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So I looked over the various gaming threads that had come out of discussions of Action Points and how they were used -- I agree and disagree in equal measures with what folks are saying, so I'm just writing down my thoughts on Action Points from my own point of view.
This essentially codifies the House Ruled Action Point system I've been using.
First, my thoughts:
1. Action Points are cool. I don't necessarily love how they're implemented in the game, because:
- 1a: They can only do one thing (take an additional Standard Action).
- 1b: That option is alternately kind of lame or potentially game breaking.
2. Due to (1b) and the risk of a game breaking series of Action Point expenditures (two or three rounds in a row of additional actions would kind of break things, yes), the game designers opted to:
- 2a: Heavily restrict the number of APs a player can have.
- 2b: Heavily restrict how often APs can be used.
I understand why they did that, but I think it simply treats the symptomatic problems of the system as implemented -- it doesn't fix what's busted.
3. Since Action Points, under the standard system are both (a) rare and (b) unstable in terms of payoff, they're rarely used by the players.
- 3a: Their primary purpose (allowing players to combat the unavoidable whiff-factor in a dice mechanic with no bell curve and roughly a 50/50 chance of success on any given roll) is alternately too weak or too powerful in practice.
- 3b: Their alternate purpose (as a way to make characters more awesome) is diluted.
Truly, they might just as easily not even be in the game: as written, they represent a lot of bookkeeping ("a new Action Point accrues every two encounters, but the total resets to 1 after each Extended Rest"? Really, Wizards of the Coast? Really?), for a rare and often anticlimactic pay-off.
They are, alternately, "too much" and "not enough", in my opinion.
So here's my hack. Changes and additions are italicized.
1. Your character starts with one Action Point. For the purposes of drifting as little as possible from the core rules, we'll retain the standard accrual rules I just made fun of:
- 1a. You gain a fresh Action Point every other encounter.
- 1b. Your current total of Action points resets to 1 after an Extended Rest.
2. You can use your Action Points for one of three things:
- 2a: Spend an AP to take an additional standard action. (Once per Encounter)
- 2b: Spend an AP to reroll a failed (or successful) d20 roll. (Once per Turn)
- 2c: Spend an AP to add +3 to (or subtract 3 from) a d20 roll. (Once per Turn)
Edit to Add: A natural 1 can't be rerolled, and always misses. Sometimes, you're just screwed, and that's awesome too.
3. At will, as a free action, you can cross off a Healing Surge and give yourself an Action Point, which can immediately be used in one of the ways listed under 2. Healing Surges reset per the normal rules.
The end result allows players to "push" by sacrificing some resources in a way that I already know I like a lot from playing lots of other games with similar options. (Vincent Baker uses a phrase "trading in your future for your present" and I like that term quite a lot.)
It's also relatively "trad gaming" in the options it presents: if I really wanted to hack it into some kind of Indie co-authored hippie craziness, I'd add a few Meta-options under #2, like spending an AP to let you add facts to the game fiction, a la Spirit of the Century.
Even without that option, I'd definitely consider a player who really wanted to take part in a scene and suggested paying an Action Point to conveniently show up, if it was remotely plausible.
Bones?
I noticed early on that LotRO's main conceit about their "Health Bar" really really works in DnD 4th with regards to healing.
Lord of the Rings refers to your 'health bar' as Morale -- so it's mostly representative of your will to continue the fight -- the rest of the game works in similar ways -- where death ='s 'retreat' and so forth. This makes 'healers' in Lord of the Rings (which is really quite a low-magic setting) make sense -- they are the minstrels with their uplifting songs (VERY Tolkein), the Captains with the rallying crys and bold words, and even the Lore Masters with their quietly whispered words (or sometimes taking your worries on their own shoulders to ease your burden).
That idea really works in 4th edition DnD, especially when you look at the Healing Surges everyone has (accessible in combat as Second Wind) and the names of the healing-type abilities for the Warlord (Captain), which indicate that they're really just boosting your will to continue the fight.
Mike Mearls was saying in an interview that it changes nothing in the game if a player wants to take all his mage spells and switch them to 'cold' damage instead of, say, fire; it's the kind of customization hacking he expects from players in the game as they make their character their own.
Then I thought: it would be a pretty simple thing indeed to hack the Cleric into a sort of lore-master and/or minstrel (or both, depending on which path you took at creation) simply by changing the names of the powers and changing their "implement" from a holy symbol to either a wizards staff or a musical instrument. Do that, drop Mages and Warlocks from the game (or leave them for the bad guys), and you're pretty much ready to play in Middle Earth in LotRO style.
So, to sum up...
- Drop Dragonborn and Tieflings. Duh.
- Elladrin are the elves of Lothlorien and Rivendell.
- Sylvan elves are the elves of Mirkwood.
- Fighters: unchanged. Depending on build, they are either Champions or Guardians.
- Rogues: rogues are more melee damage dealers than the LotRO Burglars, and their benefit to the group is slightly different, but it's still similar enough. Halfling rogues should favor trickster builds, probably, with the other type being more common with sylvan elves and the like.
- Rangers: virtually no changes.
- Warlord: call em Captains and you're done, though I think a lot of them would be multiclassed.
- Cleric: the 'sit-in-the-back' build (whatever the name) you tweak in Power names and Implements to be Minstrels, and the 'up-in-your-face' build you likewise tweak to be Loremasters.
- Warlocks: probably only bad guys -- infernal types serve Sauron entirely, I'd guess. Fey types work alright with the High elves, and Star-pact warlocks would make an interesting type of Loremaster, maybe.
- Mages: too overt to be anything but bad guys, really.
This would simulate LotRO pretty well, would work for a game setting like Midnight quite well, but still be too much magic for true Tolkein.
If you really wanted to be totally hardcore Tolkein, not LotRO, you remove Clerics and Mages. Healing would fall entirely to the use of Healing Surges and any Captains you had with you. Warlocks stay in the setting in very particular instances. Infernal Warlocks are bad guys, Fey Warlocks are the Elf Lords, and Star Pact Warlocks are Gandalf and Sauruman. (Keep the Ritual List, from which you'd likewise remove things like passwall and the Portal magic, but keep the 'rezzes' for when Frodo gets insta-gibbed a ringwraith on Weathertop. Only the various Warlocks would get such Rituals automatically -- anyone else would need a Feat to learn a few -- Aragorn did so.)
This is a SotC rules tweak. I didn't come up with it, though I am tweaking it.
FATE and Spirit of the Century already let you change a character's aspects whenever it's appropriate or interesting or just plain cool to do so. That's well and good. It's a kind of 'staying put' character advancement.
I want to put a spotlight on that, when it happens. Some of the most dramatic moments in stories come when characters experience a radical change of heart. In SotC, the character is exchanging one aspect for another. In the Shadow of Yesterday (which has MANY things in common with FATE and SotC) it would be when you Buy Off a Key, which is a pretty awesome thing in that game.
So combine the two.
Continue reading "Burning Aspects" »
Fred Hicks asks:
What do *you* think needs to be in a 15-minute demo of Spirit of the Century?
