World Build October Part 21

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Sunday the 21st - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) one of your worlds natural wonders"

If you've ever travelled earth, Seen some of the natural wonders that we have, you'd be hard pressed to invent anything that isn't already a real, natural wonder.

Sure you could include magic, turn things upside down, or floating without gravity, entering one place and popping out another. Things akin to the world in the Russian made Dragon Hunters movie (which I've seen on YouTube in its entirety).. or Labyrinth, Jareds castle's gravity mixed locations could present an interesting natural wonder..

That begs the question, if a place is created by a god.. is that a natural wonder?

If magic, psychic or godly powers, influence anything, would it still be natural?

So, for this, I Think I'll have to go with something a bit different, and a lot bigger.

The Coyn World..

The World was made of Lava, it was a spinning top of lava, and upon its surface little lava people walked around and fought for the creators amusement.

Over time the lava cooled, and became a giant rock, meteors of ice and minerals crashed into its surface and eventually over time, the escaping gasses formed a dome of air.. because, even though the world gravity caused the shape of a flat coin from the rock, air has its own way of doing things.

At first there was no plant life, mostly due to a lack of sunlight. There was no sun, originally being lava, there was no need, but as the rock cooled, light faded into nothing.

Yet life still somehow existed on the surface.

The Creator has included some left-over toys to create suns, but never got around to starting them up, they floated around this little creation, their energy seeping into the world, yet no light.

At some point, the little lifeforms on the surface began to create light sources, who knows why, and eventually, they tapped into the giant energy balls and started one up as a sun (not before getting one wrong and creating a cold sun) and so, light eventually existed on the world.

Now (skip time), Four remaining spheres float around the world, One Sun, bright and hot, one Cold-sun, Bright yet frozen, One untapped Sphere of energy and a small lump of rock, that may have been the top of the spinning top at some stage. Plants began to grow, giant dinosaurs didn't take the time to eat all the plants as people were already running around the world, using the dinosaurs as mounts, No comet has come to wipe life off the planet, but there was a great flood of mud that buried everything, and people had to dig it all up again, which created hundreds, if not thousands of tunnels and dungeons beneath all the cities of the world.. hence the name.. DungeonWorld.

World Build October Part 4

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Thursday the 4th - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) a Cultural rite of passage"

Every Year on Their Name Day, the Children are gathered around the great circle, They look on in fear, fretting their hands, From the year of their 10th until the year of their 16th, they are walked through the eye of Wailing.

Its unknown how long the eye of Wailing has been there, but its well known, Children who pass through unharmed are good children, those who have evil in their heart are banished.

Its rare that children fail to pass through of their 10th, it has happened, but maybe once every few years, more often than not, its the children of the 15th or 16th year, and even then, barely one in a few hundred might perish.

As a result, the towns are usually devoid of delinquents, Children before their 16th year are well behaved, they do not wish to be banished on their Name Day.








Thousands of miles away, on a castle floating in the sky, children appear at the summoning portal. They are quickly gathered, consoled and informed that they have been enrolled in the college of magi.  

World Build October Intro & Part 1

Its World Build October.. So I'm going 'to try' to Blog Daily, .. with some short sharp, snazzy bits of the Coyn World as per the World Build October Prompts you see above:

Monday the 1st - World-build-tober

Draw your worlds non-human Sentient Occupants.

p.s. I know it says Draw, but its a blog, so I'll draw in your imagination..

In a Time long forgotten, the world was a spinning lump of hot lava, from which the first lifeforms grew. From this mountain sized lifeforms pulled themselves from the molten sludge and walked? some crawled, some slithered, some attempted to bounce. The ones that could move, act and even think quickly dominated over those who could not.

They called themselves, Krowzp.

Thousands of years later, lifeforms alien to the world, started to appear, some microscopic, some as big as a Krowzp thumb, they buzzed around their ears, their bodies, they sometimes bit at them, but for the most part they just moved around chasing one another, ignoring the Krowzp.

Thousands of years again, the Krowzp are rare, almost non-existant, There are now a myriad of races that come and go from the planet, why? because the energy of the world allows warp gates to appear and even move around the world, people from other worlds accidentally (or purposely) have come to this place. They form new settlements, now structures, new place.

As a result, every form or being ever thought of by any creative mind probably exists here. The more dangerous ones are often hunted by the more resilient and inventive ones.

