My daughter watches adverts, and like any other child who watches adverts, she sees toys and jingles and things get lodged in her head. She knows Lelly Kelly shoes, Unicorn Poop (sadly real) and loads more. She sees me and my wife collecting the odd Funko Pop and she wants them too. All of us like to get the occasional Lego minifig blind bag and hope it will be the one we want.
(very happy that I have a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow minifig on my desk now!)
So just a small thought: what would an in-RPG collectible look like? What would a world with elves and dwarves have that would be interesting and thematic? Why should someone care? (player and character)
It can't just be about "getting a better sword" or "finding the three Zanthar Crystals" or some kind of key that's in four bits. What, small, interesting, non-trivial things could there be?
Monday, 15 April 2019
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
Recent Games...
...but not RPGs!
It's spring break here for my daughter, so lots of family time, the odd snatched hour or two of work to keep things ticking over, and little-to-no time for thinking or writing about RPGs.
Correction: little-to-no time spent thinking or writing about RPGs, as I've had time, I've just chosen to spend it playing games on my PS4. I got a game bundle last week and have played and completed two short games and messed about with a third. All have got me thinking parallel things about RPGs...
Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle game. The title character, Hue, is trying to find his mum, a scientist. They both live in a 2D black and white world, but his mum has figured out a way to "see" other colours. Hue gathers pieces of a magic ring that helps him shift his perception to see or not see other colours; when he chooses to not see, say, red, then red walls disappear, red spikes can't stab him and so on. The puzzles get tricky, the story is charming and there's a nice philosophical flavour running throughout. But it got me wondering about ideas like that in RPGs. Are there systems, rules, mechanics that just let someone veto effects? Maybe as super-ultra-powerful magic items, but what about just regular little artefacts... I wonder...
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is a game I finished in one four hour sitting. A beautiful, haunting game, you play as someone (it's never revealed who you are) exploring an empty English country town. No one is around, but there's evidence that something very, very strange has happened. As you explore you find ghostly echoes of the people who lived there, and piece together the story that has lead to this strange situation. It's amazing, it's deeply emotional, it's incredibly gorgeous to look at and I've not been able to stop thinking about it since last Friday night. It's got me thinking about two player games, role-playing games of exploration, games with very few instructions, games to explore difficult topics (there's a lot to unpack in Rapture about life, death and legacy) and a lot more. If you get the chance, play this game.
The Flame in the Flood is hard. It's a rogue-like game set on a great flooded river. Scout and her dog are rafting downstream trying not to drown. When they find a camp site or an abandoned town they explore for food, supplies, clean water and things they might need. Everything wants to kill you. Water is mostly polluted, so has to be cleaned. Filters break after three uses so replacements have to be found or made. The nights get cold so you need to make clothes. Animals are all around but hard to catch. Walk by some thorns and you'll get scratches; don't treat them and you'll get infected and die. Can't cook the food you find? Food poisoning. Eat too many berries? Stomach ache. And so on. Flame is really hard, but there is a neat little game concept that could help a lot.
Whenever you start the game, you're shown Scout's dog dragging a backpack away from someone who has died. Scout takes the little backpack and puts it on the dog, and it becomes a kind of second inventory (the third is what goes on your raft). To begin with I thought this was just a kind of extra little item slot and nothing more, but then I realised: those six item slots persist between games. If you have a jar of water and a piece of jerky in the dog's pack and die, when you start a new game it's in the new pack.
So... The dead body that your dog finds at the start of the game is YOU, holding your last dog's little pack...
And... If you're about to die in the game and you can you should load the most useful items into the dog's backpack so the next Scout can use them.
Also... What games do interesting things between a dying character and a new one? Yes, people pick over a dead character body for treasure and items; the interesting thing in The Flame in the Flood I think is the weird metaphysical connection between the characters that the items creates. So what other kinds of things could we do in games? Persistence of memory? Persistence of consciousness somehow? Clones that pop up when your character dies? (played in a oneshot game that did that actually!) A chance to send a small portion of your inventory to the next character, who is somehow connected to you?
Friends, take my sword to my daughter, tell her to avenge me...
So not much writing and thinking about stuff that was in my head a few weeks ago (although more on Troika! as soon as I can get my thoughts in order) but lots of thoughts.
It's spring break here for my daughter, so lots of family time, the odd snatched hour or two of work to keep things ticking over, and little-to-no time for thinking or writing about RPGs.
Correction: little-to-no time spent thinking or writing about RPGs, as I've had time, I've just chosen to spend it playing games on my PS4. I got a game bundle last week and have played and completed two short games and messed about with a third. All have got me thinking parallel things about RPGs...
Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle game. The title character, Hue, is trying to find his mum, a scientist. They both live in a 2D black and white world, but his mum has figured out a way to "see" other colours. Hue gathers pieces of a magic ring that helps him shift his perception to see or not see other colours; when he chooses to not see, say, red, then red walls disappear, red spikes can't stab him and so on. The puzzles get tricky, the story is charming and there's a nice philosophical flavour running throughout. But it got me wondering about ideas like that in RPGs. Are there systems, rules, mechanics that just let someone veto effects? Maybe as super-ultra-powerful magic items, but what about just regular little artefacts... I wonder...
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture is a game I finished in one four hour sitting. A beautiful, haunting game, you play as someone (it's never revealed who you are) exploring an empty English country town. No one is around, but there's evidence that something very, very strange has happened. As you explore you find ghostly echoes of the people who lived there, and piece together the story that has lead to this strange situation. It's amazing, it's deeply emotional, it's incredibly gorgeous to look at and I've not been able to stop thinking about it since last Friday night. It's got me thinking about two player games, role-playing games of exploration, games with very few instructions, games to explore difficult topics (there's a lot to unpack in Rapture about life, death and legacy) and a lot more. If you get the chance, play this game.
