RPG Person Profile

So this is me when it comes to games... (and my first post in a looong time because of fatherhood!)

I'm currently running (at home): Nothing, but up until recently I was running a campaign set in and around the city of Wetham. We were playing using LotFP, had used a few settings, and intend to carry on at some point. I've also ran Dogs in the Vineyard, In A Wicked Age and several standalone games - in particular I love GHOST/ECHO.

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (at home) include: None. This makes me sad. Having a young baby at home makes this tricky for now.

I'm currently running (online): Nothing. Sigh. See above. However, I'm hoping to get the old gang back together sooner or later!

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (online) include: I've only played in one game online so far, but want to play more! I played a couple of sessions of Pendragon of Mars, which was awesome. (noisms ran that)

I would especially like to play/run: Cyberpunk 2020 but hacked away from the basic setting a little. I think the basic rules and mechanics would support loads of games in different genres. I have wanted to run or play Apocalypse World ever since I last played it (almost two years ago now).

...but would also try: Nearly anything OSRish/D&D-y. I'm interested in interesting mechanics that reflect some aspect of the game that is unfolding. And I have a stack of pdfs from various Bundles of Holding and other places that I want to try.

I live in: Liverpool, England - or rather that's the nearest city. I've been fortunate to game with some excellent people who introduced me to tabletop RPGs.

2 or 3 well-known RPG products other people made that I like: Vornheim is a go-to book for me. It's compact, it's hardback, it feels good in your hands and in your backpack. It's damn useful too. And all of this before saying that it looks amazing too. I got one of the final copies from the publisher. Dogs in the Vineyard feels like it came from another world. It presents an interesting setting, with core ideas that could be hacked into a million and one different settings. The Town Creation stuff does something wonderful in helping a GM to establish a series of people and problems in a logical way - so then they can get out of the way while the Dogs do their thing.

2 or 3 novels I like: I Am Legend by the late Richard Matheson. I've re-read this at least once a year for the last fifteen years. In the last few years I've really grown to love the Poirot novels. So far my favourite would be a tie between The ABC Murders and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

2 or 3 movies I like: The Richard Donner Superman. Back To The Future. Four Weddings And A Funeral.

Best place to find me on-line: On this blog or on Google+.

I will read almost anything on tabletop RPGs if it's: Interesting. I look over posts about "offending"/"offended" people and who said what and what it means and so on - but it's only titillation. I want to see interesting ideas for games, neat thoughts on where games might go or what kinds of games might be played.

I really do not want to hear about: How something is bad if you've not played it, or no-one you know has played it. OK? Ask questions - even ask questions because you're skeptical about "how X would work" - but don't flat out deny or hate something you or a trusted friend have no experience of.

Free RPG Content I made: Is all over this blog at the moment I guess; tables and ideas and bits and bobs. I'm working on getting some bits and pieces I think are neat into a pdf or something.

You can buy RPG stuff I made: Nowhere right now, but somewhere eventually!

If you know anything about intuitive software for fomatting and layout it'd help me with a project I'm working on: Actually it would help me with pretty much every project I am working on. So if you can give me some pointers or point me in the right direction I would be very grateful!

I talk about RPGs on G+ under the name +Nathan Ryder.

Imminent Fatherhood

There are a million and one things that I want to write about. The last few sessions of the Wetham campaign, thoughts about using dominoes in games, recent purchases, ideas for other sessions, monsters, items and settings.

However, at some point in the next few weeks I am due to become a father!

As a result, over the last few weeks so many things that I have tried to do have seemed to just fall by the wayside...

I'm very excited, and when I have a moment I'll come back and write some more about role-playing games. I have some big plans - I just have to find a way to make them happen...

Generating Pugs

(this is a post written in haste and ignorance and contains thoughts that have not necessarily been taken to any kind of logical conclusion; so who knows if there is anything of value here, or anything that can be taken to a valuable conclusion. Perhaps you will take a chance?)

The other day I was thinking about generating large numbers of Pugs. Pugs are a goblin-y kind of creature that I wrote about when I was DMing the Somewhere North campaign earlier this year. They start as 2/3HD creatures (clerics and chiefs have more 4HD) and are found in various group sizes, from two person scout groups all the way up to 150 strong warbands. And you would not want to look in the old Dwarven Fortresses under the northern hills. Thousands and thousands of them in there.

