Changelings, Samurai, Free RPGs and Other November Miscellany

1. CHANGELINGS AND SAMURAI

I’m still working on my Legend of the Five Rings homebrew so that I can get the campaign rolling. I don’t get as many hits for those or actual play posts (like the supers game), but I’m going to keep on. A good deal of what I’m doing is highly adaptable to FATE- and I know people had been talking about an L5R/Fate mash-up a couple of months ago. I had put together some plans for the RPG Blog Carnival for November, but that fell through. My other big plan for the month is to pull together more of the Changeling the Lost ideas I’ve been working on. We’re nearing the end of my present campaign, so I thought it would be interesting to share how I planned that campaign and some of the NPCs from it. Other GMs may find them useful for ideas. I also have a couple of campaign design tools for CtL I’m working on. I hope to have that up this month. It is National Game Design Month, and at the very least I also want to either sketch about another one of the board game ideas I have. We're still working on Right of Succession. We hope to test a couple of final tweaks and then get that out for Blind Testing in December or more likely January. I also really want to work on my reskinning of Crimson Skies for a tabletop system. 

A special thanks to Kenny who created the two cut-metal pieces on display here. I've placed them on a hex-map background for scale. They're awesome- he did a amazing job working out how to keep things stable. The Dragon Clan mon below is buffed and looks beautiful.

2. DRAMASYSTEM

The Hillfolk Kickstarter ends tomorrow. You can see my review of that here. You can also see the sample Series Pitch I put together- Malign Universal. I think it is a pretty cool product and I’m looking forward to seeing the final results. Here’s the thing- that’s a pretty amazing game value right now. For example, for $41 you get the hardcover, color interior, 240-page Hillfolk rules. You also get the hardcover, color interior, 200+ page DramaSystem sourcebook Blood on the Snow. Plus you get the playable playtest preview pdf of Hillfolk right now, as well as pdf versions of those two books when they come out. Alternately, I think just $10 gets you both massive pdfs. That’s a pretty awesome deal. Of course, I want more people backing the project as that increases the chances of hitting more stretch goals and getting more stuff in the books. There’s an element of enlightened self-interest to the process I will readily admit.

3. MANY, MANY FREE RPGS

RPG Geek recently had their "2012 24-Hour RPG Design Contest." Essentially entrants have to conceptualize  design, write up, layout, and proof an entirely new rpg in just twenty-four hours. They can use Creative Commons, Public Domain, or their own art to illustrate. These are a crazy competitions, with incredibly restrictive time tables. A couple of years ago I did one and vowed I wouldn’t again. So of course I did one this year, beginning at 4pm on Sunday and wrapping about 3:30pm on Monday. I took a couple of half-hour naps and slept for three hours in that time. I was ready to puke/collapse when my wife dragged me out for dinner Monday. Anyway, please check out this post over at RPG Geek. You can download all 38!!! Games in a zip file there. There are some very cool and professional looking products. I’m already punching myself in the head about the typos and layout choices in mine. If you want, you can also vote in the contest if you have an RPG Geek Account. Full instructions for how to do that can be found at the post. If you like games and game design, it is worth looking through those for ideas.

4. REVIEWS

I’m still doing weekly gaming product reviews- as promised I have some more Mystara products I want to take a look at. I also have some of the new Legend of the Five Rings materials, including The Second City boxed set which I want to review. Another publisher generously gave me a free pdf of their game and I eventually want to review that- but I need to give that another read through or even better get it to the table.

5. CAMPAIGNS

The Scion Campaign finishes this Saturday, so that will be two campaigns I’ve put to bed in as many weeks. That leaves three active campaigns and one in “pre-launch” phase. At some point I want to get some more writing done- at least before I do more gaming. I do want to do more G+ gaming and I wish that the Indie +2 G+ Con had come at a better time. I did watch a great panel on G+ gaming- you can find the YouTube video here. Also, the players from my G+ Supers campaign generously tipped me, which I can attest to as excellent motivation for running again- to try to live up to the generosity they displayed. 

6. YOU WANT IT WHEN?

Three weeks until Thanksgiving. WTF?