The Omnipotent Eye

How to make combat interesting - two suggestions

2012-01-28T22:44:00.000+01:00

Go read Zak's great post on the subject from a short while back, and check out Dan Bayn's series on actio scenes on big purple.

Why don't I remember all that cool shit when behind the screen?

I really don't care

2012-01-11T21:02:00.001+01:00

...about D&D 5th ed.

The last hurrah of the Ronin Wars - Battletech

2012-01-08T18:06:00.000+01:00

Today I played in the last battle of our narrative arch of the Ronin Wars. In the setting plot for the Battletech universe, that was a rebellion by old hardliners when the stellar empire of house Kurita let some worlds seced to form a new stellar state. I played the old guard, and this was the last fight as the war was lost.

I knew I wanted to try some of the combined arms aspects of Battletech, so on my side I had once light lance and one company of mechanized infantry. Add to that some buildings, and you have quite a mouthful of new rules if you've only played mech against mech before.

We decided my force wanted to extract three caches of information from the buildings before retreating off world. I sent in my three platoons of infantry towards the buildings and my opponent decided, without knowing, to concentrate his force of heavy mechs on just that cluster of buildings where two of my three caches were. Ouch!

The first platoon ran in, and ran out. While retreating off map they suffered serious losses. Lucky me we had no morale rules! Then they managed to escape they secured a marginal victory for me. After that my commander, in my only mech with any firepower to speak of, got hit by ten long distance missiles in the head. He died, quickly.

After that we diced a lot and my mechs became punched and shot at a lot. In the end one was mobile, but with no weapons left, one was running around with reactor hits and the torso a gaping hole and the last one had no arms and a leg that would fall off if someone looked at it angrily. The last of the infantry died on the edge of the map, gunned down by autocannon fire.

I have no idea of this was how you create a scenario by the book, since I don't own the full rules. Also, I have no idea of this was a scenario where the battlevalues matches up at all. Some guesstimates indicate my force was outgunned somewhat. It was real fun, though!

I really love to play Battletech, since the scenarios become small stories in themselves. Small epics of miserable shots, clumsy pilots and daring escapes. Great drama!

The idea of Interludes

2012-01-04T20:05:00.001+01:00

I have been very much into the idea if running Savage Worlds for a week or so. It's a game that manages to look kind of plain when read, but everyone I've heard of who have run it have come away raving fans. We'll see if I can manage to actually try it out one of these days.

One of the things that easily makes you a Savage fan is the support Pinnacle give their games. Recently they released the Deluxe edition of SW, and guess what? They posted the major rules differences in a couple pdfs on their web pages, for free! At least it makes me want to go out and buy the new book, just because!

The thing I wanted to bring up today is the new rules for something called Interludes which is a quite neat thing I think could be imported into any game. Go check it out and see what you think. For you who like to stay around, here's when I tell you how it can be worked into any game. This is how I'd do it.

When you have any kind of pause in the action in your game, shuffle a deck of cards and have a player at random draw a card. The next time you do it, choose anyone one. Now, what the player who drew a card does, is she tells a short flashback or similar story which develops the back story and fleshes out the psychology or her character. It doesn't have to be long, but it has to show some new aspect of her personality, or an old one explained in a new light.

The suit of the card decide what the theme of the vignette is.

Hearts - some kind of love or romantic angle
Clubs - some kind of violence of physical conflict
Diamonds - some kind of relation to possessions and material riches
Spades - some kind of spiritual or religious angle

How about that? The rules from Pinnacle are slightly different, but I liked the idea enough to post my own take on it. I think this can be used just as well with pretentious new school games of the Story Game kind as well as neck beard grumpy old schooler games where you make it all up and roll some bones. Heck! Roll some dice when telling the story if it helps you decide what happened! I like the idea, any way you slice it.

RPG and card play - whimsy cards and suchlike

2012-01-02T21:09:00.000+01:00

Those of you who have read this blog from the beginning (What? Haven't you all? Go back and read up. I'll wait here) might remember a post I did way back about whimsy cards. I've found something which brought them back to memory.

For those of you who don't know, whimsy cards was a game supplement from Lion Rampart, consisting of a set of cards you could play during the rpg session and have something out of the ordinary happen. It was an interesting way to add some player influence over things in the game, and others have used similar techniques since. Guess what I've found?

My latest find is the Adventure Cards, usable with Savage Worlds. I have not seen the pack sold for SW, but maybe they are as usable for any system as the old whimsy cards were. Anyway, if you are curious about the idea and want to take a peek at them, there is a way!

Point your browser to the Savagepedia, and the Savage Worlds fanzine Shark Bytes. Apart from lots of NPCs, adventures, extra rules and setting material, the fanzine included some extra Adventure Cards. It's all free for download on the 'pedia. Check it out! It would be cool to hear of them being used for a thing like a classic delve.

Dressed for the occasion

2011-12-30T21:59:00.000+01:00

Today I took a trip to the royal castle in Stockholm with my family. The kids loved the suits of plate armour on display, and loved trying helmets on and stuff like that. Looking at these royal and upper class outfits I realized one thing missing in most games I've played.

Usually an adventurer have one outfit, and after a sweaty delve they maybe (just maybe) take a bath at a tavern before they put it on for the next trip downstairs. Just imagine if you wanted to do a trip out in the wilderness, or god forbid, actually tried to set an adventure in the city! Suddenly you'd have a new great money sink for your players!

Imagine a historical game. In the historical eras I browsed through at the museum today, each and every social function used a separate dress! Not so long ago, you even had special clothing on when taking a sporty ride in your car! Sure, it might have been purely the upper classes, but at least in some games that's the guys we are portraying!

Now, even in the fantasy city people are bound to treat you differently depending on how you are dressed. Should you start a bar fight and have the city guard show up, I'm betting they would treat someone in fancy clothing quite differently than a tattered adventurer who looks, literally, like he crawled up from a hole in the ground. Also, like I said it could be used as a money sink.

Just some thoughts.

I also passed by a store selling Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown from LotFP. Quite good looking books, I tell you!

2011 is behind me, 2012 is coming...

2011-12-28T17:31:00.000+01:00

So, the year is nearly in the bag, and a new one looms ahead. Let's look back a moment.

What did 2011 bring to the table? For me one of the best moments was when I scored both The First Fantasy Campaign, and a British 1st ed. of Tunnels & Trolls. That one will be hard to beat!

Personal accomplishments must be that I finally sat down behind the screen (from Trail of Cthulhu) as the Keeper of Arcane Lore for a Call of Cthulhu game. For so many years, that has been one of my favourite games and now I finally got to run it! Also, being published in Fight On! together with so many creative individuals was definitely a personal highlight.

A true blessing have been my faithful readers. That's you! Many thanks for those who check in here more or less regularly, and post comments. My interest have flagged somewhat during the year, but having a readership is a marvellous ego boost. Thanks!!

Lost causes this year was my failure to run a game of T&T. I tried the Raggi method by plastering the city with notes, and got no reply what so ever. Damn, I miss Canada! Swedes are a sullen lot, who don't let you in easily. The same fate befell any attempts to play old D&D. I was a player in a play by forum game, but it died on the vine. I have posted my conclusions about play by forum in another post.

But! Time to look forward. What will happen in 2012? Will I finally become a google droid like so many else, and run a game on google+? Who knows. I like the idea, but spend so much time before a computer anyway, and when I am home I would like to either sleep or spend time with my books or my family.

I will try too run more CoC games. I loved it, and have so much good material to try out. Small but vicious dog reawakened in me the urge to do something with Warhammer. I still think that game would be so sweet as a Burning Wheel game. Burning Hammer, eh? Savage Worlds is another game that just begs to be played.

My attempts to create some original material always seen ti flounder. Most of my creativity comes on a tight deadline for my weekly game, which I have none at the moment. We'll see if I do something about those issues.

New games, then? You know, there are some cool things coming out, but I can't for the life of me post a very long list! The only thing I can say I really look forward to is the new edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight.

How was your year? Can you help me get pumped up about some upcoming games that I have overlooked? Feel free to chip in!

A Happy New Year to all of you out there in blogging land!

Some impressions of Skulduggery

2011-12-27T17:38:00.000+01:00

A short while ago, I got an email from the excellent service Loot. That means I get some sweet deals and need to decide at once of I want to buy it. This time it was a rpg from Pelgrane Press, designed by Robin D. Laws. I will post another time on my feelings on those names. I had not heard of the game, but it was enticing enough and I bought it. The game was called Skulduggery.

The game is supposed to be a game where witticisms and verbal fencing is a core feature, and inter player conflicts are not only common, but fun. I liked the idea. Now I have read most of it, and I have some impressions to share.

First off, this quote is very telling and summarize much of what the game is about:

"A character who knocks out another and then tried to kill him is invariably interrupted by a surprising event that places him at a sudden disadvantage. While the attacker deals with the troubling plot twist, the intended victim wakes up, unharmed."

Got that? This is a game where everyone is expected to abide by the social contract, and enter the game ready to do this one thing. It's a game about this setup, something with a special feeling and modes of behaviour. Let's delve into some details.

Generating character is a very quick procedure. Every setting is both a scenario with a setup, relevant NPCs and pre generated characters with personal goals and abilities. You spread out the cards, pick one at random and you are done! I wish it was that quick generating characters in all kind of games! There are no other way to generate character in the rules. In this game the character will need to be tightly coupled to each other and the game setting.

The game system is quite simple in the basics. You roll a die and if you 4+ you succeed. The traits you have are pool points you can spend on re-rolls, until you get a satisfactory result. Naturally, there are additional details. Some of those are the qualifiers you get to your abilities. For example, your Persuade ability is tagged with a word showing how you persuade. Some of those trumps or are trumped by other styles. Quite a neat idea. It is indeed a game of fencing, where you jab and riposte with those re-roll spends. The verbal power struggles are at the core of it all.

The bad thing about this game, which to begin with seem so simple, is that you get bonuses, penalties and state in a myriad of different combinations and permutation. Well, maybe not a myriad, but it is complex. There's no way you run this game without a cheat sheet. All those things almost demand you to have chips or tokens and some kind of play area or similar to pile those status indicators on.

While I have yet to actually play the game, it feels surprisingly fiddly for being such a simple game. Actually, many procedures feels slightly odd until you read a side bar or another chapter of the rules. It's a bit like the game could have used another shake through for reorganization and the fiddly bits maybe had been presented somewhat clearer. Now there are hidden some suggestions in the depth of one chapter some costs for point spends in certain situations which then are not part of the combat example. It feels, sadly, like a lot of first editions do in our hobby.

All in all, it's an interesting game. Very much like the Forge style games, it is narrow in focus. But, that makes it piercing to the point of the core game experience it is trying to create. This reinforce Pelgrane Press as a publisher that dares to go out on a limb.

Would I recommend the game? Well, I would like to play it before I deliver the final verdict, but it is a game that suffer from being less clear than it could be. The set up is really cool, though.

Fight On! Magazine #13 is out!

2011-12-27T13:53:00.009+01:00

I hope you have not missed that Fight On! Magazine issue 13 is out? This time it is dedicated to none other than Ken St Andre!

This time, I have managed to get a contribution of mine in print. I am in august company, let me tell you! Check it out.

A Traveller rule for general empowerment and player satisfaction

2011-12-26T12:33:00.000+01:00

Even though I hate the idea of a "balanced" party, there are some value to having game system support for everyone getting involved. Today I noticed, reading my new shiny rulebook from Mongoose, that the latest incarnation of Traveller have a solution for that as well.

I guess everyone have heard it said, or something to that effect, the dread question of who wants to play that class nobody else wants. Usually the cleric. If we leave the question aside if the cleric is a bad/boring class or not, I think the phenomenon is till interesting. Apparently many think a party "needs" a thief/cleric/whatnot to be "balanced" or competitive.

So, why? What can be done about it? Should something be done?

Well. There have been many arguments about the folly of trying to balance the rpg experience for maximum "fun", and I think we are all kind of tired of that. So, just let us assume that the idea is here to stay and maybe there are something to be learned from it.

In Trail of Cthulhu the idea is that since it is a game about investigation, all the skills that can be used for investigation should be covered by the party. The way it is done is basically that the number of points available to by skills for is dependent on the amount of players. You will have enough points to cover all the skills, by design. That is one way of doing it, and it might make sense for a skill based system.

In Traveller, the Mongoose incarnation thereof, they have something that I feel might be of slightly greater utility. After character generation, you get a "skill package", which is a set of skills bundled by the kind of campaign you'll play. Everyone gets to pick a skill, then everyone gets a second one, and so on until all are picked. That way, if you are going to do a trader campaign the basic foundation is there.

Some might say that in a sandbox, no such thing should be allowed. Everything should be shaped by the players, and having a skill package thrust upon the players by a campaign theme is hearing the steam whistle in the distance. Personally I think one reason why I have not managed to get any of my Traveller games off the ground is that we have not been explicit enough about what kind of campaign we have wanted, and thus we have gotten mismatched expectations and player characters. Bringing it out into the open like that, maybe the players can pick a campaign theme? Maybe the referee does not have a say in it at all, if you are that adverse to GM led story gaming? I think that is stupid, but what the heck.

Apart from that idea of having everyone on the same page, can it be used for something else? Well, I know one reason many people hate random character generation is that they want to be competent. They will feel bored or lost if their character does not have a guaranteed time in the spot light. Maybe having such a Skill Package is a way to soften the harsh experience of a pure random generation of characters? Whatever happens, those weird stats you got wont handicap you that much, since you are sure to have at least one or two picks of "good" skills? I think it is an interesting option.

Now let's tackle the cleric issue.

If the reason it is felt that there has to be a cleric in the party, maybe that can be alleviated by something like Skill Packages? Maybe it will even stack with previously picked skills, making sure that the party not only have the skills needed, but also emphasize the abilities of those who already picked the "party support" skills. That way those would be sure to shine. In the case of a class based instead of a skill based system, it might be tougher to jam in additional abilities. If you don't want to soften up the walls between classes and just and the "needed" abilities outright, consider making the Skill Package be mundane and magical items to choose from! If they have charges, and limited charges to boot, the "pure" game will reassert itself when those charges have run out, and hopefully the players have adapted to their character abilities and can use those to best effect.

Maybe I'm kicking in open doors, but I felt there was a tool to be used in general in that little paragraph in the latest incarnation of the rpg workhorse, Traveller. New uses for old tools, eh?

Traveller - the game I thought I had quit

2011-12-18T19:22:00.000+01:00

Traveller is one of the icons in the hobby. For me the acronym LBB always meant Little Black Books, and referred to the three volumes of Classic Traveller from 1977. I have never seen the OD&D books in real life, so I maybe they look more brown than I think, but for me they have always looked more cream or khaki coloured, but I guess LBB looks better than LCB or LKB does.

I have a quite decent collection of Traveller books, from all the eras of the game. The first one I owned was MegaTraveller, and while I agree with James Maliszewski that the name is daft, I still have a lot of fondness for that edition. But, after having tried to start playing Traveller for multiple times, I have never managed to make it work. More often than not, science fiction fails for me. It is as if I can't present it the way I want, and my players don't seem to grasp what I'm aiming for. My last attempt turned into "accountants in space", and was a real bore for everyone.

So, guess what? I decided to put my collection, quite a few kilos of it, in storage and forget about Traveller. Until I started to listen to Happy Jacks RPG Podcast.

Listening to Stu discuss how he set up his game, and the players to talk about how their characters emerged through the life path system of character generation, made me interested again. The edition in print right now is the one published by Mongoose Publishing. I guess nobody have managed to miss MGP? The company have sailed up as a power houses of the hobby, with lot of licences and some interesting core system like RuneQuest and Traveller.

When Noble Knight Games had their latest sale, I succumbed to temptation. I bought another edition of Traveller, that game I had given up upon!

So, how does it compare?

Well, very favourably actually! It seem to have all the good things from the LBB, and then some. Let me take one example where the have gone beyond the original in a good way. One thing I never liked with the LBB, and find very grating when people talk about Traveller as an engine for any kind of science fiction game, is the fact that the career choices in LBB are very limited. All except one, are military careers! I don't know about you, but I have read quite a lot of sf books where there are more scientist or scoundrels than military men.

MGT, as I dub it, have done like MT and included a more general set of careers. Sure, you have your army, naval and scout careers, but also things like Entertainer and Nobles.