So. You have two Pugs running from a party. Quickly you roll four d8s and there we go, you can get their HP and know what's what.

But: the Party is ambushed by a Medium group. (dice rolled as I write to illustrate point). They've been lying in wait and are prepared. (6+3d6 leads to 19 Pugs, 6 of them are 3HD, roll for 50% check and one is a 4HD Pug Warlord's Son) So the Medium group is comprised of a 4HD leader, six 3HD Pugs (two of which are Clerics) and twelve 2HD Pugs. That's a lot of dice to roll to stat them up. You can do it, but it seems like a little chore.

Thus: I started thinking, can a reasonable generator be made? Say, roll 2d20 and consult a table that will give Pug numbers, HP values, what they are armed with and so on. Of course, the original conception of the Pug is something that I have put together. There must be a million and one similarly created opponent humanoids.

Here's the interesting thing that was occuring to me as I was sat in Costa: there is something beautifully mathematical about all of this. You create a system to model some kind of objects. It's totally valid to create the objects and move from there too. But in some respects the model is quite complicated in some ways (i.e., if you want to generate a lot of Pugs at once). So can a different model be created (a different means of generating large numbers of opponents) that means fewer dice are rolled, but the result is representative of the larger model?

As I said at the start, none of this is thought through particularly well. I'm just curious.

(and say you had A.N. Other opponent that has 2HD and appears in large groups; if there was a 2d20 table, or something indexed with two d20s or something like it - the result from the d20 rolls in terms of HP would be valid as well potentially, i.e., a group of 2HD zombies might have other features but their HP values could be generated similarly)

(all of this floating around in my head, and partially prompted by Zak S's post about Elegance, which made a connection with the idea of mathematical beauty...)

Monster: Spellbook Golems

Some tomes in magical and rare libraries are cursed. The unfortunate reader, if not properly prepared, may go blind from reading the title page. A careless peruser may go mad from touching a hellish travelogue. An unwary thief may find that they are trapped within the pages of a magically charged Who's Who.

None of these fates compare to coming face-to-face with a secret library's secret guardian. No, not a Kamikaze Librarian (thought for later: run a game where people can only choose from extraordinary classes created in that style). A golem made of magical texts...

You run your fingers along the wrong shelf. You open a locked cabinet. You don't pay your fine. Any one of these might trigger a cascade of leather bound books of all shapes and sizes, spilling on to the floor and forming into a humanoid shape - or perhaps into a vaguely houndlike body. If it has been activated it is because you are not supposed to be there, or because you have taken something it is bound to protect. A Spellbook Golem will follow you, attack you, attempt to restrain you - but usually it will not try to kill you. The Librarian who finds you afterwards will do that...

Where does the time go?

I like noisms' "generalised lament" about the amount of time that he has to run/play games (and write about them as well) - obviously not the fact of the matter, but the situation resonates with me a lot. I wonder about how things are going to change when I become a dad in a few months time. Will I be able to play in a weekly game? (nevermind run one) At the moment I am barely able to run a LotFP campaign once a week; in principle I am taking part in noisms' excellent Pendragon of Mars campaign, but in reality I'm either away or busy. I've taken part in two sessions.

Ah well! I can sit here and weep for my lack of time or I can start to think, like noisms about the five games I would want to run or play:

• Chatting after games night yesterday I realised that I would love to play some more Cyberpunk; I really enjoyed the game that we played about eighteen months ago in alternate Soviet Cyberpool.
• Apocalypse World. I'd love to play it, I'd particularly love to run it (I was hoping to run it for my nephew and his friends this summer, but think I will be too short on time).
• I've read a lot about Monsterhearts in the last few months and it really intrigues me... I might have to pick it up soon...
• Avarice Industries is an RPG that I supported on Kickstarter. It's a bit Cyberpunk-y with the twist that the big corporations (one of which the players work for) have technology that creates anything. You can ride a dinosaur to work or have a bag with dimensional pockets. Big Problem: it was due in April 2012, and it's still (as of July 2013) not here. I've had bits and pieces of pdfs but nothing playable... AP stuff that was shared looks really interesting.
• Homebrew Dogs In The Vineyard in modern day setting with zombies. I bloody loved running Dogs, we played about five sessions and it was a joy to prepare for and play. While playing it I was struck with the idea of the Dogs being able to do what they do because they have the final say about what is right and wrong (by virtue of being Followers of the King of Life). I think this kind of theme could transfer well in a zombie game; people acting as they will because there are no courts or authorities to say otherwise. I act, therefore I'm right. Started making some notes about this some time ago and tagged them with "zombies".