The Flame in the Flood is hard. It's a rogue-like game set on a great flooded river. Scout and her dog are rafting downstream trying not to drown. When they find a camp site or an abandoned town they explore for food, supplies, clean water and things they might need. Everything wants to kill you. Water is mostly polluted, so has to be cleaned. Filters break after three uses so replacements have to be found or made. The nights get cold so you need to make clothes. Animals are all around but hard to catch. Walk by some thorns and you'll get scratches; don't treat them and you'll get infected and die. Can't cook the food you find? Food poisoning. Eat too many berries? Stomach ache. And so on. Flame is really hard, but there is a neat little game concept that could help a lot.
Whenever you start the game, you're shown Scout's dog dragging a backpack away from someone who has died. Scout takes the little backpack and puts it on the dog, and it becomes a kind of second inventory (the third is what goes on your raft). To begin with I thought this was just a kind of extra little item slot and nothing more, but then I realised: those six item slots persist between games. If you have a jar of water and a piece of jerky in the dog's pack and die, when you start a new game it's in the new pack.
So... The dead body that your dog finds at the start of the game is YOU, holding your last dog's little pack...
And... If you're about to die in the game and you can you should load the most useful items into the dog's backpack so the next Scout can use them.
Also... What games do interesting things between a dying character and a new one? Yes, people pick over a dead character body for treasure and items; the interesting thing in The Flame in the Flood I think is the weird metaphysical connection between the characters that the items creates. So what other kinds of things could we do in games? Persistence of memory? Persistence of consciousness somehow? Clones that pop up when your character dies? (played in a oneshot game that did that actually!) A chance to send a small portion of your inventory to the next character, who is somehow connected to you?
Friends, take my sword to my daughter, tell her to avenge me...
So not much writing and thinking about stuff that was in my head a few weeks ago (although more on Troika! as soon as I can get my thoughts in order) but lots of thoughts.
Wednesday, 20 March 2019
First Impressions of Troika!
Troika! arrived in the post an hour ago.
I was happy to back the Kickstarter back when it ran; I was a big fan of Advanced Fighting Fantasy back in my youth, and to hear of something inspired by that game as opposed to D&D made me very curious. I've got a full plate of things to write and do for my day job, but a long series of train rides coming up when I might be able to give Troika! a proper read. So here's eight things I observe in my first five minutes of handling and browsing Troika!
I was happy to back the Kickstarter back when it ran; I was a big fan of Advanced Fighting Fantasy back in my youth, and to hear of something inspired by that game as opposed to D&D made me very curious. I've got a full plate of things to write and do for my day job, but a long series of train rides coming up when I might be able to give Troika! a proper read. So here's eight things I observe in my first five minutes of handling and browsing Troika!
- The production values are high. Good hardback, nice thick-but-not-too-thick paper. Excellent printing.
- d66 character classes is nice. It will take a while to read through them all, but first glance gives real variety from Burglar to Lonesome Monarch. Awesome.
- Also: a piece of evocative art for each character class!
- Reference tables on interior front and back covers: damage tables, spells and magical mishaps. Good to have them to hand.
- Interesting to have only the d6 in play for rolls. Think I've only seen that previously when playing story games.
- Some of the bestiary art is fantastic. Some is a little underwhelming. Again, just a first glance.
- Nice to see a starter adventure present!
- The cover is a bit of a mystery! I've no idea what is happening. I like the style, the wraparound-ness of it, but perhaps reading the character classes and adventure will make that clearer. It's cool but I don't know what it is.
Monday, 18 March 2019
"Room Monster"
Surely someone else has done this better than me...?
Maybe a mimic that is trying to become a whole room? I found this piece of paper in among all the files and stuff I am sorting out. How many hit dice would a room have? Or hit points for that matter?
How do you kill a room?
Maybe a mimic that is trying to become a whole room? I found this piece of paper in among all the files and stuff I am sorting out. How many hit dice would a room have? Or hit points for that matter?
How do you kill a room?
Saturday, 16 March 2019
Found In One Folder
I need to sort out my game collection, which includes a few books and zines, a ton of pdfs that I can't even bear to look at for the most part and many, many random folders of things that I've started writing, noted down or half-considered.
In one folder, picked at random for sorting out this morning, I've found:
I have at least a dozen more physical folders of various sizes.
I have to get organised.
In one folder, picked at random for sorting out this morning, I've found:
- Probability calculations for rolling n dice and getting at least one 6.
- Probability calculations for rolling 2 dice and keeping the highest result.
- Pages of notes for random setting generating a series of systems in Diaspora.
- A sketch of a rumours table for a fantasy city I remember thinking about.
- Notes for a new game of Dogs In The Vineyard (I say "new" - the notes are over five years old).
- Notes for a zombie hack of Dogs called Dead In The Graveyard (ugh, such a terrible name!) which didn't get very far, but which had - I think - the neat idea of renaming the stats "brains, brawn, blood and guts".
- What looks like a scrap of paper with PBTA game notes, but right in the centre a single question, "What happened at the Bus Station?" - and I have no idea why that's there...
- Notes on a two-player game inspired by the awful movie After Earth, for a game where two people play characters separated at great distance. One person has experience but is gravely injured, one can move freely but needs guidance. Both will die if they can't work together. There was a wonderful concept in After Earth that didn't work given the world details in the movie, but I wondered (and still do) if there's a neat little story game in there.
I have at least a dozen more physical folders of various sizes.
I have to get organised.
Wednesday, 13 March 2019
A Neat Discovery...
...and a meandering muse on short games...
One of the funnest things I did when I was making A Random Encounter was make the short games that I did as little print bonuses. Escape The Undermaze and Thursday Night were inspired by Chris McDowall's one-page hack of Into The Odd, and what really appealed to me was this idea of having something complete in just a single-page, where every element that you would need to setup and run a fun, interesting, exciting game was there.Just add a GM, some players and imagination!!!
...or something...
I've been reflecting on both of those games for a while, as I have some ideas for a collection of games/settings, like an anthology of potential stories. A common system, probably heavily influenced by Into The Odd because it's simple and great, but with double spreads that are like mini-modules. A complete session on two pages. Some tables, some inspiration, but the GM and players make it into an enjoyable evening; hopefully, with seeds and ideas scattered through the stories/games that connect things up an interesting way.
