Co Gamesmastering

 There is a trend, I've noticed, in splitting up the role of the gamemaster, so that less mentally prepared gamemasters can still run the game, without having to do 10x as much work as the players. At first I was like, NO! (as a backlash to GM-less games) but then I understood, I've always done this. 

Ways to Co-Gamesmaster.

The Gamesmaster runs many roles, For me the underlying plot points, major NPC actions behind the scenes and how they affect the other NPCs that interact with the players. Economic flows of goods, services and information based on NPC actions and player actions, often less dominant for shorter 3 month campaigns, but are almost vital to immersive roleplay with longer campaigns, often done by the GM between campaigns.

Then the more nitty gritty, crunchy subsets of individual NPC motivations, how to roleplay those NPCs and this includes BBEGs as much as the minions, townsfolk and random encounters.

Yet some GMs I find, are so bogged down in other aspects of the game, they don't have time for the above; instead combat, maps, dungeons, gear tracking take up their time. None of these need be done by the GM. Lets look at ways to break down the components of the game for players to be more equal in the games tasks.

Combat

Often there are players who are one-trick wonders, spell casters, healers and some rogues, just are not built for ongoing battles. These players are left wanting at the table, causing games to even change their rules to be more inclusive, breaking the basic world rules, in an attempt to give all players something to do each round. (most DnD spells, in a town setting, can be used to advance economies, so why risk life and limb, when you can be employed locally to work your magic)

Get these players to be in charge of the monsters, they'll pull punches, and let the heroes win, but the GM can play as the boss monster to balance it all out. Everyone is involved.

Maps

Vice Versa, when combat is done, and the barbarian is just walking along with the group, unable to swing their sword, maybe the player can sketch out the map, drawing out the GMs descriptions of corridors and rooms, and if they get it a little wrong, well more realism, more immersion. (all players can contribute, to avoid, if need be)

Rules Lawyers

As often as not, players don't have the time to be looking up spells, components, prayers and effects, players not engaged with the rooms traps or secrets, might glance through the rulebook, looking up how they'll level up, or what spells they'll need for the next room. In real life, when someone is taking charge and looking around a room, others saunter in the corridor, or stand by the door, ready to leap out when a trap triggers, while they stare off into space, have the player pre-prepare some skill calculations.

Dungeons

As often as not, a dungeon can be created with random tables, maybe the player would like to be the dungeon designer this session. DD12 has a clear and fairly simple set of rules on how to develop a dungeon, without going overboard in monsters or treasure. Often a side lair is a good little random encounter on the path from town to the main quest. Players might pick up some extra treasure, and a scratch or two. Let your players learn the ropes, by making one of these lairs.

Bards Tales

Some players like to track the details of an adventure, jotting down the notes of each step along the way, helps in many little ways. The following week, when trying to remember the events for experience, a quick handy list helps remind everyone of where they are in the plot, what's coming up, what not to skip/miss and gets the group into the game a little faster.

Logistics

Have a player track all goods the party has, but also, approx. how much it was purchased for. In real life, we often remember these little bits of information, because we remember the whole path, picking out the goods, seeing the price, going to the shop keeper, maybe a discussion, then handing over the coin, taking the goods home, glancing at the receipt maybe, opening the goods. The whole process is flushed away in roleplay, and just the object is written on the character sheet, and the coin deleted. Having this info written in the log acts as the players memory of those events.

NPCs

When an NPC is not vital to the plot, and a PC's character has retired for the night, or is incapacitated, or in another scene entirely, don't have them bored waiting for their turn, hand them an NPC card, with some motivations, ideas, and possible skills, and get them to do the interaction. Shopkeepers, Urchins, Salesmen, Gate Guards and more, are all fairly common NPC tropes, let the players roleplay together, while you watch as the assassin from the rooftops.

Conclusion

So yes, the GMs role is huge, if you want to do it well, so why not split out many little tasks for your players.  

I'm hurt man.. hurt BAD

 Sometimes, I like to experiment with obfuscation of the values, so players can 'roleplay' better, instead of:

Obfuscating the Hit Points

Back in version 1, 2 and even some of 3, I had the old hit points. Players would start with approx. 10, and gain approx. 1-2 per level. When they got wounded, they'd lose HP, when healed, gain HP, when at 0, start making unconscious checks, and at -3 death checks. very old-school.

Players could take extra bonuses in health, KO or death scores.. one player devoted his hero points to this, and at 18th level, had well over 75 HP, a KO of -7 and death at -7 more (-14). Based on the ruling at the time, it was near impossible to kill him. he soaked so much damage, could out last any opponent of similar level.

Players would have, the same above conversation, the tactical advantage of knowing how many HP they had, if they should heal a person or not, based on values, that in real life don't exist. I wanted to get that movie moment, when one character is 'dying' then later they pull it together and keep going, then when their adrenaline kicks in, they do some amazing stuff, even though they're "dying".
So I tried this out (You can use this for a game attempt, its kind fun, for GMs, but might be a little math intensive for younger GMs)

The Hurt System:

First, you make a quick note of players Health, Stress, and the CON and WLP bonuses or your games equivalent for health stats and mental health stats. Players can 'cope' with their Willpower bonuses of damage, but they can take Constitution worth of actual damage.

