Served this weekend and requested--
Chocolate Chip Cookies
2/3 cup shortening-- Crisco
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup nuts (optional-- I don't like it)
12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix thoroughly shortening, butter, sugars, eggs & vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients. I find that it you let the dough chill for at least a couple of hours, you get better results. You can put the dough in a large zip-lock bag and press the air out.
Drop dough by rounded spoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet. I prefer using parchment paper-- it draws out some of the greasiness of the cookies and crisps the bottom. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until light brown. Cool slightly before moving to a cooling rack.
My Chili Recipe
Begin with a big cheat--start with Carroll Shelby's spice package, if you can find it.
Instead of straight beef, go half lean ground beef (1 lb) and half maple breakfast sausage (1 lb). That sweetens the flavor and adds a different set of textures.
Brown a medium chopped onion and a few spoonfuls of minced garlic in some olive oil until slightly softened. The brown the meat in that as you usually would. I find that seasoning the meat slightly with salt at this point helps. Add the main spice packet, plus one 14oz+ can of tomato sauce (more than the box says).
Add about half a bottle of beer-- sweeter or darker beer as you want (I like Dos XX for this or a honey lager works to sweeten it). Add water if you like, usually half the can of tomato sauce will do it. Add half a jar of salsa-- I recommend a garlic chipolte salsa, the Frontera if you can find it. That adds a nice set of undertones. Otherwise you can use any salsa-- I recommend a thinner salsa-- the chunky ones tend to create some odd textures. Finally, if you like, you can throw in a little bit (maybe half a square) of dark chocolate.
I cook that for about 25-30 minutes; I don't add the additional cayenne as it doesn't really do anything but make it unpleasantly hot. However, if you prefer spicier you can add a little. Salt to taste-- I find that's the real key, not too much. If the chili gets too thick, thin it with the remaining beer. If the chili gets too thin, you can use the the included masa flour with some water. If it needs sweetening, I use maple syrup.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Thoughts on Firefly for Action Cards
Second in my line of postings ahead. A while back I started thinking about games and campaigns that might lend themselves to the Action Cards system. I think at some point in the future I want to run a Mage: the Ascension game using it. One of the other ideas I had was running Firefly with it, especially givne how bad the actually published game system is. Here are some of my working notes (rather short):
Standard action card system-- although the names of the categories may be changed, as well as the special cards. Will have to work out the terminology for that.
Characters will choose a role—and each role will have a set of special abilities which will be accessible to the player. They will choose one (maybe two?) at the start of the game. The abilities will either be once per scene or once per session things that maybe can be activated with tag lines or drama points. I'll come back to tag lines in a minute. Special abilities should be distinct-- they should in some cases do some of the retcon stuff I was thinking about earlier. Just different variations on that.
Captain: Ability to emulate others abilities, Absolute Bluff, Still Standing,
Rogue: Find it when you need it, Coward's Sprint, Unaware Defense
Pilot: Tricky Maneuver, Something New, Fools Luck
Gunman: Strategic Plan, Trick Shot,
Weirdo: Wig Out, Avoidance, Psychic Power
Long Suffering Techie: Jury Rig, Kick It
Liaison: I Know People,
Skills-- allow redraws
Traits-- allow global bumps based on that ability (are going to want to make these a little narrower-- graceful, or example is too wide.
Knowledges
Taglines--
Taglines are quotes which players can work into their actions. If a character integrates the quote into their action effectively, they gain a free drama point (which may be spent immediately, say to activate an ability) and also a free bump to their action result.
Taglines will be both player and GM generated. A player may have up to three taglines available at any one time. Taglines may be freely traded at the beginning and end of any session, but not during play. Players will be expected to generate taglines as the price of experience-- essentially a tradeoff bargain.
The Ship
Who can pilot the ship?
The shared group resource and probably most important factor for the game is the group's ship. The ship is a shared resource which the various party members can contribute to. Edges can be bought for the ship, results can be purchased, certain weapon enhancements, even additional cards. Like characters, a ship may have skills, traits, and abilities.
Most ship to ship fights are run as chases. The primary person controlling the ship is the pilot. Since the ship itself represents the mechanical aspects of things, obstacle tests and such are made by the pilot. Determining the level of success is based on a pull from the ship's deck. So, for example, the pilot wants to try to break away from the enemy, we check his success there and then pull from the ship's deck to determine how far he can pull away-- like a damage check with the enemies own engines as a result. This may change-- I need to think about how this would be handled.
I'm imagining the ship would have four results-- Integrity to represent absorbing damage and handling the stress of difficult maneuvers. Combat to represent weapons and tracking systems. Engine to represent speed, take off and pushing tests. Maneuvers to represent dodge and how well the ship responds to commands.
Perhaps for actually performing tricks and maneuvers-- the pilot has to make a test but so does the ship. Need to figure out how to handle that-- with the pilot having a trumping ability?
