[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?

[Dev] Character Creation vs Generation

I was part of a discussion on reddit, and found myself looking at things from a different perspective on the whole "no Levels" argument. A most interesting one came from this slipped comment:

Character creation in Dungeonworld* takes six weeks!

Top 10 'modify and dress your avatar' systems

Tell anyone that character creation is going to take 6 weeks and they'll balk! 6 weeks to create a character? what are you Nutz? just roll the dice, pick some skills, spending little more than 30 minutes so they can "get into the game"... Yet they'll spend hours tweaking an MMO characters looks, when Charisma/Looks is usually the dump stat for the same players..

But the reality is that to make decent characters, you have to spend hours, days even weeks.. but that's what we call roleplay right?..

Whoa!, What? say some people? Roleplay your character before creating them? how .. what.. I'm confused!

I have several ways that I introduce players to my game & system. For a single session, such as a Convention or an Intro session for newbs, I would of course, pre-roll a set of fairly standard trope adventurers, using the rules lite characters. The session would likely be 3-5 hours, and I don't want to waste a minute of it, discussing which spell would be better for the wizard.

The Second method is for my lite rules system. I have a 3-6 week pre-written adventure, characters are unlikely to gain a rank withing that time, or if they do, its plot related. So I want the players to have more choice over their character, but again, not get bogged down more than an hour (including maneuvers, spells & prayer lists). Players roll standard 4d6 for the characteristics, and choose two 'classes' from a list of eight. This gives the players all the stats and standard gear for those classes, with a few choices.. "So you've chosen Warrior and Rogue, More of a Footpad with a Spiked-Club or a Mercenary for hire, with a sword."

But Full roleplay, when the players are expecting to continue for the next 6 months in the open sandbox, possibly interacting with up to 75 other players from 10 other GMs. That means some proper character generation.

Character Generation

Character Creation, is more realistically, the beginning dice rolls. before any choices are made. The first choices are almost forced upon you.. good strength, good dexterity, poor wisdom, might be a fighter... but nice charisma.. well..

You choose something that matches your rolls, figure out how you'd take advantage of what you've got and pick a class...

But what if, instead of just 'taking a class' you start out as kids. Getting to know the world, the setting, the background, all in a fairly safe environment.

So Character generation, players play out a scenario, the first RPG session, as kids. Getting to know themselves without skills, without training, just plain base stats.

When a player displays an apptitude for some skill, (Derrik climbs the balcony of the ruined house, so the GM takes note, and award Derrik the climbing skill bonus) the GM can award that skill to the player, and it becomes known by the players, that Derrik is the climber.

The first session should be understood as a tutorial mission. Something to cut your teeth on, learn some background skills, some of which may become irrelevant to the character, but builds character.

Session Two becomes the Training and intermissions. Characters join guilds, travel locally, do chores, study books, and take holidays at festival times. So have the players manage to 'catch up' in this time, and take on that nasty old bugbear thats been haunting the ruined mine all these years. (and discover it was just a costumed old man, looking to cash in on the gold mine when the lease expired - "and I would have gotten away with it, hadn't it been for those dang kids and their dog")

Session Three, the characters should meet up under circumstances, hopefully plot related. Maybe that gold mine was haunted after all, and the town gets the famous kids back to solve the mystery, maybe someones family member has become ill and cash / an ingredient is needed. This brings the players back together for a reason, hopefully plot hook.

Session Four, The characters should do some kind of income improvement related mission. Maybe tied in with Session Five. Something that's less dangerous, more likely to just set up some contacts for the future, some knowledge of the local area, and an idea of how much income can be gained from more mundane jobs, so when they do an actual adventure, they'll 'feel' how rich they've become.

Session Five introduces the need for a base of operations OR a travel pack mule/horse/cart that takes care of the bulk of the mundane. I've given players an escort mission to show them how much easier it is to have the gear in the cart, vs having to waste the first round to take off backpacks and get out gear.

Session Six, starts with a shopping session, has a 'find X to get Y' mid session and finishes withe the characters getting that 'upgrade' that makes them feel like their ready to take on the world.

Now don't take this list literal, I'm just giving you a feel for how one such gaming character generation works.

The whole point is to spread out the 'parts' of character creation, roleplay each one as a memorable event, so players can get a far more real immersive feeling for their character.