Yes, there are Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes, as often as much as Caitshee, Snirfneblin, the Fey and the Formless.

Some Notable races might be the mighty Lionshee, the Lion-bipeds. The Gelflings, with their winged females, the Dryads and their tree-affinities, the Croconians, huge 9 foot tall crocodile-bipeds, or the rare Krowzp born, a strange rock strata that walks and talks.

Part II

Part III

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Careful what you say you may ruins someones play.

This blog goes into a few different topics, I'll try to break it up with headings.Mostly its about GMing

Pro GMs Chatting with Casual GMs

Sometimes when your talking to someone that seems to understand what your saying, is on the same page as you, you might get a bit deeper into the topic, but if the other person wasn't really there on the same page, and they have a different world view on the topic, your deeper thoughts can trigger negative thoughts. 

I belong to several RPG chat groups. Its quite common to engage in discussions about new rules. Its as common to me that people pull the strings of rules to see if they are knotted well, or robust enough, so that players won't pull said strings in the middle of the game.

When describing how the players can or might pull at the strings, examples are given.

So, when I saw a fellow community member mention a new rule, I did what I thought was normal and pulled some of the strings of the rule, presenting ways in which a player or a situation could ruin the rule.

Instead I offended the guy, he got extremely defensive of his rule, politely attacked me and when I apologised, politely slapped my face. I was of course miffed, I had too late realised it was a public post, not a group post, so I was likely jumping into his realm and just rambling on about his rule having holes.

Facepalm: Meaning, Oh, Oh sorry, I made a mistake, my bad.. lets look at this differently.

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Player Agency: This was my point in the pulling of strings. And brevity was my downfall.

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I have often forgotten that I'm not thinking about things like others do, and I often don't want to write a paragraph of explanation to get people onto the same page as myself. So I'll often not bother, but when I think that I'm talking to a fellow games master / games designer, I just jump straight in, and I'll talk at the person, like they know exactly what I'm talking about. which often gets mis-interpreted.

Gamesmastering is not simple or easy

Case in point: Story Telling is an Art, not just in that its artistic, but that it requires an artist, to get it right. One key factor that many casual GMs will quote "its just a game". The problem is that regardless if they think its a game or not, Its also an exercise of the mind, it teaches us things, about ourselves, our players, and the world in which we live.

If you present your players with a cliff, and they talk about how to scale UP this cliff, they spend minutes talking about pitons, rope, how far up is it, your players are engaing in player agency, you've given them a chance to shine, for them to solve the problem in a creative way. Do they have pitons, do they have rope, does anyone have the climb skill, do we have spells that can break the laws of gravity, can we go around? Is there anyone nearby that can supply us with tools for scaling? should we actual scale it? is it a good idea. The discussion of how to solve the problem is players engaging in the game. Its part and parcel of roleplay.

You know what it also does? it teaches players, regardless if you want it to or not, it teaches them to be creative in their ability to solve problems. It makes them better people.

Its one of the reasons why Roleplay IS such a great medium. The Agency of creative thought.

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Two ways you can destroy this part of a roleplay experience, either directly or indirectly, is to take away this agency, the players choice in what solution should they use. Because players will often, if not always, take the path of least resistance.

The First, is why the above disagreement happened: Give players an out. Give them the choice to teleport the simple material objects, pitons and rope, to their characters, without any consequence.

If players can, teleport or retroactively buy components, tools, arrows and the like directly to their character, they will always do so. No need to ask around town before leaving, 'what kind of terrain will we cross' and pre-buy the goods needed, No need to worry about packmules for the goods, nor the path chosen, to get to the quest, not even a care, if the character steps on a weight based trap.. his back pack is now empty, but later, it'll be retroactively full, breaking the immersion of the game.. 

The Second, slightly less common, is when the solution is so impossible to solve, that the players, having 0 agency in the situation can only give up, a frustrated GM can't understand why the players can't see the forest for the trees, and the frustrated players can't understand how the GM can think they CAN see the forest, since they're in a desert.

As an example, back at our cliff, no material objects and the instructions clearly say they need to walk this direction, but the players are being chased by a dragon. They cannot think how to solve it, the GM keeps saying he's given them all the hints, and yet the dragon arrives, the GM has to fudge the encounter (the players gain too much XP and become OP for the rest of the campaign) change the plot (the big nasty dragon is actually goblins in disguise, but if that's so.. then how did the goblins manage to enact all those creature powers & fly & breathe fire?) or stick to the reality and kill off the party with a single flame of the dragon.

