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.

World Build Game

Some of you may already know that I like to build worlds. My own roleplay system has three, and players can from time to time use portals to travel between them. My earlier worlds are smaller, chaotic, often unbelievable places, sure its fantasy.. but I do like to get more of a feel that this place exists.. and So I created a game, one that creates worlds..

Fantasy Kingdoms

working title

For the Moment, Fantasy kingdoms is a massive multiplayer game of civilization. 

Players own a small town, that is on the verge of becoming its own. Some smaller villages have decided to band together, they've erected some makeshift borders, city gates, and charge tax for a place to come and trade their meagre supplies. 

The Lord, uses these taxes to establish contact with more of their race, build small outposts, send young hardy couples to go live there (at the crowns expense) to ensure that more people will bring more goods and more taxes to the new kingdom.

Through inventions, communication with other races, careful or sporadic resource management, eventually some of these kingdoms are going to rise up into empires, some are going to fall by the wayside or become part of the larger, more formidable, empires.

There are no computer players, players will send emmissaries to one another, communicate in secret, make plans, forge alliances, send forth armies.. but there is one underlying element to this game that will pause the kings hand. Heroes!

Heroes can be anyone, from any race, that the locals can usually hire, easily enough, to do their bidding. Unlike the world we live in, Corrupt politicians will often be downed by a hero. Maintaining the perceived happiness of the population is more important than waging war on your enemies, because the king can as often as not, hire his own heroes to take down the enemy king.

So, the King (you) must maintain a level of happiness, through safe streets, improved lives, low corruption and entertainment.

I ran a version of this game to a captive audience in 2011. Using it as a tool to teach English to foreigners. The players (80 of my students) were learning negotiation techniques, this helped them tremendously and they always asked for more. So I spent some time adding to the rules, improving it, and making it more of a world builder game.

My First run, gave me a map of 40 surviving kingdoms, you can see some of the trade routes and borders of them in the Image:

After Completion of the game, I sketched the details onto a large A1 sheet of hard card stock, and proceeded to colour it in.. Here's a work in progress shot:


 You might note some subtle and some extreme differences. Players who were at war and drew boundaries, have boundary markers, yet players who were for the most  part peaceful, or did not have the capabilities to close their borders, have a more open terrain, some roads connecting local villages and towns, and trade routes dominating the land.

Not enough detail

While the maps are nice, and provide some nice plot points for roleplay. There wasn't really enough. We stopped playing at around turn 26, because the office I worked at, closed, we moved and it was harder to touch base with all the students as regularly as I used to.

So now that Uni is over. I'm starting again.

I've contacted my local crews, roleplay groups, and such and said, HEY, is this interesting do you want to try? and they've said a resounding yes. Then I've gotten in contact with some local game clubs and gotten some players who are going to give this newer version a try. 

If you are interested in being a part of the next run, Heres whats going on:

2016 Ancient Civs

I'm running the game, from an earlier point in time, players will control a tribe of people on the verge of a new civilization, magic is present in the world, most commonly in the forms of creatures and occasional random effects, but until players decide to harness it, it won't be a 'thing' in that kingdom. Same goes for Spirituality, though its usually a lot easier to believe in a god and see the effects, so they'll more likely exist in many parts of the game.

You can come try it out if you'd like.

Players can have 3 turns a week until they either catch up to the time line, or encounter another player. We haven't started as of Feb 1st, I'm just adding this in case you're reading anytime up until late march.

Each turn takes all of 15-30 minutes to make some simple enough decisions. The rules are plain and fairly straight forward, my test group have been able to make turns without asking what to do, for the first few turns, based on the video instructions I provided.

If it sounds daunting, but you want to watch, just let me know, create an account (i.e. character-sheet via google doc / email) and then don't make any turns.. or make 1-2 turns and sit back and see how it pans out. 

We will be playing for a year, one turn a week after April, for a total of around 50 turns (unless no-one has reached the goal, and everyone insists on pushing the game longer) so expect to do a turn a week until christmas 2016..

At the end, I'll correlate the maps into a video, do some nice pretty screenshots, hand draw up a nice big map and publish it for all as a huge scan. If you really want it as a poster, I can have them made up.

The most awesome part that I got out of the first run was the History and Maps. Seeing who did what, who attacked where first, what city was made by which race, then conquered, then claimed, then populated by another, made some very interesting backdrop for my roleplay groups. They really felt far more immersed in the world when they play..

As worldbuilders, this can be duplicated in the future, If it all goes well, I'll invite anyone to run their own in the future for their own worlds. OR if the world you participate in sounds interesting, and you want to write your own material based on it, feel free. you helped create it, you own the rights to use it for yourself for your own publications.

While I'd love to make it open enough for many players, for now I can only cope with around 15 more.. but if all things work out, I'll most certainly set it up for a larger run in 2017 and beyond.

Let me know if you'd like in.

[Story - Campaign] Hekatte, Trapped Goddess

If you're a player, and don't want spoilers, don't read this. If you're a random internet stranger.. enjoy.

