(back from work trips and holiday! Normal rate of posting should resume in the next week)
Bexam is a small village on a major trade route to the west of civilisation. A wide stream trickles past not ten feet from the stone walls around it, and the road runs through the middle, with unguarded gates to the north-east and south-west. Many of the town's 80-or-so inhabitants are expert hunters. The forest nearby, Xam, is overflowing with small animals, which a good portion of the village's families are expert at hunting and skinning.
Bexam is a strange place, so small, and yet rich in so many ways: Argun, the village's headman oversees a prosperous little domain, the furs keep a good standard of living - although one that is earned through hard work. Bexam is also home to a master baker (Crumb) who, as well as selling to the village's inhabitants, is sought after by many larger towns nearby. He refuses to move though, and spends most nights baking and in conversation with hallucinations of his dead wife.
Aric and Cira are twin brothers, now estranged, who serve opposing minor deities in shrines within the village's borders. They each try to sway the villagers to their respective godlings, with little success. Most villagers instead seek advice from Dorse, a hermit who lives alone and sees visions of the town's ancestors.
Dorse and Crumb are both dependent on "Bexam Blue", an addictive moss that grows in secluded parts of the forest. Bexam Blue is a strange organism: it keeps the person who consumes it in excellent health, and has remarkable restorative properties for people suffering from all kinds of diseases and afflictions. A side-effect is that regular users, like the hermit and the baker of Bexam, see (true) visions of the dead at night. If consumed regularly (at least once a day) for five days, someone will have to fight to remain unaddicted to it.
A few villagers secretly harvest the moss and sell it to traders and magicians. Argun disagrees with this, but turns a blind eye so that the village continues to be prosperous.
(rolled from noisms' Random Village Generator)
Sunday, 8 July 2012
Sunday, 17 June 2012
Work Work Work
Gets in the way of everything. But hopefully means that sooner or later I can have a break. Next weekend I'm having the guys around so that we can play games. It might be Carcassonne, might be Munchkin, it might even be noisms' DMing his Yoon-Suin setting.
Something to look forward to after another busy week of work.
Something to look forward to after another busy week of work.
Friday, 8 June 2012
Couple O' Kickstarters
Two Kickstarters that have caught my eye in the last few weeks are Our Last Best Hope and No Security.
Our Last Best Hope has a really neat concept, and might possibly tie in to some of the ideas that I've been noodling around with in the background; players take the part of heroes trying to avert a terrible crisis or world-ending event, like in Sunshine or Deep Impact. There's no GM, and it sounds like some of the mechanics might be similar to those in Diaspora (with tokens which allow you to influence story direction). I'm intrigued to see what the game is like, and seeing as it is a potential one-shot game I just might be able to convince the regulars at games night to give it a go.
No Security is a set of resources for running horror games set during the Great Depression. I have never played a horror game before, but there is something very attractive to me about playing a game set in the 1920s. The $20 backing level, which includes a modern day "Great Recession" setting is also really intriguing. Obviously with a horror angle, players are "in the real world only not" unlike In A Wicked Age or Apocalypse World or LotFP; I am very interested in having a look at games which have "real people" in fantastical settings, unlike games I've played so far which explicitly have (to varying degrees) fantastical player characters, who have cyberarms or magic spells.
Our Last Best Hope has a really neat concept, and might possibly tie in to some of the ideas that I've been noodling around with in the background; players take the part of heroes trying to avert a terrible crisis or world-ending event, like in Sunshine or Deep Impact. There's no GM, and it sounds like some of the mechanics might be similar to those in Diaspora (with tokens which allow you to influence story direction). I'm intrigued to see what the game is like, and seeing as it is a potential one-shot game I just might be able to convince the regulars at games night to give it a go.
No Security is a set of resources for running horror games set during the Great Depression. I have never played a horror game before, but there is something very attractive to me about playing a game set in the 1920s. The $20 backing level, which includes a modern day "Great Recession" setting is also really intriguing. Obviously with a horror angle, players are "in the real world only not" unlike In A Wicked Age or Apocalypse World or LotFP; I am very interested in having a look at games which have "real people" in fantastical settings, unlike games I've played so far which explicitly have (to varying degrees) fantastical player characters, who have cyberarms or magic spells.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Games Night: LotFP/Isle of the Unknown
I've missed talking about our regular Lamentations of the Flame Princess game for a couple of weeks. Last time on the Isle of the Unknown, Patrick was DMing us through a dungeon underneath an old keep. We had killed some Cthulu-worshippers, some giant bats and avoided some traps along the way. All was well with the world, and I was enjoying playing my new cleric, Priam, servant of the powerful god Venn. Charley/Henry Shortbread, the specialist, had disappeared into the undergrowth, and Priam had just happened to walk along and find the party as they were on their way to the keep.