Face Palm.

The GM points out after killing off the players, that they needed to 'walk' up the cliff, its enchanted. The quote "walk this direction" was so obvious.. was it not? 

Well, unless the players had ANY experience that walking up the side of the cliff was even possible.. this is 0 agency.. they can't make the choice, because they can't foresee it being possible.

The Problem is that Casual GMs might see that arriving at the cliff without pre-purchasing pitons and rope, as 0 player agency, so giving them a retroactive purchase seems like a good idea.

But its not. because you made the choice for the players: You will need equipment, I want you to use equipment, but I know you won't buy the right stuff, so I'll let you buy it retroactively. you took away their agency.

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Player Agency, Don't take away choices

I had a player, who wove elven nets into his clothes, and carried a ball of string. He'd tie objects to his body as A) access easy items and B) crude armour. When in town, he'd buy up sets of things that he felt were needed by the group. often he was asked "why are you buying a fishing hook? we're going to a dungeon!

I had another player who would guide the group on regular outings to find rare and curious material components for spell casting. Each and every time, he'd end up with something curious, and as often as not, the group would encounter some creature, guarding its lair or out hunting or protecting its territory. Not often so horrible, but always a welcome side quest, with XP.

Another player, loved to try out different woods to craft arrows, sharpening his skills as a fletcher. At one point he managed to craft a masterwork redwood sapling arrow with a crystal holder head, allowing a crystal of ice to create his +6 distance +3 armour penetration +6 ice damage arrow , which helped take down a malicious fire demon. 

If I played any of those games where arrows, spell components or mundane equipment and or backpack arrangement was cast to the side by the game or the GM, those players would not still be talking about those events, to this day.

Player Agency allows players to choose to create interesting games, They can do things, without needing to change the plot or rules or interfere with the world building.

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Yet.. for all that's said and done.. players need choice.. so if your players are new.. get them used to the nitty gritty to start with, get them experienced with how it 'can' be done.. then after 5-10 sessions, let them relax on those rules, and present them with faster approaches to do the same thing.

in Dungeonworld, we have a thing called "down time" between adventures, Its done instantaneously for us, but takes weeks in game: Often while the warrior is healing, the mage gathers components, the rogue brews up potions, the archer crafts arrows and the merchant straps all these crazy things to his next set of armour.. Facepalm. 

Does Story trump rules? Only in cartoons and comedy

Over at Raging Owlbear, There is a thread about how Story trumps Rules. He makes some good points, yet at the same time misses some (IMHO) critical issues. This is not just Owlbear, This has been seen across the board with so many threads on so many forums, and its really scary that anyone should/would box RPGs up, to exclude anyone that doesn't agree with this.

If you haven't or are not going to read it, or just to clarify what I think he's saying:

Story Trumps Rules:

Owlbear talks first about how rules provide a framework for us to tell a story so we can have fun. He then goes into why you should not break the rules, I agree . Then how you should learn the rules, so you can know when to break them.. and lastly, When to break the rules, mostly this was "is it fun? then break the rules"

Whose fun?

The bulk of the posts these days seems to be "oh, the situation is too hard, just let them have their fun, scale down the difficulty, pull out the problems, let the players have fun"

At whose expense?

Owlbear doesn't go down this path, he uses example that seem fair, realistic, but read between the lines, and you can see that none of these 'rules' needed to be broken.

How do I portray this to you, the reader, clearly.. How about this: for the older crowd: We all knew it was illegal to record shows from TV onto a VCR and watch it later, the law was to stop people from setting up micro-cinemas, and showing lots of people, denying the production company the money to pay for the movie/show. For the younger crowd, Its Illegal to record Youtube Videos, and watch them later, same reasons. Yet people do it, why? because the rule is broken, its a blanket rule to cover all situations. Laws can't cover all instances fairly, neither can roleplay game rules. and that's why the Gamesmaster exists, She/He can gauge the situation and determine, does that rule apply to this situation or not.

Scafford of Consistency

When Owlbear talks of not breaking the rules, he talks of Consistency: A scaffold of consistency allow players agency to use their own world knowledge to play the game without needing to know the rules off by heart. If in real life, they think they can jump from a pillar to a window frame, they should be able to, If in real life, they can 'target' the head, with their sword swing, they should be able to. The Rules, are supposed to be an abstraction of physics to game mechanics, to allow players to do what they want to do.. or at least try.