The Revenge of the Spider Queen

There was once a goddess of Magic, Witchcraft, Necromancy, but also of Doors, Crossroads or Entranceways. As gods have a tendancy to do, they create interesting plots in the lives of mortals, to be entertained.

The Spider Queen, was not a mortal to play with, so when she discovered that her entire legacy was based on a lie.. she was more than livid.

See Spiders do not have queens, some enterprising young goddess decided that she would find a female spider, crown it in her name, and rise it in fame and status so all spiders would know of her as queen, and, like a well known story, a small child would point out that spiders do not have queens, and all would be embarrassed. Yet the gentry, now in the knowledge that they were the joke of small gods, decided to get revenge.

A special set of spiders, one that lay their eggs in the skulls of victims in regions of high necromancy, were pursuaded to worship Hekatte, Goddess of necromancy and witchcraft, to allow them to use the fallen mans skull as a shell to grow their bodies in. The skull would become the abdomen of the spider, the spider would gain magic, and the goddess would be worshipped by all.

All skull spiders.

Later, the Queen of spiders came to these worshipers and persuaded them to worship their goddess in a way that would subtly change the way the goddess viewed the world.

Not just skulls, but all once living things were to be considered hosts for the skull spider worshippers.

The goddess, thinking this was a curious request, acquiesced.

Then they requested, all things living could become all things dead to become worshippers. The goddess was amused, and being goddess of necromancy, she gave in to this request too.

The Spider priests become more powerful. So they beckoned of the god of blood. May we drink of the blood of the once living hosts of our corpse houses, to worship you. He acquiesced.

They Worshiped the god and goddess, by taking a slain man, drank of his blood for the blood god, and claimed the body as their home for the goddess of necromancy.

Then they crawled deep into crypts, and claimed of the crypts their skulls and bodies, and absorbed the necromancy for their goddess. They beckoned of the goddess, please may we claim these long forgotten skulls.. and she said yes.

Soon, Many crypts in the land were filled with the Skull Spiders and their Blood Drinker ways. They would sneak up into the streets, drink of the blood of victims fresh, and return to their crypts and wait.. all the while absorbing the necromancy that permeates all graves and the dead.

All the while, fallen queen of the spiders, petitioned the gods, please may she be once again considered a queen of all spiders.. they laughed.. but dear, there is no queen of spiders, spiders are solitary, they eat one another they recognise no queen.

Please she beckoned them, what must I do to be spider queen once more?

They told her.. like they told many mortals who asked of them a boon. You must perform a task no mortal can perform, you must gain a boon from three gods, you must get a god to treat you as a friend, you must get a god to look upon you with awe and you must get a god to return you from death.

So she returned to her followers and they took the largest skull and fashioned her home for her body within it.

First She tricked Selene, goddess of the moon, into thinking that her now skull home, from the back,  was the moon, Then she tricked Artemis to think of her furry hide as that of one of her favourite hunting gods. And lastly, she was killed, but rose from the dead into undeath with her followers magic, forcing Persephone's hand.

She returned to the gods to claim she had done as asked.. but Hecate stood her ground and claimed that the spider had not made three gods happy, but only one, herself, as Hecate is three gods, Selene, Artemis and Persephone in one.

The Spider was furious, she retreated from the gods as they laughed her off the pinacle of the world.

She returned to her people, explained how she'd been tricked, and they fumed. But The followers of Hecate knew that they were now in power.

First they etched all names in all temples to be Hekatte. Next they Named the spider queen Hekatte, and all statues were remodeled in her image. Then they raided all temples of all human and humanoid priests of hecate and slew them, and set up camp in their now fresh corpses. Within 6 days, there was no record of Hecate, only hekatte.

Hecate, at first felt only pangs of loss, and as this was a regular occurance between temples and wars, it was neither here nor there.. next as the human priests fell, she began to lose power, and grasping at what power remained, she sought out the cause of this, but it was not one place, it was everywhere.. she was unable to pinpoint the pain. Now almost powerless, she took on her three seperate forms and sought out the sites of her former temples.. but with such a quick take over, her memories of her former glory faded and she was trapped.

Now, with all this rush of worship and power, the spider queen rose up as a goddess, but before stepping into the chamber of gods to present herself, the followers of Hekatte, spread out their necromantic magics and rose up all dead, all bodies, all skeletons all zombies and started to spill the blood of the living.. in the name of the blood god.

The Blood god, now engorged on the power, greedily invited Hekatte into the chamber of gods, as they in turn began to gasp at the loss of their followers. Death had come to the world, and the only gods capable of stopping had no reason to do so. The god of death welcomed his new followers, the god of the underworld his new souls, the goddess of destruction, the fall of empires and the goddess of necromancy, magic and witchcraft took her now rightful place as most powerful god. But being a new and childish god, she did not stop to play the games of gods, no she, like any spider with a fly in their net, drank the lifeblood of all the fallen gods.

With little to no gods to help them, the mortals fell to the chaos and destruction. Heroes were without their god given powers, mages without their magic, only the followers of darkness seemed to keep their abilities.

