M

Three Things in the World of Darkness that Irk Me

Sat, 17 May 2008 08:56:32 GMT

Pseudo-Lovecraftiana: Yes, yes. I've warmed to HPL, gamers like the Mythos, but there's are fine games that do all that stuff. Pseudo-Lovecraftiana is like watching a cover band. It can really kick ass, but you're mentally putting the actual band on stage. I especially dislike the quasi-Mythos names that come from hammering on random keys.

I actually argued against a focus on the Abyss when Mage was coming down the line for this reason, but Bill Bridges smartly observed that it didn't have to be pseudo-Mythos. The Prince of 100,000 Leaves from Boston Unveiled was my attempt to take the Abyss in a bit of a different direction.

The Phrase "Closely Guarded Secret:" This hoary freelancer cliche is basically code for "Your character doesn't know this unless the scenario allows it." I've written this phrase myself and felt fine with it until I noticed it in a zillion other books. Aside from avoiding these words, I think its about time to mix this up a bit, even if the LARPers do find information restriction handy. That's why in Mysterium I basically said that they probably have information about nearly everything, but the filing system's a bitch.

Everybody Thinks Everybody Else is an Idiot and Can't Use Their Stuff: The new games kind of got away from this but it occasionally slides back in. Not only do I think it's unwise to stoke resentment between fans of different lines, but it smacks of the "fake shared world" issue, where fandom create the subliminal idea that everyone is playing in the same continuity. This is really only a problem in the Camarilla, where it isn't fake.

I run a Vampire/Mage crossover from time to time, and it's great -- but there's very little support for this kind of thing because of the idea that every splat has issues with the others and because of the strict bans on interaction. My mages can become ghouls, and vampires who were mages occasionally acquire strange powers, because this is more interesting than the current, lead-lined limits.

Now I know they can't really support this as a core assumption in a big way for a few reasons, and other games that have been freer with conceptual or character type crossovers have generally ben kind of boring about it. What I'd love to see is plenty of optional support that is full of strangeness, instead of standard theories and cautions.

Sun, 11 May 2008 07:47:24 GMT

I declare Silat to be totally awesome.

The rest of this is notes from the seminar which you may or may not understand. I think I may have forgotten one or two things.

Silat
* Male Triangle: Backwards
* Female Triangle: Forwards
* Triangular Weak Point: Off stable axis as far away from legs as legs are from each other -- throw target.
* Contact/Entries: Slap + Fist, Slap + Wedge, Slap + Gunting, Slap/Gunting/Elbow
* Throw 1: Slap + Fist past, Press/Elbow, Press/Elbow, Wrap, dissassociate upper + lower Body w. twist + pull over leg inside to out.
* Throw: Slap/Gunting/Elbow, press to standing armbar, leg through + push
* Throw 2: Slap + Gunting to wrap, arm up, head down to kneeling elbow lock ("Buddhai").
* Throw 3: If above is resisted, reverse arm position and push back.
* Throw 4: Slap/Gunting/Elbow, wedge across shoulders + sink over
* Throw 5: Slap/Gunting/Elbow, wrap to wrist, catch and pull to triangular weak point (+ can qinna it backwards in flight to be mean.)
* Throw 6: Grab arm and press elbow down.
* Throw flow: 1, 4, 6

Kali
* Angle refresher: 1 \ 2/ 3 __me 4 me__ 5 V
* Double stick: 4count is like 3 w extra strike through to chamber, does not alternate sides until 3 count changeup.
* 1/2/downward (angle #?)
* Above, to fan strike, strip, hit, roof block, strip, hit.
* Roof block: 1 to side, 1 to guide
* Knife strip: counter angle, press, pull, back of hand strip.
* Reverse grip strip: Press + stab, pull across and high strip w. knife.

Recent RPG Purchases

Sat, 10 May 2008 09:19:02 GMT

This is what I've ordered:

Dread: This one arrived a few days ago. Some parts of it are really, really cool; in other areas, it screams "Didn't need to be its own RPG!" It was amusing to read Ron Edwards praising something that he would say gives gamers cancer if it had featured a paw print on it.