Newer GMs

Newer GMs don't know when to use rules and when they don't, Often they'll break immersion to look up a rule, players go off, get a drink, return and have lost some of the flow of the game. so GMs learn quickly or look up on the internet how to do it better and what do they hit first?, 'break the rules to make sure the fun doesn't stop' and like the VCR/Youtube example above, they'll do what everyone does. to get done what needs to be done, so the game doesn't come to a crashing halt.

One of the reasons I advocate that new GMs should first be DMs, is to get familiar with a stricter set of rules. Dungeonworlds: Dungeon Delvers Twelve, puts the DM in charge of a dungeon, players have a more structured environment, a Dungeon, to get familiar with the rules, but so does the DM. Over time, after learning how to run a dungeon a few hundred times, they might advance to GM to deal with the outside world, the travel between locations, the open world, the sandbox and all the aspects of roleplay that both players and GMs need to get used to.
As they go though, they'll get used to what rules work in certain situations, but not others. If a rule doesn't exist, (like 99% of the time) the GM has likely learnt enough on how to gauge the situation, use a rule that matches best, and if no rule exists, make a ruling on what to do. No rule has been broken, players can maintain consistency, keep their agency and get on with the game, without thinking "Oh, the GM just fudged that, ok, so I don't need to think about what I can do, I should instead think about what is cool, fun, exciting and the GM will allow it, because 'fun!'.

Maybe they do that subconsciously, maybe the make a decision to do so, I know I fell into the trap, when my GM wanted my character to succeed, I felt no push-back to my antics, so I just kept pushing, not on purpose, just to know the limits. I quit the game when I should have died for the 3rd time and he just hand waved me through.. for plot.. sorry, I want to enjoy the challenge, and to understand the challenge, I need to know the bounds of the game.

What kind of fun? What kind of story?

Everyone has an opinion of what fun is, as they do what a story is. Romeo and Juliet is a classic tragedy, its an awesome story, its known around the world, yet I can't see a shred of fun in it. So why does fun trump story again? I think restricting all forms of roleplay to only 'fun' stories, is like limited TV to only cartoons and comedy. when so many other genres exist...

This is really another topic, but at the core of what we're talking about:

Limiting Roleplay to Plot and Story is, to my mind, akin to Railroading. Any kind of decision by the forces of nature (the GM) that pushes the plot in any direction, especially for Plot (story) will be viewed by the players as taking away their agency. So if Fun trumps Story.. doesn't that mean that guiding the game, to be more fun, is another form or railroading? What if the natural progression of the 'story' is to become a classic tragedy? If the GM obeys the fun rule, it forces a comedy, from what could have been an awesome tragedy, to something in the middle, and no-body wins.

Yes, Personally, I'm a Sandbox GM, I think we create stories in real life from moments of the mundane, I went to the shops, met a man, who sold me some beans for my cow and when I got home my mother scolded me.. Each of these events are fleshed out in roleplay, and more so in life, but when we tell them later, we only state the sentence that sums up all those events "met a man", did a GM somewhere make an encounter roll? sure, and he did so for the 20 people that met that man before me, but each one failed to swap the beans, and they went to different stories, not one of them is going to include the "met a man with some beans" in their story, unless its somehow relevant. Not everyone has the beanstalk 'fun' but for some reason, this topic keeps popping up, telling new GMs, misguiding them from the path for this 'fun' version of roleplay.

Childhood to Adult: Character Creation

Most Recent Update - Character Creation process

For a very long time, I've had one big missing element: Character creation. Now you might think this quite insane. How can you have a roleplay game without character creation... well ok, so I mean that it was not so much missing, as, my definition of character creation is a bit more 'plot' based, and that chapter wasn't properly written... at all...hence missing.

This isn't "CHARACTER" creation, beards and hair colour, even rolling stats isn't character creation..
Character Creation is creating "the Character", where was he born, what kinds of family did he grow up with and what skills did they teach him, How did that affect his choices to become a hero. 