It only took three months to eradicate 90% of life from the planet, another three for the next 9%..but it was too late, the spider queen began to feel the power fading, and thought that this was normal. She had done what she set out to do.. but she then discovered the backdoor.

Gods had found a way to leave this world, she hadn't gotten them all.. Revenge was snatched away from her.

She contacted her council of Skull Spiders, the greatest undead necromancers of the land, and they began to use the last of their dying powers to forge the Keys of Doors, 5 skull spiders that could be sent through a portal, to the worlds these gods had escaped to. If Three of the skull spiders could get close enough to each other, they could open a portal to this dying world and the spider queen could cross over and bring her army of undeath with her.

This has happened several times, catching some of the gods, but not all, and killing off the world, leaving a desolate place where only the gods of blood, death and destruction behind.   

The Crypts of the Necrolords.

When the Spider Skulls come to your world, they 'copy' 5 crypts of well known local evil anti-heroes. They plant themselves in these crypts as 'necromantic tokens' or 'prizes'. Giving off great purple necromantic flows of magic into the air around them, unless they are mostly coated in silver or kept in a silver box.  Between each Crypt, a line of magic flows, At the crossroads of the magic lines of these crypts, they create a rocky like fort, which contains a false lich. Each lich has not only their normal powers, but also summons up a greater elemental to protect them.

The Skulls are indestructable, and if struck, cause Undead Ogres or Trolls to be summoned from afar, clambering to claim the skulls and take them to the nexus of the 5 crypts.

If any Skull is taken from the initial crypt it will begin to open tears in reality, allowing the heroes to accidentally visit small pockets of the fallen world, often nothing but blood filled rivers and lakes, no living plant life, occasional remnants of settlements from the world, and some cannabalistic last living beings, as only these lives exist, nothing else to eat, and no plague or pestilence as the gods are gone.. meat never goes off.

If Two skulls get close together (the players have raided two crypts and brought out two together) Much larger creature manage to pull themselves from the destroyed world into this world, Randomly encountered creatures but more powerful and undead appear sometimes weekly sometimes daily.

If Three Skulls get too close, they will most certainly summon the larger more deadly undead, seeking out the skulls energy.

If three or more of the five skulls are brought to the nexus of the 5 crypts, and their eyes pointed into the same location, it tears a rift to the spider queens lair.. she awaits this, and her army of death pours into this world from this and hundreds of other locations across the world. This is the end.

But, if the three skulls are pointed outwards, the rift appears around the skulls, teleporting the heroes into the realm of death at the foot of the tower of the spider queen.

Besides the Elementals of Blood, an Army of Skull spiders and the council of spider necromancers, The Skull queen is a goddess, she is far too powerful for any group of heroes to defeat.. unless the heroes ask her for a boon.

She will be in so much shock, she will retreat, then return to ask for a crown. Once crowned by these heroes, she will be content and all will stop.

If the heroes don;t think of this, they have only one choice, to slay everyone who knows of the Spider Queen Goddess. They must defeat the entire council, and return to the blood worlds, seek out all living beings (d100) and slay them.. all the while, being chased by skull spiders, and having nothing locally to eat. Luckily with so little life on the planet, any simple scry will point out the location of each individual. The previous world has fallen since and nothing survives.

 

[off-topic] Payment for services rendered - Programmer

Something that's been nagging me for some time now, is the payment system in companies for services. a.k.a. employment, and how programmers and engineers have royally screwed ourselves, and I blame the hippies, oh and its related to the gaming industry ten-fold.

As an Artist, where are my royalties?

When an Artist creates art, which sells, again and again and again, they get paid for the copies. They own the original, that took them more time and effort to create the original than effort to reproduce.

When a write writes a book, and that book sells, they get royalties on each sale, as long as its being used, and money is changing hands, some of it goes to the person who deals with the ownership, chases the payments etc (the agent) and some goes to the original writer.

So when a programmer 'writes' code, and that code is used to make money, then provided the programmer is also the owner, they get money as long as someone buys the product.

But when a programmer works hard, more effort to create than to reproduce, (s)he gets an hourly wage if (s)he's lucky, and overtime if (s)he's not

I was having a hard time trying to think of any other worker that gets the short end of the stick in being the creator, yet earning none of the profits. Actors get royalties, Artists, Writers, Musicians, yes there is some flow, some screwed, some not, but the system is designed (if flawed) to give them royalties.

So why not programmers?

Because in the beginning, it was a labour of love. People don't care to demand hard cash for something they enjoy doing. Just enough to get by on. The whole concept of digital free, if it can be so easily reproduced, why should I pay for it? This infects the industry of all royalty systems, except in games, where the programmers are screwed. They get an hourly wage, no matter how poorly or how awesomely they work. Which might be why, as often as not, games are so badly done.. its no longer for the lolz, not for the beauty, not for the experience..

Imagine a group of artists, paid to draw millions of pictures, to make a movie, and they all have to 'create' each and every image, from scratch, but collaborate with other artists to make sure it comes together as a coherent whole at the end, to make an animated movie. How insane would that be? Disney Artists had sketches to work from, they copied a style, they drew the frames, but they didn't have to 'recreate' the model for each and every frame.