Retcon/Monkey Wrench/Set-Ups
A variation of the Operation skill system I had for my Gumshoe Spyworld! variant--
Operational skills are used to explain something that you have set up beforehand while carrying out a plan. It is not used to do something in the present, that is what General and Investigative skills are for. Instead, you use these skills to justify an existing situation. For example-- Rob is crossing through a hallway when he detects a set of guards coming his way. He says that his advance preparations told him of an accessible vent nearby which he can hide in. This is the use of his Advance Team skill (indicating someone who has found the floor plans for him). He spends one point from his Advance Team skill. Once that is used up he cannot call on that. The GM may rule that certain requests are either impossible or cost more points. At that point the player may choose to not use the skill, pay the extra points or attempt to have something more reasonable occur.
Generally players can do set ups with a good explanation and a drama point. Certain roles can also do a set up once per session for free based on their area (i.e. liaisons can have people in place). Should set-ups have a larger cost associated with them to make the role abilities more cost effective? Need to provide a condensed-- no more than ten list of kinds of retcons and examples.
Standard action card system-- although the names of the categories may be changed, as well as the special cards. Will have to work out the terminology for that.
Characters will choose a role—and each role will have a set of special abilities which will be accessible to the player. They will choose one (maybe two?) at the start of the game. The abilities will either be once per scene or once per session things that maybe can be activated with tag lines or drama points. I'll come back to tag lines in a minute. Special abilities should be distinct-- they should in some cases do some of the retcon stuff I was thinking about earlier. Just different variations on that.
Captain: Ability to emulate others abilities, Absolute Bluff, Still Standing,
Rogue: Find it when you need it, Coward's Sprint, Unaware Defense
Pilot: Tricky Maneuver, Something New, Fools Luck
Gunman: Strategic Plan, Trick Shot,
Weirdo: Wig Out, Avoidance, Psychic Power
Long Suffering Techie: Jury Rig, Kick It
Liaison: I Know People,
Skills-- allow redraws
Traits-- allow global bumps based on that ability (are going to want to make these a little narrower-- graceful, or example is too wide.
Knowledges
Taglines--
Taglines are quotes which players can work into their actions. If a character integrates the quote into their action effectively, they gain a free drama point (which may be spent immediately, say to activate an ability) and also a free bump to their action result.
Taglines will be both player and GM generated. A player may have up to three taglines available at any one time. Taglines may be freely traded at the beginning and end of any session, but not during play. Players will be expected to generate taglines as the price of experience-- essentially a tradeoff bargain.
The Ship
Who can pilot the ship?
The shared group resource and probably most important factor for the game is the group's ship. The ship is a shared resource which the various party members can contribute to. Edges can be bought for the ship, results can be purchased, certain weapon enhancements, even additional cards. Like characters, a ship may have skills, traits, and abilities.
Most ship to ship fights are run as chases. The primary person controlling the ship is the pilot. Since the ship itself represents the mechanical aspects of things, obstacle tests and such are made by the pilot. Determining the level of success is based on a pull from the ship's deck. So, for example, the pilot wants to try to break away from the enemy, we check his success there and then pull from the ship's deck to determine how far he can pull away-- like a damage check with the enemies own engines as a result. This may change-- I need to think about how this would be handled.
I'm imagining the ship would have four results-- Integrity to represent absorbing damage and handling the stress of difficult maneuvers. Combat to represent weapons and tracking systems. Engine to represent speed, take off and pushing tests. Maneuvers to represent dodge and how well the ship responds to commands.
Perhaps for actually performing tricks and maneuvers-- the pilot has to make a test but so does the ship. Need to figure out how to handle that-- with the pilot having a trumping ability?
Retcon/Monkey Wrench/Set-Ups
A variation of the Operation skill system I had for my Gumshoe Spyworld! variant--
Operational skills are used to explain something that you have set up beforehand while carrying out a plan. It is not used to do something in the present, that is what General and Investigative skills are for. Instead, you use these skills to justify an existing situation. For example-- Rob is crossing through a hallway when he detects a set of guards coming his way. He says that his advance preparations told him of an accessible vent nearby which he can hide in. This is the use of his Advance Team skill (indicating someone who has found the floor plans for him). He spends one point from his Advance Team skill. Once that is used up he cannot call on that. The GM may rule that certain requests are either impossible or cost more points. At that point the player may choose to not use the skill, pay the extra points or attempt to have something more reasonable occur.
Generally players can do set ups with a good explanation and a drama point. Certain roles can also do a set up once per session for free based on their area (i.e. liaisons can have people in place). Should set-ups have a larger cost associated with them to make the role abilities more cost effective? Need to provide a condensed-- no more than ten list of kinds of retcons and examples.
Campaign Prep for Sunday High Fantasy Campaign
Big stuff weekend-- so I'm doing my Friday and Saturday entries tonight-- pretend they're new when you look at them later. Had some interesting discussion on today's blog post and I want to come back to that-- probably Sunday.