The best, though not necessarily most useful response:
Small mook group to be scared/confused by the talky types, then mowed down by the brawlers, but not before the BigVillain joins in.
On a Zeppelin.
Which is on fire.
Over Manhattan.
With a bunch of cute socialites on board as passengers.
And the Zeppelin is heading straight down for an orphanage.
That you finance with your immense wealth. Someone stop me!
That would be an awesome 15 minute demo.
I dreamt a game mechanic last night, based on the five Chinese elements and Rock-Paper-Scissors, as in "Fire scours Earth. Earth blocks Water. Metal slices Air. Like that.
Except I think almost everything beat Air and Metal, the way I dreamed it.
So anyway, the character sheet has a kind of pentagram on it, where the five points were the elements and the lines between them were arrows that pointed toward which elements they beat, creating a big star... and each point was a circle you could put chips in to show how strong you were in that element... though I don't really know what being strong in that element would do for you -- maybe let you win in a conflict you'd normal lose (like Earth turning around and beating Fire, or something) or the number of times you could "play" that element in a conflict, per session, or something.
I don't know what the bloody point was, but it looked cool in my dream-head, and I don't have time to think about it right now, or do anything about it, so I'm putting it here.
Click to embiggen.
For no particular reason, I decided to see if I could (via harsh editing and severe formatting) squish the Frogger rpg I wrote down to two pages.
Result.
Downside: I lose all the great illustrative quotes that kept me chuckling while I wrote the original rules.
Upside: everything is much more concise -- I wish I'd done this during the 24-hour time frame, then let it expand back to normal dimensions and more explaining -- it would have been better.
So here's what happened.
Over on Story-Games, someone posted this:
You played it till your thumbs blistered, now write it up RPG style!
It occurs to me that many people today who browse the 1KM1KT website have only played computer games and have no (or very little) experience with tabletop games.
This 24 Hour RPG contest is about introducing our computer gaming audience to the world of tabletop gaming!
Adapt a computer game into a tabletop RPG in 24 Hours! Any computer game will do: Doom3, PacMan, Zaxxon or World of Warcraft (for the uninspired).
The goal is to breech the gap between hardcore computer gamers and the awesomeness that is tabletop role-playing. Read that: "Try and make your content accessible to new gamers."
The submissions will be judged by the folks here at 1km1kt.net and the winner will have their game heralded in our newsletter, bumped to the front page, and will receive a fabulous 1KM1KT fun pack! The fun pack consists of an official 1KM1KT T-shirt and T-shirt packing material! (T-shirt packaging material may present a choking hazard)
The Rules:
1) Games must be based on PC or console style video games.
2) Games must be completed within a continuous 24 hour period.
And I thought:
Huh.
And I didn't really think anything of it.
And then I thought:
Maybe X-Com.
And I did, in fact, actually work out about five post-it notes worth of thinking on the X-com idea. Meanwhile, on the original thread, people were talking about some whacked out stuff like Katamari Damacy and stuff like that. One guy took 90 seconds to write up Pong, using two quarters, and I'm sorta looking at the X-com thing and knowing I could never give it the tactical grit that I love in that game, not in a 24 hour span, not really.
And I told Kate about the whole thing, and Kate was like:
Man, you should totally do like... Frogger! Or... ooh! Pitfall. I used to LOOOOVE Pitfall!
And I was like... yeah, heh. Funny. X-com x-com x-com... I even started up my old saved game of X-Com from last year and played a few nights away. Good game.
And then someone in the Story-games thread posted a link to Lifemeter, which is like a site where people draw art based on old console games... and there was This One.
And I thought... damn... office guy... why an office frog?
And then I went and looked at the old art for the side of the Frogger stand-up console. You'll see what I mean.
And this goddamn game got stuck in my head.
This is the nightmare of modern office life: work that crushes the spirit, office cubicles as cells, and managers as wardens. The office is a dehumanizing environment for the employees - the kind of thing that makes you a cog in the machine - a number. Nothing.
Faced with that, driven to a breaking point, human beings generally do one of two things: create their own petty fiefdoms and delusions of importance... or Get Out.
Frogger is about Getting Out. You remember the artwork on the side of the old Frogger arcade console? (Here's a hint: look at the picture on the front cover of this game.) A frog, rushing somewhere, vest and tie awry, briefcase in hand. It's easy to think that he's imitating the White Rabbit, muttering "I'm late, I'm late...", except that you know from the game itself that he's trying to get Home. He's an office worker, trying to get away, get across all these obstacles, and get to the thing he wants - the thing he needs.
Something happened to our worker bee that made him want to get away from the buzz; something hit that cog and made it slip off.
I grabbed the idea of that little game... and Office Space.
...Clockwatchers.
...Falling Down.
...Lost in Translation.
...Harold and Kumar go to White Castle...
And then...
...Shawn of the Dead
...Grosse Pointe Blank
...Road to Perdition.
This is what I ended up with.
Frogger, by Doyce Testerman - 24 Hour RPG submission - 2006
Huh. I forgot to post this.
If you're in a game or hobby shop and happen to see the Deryni Adventures RPG (based on the books by Katherine Kurtz), check out the byline page: I'm one of the contributing authors.
The game's written for the FUDGE system, and I wrote the "Fatigue" rules that the game uses (originally written, I think, for ... Amber, but never really used much, then converted to Fudge and Swift.)
Anyway, it was cool to see my name in print.
Some great thoughts from ***Dave on Game logs: why to keep them, why not to, how to encourage them (both campaign and 'personal') from the players... it's all great stuff.
More thoughts on this as I get two seconds to think about it.
Continue reading "Game Contributions" »
After feedback and lots of questions from some folks, I've updated and reposted the write-up for eighteen. I think it is now tighter, closer to what I was aiming for initially, playable, but a ways from being "right".
With apologies to various good golfing movies, the sport itself, the hobby of roleplaying, and Ron Edwards, I present an alpha-draft of eighteen: a golfing epic for sorcerer.
Notes:
* I need more descriptors, including (possibly) a better way to approach (har) Cover.
* An example relationship map would be very good to have, including a number of other players for the tournament, officials, club pros, potential significant others, et cetera.
* That said, I so want to run this. :)
Update: conversation about it here.
With the exception of one Nobilis session... two weekends ago (egads)... there really hasn't been much gaming going on this month. This is unusual, since in my experience our gaming group has been blessed with (a) participants and (b) lots of stuff going on. The lull is kind of weird, but very typical for August of any given year. Couple that with the fact that I'm trying to wrap up the only two games I'm currently running (Nobilis and D20) and already finished up Sorcerer last month, and you've got some REAL quietude.
So, lacking actual play stuff, let's talk about what I'd like to do:
X-Com, the RPG: Between soldiers, pilots, scientists, diplomats, spies and secret agents, every player in the game should have about six characters in their 'stable', and would likely have access to at least four or five NPCs as well in some sessions. Combat, intrigue, espionage, covert ops, wet work, weird science, psi powers, love, betrayal, mutations, genetic experiments... zombies... there's just no bad there.