    The Version that existed, and still does (as of this blog) is the template system. This is what most people think of when they think "character creation". Players would roll the dice and consult a chart to see what was a good character to make with the numbers they rolled. Pick a race, add race template, pick a Lifestyle, add Lifestyle template, pick a hero career, add Career template. It is/was fast, quick, efficient, and got you a character.. without any character. I had a few players who complained, wanted a more in depth creation system. claiming they felt their character was just a bunch of number and had no life (like most systems).
    So I developed a more in-depth, more story and plot based character creation, and I added a decent amount of crunch to go with it:

How Far do you want to go back?

Technically, if you want to start with your grandparents, you can. Roll up their stats, find out what they did for a living, and how that affected you. Then roll up your Parent Modifiers, adjust your stat sets and finally arrive at a set of characteristics that represents YOU.

Well, maybe not that far

So, Most players will simply roll up their own stats. I've never really been a fan of the point buy system, so while I have created a balanced system for players to use, I've also spent a bit of time creating a structured system for rolling that gives players the ability to balance things themselves (more on that later). 

My system encourages character creation to take place over 1-4 roleplay sessions. You roll up your stats, take a childhood skill list based on where you were born (and where your group will roleplay) then an apprenticeship, which gives you an approx 12yr old.. then you and your 'group of friends' can go out and discover things (Session #1)

Next, your progress your characters to teenagers, take a Journeyman skill set, based on whats available, and roleplay your 'friend circle' as teenagers.. get in trouble, have a local fight with the rival gang, or get lost discovering some ancient crypt & tunnels, that everyone has gone through before, but maybe 1-2 coins were left behind (a treasure to a teen, worth 10 years of pocketmoney) (session #2)

Lastly, why did you become an Adventurer.. take on the Adventurer path that suits you, grab the skills from it, but it also lists skills that you can choose to take, Now the player gets more choices, where to become more skilled, things that don't match the mundane life you left behind..your gang finds some clue, maybe something you already had in your attic, a map in a painting frame, with a stashed coin with holes in it.. now you take your team of adventurers and go find one eyed willies treasure (session #3-4)

Why this works better than the old man at the fire

The old man begins to tell you a story of a dungeon...
The players, realise its a plot hook and leave the campsite..
The DM cries, as all his work for 3 weeks is useless

When players come together, create characters and start roleplaying, there is a missing element of 'how did we get here' its assumed that this will be filled in afterwards. It often never happens. When it doesn't, and a conflict within the group arises, there is no logical reason for the group to stay together, they 'just do' and deal with the conflict 'offline'.. what I mean by that is they don't deal with it in game, so these characters have some unknown reason why they suddenly hate each other, draw weapons, start to fight, but calm down and are best of friends, without ever resolving the reason why they fought.

By including a whole 1-3 roleplay sessions prior to the main plot, all those 'unknowns' become more obvious. Turns out that all this time stevenson and harold were at odds because stevenson got the extra treasure when they were kids and it just ate into harold, and made him resentful to stevenson. (in real life, their players just don't get along, but now we have more backstory)

Also, maybe its just my groups, but I only ever really had 1 player write detailed backstory for their character, sometimes this backstory would be 3 pages and often included some very dubious connections, in that the player was now noble blooded, friends of three other noble families and received a monthly stipend of a few thousand dollars.. game & plot breaking backstory.. 

So now, all players have a backstory, all players have something to refer to in game & in plot.. Also they have a little more than 5 minutes of 'love' for their character.. in this method, I've yet to have throw-away suicides, so they could get a 'better character', though I have had plot reasons for players to 'need' to wade into a suicide missions, which again, made more sense because we had backstory.

This is not for everyone.. or is it?

If your group is only playing 1-4 sessions for an adventure, then having a break and playing a different system, then obviously this isn't for you. But if your going to play for anything longer than two months, I'd suggest this as a viable option, and remember, you can always do this in stages.. flashbacks are a wonderful 'break' from the regular..

The Flashback

I've attempted this quite a few times, and with one exception (I'll get into next) its a great way for players to develop a better background.

The biggest factor is the introduction of your characters in a more unique way that average. You start the game, lets say at 5th level, progress for several adventures and you're around 7th and about to take down the end boss.. all seems hopeless, then the GM points out that you've all forgotten something...

The GM passes the characters blank charactersheets and has them copy the basic stats over, and they're all level one or two, the characters are mid adventure, they're entering a simple tomb, and begin play...