It's Camp Nanowrimo month and so I'm spending time writing 31,000 words about games and game resources. So hopefully, like noisms, I will find my 30 minutes a day to connect with a hobby...

Somewhere South: The Plots Thicken

Previously: Patrick and David's characters hired some new staff for their bar, The Grotesque Cudgel, and spotted someone tailing them. Gorble of Corg, who is also blackmailing them, says he needs them for a job, and that he will be in touch. Orchard the magic-user kills a man in the street, but the party evade consequences by turning the dead body into gingerbread and distributing it to people... Later, they magically disguise Rowntree the Elf as a gingerbread man and sneak him into the house of a rich immortal. Destroying the painting that keeps the man eternally young, they then throw him out of a window with a fake suicide note in his hand, and "rescue" a former guest at their inn.

Somewhere South: Two Uses for Gingerbread Curse

Previously: the party (Patrick and David) killed Arvik Bleeve, the thorn in their side, and dumped his body in the river. Bleeve's relative attacked others in the party, but were then killed themselves. A retainer of the party ended up dead, and so they held a great wake in her honour. Towards the end of the street party an urchin approaches one of the party with a note from someone who saw the party dump Arvik Bleeve's body into the Weth...

Writing Camp

I make notes of things all the time. Half-thoughts, stray notions and little "I wonder..." moments go in to journals, on to scraps of paper, and more often now get captured by Google Keep. I keep saying that I will make time to develop these further, but always find reasons/excuses not to.

So in July I am going to use the framework of Camp NaNoWriMo to make something of these ideas. I've set a goal of 31,000 words of material: 1,000 words per day. I'm not sure if I will be able to write that every day, but averaged across the month I hope to produce some (at least) half-polished pieces.

My aim at the moment is to create/polish:

• A series of useful/interesting random tables, encounters, creatures and items for old school style games.
• At least two nano-games that I have been sketching ideas for while I was on holiday recently; these have the working titles "Crash Land" and "Blood Bank Heist".
• "Die Hard in a Wizard's Tower" - taking it from the notes that I have at the moment to a scenario.

I might also ask people on G+ for challenges! My goal with all of this is to try and develop a writing habit again. I have that more or less when it comes to the professional writing that I do, but want to do more in RPG writing. Maybe this will help.

Stay tuned...

Somewhere South: Living, Dying and Mourning in Wetham

The last few months have been quite patchy for gaming; fortunately I have only one week coming up when I won't be around to run/play something - until I become a father in September, and who knows how that will effect things then. But 'til then, let's see what sort of things have been happening recently in Wetham, shall we?

Patrick and David went to sleep after their trip to the warren of the Dread Rabbit, and woke to find themselves in a strange sugar-coated nightmare world - Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess. Despite the machinations of evil stuffed toys and dastardly cherubs they were able to escape, bringing back some items with them that would probably prove useful...

Non-Blogging

Ugh. This month has just turned into one long work day.

Every now and then I have the odd hour to think about games - and thankfully I got to play a few weeks ago, but then didn't have time to write about it. Perhaps this weekend - as it is a three day weekend in the UK - I will have time to write up running Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess with Patrick and David W, which was interesting and fun and gross to describe in places.

We also played What is a Roleplaying Game? by Epidiah Ravachol, which was a really interesting example of diceless play. Very provocative and has me thinking about nano-games as a starting point for making and completing something, releasing/sharing something. I need to write about the game and about nano-games too.

I have nothing even resembling mechanics, but I do have ideas for Game Chef 2013, which of course I found out was running the day I went away earlier this week for work... Parallel universes, robots with crystal brains shifting through continua to escape from The Man while trying not to lose each other. Something like that.

And then, while playing GHOST/ECHO again I had a few ideas crystallise for a time travel game that has been running around in the background for ages called (for now) SPACE/TIME. Despite the title, it runs on the Apocalypse! So lots to do and lots to write.

At the start of the year I made a commitment to myself to blog a minimum of seven times a month. It's the 24th of May, and this is the first time I've blogged this month. So I'd best get cracking...