Patrick has a nice house rule when it comes to magic; as with many D&D type games, you have your spell slots, but you can also try to cast any spell appropriate to your level, so long as you roll for success. Success is determined according to the Apocalypse World success rules: 2d6 plus or minus any modifier, a 10+ gives you what you want (the successful spell), a 7-9 gives you success plus a roll on a "something bad happens" table and a 6 or less just gives you the roll on the "something bad happens" table.
The Bless cleric spell/prayer in LotFP, as understood by me, means that you get d6+level points to spend/declare for future rolls. So having points like that means I can spend points to attack, to evade, for WIS checks - or even, to try and get future spells using Patrick's magic house rule. So if I get a good Bless result early on, then I have points in reserve for the night. I just needed to make that first AW-style roll.
It worked last week. It didn't last night.
I roll a 9, so get my blessing, but immediately have to spend the points to get favour from Venn again in order to cast cure light wounds on myself. Why? Displeased with my constant requests, Venn placed a small dog in my abdomenal cavity. Yes, that's right: A SMALL DOG. Not warts or boils on my face, or a limp, or blindness. A SMALL DOG. Luckily I was able to perform a caesarean on myself and have enough HP to then invoke cure light wounds (using many of the bless points that I just got).
Phew. I was up on the deal I guess. The dog was out, I had more HP than I had had before, I had some bless points left, and a dog that (rolls for loyalty)... hates me.
Lesson learned: don't try to game your deity.
Despite having the highest wisdom in the group I failed four rolls in a row - which is improbable enough - but then for the first three rolls I rolled a 16 each time. A one in eight thousand chance.
The small dog, Priestly, was eaten by a giant moth, we had our first big toe-to-toe battle with some giant Amber Scarabs (was touch and go), escaped from a crazy trap, got suspicious about the Bandit/Cleric who put us up to the job in the first place and the younglings were shouting at each other so much at one point that I passed Patrick the encounter die and said "You may as well just roll."
I can't make it for a couple of weeks, so have asked Patrick if my character can try to slip out of the dungeon (so that he isn't killed in the background when the others do something incredibly reckless). We'll see what happens. I'm enjoying playing a cleric much more than playing a specialist, so am hoping that I'll be able to get him back into play at some point soon.
Patrick has a nice house rule when it comes to magic; as with many D&D type games, you have your spell slots, but you can also try to cast any spell appropriate to your level, so long as you roll for success. Success is determined according to the Apocalypse World success rules: 2d6 plus or minus any modifier, a 10+ gives you what you want (the successful spell), a 7-9 gives you success plus a roll on a "something bad happens" table and a 6 or less just gives you the roll on the "something bad happens" table.
The Bless cleric spell/prayer in LotFP, as understood by me, means that you get d6+level points to spend/declare for future rolls. So having points like that means I can spend points to attack, to evade, for WIS checks - or even, to try and get future spells using Patrick's magic house rule. So if I get a good Bless result early on, then I have points in reserve for the night. I just needed to make that first AW-style roll.
It worked last week. It didn't last night.
I roll a 9, so get my blessing, but immediately have to spend the points to get favour from Venn again in order to cast cure light wounds on myself. Why? Displeased with my constant requests, Venn placed a small dog in my abdomenal cavity. Yes, that's right: A SMALL DOG. Not warts or boils on my face, or a limp, or blindness. A SMALL DOG. Luckily I was able to perform a caesarean on myself and have enough HP to then invoke cure light wounds (using many of the bless points that I just got).
Phew. I was up on the deal I guess. The dog was out, I had more HP than I had had before, I had some bless points left, and a dog that (rolls for loyalty)... hates me.
Lesson learned: don't try to game your deity.
Despite having the highest wisdom in the group I failed four rolls in a row - which is improbable enough - but then for the first three rolls I rolled a 16 each time. A one in eight thousand chance.
The small dog, Priestly, was eaten by a giant moth, we had our first big toe-to-toe battle with some giant Amber Scarabs (was touch and go), escaped from a crazy trap, got suspicious about the Bandit/Cleric who put us up to the job in the first place and the younglings were shouting at each other so much at one point that I passed Patrick the encounter die and said "You may as well just roll."