The adventure is a fairly straight forward one, nothing too extreme and guarenteed the players are going to win, but just 'how' they win is important.. push to make some lasting effects on characters, wounds that can become scars, rare, exotic burns or items mundane but interesting, powerful artifacts that do nothing.. once they have acquired the end goal, return them from the 'flashback' to the main story.. that artifact, the one they acquired all those years ago? its the object required to take down the end boss.. they've been carrying it all these years and didn't realise it.. 

Mechanically.. the Flashback is the same as RPing the backstory, just later in the game.. Some GMs might award the XP gained from that adventure to the group, based on their choices and results, some might chalk it up to 'backstory', but the point is, you've added more 'character'.

Dungeon Delvers Changes

Since Dungeon Delvers emulates Dungeonworlds System but as a quick "we made most of the choices for you" kind of way, We needed to made backgrounds and races a kind of "sub-profession" system, This has some interesting nuances that many game systems should probably consider.. I'll blog about these in more detail, but in essence.. you can level up your race and background, to represent your backstory & flashbacks, without breaking the flow of the game. 

Dungeonworld Character Creation Update

When you realise that you've being doing it wrong...

In case you haven't been reading, a quick summary. Dungeonworld, Original, 1994tm, was and is always about player choice. a set of choices for your lifestyle, your background, your career, your path to adventurous glory.

But recently I was reading how GMs and Games designers, typically, put their own psychology, their own views and theories into their games. If a GM has a particular hatred of combat, then they don't include much combat in their games. If a Games designer wants to portray the message to their players that Socialism is bad, then they may make the Orcs socialists.

Well, I may not be trying to say one or the other, oh, while I do have a fear that roleplay games are moving towards a less 'conflict' oriented style of play, as society becomes less accepting of such, and I think its dangerous to stamp out history by making our fantasy RPGs more modern, I hope that I won't be trying to influence players to be more violent in reaction to that.. 

No, instead what I realized is that I give players choice, almost too much choice, because I feel that my own life lacks choice. I'm no unique butterfly, but I do think I'm a dash of an outlier when it comes to life. I prefer not to watch TV, news, sport, facebook, social media and I like control, fine grained, pixel perfect control. So as a player, I want a system that gives me as much control as I can have.

Rolemaster: Critical charts for Broadswords..
Yes, each weapon has its own crit chart!

Yet other people, when presented with that level of control, are overwhelmed. Its too much control! choices? what? more choices? argh!, can't you just, like, give me a list or something? MATH?! Argh.. 

I have equated my full rules system to Rolemaster and GURPS when it comes to character creation.. though I have shaved a few hours off, lol. 

But it hit me recently.. My upbringing was about choice.. I was given a lot of choice, my grandparents encouraged me to try different things and I wasn't expected to 'go get a job' at 17, I was given ample opportunity to make my own choice.

Yet in a medieval environment, we're pretty sure that people would not have much in the way of choice. The rarity of disposable income, university grants, unemployment or student benefits, meant that the bulk of society had to get a job, and that often start at the age of 10-12 with apprenticeships.

Well, I didn't always used to be an Elven Wardancer.. I started out as a shoemaker.. No not that Elf.. Grrr

So, being a medieval fantasy game, it hit me.. just like their characters would have had no choice in their apprenticeships, players should have none either.

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not taking away players agency or choice, If a player wants to sift through the rules and pick out their first career, their GM has the right to allow them.. I'm just suggesting that they gain the advantage of making it part of their backstory.

Imagine instead of being overwhelmed with lists, choices, bonuses, which one to add first, should I go A or B, which one will lead me to a more effective profession, what will give me more bonuses to my sword skills.. instead, the GM rolls on a chart, based on A) his world, B) what my higher stats would have had my folks deciding on a good career for me and C) what they could afford. This gives me a set of background skills that may or may not have helped in my future adventuring career.. but what it does do, is create some plot, some hooks, some aspect of who I was before I became a great warrior .. 

Its one of the things I loved about Warhammer, but forgot about, the 'building a backstory' from what I got as a starting career. My favourite character started as a physicians apprentice, and while I made some progress, I never ended up completing it, let alone going on to physician, and when I became a mage, I purposely chose not to take spells to do with healing and surgery, because it reminded me of the career I gave up. Now, if I hadn't had a 'rolled' background.. I'd likely have just chosen wizards apprentice from the beginning, and I would missed out on that whole aspect of story & plot.