Some things are slightly less brutal that LBB, and you can no longer die during character creation and if you fail a Survival roll you get to roll a mishap. Another really cool addition is the roll every term for an Event, which can give you some extra background and skills. That and the rule that any event and mishap can generate a connection between two PCs and give both a skill is just inspired.

So far I have not looked that closely at the starship combat system, nor the trading system. Both seem to change somewhat between editions and especially the former never really seem to come out right.

But the life path system to generate character is great fun. It has inspired many games after it, and for good reasons. It usually deliver something memorable. I did try to roll them bones, and this is what the life path system spat out:

UPP Rank: Dilettante 1 - Wastrel; Diplomat 0 - Intern
63424c/0-1-1-2-1+2 Age: 24

admin 0
advocate 1
carouse 1
comms 0
computer 0
diplomacy 1
flyer(any) 1
investigate 0
persuade 0
streetwise 0

Managed to charm his way into high society and managed to get on Ally and one Rival. Learned to Fly and weaseled his way into an internship in the diplomatic corps. Due to his limited intelligence and enormous arrogance, he was involved in a mishap which cost him one eye and made his abysmal dexterity even worse. Was kicked out of the corps and now is about to step out into the world with only his name and 6 shares of a Yacht. (I added the die modifiers after the stats for people who recognize the system to see how they did that part).

What do you say? I'd absolutely love to play this miserable twit! Just imagine a noble so stupid, so ignorant and in general without a clue. I think the Connections rule which might tie him to another character, probably due to his flying skill, will be his way to survive. Unless of course the other players would not join hands to strangle him! Imagine the fun in playing such a worthless character, but with influence, family and a starship.

Some things Traveller do deliver...

Cool things in first edition

2011-12-15T23:28:00.000+01:00

As you might have read, I recently became the proud owner of a copy of the British 1st edition of Tunnels & Trolls. It's virtually identical to the American 2nd edition which should be the same as the first one apart from the cover. At least, that's my understanding. Ken or someone else might tell me I'm wrong, though.

In any case it's a marvellous peek into the culture of gaming back in the olden days, regardless of you play T&T or not.

First it starts with some advice on "Digging the tunnels". Tunnels being the word used instead of Dungeons. Yes, this is a game about dungeons. the rules even say about CON and STR that they are automatically restored to their previous level if and when the character returns to safely to the surface! That's a healing rule for you! These are the general rules (paraphrased somewhat) apart from the suggestion that you create a vertical cutaway.

1. Let the imagination run wild
2. Put in as much as you can think of. Nobody likes to mess around in a tedious tunnel.
3. Use as much humour as you can.
4. Deeper in the tunnels mean tougher.
5. Traps and spells should be avoidable.

This goes counter to the Empty Rooms Principle, and I'm not sure I disagree. The principle looks good on paper, but will it lead to players zoning out until something fun happens? Maybe sometimes. Some of the other points I just think is worthy of repeating.

Characters then. Some interesting points. Rogues have to change class after level 7! They have to choose to walk the path of the Magic-User (yes, that's the term. I like it) or the Warrior. Interesting. It would be an interesting hack of D&D to really only have two classes, with magic or without and if you mix you sooner or later have to choose.

Naturally there are rules for combat. As someone who have seen some editions come and go know, inflation hits most games. Everything is smaller in this edition. No weapons doing 6d of damage! Some things worthy of note is the small reminder that you can not fight and hold a torch, and yes all monster get double the amount of dice in a fight in darkness. Ouch! Then there's rules for capturing monsters, which brings back memories of OD&D. Subduing dragons, anyone? I like the variant of the Splintering Shields, where the Warrior (only the Warrior) gets to multiply his level with the armor rating, once, before it is destroyed. Interesting.

When it comes to XP, suddenly we see the gold for XP rule! I like that. Also, multiply by level seem to be a popular mechanic in this part of the rules. Combat XP is Monster Rating x dungeon level / level of the victor. XP for saves are also multiplied by your level, and not by the level of the save. Levels, levels. There's even level titles! Yay!

In general there are many rules in here that I think is better than the newer ones. But, the many subtractions, divisions and multiplications feels a bit old. In any case it's clear that level 7 was something to write home about, and a weapon doing more than 2d is cool again.

Why this focus on sappy tv shows?

2011-12-14T19:33:00.002+01:00

This is a rant. You have been warned.

Have you looked at some of the games labelled as "storygames" or games about which the designer sprouts exclamations like Story Now? I have, and while I love some New School Forge games, some things makes me sigh.

This all begins with Robin Laws (my Robin Laws number is 3, by the way).

I was listening to a recorded session from Dragonmeet, namely the Pelgrane Press session with Simon, Robin and Ken and they talked about upcoming stuff. One thing Robin was working on was something called Drama System. This was presented as yet another attempt at trying to use the narrative structure of other media in a rpg.

Often when new school games borrow ideas about narrative structure they seem to think of TV shows. Actually, a few games by Robin Laws does this. There are a couple of games that explicitly try to minic TV shows, like Buffy, Smallville and Primetime Adventures. My experience with those games are not positive.

So, when I heard about Drama System I triggered on the word "relationships". I have realized that one reason I'm not very fond of taking inspiration from TV shows is that I really don't care for relationship focused TV soaps.

Why are all these Forgie New School games so focused on relationships? Some designers talk about how odd it is with the classical adventuring party, outside of society and without any natural human bonds and relations. Others talk about how interpersonal conflicts drive drama and immersive roleplaying.

Those who have games with me know that I can go bananas with funny voices, in character speak and that thespian spiel. But, I can also play the game with the characters as chess pieces when I want to focus on e.g. world or story exploration (going along the rails, for the heck of it). I think both is valid roleplaying.

So, why is sappy tv shows the norm for serious character development? I don't think it's anything wrong with it, but I am bored of it! I have relationships already, to friends and family. Why do I have to have that in a game?

Rant over.

As usual, the real world is a bit more nuanced and if it seems like I was slagging a certain designer, let it be known that I received my copy of Robin Laws Skullduggery yesterday, and it looks like great fun!

What I don't like about Trail of Cthulhu

2011-12-11T20:16:00.000+01:00

Since I just ran a game of Call of Cthulhu, including some rules and concepts from Trail of Cthulhu, I have spent some time pondering the qualities of the latter.

Why did I not just run a ToC game?

Basically, my main beef with ToC is that I don't really feel very comfortable about rolling one die. It might seem like a small thing, but I want more randomness in my games.

If you, like in ToC, rolls 1d6, may add in "spends" from your pools (all skills are pools of points) trying to beat difficulty of, say, 3-4, it goes without saying that most times randomness wont be a factor. Naturally, this is a design feature. Robin Laws who designed the game clearly states that his idea is to make the system drive a kind of narrative that behaves in a specified way.

Personally I like the quality of "new school" games, like the forge style games and others, to have rules that reinforce and drive toward a style of play the designer envision his or her game to be about. Many times, almost as many times that I have claimed Alignment leads to brain damage, I have elevated the rule of gold equals xp to sublime levels of design mastery, due to the effects it can have in enforcing a style of play. This is something I think is the great re-discovery stemming from Ron Edwards "system matters".

What kind of style is it then that ToC reinforce with its pools you can spend for basically guaranteed success? Well, it is a game where you can be sure, as a player, that the actions of your character will succeed. If you have a decent pool of at least 2, trying to beat 4 (a rough mean of a 2-8 scale) is an average chance of success of more than 80%. I think that makes it kind of pointless to have a randomizer with those odds. Before we delve too deep into math and probabilities, the main point of my argument is that on such a small scale a spend of one point, to say nothing of more than one, makes successes almost certain.

So, why is that bad? Isn't it good for the players to have say in when they get to shine? Well, no. Not when the object of the game is horror.

Horror demands giving up certainty and hope. Vagueness and isolation, and the strong possibility of failure and its following painful result is what drives the sense of horror. I think ToC is a fine game for CSI, but not for horror.

Some say the rules don't work that way in actual play, and they might be right. I have only played ToC once, but it did not falsify my principal objections to the rules. Feel free to disagree!

How did it work? Combining the Cthulhu game rules

2011-12-09T19:37:00.000+01:00

So, now I have run to sessions of my Trail of Cthulhu infused Call of Cthulhu hack. How did it go?

To begin with, I think more sessions are needed to really expose the dark corners of the system. But, I think I some impressions would be fun to share.

How about the most talked about feature of ToC? Well, I have said before that I think having a scenario stall because somebody missed their Spot Hidden roll is just shoddy game mastering. Having rules that hinder that just feels like the wrong way to fix the problem. That being said, I always liked the way how Unknown Armies handled skill percentages. In that game you are really good with a skill of 50%. That doesn't mean that you fail every second time you try to do what you do to earn your living. If you have 50%, you can earn your living, without rolling! That way of handling skills is a way to fuse ToC with the regular BRP system. You don't roll your Spot Hidden to notice that clue, and fail. If you are a guy who needs to be perceptive to make a living, you just spot things. That's what that 50% means. It turned out quite well in real play. You roll your dice anyway and if you succeed I give some extra info or colour. I think that worked fine.

The part of ToC that I personally feel is most interesting is the Drive, Pillars of Sanity and Sources of Stability. I implemented the Drive and the Pillars. The former I actually turned to once, just checking if it was time for a soft driver. The player in fact used the Drive to justify the roleplay, and the Driver thus worked, without actually turning into a game mechanic. Would that roleplay have happened without the Drive? Maybe, but the signpost and guide for roleplay was there. I think that worked fine.

After the scenario I realized that I had totally failed to ask for SAN rolls at quite a few opportunities when it would have been applicable. Thus, the concept of the Pillars needs further play testing.

I will probably make a follow up post on this topic after some more sessions of play. Sadly, it seems like the great game killer season is upon us, and now people will be travelling to be with friends and family. Probably we will have to wait until January until the next session.

New Loot - pictorial evidence!

2011-12-08T15:43:00.000+01:00

Here it is! My holy grail for a time have been to get hold of a copy of the 1974 edition of D&D for a decent price. In addition to that, a 1st or 2nd ed. of T&T and The First Fantasy Campaign have been at the top of the list.

You see that stuff up there? Not only is that a copy of FFC, in pristine condition, from the personal collection of Ken St. Andre. Ken even had a few extra maps, from a few other Judges Guild products it seems like.

But wait, there's more!

You see that little black book? It's the British 1st edition of Tunnels & Troll, which looks identical to the 2nd American edition I have browsed. That means puny damage from most weapons, ablative armour and some other goodies from the earlier editions. You get Adventure Points for gold! The cover looks very funky, but the innards is pure gold. Eh... adventure, I mean.

This was all from an auction Ken ran, with a percentage of the proceeds going to a fund to help artist Jeff Freels with some quite serious medical expenses. Take a look at the stuff Jeff is selling. He's an amazing artist.

I'm dancing the happy dance today, both for me and for Jeff.

Loot!

2011-12-07T22:41:00.000+01:00

I am finally the proud owner of a copy of The First Fantasy Campaign! From the personal collection of Ken St Andre it came, in marvellous condition! Tomorrow I will try to take some pictures to show it off. Quite the grail, and it was not the only grail I got...

How to play by forum

2011-12-06T23:13:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine started a game by post a while ago. It was an attempt to try out the principles in Matt Finch primer, using S&W and a big dungeon. I had tried games like that before, with differing results, but since I had no game and felt the urge to get some gaming done I joined in.

It has now ground to a halt, or at least found such a glacial pace that I doubt it will continue. This time I felt I should summarize some lessons learned.

1. Decide on a posting schedule - This I think is crucial. Everyone involved should know that they are expected to send something in, on schedule. I remember way back when there was such a thing as postal PBM, you had a deadline before sending in your orders. Keep it regular, and time should flow constantly in the game. The GM should move things on if no input is forthcoming.

2. Have a well known way to handle out of character chatter and logistical information - Everyone should have the ground rules down. If you leave town, or had some tense days at work, let everyone know - beforehand.

3. The GM should re-frame the scene in a clear way when collating the player input, either at every new dungeon room, or at each suitable dramatic interval. If you feel up to it, do it every time players have sent in their "orders". In that way players will see the GM rephrase their intents and it will be clear if there's a misunderstanding. It is quite annoying when you expect everyone to be present in a scene/room and suddenly realize one PC is not there.

Using those principles is key, in my experience.

Kult - as a comic book

2011-12-05T14:25:00.000+01:00

Some of you might have heard of Kult? It was a Swedish horror rpg, first published in 1991. It was translated to a bunch of languages, English among them, and sold quite decently. It was quite intense and didn't shy back from some fairly gruesome stuff. In the process it proved that controversy can be quite good for the bottom line.

Now Dark Horse have put out a comic book, a mini series in four parts, based on the game. Naturally, I couldn't just let such a thing pass, so I picked it up.

While the idea of a comic book based on a rpg is not new (anyone have read some of that dreadful D&D comics? I have read both the really old ones and the new ones), I thought it would be interesting to see if they had managed to capture the game in any way in the book.

For those who don't know much about the game an its setting, I can summarize the game system as BRP divided by 5 and all the rolls by d20. It's nothing special, except that I seem to remember some funkiness in the combat system. The setting was where the game really shone.

It was a gnostic world view, but with the twist that the moral was that all the pain and suffering is of our own choosing, and by gnosis can you transcend into godhood. Heady stuff. Uncovering more and more nasty stuff and then realize that it was all done by you, and unto you, was potent material for a very personal horror. Sadly, most of the supporting material focused on the nasty stuff in graphic detail, where violence and gore was never really more than effect, and the gnostic elements were never really explored that well.

Sadly, the comic goes to the heart of the metaphysics and the fight for the dual nature of reality, the one part where the game is at its weakest. I mean, who really cares about big fights wherein the dark creator of the world duke it out with someone with too many claws and teeth for their own good?

Kult was very much like Mage in its first edition. In that game reality was a prison and by discovering your own potential you could break free into total freedom. Kult in contrast was about how breaking free was encountering the shivering existentialism at the heart of reality, freedom through total denigration of your self. It doesn't travel that well unto the pages of a comic book.

Anyway for those who feel curios about the comic check this link.

Anyone have a good source of sound effects?

2011-12-04T23:10:00.000+01:00

In the prep work for my stint as a Keeper of Arcane Lore for Call of Cthulhu, I browsed around for some sound effects to use as ambient background noise during the session. When we played Beyond the Mountains of Madness, our Keeper had managed to find some very good noises both for the boat trip to Antarctica and for when we was on the ice. It managed to give that extra subtle but constant reminder that we "were" in another place.

What I did find now when I searched, was only short snippets that either faded out or faded in. If you wanted to have them as ambient sounds in the background, you'd get some very annoying clicks and points when the sounds would go away before suddenly re-emerge. Needless to say, looping them just didn't work.

So, where do you go to find good, loop able, sounds for sounds of weather and general noises in rural or urban areas? Anyone have a good stack? Do you know a site where they reside? My google-fu wasn't up to it before the session, and I thought I should try other methods before the next one.

Where to go for you next game setting? The bible!

2011-12-04T20:10:00.000+01:00

Even if you care nothing for the religious dimensions of the christian bible, read this marvellous post by FrDave! That is a truly inspired post that takes a literary basis and weaves from it a setting with dynamics and both a dungeon and NPCs. Great work!

How about a new adventure for DragonQuest?

2011-12-04T19:07:00.000+01:00

For those you don't follow the DragonQuest emailing lists, this is a heads up for a crowd funding effort to produce new adventures for the old game. I think it looks interesting, but sadly I can't afford to chip in until after Christmas. :(

Take a peek!

The Hils Rise Wild - some impressions

2011-11-29T15:19:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday we played The Hills Rise Wild for Call of Cthulhu. Now after the fact I'm wondering why I decided to play that scenario? Let me put it this way.

In the scenario, the text describes how the players are introduced to the events and then sketches out a trip into the wilderness and then on day three, it say "this is when the scenario start for real" (paraphrased). There's a problem there.

As written, this assumes that it takes two days to travel to where the scenario start. When we ran it my players checked the capabilities of their car and we looked at the maps of New England I had printed out. It turned out the actual travel time, unless you stop and ask the locals every mile, is one hour. Have I missed something, or have the author only assumed that the investigators stop every mile? Nothing in the background and the introduction suggest that. I guess you could me a sloppy Keeper, but this was something I did not foresee.