Finally got some structure and just about ready for the next Sunday Campaign. Thought I'd post what I sent out so you can see how I put things.
We'll be playing on alternate Sundays as per usual, with a starting time of 7pm. I'd like to use Sunday, April 5th as a starting night to go do character creation and setting things up. My target right now in terms of campaign arc is one year; however we can negotiate on that depending on how play goes.
Mechanics-wise we'll be using an incredibly steamlined version of Gurps. I should have all the rules you'll need for play in a document by the time we start, so don't worry about books. Plus, I'll be moving fairly far away from the original system so I don't think the books would help anyway. My goal is a fast-playing system with some crunch for combat. Magic will be handled in a flexible way, allowing mages to construct effects on the fly. They'll also be some easier simple versions to allow people to create "hybrid" characters as well. I don't want to worry too much about mechanics after character creation.
Premise: This will be a fantasy campaign, with strong elements of interacting and shaping the mythic. It will take place on the Third Continent, where some of you have played before (Pillar of Fire, Covenants, Pavis and Red Emperor campaigns). However, things have changed significantly since the last game. A century has passed, one in which the hierarchy of the Gods has been shaken. Some have ascended and removed themselves from the world, some have new places, some have fallen, and others are trying to fit themselves into new niches. The Ban, an effect some have said of the Godlearners, has returned but in a different form. Much travel and communication has been cut off-- not only by sea, but also by land. However, those known as the Wayfinders and a few select others have been able to make their way through and lead others. Many places still remain hidden or out of contact, but others have managed to establish trade and communication networks (albeit with some difficulty).
Players will begin as part of a collective community-- one of those places which has gathered a diverse group over time (explaining various cultural backgrounds, professions and gods). It has some trade with neighbors through The ban, but is generally a sleepy place. You will begin as adolescents/early teens. We will do a prologue scenario set there. We will then move forward some years-- with your characters older (late teens, early twenties). I will have a set of event cards for you to draw from in order to help you shape the narrative of the time between the prologue and the beginning of the campaign. You'll get to spent the rest of your character creation points at that time.
The other important part of the game will be that each of you will make up your god. You should decide their personality, their aspects and something about their story. I'm attaching a copy of the old Prosaepedia of the Third Continent to give you some ideas-- NOTE: don't try to read this through!!! I'm only including it to give you some flavor ideas for what you might do-- plus there may be some minor or lost gods there you'd found appealing-- but don't think you have to know this stuff for the game!
These gods should not necessarily be part of an established pantheon or array. The key concept is that your god is a little god and in the course of the campaign, you are one of the few followers of that god remaining. As your character grows-- so will your god, granting you new powers. Your path will shape the stories of that god, help forge a new pantheon, and affect the mythic realm. There will be an element of Heroquesting here-- acting on the plane of the mythic.
Character types-- think about yourself in terms of the classic professions and archetypes. Everyone follows a god, so you don't have to be a Priest or anything. You can be a straight fighter, rogue, diplomat, scholar, acrobat or so on. If you do want to follow the divine path more fully, you can be an initiate or a full-on priest. You can be a shaman, in which case we handle magic slightly differently (or rather there are some additional options). You can be an adventurer will some magical skill (i.e. a hybrid class as it were). If you decide to be a classic non-divine mage (like a Sorceror, Adept, Warlock, etc) then your godcould bea little different-- a heretic Malkioni Saint (but we can talk about that). As you may recall there's some tension between classic mages and everyone else on the continent. There are some mages with religious faith as well.
Finally got some structure and just about ready for the next Sunday Campaign. Thought I'd post what I sent out so you can see how I put things.
We'll be playing on alternate Sundays as per usual, with a starting time of 7pm. I'd like to use Sunday, April 5th as a starting night to go do character creation and setting things up. My target right now in terms of campaign arc is one year; however we can negotiate on that depending on how play goes.
Mechanics-wise we'll be using an incredibly steamlined version of Gurps. I should have all the rules you'll need for play in a document by the time we start, so don't worry about books. Plus, I'll be moving fairly far away from the original system so I don't think the books would help anyway. My goal is a fast-playing system with some crunch for combat. Magic will be handled in a flexible way, allowing mages to construct effects on the fly. They'll also be some easier simple versions to allow people to create "hybrid" characters as well. I don't want to worry too much about mechanics after character creation.
Premise: This will be a fantasy campaign, with strong elements of interacting and shaping the mythic. It will take place on the Third Continent, where some of you have played before (Pillar of Fire, Covenants, Pavis and Red Emperor campaigns). However, things have changed significantly since the last game. A century has passed, one in which the hierarchy of the Gods has been shaken. Some have ascended and removed themselves from the world, some have new places, some have fallen, and others are trying to fit themselves into new niches. The Ban, an effect some have said of the Godlearners, has returned but in a different form. Much travel and communication has been cut off-- not only by sea, but also by land. However, those known as the Wayfinders and a few select others have been able to make their way through and lead others. Many places still remain hidden or out of contact, but others have managed to establish trade and communication networks (albeit with some difficulty).