The point is, to not tell players how close to death they are, just tell them how close to death they FEEL. A player unhurt, will feel like the first cut is far worse than it is, based on how much pain they can normally cope with (their CON bonus), but once in pain, further hits don't feel as bad, because they are already in pain the distraction and adrenaline, will make them feel like the same amount of pain, is actually less.

The way to do this is to glance at the damage done, divide it by the willpower/pain bonus and tell the player "The blade cuts deep into your flesh, you are in extreme pain" according to how much the results were. 

When a player is 'hurt' you inform them to write "hurt" in their health box, If they are in extreme pain, they write extreme pain. 

0-1: Light grazing, 1-2: Hurt, 2-3 badly hurt/ cut deep 3-4: extremely wounded, 4-5 dangerously wounded, 5-6 mortally wounded, 6+ at deaths door.

But here's the rub, A player with 30 health, taking 10 damage, with a pain of 3, is going to be at stage 4 (round up) but another player, with 20 health, taking 4 damage, with a pain of 1 is going to be at pain stage 4 too.

So, then after the 1st wound, when a player takes a 2nd wound, you reduce the 'pain' by their con bonus, to account for adrenaline kicking in..

Player #1 with 30 health, takes another 10 damage, which would be 4 more pain, but her con reduces it by 2, so she only gets 2 more pain levels.. the pain from the wound is just badly wounded, but the total of 6 is mortally wounded, so you'd inform the player they were wounded, and they can feel the icy grip of death nearing.

Player #2, with 20 health, took another 4 damage, since their pain threshold is 1, they feel like they have taken a grievous wound, but since their con bonus is 2, and the total damage is only 8, they are only at the extremely wounded stage (4) rather than their pain threshold level of 8.

Player #1, with 2/3rd of their health gone, is feeling like death, their individual wounds don't feel so bad, but over all they feel bad. Player #2 takes each wound like they are deadly, yet overall are feeling ok.

The purpose here is not to be specific, but instead more descriptive, so the player can easily identify if they are going to die based, not on actual health, but on perceived health.

The Threshold System

Another, less mathmatical intense version is to just keep track of the most wounds they have ever taken, setting an 'invisible' 0, then dividing the difference into 4 or more 'stages'.. 

The above example, we reset, player #1 with 30 hit points.. takes 10 points of damage (a deadly blow, almost killing them!) in their first battle, so the GM jots down 10 as their threshold.

In the next battle, the player takes a quick 3 pt wound, the GM says its a major gash, as its above 1/4th of the threshold, another 5 point wound is also a major gash, later a 3rd major gash pushes their new maximum to 13, and the GM informs the player they are at deaths door as they've gone above their maximum from before.. They retreat from battle, 'barely surviving'

In the next battle, their next 3pt wound is not a major gash, since now, the 1/4th of 13 is 3.25, instead its a minor gash (from the players perspective) yet the 5pt wound is still a major gash.. the player, having seen the earlier 3pt and understood it to be a major gash, now, with another 3pt its a minor gash, wonders... hmm, ok, so I can take more damage than I thought, and like anyone in real life, is probably going to think, Oh, I'm tougher.. rather than 'hey I levelled up'

When they do level up, you increase their actual HP as per normal rules, but you only increase their pain threshold by 1 pt. This works well when you don't announce level ups too, players slowly get used to rolling more successes, but never know their own numbers, just general ideas.. but this is heavy load on the GM to track all players, and only the most pro GMs can handle this level of obfuscation.  

 My Current System

Players, not comfortable with not knowing their damage ratio to death, caused me to try this tactic, which seems to work best for now.

Health points act as the kind of 'threshold' above, if a player has 10 health, they can take 2.5 points of damage, without blinking, if they increase their 'pain' score with skills, it applies to this value.

Once they pass this threshold, the GM warns them, they are now able to be killed. players get cautious when they know any single blow can kill them. which is the effect desired.

Beyond this, players taking damage make system shock tests based on their will power and or constitution, determined by the damage taken vs the total damage already taken.

To evade the constant math that players can sometimes struggle with, the GM will inform them to write in the pain they've taken from any given blow, and the player can see for themselves, what kind of pain they are in. Pain causes negatives to the charactersheet, So players knowing they've taken 1 pain will usually start to question the cost benefit of pushing the battle vs the slippery slope of going on.

Conclusion

The key here, players, will never quite know how far they can push their health & wounds, only the GM, for sandbox games, the GM merely lets players learn via trial and error as to their actual health threshold, and for Narrative style games the GM can allow a wounded character to push on, past actual death, so they can complete the story, and players who have decided to ruin a game, can die off quickly and be asked to leave, without needing to justify the dice results. 

Inktober Intro & Art #01

 I've decided to 'try' to participate in Inktober in 2020. Partially this is for some practice art, in preparation for the Blood Rain Kickstarter next year.

I'm going to draw a bunch of things to include in the PDF and the town Map.

The Town Map is made up of three distinct types of buildings, Inner city Main buildings, Outer city hovels or interesting places, and Downstairs Dungeons. If you're reading this in October 2020 and want to participate, pop me a message of something you'd think matches the theme, I'll add it to the list, and I'll roll a die to see which one I draw from the list. 

Inktober 01: The Shroom Tower.