I'm going to suggest something.

When you write a scenario which needs a trek through the wilderness, you need a map and a preferably hex grid on it. Discrete units of travel, like hexes, makes it possible to easily measure how far you get in a certain time. Also, if there are to be things happening while travelling, make a list of encounters and/or a random list.

Nothing really broke down, but if the author had intended the scenario to be a slowly building event, there should be in the adventure and not glossed over. I thought the stuff that was in there, but when actually trying to run it I improvised most of it.

Now, why didn't I see this coming? Maybe it takes some training to see what is a good scenario and I think that this kind of scenario, wilderness hex crawl for lack of a better word, is not something I'm very comfortable with.

An interesting way to start a sandbox

2011-11-28T13:00:00.000+01:00

I have been listening to podcasts again. Yeah, I do that a lot. Me and my spouse cover different ones. She listens to 'casts about book of fiction and science news while I enjoys listening to people talk about ways to explore and invent imaginary worlds. Yeah. Solid stuff.

I did pick up a nice idea from the Happy Jacks podcast which I now have listened to a new episode of. Blame none but me if you think the following is stupid, though, it's my interpretation of an off hand remark made on the show.

For me the idea of a sandbox hinges upon the very proactive players. Frankly, I have seen few that would fit the bill. So, how about a way to show them the possibilities and wet their appetites before letting them loose? I'm thinking like this. How about you start your sandbox campaign with a pilot? You know how they do tv-shows, when they have a longer pilot episode where the main players gets introduced and suitable arenas of conflicts are delineated? I'm thinking that maybe that is a good way to start a sandbox campaign.

The way I would do that, would be a short but quite scripted episode where I expose the players through a simple plot (yes a predetermined one), to the things they then can poke and prod to their hearts delight. That way you would show how a story could look like in this world, and who the powers are they might want to topple, or play nice with. Naturally this would be strict by scenes, with time limits and also by cut scenes. Very focused and railroady.

Then I'd let the loose.

I wonder if that would fly?

Alignment and brain damage - a new deal?

2011-11-27T19:49:00.000+01:00

I was listening to the Happy Jacks podcast, and in a midst the jolly bantering someone suggested (not very seriously, I gather) the alignment one step beyond "chaotic good" namely "chaotic better".

I could dig that.

CoC character generation

2011-11-14T16:57:00.000+01:00

So, this weekend we generated some character for CoC. I will be running The Hills Rise Wild when we next meet. It will be interesting.

I decided to include as much cool stuff from Trail as I had earlier been pondering. Drives, Pillars of Sanity and all core clues from Occupational Skills of 30% or above. I also added in a starting max of 85% and the Trigger Event from Unknown Armies. I think it will fit well.

We now have a lady reporter, a private eye and a businessman and gentleman scholar. It will be interesting...

Hexcrawling Call of Cthulhu

2011-11-09T00:17:00.000+01:00

This coming Saturday I'm supposed to be running a Call of Cthulhu game. I guess it goes without saying that if you plan on playing in that game, the rest might be less fun to read before the game.

Since I like Arkham, and I own the sourcebook, I had planned to run the scenario The Hills Rise Wild from that book. But, some parts of it I'm not very sure on how to handle.

Basically, the scenario is about finding pieces of a crashed meteorite. While searching in the rural outback the investigators will find this cabin where a homicidal maniac keeps his family in thrall, and plans to do the Investigators in as soon as he can.

The problem I'm having is the part where the players are supposed to be driving around in the rural outback, talking to farmers and searching the area for hints of a crashed meteorite. How do you make that part fun?

Looking at the scenario I think it's quite likely that rolling a few rolls for reactions, rolling a few rolls for search skills and then suddenly start to flesh out a cabin and some individuals living there, will be a dead give away that seems people are special and probably the main focus of the adventure. In CoC that means scary stuff to run away from. It will be a very short session if they do.

Improvising some odd rural folk and their quaint tales I can manage, and probably also describing the increasing decrepitude of the area and buildings. But, how to make the search in the fields interesting?

Anyone have any experience running that scenario, or have any hints on how to make a rural trek and meteorite search more engaging, so as to not bore the players until they get to meet some crazies?

Whos's the big kid on the block?

2011-11-04T11:33:00.000+01:00

I guess many of you have read the news about Pathfinder outselling D&D? Personally I find the entries lower on the scale more interesting. Is really Dragon Age and Shadowrun that popular! Boggles my mind.

Playing Lady Blackbird

2011-11-02T19:49:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday, I ran Lady Blackbird with a couple of friends. It was fun and everyone laughed a lot. Still, it was not as I had hoped it would be.

For those of you who doesn't know, Lady Blackbird is both a scenario and a game system. John Harper designed it, and distributes in freely on the web (see the link above). It's a pdf with a setup, some sketchy setting information and five characters with a rules summary. This means that all the time when you play Lady Blackbird, the character will be the same, and it will start the same way and diverge from there.

So, what did I like? Well, the game system if easy enough and the character are all fun an easily triggers ideas for play. Also, all characters have relations to each other and other forces in the world. It's a good setup.

So, what did I not like? Well, the game system really demands you to invent stuff. You should go out of your way to really, really grab xp at every opportunity. You should also look for opportunities to reinvent the character and take the meagre stuff on your sheet and develop it, though play. You think this all sounds like positives? Yeah, kind of. But, it also mean you have to have proactive players. You have to be able to design and add to the setting as a player. This is not for everyone. Actually, I think the old saying that a good GM can make anything fly is wrong. Good players, can make anything fun! Mine weren't too bad, actually.

What am I complaining about then? Maybe I'm just teasing, to make a bland post more dramatic? Anyway.

It went well, like I said. But, it took quite long in the session until people actually remembered their keys, and that they gained xp for them! Also, I tried to follow the GM advice and ask questions and follow along, and not try to steer the action. Those times I tried to force the issue by pointed questions about how people felt about being treated "like that", they more often than not shrugged and let it pass. But, it shall be said that they did create more trouble for themselves after a while anyway. I just wished they had responded like I wanted them too! Yeah, I know. They did well.

Now I want to run this game again, to see if it will differ as wildly as it seem to have done, in podcasts and forum posts. Interesting game.

What are the strength of a table top rpg anyway?

2011-10-23T19:32:00.000+02:00

I was pondering the ways people approach their rpg sessions lately. One brain child of that was my previous post about Rifts. Now I have been thinking about that roleplaying aspect again, and more specifically the immersion some of us crave.

For some they see the game session as an opportunity to wind down, kill some orks and hang out with their friends. Yet others play it as they would chess or a game of bridge, they sit down with some strangers, maybe in a game store, and try to manipulate they rules and procedures in order to grow and develop their in game persona. There are more than one way to approach a rpg session.

Like you might know by now, I love the old school games with their relaxed attitude and how they are first and foremost games. But, I also like the new school games, the story games which focus on enforcing themes and crunchy parts for things like relationships.

It's not unheard of the latter to focus on more emotionally engaging subjects and themes. A game of that school might actually be intended to emotionally engage and challenge not only the character, but also the player. I find that interesting, in more than one sense.

When you sit down to play a game with strangers in a game store, you might prefer a game which lets you sit in your comfort zone. You do stuff which anyone can understand and follow along, without getting their panties in a twist.

Compare that to a game of Rifts, playing Coalition soldiers. For some that is just as abstract as playing chess. You gain XP by wasting the opposition, fair deal. For some others it might make them sit up straight and wonder what it means to play racist bigots with guns.

A few years ago I could see and hear how gamers I used to play D&D with now talked about how they had a "raid" or a "run" to attend with their guild in World of Warcraft. They had been hooked and online gaming took time out from planning a face to face session with friends. Personally I thought it was nuts!

Now, consider that WoW probably does that part of "playing an abstract logical game of chess with strangers" part quite well, what is left for the table top?

Maybe, just maybe, those games which plays best with friends, or at least with people who might like to get somewhat emotionally engaged, is what is uniquely well done by a table top rpg?

Could it be, that when immersion is key, is where these peculiar games really shine? I have a very varied view of the would be thespians at the table, but I do think going that extra step while engaging the game is what WoW will not let you do. For good, or bad...

Dogs of the Riftsyard

2011-10-18T21:35:00.000+02:00

Have you ever played Rifts? Maybe read a few of the books? Even owns a copy of the game?

For some reason (yeah, I know), this game often makes people blush or just have them talk about how they are above that kind of stuff. I'm not. I like that gonzo shit.

Now, I've been thinking about how to play Rifts, and using any kind of game system but the one in the book. Stay cool Kevin, I'm not going to be publishing any conversion notes! But, that game probably could work with what it got. Hey, I'm thinking of a cool way to approach the setting.

I was listening to the very cool podcast Canon Puncture Show and in it the idea was suggested to think of the setting from a new perspective. The idea was to merge Dogs in the Vineyard with Rifts. This got me thinking. I would do this, but take it one step further than suggested in that show.

So, in DitV you play 18 year old virgins, with guns, who have been educated to act like god sent emissaries of mail, doctrine, justice and death. You are supposed to enforce a social rule which many people find quite medieval at times. In the North America of Rifts we have another society, The Coalition, which is a hundred times as unpleasant. Basically it's all the racial elitism and militarism of Nazi Germany or some of the gun toting nut jobs around even today.

Now, mix and stir.

You play young soldiers in the Coalition, and not only are all the aliens out there really out to get to get you, that racial supremacist ideology is the last hope of mankind. How about that?

That could be a very interesting game about hard choices, ethical dilemmas when you explore the truth of that ideology. Maybe it could even be quite interesting as a very black comedy.

Lot of people probably would not get it at all...

Some musings on skills

2011-10-09T19:28:00.000+02:00

I was listening to the Roll for Initiative Podcast, and they were talking about non-weapons proficiencies and "skills" and it dawned on me when skills work and when they don't.

In BRP you have skills, lots of them. You also have stats, and sometimes you roll against those. Usually those are the Luck, Know and Idea rolls which are stat x 5 for a percentage. More often than not, those are only used when there are no special skill, or for specific procedures or mechanics detailed in the rules. The specific skills are mostly based on the development points you put in there, even if high stats might give you a slight bonus in some incarnations of the system, like my beloved Stormbringer.

In Warhammer (1st and 2nd ed. at least) you mostly roll against your stats (weapon skill is a stat, I'm just saying...) and the skills you have just gives you a bonus to a stat check. They are mostly feats or talents to diversify your class. You either have a skill or you don't, so you don't develop them with points.

In 1st ed. AD&D (and 2nd ed.) the proficiencies are legion, and they are bascially skills for lot of different special knowledges. To use them, you basically roll a stat check, with a bonus.

In the Nalfeshnee edition (Type IV you know?), you have a very short list of skills. They are based on development points, but bonus from stats play a significant part. You roll the same die as when you, say, make a save.

Do you see some patterns?

This is how I rate those system on a subjective enjoyment level.
1. BRP skills are fun, worth my time and they make the game interesting
2. WH skills are nice for colour, but I depend on my WS and my I.
3. Why not just roll a stat check?
4. "I need to solve this problem? Gee, I wonder what I will choose? I seem to have one skill for stealthy stuff so I roll that I guess. Was it just like a stat check/save you said? Can't I just use my DEX?"

While it might not be the same thing for everyone, I think I've found out what works for me. In 4th ed. they don't really present you with much a choice. You can have any colour, as long as it's black. right? In WH I have a schtick which I can groove on for colour. Nice. In AD&D, why didn't I just roll my DEX?

I think a game which uses skills should have a mechanic that feel fun and involved and don't feels like it could have been a stat check. They have to be something clearly different from a stat check. Preferably they should be something which not everyone off the street can be expected to have access to. Also, when you have a cool skill mechanic, the choice to roll a specific skill must involve some choice and diversity, to allow for multiple ways to place those development points while still build viable adventurers.

Your mileage might differ. I really like CoC, RQ and Stormbringer while 4th ed. bores me to tears. My summary would be: if you tack on a skill system, make it large enough to matter and roll off your stats otherwise.

Old School Psionics - the final word

2011-10-08T15:44:00.000+02:00

As long time readers of this blog knows, I started a project to clone Supplement III since I am fond of psionics. I have reached the end of the road of that project, and it wont materialize as intended.

The fact is that when you delve deeper into Supplement III, you realize that this some of the worst written rules in the D&D canon. The editing is abysmal and the rules contradictory and clunky.

There are two ways to approach this, one is to rewrite it to conserve the feel or the other is to try to untangle the mess and present it the way it was intended. I had intended to do the latter, but I found it was way harder than expected. Partly I guess that comes from loosing all respect for the original after spending some time with it. I also felt the tug to just write my own, but then it would not be a clone.

But, after all those negative vibes I am happy to say that someone have managed to create a set of rules that have that old school feeling, preserve thrust of the original and are clear and lucidly presented. I direct you to the Retroroleplaying blog by Randall Stukey. Randall have written the very cool Microlite 74 and Microlite 75 rules, and those contain a very workable and excellently presented rules for psionics, in the spirit and style of Supplement III.

My project floundered, but at least someone managed to present something instead. My hat off to Randall for his great work.

G+ really?

2011-10-02T19:51:00.000+02:00

I'm seeing the phenomenon that is Google+, and how Zak have manged to bring everyone together around this new online gaming tool. Since I am wary of google and their way to grasp after every activity I do online (Hm.. who own Blogger, again?) I have not yet joined in. But, I'm thinking of alternatives.

Apparently there is this thing called Ekiga which to video conferencing and instant messaging and ghu knows what. It looks like it multi platform as well.

Could it be something worth testing, possibly? I have dozens of campaign ideas and enthusiasm to GM. Maybe I have to jump in the deep and see if I float or not...

Happy Birthday Dave!

2011-10-01T22:51:00.000+02:00

Today would have been Dave Arneson's birthday and I guess the guy is well remembered on the blogs today. Let's remember the man who managed to transform a miniature gaming into something totally new!

I have not done much roleplaying, and thus not much posting on the blog lately. Probably it wont change soon. Still, today I got to sit down and talk to a friends about memories and how gaming have meant a lot to so many of us. Thanks Dave!

Worlds of Cthulhu

2011-09-17T23:07:00.000+02:00

I just got hold of issue #1 - #6 (apart from #3) of Worlds of Cthulhu, and wanted to suggest you do the same. This mag is quite something, with many really cool scenarios and some nice articles.

Mine I bought directly from Pegasus Spiele, which was a hassle.

Very good mags, though.

Horses and knights in plate mail, in real life!

2011-09-15T15:21:00.000+02:00

This last weekend there was a cultural festival in these parts. All kinds of films, literature and ethic food and dance all over downtown. When darkness fell, fires lit up and you could watch a show with real horses and knights clad in armour thundering forth. Guess where I was standing?

It was quite amazing to see a 600 kg horse come galloping down a field of gravel, the ground thundering and loudspeakers playing Ramstein. The fact that the horse had a lad or lass on its back wearing plate armour and swinging a sword or lance didn't make it less impressive! With people breathing fire for the audience and the jousting knights sometimes having swords lit with flame it was quite a show!

Now, imagine that beast and warrior coming charging against you with intent on your life.

I would run.

I'm suddenly feeling that having a PC make a morale check to stand his ground when facing a dangerous monster makes a lot of sense.

Rules found by re-reading

2011-09-09T19:11:00.000+02:00

As some of you know, Initiative is something many D&D refs have house rules for. Ordering the chaos of real life combat, or just the monomanical urge to add structure to all facets of life is something that all kinds of roleplaying games are pretty wont to do. Today I found some new little nugget of Initiative related rule.

Since I have not had a regular game for a while, the inspirations for posts on the blog have shrunk, and the posting frequency almost crawled to a stop. But, hope lives eternal and I have started to re-read the Call of Cthulhu rulesbook in the hopes of starting a CoC game.

Today I read the skills chapter. Usually lists of skills and their use is something I find as yawn inducing as spell descriptions. I prefer lists of skills and spell just to be the names, and those to be descriptive enough. But, I had promised myself to give the rule book a full read through so I kept slogging at it. So, now I found a nugget I had missed before!

When you are in a fight, you can either attack, dodge or parry. The latter you can do once a combat turn, dodging you can do more than once. Since Parry is a bit special, you actually have to declare in the beginning of the round that you will parry, and which antagonist you expect an attack from! Should that NPC not attack, you have "wasted" your round.

Interesting.