Players will begin as part of a collective community-- one of those places which has gathered a diverse group over time (explaining various cultural backgrounds, professions and gods). It has some trade with neighbors through The ban, but is generally a sleepy place. You will begin as adolescents/early teens. We will do a prologue scenario set there. We will then move forward some years-- with your characters older (late teens, early twenties). I will have a set of event cards for you to draw from in order to help you shape the narrative of the time between the prologue and the beginning of the campaign. You'll get to spent the rest of your character creation points at that time.
The other important part of the game will be that each of you will make up your god. You should decide their personality, their aspects and something about their story. I'm attaching a copy of the old Prosaepedia of the Third Continent to give you some ideas-- NOTE: don't try to read this through!!! I'm only including it to give you some flavor ideas for what you might do-- plus there may be some minor or lost gods there you'd found appealing-- but don't think you have to know this stuff for the game!
These gods should not necessarily be part of an established pantheon or array. The key concept is that your god is a little god and in the course of the campaign, you are one of the few followers of that god remaining. As your character grows-- so will your god, granting you new powers. Your path will shape the stories of that god, help forge a new pantheon, and affect the mythic realm. There will be an element of Heroquesting here-- acting on the plane of the mythic.
Character types-- think about yourself in terms of the classic professions and archetypes. Everyone follows a god, so you don't have to be a Priest or anything. You can be a straight fighter, rogue, diplomat, scholar, acrobat or so on. If you do want to follow the divine path more fully, you can be an initiate or a full-on priest. You can be a shaman, in which case we handle magic slightly differently (or rather there are some additional options). You can be an adventurer will some magical skill (i.e. a hybrid class as it were). If you decide to be a classic non-divine mage (like a Sorceror, Adept, Warlock, etc) then your godcould bea little different-- a heretic Malkioni Saint (but we can talk about that). As you may recall there's some tension between classic mages and everyone else on the continent. There are some mages with religious faith as well.
Odd RPG Mechanics I'm Fond Of
ODD RPG MECHANICS I'M FOND OF
While I've been whittling away at the mechanics I actually use at the table, I'll still admit that I have great fondness for cleverly constructed rules and systems. My problem stems from their real lack of utility at the table-- getting in the way of the story of narrative. But I still like the idea of structures-- and some of them do work for handling odd things. I know Sherri gets a little frustrated when I start talking about new system mechanics I've come up with-- she knows that 99% of the time I could handle the same thing through narrative negotiation. I have been trying to sublimate my affection for mechanics into my board game obsessions.
That being said if I find one of my “pet topics” has been covered interestingly or well in a game system, I'm feverishly drawn to pick it up. I've seen some good versions, and a lot of lousy versions of the systems. Some I've liked at first and then changed my mind after playing with them for a while.
Mass Combat: We used to play Chainmail with all the figures we had-- probably my first real introduction to miniatures game. It wasn't really tied to any campaign, but closer to pulling out all your action figures and rolling dice to determine battles. Back in 1985 TSR finally put out Battlesystem-- which was intended to be the definitive mass combat rules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We still played AD&D at that time and I recall picking up the rules and never, ever using them.
Instead the first time I saw an even reasonably workable way to handle mass combat in a role-playing game came from Gurps. They first presented an abstract system in their Horseclans book and then later in their take on Conan. That broke forces down into numbers and values and had contested rolls. However both only had some light contact with how the players might interact with the battle (i.e. here's how you resolve the battle and you can do something...at some point...). Over the years I saw other iterations-- TSR with Birthright, ICE with War Law- which was even worse than you can imagine. Probably the best take I've seen has been L5R which resolves the battle but also provides events and incidents to give more color and control for the players. Exalted 2e has a take on it that I don't find that appealing, despite its simplicity (essentially armies become like equipment and weapons for resolution). The Black Company RPG has some great stuff-- but it suffers from being based in d20.
I've tried some homebrew systems in the past-- trying to bridge the gap between the strategic choices of the leaders and the roles of the players on the battlefield. Some of those resolution systems have been interesting and made for good sessions (the Siege of Neutral City, the Battle of Whitewall) while others have been real misses (the Urokell Campaigns) in part because different players wanted different things out of the game. So my druthers these days is to handle those things as abstractly as possible-- but at the same time I look over the rules I find in other games, hunting for that magic bullet.