 

   Nestled on the backstreets of the city proper, Mr Bilk was an avid fan of mushrooms and attempted to use the city sewers as a place to grow some varieties, as he slept, some of his creations were warped, and a brick eating shroom managed to grow itself overnight into this .. building. 

    Interestingly, the Shroom only grew in the night, and by morning had returned to brick, not before of course changing the entire structure of the house.

Mr Bilk was consumed, it seems, into the house on that night, and while now a solid brick house, that is explored sometimes by the daring children, they often exit, white as ghosts, vowing never to return.

    No one lives there now.. yet the lights come on at night, and shadows are seen lurking within.   

Appologies: After posting this, a series of events, unexpected, came up, moving house issues, settlement issues, we were homeless for the month of Oct, so drawing Buildings was furthest from my mind. 

I'm going to endevour to attempt to do this over the coming months, in a build up to my next Kickstarter Project.

HASBROQUEST - The good, the Bad and the Ugly

 So, Hasbro has re-released Heroquest, the game, many of us loved as kids, that nostalgia feel of kicking in a door, beating up the monsters, looting the rooms and moving on to the Boss fight.

Hasbro, has decided to crowd fund their game, to 'get a feel' for how the market will respond.. and its not good.

HASBROQUEST - Fail?

I'm not going to go on about how great Heroquest was, Its a little dated, but its target audience was 10+yr olds so I don't expect it to be on par with Darklight momento Mori, Dungeon Universalis or even Descent. It has the main components, equipment, weapons, armour, spells, monsters, rooms, heroes and a boss fight. It even has a plot!

Instead I'm going to focus on the Hasbro fiasco, how, in many ways, they failed, regardless that they've hit $1.6mil as the time of writing. 

The Good:

Price & Availability:

For many, Heroquest was off-limits. They were born too late, the game was out of print, buying one on eBay would set you back $300, when minimum hourly rates are $15 (the original was AU$30, when hourly rates were AU$5 ) Now under this new campaign, the 'all-in' is $150, and the base box is $100, far more affordable. 

Association:

Some players can't get immersive if their character isn't the same gender as them, this perception-locked some women out of games for years. Now HQ has the full first 4 heroes as females too. Awesome.

Additional Components:

There is an argument about the miniatures (see below) yet, the fully modeled furniture is an improvement, the inclusion of extra model for Sir Ragnar, Mentor and the Witch Lord (again see below) Abominations models, Extra door types for the expansions, and as Stretch goals slowly unlock, we see a wider range of some new Heroes, and some extra monsters for some quests to be even harder. There's a lot more than the original game. Bonues, if you own the original and felt there was little to no need to grab the new version. 

Already Existing Fan Base:

Because of that 'blank map' at the end of the quest book, there were all manner of existing quests published by avid players online, before even the internet, I was downloading HQ maps on Bulletin boards. New Players to the genre will have a plethora of material, so the 'extra content' will keep you going at least a year if you're into it. 

The Bad:

Availability:

Well, its ok for Americans ($30 shipping, when most KS give it for $10).. Sorta sucks for Canadians ($130 shipping costs??? WTH?) and Double sucks for the rest of the world, as its not even available. Buying a game, sending it to one of my friends OS and then having it sent to me is in the ballpark of $100+ shipping. No Thanks.

The Models:

HQ1 (as we'll call the original) was a game aimed at the 10+yr olds, so the miniatures were simplified enough to be accessible for painting. I remember spending weeks learning how to paint by painting up my own set of HQ. It set me on the path of 'local painter' as I painted up several hundred miniatures for the kids in my school, and put a decent amount of pocket money into my club and game.

But the New HQ2 models are complex, complex enough even I'm looking at them and thinking.. do I want to justify buying this, then only give them a base coat of colours with some contrasts? No.. its HQ, I'll have to go full layers, drybrushing, NMM, the works.. but that's time I don't yet have. So those models will likely sit on the shelves for years, unpainted, til my kids are old enough to do it for me.

Pulse:

Some of the content, looks like its pulse exclusive, so the FOMO addicts will HAVE to buy it there. Will retail have all eight hero models? will it have the extra skeletons? dice? We know Ragnar is locked behind the pulse exclusive, but what of Mentor or the Witchlord?

The Ugly:

No Talk:

This is on Hasbro. Pulse isn't kickstarter, and what brings a percentage of Kickstarter projects money, is the watercooler talk, in the forums of each projects. Without that, the community doesn't exist, there isn't much going on, other than all these external, often negative views of the Hasbroquest. And its heartbreaking.. why?

The Goal, The Funds and the Potential.

Most KS backers well know, Second time at the plate, Kickstarter projects, hit millions in their first few days, it rockets up so fast, it brings in hype by itself. Kingdom Death Monster, Frost Haven, They hit a few million in the first few days, and topped Twelve million before their ends.. And they are boutique games, KDM is a very niche audience of Heavy Metal (magazine) Style content, set in a brutal world, and Frosthaven is an Expansion for Gloomhaven. Only people who know this product are likely to back it.

Yet Heroquest is so well known, People will back it, just to have a copy, not even to play it. Then another audience of people who always wanted to play it will have a chance to play, lastly at a easy enough price point of $100, anyone even remotely curious about the hype, might have gone in on it.