Also, with all the failed or uncompleted spin-offs, I've got material for literally years of storylines.
The only question is what I'd use to run it. BESM would work for the gear, but might fall flat in other areas. FATE would do the characters beautifully without a huge amount of time investment, which is handy when I need a dozen NPC grunts and six Grey Soldiers in two minutes, but the downside there is that I really want to capture the tactical battles of the original Microprose game, and for that I need some more rules. Savage Worlds is supposed to have a really light and fast (which is key) squad-level system with an RPG wrapped around it -- that could work. Hmm.
Dogs in the Vineyard (see the lumpley link in the sidebar) -- Already on order. I have high hopes for this with the right group, though I'm not entirely sure what the right group would be.
Lots of Sorcerer stuff (again, see link). I want me some Sword and Sorcery... I want some rust and blood. Or Kindergoth stuff... either way.
Heroquest: at the bare minimum, I want to make this the replacement ruleset for the d20 group. Taken a step further, I want to run a supers game with it -- I think it would rock, especially with some fun trope shifts.
And writing... there's also writing I should be doing. :/
You know what's intimidating?
When the Ron Edwards PM's you with "I'm utterly swamped, could you please address the questions in [post x]?"
... and the questions all require accurate comparisons and contrasts of 'official' Forge terminology -- terminology I'm completely sure that any of two dozen other people on the site understand far better than I do.
Oh, and the first part of the thread includes a post in which he introduces a term I'm fairly sure I've never even seen before, and one of the questions is 'what you do mean by that term?'
Finally, let's make it this much worse: Paul Czege (author: My Life with Master) has already answered the guy, but you've been asked to add more.
I realize it's not exactly like being asked to speak at a Nobel Prize presentation, but it's still daunting.
Neel Krishnaswami posts a Sorcerer One-Sheet to The 20' By 20' Room. Fully expect it to be brilliant, because it's Neel.
Sorcerer's one-sheet style is a really handy template for blog posts. As evidence I offer All Things and Nothing, a Sorcerer game which is Nietzsche by way of David Lynch.
With regards to running FATE (which I plan to use in the future for at least one if not two or three things):
It's possible, even likely, to get so used to hit-point-driven combat systems that it might seem as though a fight in FATE was not a "real challenge" if the characters come through it without any marks on their damage tracks. The thing to remember is that FATE really has two damage tracks: the actual damage taken, and the pool of Aspects that one might 'check off' during combat to improve results.
A game like d20 has one 'ablative resource pool' -- hit points -- while FATE has two (and possibly even other, smaller pools for specific Extras or what-not), so while it is, of course, relevant to notice damage the characters took, it's also important to notice how far they had to reach into their Aspects during a fight (or any other conflict, actually).
A lot of checked-off Aspects as a result of a conflict means just as much (if not more) reduced effectiveness during the remainder of a scenario than the damage track (and far more than a partial loss of hit points in d20, which has no mechanical effect at all).
Doc's Blog ... Confessions of a Game Addict: Game Dream 3: Is it Me or is it Memorex?
Some people play RPGs to enjoy a viewpoint or way of acting that they just couldn't do in real life. Others seem to play characters whose motivations are more their own. And some folks do all of the above and everything in between :) What character of yours was most like you "in real life"? Which of your characters is the least like you? Which did you find more fun to play, and why?
Continue reading "Character mix-n-match" »
This weekend, I had a chance to play-test a Firefly game session using a stripped-down version of Unknown Armies 2nd edition. (Details on chargen are over here, but basically I just stripped magic out entirely and used the street-level campaign.)
Anyway, the game went reasonably well (though, damnably, we didn't get a chance to finish up what should have been a one-shot session, due to interruptions) and the system seemed to work pretty well. There are, however a few tweaks I would make (or have already made) to the chargen.
- More skill points. Using the 'street level' points for stats seemed to give scores that felt realistic and accurate for the characters (both those from the show that I was using to 'calibrate' the system and those that the players made up -- however, using the street-levels for available skill points meant there just weren't enough to go around and really flesh out the characters. We were using 15 bonus skill points -- I think that in the future, I'm going to go with the same number of Stat Points, but change the 'extra' skill points to somewhere around 70 to 100. (Basically, I think the characters we see in Firefly have Stats that fit Street-level, but I don't generally feel like I'm doing justice to their skills.
- Passions can be invoked multiple times in a session instead of once-per-passion. This is the thing that will let a player get those cinematic moments when they need them -- it also reemphasizes the Firefly conceit that a person is more effective when they really care. Mal's a decent shot with a pistol, but when you've betrayed him and you're threatening one of his crew, at that moment he can put a bullet in your brain from twenty feet away while at a brisk walk, without aiming. Cool.
I'm also pondering using Conflict- instead of task-resolution. Rather than rolling for each little task in the middle of combat or major conflict, I'd move to a Sorcerer/Fate type of resolution where a roll represents a short-ish series of related actions. Rewrites to optional skills like Fast Draw might be necessary, but it would still probably be quite viable.
We'll see. I've been wanting to mess around with this system for Firefly for awhile now and I was glad to give it a whirl... I think it offers a lot of features that emphasize the parts of the show and characters that deserve emphasis -- it's not perfect by any means, but there's some really good stuff there.
That said, I'm looking forward to a chance to try out Dust Devils in the 'verse as well.
[I promise the actual play from Friday night is on the way. I've got it about half-written, I swear.]
I mentioned this parenthetically in the previous post but it bears repeating (and adding to my SorcererWiki, actually): one big difference between Sorcerer and pretty much every other game on the market (at least every game I've ever encountered) is the character sheet.
To be more specific, in almost any game the sheet is meant to express your character at their current optimal functionality; generally, in-game modifiers pull down (lowering stats, scores, skills, or removing equipment or spells or whatever) -- the sheet is the top end -- things just get worse from there. This seems so obvious that it hardly needs to be noted... except that Sorcerer doesn't do it that way.
What you get on a Sorcerer sheet is the character when they're not really trying too hard.
The assumption that the character-on-the-sheet is the "optimal" version (and failure on the part of the GM to correct this assumption *coff*myfirstgame*coff*) is erroneous and is usually why players fail to capitalize on the bonuses that come from 'contextual play': most folks with experience in other games will look at the sheet and think "I have a Will of 5," when it is more accurate to say "If I don't really put much work into it, my Will is 5. If I'm really phoning it in, it's probably more like a 4, and if I'm truly firing on all cylinders as a player, my Will is a 6, 7, maybe even 8 or more.
It's also worth noting that it's the players actions during play (bonuses for tactics, cool scene setting, et cetera) that make the character more effective, not usually the character's actions (such as using a 'boost' ability or whatever). In the long term at any rate the former method of enhancement is more more reliable than the latter.
The game more than supports this kind of play; it really requires it in order to do well and will kick your ass otherwise. Some of the differences I've noticed in play between the first game I ran and some of the later stuff is the simple fact that I've eventually started to point this feature out to people before the game starts.
One of the questions I've been trying to answer when I look over a new game is "What do I want out of the game?" This is a key question, because the answer I come up with is also going to be the answer to "What 'thing' do I want the system to be able to do as a central function?"