I wonder how well that would work transplanted to another game, or for that matter, how well would it work in CoC? I have played with BRP derived games for many years, but never have I encountered Parry like that.

Interesting.

Battletech: Random Encounter!

2011-08-26T21:14:00.001+02:00

It was time to play another BattleTech scenario today. Last day at work was hell, so I needed something to take my mind of it all. We decided to run a classic lance on lance patrol encounter, in wooded hills.

Once again we visit Zyclone 3, the fought over planet. The Rasalhague have been given it, but Kurita hardliners refuse to give it up.

The Kurita mechs were advancing through woodlands when suddenly there came enemy mechs up over a ridge. Intense fighting took place. First some placed themselves on hills and started to rain down long range missiles, and then others closed for melee all guns blazing. It all ended when the Steiner lance began to fall back, under cover of their leader. Sadly one pilot wanted to launch one more salvo and both him and commander Heinrich MacManus was vaporized, by a direct hit in the head by a laser and a missile ammo explosion, respectively. Fittingly, pilot Brenan Amundsen desperately yelled "Sarge!" and in tears managed to cause an ammo explosion in the Kurita commander's mech as well. Commander Takita's death caused his lance to hesitate and the Steiners could fall back.

Damn, these giant robots are fun!

I find that a simple rules system, with enough quirks and wrinkles, gives a lot of flavour. You roll your 2d6 high is always good. It just took 3 hours, including a lunch break, so it wasn't time killer either.

Naturally I think of this as a roleplayer, and for me the individual pilots and the stories that compel them to fight this fight is always in my mind. Having a pre written story and trying to reenact that in a set of scenarios where there's freedom of movement and action is an interesting challenge. I will probably try to write up our efforts as a campaign, and I will probably try to find ways to play this game on many levels. I have still not managed to get my great project off the ground where you play the domain management game on one level, then pick up your low level characters and do a crawl and have those two be played by different players and have it all interact and create a living, breathing world. Maybe Battletech is worth studying for something like that.

Old School games and thespians

2011-08-24T22:10:00.001+02:00

I've been thinking about the conversations had following James Malisewski posts from OSR Con in Toronto, and him playing with Ed Greenwood. Many peoples seem to have an instant dislike of any would be thespians at the game table. It reminded me of a poll at Dragonsfoot way back, when the level of engagement in the game was the focus of the poll. The result was that most people there treated AD&D as if it was chess, or Monopoly.

From what I have gathered, the prevailing wind in these parts are kind of the opposite but with a healthy dose of simulationism as a side order. Way back the periodicals had articles espousing the values of acting, talking and being in character. Add to that an influential designer who seem to value realism really, really high and you have a bunch of kids who grow up to be either sim earthers or drama queens. Yeah, I am exaggerating.

But, what about me? Well. I have found that I becomes quite bored if all I do is roll the dice and have to treat my character like a chess piece. Outrageous accents just makes me more engaged. Now, if you are to treat the characters as game pieces, having many and detailed choices to make in the game makes it far more fun. Actually, I think this is where 3rd and 4th D&D really shines. You can happily play without any hint of "acting", and still have a game where you have a lot of things to do. On the other hand, a game like the older editions of D&D or T&T where combat rounds are minutes long and everything is abstract I think the game becomes boring unless I get to engage in a little extra like at least yell something in a funny voice when rolling to hit.

Now, with more abstract games, and more up to GM fiat and player inventiveness you would gather that those games should leave more opportunity for the players to express themselves by doing more thespians experiments. I mean, they do have less rules baggage to weight them down, and more freedom to interpret what abilities and limitations their characters suffer from, right?

Maybe I am off on a totally wrong track here. There's not like there's any strong causality involved or something like that. Somehow the world is not the way I expected it to be.

Let me also add that I think the level of pretentiousness is important. Even when I was quite enthusiastic about it (yes, I was!), Vampire: The Masquerade was a game I liked best when I never met the guys (and gals!) who played it. The same thing is true about things like freeform and "jeepform" which are way to game which makes my stomach turn. That's when I think the would be thespian ought to go to drama class and leave me to my roleplaying game. I just hate the combination of acting, pretentiousness and RPGs. When I act out a bit I goof off. It might be serious, but I am playing a game.

There's more to it than rules density.

How to be a good GM

2011-08-21T14:03:00.000+02:00

Since the whole blogosphere is talking about how to be a better GM I am going to toss in my two cents in the ring as well. I guess mine have the queen on them, since I have no idea how the euro cents look like.

I suggest there is just one skill you really need to be a good GM.

Well, you probably think that is hogwash, and more than one thing is included in my suggestion. I still want to focus on that thing, though.

To be a really good GM, you need to be able to go with the flow.

That's it. Say 'yes' and make some shit up. That's what it's all about.

What? You think that didn't help much? Let me expand a bit then.

I suggest that the great thing that hanging out with your friends pretending to be an elf is all about entering a secondary world where you can do anything! In order to have it be like that, for the players it must always feel like the limitations of their mundane existence are no more.

That means that if they sit there and want you to take them through a story, make some shit up and do it. Lead them through fairyland. If it means they have glorious plans for how they will hexcrawl and explore the sandbox, make some shit up and do it. Show them fairyland and let them rape it (yes, they will do disgusting things against your wishes. I didn't type that lightly).

I never said it would be easy, or that I could teach you how.

Battletech, fantasy and the technological arms race

2011-08-20T21:33:00.000+02:00

One thing I find interesting with Battletech, is that there are different levels of technology in the setting, and they all fight over technology as much as for power for its own sake. Sometime an influx of new tech shakes things up a bit, and it influences the capabilities of the other states and factions involved in the conflicts. Why aren't we seeing this in the fantasy worlds of roleplaying?

Imagine a country, which have invented gunpowder or the printing press. They invade another country and suddenly that country is filled with guys with primitive guns. Later on another country creates the telegraph and suddenly the game world have "instant" communication in some parts.

Imagine how cool that could be. Imagine your characters in the midst of it.

I think that part of Battletech could be imported successfully into your fantasy campaign!

Battletech: The Dragon holds the line! (and a few thoughts avbout Traveller)

2011-08-13T10:59:00.000+02:00

A few days ago we assembled to commanders at my place and fought a Battletech scenario. BT is old school to me, whatever rules you use. My boxed set if the 2nd ed.

Along the border of the Steiner and Kurita empires, worlds have started to rebel, not respecting the deal by Theodore Kurita and ComStar. (this is before the clans. I did say old school, didn't I?). One such planet is Zyclone 3, where the samurai mechwarriors get their orders from the local warlord, that coming down from the mountains are two lances of Steiner mechs. They are spearheading a push toward the industrial centres in the lowlands. "We are redeploying to meet this thread, but you have to Hold the Line until reinforcement arrive and we can defend these vital resources!" Let the battle commence.

I played the Kurita guys, and had one lance of veterans in medium mechs. The Steiners had one light lance and one heavy lance. They were regulars, and the light lance mostly so. Naturally, the first thing that happens in that the heavy mechs stumble and fall while crossing a river! Some giggles in the light lance when that happened. Then I got my LRM and autocannons up on two hills with good visibility on a majority of the battlefield. Missiles started to rain as soon as the Steiners came into view. Two batteries of LRM 15, firing each round for four rounds. Just picture it!

In the end I managed to blow up two enemies, and shoot off the leg one another. It looked like a victory and the other player yielded. This was so fun that I at once started to think about doing a campaign. Naturally that makes you start to think about stories, free form developments and sandboxes. Again.

There are different rules for Battletech campaigns, and some of them have tried to handle the fact that you might want to play in a story line, but also to be the master of your own fate. I have read some of those and been thinking that maybe they can be used got a RPG campaign?

In a BT campaign you use something called tracks, which specify not which troops show up, but their relative size and strength. Also, the terrain is stated in a general case and the outcome can lead you to another track depending on what happened.

If you want to try to game a more controlled story, I don't see why you couldn't use something similar. In Traveller adventures, at least those from DGP, utilized something called nuggets. A nugget was a few resources for an encounter, and it had a dependency tree, i.e. it was connected to nuggets that had to happen before that one, and nuggets you could go into depending on the outcome. I think I'm going to go back and reread some of those old Traveller adventures and see how it worked.

meme: Dice pron

2011-08-06T11:44:00.001+02:00

Never the one to miss an opportunity to talk about dice I join the ranks of dice pornographers. I might hate dice superstition, but I love the dice.

First, all of them!

Th big pile

I love FUDGE, both as a concept and its derivations. I once read an article on how to make your own FUDGE dice, from ordinary d6. Later I bought my own real FUDGE dice but I still have a soft spot for my own ugly ones.

FUDGE dice

Since we are talking about special dice, this is a favourite. I got a novelty dice from my wife, and the text on the dice about what to do right now "breathe", "make love", "relax" and suchlike is cool. Nice box too.

novelty die

Then there are these puppies. Now when I live far from any game store, and continents away from free RPG Day, I find the special dice for that occasion and for the game store I used to frequent (Minotaur Games and Gifts) to be of some sentimental value. Longtime readers of this blog will understand the value of the third one.

sentimental dice

Now for the meat of it. These are my Gamescience dice (hey, I like them. So sue me!), my T&T dice and my averaging and d3 dice. The last one I feat exceptionally neat. This is my "go to" bag. Also, the bag is a homemade gift from my wife.

the first dice I reach for

Then we have the big pile. In here are the dice for WoD and dice pool systems, random dice from all the games I own. In my boardgame collection I even have another pile of d10s. You will note that missing is both d16. d24 and d30 dice. Someday, maybe.

the big pile

I like me some dice!

Naturally I also have a pile of poker chips, playing cards and a tarot deck. All are used in my rpg sessions. The big pile of pennies is also counted to this oddball section of gaming tools.

Enjoy!

Houseruling Call of Cthulhu - yet again! Incorporating Trail features

2011-08-06T11:05:00.000+02:00

I have thought about suitable ways of incorporating the nice features from Trail of Cthulhu and think I have finally nailed it down.

Pillars of Sanity - So, pillars are abstract principles your character believes in. Everyone get for each 20 pts of SAN.

Advantage: When faced with a horror that invalidates your belief, you can have the Pillar crumble and avoid the SAN loss. When all your Pillars are gone, you will automatically fail your SAN rolls when nothing shields you from the horror.
Disadvantage: When faced with a horror that threatens your Pillar you will always roll the worst effect when failing a SAN roll.

Drives - Drives are core desires of your character, which gives you a reason to go mad and die.

Hard driver: Following a hard driver will protect you from the effect of losing 5 SAN in one go for the next immediate experience related to the driver. Ignoring the driver, loose 1d6 SAN.
Soft driver: Following a soft driver and you will only loose the minimum amount at the next immediate experience related to the driver. Ignoring the driver, loose 1d3 SAN.

Core Clues - While I don't expect to use it as a hard and fast rule, professional skills will always give the clues needed. Characters should shine when doing their thing. I'll always ask for a roll, but if it is a core clue check, failure will not stop the clue from being found but instead will take a significant amount of extra time, say all day instead of an hour.

Then there are one thing I am looking at importing from Unknown Armies, and a small tweak to the basic system.

Trigger Events - In Unknown Armies your character have an event in their history when they encountered the supernatural. I think that is a good idea for thinking more about who your character is. It's probably also a nice way to tie into the Drive of a character.
Skill improvement - In older editions of CoC you didn't gain 1d10 when rolling for improving a skill, but 1d6. I love my d6. I do like the idea of extra effect for crits, though, so crits will gain you 1d6+1.
Regaining SAN - Sandy Petersen's original game didn't have the option of regaining SAN. I like the starkness of that rule. Taking a cue from ToC, I'd rule that if at the end of an adventure there are no physical evidence left for any unnatural event, you can regain SAN. Roll a d6 and be happy.

Scenario design according to Dennis Detwiller

2011-08-04T23:02:00.000+02:00

I was listening to the Unspeakable podcast, a podcast about Call of Cthulhu, and noted Dennis Detwiller had some guides for scenario design.

He suggested
1. having a situation
2. a plan for what would happen if nobody else got involved
3. outlines for all the different ways you could investigate and interact with the situation and sketch possible results from that.

It sounds like pretty good advice. Maybe it's all old news to you, but it made me think how it could apply it to some different kind of games and not only Call of Cthulhu.

Glorantha stuff for sale

2011-08-04T10:13:00.000+02:00

While I have no intention of turning this blog into a marketplace, I am a bit wary of entering the big swirl at eBay. Should any of the items below catch your fancy, email me with an offer (address is on the left side on the blog front page). Everything is in Sweden, and you will have to pay actual shipping costs.

I already have more copies of these items, and some (like the Genertela box) I consider to be the definitive source on the matter.

If none of it finds a buyer I guess I'll have to go to eBay. I do have some more stuff, for DragonQuest, that I also have excess copies of. Those might show up later.

Gods of Glorantha - Scotch tape on box. Cults book have tears by the staples. Otherewise just fine.

Tales of the Reaching Moon #13 - spine have scruff marks.

HeroWars:Roleplaying in Glorantha - Excellent condition.

HeroWars:Narrator's Book Game Mastering in the Hero wars - near mint.

Snake Pipe Hollow RQ3 - Excellent condition. NPC stat booklet photocopy.

Apple Lane RQ3 - In shrink wrap. Some tears in shrink wrap, though.

Ye Book of Tentacles vol.2 - near mint. Minimum shelf wear.

Glorantha:Genertela, crucible of the hero wars - One box corner crushed and taped. Map have tears along creases, lover box have split corner, player's book have torn and creased corner. Otherwise excellent condition.

Super Endless Quest - does it sound inviting?

2011-07-30T14:55:00.002+02:00

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm not playing my solo game books to take me through summer slowdowns. I have T&T solos, and I have the Fighting Fantasy books. But, there are a whole truckload of solo gamebooks out there!

I managed to find a couple which actually said "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover, which was intriguing. Two books found their way into my waiting paws, and the one I'm looking at right now have a Keith Parkinson cover illustration and the inviting title "The Ghost Tower". It's not without some effort I stop myself from writing "... of Inverness" after that. Is there a relation? I don't know yet.

But, what is striking is the enormous series logo above it all proclaiming Super Endless Quest! Is it just me, or doesn't that actually sound a bit discouraging? A quest that goes on and on with all the limitations of the solo format feels very restrictive top me. When doing some research, I found that in the big index at rpg.net there are indeed if not an endless list at least a very long list of these books.

The game system looks to be something which is quite far from D&D. Actually, it doesn't seem to have any relation to D&D at all! Considering how simple a system D&D can be, when pruned from it's worth excesses like AD&D1 and D&D3, I find it a bit curious that they didn't try to base the rules on D&D. Wouldn't that be an extra sales point if you could take the character in your solo onto further adventures in the dungeons of your friends when playing the full D&D game?

Anyhow, this is a new field of adventure for me and since I know many gamers have tales to tell of being shaped in the forge of Fighting Fantasy I wonder if anyone ever was brought into the fold by the Super Endless Quest books?

Summer slowdown - solo gaming

2011-07-30T10:53:00.001+02:00

I'm in the midst of summer vacations, and gaming is now happening less than usual. A few years back I remember a friend saying that soon it would be summer and then there would be more opportunities for games. I've found that instead it means even less. Everyone is gone, to summer houses and trips abroad for those who can afford. But, not wanting to give up I've tried to do some solo gaming.

For many years I saw T&T as that game which was all about solos. I even considered it an odd choice of a game, since I had a gaming group and didn't need such a game. Poor fool I was. Actually, the first contact I had with adventure gaming was through that marvellous little book The Warlock of Firetop Mountain with those fantastic Russ Nicholson illustrations. God knows why I then developed that attitude towards T&T.

Having a pile of T&T solos I grabbed a small volume by Andy Holmes, being one highly regarded solo writer. I have played some of his solos before, but this one Wytches, was new to me. This time it felt there was a story to it, with some quite decent pieces of exposition setting the mood. I started to play it and explored the small village. Walking around talking to people getting to know the story of the solo was a nice change from the kind of solos where you walk from fight to fight. Naturally I finally found myself in a fight, and was squashed like a bug. I had +5 combat adds and had to go up against a monster of +30 or something like that. Might as well have said, "you die" that paragraph. Holmes seem to be very fond of that kind of solo writing where you encounter a monster which is a total TPK waiting to happen. It's not just Holmes doing that, though.