Instead, as a result of being in its own crowd-funder, No Community, No Chat with developers let alone other backers, and locked into only USA. It barely hit a million by day 3, and now, several days on, struggles to hit the 2nd stretch goal. It should have been $5mil by now, it should be unlocking 10, or even 20 stretch goals, It should have revealed expansions. 

Hasbro, You lost at least $5mil in sales.. so far.. and honestly, this would have been the biggest KS, topping $15mil had you done it right. 

Conclusion

I love Heroquest, and it pains me to see a product that could be getting into the hands and minds of this next generation of shut-ins, giving them an opportunity to "Escape From Reality".

Yet instead.. of the 11k backers, I doubt more than half will make it into the hands of kids to play it. A Third of the Audience will be my gen, buying for nostalgia. A third (some of which will intersect with the first) will be scalpers or owners, the game will sit on shelves, and not played for months or years. Hopefully at least half will be for kids, for adults who bought it for their kids to play together as a family, and young adults who had enough disposable income to get into this hobby with HQ. 

p.s. I would buy it if I could.. but I can't.. so.. If I'm lucky, retail will have it, and those special minis won't be 'too' expensive online later.

CAVEAT...

Kickstarter is not for companies, its not for existing products, Its not for established brands. 

For that reason, I would give Hasbro a pass, and put the blame directly on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter has come a long way, but the gap between a Kickstarter Audience, and the Retail Market exists. There needs to be a place where Established, Existing Companies can put out a 'product' start, and see if there is an audience for it. Some kind of Niche Starter, or Fund Injector, something companies like CMON and Mythic and Hasbro can come along and say, HEY, we have this cool project, the normal retail way of marketing this will likely end up scraping funds at the middle and the product will need to be scaled back to accomodate that.. BUT INSTEAD, if we launch on this Fund Injector Site (owned by Kickstarter, so members of one, can access the other) We get a target audience, who will let us know with their comments and their wallets, IF a project should exist or not.

Also.. Maybe.. All Fund Injector(FI) projects, are required as part of their terms and conditions, to help fund other projects on kickstarter, based on their success.. kind of a pay it forward system. If you raise $1mil on Fund Injector, you're required to spend $100 on 10x other projects, before you can do another future project. (what I think would be better, is that they mentor KS projects, and provide funding for the project creators, to create their projects.. artists, editors, maybe even project mentors to help newer kickstarters to build better KS project pages)

Also, for security and safety concerns, FI projects are not protected like Kickstarter projects, If you raised the funds, your contractually obliged to deliver the product as advertised, to at least some extent.  

This will help the KS community, Will bring in more people.. Will segregate the audience to understand that KS projects are not pre-order, are not guaranteed to deliver, while FI projects are, or at least are legally obliged to prove it if they couldn't. 

  

Combat, Revisited

 There are several 'parts' of combat, that are often not addressed. While they may not be obvious to the roleplayers in general. If a players is interested here's the reasoning and logic to the way the stats are why they are:

Combat Break Down

In All parts of Combat, it comes down to three simple structures to an attack. Anticipation. Contact. Recovery.

Anticipation, is the part when you decide your going to make an attack. Mechanically, you declare an attack, and pick up your dice. BUT, in that part of the game, your character is 'looking' at where they may attack, and preparing the swing. They anticipate hitting the target.

Contact, happens as they expected, or not, or worse, shocking them into how badly the missed, or in some cases, shocking them into how successful they hit.

and Recovery, gets their weapon back out of the Contact and prepared ready for either defence or the next attack.

Initiative takes all three components into account, which is why the absolute minimum of 3 initiative exists. When a player starts basic combat, they only care to 'hit', even Initiative in basic combat is obfuscated out into 'number of attacks'. And if the characters is a non combatant, they may never learn, understand nor care about the parts of combat.

But. Epic Warriors will.

First, Anticipation. 

A Warrior worth their salt, will take a -2 to hit, to 'not look' at the target, why? because the first defencive skill anyone takes is being aware of the attack. Gauge opponent, Gauge Attack, Gauge Swing, all allow the Warrior the ability to 'see it coming' adding massive +3s to defence each. The Simple dead stare skill negates the last two completely. And with some fancy skill changes every round, can negate the first too. 

Also, a Player can feint an attack, they spend 1/3rd of the Initiative (the anticipation part) to trigger the opponent into a defence position (negating their defence for the round) and then follow up with a real attack, which the opponent didn't defend against.

Next Contact. 

Early in a Warriors career, a GM can trigger a whole range of reactions in characters, epic failures and epic successes, can cause a shock attack. the player has to roll under their level on 2d12. If unsuccessful, they can lose their attention, and be open to counter attacks from other opponents.

There is a whole gamut of skills that can be triggered in the contact portion of the blow, from increased damage, twisting weapons for increase wounds, cutting deeper, but also many powers activate on contact with the target. Players should be aware of their skills, failure to activate a skill because the player was not concentrating, means their character was also, lost in the event and the skill/spell or ability was not performed, or in the case of trigger events, some cause of fate, the event didn't trigger. Combat should be fast, and rewinding for lax players will slow things down.

Recovery though can be the most important. 