Anyway, that's for a much longer post and another day! I like the simplicity of having just a few simple rules and a couple of tables, and I thought a few days ago, "I wonder if I could really strip that down and make a simple game - maybe for the 200 Word RPG Challenge! Isn't that coming up soon?"
I think it is! Probably, hopefully announcing soon. I decided to "check out the competition" and see what was submitted last year. There were lots of entries, but I clicked on the first title that really jumped out at me...
...and wouldn't you know it, someone has beat me to it. A simple game, a neat structure, several short tables for inspiration, a working - and interesting - system and all in 200 words. Levon Jihanian is a genius.
Seriously, go check out Fuck! It's Dracula. You won't be sorry!
Monday, 11 March 2019
Illness In Games
On Saturday morning I woke up with a cold. By tea-time I was hunched over in bed, shivering and shaking as my temperature crept up close to 40 degrees (nearly 104 if you're Fahrenheit-inclined). When I woke up on Sunday morning my fever was completely gone, but since then I've continued to have aches, pains, cold symptoms and general body discomfort. Nothing major, not compared to people in real distress, but enough to make me go "Urgh!" at the thought of doing anything.
(so of course this coming week is busy than the last two combined when it comes to my day job...)
But all of this got me thinking about illness in games - or more specifically, the fact that I can't remember EVER playing in a game where any character, mine or another party PC, got sick. People got injured, sometimes badly, but they never stumbled around through a cave because they had earache, you know? They never sneezed inappropriately due to complications from dwarf pox.
Maybe it would be boring. I remember that, as we were coming to an end of a small campaign in a D&D game, my character got petrified. There was about half an hour left in the session, we didn't know if or when we would pick it up again and so I sat there listening, twiddling my thumbs and calculating my character's weight now that he was stone and not flesh. I understand why I didn't roll stats or become a random pregen, but it was a little boring.
Maybe pretending to sneeze or wheeze or groan would be dull too. Simply adding a penalty to some rolls doesn't feel like quite enough...
...but I can imagine a little fun in character and NPC interactions maybe. Nevermind charisma rolls, but how does the High Priestess look upon you when you have dragon boils? Or even just a simple cold, with red-rimmed eyes, streaming nose and slight clumsiness?
Maybe getting sick in a game is a sign that you need to rest your character. You could push on through the jungle, try to find a trail to the Hidden City of Somewhere, but you'll make things worse. Three days of rest at camp should see you right though (of course, someone else might get there first...).
I'm definitely not an expert on games, not by a long shot, I just can't think of any games that I've played in, run or read which have rules for the consequences of simple (or complicated) illness.
Can you? What would you do if characters got sick?
(so of course this coming week is busy than the last two combined when it comes to my day job...)
But all of this got me thinking about illness in games - or more specifically, the fact that I can't remember EVER playing in a game where any character, mine or another party PC, got sick. People got injured, sometimes badly, but they never stumbled around through a cave because they had earache, you know? They never sneezed inappropriately due to complications from dwarf pox.
Maybe it would be boring. I remember that, as we were coming to an end of a small campaign in a D&D game, my character got petrified. There was about half an hour left in the session, we didn't know if or when we would pick it up again and so I sat there listening, twiddling my thumbs and calculating my character's weight now that he was stone and not flesh. I understand why I didn't roll stats or become a random pregen, but it was a little boring.
Maybe pretending to sneeze or wheeze or groan would be dull too. Simply adding a penalty to some rolls doesn't feel like quite enough...
...but I can imagine a little fun in character and NPC interactions maybe. Nevermind charisma rolls, but how does the High Priestess look upon you when you have dragon boils? Or even just a simple cold, with red-rimmed eyes, streaming nose and slight clumsiness?
Maybe getting sick in a game is a sign that you need to rest your character. You could push on through the jungle, try to find a trail to the Hidden City of Somewhere, but you'll make things worse. Three days of rest at camp should see you right though (of course, someone else might get there first...).
I'm definitely not an expert on games, not by a long shot, I just can't think of any games that I've played in, run or read which have rules for the consequences of simple (or complicated) illness.
Can you? What would you do if characters got sick?
Friday, 8 March 2019
Wednesday, 6 March 2019
The Last Days of New Paris (tiny review)
I enjoyed The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville last week. It's a short novel, showing a brief period in a long Second World War: New Paris, 1950, where Surrealist manifestations stalk the streets, literal demons from hell stalk the manifestations, artist-freedom fighter Thibaut fights the Nazis and the Nazis do the kinds of things you can probably imagine the Nazis doing if they really were tapping into demonic and occult powers.
I know nothing about Surrealism, but the book certainly painted a picture with the descriptions of the city and the manifestations within. There's a fast-paced story with some neat mysteries behind the beautiful, almost-apocalyptic world that's presented. I think fantasy (and sci-fi) novels work well when a lot of the work of understanding what things are is left to the reader. So when China Mieville starts by talking about "manifs" you instantly get that they are something weird, strange, maybe dangerous, and as time goes on you pick up their true nature. This drew me in, and has reminded me just how good a writer Mieville is. I've picked up Perdido Street Station to re-read on my Kindle some time in the coming months (it's a loooong time since I first read it).
If you're interested in art generally or Surrealism particularly then I imagine that there will be interesting things in The Last Days of New Paris. But you don't have to know anything: the book carries you along through the explorations of Thibaut and Sam. I was not expecting the book to go where it went, but was very glad by the end that it had.
There are tons of neat ideas for games here too. Literally drawing on the power of art, a Tarot deck that can be spent card by card for special abilities, invoking the concept of a branch of art, and the almost-golem-like exquisite corpse creature that Thibaut shepherds around - there's a lot to take away from this book!
I know nothing about Surrealism, but the book certainly painted a picture with the descriptions of the city and the manifestations within. There's a fast-paced story with some neat mysteries behind the beautiful, almost-apocalyptic world that's presented. I think fantasy (and sci-fi) novels work well when a lot of the work of understanding what things are is left to the reader. So when China Mieville starts by talking about "manifs" you instantly get that they are something weird, strange, maybe dangerous, and as time goes on you pick up their true nature. This drew me in, and has reminded me just how good a writer Mieville is. I've picked up Perdido Street Station to re-read on my Kindle some time in the coming months (it's a loooong time since I first read it).