It has been said that "balanced" encounters is a true sign of the decadence of modern editions of the world's most popular rpg. When it leads to players feeling entitled to "challenges" scaled to their level, and treasures as their due I feel it has gone very wrong. That being said, I think monsters which are way out there should at least be very uncommon or possible to avoid. In a solo the possibilities for evasive maneuvers are often not that common, so I prefer those to be random encounters and/or things which the solo writers include an "escape clause" for. Victories won by the skin of your teeth are valued the most, but it's a fine line. I think maybe the subtle queues gained by a GM from her players is needed to gauge when it's time to let the big stomper in on the stage and when the players will just feel harassed by it.

Naturally, I had to bring a Fighting Fantasy book on my vacation as well. That's where it all started after all. City of Thieves, the den of inequity, is where my brave adventurer headed. Once again we have a solo where the main task in not to fight, but to enter a hostile environment to find a person and then having found him scout for the the items of power needed for the main task. The city almost felt like a real place, with a mood of its own when you carefully approach proprietors of different kinds of stores illustrated by the classic look and feel of Fightiong Fantasy artists. I don't think I really appreciated before how much of my imagination of the fantastic have been shaped by these artists.

Once again I run into the limitations of the solo format. Dead ends can, and will, happen when you take one of the paths through the numbers not tested and tried by the authors. To their defence I should say that in a solo of 400 paragraphs that is juist to be expected. You would need a computerized testing suite to find all those possible dead ends. Ian Livingstone have at least prepared for it, writing the paragraph I ended on so that coming there you had to check if you had the needed components before travelling further, a small checkpoint if you like.

It is amazing how this hobby is to its very nature a creative one. Having played these two solos I now find myself wanting to beat them at their game, and write my own! I did it once and that was a mini solo of less than 40 pages, I think. Was it even 20? It was a lot of work. Maybe, just maybe, the summer with its lack of gaming opportunities will be the fount of something after all.

Another way to have tricky games, the Stable system

2011-07-15T19:11:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I read about the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and how you sometimes have to metagame and play them more than once, since there are plenty of instant death situations in those books. I realized there are other solutions which could make those "tricky" situations in a non-solo game.

If you use your henchmen like trap detectors the next lot to sign on will demand extra pay, surely. But, what if you use your own PC?

Way back in the days, everyone used to have multiple characters. In the T&T rulebook from 1979 it's even mentioned as the way to do things. So, maybe it's possible to have those tricky dungeons which "demand" to be tested before you can take intelligent decisions. Just send in one of the clones...

What is it about dice?

2011-07-15T17:00:00.000+02:00

I have been following the DCC RPG posts in the blogosphere, where people have been giving their expressions about the beta rules. Many have commented on the oddball dice needed. That combined with me reading an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table before falling asleep yesterday, have gotten me started on dice. Have you read Hackmaster? They have a whole chapter in the new Basic game on dice!

What is it with gamers and dice?

Warning, a rant coming up!

This probably wont win me any friends...

Trust me, I have the collecting bug, so I can understand that angle. I can also understand the aesthetic reasoning of getting hold of a set that matches the mood of the game, or otherwise fitting what you are playing. I mean, I would love to play a game with stone or metal dice if I played a dwarf in a fantasy game.

But, what about the pure superstition about "lucky dice" and idiotic methods of dice rubbing, not letting anyone touch them and so on?! What?

In the KotDT comic, they even have a long running story about a die which curses all other dice around if it's every used for it's "superior" results. The weird thing is, I have heard similar stories in real life.

Whatever you think of Lou Zocchi, his claim that some dice are "lucky" because they are uneven kind of makes sense. In the light of that, it makes even less sense to care about lucky dice. If you really care that much about true random distribution, use those precision dice. If you don't care, grab what you have a roll them bones and have fun. But if you really grab that special die when a important roll is on the line, aren't you really cheating?

Reading the chapter on dice in Hackmaster Basic, a game that no longer is forced to be a parody, I was amazed of how much hogwash and hokey this was. Either it is parody and humour, or it's just as ill fitting in a rpg rule book as a chapter on the body humors in a modern university textbook for physicians.

Are we gamers all just fun and games, or are we a superstitious lot who'd rather be cheating?

Meh! yet another game dies on the vine

2011-07-13T22:10:00.000+02:00

I'm seriously miffed. Due to scheduling problems, my latest rpg game have been shelved until next year sometime.

Meh!

I really need a new local weekly game group!

*sigh*

[The Shadow of Pavis] Solar System - what makes it cool?

2011-07-12T16:18:00.000+02:00

When I posted about me playing a Gloranthan game, I said I would post something more on the game system. Instead of just telling you how it works, I'm going to try to say why it makes me think it a good match for this game.

One of the features of the so called "Solar System", is that you have something called keys. I guess you could say they are late cousins of the Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel. For those of you who became none the wiser from that, I'll say they are triggers for things which gain you XP.

So, the fine things with these keys are that you pick them yourself during character generation. This means you get to decide what you want to do to gain XP! Isn't that kind of sweet, eh?

If you have a key like, Key of Hatred of Uz, then every time your character can show some hatred against trolls, you gain XP. Simple.

The second thing I wanted to mention is Pools. In the basic and generic Solar System, you have three pools of points which you can spend on rolls. All abilities are tied to a pool, and chuck in some of those points and you get to roll more dice and have a far better chance of success.

Like you have figured out by now, that means you can decide when something in the game is important for you and make it pretty likely your character get to shine. Also, it is a pretty cool resource management level in the game.

Thirdly, the best name of a game sub-system ever, is Bringing Down The Pain. I love it. Bringing it down is something you can do in a resisted conflict when you are going to fail, and just wont let it pass that easily. Regularly, you can't kill anybody unless you bring the pain. The vanilla conflict, if it's a fight, is a one roll affair to decide who wins.

When the pain is brought down, you go blow by blow in whatever conflict there is. For all those you you who had played a game which glosses over the nitty gritty when you wanted to dive in, this is where it shines. Having a mechanic like this makes it possible to customize when you want to have an involved game system and you just want to move on.

So why would all this make it a good fit for Glorantha? Well, I think that in a world where the mythic and the mundane are juxtaposed like they are in Glorantha, it's crucial to be able to decide when to "zoom in". RQ always had the same scale on things. I means, in a percentile system everything goes from 1 - 100 since that's the maths, right? It always makes it a bit wonky when you try to mix in godlike abilities and the fact that the power scale between a dirt farmer and some of the movers and shakers are so huge. HeroQuest/Wars tried to remedy that with "masteries" for every 20 steps of an ability, and they could then cancel each other out to reduce the system to a manageable level. While that is kind of neat, I think the Solar System manages something similar in a way more too my liking.

Another thing I like with the Solar System is the idea of gift dice. It is a neat way to make communal support a part of the system. In Glorantha you usually can't make much happen without the backing of someone else.

Most important though, I have always wanted to test the system! Now I had, and it was fun.

Happy Canada Day!

2011-07-01T17:26:00.000+02:00

The Shadow of Pavis

2011-06-25T11:26:00.000+02:00

So have I finally joined the ranks of Gloranthaphiles who have fought their way out of the Big Rubble. Last Wednesday, a day that had sucked from when I got out of bed, ended well with our brave adventurers escaping with their lives, and nothing much more.

Way back when RuneQuest was the game of choice for gloranthan gaming, everyone were gaming in the plains of Prax and in the city of Pavis. Far later everyone shifted their focus to Dragon Pass, but latecomers like me never got to experience Prax. Now I have at least addressed that.

There was a time when whatever somebody posted about on Big Purple, the recommendation was to use Savage Worlds instead. The darling before that had been The Shadow of Yesterday. I have the former, but have never played it. The latter I had become very curious about, due to the above mentioned recommendations. Now we had a setting and a system, we all just waited for the lovechild of that union.

After character generation, we started off in media res, but not in the midst of the adventure. After the adventure, having a drink and retelling our adventure!

We had a very peculiar setup. Our GM knew little of Glorantha, the other player nothing, and I know far too many odd little details thanks to my extensive collection. How do that work, do you ask? Well, you just set up a dramatic and appropriate scene based on general knowledge, and when an NPC asks "Tell me more of how that happened!", you as a player with more setting knowledge can step in and add to the background. It was an interesting way to involve the players. There's often talk about player skill, and I found that having the GM set up a tight spot and then as a player have free reins to develop that situation, both by solving the immediate problem and by fleshing out the setting, was an interesting usage of just player skill.

Our brave adventurers was on an expedition into the Big Rubble, which is a dungeon which can contain anything. We ran into some weird plantmen, i.e. elves, which scared us witless. Exchange of gifts according to some ancient agreement with the Pavis cult took place, as we invented that ritual on the spot. After being amazed by a levitating rock, chewed some narcotic leaves and stolen our gift from the elves, our thief managed to loose it in a cesspit. The local occupation force did not detain us, since we had after all our troubles no treasures to tax.

I think the lessons of this session was how a backward narrative with a swapping of tall tales in an inn worked quite fine to set up short and challenging set pieces for us both to solve and embellish. It was a good way to develop both the setting, story and characters without heavy prep, massive reading assignment on the setting and a nice way to keep the session contained and restrained both in time and space. Really good for a one shot.

We didn't exercise the game system that much, but The Shadow of Yesterday didn't get in the way, and the possibility to tailor the abilities you get XP for was interesting. I might write more on the game system at a later time.

Am I missing something?

2011-06-24T09:36:00.000+02:00

Now I've seen that in my feed there have been a very intense conversation going on in the blogosphere about shields. But why? After skimming those post I don't understand what all the hubbub is all about. Am I missing something?

How about a little gonzo with that soup?

2011-06-16T15:45:00.000+02:00

I just watched Hidden Power of Dragon Sabre from 1984, and it must be one of the most nonsensical movies I've seen.

There are a big mountain with bottomless holes, corridors which looks like a spaceship, laser bolts and odd things happening when you pull random levers. It's just like a dungeon of the wilder kind.

Could you use this in a rpg?

One thing I thought about was how a manual of martial arts secrets are copied onto the walls of a cave, which is then guarded. Then there are the two magic swords which are guarded by a secret society. Finally there is this weird effect when the antagonist manage to get all the weapons and learn the secret art. Then he "unifies the yin and yang" and becomes a half woman and half man creature with awesome magic power. Doesn't that sounds a bit like a rpg?

For those of us who have been thinking about what kind of treasure to provide in our game, maybe the idea of a secret combat art could be a neat treasure? I have no idea how popular the ability to be both male and female at the same time would be in the general gamer populace. Otherwise that might be a treasure in itself. Hey, you could always use it as a curse!

I anyway think the idea of hidden space ship corridors, lasers and plexi glass swords are too cool not to include in a game.

Weapons length and reach in combat

2011-06-14T21:37:00.000+02:00

When posting a comment on the A Paladin in Citadel blog about the value of weapon length modifiers I realized it had turned into a post of its own. I have posted on this topic before, but it's worth revisiting. Here we go.

Those rules, adding a sense of simulation to the play, are probably jettisoned because they make combats longer.

While it might be heresy, I might suggest that those who prefer tactical crunch should take a closer look at D&D 4th ed. The teamwork and tactical play needed for efficient combat is a big part of that game. Even with the fiddly bits of 1st ed., it never was a very tactically detailed game.

Now, that being said, there are some ways to incorporate tactical details while making the game decently swift. One good way to add some depth and planning to the combat phases is to have different phases in combat. Ranged combat and magic have their own phases, and I'd suggest they go before melee.

When it comes to weapon length, I think Elric!/Stormbringer can add a simple way to handle that. This is how it works. If you have your weapons categorized as "long" or "short", the longer ones will have reach to hit before the short ones do. Simple enough.

When attacking, in whatever order you choose, let "long" weapons go first. If you use DEX order or side initiative, follow that but let long weapons trumph that order.

For fighters with "short" weapons, they will have to make a dodge of some kind to get within the reach of the "long" weapon. Otherwise they can not attack. The same thing then apply when the opponent have dodged within your reach. Wielding a "long" weapon you then need to make a disengaging dodge in order to use your weapon again.

While it reduces the reach to a binary situation, it have the benefit of being very simple, but still managing to create a lot more tactical depth to the choice of weapons. Should your game system of choice, D&D say, not have a dodge skill, use the initiative! Dice off or use DEX or whatever method you normally use. A great idea from Tomas Arfert's Saga RPG.

Hopefully that gave some food for thought.

The madness continues - unabated

2011-06-13T22:12:00.001+02:00

Remember that I posted before about games I own but haven't played? Well, the madness continues. I still haven't played DragonQuest.

But, now I own not one, not two but four copies of the game! Somebody save me from myself. By the way, I do have extra copies of Enchanted Wood, Blade of Allectus and Palace of the Ontocle if someone is interested.

I really need to play DragonQuest, don't I?

How to have interesting extened conflicts

2011-06-12T21:45:00.001+02:00

I have been thinking on how some parts of rpgs never seem to turn into the drama intended, but devolve into endless rolls of the dice without any of the buy in and excitement I had hoped for. Lucky for me, the guys at the Narrative Control podcast have been thinking on this as well. A mashup of their ideas in show #65 and my own follows.

Everyone have probably tried to run a game where one guy suddenly is the focus of everything, and the rest is sitting idle. Maybe the thief is checking for traps and picking locks or maybe the netrunner is hacking a computer system. In both cases the rest of the players do nothing. While shared narrative control and kibitzing can help somewhat (like I talked about in my last post), maybe some rule support to keep everyone involved would be a good thing.

Here are the things you can do, and import in your game as rules supporting more engaging play.

A Unified Mechanic - One way to make even climbing a cliff or a trek through a snowstorm engaging is to have it use the same game mechanic as the players. Stat up the snow storm, and let it have an AC, attack rolls and defensive maneuvers. Yeah, I know it sounds daft to have the door you are trying to break down or pick the lock have an attack. But, imagine how it "attacks" your concentration as you pick the lock. Maybe the door attacks you and as a result pearls of sweat forms on the forehead of the thief giving him -1 to his picking because his will is strained? The cliff might not maneuver away, but that beast you are trying to rescue up that cliff might be climbing higher! What I'm saying is, let the whole challenge act as more than it's just sitting there. Make it an active participant in the challenge. It sure helps if you can use the same mechanic that you have used since fifth grade while killing orcs, right?
It's Not Over Until It's Over - In the marvellously cool game Wushu, everything you as a player say is true. Yes, you can say in the first volley of melee that you strike the villain through the heart. As long as the Threat Rating (I don't remember the specific term) is not down to 0, anything goes! When inventing cool moves is part of the game, everyone listen up just to hear what outrageous stuff their friends is inviting.
Let Everyone Pitch In - Closely tied to the last point is the idea that everyone should be able to chip in. If you think the NPC made a lame move, suggest something cooler to the GM! Listen up, game masters! When someone is trying to make your job easier, let them. It's just more engaging for everyone if everyone is engaged. Right?
Make It Measurable - There is one thing among all this loose and woozy stuff that I'd suggest you add some crunch to. In order to have tactical options, and in order to make informed choices, the players need information. If you need to figure out the big trap in order to stop the doomsday device, don't just reduce it to a bunch of skill checks. Here is where I differ from the guys on the Narrative Control podcast. I think the skill challenges in D&D4 bores me to tears. With a skill list that short it tales all of two seconds to figure out one skill you need, and a backup. Instead, toss the skill list or make it far longer. Better is to have the players just speak their mind. Whatever they say that sounds cool, investigative or proactive, give them a +1 or an extra die or whatever. Then let them go at the doomsday device. Now for the interesting part. Have a tally of their progress, and make it public. Make them see what made the scales tilt in the preferred direction and what did not. Actions should count, not rolls.

Some of you might think this is just bogus, or maybe newfangled ways to beat down open doors. More power to you! If you have an un-engaging game, try some of these ideas out, or think them over and tell me what worked for you.

I love these ideas.

Never split the group! Maybe you should...

2011-06-05T16:32:00.000+02:00

I have had the fortune to be invited to a Unknown Armies game. The gamemaster is one of my dear readers, and he have done some quite cool things with the set-up for the game I wanted to talk about.

As everyone who have wondered about ecology in the dungeon, or "naturalism", knows there are a few things you just can't explain or have make sense without some major thinking ahead. Personally I lean far enough into the gonzo side of things, but if you want it all to make sense, one thing to watch out for it why the party adventure together.