Chases: Action movies live or die on their chase sequences. However, translating that energy on to the tabletop can be difficult. On the one hand, you want players to be able to make strategic choices-- whether their fleeing or pursuing, but on the other hand you want everything to move at a breakneck pace. You could make everything based on A or B shout it out choices-- like quick-time events from video games but that isn't entirely satisfying. The good action sequence has characters interacting with the environment in clever ways. There's also the question of how you represent skill in those situations-- I mean, beyond speed and reflexes. Let's say you have a system of compared maneuver types-- represented abstractly-- a good pursuer ought to be able to determine something about his opponent's actions going into the chase (“i.e. You think he's going to do an X, Y or Z escape action”). That would allow them to calculate more optimal responses. But that's another moment, another decision, another step, another cross-referencing that needs to be handled. And so we slow things down further.
Two games I recall with more involved discussion of chase mechanics are the old James Bond RPG and Spycraft. The former I don't remember that well-- but my suspicion is that it wasn't that great since I don't recall many exciting chases in the games I ran. Spycraft has some interesting ideas, but unfortunately wedded to a d20 based system with a highly, highly elaborated feat system. I still keep looking.
Duels: There's great tension that comes from seeing a single hero take on their rival in a one-on-one duel. The end duel from Robin Hood or any high noon showdown from a Western. That's hard to replicate at the table for a couple of reasons-- not least of which is that you have multiple PCs. You can kind of work around that through careful planning and a group that understands dramatic necessity. But most games done really simulate the back and forth of a duel-- advantage, gaining ground, managing to get out of a particular maneuver. Those are discrete elements and generally when I play, I'm imagining a round of combat not as a single swing and defense, but as a series of movements, strikes, and finally real attempts. One other problem comes up in gunfights or Iaijutsu duels-- that's really one strike or shot and ends up being a contest of initiative. I've tried a couple of work arounds-- usually involving perception and skill checks before a duel to gain advantage. Those have usually happened in tournament settings. Some of those ideas I took from a Pyramid article on the topic, but I haven't found anything entirely satisfying.
Bases: This may sound odd, given my general dislike for building equipment or vehicles, but I like the idea of the group investing shared points into the resources of a base. What I don't like is systems with highly detailed rules for this-- including point costs for square footage and so on. Or even the old Warlord's keep structures from classic DnD (“Whee! Level 10! I get a Castle!”). I think these kinds of things ought to be abstract. The Angel RPG had a system of ratings for different aspects that I liked-- at least I think that came from the Angel RPG, but it might have been from one of the Buffy-verse rpg sidebooks from Eden. Changeling has some of this in the concept of a shared Hollow with resources that players can purchase. It is an aspect I like and if I see it, I usually try to take a look.
Social and Political Grand Scale: I think I mentioned this in my discussion of the Weapons of the Gods Companion earlier. While I'm not sure I'd ever use them, I like the concept of rules and structures to deal with these kinds of games. I remember the old Aria Worlds game which tried to deal with the evolution of civilizations. Impractical, absurd and strange-- but also fascinating at the same time. These kinds of rules approaches can develop good material inasmuch as they show what power structures and relationships exist within a society or group.
Martial Arts Systems: I love seeing what people make of this-- from highly specific maneuvers with multiple rolls (ala Gurps MA) to delineated but looser feat blocks (ala True20 and the like) to simple lists of actions (ala Hero System). My problem now is that I've seen so many of these systems over the years that I immediately note the resemblances. I do love to look for the relative level of Wushu-y-ness of these systems though. I want a structure for MA that stays relatively loose-- but I'll read any of them, and there have been some bad ones (Enter the Zombie, some of the weirdness of Exalted where it goes into the highest level stuff).
Social Combat: I'm always curious about games which try to model social combat. I mean obviously you could handle it the same way as physical combat, but that seems to loose something. You have varying objectives, varying circumstances that might be even more difficult to model. Plus, once you go down the road of abstracting these kinds of interactions-- where do you stop? I don't think I'll ever use an involved system for this but I love to window shop. Both Burning Wheel and The Dying Earth RPG have systems for this. The former has all of the strange low-trust, low-detail problems of the rest of that game and the latter goes to far into paralleling the two kinds of combat. Dying Earth also suffers from some broken basic mechanics-- or at least mechanics which our play group didn't find palatable. I think there might be some things worth digging out of that game though (except that Pelgrane Press will lose their license to the material in the near future and make it OOP). I'd like to see more and fuller treatment of these ideas in the Legend of the Five Rings game-- that always seemed like a strange omission. Maybe they've done something with that in the newer books.
*****
In the end, I'm much more likely to homebrew these areas of the game-- but still I seek the Holy Grail for each of them in new games.
While I've been whittling away at the mechanics I actually use at the table, I'll still admit that I have great fondness for cleverly constructed rules and systems. My problem stems from their real lack of utility at the table-- getting in the way of the story of narrative. But I still like the idea of structures-- and some of them do work for handling odd things. I know Sherri gets a little frustrated when I start talking about new system mechanics I've come up with-- she knows that 99% of the time I could handle the same thing through narrative negotiation. I have been trying to sublimate my affection for mechanics into my board game obsessions.