I can't make it for a couple of weeks, so have asked Patrick if my character can try to slip out of the dungeon (so that he isn't killed in the background when the others do something incredibly reckless). We'll see what happens. I'm enjoying playing a cleric much more than playing a specialist, so am hoping that I'll be able to get him back into play at some point soon.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
In Which I Fail To Blog
Time pressure, work, maths not working, not making time, yadda yadda yadda.
noisms does make some good points that there might be a broader question here connected with styles of DMing and what they might be used to as well; I can't really comment on that: I've only played under the GMing of noisms and Patrick and I know them both to be fair but lethal, so I know what to expect.
Anyway, more soon. I promise. (and you know what that leads to, right?)
- The maths has come together for my ammo maths question (or at least partly), so I'll be typesetting that over the next few days and putting it up - along with some thoughts on why this is interesting in general.
- noisms is really knocking it out of the park with his latest blog posts; two in particular have been really good. I really liked his thoughts on Hanafuda cards, and the discussion underneath really seems to have sparked something (in me and in other readers) thinking about using cards in play generally.
- The other post was a bit of AP from the LotFP game that we are both involved with. My nephew and his friend joined us, and last week brought along another two friends. This has really added something to the game, and noisms makes some really interesting observations about differences in play styles.
noisms does make some good points that there might be a broader question here connected with styles of DMing and what they might be used to as well; I can't really comment on that: I've only played under the GMing of noisms and Patrick and I know them both to be fair but lethal, so I know what to expect.
Anyway, more soon. I promise. (and you know what that leads to, right?)
Friday, 25 May 2012
Coming Soon
Less posts than usual this week; the maths is coming! Also hopefully an actual play report after tomorrow... Updates in the near future will also include:
Anyway! That's all to come.
- A couple of maths-related things that I am working on. The hold-up is mostly due to thinking about how to best present something mathematical within Blogger, without having to use lots of images or to use strange ASCII combinations. I also have to balance the level of detail as well, and think about what will be most comprehensible. Maths things on their way include:
- More on simulating the strange and mysterious dX.
- Thinking about the probabilities of different dice combinations beating other combinations in a game like In A Wicked Age.
- Ammo Maths, which I have been tweaking like mad, and which I now think I might have a breakthrough for: removing stubborn terms that will only tend towards zero anyway! Result!
- Some more thoughts for the zombie game that I want to play, which I am consequently pulling together piece-by-piece. So far I have the ammo mechanism, and I think I have the guts of the resolution mechanisms by borrowing from GHOST/ECHO.
- Wicked Wednesday posts; soon I should have 36, which is enough for a random table indexed by two d6. I might make a little pdf for it.
- Other strange little thoughts that have occurred to me. Personal circumstances recently have started me thinking about the "From Dusk Till Dawn" effect, and some other ideas I've had circulating. For example, your players roll up some characters based on something that they think to be true ("We're brave and noble warriors on a quest!"/"We're a gang of criminals in a cyber-future!"/"We are God's word in the American wilderness...") and then halfway through the second session you hit them HARD with a new reality. For example:
- "You are the last free people, everyone else is being over-run by a demonic bodysnatcher plague. What do you do?"
- "Your face has just been splashed all over every phone screen in the country, you're wanted. Everyone thinks you did it. What do you do?"
- "The Dead have risen, and people are saying they End has come. What do you do?"
Anyway! That's all to come.
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Tabletop (the web show)
A very short and simple post today; I just wanted to share the third installment of Tabletop, a new fortnightly series of videos with Wil Wheaton and friends playing geeky and nerdy games. I've not played any of them so far, although I've heard of a few. After the second episode I really want to now play Settlers of Catan, and some of the short games featured in this video look great too.
Now all I have to do is get them and find someone to play them with... I think I'm going to get Carcassonne for Android so that I can play against AI.
Now all I have to do is get them and find someone to play them with... I think I'm going to get Carcassonne for Android so that I can play against AI.
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Some thoughts on a Time Travel RPG
I've been thinking about how a time travel tabletop RPG for some time now, wondering how it could be put together in a neat way without being burdensome in terms of rules. noisms is responsible for two provocations that started me thinking about it. The first was introducing me to Microscope, which works really well in terms of role-playing and world-building, and which has the neat mechanism of populating a worldline with cards that put things in historical places.
While playing it I thought about how the end result was really neat, but that if you took a picture at the end you might not have a clear picture of the timeline of the player actions (i.e., the order in which the group put things down). A simple way around this would be to just number the cards as they come in to play. That was the first seed which went in to my mind.