In Call of Cthulhu there is one attempt to create a narrative structure, Delta Green. It's quite successfull. In our UA game we have The Band.

The band is called Unpeace, and was the greatest of them all. Well, it was riding the wave of death metal, mixing in some symphonic influences and a healthy dose of showmanship. After releasing one album the band was dissolved, but it's legacy and memory is very much alive. Now there will be a documentary, and a lot of memories are being brought to the surface. Naturally the player characters are the members of this band.

So, what's so cool about this?

Well. One thing I find interesting is how our game master have handled the fact that all PCs have a gigantic ego and loves to be in the spotlight all the time. Considering that, I think the solution is both neat and obvious when you think of it. We all met at a bar to talk to the film crew, and when the bar fight erupted and somebody's wife calls them to pick up the kids, we went in our different directions.

We split the party. It just made sense.

Now, to just idle and do nothing is the main cause for boredom when splitting the party, so naturally you have to keep the individual segments short and too the point. There is another trick in the bag, though. Since we have all played a few of those new fangled forge style games, we are quite confortable with the idea of shared narrative. This is used to good effect.

When my character, high on cocaine, runs into an alley after having hit somebody with his car, he finds somebody. The GM just said to me it was, I think, someone whom I had been missing lately. I could have said it was one of the other PCs, and suddenly the player sitting by my side would have been in that scene. Naturally, the other players could chip in their suggestions as well. I thought that was cool. While nothing really revolutionary, it was a good example of how the ideas of kibitzing and shared narrative can help make the split party less of a problem.

Let's think more of how the narrative structure helped the game along.

We all knew, from the first short conversations with some NPCs that we had arranged to start filming tomorrow. Thus we had a structure to the game, and could goof off until we were bored and it was tomorrow.

That also made it easy to split the party, running off doing wild things, since we could all participate to some extent.

I have often muttered about how the holy grail of sandboxing demands pro-active players. In this case we all knew that we had a Story, the film. If we wanted something to happen, we could just do something related to the film, like fight about whether we should play some songs, if we should film individually or as a group. I foresee lots of opportunities when the GM as the crew asks us about filming a scene about when "Frank fell off the stage". Guess if the possibilities of shared narrative are going to be utilized then!

To have an organization that gives you missions is one good way to keep the party together. Having some shared history like the Band creates natural conflicts, and some natural allies. Having the film being done is a good way to drag the PCs together again if we split up. Having the ability to chip in helps everyone to be involved. I think this set-up is great.

Can this be done in your vanilla D&D style fantasy game? Well, there's always the DragonQuest solution, with the Guild of Adventurers and their contract [sic!] spelled out in the rules!

You like dice?

2011-05-25T10:57:00.000+02:00

I just found this out. That dude is serious about dice! Impressive stuff, to say the least.

Raven c.s. McCracken would be proud

2011-05-11T20:07:00.000+02:00

Tonight when I got home from work, my wife told me what the kids had been playing when taking their bath. Apparently our son had said "I'm breathing fire!" and had been playing a dragon. Determined to top this, our daughter (creator of the Chaos Turkey) decided that "...and I'm shooting laser beams from my eyes!"

Her explanation for what lasers are became very labyrinthine and involved. Lasers are for shooting out of your head...

Ain't that grand?

My thoughts on sandboxing

2011-05-09T10:44:00.000+02:00

A few days ago I read some reviews of old Swedish modules, the shared heritage kind of thing, if you like. I noticed that one module was described as a "fishtank", and the way it was described it was clear that some kind of sandbox was what the author was describing. That made me look at what was provided, and how that stack up.

I guess anyone interested in the subject have seen Rob Conley's major series of posts on how to create a sandbox? I have a suggestion. Don't read it. Yet.

That series, while informative and exhaustive, is way too much. To start a sandbox you need far less. This module that ignited the fire fuelling the this train of thought provided far less.

A sketchy map, with some atmospheric names, is great for inspiring wonder and creating ideas for adventure.
Some NPCs who move about this area, with clear motives and plans for players getting involved in, helping or thwarting.
Pro active players who can look at that map and run with the ideas generated from it.
Player characters with ambitions and short and long term goals.
A few McGuffins.

I'm pretty sure that is all there is to it.

Note that I have never successfully ran a sandbox campaign, so what do I know?

The question about RuneQuest magic

2011-05-08T10:57:00.000+02:00

I came late to the show. RQ had already passed on, and while there was this new game being worked on it took ages and everyone still spoke in RQ terms. Finally I got the new game, HeroWars, and while it was an eye opener it was also one of the worst produced games I've ever seen. But, it did give me some vocabulary to speak about Gloranthan things. Then there was these RQ terms.

One bone of contention is the vocabulary of magic. In HW the different magic paradigms are very different. In RQ3, there are spirit magic, divine magic and then there's sorcery. Even though the latter is supposed to be more powerful and take more study, it's quite similar in game effect to divine magic, which comes from the gods. Then there's the spirit magic, which even though coming from spirits look just like the spells of divine magic. I always wondered why there wasn't just one game mechanic and the metaphysics just background facts.

Now, in RQ2 things were named differently. There was something called battle magic, which I think was not at all that related to battle. I seem to remember something called Rune magic as well. Whatever that was.

When HeroWars spawned its successor, HeroQuest, we suddenly had something called "common magic", which once again mixed up the cosmologies, or at least made me mix it all up. Unless I misremember (I've never owned HQ), it also did change the name of one of the other schools of magic.

So, how on earth do all these related? Why are they all looking so similar when they depict three very different views on the world? With the great Yellow Tome, the new BRP rules, I've been thinking of a Gloranthan game but have hit upon the problem of relating to all those old RQ based books that I have.

Now we go into the territory of Gloranthan high weirdness.

The heroforming of HeroWars seemed a perfect fit for superpowers. The use of theistic feats for skill augmentation would be a simple +20% to a skill if your Devotion skill was higher than the skill rolling for. Animism then would just use the summoning skill, and the sorcery system using the regular spell system.

Do this in any shape or form look or feel like either RQ2/3 or HeroWars/Quest? I have no idea.

Frankly, when I a few weeks ago got hold of the British edition of RQ3 all these questions came back to me again. Anyone know enough of all these schools of magic to tell me how battle, spirit, common and sorcery magic all related? Oh, there were divine and rune magic, and a few others as well. Arrgh!

More musings on AD&D saving categories

2011-05-05T22:44:00.000+02:00

Since Daniel Boggs mentioned that the Saving Throw categories are actually in one of the manuscripts Dave sent to Gary, and the fact that it actually contains a category for lasers (I hadn't realized what I saw, when reading "death ray"), I guess it's not unlikely that Dave Arneson invented the concept. Still, why did he do it like he did?

In OD&D, there is a "Death Ray", or possibly "Death, Ray" category, and a "Stone". Those are gone in AD&D, and also "Rod, Staff or Wand" have been harmonized into one, in contrast to OD&D where "Staves & Spells" and "All Wands" are different. Some of these I find puzzling.

In AD&D it feels like the categories could be described as "Physical Transformation", "Transformation again", "Magic Items", "Area Effects" and "The rest". While The first two are slightly overlapping, it at least makes more sense than OD&D.

I have a heard time figuring out how anyone could have been thinking when staves are one category and wands another. Even if these once were stat checks, it's now impossible to see which stat covered which one. In the comments I got the suggestion that when a PC encounter he should probably save vs "Rock Slide" or something to that effect, and it will be up to the DM to base it off a sensible number. I wonder if the categories are different things Dave had encountered in his Blackmoor campaign, and had noted down numbers for?

Considering Arneson and his friends had been playing wargames, I think about how saves are used in the rules I know. Often you roll morale for your troops in the same way as you roll a save in D&D or T&T, to avoid something bad happening. Also, cohesion and acceptance of orders is some mechanics I've seen. I see here at least a small suggestion the idea could have come from that background. Still no hint on if there are any system to the categories.

There are two things that bug me about all this. I would like to know what kind of thinking lies behind the original edition of D&D, and how the idea of rpg evolved. Lost knowledge is so sad. The other thing is my thirst for symmetry, rationalizing and shaving off rough edges on rules to make them run smoothly not only from familiarity. Both these annoy me in this case.

Having been reminded that T&T actually reinvented the idea of basing "saves" of the stats I'm inclined to put it back into D&D like I think of it. It can't really stop me from turn and poke those saves a bit more, though.

AD&D saves and ability checks

2011-05-02T16:13:00.000+02:00

One of my commentators on yesterday's post mentioned something I find interesting, and suggests something about the relationship between abilities and saves that I had also been thinking on.

The first time I was DM for B/X, I instinctively asked for a d20 against a stat when a situation came up which I had no other mechanic for. The game I had been running before that had been D&D 3rd ed. and as far as I know, that mechanic is not specified there. Rolling against a stat seem to be a long standing way to resolve things like that, though.

In 3rd ed. the relationship between saves and stats are quite clear. You get a bonus on all saves from higher than usual stats and they have tidied up the zoo of saves into three general cases. If you compare this to how Call of Cthulhu, or other BRP games, handle it you can see that the Idea and Luck rolls etc. are all mapped to one stat each. In the new big Yellow Tome of BRP, I think they have expanded it to one such roll for each stat. Is this a way worth taking with D&D?

I like the idea of saves, but if you should have more than one, or not just a LUCK score, maybe it could be interesting to tie them to the stats. Inspired by the neat Target20 system, maybe you could roll a d20 trying to beat 20, and getting a bonus from the stat the DM decide or you talk him to accepting, getting a bonus according to whatever bonus scheme you like. Say, +1 per 2 above 13 or just +2 if above 15. You choose.

Looking at the different saves in AD&D I do find it slightly odd to Save versus Petrification when avoiding a rockslide, and I'd argue a bonus for high DEX any time. The system above sounds flexible enough to me.

Then I guess you could just say the DM asks for a Save vs. Rocks and invent some shit on the spot...

AD&D, using just the PHB

2011-05-01T21:58:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking about games I want to run for a while now. Since I listen to Roll For Initiative podcast, which is all about AD&D, one candidate have been AD&D. For many, probably for many of my dear readers, it is a familiar game. Not so for me.

Way back when I started playing, one of my school mates talked about the games his older brother played. I had the opportunity to visit them, and got to browse the AD&D PHB, that game for "older guys". What I remember most clearly where the illustrations. I thought they looked like doodles made by ball point on a pad of paper while sitting chatting on the phone. Ugly game, not for me.

Later I started to buy some 2nd ed game books, since there were dozens of game worlds and some was actually pretty cool. I still abhorred the game, now for the rules.

So, since I now own two [sic!] copies of the PHB, I feel like I should give this game a chance. Having played B/X and S&W it feels a lot more familiar than it did way back then.

Everyone who have read the AD&D rules knows how much quirks they hide within those pages, and I intended to limit some of them. My first move was to decide that I'd play with the PHB, only!

All those old hands now shake their heads, since they know that there are no combat tables in the PHB. That I knew, but had forgotten. What I didn't knew, was that there are no saving throws in the PHB! All the rules on how to make a character, but not a word about saves!?

Since these rules are organized in a quite eccentric way, I might have missed the saves. Please tell me where they are in that case! But, how would the game work without saves?

When I had realized that they were missing, I suddenly thought that maybe it would be an interesting experiment to just disallow saves, since they are not in the PHB. Disallowing combat it more problematic, but AD&D without saves sounds like it could work.

What do you think?

How to present your game - like Habro?

2011-04-30T21:48:00.000+02:00

I was listening to The Walking Eye podcast, and they were talking about Drifting. Drifting is a term from the Forge terminology, that usually entail changing the rules of the game in play to better fit the feel of the game you want to play.

In the podcast they talked about the futility of trying to design a game to limit drifting, to get the idea of your vision across. Somebody mentioned how the D&D Essentials could be an attempt to do just that, nail it all down. Then it was replied that we mustn't confuse design and marketing. It's a marketing move, to try to sell the same experience to all gamers.

So, is that a good idea? If you are into marketing your "old school" game, could you learn something from Hasbro when it comes to marketing? Can you do it without descending into the "a rule for everything" morass? Maybe. I'm thinking that maybe there is a way to learn something here, even if it's not marketing.

We all love the idea of having a game where the excellent DM adapts the game to perfectly fit the group. Maybe it's the sandbox or "fly by the seat of your pants" school of game mastering. But, do you do it?

Zak have, in Vornheim, brought the idea forward of using the graphical design of the game to be utilitarian. You have that chart in front of you, roll the dice on top of it and read the results! That is, in a small way, a way to have a framework on how to use the rules. Compare that to the "delve format" in modern day 4th ed D&D. You have the same layout, the battle map prepared and the same details there on the page, a full spread with everything you need, right in front of you. Sameness, not of experience, but of usage.

Nothing here is all new, I have already mentioned how Zak have done. But, maybe understating and leaving things out, like in some monster or spell descriptions, are not the only way to foster the loose "old style" play. Maybe it's not even sure that's what you want. Maybe you just want better, or "easier to access" play.

I'm starting to think that maybe rules can be presented with something like the "delve format". Things you need to grasp at first, ways to expand upon the rule, why this piece is here, another rule for this and maybe a table or three to summarize or generate new content from the rule. This not as much a way to make sure the rules are learned, as much as it is a way to present why it is that way - at the same time. Am I overthinking it?

I know how some people have tried to have a uniform format for adventure modules, with boxed text and stat blocks and maybe a "at first glance" text. I love to see experiments like that. DGP had their "nugget" system for their Traveller adventures, which showed critical "encounters" and how they related to each other. It was thought that it made it easier to improvise and run the scenario when you knew how the pieces fitted together.

Thinking on that, drifting and the idea of making use of graphical design I also think there are opportunities here to work with the text of the rules. If you think this sounds kind of vague, that is because it is kind of vague! Exactly how to do it, I'm not sure yet.

A new way to use the Ronnies

2011-04-29T22:12:00.000+02:00

Since I have had no time lately to devote to even think about designing a game, and the Ronnies always makes me want to try, I have held off the Forge for a while.

The last round had these words from which you had to pick two and had to ignore the rest.

amazon lust chains queen

Can you feel the wheels start spinning? I mean, who will not get at least some imagine in their head from those words? Rob Kuntz have posted many times on his blog about creativity, and I think this is making me think about that elusive quality.

Ron suggests you take two of those words and then start to associate and get the mind roam around those words to get the creative juices going. This set of words I think is extra good at showing how that helps creativity. Talk about loaded words.

How about this as a spur to make great adventures, not whole games?

* amazon & chains - Why are those amazon warriors seem plundering caravans in the Purple Forest? Is there something behind the fact that they just claim all the copper items on the baggage train? Why have they suddenly stopped, after kidnapping the village smith? Are they making chains for something big and dangerous?

What kind of adventure can you make up from those words? I know I have more images in my head I'm not developing here...

An overlooked facet of the game - treasure

2011-04-28T21:35:00.000+02:00

I know that I have read more than one magazine article, and more than one blog post on how to spcie up the loot you give out in your game. Now I have read yet another one. But, this one was quite good, and I thought I'd share this link to J.B.'s post on treasure. While I find the output on the Blackrazor blog to be more than I can keep up with, I felt this was a post worth linking to. Considering the failings of the alphabetical blogging project, this post was worth highlighting.

I remember when I started to roll on a bunch of tables from Pegasus Magazine for the appearance of potions. None of my players cared that much, and was quite confused by the ceramic container with glass stoppers containing purple bubbling liquid. What the heck, I enjoyed describing them! Go wild with your treasure.

A new game in town

2011-04-21T22:31:00.000+02:00

A while ago I decided I was fed up my the gaming drought, and decided to follow the advice of Jim Raggi. He had an article in on issue of Fight On! about how to find players, and I did like he said and printed up a flyer and spread it around. Not any bloody response at all in the fourth biggest city in the country, with a university and lot of people coming and going. It just didn't work.

I would like to think that Swedes are insular and scared of letting anyone talk to them. It's almost as if you have to be drunk, or mentally unstable to address another human being in this place. Can you tell I'm a bit disappointed? Yeah, and maybe a bit bitter and unfair as well. Sometimes I wish I was back in North America, though.

Heck, I could probably fail there too.

...or we should all move to Finland.

Anyway. I did attend a character generation session last night, though!