Dread's sparseness is one of those areas where design trends have taken a flaw in the community and attempted to turn it into a feature . . . without succeeding. The idea of wanting to make games with "focused" settings seems to often be code for "I don't want to spend all this time on a setting" -- but settings display how flexible a game's framework can be, and provide avenues for creativity by both supporting *and finding tension with* other rules and design goals. That's why wacky splats succeed so well. Pure archetype and toolkit approaches are cardboard.

Dread has some cardboard elements. You're some guys who fight demons. There are some powers, and some demons. There are maybe two factoids that constitute a setting. Once you integrate this with the very rigid structure designed for game play, you'll end up with pretty repetitive games. This may go unnoticed in the indie circuit, where single sessions at conventions and meetups are where a lot of play happens, but I can see it being grating over time.

That said, it has some clean rules, and the bits that are described are evocative. For an experienced group this is more than enough to get started with, so I'm glad I got it.

D&D4th: I think it'll be a good game. I also think there are aspects I won't like. We'll see. My main concern is that the game will demand more subordination of narrative concepts to the rules structure -- that you want X to be in the game, but the system will demand Y. This was a problem in our 3.5 game that eventually forced me to change my character's concept even after we instituted some serious house rules. This *did* give me some creative alternatives in the end, but it took some work to get there. Classes read as being more conceptually rigid (they're play functions first, narrative backbones second). On the other hand I'm looking forward to better ways to generate challenges and the new magic system.

Houses of the Blooded: The purported "anti-D&D" will no doubt contain some ideas I disagree with too, but I don't mind strong opinions. I've gotten quite fond of the idea of flexible descriptors and want to see the full treatment of what I've read about. A lot of the commentary I've read so far seems geared toward groups I would say have "issues." I don't believe it's really a good idea for a game to try and support these groups, since these are aspects of things that are more important than gaming.

Lately, I've been thinking about games that aren't generational, but support multiple groups crossing paths and participating in the same setting -- a kind of The Thin Red Line play style. I ran Mage for years this way very successfully.

Where I'll be on Saturday

Wed, 07 May 2008 03:34:03 GMT

In Toronto, at:

http://www.trinityjunfan.com/news.html

Anybody want to hang out before or after? Any PTBO martial arts people want to go down? Lemme know.

Final Cylon

Sun, 04 May 2008 12:28:24 GMT

It's Gaeta. Well, that's my speculation, anyway.

It can't be anybody with kids and relatives without some oddness, or Baltar (too obvious), or Kara (mother in flashbacks, has been examined by Cylons in icky detail). Gaeta's also different enough from everyone that he fits that archetype deal. Also, due to a dropped plotline, there's a loose thread about what Baltar said to him last season -- and Baltar's Cylon detector does in fact work.

Yep Gaeta. In fact, I bet he's known for a while and is "Number Seven."

And if this isn't true, it should be, because this is better than all the other options.

Sun, 04 May 2008 08:06:15 GMT

One of the hallmarks of a good developer is that he can create an outline where you end up writing a multi-part, non-linear novella without making you suspect how difficult this actually is. This is not so much a trick as a form of insidious morale building.

Speaking of the RZA -- Interesting Interview

Sun, 04 May 2008 01:15:09 GMT

RZA: You know, where I come from - New York, Staten Island - we call it Shaolin. I'm representing the Wu-Tang Clan, but you came from the actual Shaolin Temple in Henan Province in China. What was it like to grow up in a place like that? Was it hard training?

RPG What Ifs

Sat, 03 May 2008 20:28:13 GMT

What if . . .

The RZA wrote RIFTS?

Fri, 02 May 2008 03:22:56 GMT

Need WordPress Help!

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:59:48 GMT

Hi folks,

I'm looking for a tool that will provide LJ-style avatar functionality to WordPress. Basically, I'd like a setup where every login on the blog has its own avatar and these attach themselves to the user's blog entries and comments (kind of like LJ comms, I guess, but without the source LJ user).