Some Warriors, knowing the advantages of the round by round, might forgo the recovery phase, and take advantage of the wounded, and winded opponent. flurry of blows, ignores the recovery phase, and allows the character to make a subsequent attack at 2/3rds the initiative, provided they hit. Shivs can perform a larger amount of damage from sequential hit after hit. The opponent loses the recovery phase to prepare to defend, as does the attacker, and the attacker must focus the attack on the same target, location and other factors.

But, Opponents with good combat skills can also take advantage of these three slots of time.

Weapons with a heavy Anticipation Initiative, will find themselves at the mercy of smaller quick weapons. Any weapon with an Initiative under half that of the attacking Initiative, can under basic combat rules make a jab attack, and if successful, will disrupt the attack from taking place, yet the Initiative for the Contact and Recovery is still spent, and the jabbed victim must often wait out the pain Initiative too.

With some skills involved, an Attack, can be parried in the contact phase, and even turned back against the attacker.

And lastly, When the Attacker attempts recovery, a quicker opponent might now take advantage and get in their own strike, or now, retreat to run away. 

Just some thoughts for you, next time you're playing dd12.  

Turning the Blog Around

Its been a long slog of a roller coaster, and I've been sporadic. Honestly, I just didn't have focus. The rules are in several documents, my life is in several locations, I'm all over the place.

So its time to clean it up. 

I'm going to turn this blog into what people used to expect from a Blog.. what I expect from a Blog.. a Web - Log of what happens in another aspect of your life.

This is called Dungeonworld Dev for a reason, it was the development blog, but when I wasn't developing, I was just throwing stuff at the wall, and seeing what stuck. There are over 100 'articles' that didn't. I didn't press publish. For a myriad of reasons, fears and the like.

I might still go back and click publish, but, like I've said before, I'll tag them, so you, dear reader, can see the difference.

What I'm going to do, is push forward with this like a proper log of events. When I Write, Draw, Create or do anything related to Dungeonworld, MY game. I'll blog it in here.

Why? Because I think its what I want to read.. someone else making a roleplay game, and all the trials and tribulations of that process.

Where I'm starting.. 

* I have a 99% complete map for my Kickstarter. since it took a year and a half to get here, that 1% will likely be another 2-3 weekends. I need to scan reworked images, crop them into the giant map, and publish it.
* I have Several, Half finished, roleplay documents. Core Rules for Dungeonworld v4/12, Core Rules for DD12 v0.7, Cataclyzm, barely a chapter, Pirate Cave, barely a chapter, Alita ripoff, some NPCs, Paladin Concept, a design draft. An Almost finished Magic Synopsis, written in by my in world alter ego.
* I have a card game, to help GMs make plots for that session/scenario/campaign, based on player input.

I have several ideas for several other things.. another map, but for a city, another map, but for a mega-dungeon.. these need to wait, til map #1 #2, #3, #4 and #5 are finished..

I might migrate this.. I think, a cleaner start might be a good idea.. but maybe not? I might duplicate this to another forum, such as medium or minds.. and 'start' from the next post, or maybe this one..

Good luck to me..

Lets see if this pans out, or its just the coffee speaking.

Dark Moscow

Unsure if I wrote about it elsewhere, I want to document it before I forget, my epic.

The Streets and Lives of Dark Moscow.

The City, Built of Wood, sometimes with basements of stone, to house the furnaces, or shore up the property against fires, or in rarer cases, whole buildings of stone and a crude form of cement, was a great place of commerce and trade, but also poetry and crime.

Sometimes both.

1812, Smirnovs 'Moscow Fires' a great setting for Roleplay

Players were the street kids of the city, born and raised in the backalleys to illegitimate women or worse, they were raised to fend for themselves, and their gang.

Over the first session, players are instructed as to their gang, they participate in the naming of their gang and their rivals. They form an understanding of their world, through its creation. Once its established, then, they are unleashed unto the world.

The Concept was getting players used to playing Rogues, either as primary or secondary classes. They sneak through the streets, half at night, they run across rooftops, they shimmy down gutters or climb into wells, sometimes, slithering up latrines at gain access to the buildings, so their brethern can steal in, and clean out the silverware.

Players soon learn, that, its all well and good to playing theives, but then there are things like dues to the guilds, other gangs, rivals, rogue rogues, all on top of living in a city that just doesn't quit, suburbian nightmares, all manner of people just trying to get by.

Then, there is the politics. gangs and rival gangs, follow the rule of the king and queen of the theives. Rivals unto each other.

Do players try to gather enough wealth to get out? or enough clout to hold their own? or push forward into other ganglands to claim a large chunk of pie? or worse/better attempt the long gamg and try to take down the king.. or the queen? Or some weirder wilder game of cat and mouse with the militia?

Some say, the longest game of all, is to rise above it all and become a politician, the highest rank of theif there ever was.!

Then, throw in a handful of mages, a bucketload of priests and thier whole gang/rivalry system, the flow of heroes coming and going from the city, soldiers pushing on to the war. Its all happening in Moscow.. and underneath too.

The City-underneath (expansion)

At one point, some mage discovered the city was built on some of the most powerful leylines of travel magic, and they harnessed the magics to create a passageway for the nobles, well it didn't take long for the nobles to realise they could profit from the transport of goods and people, and the whole thing became a freeforall, Now the 'City-Underneath' is used by the common folk

Now, your intrepid gangs have to deal with, not only the gangs in the standard four directions, but also with gangs that can rise up from underneath. BUT, that also means, with a little reconnaissance, the players can find smaller weaker gangs, and take their territory faster, or, just as easily, sneak into a territory, shake down a merchants house, and be gone before the nobbies or the bullies have even blinked, worse for them, any number of hundreds of gangs could have been responsible.