Worse is the trickle down effect on the industry.

When a big company can spurt out a $0.99 mobile game that has fabulous graphics and half decent game play, they can do so because 100,000 people are going to buy it. Now the customer has an expectation of what a 'mobile game' costs, so they expect their games at that quality and price.

But the little guy, to make the same game, has to spend months of his life, years even to make a game, flesh it out, draw the art, etc and he needs 25k a year to survive, but only 10,000 people see his game, and 80% of them get the free version, so he earns $2,000.

The expectation of the programmer has gone from being a god, someone who can control the amazing lights of the internet, and is in command of the very lifeblood of the future.. to a worker, a slave to the system, a cog. 

How the mighty have fallen..

[worldbuilding] Discovering old maps part 2

Having discovered my old maps and deciding to rework them, I continue on my path to create a new.. old world

Part One

The Canvas

To really get a feel for what I was doing, I gathered all my maps and looked over them, drew out sketches of things, very very general sketches.. making sure certain issues were dealt with..

The first was simple world physics. The Original Coyn World was far smaller, the sun would pass overhead which would mean very long days, very hot days.. or the sun would need to move so fast you could watch it shift shadows. So I needed to 'set' the sun to match the more current world maps which I worked on the physics for months before I got it all right.

So the sun rises and falls on the rim of the coyn, but now a new problem.. in the centre of the world is a spire (because remember, that this world was more directly a copy of Terry Pratchett's Discworld). So with only a 30. degree rise, the spire would blot out the sun on the other side of the world, making winter in some areas deadly.. while interesting.. was going to break too many maps..

Zoom in to see details.

So I adjusted the rules of the sun, 40. degree, sped it up slightly to ensure an earth approximate temperature, checked the maths, then started measuring the spire. (see the little image below.. it had to get shrunk..60%)

As you can see from the image, the spire shadow would (from the 16 different months) only cover half of the world in winters shadow.

Now, since I was going to use the zoomed in section, I needed to ensure that any nearby mountain ranges might not interfere with the suns rays.. there was.. you can see the mountain with the green sun lines to determine its midday ranges..

Next, I plotted out the suns direction to give me some workable lines. I no longer had the cad program I used before and I calculated the time it would take to make a new program to work the maths, would exceed the time I would take to simply draw lines on a map myself. So I drew the lines myself.

One Shadow Map

I'm not going to bore you with 16 variants of map, just one. What I did was work out the distances the sun was from the local hills, and the height of the sun at 9am, midday and 3pm, and "shifted" the mountain peaks lines in an art program and filled in the shadows with a darker colour.

Shadow Lines, Shadow Months & Sun Levels

Then I blended all images together to give me a colour coded map for the 4 months of summer, winter, spring and autumn so I could determine biomes. If an area got 2-3 hours of sun, mid-autumn, but remained in the shadow of the local mountains, its going to be a colder region, and will less likely to have temperate forests, so I'd colour those zones with a light green/blue, if it got sun all 18 hours of the day, all times of the year, its going to be a desert.

Rainfall Levels

Next I started adding Water. Simple google searches explain how water evaporates off the ocean, flows across the land, then when it hits mountains it becomes rain and produces forests and rivers and the like. So I mapped out the general flow of the clouds and map a map of that.

Forests in Green, Deserts in Yellow

Next I made sure my river beds on the original maps matched the flow of water coming from the mountains. I had made some mistakes, but mostly it was ok, so I matched the rivers to the shadows to the biomes and drew in the spots where forests could grow (not would.. just could).

Then I scanned all these, and overlayed them in the art program, and this gave me the 'concept' of where the forests 'would be' before humans started chopping them down and building places.

Not that its easy, but you might be able to see that my original 1991 maps have quite different forest lines to the new more legit maps

Lots of little trees, all those green dots.. (yes I'm using copics)

So far so good.

So my new map now has a very cool desert like terrain, not exactly Sahara, but more Australia/Arabia/Egypt, so that unlocks some opportunities. Also the larger expanses of plains on the east, could be used for some battles.. European style.. and now the central valleys are all cold.. snowy cold.. so I can also make some cool little Russian/Mongolian Taiga locations.

Plot-hooks

The Main draw card for this island, is the History. 12 gigantic Ziggurats from an ancient civilization of 9ft tall crocodile people, built of gold, (based on the 'cities of gold t.v. series when I was a kid). Heroes across the world catch boats here, travel through the cities, spend their money, and some return from the ziggurats with a gold brick the size of a dog, enough to retire the entire group, if they so wish.
My notes are sketchy as to what they contain, but I have some maps and a few pages of notes, so I just need to piece it together (and re-watch the t.v. series to see if it sparks any memories). the main point comes from one line at the top of the page:

"The Ziggurats are heavily guarded, not by living creatures, as they would have died eons ago, no but by traps, ingenious deadly traps, that are designed for 9ft tall priests, who know the correct path, to be able to traverse safely, at the right time, in the right season."

My notes only included traps that players came across, (I used to make everything up as I went). Chessboard battles, Illusionary chasms, a Cart-Voodoo puzzle and some giant cat statues that shoot lazers? So now I just need some ingenious traps to flesh out the rest of the rooms..