If you're interested in art generally or Surrealism particularly then I imagine that there will be interesting things in The Last Days of New Paris. But you don't have to know anything: the book carries you along through the explorations of Thibaut and Sam. I was not expecting the book to go where it went, but was very glad by the end that it had.
There are tons of neat ideas for games here too. Literally drawing on the power of art, a Tarot deck that can be spent card by card for special abilities, invoking the concept of a branch of art, and the almost-golem-like exquisite corpse creature that Thibaut shepherds around - there's a lot to take away from this book!
Monday, 4 March 2019
Space demons! and other universal interlopers
At the edge of the solar system, impossibly, They are here, pouring through a hole in reality...
Humans rally their forces and wonder: can we beat them? Is this the end? And importantly, why are they here???
(From notes for an old Into The Oort supplement idea I had. The canon Oort setting had no aliens, just leftover tech from older human communities, but commenters seemed interested in space demons and Other Menaces. The table also probably owes a debt to To The Stars, the shared game universe that I, David McGrogan, Patrick Stuart and others played games in years ago.)
Humans rally their forces and wonder: can we beat them? Is this the end? And importantly, why are they here???
- Counter-humans from an inverse-universe determined to conquer our space.
- Insectoid menace plundering precious resources: humans!
- Blurred-edge fractal-flowers, AIs that want to be the only consciousness.
- Conceptual bubble-beings; they feed off maths and want more equations to devour.
- Swarm of nano-constructors; absorbing comet ice and space dust, and looking at that hot glowing ball of gas in the distance with hunger.
- Spike-ships colonised by ant-people parasite-pilots are searching for something good to drink: humans!
- Matriarchal anti-entropic space-pirates looking for a new star to turn into pure computronium.
- Macro-scale germ-hive searching for the ultimate infectees: whales! (or, if whales extinct: humans!)
- Cat-headed demons of the negaverse; searching for a great big saucer of milk.
- Aesthovores, art-eating twelve-legged spiders from dream-space; attracted by Earth culture and looking to farm artists from the closest source: humans!
(From notes for an old Into The Oort supplement idea I had. The canon Oort setting had no aliens, just leftover tech from older human communities, but commenters seemed interested in space demons and Other Menaces. The table also probably owes a debt to To The Stars, the shared game universe that I, David McGrogan, Patrick Stuart and others played games in years ago.)
Friday, 1 March 2019
Highlights of the D&D 5e Starter Set Misadventures!
A little over two years ago, Christmas-time 2016, I met up with Patrick Stuart and David McGrogan to have a meal, catch up and play something. Patrick suggested the D&D 5e starter set adventure. Dave and I had played a little 5e but weren't really familiar with the system. Over the course of a few hours things got weird...
Patrick: "You're a couple of adventurers taking supplies to a village... Do you want more than one pregen each?"
Us: "We'll be fine!"
...five minutes pass...
Us: "Who else have you got?"
We kill some goblins. My goblin-hating elf desecrates the shallow graves that Dave's responsible dwarf digs. We head to town and promptly leave the wagon in the open with one guard, not knowing that a gang of brigands roams the town after dark.
Violence follows.
The mayor is concerned that adventurers have arrived in town and started murdering the locals. We suspect (wrongly) that he is in league with the brigands. My chaotic elf wizard fakes a weird holy symbol to try and force a (non-existent) confession out of him. We persuade a brigand to help us out, but then fake a curse on him to try and ensure compliance. We get caught out but kill him.
Moving on to an area we think is the real source of the problems we encounter a strange creature. We need to tell deep, dark secrets to get past it. We invent things, getting deeper into our characters. One of us is a thief, another killed their goblin-deity worshipping grandmother.
Things get dark.
We rush into a wizard's bedroom and seize the advantage. We hurt him and then put him to sleep. He's the head bad guy. We tie him up, gag him and break his fingers - "just in case" - then when he still raises the alarm we drag him along with us because he knows stuff.
Some impressive visual cantrips scare away enemies, but then we're cornered by three larger foes. We take out one, and then two of our party are slain. Our last PC runs into the night, escaping with no friends, no treasure and no XP. She lives to tell the tale, but barely.
All of this happened over the space of about fourteen in-game hours. A series of seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time choices, followed by instant regret, mayhem and disaster.
Maybe it was a mistake to desecrate the goblin graves.
Maybe it was wrong to push a prisoner down some stairs into a stone basement.
Maybe we should have thought through some of our plans more.
Editor's Note, two years later: It was a really fun game. I found some of this in a G+ post I wanted to see archived, and it seemed like it might give some amusement to the general reader!
*
Patrick: "You're a couple of adventurers taking supplies to a village... Do you want more than one pregen each?"
Us: "We'll be fine!"
...five minutes pass...
Us: "Who else have you got?"
*
We kill some goblins. My goblin-hating elf desecrates the shallow graves that Dave's responsible dwarf digs. We head to town and promptly leave the wagon in the open with one guard, not knowing that a gang of brigands roams the town after dark.
Violence follows.
The mayor is concerned that adventurers have arrived in town and started murdering the locals. We suspect (wrongly) that he is in league with the brigands. My chaotic elf wizard fakes a weird holy symbol to try and force a (non-existent) confession out of him. We persuade a brigand to help us out, but then fake a curse on him to try and ensure compliance. We get caught out but kill him.
*
Moving on to an area we think is the real source of the problems we encounter a strange creature. We need to tell deep, dark secrets to get past it. We invent things, getting deeper into our characters. One of us is a thief, another killed their goblin-deity worshipping grandmother.
Things get dark.
*
We rush into a wizard's bedroom and seize the advantage. We hurt him and then put him to sleep. He's the head bad guy. We tie him up, gag him and break his fingers - "just in case" - then when he still raises the alarm we drag him along with us because he knows stuff.
Some impressive visual cantrips scare away enemies, but then we're cornered by three larger foes. We take out one, and then two of our party are slain. Our last PC runs into the night, escaping with no friends, no treasure and no XP. She lives to tell the tale, but barely.