To reverse engineer this, so I can evaluate the system in those terms, the opposing question ask about a game system is "What does this game facilitate as a central or key mechanic that interests me? What kind of game does that create? Does that interest me?"
You can rephrase the question as "What is special about the system that simply couldn't be done in your generic-game-of-choice (GURPS, D20, BESM, FUDGE, et cetera) without rewriting the whole thing?"
Continue reading "FATE and the El Dorado game" »
Man, that was a fun martial arts movie...
Anyway.
Perverse Access Memory: WISH 99: Best Genre RPGs
Pick three to five genres and name the best RPG for that genre. Why do you think it’s the best? What makes it better than others? What are its downsides?
Continue reading "Best of the Best" »
Lumpley, via the Forge
I've got a theory.
There's Setting, System, Character, Situation and Color, right? I think that you can start a game as soon as you've nailed down three of the five. That means that a game text must provide at least three of the five to be a whole game. But I really don't think it matters which three.
You can write a game that provides Character, Situation and Color but leaves Setting and System to be set up by the group, if you want. In fact kill puppies for satan is like that.
Or you could write a game like Sorcerer, providing System, Character and Situation and leaving Setting and Color to the group.
Ars Magica provides Setting, Character and Color, with maybe some Situation too, but not much System at all. (Call me on that, I dare you.) All the WoD games are probably about the same, there.
Obviously, the thicker your game the more you can provide.
Hmm. A game the whole geek family can play:
* Trollbabe: Color (disguised as setting), Situation and character.
* Gods and Monsters: Character, Situation and Color. (And more system than Trollbabe at least.)
* FATE: System, Character. Players must add/select one or more of Setting, Situation and Color.
* Nobilis: Setting, Situation and Color (very little of the actual character is apparent in the stats -- there's more even in d20, where at least skill-point selection reveals preferences and interests.)
* Amber: Setting, Situation and Color (ditto Nobilis, except it has even less system)
* D20: System, Character. Add setting, situation, and color (usually as expressed within skills/feats) to taste.
Hmm... thinking of stuff like Hero and Gurps and whatnot, it seems like most of 'generic' systems only have two-of-five, with splatbooks or player input to provide one or more of the other elements.
Okay.
Once upon a time (about six months ago), I stumbled on some pretty good games via reviews on RPG.net and 20x20 room. The first of these was My Life With Master, which was so different in a lot of ways from what I tended to think of as a role-playing game that I wasn't even sure if it really was a roleplaying game.
It was, however, cool as hell. That I knew.
Reading through the thing and the notes in the back led me to some sites I'd been to before, off and on, but never really delved into too much -- Momento-Mori and the number of games available for download there (notably InSpectres, which was a real mind-blowing 'investigation' game), and the Forge.
Stuff on the Forge led me to reading up on quite a number of other games whose goals all seemed to be pretty novel and very interesting to me as a GM and even moreso as a player: Sorcerer, Urge, Trollbabe, Dust Devils, Donjon, Paladin, Universalis, et cetera.
These were, I found out, products of folks working on building "Narrativist" games, a style (dare I say "movement") of games built not (usually) to test out new game mechanics or (necessarily) to create an incredibly detailed setting -- but to explore a character dealing with conflict.
"Umm... dude... that's like... every RPG... ever?"
Well, that's not to say that other games... older games... didn't give you a session or a campaign where you got to deal with character conflict. Most every game out there does... that's sort of the point.
What the narrativist guys were doing was talking about the Literary definition of conflict -- that means "a question is posed within the story (overtly or covertly), and the protagonist answers that question through his or her actions."
So: A ballroom full of hobgoblins that you have to get through to save the princess is not a conflict in these terms; it's a challenge (which those Forge guys then associated with "Gamist" styles of player).
A conflict by this definition would be something like: "You've been given great power. How will that change you?"
The players then play the game, and their characters' actions define their answers.
Peter Parker's actions say: Great Power means I must now be responsible.
Bruce Banner's actions say: Great Power exposes my greatest faults.
Logan's actions say: Great Power just raises more questions for me.
Or whatever.
What I'm going to do below is talk about three styles of play that the folks on the Forge use when talking about game group dynamics, and use examples of both Games and Example Moments from Actual Play to illustrate what I think each style means in the real world.
I don't know if any of this will be useful to anyone but me -- that's okay, since it's mostly just me working on figuring it out.
Continue reading "G/N/S translated into my own words, using examples" »
...and...
Hmm. I think I'm going to go a bit longer, despite someone handing me (another) nice short definition for the three styles of play today.
It's not the most accurate description, exactly -- I might put it in my own words later -- but it works. For what it's worth the whole thing has really helped me (personally) understand why some of the people I play with react to in-game stuff the way they do. Hell, it helps me understand my own enjoyment (or lack) of a game session.
If nothing else, it made me notice when I'm sitting with a group of six people who think they're all there to play the same game and three want to play game A and two want to play game C and one wants to play game B, and the issues that might come out of that. That's Result -- it makes me a better GM -- maybe even a better player (arguable).
"It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them."
-- Dame Rose Macaulay
Okay, so ***Dave has (rightfully) voiced some concern over the problems with running Spycraft d20 -- while it's a great adaptation of the system to the genre, the d20 cruft-accumulation added to the not-at-all-inconsiderable Spycraft-additions to the rules has created a sort of never-ending learning curve on the rules.
Translation: we spend as much time looking up stuff now as we did 4 levels and 16 sessions ago. Frankly, that shouldn't happen.
So, in an effort to keep the ship airborn by jettisoning unwanted baggage, he started looking at other systems. Since I am currently the designated system-whore, I offered up some suggestions, which lead to FATE, which is basically Fudge all growed-up. It's good stuff, people.
The problem -- the only real problem thus far (and one that presents itself even moreso in vanilla Fudge as well), is that there's some customization required. Granted, this isn't Fudge, where you have to create your own stats, your own ... everything...
but it is a generic system* with all the good and bad that comes with that, and that means custom-built skill lists.
Which means, after digging into the rules (and digging the rules), you're still stuck hammering out a skill list that isn't (a) too long (b) too short (c) too plain (d) so 'flavorful' that you can't play it.
It feels a lot like designing a game, which is... well, fun if that's what you're in the mood for, but not fun if you're... not. My brain (and, I'm sure, Dave's) is fried -- turning over questions like "do we need scrounge if we have Streetwise? what level of detail should that kind of activity need in this genre?"
Ugh. I'm down to "Fire bad. Tree pretty." Pass me the beer.
Green Ronin has the publishing green-light to revise and release Warhammer FRPG (my favorite 'blood and rust' game of all time).
That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that there's some table-talk about coming out with an RPG for Warhammer 40k... the closest thing anyone's ever done before now was Spacehulk. Color me intrigued.
Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
Saying that shards of broken glass are razor sharp is an understatement. A shattered window contains thousands of incredibly sharp edges and dagger-like points. It takes almost no force for one of these points or edges to cause a laceration. However, people in movies routinely jump through plate glass windows without receiving a single scratch.