Lastly, because I never got around to finishing it, I'm putting the dead remains of one of my old roleplay groups, in a set of Crypts that guard ancient treasures that they collected

Narrative Sharing, my two cents

Just Wanted to jump on the bandwagon of this wave on the interwebs.

You can look at the arguments across some of the forums, from here and here and here and here

TL;DR; If used sparingly, a narrative mechanic might work, but you gotta be a dang good GM to know how to use it.

Should Players have Narrative Control?

Sure, about themselves, their characters, their decisions, for the most part. When players suddenly decide their law abiding paladin decides to slaughter innocent children, I gotta ask the player.. "hey buddy, that makes zero sense for your character, should we talk about whats happening?" So maybe not 100%.

When it comes to asking the now famous question: "Do I see a rock nearby?" or the other "is there a Botany book in this library" Now we're getting to some of the problem.. I'm thinking, probably yes, but, ... and I'll get to that..

When a player starts saying things like, " I wanna play an elf" and I say, "sorry, but the campaign is set too far from any reasonable expectation of an elf being within dragon-spitting distance, let alone born here, what is it you want to play?" we're not talking narrative, we're talking setting.. so thats another point.. kind of a yes.. but.

If a player ask, in my Pratchettesque fantasy setting, " I want to buy a glock.38" then I'm going to look at him quizzically and say, "you do realize this is a fantasy game right? no guns?" so that's a plain.. No.

Working backwards:

Setting, I hope it doesn't need to be explained in detail, no-one is really arguing that a player insists on breaking the setting, and that a GM need to allow it. strike it off the list.

Bending the setting, When a player wants to create his character that's not really permissible. Early GMs might capitulate because they don't know or haven't experienced how sometimes saying yes to make the player feel good, will break the world. My example of an Elf above, would suggest, somehow against all logic and reason, some Elven parents managed to sneak into territory hostile to elves, have a kid, raise him, all the while disguising themselves and their kid until adult-hood, enough that he can now become an adventurer with the group. This is when my players can use my Karma system, what would be Fate/Bennies/points that could make this 'background' ok, why? Does that break my world? no because its setting, we haven't started playing, its developing their own character, their background, in a way that is interesting to the player and the group.

Ok, struck from the list.. Now for in-game player narrative..

Looking at the Idea, Is there a Book about Botany in the library. To start most would agree, It is pre-destined or it is unknown.  In the case of the pre-destined book existing we have the concept of, the GM pre-thought the books existence or non-existence, and is in his notes. "the Library contains only roleplay manuals". But realistically, a book about botany not existing in a library, sounds quite far-fetched, so maybe the GM takes a moment and thinks.. hmm, well maybe..

So we're left with the Schrodinger cat conundrum, Does the Book exist or not? Like many before me have spoken, There seems two camps of thought..The Book has a chance of existing, because the world has a statistical chance of it existing, or the Book exists because of Narrative reasons.

With the chance of existing, the statistical value is based on factoids that the GM mostly knows, but maybe the players might also know if its a published adventure world, such as forgotten realms or Warhammer40k. In this case, most GMs who follow this style of GMing would roll a percentile dice of chance to see if the book exists. If it does, it does, the GM didn't decide that it existed, the plot didn't decide, The statistical chance determined that is was there all along, the percentile roll only determined that the player found it. Actually, the roll might determine that the player didn't find it, but its still actually there.. If a tree falls in the woods, does the GM hear it?

From the Narrative point of view, the Books existence is based on the flow of the story. If the player has an idea and the idea doesn't directly break the GMs current world view, he allows it, because the player has more narrative control.. and this seems to be the whole argument..

Did the book exist? or did it pop into existance because the player, and not the GM determined it needed to exist.. will this break the world?

Some game systems and Improv Theatre roleplay groups insist that this be the norm, if the GM didn't previously state that it was not so, then the players should be able to include it, sometimes for some kind of point/luck/benny/fate cost.. 

Now sure, if a group decides together that this should be the way they play.. go for it.. find out the dangers and benefits, play to their hearts contents, but don't for a second expect me to listen to your story with any level of immersion, its like kids explaining how cool it is to play a game with god-mode on, or how cool minecraft is in creative mode.. no.. its not cool.. I'm not going to say that to their sweet little cherub faces of course, but I know deep down that they've missed out on the very reason roleplay games work.. 

Experience, creativity, boundaries and obstacles.

Its fun to figure out a puzzle, we get the boundaries and the obstacles, we use creativity and when we solve it we are wiser for the experience. If we can suddenly change the boundaries, how will be ever be able to learn how to solve the original puzzle? we've changed the puzzle and we solve, probably an easier version, probably we've changed it to something we've already done before, because its easier, so we don't even learn anything new.. 

Lets look at the rock in the above example..

The Player stands in a stream and says "Oh I need a rock, is there one nearby?"