This also means, low hanging fruit in your own territory could be raided before you know it, worse, big hauls, which might have taken weeks to plan for, get pulled out from under your players feet..

On the other hand, there is a greater number of ways of making a legitimate path work, in a number of emerging busineses, logistics, courier work.

And, as a last resort, players wanting 'out' might accidentally be standing at a travel portal, on the wrong day of the month, in the wrong season, when a layline passes over, and get teleported to a whole different continent, or worse.. whole different world.

Character Names

I've always thought, if you're going to roleplay, you shouldn't be choosing your character. You should play what you get, to that end...

Having your group, make your character

The Idea here is, as a group, you have needs and wants of your group, you want to help each other out, and play as a team. So why do we let players make their own character, often it results in some kind of loner, trying to be self centered, or an over achiever as the player is trying too hard to be the best group friendly character.

So Instead, I tried this for several years, often at conventions, because captive audiences will do new things, and go away telling friends how interesting it actually was to try something new.

So, First, your name. 

(Now as player, you can veto one thing, but only one thing, if you want to change your name, do so, but be aware you cannot veto anything else later)

Write down: The last two letters of your first name, the middle two letters of your last name, the first two letters of your mothers name and then the last letter of your fathers name.. sounds like a meme.. I know.. Now, read it to the group. don't show them, read it! and have them spell it for you. That's your name.

(GMs: Nominate your world to match known common earth like traits, this is purely an association game for your group, not fixed to any tropes, unless you want it that way)

Ask the group, what kind of culture does it sound like, matching what the group knows of current cultures, then Ask the GM, if it sounds like a name that matches part of their known world, and have your character come from there, if that place is a set race, that's your race, if there is a choice, have the group decide.

Now you can roll the dice for your characteristics, apply racial modifiers, cultural modifiers, and ask the group, what kind of character do they think it is, picking a primary (or secondary) lifestyle for you, and you choose the other.

Lastly, they pick your starting profession. You can always change, but this is what your parents chose for you.

Why do it like this? Is this un-fun?

As an artist, and author, I often balked at my teachers telling us to write / draw specifically in a genre or style that I didn't like. Yet, every time, I learnt something more of the genre, or the style and while I may have never done another piece like it, I am amazed at how much I got out of it in the long run.

My greatest piece of art, was life drawing of my own shoe, when I encountered it years later, I had forgotten how well I could draw, yet as a kid I distinctly remember how bored I was with the idea of drawing a shoe.

In this sense, I've often considered, roleplay is a form of art, its a learning experience, and we should use it as best as we can to tell stories, but not self-indulgent personal fantasy in the truer sense of the word, but instead the story emerges as we have our characters go on the arc of self discover, self loathing, and self acceptance. Which can be next to impossible if we build out own fantasy archtype as our character.

Lastly, I have had groups make their self indulgent fantasy character, and get bored of it, all to early. They've achieved their pinnacle and there is nothing more to do with them after, But players, saddled with this personal abomination, grow to like them, and over time, have claimed how, despite themselves, they have found it to be their favourite character.

So I say,..Give it go..  you might be surprised. 

 

Game Design: Roll to Move

I was watching some game design videos and how they complained about 'roll to move' and I just felt like, hang on, where they dissing it because they don't understand it? or just because everyone says that its bad?

Why and When Roll to Move is the correct way to go.

If we look at the mechanics of a roll to move, for example, we'll use a single d6. if both players tokens are standing at the beginning of a 6 spot track. then yes, roll to move is a poor mechanic. The likelyhood of one player rolling a 5 and the other a 1, means that neither player had any influence over the event and so its not fun. 

Sure, Odds are, the 2nd roll might be the opposite, and they both win. And yes, you can extrapolate out, if most people are playing a somewhat fair game, then over the course of 10 rolls, with a roll average of 3.5, the two players, on average will get to the finish line around the same time.

Here we have red, rolling poorly, and blue rolling well. Blue has a lead of 5 squares

Three turns Later, and Blue is even further ahead by 9 squares, so blue feels like he's winning.

Yes, If the Law of Averages comes in.. 

While Contrived, Blue and Red have 12 turns each, and arrive at the end, in the same round.

In such a game, going first, has higher odds of winning, because he's cross the line first.

Yet, there is no point to this.. regardless if you roll once or a hundred times.. you're not making any choices. So there is no game here, its just an exercise in dice and math, which is why its for kids.. to teach them dice and math, and that's all.

NEXT.. If we look at the squares themselves as opportunities.

In many games, a roll of a dice, gives you a table of opportunities, Lets say 1 to 6. You roll, consult the table, then I roll and consult the table. The table, and its choices are the game.

Roll	Results
1	Take a Coin
2	Take a Shoe
3	Take a Bag
4	Take a stone
5	Give an Item to another player
5	Swap an Item with another player

Now this game is just about collecting objects, You take turns for a set number of turns, say 12, and you want to get a complete set of all 4 items, which earns you a point.