Broken glass has at least two mechanisms for slashing a person diving through a window: its weight and its inertia. First, large heavy shards of glass can fall like guillotines, slicing off body parts. Second, when a person jumps or, even worse, drives a motorcycle through a window, the shards of glass tend to stay in place due to their inertia. The only way to move them is to apply a force. If the person's body provides this force by pushing on the edge of a piece of glass, it can slice right through clothing, skin, and flesh. In the real world, jumping or driving through a plate glass window would be suicidal.
There are individuals who have accidentally fallen through windows without sustaining serious injuries. There are also people who have survived the Ebola virus. However, in both cases the odds are not particularly good.
Not sure if this is the thing to read before a Spycraft game...
Population: One: Monday Mashup #37: Full Metal Jacket
Oh, I could do something here with Sorcerer, tying everyone's kickers into what they fear. I could do something with the "Basic Training Horror" inside of a setting like Nobilis, but there's a really clear, perfect answer to this mashup: My Life with Master.
Full Metal Jacket is about, in part, the lengths men go to to avoid that which they cannot face. In some cases, that’s death. In some cases, it’s something else. I think I’d want the definition of the things the characters fear the most to be an integral part of character creation, in some way, because my mashup of the movie would be oriented towards catching the harrowing mood that Kubrick produced.
Well, when you've got a system in which the only numeric ratings relevant to characters are Fear, Self-Loathing, Weariness, Reason and Love -- ladies and gentlemen you've got the game for this kind of spiral into darkness.
And there’s no suspense: the characters are going to wind up smack dab against the things they want so badly to avoid. The question, in this game, is what they’ll do exactly once they realize where they’re going.
To quote lumpley, the suspense doesn't come from wondering if something's going to happen -- it comes from wondering how something's going to happen.
That's what My Life with Master gives you -- the crushing weight of inevitability and what your reaction to it will be.
Not just Batman, actually, in fact...
every single character that can be referenced for this stereotype/archetype is also a Big Softy. Show him a struggling young couple, a stray animal, an old but still feisty craftsman, or anything similar, and he'll put his blood and bones on the line to help them.
Conan. Mad Max. Batman. The whole bunch of'em, all softies. The inability to see that characterizes a large number of role-players who continually want to play vicious bad-asses who are not Softies and then wonder why no one wants to play with them, or why they never quite feel like they get the character "right."
It explains something I'd never really tried to voice about why Batman 'works' in the hands of some writers and doesn't in the hands of others, but the relation to PCs in RPGs is also a good one.
Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore:
Seriously. How many times have you created a character who was far cooler in your head than he or she turned out to be in play? How many times have you prepped a campaign only to find that, in play, it didn't go as well as you'd hoped? Have you ever thought that, y'know, reading game books and imagining play and preparing for a game is almost as much fun as actually playing? Or even more fun than actually playing?
The hobby doesn't value or teach collaboration. It values and teaches competing sole-authorship. Pre-game invention sells books but robs players of their ability to contribute; pre-game meaning is thrilling to imagine but dull to actually play. This arrangement we've got going is frickin' broken.
The solution is to design games that're inspiring, but daydreaming about how much fun the game will be to play seems pointless and lame, and you can't create extensive histories or backstories because that stuff's collaborative -
- so you call a friend.
I wanna do Evangelion/Sorcerer.
A conversation on the Forge regarding how or when the idea of Player Authorship crept into your style of play. What follows is my reply, which I'm posting here simply to have it at hand:
So: Are my experiences with player authorship relatively common to those of other Forgers? How as a greater/lesser degree of such effected the games that you have run or played in?
Largely, it's been an evolutionary versus revolutionary process for me.
Playing DnD back in high school (lo those many years ago) it was all gamist/sim stuff -- players played and the GM made the story. Period. Full stop. It was '89 in the midwest -- whattaya gonna do? :)
This style of play continued into college. Towards the end of that period I was running a game using Dangerous Journeys/Mythus (a game I still adore). This was my first experience with characters who essentially started out as competent, experience people, and it had quite a lot of influence over the game. Everything was very heavily Sim, but there was a lot of player-initiated plotting and interaction, though still well within the bounds of the designed game, and I remember the players sometimes trading in Joss (luck) to get things to happen that otherwise would not have. Never occured to me that that was player authorship, but it certainly was.
The next game was my first time GMing Amber, which I think was a game that people looking for more authorship control might have naturally gravitated towards at the time, since it gave the player so much say over what was going on -- I specifically remember part of the Combat section that told players to "just add what you like to a scene -- you need a sword and your in the castle? Put one on the wall and grab it!" Heady stuff. One player faked his own death and passed himself off as a 'new' family member for two-thirds of the entire eighteen-session campaign.
The setting helps with player-empowerment as well, since there was an inherent ability within the setting for the PCs to invent entire new worlds exactly (heh) to their personal specifications, populated with people they found interesting, and focusing on their own stories since they were compentent enough to be able to go off on their own. Players could seek out whoever they wanted to seek out, have the encounters they wanted to have ("I shadowwalk to someplace were there's a bar fight"), and talk to whomever they liked, even if they weren't nearby (Trumps).
This was one of the revolutionary shifts to the player/GM dynamic. I started GMing with much less prep on 'scenario' and much more focus on 'what happens as a result of the player actions'. I don't think it was diceless, karma-based play that did it, I think it was the setting and the sense that not having dice really 'opened things up'.
I moved after that and spent a few years finding new players (and learning that I can't PBeM worth a damn and playing Muds, where my need for Player Authorship was (sadly) channeled into an obsessive need to spend as much time Building as I did playing), after which I ran a very rewarding, very long, Amber game. While I gradually became less and less enamored of Amber DRPG's "system", this essentially cemented my expectations for player-control. In fact, it got to the point where I actually became annoyed with the players who seemed to 'just sit there and wait for some NPC to give them a job'. The players that worked well in the game were those who were self-starters or who would take a plot hook and run with it. "Passive" players were just a lot more work.
Following that game I did some stuff with the original little BESM book (which I think of as a sort of 2nd edition Amber RPG in a lot of ways). This didn't work quite as well in terms of giving the players input (which meant I was prepping a bit more and not really thrilled about that). D20 was out though and everyone was in the mood for some 'old skool' games.
The glow of that faded, however (though not as quickly as some of the campaigns have, unfortunately), and I found myself looking for something that would give me that "shared creative energy" that I had in previous games. (I still didn't have the Forge vocabulary to see that I was looking to recapture some Author-stance for my players.)
I was really down on the ADRPG, which led me to put it off for a really long time, but eventually I gave in and bought Nobilis. (Which I think really feels like an Indie game -- it's big and thick and published by someone else, but it's owned by the author and has a lot of shared philosophy with the kind of play you can get out of Forge games -- grist for another thread, perhaps).
Love at first read. Granted, the book is... well, a big beautiful mess, but there's a great 'Nobilis 101' doc on the internet that really helped me get the rules, and I started running a game. That was a year ago, and I've been very pleased -- it's a great game and allows from some fantastic character interaction.