Every GM says, of course there's likely to be a rock in a stream, and lets them have one. I say.. Hang on.. what is the player asking? I have an idea.. I want to use a rock for something.. spell component or throw it or.. something.. In a movie, there will be a rock if there needs to be, because we like luck to favour the hero. If the plot determines that a rock will make the event too boring too easy, then there is no rock.. but that's a movie.. Its understood by the writer and director where the movie is going so they can balance this exactly as needed.. but a GM, on the fly? with a player who hasn't told the GM what the rock is for yet? how can he judge if that rock is going to make or break the plot.. so its easier to determine.. likely that rock exists in reality, the player wants one.. so let him have it.

I might think also.. wait, is that player always 'coming up with ideas at the last moment? and using his fate/benny/luck to change the plot? how will a person grow, if he expect life to always have things ready for him.. so maybe the rock will be there, but not accessible, not right this very combat round.. so he thinks, next time, next time I'll get a rock and be prepared, have one in my pocket.. like a good adventurer should.

That's sorta "yes, and" but I've created an obstacle to what they wanted, because they thought of it at the last second and wanted 'god' to 'shift' reality to accommodate, which I hate to do, but they are heroes and they should be lucky, because roleplay is a little cinematic.. but they have to use the luck.

Why is this acceptable to me? because dice are fickle, and narrative is not supposed to end because someone rolled a 1 at the wrong time, but I don't want to bend the rules, because then it never ends.. and when I've played games with GMs who rule bend to keep the narrative, I got bored almost instantly.. why bother to try so hard if the GM is just going to allow me to do my cool thing because it fit the narrative or as much it didn't break the narrative. So I included a mechanic, dice are fickle, monsters and NPCs might die because life is like that, but you are heroes, so if you make a choice and it results in poor dice rolls, you can use your luck to take back that roll, and live another day.. but learn from your mistakes, because you have a limited pool and once they run dry, you've out of luck.

For systems without some kind of saviour, I don't see an answer. fickle dice will kill a straight simulationist story, but player narrative will destroy players agency in the long run, and make a game boring. finding the right balance is hard.. which is why people will argue about it.

Monopoly New House Rule

Just watched an interesting article about how Monopolies original concept was to teach you to hate the rise of the real-estate barons, I guess that's why everyone gets that negative feeling when playing..

Heres the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeLPNVmzerg

But an Idea popped up from watching, specifically from the one point,

Choose your Direction, after you roll.

   In roll and move board games, players are at the mercy of the dice. Many games that use this mechanic (which many board games designers call the worst ever mechanic) don't give you any choice, you roll, you see what it results in, you follow the rules of that square, pass the dice.

   The Idea of player agency, player choice, which makes game more interesting, is in monopoly, which is probably why it did so well, vs snakes & ladders and other games of its time. You roll the dice, but then you have a choice, buy the property at the listed price or be the auctioneer on the property (Original rules had no listed price, you just went to auction automatically). Also, if the up coming properties were already taken, you engaged the players in conversation before rolling the dice, get them distracted about some other topic, roll casually, count out your position in your head and if you landed on someone elses property, pass the dice and encourage them to roll "quick game is a good game" as you moved your piece.. if they rolled quick enough, you escaped the rent.

   Paying attention, in a time when board games were more about an excuse to have conversation and get together, than to actually play, was more critical.

But one rule that was lost to time, was the agency of choice. When you rolled. you could choose which direction you wanted to move, except backwards past go (see there was a reason there was an arrow) you could only pass go in one direction to get paid.

Thinking about it, how many lost opportunities are there for games where this kind of mechanic could be employed. What you gain in not going forward to a bad square and going backward to a safer square, you give up in faster income, also teaching players that sometimes going backwards in life can be the better choice.

What other dice choice mechanics could we be using? 

Roll two dice, and move either the value of one dice or the other.. choice in your possible results.

How about moving one die forward and the other backward, takes longer to move around the board, but give you choice.

Two dice, move either the result or either of the individual dice, or reverse for the same. Now you have six possible choices, throw in the +/- variant and you have eight possible locations to choose from..

[Worldbuilding] Discovering Old Maps Part 1.

Have you ever packed up all your stuff, moved, and then forgotten to unpack one box, stuck in storage, back room or shed or some place, then you open it years later and say "oh wow, I forgot I had all this?" Tag that emotion..

The Discovery

I left my mums place when I was 19, packed a lot of things in boxes to move, but my new place was big enough to expand into. I wrote a lot of notes into old books. At the start of a new year, around  February / March, Diaries become cheaper, so I picked up what was $20 hard cover, leather bound business diaries for maybe $2.

In these I would write my game rules, notes, adventures, everything. I even have old receipts and budgets for my lifestyle..

When I moved from that place, I had to go home for 6 months to sort out my finances, so most of my stuff, unable to fit into my small room, had to get put in boxes.

Digital Version of my world and how I made it

When I moved from there to my next place, I had the room, but I sorta maybe forgot about the older stuff, I maybe felt like my old notes were not as good as my newer notes, I was more grown up.

Also I had decided to make things digital, I could map things in the Civilisation game, sort out what was where and structure things more systematically.. so why would I ever use all my old maps again?