Players are constantly griping about how they should have taken skill X instead of Y. This style of play lets them choose the skills as they are needed, Let the player 'build' their needs. Players are more in tune with the world you want them to be in, little things that break immersion and cause argments are often the expectations of the world and their character, and how they feel cheated, because they couldn't foresee what skills they needed when they chose them.

In this style, players acquire skills, weapons, armour, spells, all on the go, while roleplaying. They feel more in touch with them, know when and how they got them and why they got them. Nothing on the charactersheet is 'given' from a book, its all earned.

Lastly, Since the players "grew up" together, they have a tendency to be a more coherent group, more likely to watch each others back, rogues are less likely to backstab their fellow players, Leaders are formed rather than chosen and players choose skills which compliment the group based on needs as they go, rather than clash because three players have herbalism, but no-one has first aid.

Note: For those adventures which are 'strangers coming together' obvious a different style is needed. If tension is part of the plot, having players develop their character independantly is the obvious choice, but if you can handle the initial build time, have them roleplay each heroes arc before the meeting, with whole other groups if possible, then have them meet up.

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* p.s. I have recently discovered that another Dungeon World title exists under the Apocalypse World brand. I have zero affiliation with them. DungeonWorld(tm) was created in 1993, registered in 1993 and trademarked under Australian Law.

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.   

Humans, meet the Octopodi

Based on the recent set or articles about Octopodes, This article seems to me more realistic amongst the myriad of link-bait "Octopuses are Aliens". I had a thought.. and so I wrote this:

They Came from the Stars

In a time, long forgotten, as records have been destroyed since. The Inhabitants of Earth watched as the creatures came in a vessel. A giant strange vessel. Rock Like, A Smooth outerworld rock, one shaped by the crashing of the waves upon its surface, outwerworld waves upon an outerworld rock. 

space-octopus by skumpf

Shev and Marsh looked upon this strange shape in the sky with wonder, as it descended.

Gathering fish for the future family, they slowed as the shape began to land. They quickly retreated to their homes, watching from the entranceways.

The Ship descended, steam like vents burst forth from the underside, then with a great thud, it landed.

Dust and Steam mixed in the air, settling quickly upon the surface of the outerworld craft, Shev pushed Marsh to go, have a closer look.. dared him to enter this hostile place and see what is what.

Shev moved cautiously, slowly, conscious of the slight pain as he grabbed rocks too tightly,He moved along the path that led up to this, outerworld phenomenon. 

A Crack, a Boom, and a strange shape opened in the craft. It separated from the craft, like a limb. Then the creatures emerged. They did not move like shev, they seemed to glide, but in a strange jalting manner.. but their legs.. Shev was in shock, awe, confusion.. the number of legs.. it was wrong.. all wrong.. how could a creature exist with this many legs, and the way it used them.. and on the ends of the legs.. little.. things? suckers? tongues? It was grotesque.

There were eight of them.

Shev quickly ran back to Marsh and explained what he saw.. Marsh was hiding, her arms wrapped around her head, scared. When he began to explain about the legs, and how there were eight of them, Marsh yelped and spilt ink on the floor. What would happen to them, would these 'things' eat them?

Shev told Marsh to gather their things, they would leave, but first Shev wanted to see what the Aliens would do, to get a better explanation of them for the place they went to, to explain to an elder, what these beings looked like.

Eight.. he kept thinking this strange number, Eight.. 

He crawled again out of the innerworld, poking his head into the outerworld, mindful to take a breath of air. 

His own tribe of two, made sense.. Sometimes there were three or in extreme cases four, but eight.. no-one travelled in packs of eight, 

Yet these creatures, Two Older, and Six younger,  some yellow topped with long strands of golden seaweed, some brown topped with fuzzy coral on their faces. They were constructing a home, an entrance and gaps to see, for eight! In this outerworld.. they were staying.. 

Shev took note, to explain to the elders: They walk upright with two legs, and two legs to grasp tools. It was Alien! 

Shev quickly grabbed at the rocks with his eight arms, and slithered his way through to the innerworld as quickly as possible. Marsh and Shev would leave tonight.

They Packed their things and moved.. far away.

New Places, New Cities, Getting Lost

If you haven't travelled to a new city, or better yet, a new country, even better.. a new culture new language, everything so different its just alien.. you won't know how it feels for your heroes, and you won't be able to express their feelings, nor would your GM be able to explain it to you

Experiencing the Wonder and Fear of being lost

As I stepped off the plane, to the familiar surrounds of the airport, the customs control, scowling faces, suspicion, fear of being arrested, the baggage handling, the lack of trollys, the guards ready to pounce on me, strip search my bags for suspicious sets of jeans, and the slew of taxi drivers trying to tear me away from the throng and overcharge me to go in circles.. I felt the pangs of excitement, as I was back.. in Russia.