Also, in the last half of that time-period or so I started picking up on the threads of thought on the Forge and have begun implementing some of the techniques found here as a way of giving the Nobilis system the last few things it didn't naturally have built into its setting (the way Amber did) to facilitate player authorship.
The Forge was the other big revolution in the evolution, as it's crystalized and defined some of the things I've been looking for without knowing I was looking for them. I'm starting up a proper Sorcerer game this Friday, having some great fun with the pre-game chargen (using something called Themechaser for background stuff) for an online Paladin game (running Tuesday nights on #indierpgs) in which the player creation has already influenced the setting, and I'm just hopping up and down in anticipation of getting to the next Nobilis sessions and tightening the focus of the Premise for the game and getting some more player control going.
Whew! Long post. Really helped me get my head around where some of my inclinations evolved from, though.
So in sketching out the Shannon character for this post, I became aware of a really cool 'dark-side/light-side' thing going on:
When she was setting the character up, she chose to connect Humanity to 'Mastery'. I'm naturally inclined toward connecting it to something like Empathy, but one of the example sorcerer groups (the Black Wheel) fit the Mastery idea pretty well, and I thought her history could tie into that, and that might be interesting. End result, we went with Humanity=Mastery for her, even though I didn't really have the impression that it would be a compelling definition of the Attribute.
And then she chose "Rageful/Vengeful" as her descriptor on Will.
Now, for those of you who don't know my wife, imagine she and I smirking about this and making jokes about Playing to Her Strengths -- Jackie has a... pretty easy time playing characters who channel their anger in both constructive and destructive ways -- call it a talent if you like, or art imitating life. Anyway, what we ended up with was this quiet librarian who's not very good at social situations and for whom the core of her Will is basically a hard kernel of anger and resentment... lots of which is generated by the awkward social scenes that seem to gravitate toward her. (Sounds like the bad-guy/girl for a Stalker-Thriller movie.)
Also, within the game, you can (in theory) get bonuses for using an Attribute in such as way that it dramatically emphasizes the descriptor for the Score. (Note emphasis on 'dramatically' -- I understand that it's no good to just say "I hit him, and I'm mad".)
What this boils down to is that, in the short term, it's in the player's (mechanical, game-based) interests for Shannon to 'lose it' in critical situations -- it's interesting, it's appropriate to the character, it's dramatic, and it's also potentially worth a bonus on her dice.
It's also, long-term, a bad idea.
See, the definition of her Humanity is "Mastery", remember?. There's lots of things that could cause a character to risk a drop in Humanity (contacting and summon Demons is a universal risk for anyone, regardless of how they define Humanity), but in addition to the 'standard' reason, things that cross the line in regards to your personal definition of Humanity also mean you're risking a drop in the stat.
Well, "Losing it" in some violently emotional way is one of those things that causes a Humanity test in our definition of Mastery/Humanity.
First response: Hmm... nice dynamic.
Second response: What a great, classic bit of character drama! (Particularly fun since we didn't set out to create that crisis for the character... we only realized it later.)
Do you go for the quick and easy pay-off of flipping your lid and letting out your anger or do you keep control of yourself, thereby protecting your Humanity in the long-term but robbing yourself of some easy strength at this particular moment?
Give in to your anger... Heh. Classic stuff. I'm loving this game and we've only played one session.
Continue reading "Sorcerer and the Dark Side :)" »
Ron Edwards is working on a final, hard-copy version of Trollbabe, trying to get it done in time for GenCon. In a Forge Thread, he talks about the fact that he's changing the range for Social tests (making them one-better than the lower, rather than higher range, thus making them the 'middle' number of the three tests). (He also mentions a change to the way Magic is going to work as a 'conflict starter', which I haven't had a chance to really look at.)
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, the thread became a discussion of dealing with failure in Trollbabe and the fact that what failure looks like for a Trollbabe depends entirely on the player's narration and how they interpret a low chance of success in a particular task. (Or, balancing a low chance of success with the world-view that a Trollbabe is a bad-ass at everything... even something they technically have a lower chance of success at.)
There's a great example from Bob McNamee, which I have to share here:
Continue reading "Failure in Trollbabe" »
There's this thing in gaming that really doesn't work: adding new optional things to a system that the players are very familiar with.
This could be talking to the players and ask them to try to use some different method of play or an optional rule, adding in a few cool rules from another game that matches the goal of the GM, or just trying to encourage the new thing in play as GM.
These are all situations where the new thing was 'optional'. I've never seen it work.
The reasons are simple. Typically, players feel that they're supposed to do what they were doing before, plus some other things that just add to the level of complexity.
The most common thing that happens is... nothing. The players still see the original game's system and they don't adjust in any way to the new stuff.
Alternately, players alter their mode a little but then feel they're being made to do things that are uncomfortable, boring, or just not what they expect out of that game. Canalized players know what they want, and even when they're presented with something that’s potentially fun, they might not see where it's fun. Especially if it happens to conflict with what they normally consider fun.
Put another way, if they can play the same old way, they will play the same old way.
Let me give two examples from two different system/settings: d20 and Amber.
D20: I'm currently playing in a Spycraft game. Tremendous amount of fun. One of the things that's different about the game versus standard d20 is the concept of action dice. I've been reading all this Narrative-game theory and checking out games like Trollbabe and Paladin and stuff and I think "Holy crap, this is a way to give Player's some narrative control over the situation." so I burn these things like water -- I'm invariably out of the damn things about an hour into each session. Loosely stated, they give you the option to give yourself bumps to your rolls that you'd really like to succeed at, the option to call in favors and so forth from home base, and they also must be traded in to convert a d20 'threat' into a 'critical' -- it's the only way it can happen.
Anyone want to take any guess as to where 90% of all action dice get spent?
Yup. On the thing that you have to spend it on. I've seen players at the game sit there and potentially accept failure in lieu of spending AD's during the game -- and I don't think it's usually because anyone's waiting to see if they get a crit later that they can use them on -- they just don't *think* of it. (Not to take too much credit for anything, but when the other players spend have spent AD's on bonuses to skill checks, it's usually because I badger suggest it to them.)
Why? Cuz the optional things get pushed out by the d20 mindset. Crits you know -- crits require this mechanic. That's what they get used for.
Amber: It won't surprise anyone when I point out that I'm not in love with the ADRPG's resolution mechanic -- the "static karma, plus drama' systems just don't work for me -- whether via dice or some sort of resource pool, some dynamism is just something I think the system needs. YMMV.
I sat, astonished, when I started to grasp the elegance of the Nobilis diceless system, because with the Miracle Point pools it did what I didn't think a truly diceless, fortuneless (no dice, no cards) system could do.
A few days ago, I ran across a saved copy of Mike Sullivan's Amber system for his New Mutiny game. Reading through it (about one page), I was stunned to notice that it had a 'resource pool' mechanic right there --granted, it's more like 7th Sea or HeroQuest's Hero Points than Nobilis in that it uses the same pool of points that you used to raise your stats with, but it was there, and I'd seen it almost two years before Nobilis.