*
All of this happened over the space of about fourteen in-game hours. A series of seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time choices, followed by instant regret, mayhem and disaster.
Maybe it was a mistake to desecrate the goblin graves.
Maybe it was wrong to push a prisoner down some stairs into a stone basement.
Maybe we should have thought through some of our plans more.
*
Editor's Note, two years later: It was a really fun game. I found some of this in a G+ post I wanted to see archived, and it seemed like it might give some amusement to the general reader!
Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Lamentations Of The Dogs In The Vineyard
G+ is on life support, so a few weeks back I trawled through every post I'd made in my 6+ years using it to see if there was anything that I wanted to archive.
I found about a dozen posts that were effectively blog posts I'd misplaced. One was an idea I'd loved but done nothing with. I think over the coming weeks/months/however-long-I-maintain-a-regular-writing-habit I'll expand on this concept and flesh it out as much as I can.
From a November 6th 2014 G+ post:
But while I like the basic stats and skills setup for Dogs, I found it really bothersome to keep on top of the dice pools. The rolls and re-rolls, the escalation. It could be tense sometimes, but at others it was just eight or nine dice on each side clattering and trying to find an exception as no-one backs down.
So why not mix a little Old School goodness in to the blend to simplify some of the mechanics? Why not use D&Dish stats? And since LOTFP has a system that uses equipment and assumptions about a similar background period of history, why not "simply" perform an RPG transplant operation?
Why not write about this in bits and pieces over the coming however-long-I-maintain-this-blog-yadda-yadda-yadda?
Why not.
I found about a dozen posts that were effectively blog posts I'd misplaced. One was an idea I'd loved but done nothing with. I think over the coming weeks/months/however-long-I-maintain-a-regular-writing-habit I'll expand on this concept and flesh it out as much as I can.
From a November 6th 2014 G+ post:
Prequel to Dogs in the Vineyard; early 1800s sandbox campaign in a largely unsettled counter-Utah; party are not-quite-Dogs; sent off by the church to convert isolated communities, make contact with the Mountain Folk and look into those odd reports of weird caves in the Border Hills.I'm a fan of the setting for Dogs In The Vineyard, and in the G+ circles that I used to read and the blogs I currently read I see barely a mention of it. I LOVE what the game is about, I love the idea of the Watchdogs and I think that Dogs is possibly Vincent Baker's best game - at least out of everything of his I've read. The game-setting-making process he leads the reader/GM through is magical. Going from simple prompts it steers your creativity without being prohibitive.
BUT play with LotFP as base system (plus guns). Clerics are true believers, magic-users are the church's investigators into other stuff who are now a bit tainted, fighters and specialists are the useful novices.
And the weird caves are filled with things out of Lovecraft.
But while I like the basic stats and skills setup for Dogs, I found it really bothersome to keep on top of the dice pools. The rolls and re-rolls, the escalation. It could be tense sometimes, but at others it was just eight or nine dice on each side clattering and trying to find an exception as no-one backs down.
So why not mix a little Old School goodness in to the blend to simplify some of the mechanics? Why not use D&Dish stats? And since LOTFP has a system that uses equipment and assumptions about a similar background period of history, why not "simply" perform an RPG transplant operation?
Why not write about this in bits and pieces over the coming however-long-I-maintain-this-blog-yadda-yadda-yadda?
Why not.
Monday, 25 February 2019
The Passage of Time
A long time has passed! Perhaps mysteriously... The party can't account for the gap in their collective memories. What has happened?
- They've skipped forward in time, a simple time slip (just like anything magical is "simple" right?) What were they last doing? How have things unfolded in their absence?
- They were kidnapped by strange beings! Fragments of memory will return to them every d6 days. 10% chance that any sleep will result in nightmares of things they can't explain.
- Their possessions are all missing and they have unexplained bruises on their heads. Bandits probably? But fairly untidy ones as there's a 75% chance that someone who looks will pick up signs of a trail leading to the hideout.
- Pockets are searched. Half a note says, "Don't think about it, or-" and the rest is burned away. Another scrap says, "-the tailor or the innkeeper-" while a third slip of paper lists everyone's name under a WANTED FOR SKULLDUGGERY AND DEEDS MOST FOUL banner.
- "Friends! There you are!" A jovial man walks towards you, his manner is regal but his dress is not. "Ah, what a week we've had eh? Eh?!" He pats his pockets. "You've all been most kind, most kind indeed, but it seems that there's the small matter of my retainer, yes?" His eyes narrow and his hands rest lightly on a pair of short swords. "As discussed, my friends, yes?"
- They got busy doing one thing and another, meandering from this and that to modest successes and small failures, surviving all the while and now here they are. Hazy, but happy, ready to continue.
Friday, 27 January 2017
Catz
I like The Black Hack, and I think The Cthulhu Hack is a good read for combining a simple ruleset with a bit of focused setting and tone. Of all of the *Hack products I've seen so far, The Cat Hack has hit me the most as a game that I want to run. In 16 pages you've got rules, a theme, some neat innovations around equipment, magic and more. The classes are really clever, and not just feline versions of fighters, rogues and so on. The Cat Hack stands out to me as something to be explored - you could read it once quickly and miss a lot. If you get it, take your time when you read it, there is a lot of really neat stuff in there.
I'm going to run it sooner or later; I have a particular setting in mind for a game of it though. I like The Walking Dead and real-world zombie fiction, and there's something neat in my mind of mashing that with The Cat Hack. The dead rise, the humans in a neighbourhood are scared and wondering what to do when Mr Jones starts snarling and chasing after his wife with blood running down his face - and a group of cats work to try and help their owners escape and survive. I've no idea where it would go in play, although I would lean on it as being serious rather than a comedy game (even though the PCs would be semi-mystical cats).
I want to find out how well it might work for a setting. I have a three week gap in my "working away" schedule coming up, so if I can find a good day there, I might try to run it on G+/Hangouts. Stay tuned, drop me an email or comment if you're interested.
And check out The Cat Hack: it's small and perfectly formed, interesting and innovative and it's $1.95 on DTRPG! Total bargain!