But, all those little fears, they were familiar little jokes to myself, reminders of what actual fears I had the very first time I flew out of, and into Moscow.

Sure, our Heroes travel through dangerous forests, biting sands, caverns filled with lava, creatures of unimaginable horror, its hard to truly understand this feeling (unless you have the chance) so as GMs its a bit hard to describe them, beyond the movies and books we've seen (in our minds)

But Medieval Cities? that's do-able.

Let me take you on a ride, through a memory of mine. 

I have arrived at the small coach house, to my left, a building, tavern like. I can see some revelers dining outside. I could join them, but the parchment with a map, and an address, suggests I go further into the keeps grounds

( want to see: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@59.4393671,24.740173,3a,75y,138.69h,90.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLpCm64CA09Bgi55VZIKFpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1?hl=en )
I travel east, along the cobblestone roads, To my right, peeking between the trees, a giant wall of stone, what seems like a mile above, small buildings, stone-works, defences. I am indeed at the keep of Tall Inn.
Further along, the battlements present themselves. High walls, protecting the city within. My heart shudders, its enormous. I hope I'll get through the gates, I'd hate to be turned away from such a glorious place.

I pass a large Hostel, A Tavern, Bakery, Iron worker, Book maker, Theatre for children, each place strange and exotic to me. Goods displayed in the windows, on shelves. Something I have not seen in my own city, at least not like this. Its like a little 'vignette' rather than shop shelves.

The Cafes are exquisite, Little places for one, maybe two people to eat. The Taverns not much different, three people can sit at the bar, not more.. how can they stay in business I muse to myself.

Rounding the corner, Street sellers are setting up stands, selling beer, Kvas (a dark sweet & salty brew) Trinkets, Markets can be heard now as I walk the street.

I am a little lost in thought.. my map shows that I must go left, but there is no left. I ask the beer seller and she looks at me dumbfounded.. I speak a strange language, and she doesn't seem to understand that I am lost. She offers me beer..

So I walk onwards, Passing a fountain, a Tavern again, devoted to only those who like the bards who sing within, a shop selling weapons (yet it is not a blacksmith). Building after Building, each, wonderous to look at, different, stone with flat faces, marble, right here on the street. I have walked too far by the time I stop myself and have to return to the start to get my bearings.

My bags are heavy, but I must get to the Border Guards Building first, else I will be arrested.

You can climb the tower, and walk the battlements for a small price, Worth it if you're a fan of all things medieval.

It takes me an hour, but eventually I get there.. I'm not too late. I go to enter, but am told to wait outside the building. The guard won't let me in yet.. probably it is full. I wait.. and wait. and eventually I am let in. The rooms are not full, they are mostly empty, I go to the window, I ask questions, I get answers, I get questions and give answers. Eventually they stamp my parchment and I am admitted entrance to their lands... in two weeks.

Returning to the street, I may now find a tavern to stay at, or a hostel.

Or Maybe I need a new Hat.

Eight years later, I have traveled this route almost 20 times, Its no longer a strange and exotic place, its my third home, my favourite home. I return here as often as I can. I have friends here, a small life here, but no work, and probably no possibility of work.

The Walk from the Coach House to the Border guards is repeated, but now, I walk down Nunne street, turn left onto Lai, and arrive quickly. I ignore the guard, he wants a bribe from strangers. I enter the building, submit my papers, answer maybe one question. The woman I speak to has become my friend over the years, she smiles when she sees me, I have a quick chat, but not so much to be overtly friendly. I tell her, sorry, but this is my last trip. I return home, and likely to never return. I am sad, so is she. I thank her for the years of help with my parchments. 

My route is not as exciting as it once was, sure, I remember the first time, getting lost, being confused, but also being full of wonder at how different it all is, this medieval city of Tall Inn.

Ok, so I jazzed it up, Medieval Style.. and hope to be doing more of my travels like this in the future. My Point is that as GMs sometime we gloss over things that for characters should be drawn out. Its hard to 'create' entire cities worth of feelings, and players as often as not, want to just get their healing potions, upgrade their weapons and armour and get back to the dungeon. So mixing it up with a bit of 'lost in the city' might not be your style..

but maybe it is..