Why didn't I remember it? Because I saw the whole thing as an Amber system, and that 'optional' rule for pushing up your score was immediately fnorded out by me -- I simply didn't see it -- all I saw were the 'mandatory' rules variations he'd set up for defining attributes (themselves a good thing), not the optional 'pushing' rules.
There's a simple solution to this: just play a game that strongly supports the change you're looking for from the ground up -- either do this to try out the feel of such a thing, or do more long-term to get the kind of play you like without modifying the old system. The biggest advantage is that these games have the 'thing you want to try' built in at some integral level, and they're largely new ground for the players who, lacking any preconceptions about the gameplay, will try out the new rules.
Here's a quick example: In the ADRPG, in the section on combat, Wuj points out that the player's got a lot of leeway with combat scenes -- if you're in a hallway in Castle Amber and you need a weapon, you can just use the logic of the setting and say "I grab a sword off the wall from where it's behind one of those heraldic shields." It's one of the coolest bits of advice I'd ever read at that point in my gaming life, and that kind of player control just blew my mind.
No one does this. No one. I've played over two-hundred sessions of Amber and I've never seen a player do this. (They might ask if there's a sword there, but they never just put one there themselves.) Why? It's optional.
Then there's Trollbabe, wherein, if you miss a roll, one of the (five or six) ways that you can earn a reroll is by introducing 'a new object' into the scene.
Time elapsed in actual game play before someone used the logic of the setting to introduce a handy improvised weapon? About ten minutes. It was, in fact, the first thing anyone used to earn a reroll.
Why? It's built into the system.
Maybe something that might work for a game like Spycraft would be to play a session of Wushu or even Sorcerer (hmm... Spy-genre Donjon... hmmm) -- everything cool you describe gets you more dice and you will, quite frankly, get your kung-fu ass HANDED to you if you don't set up those cool actions.
Then take that play experience and try to translate that kind of feel back to the pre-existing mechanic Spycraft -- the players are maybe doing more stuff with the dice, doing more things that would *earn* them the dice in the game, and the GM is letting them flow more freely, like Force Points in Star Wars (wasn't really cool: it's gone; used it to do something cool: you'll get it back; used it to do something cool at the perfect time or this resulted in a dramatic scene or something; get it back and have another -- all this in addition to the other reasons they give for distributing them in the game itself.)
Conversely, I think to really see the strength of Mike's New Mutiny system design, you take the system out of Amber entirely and run something else with it... hell, Ancient Chinese Sorcery wire-fu works as well as anything else and lets you "push" appropriately -- then take it back into the game it was meant to.
But, the bottom line: if you want to break a habit, make a clean break first.
If you want the players to exercise more control on the story in the game, you drop them into InSpectres. Period. They don't really have any choice but take control or the game just stops.
To paraphrase Mike Holmes: It's the reason why Everyway cards work in Everyway/Amberway and can't just be dropped into a standard ADRPG-system game game with real success: if changing the system alone were enough to change mode, then those nifty alterations would work. The cards get ignored, though, so that people can focus on the 'actual system', even if they might save their butt. Where in "what would my character do?" does the player consider when to play "Unlooked-for Ally"? He doesn't.
I've mentioned that I'm wrapping up my DnD game soon. After that happens, my plan (providing my players don't run screaming from the table at the idea, which is a possibility) is to do some short-run games (1-5 sessions each) in systems that players haven't played before -- the genre will probably remain fantasy for most of it, but I'm looking at stuff like Donjon, Burning Wheel, HeroQuest, Sorcerer & Sword, Paladin, and another thing I've been playing around with -- what they all have in common is that they would work in the same setting we've been using and introduce new concepts to game play as an integral part of the game.
Integral. Cannot be ignored. Et cetera. That's where you get outside the box.
"Next campaign, I'm not going to give a bonus to hit for coming up with interesting descriptions in combat: I'm going to give penalties for not doing it."
There's a game I'd like to write up in full that I never will. Two reasons:
One is simply that almost all of the mechanics of the thing are based off of a great indie game called Trollbabe. While the author might be (in fact, probably is) down with people riffing off his game, to do him justice I should be charging for it and making sure he gets his due. This conflicts with the second thing; making money off of it would be illegal, in that setting a game in Amber is the right of someone else in the gaming world. (Not that they're doing anything with that right, but there it is.)
Anyway.
So, the only way I could do it as a complete rules set for Amber would be to make it free, which screws the original game's author, which I won't do.
So this is best I can do: kind of an OGL "You must own this book to use these rules" type of deal -- go buy Trollbabe, by Ron Edwards. Just do it. It's ten damn dollars and probably the best money you'll spend, per dollar, on any game. If you disagree I'll pay you back.
Jesus, still hedging?
Well, you can go read the review here, which should give you enough rough understanding of the rules to get you though the rest of the post, but really you should just cough up the tenner.
For those of you who've got Trollbabe, but don't know about the setting of Amber, go buy the five books of Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber series and read them, or just ignore this post.
Now then, you've bought. You've read.
Everyone on the same page? Good. Let's try out a game called Amberite.
Continue reading "Amberite" »
Donjon (site), Donjon (review), Donjon example characters -- player-driven dungeon crawling -- it seems as though this could be either an InSpectres-level romp or a serious game. I'm intrigued.
Paladin (site). Probably for a small group... maybe 2, maybe three. Maybe good for Justin. Good mechanics at any rate.
Trollbabe. Review. Example of play here. Again, a smaller group. I've got a lot of hope that this game might be really good for some of my players.
Sorceror. I put off getting this for a very long time. I was wrong to do that. Great game. Great. Already looking around for Sorceror and Sword.
Perverse Access Memory: WISH 85: Character Inspirations
What inspires you to create characters? Do you have partially-developed characters in mind for use when you get into a new campaign? Do you shop characters around, or do you come up with new characters when you get into a campaign? Why? If you GM, are you bothered by receiving a solicitation for a “generic” character, or does it enthuse you to get a solid proposal even if it’s not closely tailored to your game?
I wonder how well this ties back into making the same character over and over.
Let's look at the last few character's I've made for games:
* Dylan isn't a continuation of any ongoing riff I've been trying to play: as a general rule, he's a 'new' character to me, especially when you take the complications of his home life into account. I got the basic idea from ... I guess Alias and the character Jack on the show -- at least the profiling bit, but that came on later -- really I just think I'm better off playing a faceman -- I tried an laconic character with Bob and it doesn't really work for me. So, Alias, with some home-life stuff from... who knows. Some of the stuff I have in mind for him is based solely on my plans for the character, while other stuff is growing out of my interaction with the game.
* Japteth is something else entirely -- conceived solely for the purpose of working within the setting and campaign, he doesn't really work in another setting or story. Again, he's sort of a faceman/leader type, but not in a charming way... in a bossy way. I wanted a guy who commands the legions of the dead because that's his right... someone who can talk to gods without quailing because of the utter surety he has in his duty.
* Jacob, in CryHavoc, was a character I've been trying to play for several years in several different settings and systems. I finally had to a chance to play him, and now I'm pretty much over it.