That being said if I find one of my “pet topics” has been covered interestingly or well in a game system, I'm feverishly drawn to pick it up. I've seen some good versions, and a lot of lousy versions of the systems. Some I've liked at first and then changed my mind after playing with them for a while.
Mass Combat: We used to play Chainmail with all the figures we had-- probably my first real introduction to miniatures game. It wasn't really tied to any campaign, but closer to pulling out all your action figures and rolling dice to determine battles. Back in 1985 TSR finally put out Battlesystem-- which was intended to be the definitive mass combat rules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We still played AD&D at that time and I recall picking up the rules and never, ever using them.
Instead the first time I saw an even reasonably workable way to handle mass combat in a role-playing game came from Gurps. They first presented an abstract system in their Horseclans book and then later in their take on Conan. That broke forces down into numbers and values and had contested rolls. However both only had some light contact with how the players might interact with the battle (i.e. here's how you resolve the battle and you can do something...at some point...). Over the years I saw other iterations-- TSR with Birthright, ICE with War Law- which was even worse than you can imagine. Probably the best take I've seen has been L5R which resolves the battle but also provides events and incidents to give more color and control for the players. Exalted 2e has a take on it that I don't find that appealing, despite its simplicity (essentially armies become like equipment and weapons for resolution). The Black Company RPG has some great stuff-- but it suffers from being based in d20.
I've tried some homebrew systems in the past-- trying to bridge the gap between the strategic choices of the leaders and the roles of the players on the battlefield. Some of those resolution systems have been interesting and made for good sessions (the Siege of Neutral City, the Battle of Whitewall) while others have been real misses (the Urokell Campaigns) in part because different players wanted different things out of the game. So my druthers these days is to handle those things as abstractly as possible-- but at the same time I look over the rules I find in other games, hunting for that magic bullet.
Chases: Action movies live or die on their chase sequences. However, translating that energy on to the tabletop can be difficult. On the one hand, you want players to be able to make strategic choices-- whether their fleeing or pursuing, but on the other hand you want everything to move at a breakneck pace. You could make everything based on A or B shout it out choices-- like quick-time events from video games but that isn't entirely satisfying. The good action sequence has characters interacting with the environment in clever ways. There's also the question of how you represent skill in those situations-- I mean, beyond speed and reflexes. Let's say you have a system of compared maneuver types-- represented abstractly-- a good pursuer ought to be able to determine something about his opponent's actions going into the chase (“i.e. You think he's going to do an X, Y or Z escape action”). That would allow them to calculate more optimal responses. But that's another moment, another decision, another step, another cross-referencing that needs to be handled. And so we slow things down further.
Two games I recall with more involved discussion of chase mechanics are the old James Bond RPG and Spycraft. The former I don't remember that well-- but my suspicion is that it wasn't that great since I don't recall many exciting chases in the games I ran. Spycraft has some interesting ideas, but unfortunately wedded to a d20 based system with a highly, highly elaborated feat system. I still keep looking.
Duels: There's great tension that comes from seeing a single hero take on their rival in a one-on-one duel. The end duel from Robin Hood or any high noon showdown from a Western. That's hard to replicate at the table for a couple of reasons-- not least of which is that you have multiple PCs. You can kind of work around that through careful planning and a group that understands dramatic necessity. But most games done really simulate the back and forth of a duel-- advantage, gaining ground, managing to get out of a particular maneuver. Those are discrete elements and generally when I play, I'm imagining a round of combat not as a single swing and defense, but as a series of movements, strikes, and finally real attempts. One other problem comes up in gunfights or Iaijutsu duels-- that's really one strike or shot and ends up being a contest of initiative. I've tried a couple of work arounds-- usually involving perception and skill checks before a duel to gain advantage. Those have usually happened in tournament settings. Some of those ideas I took from a Pyramid article on the topic, but I haven't found anything entirely satisfying.
Bases: This may sound odd, given my general dislike for building equipment or vehicles, but I like the idea of the group investing shared points into the resources of a base. What I don't like is systems with highly detailed rules for this-- including point costs for square footage and so on. Or even the old Warlord's keep structures from classic DnD (“Whee! Level 10! I get a Castle!”). I think these kinds of things ought to be abstract. The Angel RPG had a system of ratings for different aspects that I liked-- at least I think that came from the Angel RPG, but it might have been from one of the Buffy-verse rpg sidebooks from Eden. Changeling has some of this in the concept of a shared Hollow with resources that players can purchase. It is an aspect I like and if I see it, I usually try to take a look.
Social and Political Grand Scale: I think I mentioned this in my discussion of the Weapons of the Gods Companion earlier. While I'm not sure I'd ever use them, I like the concept of rules and structures to deal with these kinds of games. I remember the old Aria Worlds game which tried to deal with the evolution of civilizations. Impractical, absurd and strange-- but also fascinating at the same time. These kinds of rules approaches can develop good material inasmuch as they show what power structures and relationships exist within a society or group.