The second thing that noisms did was talk about Continuum on his blog:
But it did spark a couple of ideas... (continued after cut!)
While playing it I thought about how the end result was really neat, but that if you took a picture at the end you might not have a clear picture of the timeline of the player actions (i.e., the order in which the group put things down). A simple way around this would be to just number the cards as they come in to play. That was the first seed which went in to my mind.
The second thing that noisms did was talk about Continuum on his blog:
Part of [what makes Continuum compelling] is all the talk of time-travel combat: trying to "frag" your opponent by making him cease to exist due to historical discrepancy. And undoubtedly, a large part of the attraction was the air of enigma surrounding this apparently excellent but impossible-to-possess gaming grimoire.But he went on to say that there were plenty of reviews and notes out there from people who had played the game that it inevitably lead to a kind of railroading. Not so much Doctor Who as the Time Tunnel by the sounds of it: instead of exploring the whole of time and space to explore you have to contend with a "mission" at a particular instant. Again, I have not played Continuum, but having played RPGs that have been presented to me more as "story games" the idea of this described game doesn't appeal all that much.
But it did spark a couple of ideas... (continued after cut!)
Monday, 21 May 2012
What eBay Brought
I had a few pounds burning a hole in my Paypal account, so started looking around. I found The Shadow of Yesterday, and it seemed pretty good. I'll be reading it soon, and I might even get the chance to play it some time!
Saturday, 19 May 2012
Games Night: Isle of the Unknown
Another evening on the Isle of the Unknown, and we went into even stranger and darker territory. We made big mistakes; one of our fighters used his magic sword to save us at the last minute again; we made little overall progress in getting things actually done, but went to some strange places while we did it.
A big event which I think was a turning point for my character came at the end of a deeply uncomfortable encounter with an NPC cleric/mage. It was all going so well, until our characters started talking in a group... The healer got angry, I tried to explain the situation and placate him, but he was having none of it; it ended up with me on my knees in front of him, begging him to believe my (for once true) story. I was then cursed: if I take an innocent life my own life will be forfeit, I will be struck down. I think this is going to be a great new direction for Henry Shortbread, and I'm already trying to play him differently as a result of this curse sitting on his shoulder.
We fought goblins that tried to kidnap our most ill member (we don't know why, we fought them off), we encountered the Sorrowful Dead (zombies!) just a mile from the town gates and barely escaped with our lives, and fought an evil vampire monkey (which bested us). We're on our way to clear out a keep which has a monster in residence and a group of bandits lurking nearby. We are in no shape for the fight really; our group is no longer all that cohesive, in many respects we stick together because we are all tarred with the same brush in the town of Scrodd.
What will happen next? I'm not sure. The last time I had this sort of feeling about a character I was playing as Chaplain, my Gunlugger in Apocalypse World, and I felt sure that he was about to die. He didn't, so maybe Henry will live as well. I have my doubts though...
Memorable Moments from Games Night
Patrick (DM): "You can hang around with the guards and play with your swords."
(maybe you had to be there; we laughed)
A big event which I think was a turning point for my character came at the end of a deeply uncomfortable encounter with an NPC cleric/mage. It was all going so well, until our characters started talking in a group... The healer got angry, I tried to explain the situation and placate him, but he was having none of it; it ended up with me on my knees in front of him, begging him to believe my (for once true) story. I was then cursed: if I take an innocent life my own life will be forfeit, I will be struck down. I think this is going to be a great new direction for Henry Shortbread, and I'm already trying to play him differently as a result of this curse sitting on his shoulder.
We fought goblins that tried to kidnap our most ill member (we don't know why, we fought them off), we encountered the Sorrowful Dead (zombies!) just a mile from the town gates and barely escaped with our lives, and fought an evil vampire monkey (which bested us). We're on our way to clear out a keep which has a monster in residence and a group of bandits lurking nearby. We are in no shape for the fight really; our group is no longer all that cohesive, in many respects we stick together because we are all tarred with the same brush in the town of Scrodd.
What will happen next? I'm not sure. The last time I had this sort of feeling about a character I was playing as Chaplain, my Gunlugger in Apocalypse World, and I felt sure that he was about to die. He didn't, so maybe Henry will live as well. I have my doubts though...
Memorable Moments from Games Night
Patrick (DM): "You can hang around with the guards and play with your swords."
(maybe you had to be there; we laughed)
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