* Gwydion, the smooth-talking scotsman bard was another I carried around for awhile (not nearly as long as Jacob) trying to get 'right'. I think I did that in LGreyhawk (before it all went to hell), and while I would have liked to have done more with 'Her Brilliancy's Secret Service', I think I got what I wanted out of the character, and I don't need to play him again.
* Bob was a joke that turned into a character that turned into a joke. The campaign I was playing him in didn't support that kind of player, but at the same time I have no desire to 'try again' with him at a later date.
And then there's Kethos, the guy I keep trying to play in any number of games... Amber NPC, Living Arcanis demonkin... heck, even Grez'k in LJ is sort of a Kethos adaptation... or he became one. On the one hand, I've never really been able to finish playing this character... on the other, I think my friends are tired of seeing him at the table :)
One of those fantasy games that (like HeroQuest) I plan to try out with my DnD group after they wrap up the current campaign (assuming we ever finish the current frelling module): Burning Wheel
Continue reading "Games I might want to run #4 - Burning Wheel" »
Next up, let's take a look at a fantasy system: HeroQuest.
First, a particularly good and useful review can be found here, listing both the good and the bad of the system, all of which I entirely agree with, and some of which I've co-opted for the summary below.
Continue reading "Games I might want to run #2 - HeroQuest" »
So I've got a bunch of games laying around -- stuff I want to run, to try out... whatever.
I communicate more succinctly in the written word than the spoken, however, so my enthused rambling face-to-face usually tends to miss a few things that I really wanted to mention about any particular game.
Therefore, what I'm going to do is assemble (and I mean that literally) a summation/review of the various games that I'd like to take a stab at some point -- some I have in mind for the weekend folks, some I have in mind for the DnD group... some would work for both, so g'head and read -- you might see something you like. If so, lemme know.
First up (simply because I've been reading it this morning) Dead Inside:
Continue reading "Games I might want to run #1 - Dead Inside" »
Here's an observation, neither novel nor groundbreaking. d20 in it's current incarnation will never be a good system for non-dungeon crawling (i.e., search for traps, get treasure, kill bad guys).
It boils down to search time. Your To Hit and Armor Class bonuses are prefigured, as are your Damage dice and Skills.
Search Time to hit a bad guy? If I haven't memorized it, it's a glance at the character sheet.
One PC decides to subdue and bind a bad guy, rather than kill 'em.
What happens?
Several people flipping through books, GM jokes about being taken by surprise and unready for non-lethal action from the players. Search Time is quin-trebles.
D20 suffers from selling itself as a universal system -- when you try to do anything other than killing or skill checks, you've just doubled or tripled (or worse) the search time.
The game encourages XP rewards for finding alternate and creative solutions, but doing these things is such a pain in the ass it's not worth it.
I've often said there's practically no difference between the basic PC conflict setups for Amber and Vampire (whether that's a good or bad thing is left as an exercise to the reader.)
Someone actually worked out the similarities.
Heh. I can think of others, but they're definitely not wrong.
The Wednesday Weird is a writing exercise where each week a topic will be posted and participants will write about in it in their own blogs, livejournals or the comments section. The Wednesday Weird is for gamemasters, writers and anyone else who wants to practice their creativity through this excercise. Each week in the Wednesday Weird, I will supply a fairly common cliche in gaming and/or fiction. Participants will then be challenged to take that cliche and give it an original twist.....something a little weird, then explain why it's weird.
First up: The Mugging
Basics: The basic mugging goes something like so: mugger comes out, weapon in hand, and demands your money.
My twist: Mugger comes out, weapon in hand, and demands that you take his money. Take. Not Have. He literally forces you to steal it, at gunpoint, then runs.
Why?: The poor bastard stole a cursed coin or bit of scrip and the only way to get rid of it that he can figure out is if someone steals it from him -- problem is, no one mugs a mugger, and he's had to take matters into his own hands.
Reading one of the 'Actual Play' entries on the Forge left me a bit... confused. Here's an excerpt:
We did a system switch: Spycraft to Wushu.
It's like the 6th game in the run, and we bailed on poor d20, which was boxing us in. My chief complaint about d20 I think is that it provides a lot of information about what a player and character cannot do. Your opinion may differ.
So anyway, Wushu. It's not for the lazy. No time to space out. You gots to be thinking up cool ways to earn those embellishment dice.
Our group really got into it by the end of the session, really riffing off each other's narrations, gaining embellishment from things that other players had worked into the scene.
I've bought and read Wushu awhile back , and it's a good, fun system. To explain the above
1. You basically have to succeed by rolling a number of dice
2. The number of dice are determined by your stats
3. You get more dice for coming up with cool stuff in the scene you're in
Not just personal stuff, like sliding down a banister into the bad guys, but anything very cool and like an action movie. You walk into the room -- and you add:
the camera is tight on my face, I'm wearing sunglasses and the fearful old man we're about to question... his cringing expression is reflected in both of the lenses of my sunglasses.
That's cool... have another dice.
Here's my confusion: SPYCRAFT DOES THAT. Am I crazy? Is there not a mechanic for getting extra action dice for coming up with cool stuff? Hell, you can get action dice just for being funny.
Hmm.
That aside, the thread (located here) did talk about the challenges of coming up with cool stuff all the time -- how much of a pressure that can be, but also had some good ideas for making that mechanic (talking mostly about Wushu, but it works else) work.
I have hopes of using some of that in the Spycraft game tomorrow, because yes, the game does have the mechanic but, being d20, the players don't naturally lean toward that sort of co-GMing narration.
I will do to Spycraft action dice was Stan did with the NPCs in Nobilis and encourage the cool thing.
Or I'll try at least. We'll see.
Side note: Something I mentioned to Margie yesterday that's odd -- I used to frame almost every scene of my games using the sorts of language that would most commonly be associated with movie and television action -- I used to really jones on the framing of a particularly cool image.
I don't do that anymore. Used to. Don't now.
Not exactly sure why.
The 20' By 20' Room: Definitive Narrativism links to essays on the Forge (a rpg forum I won't bother to link to because you either already know what/where it is or, like me, don't find forums that useful) that define the current chic among RPG gaming theory -- the GNS model, in which gaming styles are broken down into Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist styles.
In short, the essays are fucking long. Here's the short version, because I am in no way recommending reading the bloody things unless you've got some time to kill:
Continue reading "Game theory" »
A long email exchange on magic in rpgs -- not a lot that resonated with me, but I did want to refer back to this passage, which touches on a possible problem I'm having in Nobilis (and possibly other stories).
Emphasis mine:
... [I am] against taking magic for granted, relying on the system, instead of trying to elicit that which the system is designed to facilitate. Relying on the system has the paradoxical effect of making the magic both more and less real: on the one hand, it removes everything from the realm of concrete action and physical description, distancing everyone from what’s really going on; on the other hand, by invoking rules, one lends an air of authority if not verisimilitude to the proceedings. “I’m using Waters of Vision to try and see what’s going on” implies that the magic is real*; “I’m peering int |