So they stayed in their boxes and I made all new maps.

Fast forward >> I GMd for several years, made a whole new version of my rules, shelved the old version, and with it, made all new maps >> Then I left Australia, travelled Europe to understand more of what makes roleplay interesting and returned to start the whole next version of my rules to match the growing and changing landscape that is the roleplay community >>

So 2013, I move into a new place, and take all my boxes stored in my mothers roof and put them on my shelves.. but I'm studying so hard, I have no time to actually check them

The Orginal (Upper Right) Albius, Drawn 1991

And now its 2015, a month ago I opened up a few boxes and started to sift through.. Cue tagged emotion.. WOW!

What to do with it all? a lot of it was almost useless.. maps we never got around to using, places that had no names.. is it worth it to bother to use a map because I made it 25 years ago?

Is it any different to making a new one?

Well I decided to stick to my original plans.. History is written by those who survive, so whose to say that the world map I had was 'legit' It could be a map that someone could have drawn based on theory and conjecture, rather than the actual world map.. that allowed for some 'adjustments for reality'

Then also, we had stories about characters from ages ago.. players who played in our games and I could ask them to recall their events and write them in this blog or put some together as 'histories' all manner of creative ideas can come from it.

The Lands of Albius, Drawn June 2015

So, I decided.. since my blog has been a bit sparse of late, that I would document the 're-creation' of my game world, using original maps, updated maps, notes, structures of ideas and things from 1989-1996, prior to the Civ Maps, and use them as my "original world" series.

My endevour, to 'match' enough of the maps and map notes together to make one cohesive world, without breaking any of the history, (but maybe breaking a tiny bit of continuity, but creatively) and document the process.

Link to be Added:

Veterans Day in your world

After seeing so many of the 11/11/11:11 posts, I was reminded of an old TV-show that had rigged up a trap to go off and shoot anyone trying to access a treasure chest. It was such a moment in my childhood that I never forgot, So I was going to write about that..

But then I saw a photo-shoot of returned, healed veterans, missing arms, legs, both, faces from burns.. and for a moment I thought.. no-one in a fantasy world would be coming back like that, they'd either die.. or get miracle cures / limited wish back to full health.. but I asked myself again..

What would happen to veterans in our fantasy worlds

Our lives are affected by events around us, what we see, how other people explain what they see, and the cumulative effect it has upon us.

So When roleplay characters have events around them, their lives will be affected as much.. yet I get the feeling that maybe some GMs forget to add that to their games and worlds.

How Often have you had NPCs in taverns talk about the last great war, how it affected them, what they did, their stories. More interestingly, how did the non-worldly events change things. Magic can be both napalm and airstrikes, tactical strikes and reconnaissance, so would a medieval war be like we think of a medieval war? or would it be more on par with WWI & II, even some of the skirmishes being played out now.

What of Healing? If a cleric or three exist on the battlefield, wouldn't they be the no.1 target for all strikes? Mass heals, miracle cures, Resurrection for the top brass or greatest heroes? Surely the local kings would be half decent warriors, and would go into battle daily, with the knowledge that no matter what, they'll be alive again the next day.

I don't know about many systems, but my Clerics gain XP for healing, based on the wound and how much healing took place. After a week of constant, regular healing, plus surgery, they'd gain a level or maybe two, sure the diminishing returns would take out some of the smaller HP heals, but any mid level Cleric/Priest with a minor in healing, is going to get more than half a dozen levels from just being on call.. 

and if they were running M.A.S.H. I'd have some epic level doctors by the end of the campaign.

What of the wounded? the dying? ok guys, rush them all into this 10x10m room, and I'll mass heal everyone to stop bleeding and close severe wounds.. then the junior clerics can take over and do some extra healing on the severely wounded, and within a few days the entire platoon would be back on their feet, right as rain.

Only the dead would be the limiter, so get those clerics in some arrow resistant armour, out on the battlefield, and heal them before they die, not much, just enough to survive the trip back to hospital.

Wars would go on for much longer. Soldiers would gain enough XP to level up, by the end of a campaign, you'd have an army of 3rd or 4th levels.. that's a scary thought.. maybe that's why they go fighting, for massive XP boosts.

Sieges might be the same, except a few mages that summon up food would counter the main problem, and the sight buff spells would take care of sappers and other tricks from the enemy..

Again Mages, they could do all the fighting, summon up creatures, back him up with a cleric to cover the possible backlash and damage.. (Magic the Gathering?)

begs the Question.. why hire, train and pay an army, if a few mages and clerics would do.

Would War even exist in such a fantasy world? could it still exist? The enemy declares war on your kingdom, so you send over an assassin, kills the opposition king, then maybe a bard, disguised using voice and illusion spells, pretends he's king for a bit, strikes up a treaty, then retires, to allow his 'friend' (you) to rule his lands too.

But the question in the beginning is, if wars are changed, people arn't coming back missing parts, burnt faces, and the greater populace doesn't see this, how will they be affected.. how will they think about wars.. just some crazy game played by kings? go off, have a good fight, don't get killed and you'll be right? return all levelled up? ready to be a hero?