Also career paths, lead players to try things out that, probably, unless they're deep in LORE, they're not going to even think of.. 

I mean how many of you would have though to play as a mo-hawked suicide axe-wielding Dwarf.. if it weren't for the "Giant Slayer".

Also, it saves a heck of a lot of space in the character creation pages.. which means a decrease in the costs to produce the books..

so WIN WIN!

expect to see the updates to the appropriate google docs over the coming weeks.

World Building Game, Turn #0 Race creation. Crocodiles

If you've read the previous post about the world building game, you might have been interested to see how its running, but of course I don't want to reveal "live" game turns, because then the other players will have an extreme advantage against me.. So this post is saved at the point of writing, and I'm going to make it public in around 12 weeks.

I'll be playing my own race, Croconians, from the ground up. Because I wrote the game, I have an advantage, but by revealing the turns (even 12 turns later) I give myself a disadvantage, so I guess that balances out. I've purposely placed my race apart from the others, so I won't gain any trade advantages either, I most want people to see how the game runs without the need for too much Interaction.

Fantasy Kingdoms, Croconians turn #0

Set-up

First things first, I need to create my account. I need the following:

1. What kind of Race is it?     Bipedal, Humanoid, Crocodiles
2. Name of my race                Croconian
3. Name of my King / Chief   Krogar Rugg'a
4. "statistical Modifiers"         Strength++, Speed--, Magic++, Health ++ Luck-- Training--

Note, While Statistical Modifiers are here, they represent more of a roleplaying aspect to the game, a "squad" of one race will be the similar equivalent strength of a "squad" of another, regardless of the stat modifier.

Next, my "king" has traits that are assigned by the game and by the player, my King has Frugal (-2% to all spending) and my choice is Inspired (+2% tax increase ) All kings start at level 3 for this run of the game.
So on my charactersheet I have the following:

Leaders Name	Krogar Rugg'a	Experience	0	Traits List
Race	Croconian	Level	3	Frugal (-2% x lvl = -6% costs) Inspired (+2% x lvl = +6% tax)

First City

This city represents the 'remains' of the previous civilization after some kind of catastrophic event, where we've lost access to our kingdoms full resources, technological know-how and such. I've decided that my 'rebuild' have managed to secure the last mages tower, and my Chief has found a decent enough building to use as his place of leadership, and the other 2 locations are to be markets, to ensure my kingdom has a chance of rebuilding. So my starting city will be like this:

Starting City	Grogary Rogg'a	….	Turn0
Current Stores	-	Food	1000
Caravans	0	Resource	1000
		Stone	0
LOCATION BUILDING	HAPPINESS	TURN MODIFIER	INCOME / COST
Chieftains Hut			-125
Mages Guild			-250
Markets	100	-10	+360
Markets	100	-10	+610
(empty for later)
		Subtotal	595
Other Costs
KING/Leader	=50 x Level	e.g. 150	-150
		Total	445

Without overwhelming you with any rules, lets just say that this is an acceptable start, but my income is rather low. I'll need to improve it fast if I'm going to get off the ground. This is because I chose the expensive and currently useless mage tower.. but saves me a massive later game cost to try to invent & build the mages tower.

Starting Map for the Croconians

My Map:
Not a bad start, only losing 1 cell over the river. because the terrain is all swamps, I think that being close to the forest is a good thing (wood?) but don't want to lose any more cells from that river blocking my path (rivers in this map are almost a km wide, no crossing easily.

My Techs:
I chose to take 3 random techs from the Cave-era( my choices are 2 chosen from Stone-age, 3 random from Stone-age or 4 random from bronze-age). I got Elders, Despotism & Surface Mining. .. Despotism looks interesting, minus happiness, lower tech, but Military prevents unhappiness... could be interesting.

After Watching the "account creation video" I see that I've pretty much completed all that I expect from other players.. so that's it for this Blog..

(After 12 weeks addition) - We've had a couple of drop-outs, only 2-3 so nothing too drastic, story line, its understandable that not every prince/princess is going to be as good a leader as their father/mother, so story line, accounts that are left abandoned by their players will 'play on' as Non Player Accounts, these accounts can be taken up by anyone at any time (the new crowned leader is a decisive leader) and continued, so if you're reading this blog and think, this could be interesting, pop me a line/email and you can join in as one of the untouched accounts, I'll walk you through the first first turns.