But it can be a little boring to just roll a d6, and look at a chart.. if instead the chart was on the table, like a board.. we can see it..

Hence why many roll and move games have the 'chart' as the next 6 steps you can land on:

Now we see that while red landed on a 2, and took a shoe, blue landed on a 6, and would need to swap an item (to ensure this works, we need rules about what happens if you can't give/swap)

In Blues Next roll, 1->6 will still equate directly to the chart, but for Red, the order has been mixed up, where a roll of a 1 will give them a score of 3. because there is no modification to the dice rolled, the odds are still the same. (see more below)

Now, we have 12 rolls, resulting on 12 checks on the chart, and the roll->move structure is actually just a timer for how long the game lasts for.

In essence, provided there is enough rounds.. 12 or more, statistically, most players are going to have a fairly even chance of getting each roll once, and as long as you design in the rule to allow some exchange with a player who didn't roll often enough, or rolled too much of, it balances out.

This actually is pretty much exactly how Catan works. just the 'movement' track is in your head, for how many plausible turns until you hit the end of the game.

Roll modifiers.

IF you could modify the roll made.. then we unlock a whole gamut of possibly interesting choices. Since the roll of a 1 in that second turn, equates to a 3 for red, if red had a +1 token that could be used. Red can choose either a bag or a stone as their 'gain' allowing them more strategic choices.

Conclusion

So, when we look at older games, and think, Oh, Roll and move, how wrong. We fail to realise some of the very complex decisions that are likely to have been made to ensure that the 'track' has equidistant effects and choices for players, to ensure a balanced end game.

Genres and Settings for Roleplay

Wikipedia lumps them together, and that's confusing as much as misleading, as I'll discuss below

What Genres x Settings Exist in Roleplay, and whats missing?

There are 24 genres listed in Wikipedia, Some we can discount instantly, for roleplay, and some, well, they're not genres, they're settings, I don't know why they're lumped together and I don't remember why I seem to have a very strong memory learning them as very separate structures. Maybe my High School teacher had strong, logical reasons and I agreed with him/her on the subject:

You can go to the Wiki List I'm working from:

Genres:

Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Paranoia, Political, Romance, and Thriller are all Genres, in the more truer definition. They have a distinct set of feelings, we could even cross reference feelings to come up with these.. Excitement, Discovery (location), Laughter,  Discovery(events of dubious nature), Extrinsic Emotion, Disgust , Discovery (events), Helplessness, Machinations? Love, Fear.

This suggests that while there are definitive lines in the sand, Thriller, Horror and Paranoia all stem from Fear of the Unknown, Violence and Control. And Crime, Mystery and Adventure are all subsets of Discovery.

Sagas seem to be a sub genre that, due to the title, historical nature of the story, are just included in genres, that said, Its possibly both a genre and a setting, as to qualify, it needs to be OP stories of Vikings doing heroic deeds. Personally that's just stylistic representation of Historical Adventure.

BUT, you can mix these.

Yes, Its very easy to mix many of these, because they are emotional, Start with some discovery, that leads to fear, causes problems with sickness and is conquered with laughter. But your audience will come out at the end, unable to pinpoint why it was good, IF it was good, Which is why movies stick to one or two of them, and books two or three.

Also, some of them destroy each other if not done right. Comedy done as laughter will bring down the Horror, Paranoia, Thriller and even Mystery. Yet releasing tension with the right dark humour can control the audience.

Settings

So, our Settings are, Fantasy, Historical, Western, Urban/Modern, Science Fiction, Science Fantasy. Even said, Western is technically just Historical,, else should we break out Classical, Medieval?

So, Non realistic and Realistic events before now, now, and in the future? The problem with this, is the purpose of the setting is to evoke an understanding of the culture, timeline, technology and way of thinking of a given people. Fantasy is commonly Tolkienised, with Elves, Fairies, Dwarves and Orcs. While Magical effects added to Medieval History would be Merlin and King Arthur. Which is why Historical Fiction exists as a Genre, too many styles of Fantasy, means the Setting needs to be split to understand which Audience you're trying to connect to.

Magical Realism, refers to magic existing, yet not changing the very underlying world. Harry Potter may have influenced this break away. The Muggle world is our world, and we are unaware of the magic going on. This can also include the Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Modern Witches, maybe even Cthulhu style games (though, typically Cthulhu is more Late Victorian era)
 
Its Curious, that while Historical fiction, Magical Realism and Sagas are separated out, Punk, Space Opera, Science fantasy and Apocalyptic settings all come under the "science fiction" Setting, Yet, when you say Science fiction, several people will not think any of those genres, instead jumping to Star Wars Styled settings as the 'default.

So, for the purposes of this post, Our Real settings are , Classic, Medieval, High Fantasy, Pirates, Western,  Modern, Post Modern,  and Science Fiction.

How are these not Genres?  

First, we defined that Genres are constructs of Feelings you get from watching a movie, You can have multiple feelings, but to get a real sense of a specific feeling you don't invoke more than a few.

Settings are different, its a set of background rules, an understanding of what kind of people will be in the world, how they act and react, and most importantly, No Cross Over. You cannot have High Fantasy and Western, You can add off world races to western for spice, or you can add gunslingers to Merlin's Castle, but the underlying core is defined, When you say western to 50 people, you'll get several identical key points. Sure Science Fantasy and Science Fiction are well defined, Star wars vs Star Trek, explainable science vs hand-waved science. Yet at the end of the day, spaceships, laser guns, alien races, in space, all say science fiction.