Don't tell me about Gravatar, by the way. I tried it; it sucks.

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:26:44 GMT

Euthanatos: The Movie

Rhodium's unbalanced classes

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:51:12 GMT

One of the things I want to do with my old-timey tribute game Rhodium RPG is have unbalanced classes, befitting a game where Frodo, Thundarr the Barbarian and Iron Man might team up. But unlike a traditional hacked together method, I'm going to organize it into tiers:

The Hero tier consists of normal folks done good, the kind of protagonists who top out at the Die Hard level of competence.

The Adventurer tier is for folks like Blade, Batman, Buffy and many more low-level superhumans.

The Legend tier is for guys in powered armor, outright superheros and demigods.

How do we balance these? We don't, but we use blatant staples in the form of GOOJ (Get Out Of Jail) points to balance appeal. These allow you to buy special privileges or just avoid death. Now I could just differ the number, but these would not give the class tiers different flavours. Here's what it is instead:

* Heroes gain GOOJ points as they go up in level. Your Frodos and McClanes change over time and wrestle their central status from the cruel hand of fate.

* Adventurers start with a fixed amount of GOOJ. Batman never gets any luckier. He's consistently Batman-like. (Batman is an Adventurer; Robin is a hero, assuming he survives in a particular incarnation.)

* Legends loose GOOJ as they advance. They have wild origins and early days, but tend to settle down a bit over time.

The tiers are still unbalanced, but GOOJ is fun to use (or will be), so the question isn't just about power, but the kind of play experience you want, which will qualitatively change more and more from the alternatives as time goes on.

The goal is not elegance. The goal is Rational Inelegance -- that means I'm exploring a more hacked together design, but those design elements have reasons for being the way they are.

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:22:11 GMT

So what is ST Joshi's deal, exactly?

Politreks

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:28:33 GMT

Chain of Command Part 2 is on. It's the anti-torture TNG episode.

The problem is, of course, that according to the current position of the US government (and silently, tacitly approved by my own government), it's not torture. Picard is not in danger of death or organ damage and sends most of his time in a stress position. The plot hinges upon the Cardassians being free to treat Picard as an "enemy combatant" without any treaty protections.

Just thought y'all should know.

It's the Rhodium RPG!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:46:55 GMT

The Rhodium Role-Playing Game is an old-timey RPG that uses multiple task resolution systems and imbalanced classes -- but it does so for specific reasons.

Attributes!

Let's start by rolling 4d6 for 8 Attributes. Arrange the results however you like among:

Strength (ST): The basic Strength skill is Might. Add half your ST to muscle-powered hand weapons. Your ST is your base starting Stun Points.
Agility (AG): The basic Agility skill is Grab. Add half your AG to parry or slip hand-held weapons and unarmed attacks, or strike with them.
Endurance (EN): The basic Endurance skill is Toughness. Your EN is your base starting Hit Points.
Move (MO): The basic Move skill is Evade. Add half your MO to dodge ranged attacks. MO + 10 is the number of feet a human character can move per round.
Appearance (AP): The basic Appearance skill is Charm.
Intelligence (IN): The basic Intelligence skill is Reason. Add half your IN to all skills, including IN skills.
Presence (PR): The basic Presence skill is Convince.
Willpower (WL): The basic Willpower skill is Resist.

AP, PR and WI are "dump stats." This means they're less important that other Attributes outside of specialized niches, allowing characters who want to concentrate on other areas to better arrange their scores. Of course, some characters will want to focus on these, and characters with low scores may be left in the lurch at unpredictable times. Treating them as dump stats benefits players, but it also creates flaws that the GM can exploit at a later time to make the story interesting.

Skills!