Martial Arts Systems: I love seeing what people make of this-- from highly specific maneuvers with multiple rolls (ala Gurps MA) to delineated but looser feat blocks (ala True20 and the like) to simple lists of actions (ala Hero System). My problem now is that I've seen so many of these systems over the years that I immediately note the resemblances. I do love to look for the relative level of Wushu-y-ness of these systems though. I want a structure for MA that stays relatively loose-- but I'll read any of them, and there have been some bad ones (Enter the Zombie, some of the weirdness of Exalted where it goes into the highest level stuff).
Social Combat: I'm always curious about games which try to model social combat. I mean obviously you could handle it the same way as physical combat, but that seems to loose something. You have varying objectives, varying circumstances that might be even more difficult to model. Plus, once you go down the road of abstracting these kinds of interactions-- where do you stop? I don't think I'll ever use an involved system for this but I love to window shop. Both Burning Wheel and The Dying Earth RPG have systems for this. The former has all of the strange low-trust, low-detail problems of the rest of that game and the latter goes to far into paralleling the two kinds of combat. Dying Earth also suffers from some broken basic mechanics-- or at least mechanics which our play group didn't find palatable. I think there might be some things worth digging out of that game though (except that Pelgrane Press will lose their license to the material in the near future and make it OOP). I'd like to see more and fuller treatment of these ideas in the Legend of the Five Rings game-- that always seemed like a strange omission. Maybe they've done something with that in the newer books.
*****
In the end, I'm much more likely to homebrew these areas of the game-- but still I seek the Holy Grail for each of them in new games.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
RPG Mechanics I Always Ignore
RPG MECHANICS I ALWAYS IGNORE
(But still keep appearing in rulebooks)
Equipment tracking and encumbrance: I don't remember when I stopped worrying about this kind of thing. I distinctly recall having the classic DnD “is it written on your sheet?” arguments back in high school. I also remember keeping track of these things for a time when we played Gurps, but only because encumbrance actually had a fairly easy to track set of effects. Somewhere along the line I stopped really caring about it. When Dave Fink ran his Rolemaster game he shocked me by forcing everyone to go to the equipment lists and spend money to show what precisely we were carrying. It seemed so odd.
The last real attempt to follow this was more of a tactile exercise when we played the Red Emperor campaign. I had money bags sewn up by Sherri's mom and prepared coins and tokens to track wealth. We stuck with that for a long time, but eventually I gave up on it. I'd stopped measuring treasure troves in terms of Electrum pieces and Gold Coins. That kind of tracking just seems a little archaic. Instead I measure wealth and items more abstractly. If someone says they have something, and it makes sense they'd be carrying it with them, then I let them have it. If there's a question we make a roll. I only worry about wealth in the abstract-- ratings and levels-- that help support an argument that someone can having something special or expensive.
The exception comes where the question of scarcity of wealth is crucial to the scenario. For example, in the Crux campaign, I've made their lack wealth and resources appropriate to their status a central theme to the campaign. Over time they've slowly accrued more money, which has in turn brought more things they need to spend money on. That question of wealth and support serves as a major plot point. Alternately, in the Changeling game, they have a support structure for food and shelter, but at this point little else. Since the campaign has a theme the question of how outsiders survive in the real world, how much money they have is important. Over time I expect those monetary questions to be answered but they should always at least be pressing in the background. At the same time, I still don't need them to have equipment lists: we know they have a couple of changes of clothing, a fine set of Dollar Store dishware and so on.
For your classic game game, all people really need to have on their sheet is what weapon they use, why armor their wearing, and any magic/unique items they've picked up over the course of the game. Kaiju, in the Action Cards system, has a card that specifically addresses the question of having the right item at the right time-- if he pulls it he can justify excellent preparation.
Reaction Rolls: Gurps, and a few other systems, have social rules that elaborately track levels of friendship and interaction. I feel a little bad about ignoring them in Gurps since several advantages add bonuses to these initial checks. But on the other hand, if you have to leave these kinds of considerations to mechanics-- then I think you're doing something wrong. I'm not saying that social skills shouldn't have checks-- but they should be used where risk comes in and the player's had a chance to develop how they want to interact. Those skills become support for Matrix-style arguments about being able to persuade, convince, bribe, bluff, or seduce. The GM has to decide the player's comfort level with these kinds of interactions-- balancing the player who can comfortably soliloquy with the player who gets tongue tied. I, for example, try to interpret things for players if they have high social skill levels but they themselves might not be picking up on some of the subtleties.
Vehicle and Equipment Building: I like my character points to stay where they are-- with character creation. A number of games-- Gurps, Cyberpunk, MektonZ, Hero System, among others-- have elaborate systems for building devices, magic items and/or vehicles. For some games I can certainly see that-- if you're playing a giant robot game, you need to have rules for them. More often these systems involve elaborate calculations about weight, chassis strength, dollar costs, levels limits and so on. I don't want to deal with that-- I mean, I just barely stat out the bad guys. Generally these systems do align with the other systems in the game-- I mean that they ought to be simply another iteration of the character creation system, but in a different scale with a few twists added to them.