Blogging seem to have brought me into contact with some really cool people in a way the flyers did not, and yesterday night we fixed up some characters for Unknown Armies. I have no idea where this will lead to, but I have a character named Frank, and he is stupid and into "darkness" and have some obsessions and social misadjustments. Simply put, he is a nutjob. I think that makes him a perfect PC in Unknown Armies. I'm really looking forward to this game!

One thing struck me about our PC gen session. We talked a lot about how we imagined our PC to be looking or sounding like this or that celebrity. Maybe this is the way to go when you are left with a game devoid of randomness? Pick an arena to be famous in. Say, pick an actor or a musician. Then think of some distinctive feature, like Sean Connery's way of speaking with his teeth clenched. Bring that look and feel into your game and try to stat it out.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit you you couldn't get a deck of cards and scrawl the names of actors/singers/writers/whatever on it and go from there at random.

Reign and the D&D engame

2011-04-19T22:02:00.000+02:00

Have you heard of Reign? The game showed up on my radar when I was reading Unknown Armies. Apart from being a game with a very cool setup, that game is the best written game I've ever read, so seeing who had written Reign I thought that it was bound to be at least a good read. It did have some other qualities, and one that I'm focusing on in this post is the so called "Company Rules".

To begin with I'm going to let you know that you can buy Reign from here. Hopefully I will be that convincing.

Reign describes itself as a game about "Lords and Leaders". What could then be more fitting to use as inspiration for the endgame?

A company could in theory be a way to play the whole party of PC at once, but I'm going to consider it more for domain management. Just like a character, a company have stats. Inspired by Reign, I'd suggest to at least have Fortitude, Wealth, Psychological Strength or Influence as stats for your company. Now, when you have stats, you can treat that realm as an entity that can take actions, and be affected by actions.

To consider your fief, thieves guild or wizard's school like a character like this, you can use it to play long term actions while playing on the PC scale, and you can use it together!

Consider this.

Say your realm have a Fortitude of 12 on a scale of 1 to 20. If your DM have told you that there's a drought in the lands, you roll a d20 at your Fortitude, or better, to have the realm handle the problem without penalty. On the other hand, if you need to do something like influence the politics of a nearby realm, you use the Influence of your company as a modifier to a die roll for your character. Maybe you divide that rating from 1 to 20 by 5 and have that as a d20 roll against CHA to see how well your diplomatic mission went after preparing the neighbour with your Influence. You get the idea, right?

This way the domain rules wont be a totally different game, but just a more abstract way to handle a character with a few basic stats. I imagine that that would lower the bar, and make it easier to not only include domain management, but also integrate it as die modifier to the regular character level.

I'm not sure I'm making sense, or that this became as well presented as I would have liked. On the other hand, maybe I can just get the message across that Greg Stolze's Reign is a game with a very modular system that can be borrow outright, or used as inspiration for what I consider a fascinating aspect of higher levels of play. I strongly recommend it. Let me know if you manage to pound the suggestions above into something cool. I'll probably try to massage it a bit further myself.

Alphabet Challenge ends

2011-04-17T08:52:00.000+02:00

After a few days of inactivity I think the alphabet challenge project is dead. My visitor stats went down and comments were almost nonexistent. While I write for my own enjoyment I do like to see that somebody is enjoying what I write and this apparently wasn't a success for me nor my readers.

Even though I constantly get google hits from people looking on Kalamar stuff, it seems those people are not many or vocal enough for me to get the kind of sustainable conversation that makes you slog on when you write according to a plan, and not from the random whims of my heart.

Now I will go back to my usual musings. Maybe not as challenging or developing as a writer, but easier and more fun.I do think I did manage to produce a few posts of some entertainment value, though.

Next up: Reign and the D&D endgame

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Merchant's Tongue

2011-04-13T22:50:00.000+02:00

In almost every game world, there is a language that everyone knows. A "common" if you will. In contrast to our world where things like latin evolved from the learned world, the game worlds very often base it on commerce. KoK is no different. Today I will base my musings on languages.

So, why have a "common" at all? Isn't is very "unrealistic"? I guess it is, but also very handy. I have played games where not everyone could talk to each other, and it was fun a while. A short while. Having to roleplay not understanding is quite strain on the group after a while.

If we want to have a common language, what can we do with it? I have seen people suggest that you could imagine that a language evolved mainly for trade and commerce should have problems to convey subtler things. Maybe you could have a penalty to your die roll if you tried to talk diplomacy using the trade language?

Another interesting option is that the trade language can actually make people understand what the other person want, not what they say. If the language is used for trading, and maybe it a gift from a god of trade, it could be a magical effect transmitting just those kind of impressions even if you are not talking about trading. Try to wrap your head around that one.

Something which are very common in game worlds is the old empire. Usually it is long gone and the realms of today are the smaller states resulting from the squabbling and infighting which resulted from that collapsing civilization. You could build a lot of interesting game situations based on the fall of Rome. Seen from that point of view, maybe the different national and tribal languages are all strongly influenced by the language of the empire. In that way you have suddenly made that "unrealistic" common language make a lot of sense.

In the Kalamar setting there are multiple languages. There are even lists of common names in different languages, and examples of glyphs in the different alphabets. Since I am quite interested in typography, I like that bit. It's very cool to both have your cake, and eat it. You let everyone converse in Merchant's Tongue, but then the old treasure map you give out as a handout is written in old Brandobian letters!

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Lamellar Armor

2011-04-12T22:44:00.000+02:00

Can you tell that I pick the most catching words in the index of the KoK campaign sourcebook? I have once again missed a day, but hopefully this will be of some interest.

In a sidebar of the KoK sourcebook we can read about lamellar amor. It's the kind of stuff you usually see in sourcebooks, right? More classes, monsters, equipment and spells. Using all of this is another kettle of fish, entirely.

I once ran a 3rd ed campaign. It started when the game was fairly new, and it ran for something like five years. Originally I had intended it to be longer, but the group became geographically dispersed and the game fizzled. In that game I allowed everything imaginable. We had weird spells, weird items and god knows what. I totally lost any sense of control of where the feel of the game was heading, and I knew nothing of how to make it right. Doing the right thing from the beginning would have helped, I guess. But what?

Now I see all this options as something of a hindrance. Considering how common the "rules light" meme is in the OSR parts of the web, I guess I'm not alone. I'm not against the idea of new stuff, but it has to somehow reinforce the setting.

So, what use are a thing like lamellar armor? Well, I think one way to make a secondary world, like a game world, come alive is to make it stand out. To have all the magicians cast spells from the same PHB spell lists, and to have the all monsters be the same old, same old from the MM, it will feel just like any other game world. While you can go as far as Talislanta, or Glorantha, or Tekumel, I think there might be a middle ground.

Take some of that crunch, like special classes or a odd piece of equipment that might have the same game stats like any other, and make it culturally significant.

Let's say our bold hero, having slain a hobgoblin chief, wanders into Bet Rogala i Pekal wearing the armor of his fallen enemy. Suddenly everyone's attitude towards him seem different, and suddenly people start to expect him to behave in a special way. Maybe they suddenly want him to take part in some dangerous task, or religious ritual? What if that kind of armor is something only the sacred chief, bound to be sacrificed to the gods after the campaign or war, is supposed to be wearing. Suppose that armor means something else, and quite significant as well, to some other culture the characters might encounter.

In that way even a suit or lamellar armor might be more than just another piece of "kewl power" from the latest sourcebook to plunder for maximum powergameing potential. Maybe it can be that as well...

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Joto II

2011-04-10T19:35:00.000+02:00

What would you call somebody who refused to believe the existence of the gods, when their followers are all over the place using powers which should tell all and sundry that the powers they follow are the source of them?

Let's take a look at King Joto II of Shynabyth. He wages a long and bitter war on a nearby theocracy and don't tolerate any religion in his realm. Quite an odd fellow in the polytheistic realms of common rpg fantasy. Consider that the majority of my readers are from the US, another realm where the refusal to accept the existence of a god probably will forever lock you out of higher office. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in the western world, the US is about as religious as it gets. King Joto would be odd even there.

But, imagine he is right?

No, I'm not going to make this an issue about American culture, but investigate an uncommon twist in fantasy rpgs. Let's for a moment consider that the king is right. This could happen in many different ways.

The first way would of course be that the divine magic is nothing but arcane powers in different garb. Lots of fancy robes, mitre and other garb it is. Then the question is why not everyone can wield all kind of magic? Maybe it's just a question of training. I could see interesting campaigns happening when the players find the ancient way to unify all the forces of nature. Eh, magic, I mean.

The second way could be that in the realm of Shynabyth the divine powers are just imaginary, and their powers useless. Is there a anti-magic aura radiating from the king himself? Ars Magica, a game I usually am not that fond of, had this idea about how arcane magic didn't work around people of strong and pure faith. Now, imagine something in the same vein, but opposite in effect. Is it a curse, or a blessing? What would happen should the king meet his end? Would divine power suddenly start working? Would it seep back into the culture?

The third option, just to pick some, could be that all those powers are really psychic powers channelling the inner energies of the caster. Both Tunnels & Trolls and Talislanta have wrought their worlds of fantasy out of that mould. Talislanta is actually the only fantasy rpg that I know of where the very existence of the gods is undefined.

Now, how could you use this in your game? Just imagine an idea out of option two up there! How would you win that war against the theocracy? By extending that aura of non-belief into their lands, of course! Back in the 2nd ed era there was at least one Planescape adventure where the player characters could make a village slide into the abyss by furthering the idea of chaos! I see opportunities like that here.

[From a to Z in Kalamar] Inolen

2011-04-09T21:16:00.000+02:00

I remember that when the campaign setting source book for Kingdoms of Kalamar was published, I read some reviews that feel the setting was too dry for their tastes. They must have missed the section about Inolen in Brandobia!

This is a city, rules by a duke who makes everything he can to befriend bands of mercenaries. He also pays on time and let them handle things as the see fit. Naturally there are patriots who feel the duke are heading out on deep waters and wonder if it's time to act. Add to this the fact that there are caves a few miles south, known to be havens of monsters in prehistoric times, and "Farmers insist that otyhughs lives in the caves". Adventure time! Also, " he [i.e. the duke] is greatly concerned about the rumors of a secret cult of a dead god of Tellene". Epic Adventure time!

Now I really want to run/play a campaign in that city and its environs!

Gender equality?

2011-04-09T21:02:00.000+02:00

Since I got my copy if Bushido in the mail a few days ago, I have been studying FGU rules. This got me thinking. There was a time when it felt like all games was very much about simulationism. I don't mean that specifically in the way Forge people do, just that the idea that rules should cover all bases and make it feel real.

I have gotten the impression that one very common rule back then was to give females higher dexterity than males.

Since I have been starting a exercise program, focusing on stretching and muscle building, thoughts on my own stiffness is very common in my mind. Naturally, I wonder if this is somehow related to my maleness? Is it really so that women are more agile than men?

While it's quite easy to understand why a penalty to strength is common for females, I wonder if the bonus to dexterity is there only to balance the penalty or it it's there for a "simulation" reason, if you see what I mean?

My wife thought it was just a question of game balance. For her it didn't make sense that women should be more agile, just because of their sex. She is far less stiff than I am, but extrapolating from us two seems silly. I guess there might be some facts out on the web, but finding it? Don't get my started on how to verify your sources on the net...

If this isn't a rule grounded in anatomical truths, I wonder how many other rules "simulating" reality is also pure game artifacts?

A few thoughts on blogging

2011-04-09T14:00:00.000+02:00

I have noted a clear trend in visitor stats and comments lately. Every since I started my alphabetic blogging, comments have been scarce. Yesterday I even found out that some people have proudly proclaimed not to read any bloggers who post their way through the alphabet in April, at all! What's the deal with that?

What I post here is not something I will force anybody to read, we all post what's on our mind and hope somebody enjoy it. To have some people state how they avoid reading something is a kind of negativity I just don't understand.

Anyway, I'm finding new interesting stuff in Kalamar, and hopefully somebody comes around who might find something entertaining.

The reason I skipped a letter was because a storm that caused electricity to fail and when it took many hours more than usual to get home from work you don't always feel like blogging. So, one letter a day meant I skipped one letter.

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Hobgoblins

2011-04-08T22:32:00.000+02:00

On Tellene there are one race which in addition to humans, elves and dwarves have managed to build a civilization. I quite like the fact that it happen to be the hobgoblins.

Having humans in funny suits is not all that interesting, and the kind of anthopology 101 that Glorantha becomes in it's worse moments is probably not that fun either. Well, the latter might not be true if you like to read more than play, and enjoy canon debates, but let's ignore that for now.

So, hobgoblins are something special, and quite interesting without the above mentioned excesses. Two things define hobgoblins, and they are enough to build an alien enough society to be fun. Those two things are strength and honour. While strength is kind of self explanatory, it is very focused. It means you have to have the power, since power is strength, to control the most precious of all, someones life. Being able to kill, but not necessarily to do it, is a defining factor in the hobgoblin culture. The second one, honour, is all about doing something the right way. Exercising influence, or proving your ability is honourable. Now combining that with the value of strength is interesting.

Imagine you are fighting a hobgoblin, and you are actually a character of some standing. Should your weapon break, or you fall, your hobgoblin opponent might actually stop and yell to his subordinate to provide you with a weapon so the fight can continue! This makes me think of intelligent gamers who suddenly stricken by the brain damage that is alignment rules, will sometimes kill defenseless kobolds or orcish females and cubs "because they are evil". What's the honour in that?

Take one trait, and then another which seem to be slightly ajar from the first one and make them the basis of a demi-human culture and I think you'll have something interesting on your hands. How hobgoblins are treated in KoK is one of the subtler things I like with this setting.

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Fhokki

2011-04-06T15:59:00.000+02:00

Different races are common enough in fantasy settings. One thing I find interesting is how the designers of Kingdoms of Kalamar have included multiple human cultures in addition to the demi-human ones. In our world there are multiple cultures with different languages, traditions and some common physical traits. Why would a fantasy world be different?

Naturally there are people of great stature, blond and blue eyed and a fancy for rough living and disdain of the effete cultures in the civilized lands. More often than not, especially when the world builder are of American background, these are modelled on the old norse culture and the vikings.

I can tell you that people in this part of the world usually cringe when that happen. The popular cultural view of vikings in the US is not always that well aligned with neither self image or history. Not being of Asian descent, I can only guess at how much things like Oriental Adventures make people from east Asia cringe.

Anyway. On Tellene, the world of Kalamar, there are nordic barbarians and they are called Fhokki. One of these days I'm running a campaign with those people mashed up with something else. That is one of the things I like with how many cultures in Glorantha are similar to cultures in our world, but then there are things mixed in which twist them just that much into weirdness. In general I think that is a good idea. Take scoop full of inspiration from our world, but then add that something extra and twist a bit. Imagine something like the Imperial Romans, but add a strong belief in reincarnation and a cyclical view of history like the Mayan calendar. How about that?

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Elos Desert

2011-04-05T21:11:00.000+02:00

Why on earth would you want to include a desert in your campaign? Sand, rocks and a few scrubs and some poisonous snakes. What is there to like?

Everyone have heard of the long lost city Irem, or City or Pillars or the Nameless City of H.P. Lovecraft's story, right? Lost cities even have been found in classic D&D modules. Basically, deserts invite you to enter the endless seas of sand and prove your mettle against the elements. There might be treasure there.

The Lost Tomb of Kruk-Ma-Kali lies hidden somewhere beyond the Elos desert. There's also that font of knowledge and trade Dijishy, city of time, itself so old nobody knows when it was built or by whom.

Deserts means old and deserted things, mysteries and treasure. One of my favourite covers of a gaming product was the old 2nd ed supplement "Cities of Bone" for Al Qadim. I loved that picture.

Those endless wastes speak of ages gone by, and of ancient things best forgotten. If that isn't spelled "adventure", I don't know what is!

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Diaday

2011-04-04T15:57:00.002+02:00

In the Merchant's Tongue, the first day of the week is called Diaday. That is the topic of today's post, the first day of this week.

Many settings have created new funny names for common things, in order to add a sense of otherness to it. Sometimes it's just new names on the same seven week days, and sometimes it's ten days of unpronounceable stuff with multiple syllables. The latter seldom works better for a game setting.

So, except for those who wish they were like Tolkien, what use are these linguistic execises?