There are lots and lots of skills -- so many that I'll deal with them later, when we get to character classes -- but they all work they same way. Every skill is based on a percentage score . . . well, several. Each skill has a base attribute. Multiply this by the ease of the challenge:

Hard: x1 Tough but memorable; most people only have a 26% chance of success.
Medium: x2 Getting hard; in a crunch, a normal person has a 38% chance of succeeding.
Easy: x3 Not so bad; in dramatic situations, the average person has a 50% chance of success.

Here's one trick. If your skill is a class specialty, you automatically add 1 to your ease rating, to a maximum of Simple (you can't get the Simple rating any other way).

Simple: x4 When stress or drama is involved, the average person has a 64% chance of success.

As characters go up in level, they improve at basic and trained skills. For every level for which they possess training (or basic ability), add the following:

Hard: +5%
Medium: +3%
Easy or Simple: +1%

Training works better for harder tasks, you see -- that's when all the sweat you poured into learning has a chance to shine.

Add your IN bonus to skills at the same rate at all times.

Skills are percentage-based to make them easy to figure and resolve. This game is mostly about action, so that's where the tactical detail comes in. Skills are simple.

When two characters compete with skills, the winner is clear when somebody fails. Otherwise, resolve in this order:

1) The character with the highest skill.
2) The character who rolls lowest on d%.
3) Flip a coin.

If one character is the "main guy" (a PC, the initiator of the situation and so on) he can set a dare, by rolling against a lower ease multiplier. If he succeeds, his rival has to use the same multiplier as the main guy.

Skills are only one kind of acquired trait. The rest are Physical Training (PT), Combat Training (CT) and various special abilities.

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:00:43 GMT

GSP

Palladium Bits

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:39:53 GMT

1) I'm looking for Palladium Fantasy 1E books -- the core book first and foremost, with Old Ones 1E right after that. I have lots of doubles of Mage stuff and tons of other stuff I'd be willing to trade. Let me know it you have it.

2) Also, I have a comprehensive hack of the Palladium RPG system in my head that does not make it a D20 clone or unify task resolution. I have fantasized about offering to do all the work on a corebook and split in with PB 50/50 in return for a quasi-official partnership, but I have no idea how I'd ever accomplish it without excess complexity or coming off as a jerk for offering to tweak the designer's game system. I also think it would make perfect economic sense with the plan I have for both of us and sell about a bajillion copies.

3) Last random bit: The Steranko Heroes Unlimited Cover is the best superhero gaming cover ever.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:01:54 GMT

If I ever wrote superhero comics, my dream assignment would be a Marvel title called Marvel Comics. It sounds unoriginal, but bear with me.

In the Marvel Universe, Marvel actually exists*, which makes comics there a form of journalism -- probably the lowest, most lurid form. I would think it began as wartime propaganda, but eventually bloomed into a semi-serious field called Graphic Journalism. Writer-artist teams (and occasional individuals) would work under horrible deadlines to condense major (and spandex-related) news events into panels and prose. The mainstream news would hate them for their sensationalism, their fast and loose approach to the facts for the sake of the comics form, and their obsession with superheroes.

Of course, starting in the 80s, people would argue its merits as a serious form of nonfiction. Seth wouldn't be self-absorbed. Instead, he'd self-publish a title about the local beat. Chris Claremont would be a human (mutant) rights figure. Doctor Doom would have graphic journalists produce plodding propaganda about Latveria. There would be martyrs, as bad guys killed artists who rendered things *too* accurately. There would be lawsuits, envy from the Bugle. Peter Parker probably hates them, because Spider-Man's a popular topic. There's a political component, then, in his interest in photojournalism.

There would be rumpled men and women with cameras and sketchbooks chasing disasters, and there would be writers who've mastered the art of the interview and have gotten folks like Spider-Man to open up about things they'd rather keep private. There'd be debates about using photography versus traditional art (the art having been used back when Marvel was too cheap to give folks cameras -- which of course helped touch off the form). Jack Kirby would be a Thompson-esque figure; nobody would be sure what was true, and what was a trip. There would be sleazy costumed informants, too.