Doesn't feel ok to talk about it in such glib terms, but I think that's the survival mechanism kicking in, so would a medieval person feel the same way about it, not having yearly reminders?

Devils Advocate to RPG-think

An interesting read at the ConTessa blog, about worldbuilding and how 'trope-heavy' RPG worlds are broken:

When Game Mechanics Drive World-Building, part 1.

and

When Game Mechanics Drive World-Building, part 2

Got me thinking about how this is a very simulationist way of thinking (I use the term only because I have yet to find/invent something better), but I wanted to address the many points, and posting heavy text blocks in someone elses blog seems.. excessive.. or even rude.

So I'm going to play:

Devils Advocate to RPG-think

I won't assume you've read the article, instead I'll sum up the points and address them from the narrative perspective. 

1. Magic Shops: The Premise

So, the idea is, that in each and every town is a supposed magic shop full of ingredients and components, spell books and scrolls, potions and the like. The likelyhood of this happening is next to zero, so why does every fantasy RPG do it?

Lets set up some understandings. to be an RPG world, you can't have just one set of heroes. Its not a 'these are the only heroes there are' story, because if it was, the entire premise of anyone having magical potions available for heroes is preposterous. Every single potion, scroll or magical weapon would be unique items, made by unique people, for unique reasons.

Ye Olde Madgick Shop

So then we are left with two possibilities: The world has a fair number of heroes, or the world is filled with heroes.

With a filled with heroes concept, then its obvious that every town or village should have a magic shop. They become the 7-11 of the fantasy world. This in itself should require the simulationist GM to need to label the bottles 'McDonalds Healing Potion" or "Healthy Meal" with 1 potion, 1 ration and 1 charm (one use) resist all.

The 'fair number of heroes' premise, would be something more akin to a car salesman. you're not going to make sales often, but when you do, you pay all your bills for the year.

Personally I like this idea.. little old man, alchemist, retires, has a little shop front, makes salves for the locals, in case they scratch their knee, but need to dance that evening. but once in a while, he breaks out the expensive stuff for the heroes that pass through, the gold they dump on him, buys the next 2-3 sets of ingredients to brew them up again, pay off any debts/tabs built up since the last time, plus some change to buy Christmas gifts for the next 10 years.

For Narrative GMs:

Players are not really taking note of the reasons for the magic shop to exist. There doesn't need to be a magic shop in every single town, it just so happens, there is in every town the players happen to go in.

2. Thieves Guilds: The Premise.

 

Suprisingly (or not) finding images of a Theives Guild was hard
Mostly just in game images. Art by Isriana

Here, the idea is that, since earth has very little proof of guilds of thieves existing, therefore, they didn't exist. This suggests that they were just good at what they're supposed to do. Remain hidden from public. The Mafia always seemed like a thieves guild to me.

Moreover, the concept is that any kind of 'guild for one class' would have far reaching effects upon the world at large, heirachy, dues to the city council, power play, etc.

Now, the effect would be far more prominent if we have a filled heroes world because almost every hero would belong to a guild, and there would be some kind of guild in-fighting.

A fair heroes world, would be more likely to have singular guild halls, with affiliations to other guilds. Asian fighting schools had this, students could travel to a nearby town and talk to the dojo master about his own master, and if they were friends.. he could stay for the night, maybe even train somewhat.

For Narrative GMs

Unless your plot involves or revolves around the interplay between guilds, there is no reason for the players to see any. Ignore this and include them as you will.

3. Temples for each god: The premise

 

City of Churches You'd need a city just to fit one of every church - Art by Chao Yuan Xu

For each Cleric/Paladin/Priest to access their spells, they need to pray to their god in a specific temple? I was not aware of the rule myself, but even if we disclude(yes, the taking out of an included item) the requirement, pretty much most villages have a local temple to the local pantheon.

I'm not really at all sure why this is considered strange. All across Europe I saw temples and churches to multiple religions, if the town was big enough. Cities would have hundreds of them. Not one temple would turn away a person who wanted to pray, regardless of religion.

Now, sure, maybe some gods hate other gods, so praying in a rival gods temple might be considered rude or worse. But surely the gods wouldn't require their followers only worship in a temple. They'd lose half their followers (I was mid adventure, but my god didn't answer me, so we called off the quest)

For Narrative GMs

Again, your players are traveling to places where your god has sway, unless the plot requires that your cleric has limited access in these lands, creating a power sink for the group, to make the next scene more dangerous (and the players have to think more with a low/no powered cleric).

Conclusion

Worldbuilding, can be in many ways, the opposite to Plot building. Maybe instead of Narrartive vs Simulation, it should be called world-built or plot-driven styles of play.

For Narrative/Plot driven play, there is no need to care if your world 'works' or not, the shop keeper is surly because the story works best that way, not because he had a bad argument with his wife the night before, about the lack of flowers for her anniversary.

But for World Builders, these things are critical. You can't have magic shops, thieves and fighters guilds and player specific temples in every town, you need to map out the influences of each of these forces, and how they came about in the world, to ensure that they are robust. 

More to come on this train of thought.