I remember when I first got hold of Planescape, the planar setting for 2nd ed. AD&D. I loved that place, and even though I hate alignments I dream of one day go wild with the myriad possibilities inherent in the idea of the planes. Apart from Tony DiTerlizzi's amazing artwork and art direction, one of the most notable things with Planescape was it's use of planar jargon.

Now, have anyone of you out there actually used that stuff? If you think it would sound silly to talk like that round the game table when everyone else is talking English, imagine how stupid you would feel if everyone was talking German, Swedish or Finnish and you as the GM wanted to introduce that exotic phrases?

Nice try, but no thanks.

These days I see things like Diaday and think it might be the limit for me. No more linguistic immersion. Some chrome to make that setting shine, but apart from some words used sparingly I think it is enough.

Tomorrow is Pelsday and I'll take on 'E'.

[From a to Z in Kalamar] College of Magic

2011-04-03T17:15:00.001+02:00

Our 'C' word is the College of Magic, in the Principality of Pekal.

In most fantasy worlds, there are (for lack of a better world) universities. Sometimes they teach all and sundry, and sometimes they are the guardians of knowledge, hoarding the arcane mysteries. Kingdoms of Kalamar is no different.The college in Bet Rogala teaches all the arcane mysteries, but they keep close tabs on everyone practising the mystic arts. Unregistered magic users can expect to be treated roughly, since the college have close ties to the political power in the Principality.

So, how come there are such a site of learning? Quite a few of the pioneers of our hobby met in wargaming clubs at university, like the founder of GDW and Dave Arneson and Dave Wesley to just name a few. I hardly think that it the reason for the common theme of wizard schools, though. Thinking back to some of the classics of fantasy literature I find few if any magic schools neither. Maybe there's something obvious here that I'm overlooking.

Why would you have a college of magic in your game, though? If there's something that have the potential to wreck the best laid plans of evil wizards and other baddies, that must surely be inventive players shuffling the cards of fate by magic. To be able to control what spells, and magical research a player will be able to access you will have a lot more control of your campaign.

Then there is the school of magic as a font of adventure. It's kind of obvious these days, post Harry Potter, what kind of adventure you could have at a school of magic.

Have anyone ever heard of such a campaign idea before Harry Potter? Oddly enough, I have not.

Taken to its extreme, here we see the birth of Ars Magica, a game which I have empirically come to understand just don't work for me. With that I conclude that in my games I think the college of magic is something as simple as my way to control the purses and power of my players.

Polearms...

2011-04-02T22:11:00.000+02:00

You knows you had to do it, right? Yes, I also read Grognardia and followed the link to Wizard's polearm quiz.

I managed 5 out of 22 and was guessing all the way...

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Battle of Kadir Ridge

2011-04-02T21:13:00.001+02:00

In the section about the Kalamar empire in the KoK campaign set, under the heading Mountain Ranges, there is a mention of the Battle of Kadir Ridge. Today I'm going to take a look at how to use that in your game.

This is what we know of the battle. The Emperor of Kalamar sough to control the riches of the dwarfs, and marshalled his armies to attack. One of his group of allies were some fire giant chieftains. Then when the battle was won, the Marshall in charge fell upon his allies.

So what can be done with this?

So, both fire giants and the dwarfs have been slighted by this emperor. Both these groups probably want revenge, and the giants wanted something from the dwarfs which lured them into that fateful alliance.

1. The emperor now have in his possession the fabled dwarven warhammer of giant slaying. The very existence of this item is anathema to the giants, who have decided to get it back. What happen when the decoy the giants have used accept the item from the adventurers who have procured it? Will they maybe have investigated a bit and found out about that camp of giants a bit off who are there to receive the artifact? What happens when the dwarfs show up and demand their item? That could be one "fetch this item and earn a bag of gold" adventure to remember.

2. By now the dwarfs and the giants have realized that the Emperor is not to be trusted, and that they have a common enemy. How will the party feel about the idea of earning some luxurious items crafted by dwarven smiths, if they do this small political assassination of a certain Marshall?

3. One day the dwarfs unleash their monstrous automaton they have been building since the day of the defeat at Kadir Ridge (I see before me that steamroller from the cover of module DA1). Maybe the only one mighty enough to stand against it, and it's fire belching powers are a fire giant or three? I bet a diplomatic mission to the giants would be quite interesting for a party in the Emperor's employ.

Hey! Run with it.

Tomorrow we see what can be found in Kalamar with the letter 'C'.

It's here! Nippon goodness!

2011-04-02T17:27:00.000+02:00

Nippon! My copy of Bushido have arrived in the mail. Thanks Greg!

This is the only FGU game that I have played, and while quite quirky, it's not hopelessly complicated. There have been some mumbling lately, and there's a new session to come quite soon, I've heard. I'll keep you posted on the coming fate of the Roanaga clan.

This game even has a hexmap. Hmmm. Hexcrawling, anyone?

New book for Houses of the blooded!

2011-04-01T22:17:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I noted that there is a plan for a supplement to John Wick's Houses of the Blooded game. I haven't managed to get a group together to play the game yet, but it is a great read, and I have learned a few GM tricks from that book.

So, take a peek at Coronets but Never Crowns! How about chucking in a few bucks if it takes your fancy? I already did.

Blogging Challenge, from A to Z

2011-04-01T20:39:00.000+02:00

Like some of you might have noticed, the idea of blogging your way through the alphabet is taking root in the bloggosphere. I have decided to, not very imaginative I know, to jump on the train.

From today and further on in April, I will walk through the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting with the alphabet as my guide. Come along!

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Ablutor - the shimmering one

2011-04-01T20:36:00.000+02:00

One thing I like with Kingdoms of Kalamar is that the gods are not the same from all cultures and races. I've always found the idea of a "dwarven pantheon" slightly odd, since why would the gods order themselves after the smaller beings classes and divisions? In KoK, the gods are known by different names and manifestations for each culture, which makes more sense to me.

Another thing is that the campaign set contains mentions of raiments, festivals and how to advance in the church. This is a far step from just a nondescript source of healing spells. Let's take a look at one of these gods for our letter A.

Abluthor, known as "Bendon" among the Brandobians, is the god of moons, night and beauty. While you might wonder why bold adventurers should worship such a silly god, there are great campaign fodder in one of the festivals mentioned in the KoK book. Once every 280 years, the three moons of Tellene line up in the sky and a great festival is held. At this festival, three great magical charms are sacrificed, and then dispersed all over the world again by magic.

How about it's now 278 years since the last time, and your characters are looking for those quests establishing their own immortal legend and place in society as name level heroes? Go hunt for three magical charms in different corners of the world! Thinking of moons, night and beauty I immediately see potential for interesting conflicts with werebeasts (moon), thieves in the night (night) and maybe a new twist on the theme of beauty with traps and dangers that might cause CHA penalties. Quite a hindrance for a cleric of Ablutor, I'd guess? See, NPCs, monsters and traps for a world spanning campaign from just a simple example of a festival!

Unknown Armies - UK?

2011-03-29T21:55:00.000+02:00

As anyone who have had come into contact with Unknown Armies probably know, it's known to be a very American game. Not only is the Occult Undergound as described in the game mostly focused on what's happening in the USA, it's also grounded in Americana and the mythological landscape of North America.

I have seen a few attempts to broaden the scope of UA, mostly by including magical traditions from the Old World, and emphasizing things the like influence of the roman catholic church. None of these attempts have really felt convincing to me. Even though we have another relationship to time in this part of the world, nobody is that obsessive about having a cultural heritage that goes back for a thousand years. That's just how it is. It feels forced in a game text.

Lately I have been reading a novel that made me think of UA again. My wife mentioned before Christmas that she'd love to get Kraken, by China Mieville, and since the cover text made me curious I bought it. Having read most of it I think it is a very interesting take on modern magic. Things have mythical resonance and meaning in that book in a same kind of way like the obsessiveness of postmodern magic does in UA. Pop culture is not only an American thing, but some things like Londonmancers are an interesting twist. There are even the magical incarnations of memory, and time, in the Angels mentioned in the book.

Maybe it can be argued that what makes UA what it is, and not just Mage minus the new age and powered by BRP, is Americana. Still, I think Kraken could be a very cool basis for an Unknown Armies game in e.g. The United Kingdom. Take a peek at it if you dig UA. It is far from the best book by Mieville, but it's definitely worth mining for ideas.

Rethinking the spear trap

2011-03-28T21:46:00.000+02:00

Inspired by the table (I rolled a 5) I suddenly realized that on way to make the old chestnut, the spear trap, interesting would be to have a room with a spear trap, sprung. The wall of the room opposite from where the characters enter you have a door. This door is rigged with some kind of alarm. When the alarm goes off, the snake people in a room close by arrive to the party.

Now, imagine a fight in a room with spears sticking out of walls, floor and/or ceiling. Let's also suppose that the opponents are more than one, quick and dextrous. They can probably dodge these spears quite easily, or maybe slither around them. Maybe they even trip and push the player characters towards the sharp spikes.

That would be a far more interesting use of the old spear trap, and a way to make a bunch of weaker monsters more fun to fight.

How about that?

An addition to the wiki - shields

2011-03-27T22:33:00.000+02:00

I guess most of you have heard of the wiki by now? It's a very handy collection of some of the best contributions in the blogging community of handy and cool stuff for your game.

Following the very useful table Zak posted the other day, I rolled a '2' and updated the wiki with something cool.

I think of the most of the really cool things out there have been put up there, but since I feel it's bad form to post a link to my own blog I did dig out something else which I think was missing, namely the genre fitting post by Trollsmyth called Shilds shall be splintered. Enjoy!

So, why did I pick that? I did it because it is such a small tweak that gives a minimal additional power to that 1d6 Hits level 1 character, which is one thing many gamers have a problem with. Also, it happens to feel very much like a proper sword and sorcery thing to have in your game, without going all wire fu and gonzo just to up the ante and action level of the game. Just like intended it additionally shift the focus to the shield as a useful and important tool for the warrior, and not just a forgettable nudge to your AC.

GURPS through a FATE lens

2011-03-27T12:53:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking about GURPS a lot lately, and it feels like it wont leave my head.

GURPS is a very crunchy system, and while I have no fear of crunchy systems (I did start out with MERP and Rolemaster after all) something scares me off GURPS. That something is character generation. One problem with point buy systems is that it necessitates a lot of thumbing through the rules books, and recalculating and juggling numbers around. That takes time. I hate that part.

Still the allure of a generic and universal system have never left me. While I have never actually played GURPS, I imagine it could be pretty smooth in actual play. So, how do I take out the points while keeping the customization possibilities? Today I got this idea of merging GURPS with FATE.

FATE, Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment, doesn't only have the worst name ever, it's also a pretty slick game system. Even better, I have played it, and enjoyed it. FATE is a game engine, an outgrowth of FUDGE, that can be used for lot of different settings. It almost start to sounds like "generic and universal", doesn't it? I took a stab at combining the two flavours.

Step one. Roll your stats, ST, DX, IQ and HT, on 3d6 - in order. That's your basic stats, and you can calculate Move by averaging HT and DX, or something similar.

Step two. Now pick your Aspects. This is where we bring in FATE. You can have any kind of trait as an Aspect. It could be a personality trait, an advantage or feat like Advantages in GURPS. The important thing is that this is a defining aspect of your character, and from this you generate your skills. Eyeballing it I'd say you pick three Aspects for a 100 pts GURPS character. Maybe add another one per 25 pts?

Step three. Now you get to pick skills. My first idea was to say you get a bunch of points to spread around. Then I remembered the idea was to get rid of points, and decided on picks instead. Make of it what you will, it's all for free on my blog, right?

So, skills. I suggest you now pick five skills per Aspect. Make them all relate to the Aspect in some way. The rating is eight to start with, and if you spend more of your picks on the skills they get +1 per pick. Got that? If one of your Aspects are a Power of some kind, like magic or psionics, you get 5 free "skills" for free, at rating 6, before spending picks.

Step four. Roll 3d6 x 10 for money. Or credits or dollars or whatever you want to call it.

How's that for a slimmed down GURPS? What? How to use those aspects? Well, this is what I'm thinking.

For every Aspect you have, you can once per game day invoke it to add +2 to any skill roll, i.e. 3d6 against your skill rating. Once every session you can invoke it for +3. Take your pick. The gamemaster can do the same to give you a penalty of -2/-3 instead. What helps sometimes hinder, right? Untrained skill use I'd say you roll 3d6 against a relevant stat -4, or 10 if that's lower.

Will this work? Will it feel like GURPS? I have no idea. Feel free to test it and tell me. Some days I feel like tinkering with rules, but I seldom get a chance to play test them.

What do we do when we play?

2011-03-16T23:02:00.000+01:00

I remember seeing this a short while back, and I saved the quote. Well put, well put indeed.

We don't explore characters; we explore dungeons.

It makes a hell of a lot of sense to describe old school play like that. Sometimes I think some people don't appreciate how much can be contained in the idea of role playing.

Why aren't there any good rules for martial arts??

2011-03-11T23:02:00.000+01:00

Since I'm a practitioner myself, and since I have been on a kung-fu movie spree of late, I've started to wonder why there are no rules for fluid, quick and colourful martial arts action?

The rules there are, in different rules sets, are are either too involved to feel at all like Brave Archer by Chang Cheh (like GURPS) or just to damn flavourless (like Rolemaster or unarmed combat in AD&D (the horror!)).

Are there any good wushu rules out there that is fun and quick, and wont bore me to tears or lull my non martial arts friends to sleep?

I'm thinking of dice, cards or something else unorthodox to base it off. Damned if I know what to make of it! I've even tried myself even if that was just a toss off first draft.

[DragonQuest] Shields will be splitered!

2011-03-07T21:55:00.000+01:00

I found this reading DragonQuest yesterday:

[18.3] Grievous Injury may result if the successful Strike Check is 5% or less of the Modified Strike Chance.
...
A figure who suffers a Grievous Injury while wearing armor has the Protection Rating of that suit of armor reduced by 2 until repaired. Optionally, a figure who is also carrying a shield can choose to have the shield cloven and spare his armor. A cloven shield is useless.

Shields will be splintered, eh? I really like the idea with ablative armor, like in older T&T editions. Try that one out with D&D and let me know how that works! Should drain some money from those rich coffers.

How to get XP

2011-03-05T23:13:00.000+01:00

Today I read a short note about a groovy house rule, where you got XP for inflicting and receiving hits. Only. (I wonder where that link is gone?) This got me thinking about way back when I was playing MERP/Rolemaster. In MERP/RM you get XP for each mile travelled, for spells cast and for maneuvers rolled for. It also had that pet hate of mine, XP for delivering the killing blow. In group that meant an insane rush when the monster stared to stumble and become stunned. Realistic maybe, but cowardly. It felt like you got XP for just about everything and it was quite a book keeping effort.

What can you give out XP for that makes sense? It will affect play, like XP for gold does. These are mine ideas for your classic S&S game:

XP for gold spent
XP for hits taken
XP for sites and wonders visited and explored
XP for new facts learned from NPCs

How about that? I'm still undecided about XP for spells invented or magic items enchanted. The latter I'd prefer to be the domain of NPCs and the former makes me think more of Ars Magica than S&S.

Some thoughts on character empowerment house rules

2011-03-05T17:32:00.000+01:00

Today I read this blog post, about Gary Gygax's house rules for D&D. Reading that I was thinking back to how the rules for T&T have changed over the years.

For those of you who have read 5th ed. T&T and then compared it to the latest edition, the reaction might have been negative. It's not like the later editions of D&D, but even though the rules have stayed mostly the same there have been a shift in tone. Just looking at the list of 1st level spells known to a newly rolled up delver makes that clear.

Just like the rules Gary used, linked to above, the latest T&T edition is empowering characters, especially at lower levels. I think this is a sign that the old style long term campaign play have fallen out of favour. I know that Ken no longer have a regular group. Do anyone of you know if Gary had one during the later years? When you mostly play at conventions, you don't slog through from level 1 to name level, it just makes sense e.g. to start at level three with max hit points.

Now, would anyone claim that this is not old school enough? I know that some people have argued for long campaigns to get a proper feel for "the old ways". While I can appreciate that, I want to emphasize that two founders of the hobby apparently play differently.

Yeah, I know. It's silly, isn't it? I don't know if this is just me trying to somehow make myself feel better about the fact that I don't seem to be able to get a group to commit to long term play. At least I'm in good company.