I'm going to run it sooner or later; I have a particular setting in mind for a game of it though. I like The Walking Dead and real-world zombie fiction, and there's something neat in my mind of mashing that with The Cat Hack. The dead rise, the humans in a neighbourhood are scared and wondering what to do when Mr Jones starts snarling and chasing after his wife with blood running down his face - and a group of cats work to try and help their owners escape and survive. I've no idea where it would go in play, although I would lean on it as being serious rather than a comedy game (even though the PCs would be semi-mystical cats).
I want to find out how well it might work for a setting. I have a three week gap in my "working away" schedule coming up, so if I can find a good day there, I might try to run it on G+/Hangouts. Stay tuned, drop me an email or comment if you're interested.
And check out The Cat Hack: it's small and perfectly formed, interesting and innovative and it's $1.95 on DTRPG! Total bargain!
Thursday, 26 January 2017
Signals From Noise (1)
I've been thinking about ships in Into The Oort a lot for the last week. I had a lot of fun a while ago writing down names for a d100 table of ship names (it will surprise no-one if they see that table that I like the Culture novels), and I now have a d50 table of "ship classes" too, in the sense that the Enterprise D is a Galaxy class ship, Luke Skywalker flies an X-Wing and so on.
Say you have a random encounter with a ship and roll some thing from a few tables quickly. It comes back with, say, 20 metres long, rocket-shape, stats are 10s across the board except for a thick HULL of 14. Two laser banks. Another quick roll, it's part of a notoriously inept pirate militia - but where did they get their hands on a decent ship like that? Mystery...
Anyway, you roll on the d50 ship class table and that tells you it's a Caliban class ship - and from this point on, if you meet another Caliban class ship you can expect it to have similar stats, shape, size and armaments. Caliban can become a kind of shorthand in your game.
(of course, they might not only be used by pirates: a border patrol for a polity seven hexes over could have a whole fleet that they have retrofitted with fast drives; comet miners might have one with a ridiculously oversized gun installed to deter thieves - the class just offers a broad baseline)
Ship names and classes are fun to think about. Mechanics and shipgen less so. Finding a way to make ships as nice as PCs from a game of Into The Odd, mechanically speaking, is interesting and tricky. If someone rolls stats for a character, they can then interpret them when it comes to describing their physical appearance - and that's OK, because they're going to be playing that role after all. They won't be playing a ship. My original design idea was to have three stats for ships, HULL, DRIVE, SCAN - which almost mirror STR, DEX, WILL from Odd - and to have regenerative shields, SP, replace hit points. So in the midst of a fight the shields then the HULL takes damage, but assuming the power is up and the ship can get away, the shields recover and then the HULL has to be repaired.
But what about crew size? What about ship size? What about cargo space? I'm happy to have black boxes for a lot of features - power, life support, gravity - but I think having something mechanically that determines crew, ship size and cargo space features in ship generation is useful (as well as some thoughts about how that could mechanically impact things in play; how well can someone fly the ship with only a skeleton crew?)
And while it is nice and neat to have stats for the ship, do we need someone who is acting as a pilot or captain? Probably. If the ship takes a hit does everyone onboard roll to avoid taking some kind of damage? Maybe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the moment I'm looking for something simple to generate ships, both for players and for the GM who is creating encounters in play and prepping them before play. I've asked a fair few questions in this post. In the next post I'll try to pull some answers together.
Say you have a random encounter with a ship and roll some thing from a few tables quickly. It comes back with, say, 20 metres long, rocket-shape, stats are 10s across the board except for a thick HULL of 14. Two laser banks. Another quick roll, it's part of a notoriously inept pirate militia - but where did they get their hands on a decent ship like that? Mystery...
Anyway, you roll on the d50 ship class table and that tells you it's a Caliban class ship - and from this point on, if you meet another Caliban class ship you can expect it to have similar stats, shape, size and armaments. Caliban can become a kind of shorthand in your game.
(of course, they might not only be used by pirates: a border patrol for a polity seven hexes over could have a whole fleet that they have retrofitted with fast drives; comet miners might have one with a ridiculously oversized gun installed to deter thieves - the class just offers a broad baseline)
Ship names and classes are fun to think about. Mechanics and shipgen less so. Finding a way to make ships as nice as PCs from a game of Into The Odd, mechanically speaking, is interesting and tricky. If someone rolls stats for a character, they can then interpret them when it comes to describing their physical appearance - and that's OK, because they're going to be playing that role after all. They won't be playing a ship. My original design idea was to have three stats for ships, HULL, DRIVE, SCAN - which almost mirror STR, DEX, WILL from Odd - and to have regenerative shields, SP, replace hit points. So in the midst of a fight the shields then the HULL takes damage, but assuming the power is up and the ship can get away, the shields recover and then the HULL has to be repaired.
But what about crew size? What about ship size? What about cargo space? I'm happy to have black boxes for a lot of features - power, life support, gravity - but I think having something mechanically that determines crew, ship size and cargo space features in ship generation is useful (as well as some thoughts about how that could mechanically impact things in play; how well can someone fly the ship with only a skeleton crew?)
And while it is nice and neat to have stats for the ship, do we need someone who is acting as a pilot or captain? Probably. If the ship takes a hit does everyone onboard roll to avoid taking some kind of damage? Maybe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the moment I'm looking for something simple to generate ships, both for players and for the GM who is creating encounters in play and prepping them before play. I've asked a fair few questions in this post. In the next post I'll try to pull some answers together.
Friday, 20 January 2017
A signal reaches out from the Oort Cloud
I posted this on my G+ feed last week, but forgot to make an actual blog post.
The main part of that message reads, if you're interested:
01001001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101111 01110010 01110100 00001010 01000001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101000 00001010 00110010 00110111 00100000 00110001 00110000 00100000 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110111
Feel free to decode and share. TL;DR - I've given myself a deadline to motivate me finishing Into The Oort. I think it's workable. And when I announced this last week, the time between the announcement and the deadline was the amount of time it takes a radio signal to go from the Oort Cloud to Earth. It felt right.