I have heard the argument, but wait, Sailing ships, Blunderbusses, Island Races on the High Sea, all match the underlying theme, which is why Treasure Island so easily ported over to Treasure Planet. Yet state those 4 elements to 50 people, and I doubt anyone will say Post Modern, or Classic.

What of Philosophical? and Absurdist/Surreal/Whimsical, Satire, Social or Speculative?

Speculative, IS roleplay, we are speculating, if a person existed, in a defined world, what would happen if they chose to make a given action, such as explore a dungeon, with a sword. Not to say, that the game can't involve speculation within itself, like a meta inception. See more on this below.

The Same 'could' be said of Philosophical? Are we exploring possible Utopian or Distopian societies to understand ourselves better?

Satire exists as a form which is referenced by real life events, or in some cases, recognized events from an existing story, bent in a way to be different. Yet it cannot exist as a genre unto itself, So its more a modifier of an existing genre. Also In roleplay, since we use memes, references to existing works, understandings of the world through other mediums, such as movies, books, then all roleplay is a form of Satire.

I can speculate, that playing a Surreal Setting, might be fun for a session, a dream sequence, it'll be hard to pull off, explaining to players that they swim through colours, and experience smells as experience points, yet the underlying problem is that a setting evokes an understanding of the world, to make decisions, but a surreal world would be so without proper understanding, it would destroy the fabric of what makes the roleplay game work, and be fun.

And Social is just the Indian term for Modern.

 So the verdict?

Two Genres and One Setting. This would be the most likely definition for a roleplay system. Not to say elements of others are absent, just that to be easily identified to an Audience.

This gives us Seven genres, (Action, Comedy, Discovery, Drama, Political, Romance, and Thriller) with 8 Settings, (Classic, Medieval, High Fantasy, Pirates, Western,  Modern, Post Modern,  and Science Fiction.) giving us a final 64 possible "categories" defined. With the Two Genre Possible structure, and given that not all Genres can go together, it looks like we can have around 500 odd Slightly broader categories.

Some of them, we know exist, Action Adventure High Fantasy = D&D. (Paranoia based) Thriller 1950s Modern = Cthulhu, Action Comedy Science-Fiction = Alpha XXX Blue.

If we went through all 500 Categories, would we find an obvious choice for all? or would it be hard? Would we start reaching empty gaps? and would those gaps be interesting to make a campaign for?

As a random example (as I roll d8s), Discovery Romance Western, gives me Indiana Jones,

So I chucked up a spreadsheet, I got these:

Comedy	Thriller	Post Modern
Discovery	Action	Post Modern
Drama	Romance	Science Fiction
Romance	Comedy	Pirates
Action	Discovery	Western
Thriller	Action	High Fantasy
Political	Romance	High Fantasy

• As discussed, Comedy Thriller is going to be hard to do as a roleplay.. Movies, such as, Evil Dead 2 is a tad more comedic, as is Shaun of the Dead, so its plausible some good players and GMs could pull this off. The Comedy aspect, suggests a light system. 
• Discovery Action, Post modern, might be game plots based on National Treasure, Maybe FATE or Gumshoe could work as a system for this.
• Drama Romance Sci Fi makes me think of Battlestar Gallactica.
• Unsure what Romance Comedy Pirates would be as a game, like roleplaying in Pirates of Penzance. Could be fun for a session, but not long term.
• Action Discovery Western, a very likely scenario. I've run one of these with my system, yet I know there are western style RPGs that do this already.
• Thriller Action High Fantasy, well, I'm running one of them right now.. so that's obvious.
• and lastly, Political Romance High Fantasy. I get the impression that Lamentations of the Flame Princess is like this. but I'm probably very wrong. This does like it would be difficult to find such a game focussed on it. 

So, it does indeed seem like there are holes, and the question is.. Is it interesting to explore the gaps

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Final Notes

From that quick little attempt, Its obvious to me that Action + adventure, and Action + Discovery is going to have a roleplay game out there for each possible genre, and likely each sub-genre.

Thriller is also a genre that will likely have a decent amount of games, even if they are all Cthulhu rip-offs.

Comedy, while it happens in roleplay often, because strange things happen, and there are gonzo styled games that try to evoke comedic moments, I think its harder to 'make' a comedic roleplay game.

What might be the genres we find gaps are going to be Drama, Romance and Political, and maybe that's because they don't lend themselves to roleplay as much as we like, or they're tacked on...poorly, by the rule-set being used.

When two combatants go against each other, several factors, such as weapon, skill, armour, and timing come into a turn by turn structure of combat. The outcome are wounds, dismemberment or death, so its vital to understand this and make it as fair as possible.

Yet many RPG system treat the nuances of politics, diplomacy, romance, persuasion, charm, conflict, lies, deception and perception as a single die roll. An entire campaign, hinged on the single arbitrary roll.

This is one of the reasons, I decided that all aspects of roleplay should, if players want it, have a play by play rules for each of the common aspects of roleplay.

I've blogged a little about this, but I think its time to take it further..