Comics as the gutter journalism of a superpowered world would be pretty cool, I think. Maybe there's a game or supplement in it or something.

* Not my idea, BTW. It's actually in the canon MU.

More PG Game Thoughts

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:42:48 GMT

I'm just winding down before bed. I have some ideas about the aforementioned game.

1) I think I'll use Quick20 as my base, though by the time I'm done it will probably have few if any OGL artifacts. Characters have a basic stat block of: Fortitude, Might, Reflex and Will.

2) Weapons will have qualities, not a damage rating per se. A sword has the qualities Threatens (it's sharp!) and Parries (it's long!) Each template provides a straight bonus to something and allows for one special action. The environment may also have qualities, and magic might be the ability to bring certain qualities into being.

3) Other stuff has qualities, too. These take the place of skills, feat-type things and so on. I'm sensing a bit of a FATE vibe in what I want to accomplish, except a bit more individually-driven.

4) The goal of any violent conflict is to get your opponent to flee or surrender (and maybe, knock them out or give them a scratch). Your "damage" determines just how long and reliable this condition is.

5) To steal from old cartoons, the game world has plenty of automatons to destroy. 100 years ago, the Steel Orders came over the sea. Some came for slaves, others for territory or the land's wealth, but all sought the legendary Blue Passage, that would take their ships to the wealthy Worldsend Islands. They brought machines that moved like men and women but had no wills of their own, being nothing more than puppets who danced to a tune set by the etched cylinders inside them.

6) PCs start between the ages of 13 and 17. There will be detailed(ish) rules for maturation, so that every year of game time, characters change and grow independently of their advancement.

7) I'm going to call it Against Steel. And now I'll give it a tag.

The Following Content is Suitable for Children

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:04:48 GMT

So, I've been thinking lately. Over the past however-many years, I've spent a lot of time going to pretty dark places with my work. This doesn't affect me so much lately, because so much of the horror and fantasy genre material I've done has edged toward . . . loftier business. There are secret universes and strange laws, and the ways the affect ordinary people may be intimate and painful, but for me they don't have the raw effect of interpersonal violations.

(I've always found the Devil scarier than Cthulhu. Cthulhu treats you as an insect to be brushed aside for the sake of a vast, unknowable and unstoppable agenda. Satan hates you, especially when it comes to the things you find refuge in as virtuous character traits.)

But over the last few years I've slowed down my dark fantasy and horror consumption. I even like stuff like this less in subtext. On the other hand, as I've spent more time with the kids, I'm learning to appreciate "kid stuff" more. K like Kim Possible and I've become a big fan of Avatar. I don't pretend that kids like sanitized content more (if anything, the opposite is true -- I think children's TV is often about exploring a place where adults feel comfortable connecting with kids, and not the unadulterated interests' of kids' private culture), but when it's presented with a certain wit, I like it, especially when it exploits its restrictions to create something interesting, like some kind of narrative bonsai.

So I've been thinking of a light-hearted fantasy game. There's no blood and no real on-screen death without a weighty occasion, not even Star Wars' "it's a stormtrooper so you can shoot him" deal. There is violence, but it's the knockdown and make the bad guys run away sort of thing. I'm really in the beginning stages of thinking about it. It presents some interesting verisimilitude and design challenges. I want characters to be able to carry swords and use them without cutting or stabbing people, for instance. I'm thinking of some kind of fine-tuned reciprocity-based mechanic, where players set how intense a scene might get, but not where it turns into a "game of chicken," which is what most of these sorts of systems end up doing.

Found this.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:17:11 GMT

This was the plaque where we camped on Happy Isle in Algonquin back in 2003. Strange to see it again.