The to do list:
The main part of that message reads, if you're interested:
01001001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101111 01110010 01110100 00001010 01000001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101000 00001010 00110010 00110111 00100000 00110001 00110000 00100000 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110111
Feel free to decode and share. TL;DR - I've given myself a deadline to motivate me finishing Into The Oort. I think it's workable. And when I announced this last week, the time between the announcement and the deadline was the amount of time it takes a radio signal to go from the Oort Cloud to Earth. It felt right.
The to do list:
- Really figure out what does and doesn't work in my current framework for the game.
- Figure out what I know I want but don't have yet, and fill those gaps.
- Experiment with Scribus to look at layout options with that (everything so far is in an OpenOffice document).
- ART! I want a lot. Which means contacting artists. I'm making a list of the kinds of pieces I think would be good, then checking portfolios. I have one or two names in mind already.
- More playtesting. In particular spaceships and travel. Things are not as concrete in that respect yet and they need to be.
- A playtest pack. Aim for this to be done, in one form or other, for mid-March. Yeah, I know, I think I said that last year. But this year it will be.
Tuesday, 20 September 2016
Two Important Occasions
First of all, my daughter is three today! Three years has gone by very quickly. Three years ago, Mrs R and I were both exhausted. I remember this distinct moment of, "What... None of you are staying to make sure we don't mess this up?" when the last family members went home after coo-ing and ahh-ing over CJ.
I think at some point just after Christmas I'll have managed to hook CJ onto some kind of RPG; we're already making up stories together, and she's interested in board and card games too. Some kind of ten or fifteen minute RPG with some minis or toys, plus simple dice or yes/no questions to resolve things should be doable. I'll report back as and when we do this.
The second occasion is also interesting: today is five years since I sat down to play Apocalypse World with Patrick Stuart MCing and David McGrogan also playing. Apart from two sessions of high school D&D, this was my first game. I picked the Gunlugger class because it seemed right. (I think Dave and Patrick would argue that this first character has been the template for every character I've played since; I think things are a bit more nuanced than that)
That first session really drew me in: I was hooked. And the last five years has gone by quickly. Alas, maintaining a weekly game slot over that time hasn't been possible, but I enjoy playing when I can. I think about and read about games every day, and am still in the slow process of cultivating a daily writing process.
Five years from now, my daughter will be eight, and it'll be ten years since I started playing games. And I'll be forty... Hopefully, somewhere in that time I'll be able to play some good games with her, but also find space to play in a couple of long term games too.
To the future!
N
I think at some point just after Christmas I'll have managed to hook CJ onto some kind of RPG; we're already making up stories together, and she's interested in board and card games too. Some kind of ten or fifteen minute RPG with some minis or toys, plus simple dice or yes/no questions to resolve things should be doable. I'll report back as and when we do this.
The second occasion is also interesting: today is five years since I sat down to play Apocalypse World with Patrick Stuart MCing and David McGrogan also playing. Apart from two sessions of high school D&D, this was my first game. I picked the Gunlugger class because it seemed right. (I think Dave and Patrick would argue that this first character has been the template for every character I've played since; I think things are a bit more nuanced than that)
That first session really drew me in: I was hooked. And the last five years has gone by quickly. Alas, maintaining a weekly game slot over that time hasn't been possible, but I enjoy playing when I can. I think about and read about games every day, and am still in the slow process of cultivating a daily writing process.
Five years from now, my daughter will be eight, and it'll be ten years since I started playing games. And I'll be forty... Hopefully, somewhere in that time I'll be able to play some good games with her, but also find space to play in a couple of long term games too.
To the future!
N
Monday, 19 September 2016
(Almost) On Holiday
I'm going on holiday at the end of the week. Long overdue, much deserved, and there'll be very little in the way of rest because my daughter (who turns three tomorrow), and my wife and my wife's parents are all coming too.
Between now and the taxi picking us up on Saturday (ugh, 3:15am!) I'm technically still on the clock in my day job, except that tomorrow we're going out for the day to celebrate CJ's birthday, then Thursday is another relative's birthday, Friday will be packing and panicking. So today and Wednesday for work. Yet here I am posting, of course.
The holiday will give me a chance to advance some game plans (some of which I can allude to, some of which I can't talk about), as there will be some times when my family are siesta-ing, and I'm not one for daysleeping. I'll be plotting and scheming:
If anyone's been thinking about getting print copies of any of the issues of A Random Encounter, now's a great time, because in a few days I won't be shipping anything for over a fortnight. If you order by midday on Thursday 22nd then I'll definitely get it in the mail before I go on holiday. If you're happy with pdfs then you can get them from Payhip and DriveThruRPG with no problems.
More on future projects soon. If anyone's played Escape The Undermaze or Thursday Night, the print extra games that come with print copies of issues 2 and 3 of the zine then let me know how they worked for you. Or even if you've just read them and have some feedback, drop me a line.
Adios!
N
Between now and the taxi picking us up on Saturday (ugh, 3:15am!) I'm technically still on the clock in my day job, except that tomorrow we're going out for the day to celebrate CJ's birthday, then Thursday is another relative's birthday, Friday will be packing and panicking. So today and Wednesday for work. Yet here I am posting, of course.
The holiday will give me a chance to advance some game plans (some of which I can allude to, some of which I can't talk about), as there will be some times when my family are siesta-ing, and I'm not one for daysleeping. I'll be plotting and scheming:
- first, Issue 4 of A Random Encounter is somewhere between a third and halfway through the production process. I can get a rough timeline sorted out while I'm away, but I need to do a follow-up interview. That won't happen until I'm back, and then there's more transcribing, art and so on. New ETA: November.
- second, Project DANDELION: an idea I've been toying with for a while, and actually, being on holiday is the perfect time to work on this. DANDELION is a kind of prototype, and I have grand dreams but also grounded plans for this. Expect me to share this prototype thing hopefully by the end of October (I can work on this well while away, and then type and layout etc when I get back).
- third, game prep for playing Night Witches. I floated the idea on G+ a few weeks or so back, and there was enough, "Sounds cool," comments to make me go for it. I've got the pdf on my phone, and I'll have plenty of notepaper, so may as well start jotting stuff down and figuring it all out.