SEOBook daily search estimates for RPG related terms

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:59:37 GMT

Roleplaying
roleplaying: 143
roleplaying rpg: 42
roleplaying sex: 37
free online roleplaying you dont have to download: 35
roleplaying games: 32
free printable roleplaying games: 23

Dungeons and Dragons
dungeons and dragons: 1,157
dungeons and dragons online: 108
dungeons and dragons character sheets: 65
play dungeons and dragons: 58
dungeons and dragons free online game: 49
dungeons and dragons character sheet: 37

GURPS
gurps: 86
gurps traveller: 32
gurps goblins: 14
gurps adventure: 12
gurps martial arts: 12
gurps character sheet: 11

terms for comparison
nascar: 12,587
world of warcraft: 11,936
magic the gathering: 1,012
story games: 4
indie rpg: 12 (+indie rpgs: 4)
senet: 76 (+ many variant searches topical to the game)

Many RPG-related search terms are diffuse; there are few bog-standard searches. There are many mid-range keywords (I'm thinking of terms I didn't list, too) that could be built up quite easily.

Google Trends and RPGs

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:04:15 GMT

I've put up a gallery with RPG-related search and news trends here. Three interesting ones:

"Roleplaying"

"GURPS"*

"Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft"**

* GURPS is a good search because the term is distinctive and has no notable media licenses to skew results.

** WoW red, D&D blue.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:31:53 GMT

So, I'm thinking of not going to conventions. This is not the fault of convention organizers. I'm just really not a big fan of the culture of convention gaming.

I realized this when I got GanGames' mail and found out it was going to have a games on demand thing. This is exactly the kind of thing I *wish* conventions had. I hate the sign up sheets and the impersonal, ad hoc quality of it all. But on the other hand I hate running or playing games where selling something - an idea or product - is the goal. I hate the commodification of relationships like this. I hate the air of desperation from people who only game on the occasion. I hate reportage about conventions and other artificial venues being touted as representative of the main action in the hobby - and I'm afraid of it being true because if it is, I think RPGs are fucked.

It's not really anyone's fault. People are there to sell games, run a variety of games for people who otherwise might not get to play them - and for all my complaints, I've had a great time at many games. I've always been treated well by people when I've been a guest (or at least, when there were problems, they were purely accidental). But I'd really prefer to talk to gamers about craft in less contrived venues, away from panels and product-driven discussion.

I'm not sure where these feelings of mine are going. Right now I'm looking at ways to improve my craft and I want to point it straight at intimate group play, which is what I consider to be the heart of the roleplaying I enjoy. A few years back William Gibson said that blogging was kind of the opposite of writing (he said this in his blog, of course), and in that sense, I think that conventioneering is in some ways the opposite of what I value about roleplaying.

Pathfinder RPG

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:25:27 GMT

Interesting stuff. Thanks to Star Wars SAGA, we already use some stuff like this in our current D&D game. Some impressions:

* CMB is fantastic rule. This is the kind of Gordian-knot cutting thinking that should guide development.

* We use simplified SAGA-style skills, so I'm for that. I'm *not* for losing spendable skill ranks. It's fine for Star Wars because it's not a game where niche is nearly as strong.

* I wouldn't go with some aspects of the simplification scheme. Once again, Knowledge is too expensive and fiddly.

* Argh! Stupid skill bonus feats! Why not just make a feat called "highly skilled?"

* The classes are a little overstuffed because of the "dead levels." This is one situation where they really should go back and do something about multiclassing to fix the dead levels problem and provide sustained abilities that build over time. Many 3.5 mods have this issue in that they're indirect, tortured workarounds for a core issue. I'd prefer simpler classes.

* The new turning rules are dumb. Just make turning a series of instantly swappable spells and be done with it.

* Playtesting will no doubt be halfway about the game and halfway about a culture war between people who identify with the 3.5/D20 brand identity and neophiles who want to see a real change in the rules.

* If this takes away more than a trivial fraction of 4e's potential traffic Hasbro will nuke them with lawyers *unless* they have some further agreement with the company. The OGL looks nice in writing but it's never been tested in court. I'm sure that there are already prefab legal arguments prepared to deal with just such a situation. With such an imbalance in resources, the legitimacy of such action doesn't necessarily enter into it. So let's not pretend that Pathfinder will cause the Great D&D schism.