TO BUSINESS!
A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to meet up with David McGrogan, Chris McDowall and Patrick Stuart - coincidentally, the subjects of the first three issues of A Random Encounter! We played a great game of Fiasco using a Warhammer 40K-themed playset (I'm not all that familiar with 40K, but got approving murmurs when I declared that an arch heretic character was a Blood Angel Space Marine); more importantly than that they agreed to the following publicity shot: | |
| "Dammit Dave, open your eyes!" |
More on future projects soon. If anyone's played Escape The Undermaze or Thursday Night, the print extra games that come with print copies of issues 2 and 3 of the zine then let me know how they worked for you. Or even if you've just read them and have some feedback, drop me a line.
Adios!
N
Friday, 2 September 2016
Games I Want To Play
Up in the top navigation I have a page called "Games I Have Played". I started it back when I first started the blog. I thought it might be a neat way to collect what games I had played. I think I had an idea to do something which was almost like a micro-review; I didn't update it very often, and haven't looked at it for a while. I'm sure there are things that I've missed.
In the last few days though I've been thinking more and more about running a game, partly because I've not played anything regularly for a month or so while noisms Ainu Moshir game is on hiatus. I played in a game that Patrick ran a few weeks back, which was good, but also served to point out to me that I've not got a lot of gaming done this year.
So, in no particular order, here are some games that I've been thinking about playing lately:
In the last few days though I've been thinking more and more about running a game, partly because I've not played anything regularly for a month or so while noisms Ainu Moshir game is on hiatus. I played in a game that Patrick ran a few weeks back, which was good, but also served to point out to me that I've not got a lot of gaming done this year.
So, in no particular order, here are some games that I've been thinking about playing lately:
Friday, 26 August 2016
A Random Encounter #3
Hurrah! It's here! Issue 3 is now available from the Zines page in print, and there's links to the pdfs as well if that's more your thing.
It took a while to get this issue together, but as with many projects, it just finally fell into place like a weird chain of dominoes. The lead domino was Patrick Stuart, my interviewee for the issue: I interviewed Patrick in April and then again in August after Maze of the Blue Medusa was a big winner at the ENnies. Patrick was awesome, and shared a lot of really rich material for the zine; we explored where his interest in games comes from, how he makes what he makes, his motivations and more. Patrick shared so much that this issue has ended up at 36 pages including covers, instead of the 24 of Issues 1 and 2.
The next domino was getting two great artists onboard: Scrap Princess and Jeremy Duncan. Scrap has produced a great cover that follows the series theme of "show the interviewee having a random encounter in something they've made"; she also created a lot of really great original illustrations based on her collaborations with Patrick. I asked Jeremy to create some art based on my favourite False Machine blog posts - his Kamikaze Librarian and Lanthanum Chromate dwarf are awesome, and the Kamikaze Librarian also graces the back cover of the issue.
Another domino was time: finding time to pull everything together has been a real challenge in the last few months. But hitting crunch time has also shown me that this is what I want to do more and more of. There is a real thrill to making something and putting it out into the world (and also that slightly panicked moment when you pull out the credit card to pay for the print run, and wonder if people will buy it!) - and it's also a bit addictive, because you realise more and more that making stuff is not impossible.
The last domino for Issue 3 was the print extra. I really enjoyed making Escape The Undermaze, a one-page microgame, for Issue 2, and the feedback that I got for it was quite positive. I've made a decision to create a microgame for every issue from now on as a print extra - and I've also fallen in love with the format a little bit too. The microgame for Issue 3 is called Thursday Night, and is another short game with minimal rules but hopefully enough inspiration to drive a tense game of a bad situation.
So: the dominoes have fallen and Issue 3 is here. Please check it out in whatever format you like best. If that's pdf then you can get it from Payhip here and from DriveThruRPG here. And if you like print then order it from here and I'll get it in the post to you as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading this, hope you check out Issue 3 of A Random Encounter, featuring Patrick Stuart!
PS - if you've not got Issues 1 and 2, you can get them from the zines page too!
It took a while to get this issue together, but as with many projects, it just finally fell into place like a weird chain of dominoes. The lead domino was Patrick Stuart, my interviewee for the issue: I interviewed Patrick in April and then again in August after Maze of the Blue Medusa was a big winner at the ENnies. Patrick was awesome, and shared a lot of really rich material for the zine; we explored where his interest in games comes from, how he makes what he makes, his motivations and more. Patrick shared so much that this issue has ended up at 36 pages including covers, instead of the 24 of Issues 1 and 2.
The next domino was getting two great artists onboard: Scrap Princess and Jeremy Duncan. Scrap has produced a great cover that follows the series theme of "show the interviewee having a random encounter in something they've made"; she also created a lot of really great original illustrations based on her collaborations with Patrick. I asked Jeremy to create some art based on my favourite False Machine blog posts - his Kamikaze Librarian and Lanthanum Chromate dwarf are awesome, and the Kamikaze Librarian also graces the back cover of the issue.
Another domino was time: finding time to pull everything together has been a real challenge in the last few months. But hitting crunch time has also shown me that this is what I want to do more and more of. There is a real thrill to making something and putting it out into the world (and also that slightly panicked moment when you pull out the credit card to pay for the print run, and wonder if people will buy it!) - and it's also a bit addictive, because you realise more and more that making stuff is not impossible.
The last domino for Issue 3 was the print extra. I really enjoyed making Escape The Undermaze, a one-page microgame, for Issue 2, and the feedback that I got for it was quite positive. I've made a decision to create a microgame for every issue from now on as a print extra - and I've also fallen in love with the format a little bit too. The microgame for Issue 3 is called Thursday Night, and is another short game with minimal rules but hopefully enough inspiration to drive a tense game of a bad situation.
So: the dominoes have fallen and Issue 3 is here. Please check it out in whatever format you like best. If that's pdf then you can get it from Payhip here and from DriveThruRPG here. And if you like print then order it from here and I'll get it in the post to you as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading this, hope you check out Issue 3 of A Random Encounter, featuring Patrick Stuart!
PS - if you've not got Issues 1 and 2, you can get them from the zines page too!
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