I don't think I've ever run a game where these kinds of things have been important-- the exception being Neon Genesis Zombie. Gurps and other fantasy games have extensive systems for the creation of magic items, but I've always ignored them. I just make up something that sounds cool. I always abstract these elements and ignore this sometimes literal chrome on the game system.
Modifier Charts, Range and Combat Complications: As you know I don't usually use a GM's screen. I also don't like looking at the rulebooks when I'm running-- I always feel the need to apologize when I do. Exceptions occur when something completely new comes up or when we've probably handled something wrong before. The former often happens the first time we use a power or a maneuver; the latter I try to do only if the results otherwise might screw a player who has invested points in something.
I can recall the amusement of trying to put together all the modifiers from the old Gurps Size/Speed charts-- Vatican City moving at the speed of light while on fire was only something like a -16 to hit. Most games with numerical systems spend time delineating all the possible modifiers. I usually chunk those in favor of simply giving a penalty or bonus. My favorite is +/-2-- really-- it is easy to add and usually makes a difference. Obviously if things get crazier you need to do more-- but I generally wing everything on that score. An exception would be hit location penalties-- I usually stick closer for those. One thing to watch out for, as a GM, is compensation creep. When players start out with their skills, they're usually pretty low level. As a generous GM, your instinct is to not apply modifiers. However, once players get to higher skill ranks, there's more room to impose penalties. Hence, your instinct is to begin to impose them for things you wouldn't have before. Impose penalties where the player knows that what they're doing is difficult-- otherwise don't worry about it.
Range also falls into this category of mechanics. Any game with a significantly detailed weapon chart establishes very different ranges for weapons. I remember loving the detailed number crunch of the Palladium Armory books or even the Fringeworthy/Stalking the Night Fantastic games. However, in practice we rarely paid attention to those numbers. They're like a comfortable pillow for simulationists, but in play they slow things down. Obviously throwing a knife or an axe has a shorter range than shooting a gun or a bow. But in play I only give penalties if, when I eyeball the scene, it looks, um, “far.” In practice most things will reach across your usual room or hex map. If not, then -2.
Some systems require bows a round of prep. No. I hate that. Yes-- it would be more realistic to calculate times, but it irritates me. Crossbows and Volters, which do more damage, take a couple of rounds to reload. We assume that a player (or an NPC) is only going to get one or maybe two shots from one of those-- we don't calculate it otherwise. Likewise, I don't usually assign “snap-shot” or “draw & fire” penalties. That's a cinematic action and I want to encourage it. If not, then -2.
Disease and Fatigue-- If you have to track a character becoming exhausted from being in combat, your combats are going too long. Gurps has some rules for this and Rolemaster Standard System had the most insane set of guidelines I've ever seen. Those mechanics read like a parody of a real rpg. A combat lasting that long ought to be a mass battle-- or perhaps there's a series of fights, in which case-- shock of shocks, you apply a -2 penalty. Likewise diseases should be important game events rather than something you have to roll for. Too many games have extensive lists-- with effects, incubation times, contagion levels, and all kinds of details. I'm sure some GMs follow through on these things, but I have never used these rules-- they just seem like a bizarre elaboration.
I'd be curious to know other people's experience in this regard.
(But still keep appearing in rulebooks)
Equipment tracking and encumbrance: I don't remember when I stopped worrying about this kind of thing. I distinctly recall having the classic DnD “is it written on your sheet?” arguments back in high school. I also remember keeping track of these things for a time when we played Gurps, but only because encumbrance actually had a fairly easy to track set of effects. Somewhere along the line I stopped really caring about it. When Dave Fink ran his Rolemaster game he shocked me by forcing everyone to go to the equipment lists and spend money to show what precisely we were carrying. It seemed so odd.
The last real attempt to follow this was more of a tactile exercise when we played the Red Emperor campaign. I had money bags sewn up by Sherri's mom and prepared coins and tokens to track wealth. We stuck with that for a long time, but eventually I gave up on it. I'd stopped measuring treasure troves in terms of Electrum pieces and Gold Coins. That kind of tracking just seems a little archaic. Instead I measure wealth and items more abstractly. If someone says they have something, and it makes sense they'd be carrying it with them, then I let them have it. If there's a question we make a roll. I only worry about wealth in the abstract-- ratings and levels-- that help support an argument that someone can having something special or expensive.
The exception comes where the question of scarcity of wealth is crucial to the scenario. For example, in the Crux campaign, I've made their lack wealth and resources appropriate to their status a central theme to the campaign. Over time they've slowly accrued more money, which has in turn brought more things they need to spend money on. That question of wealth and support serves as a major plot point. Alternately, in the Changeling game, they have a support structure for food and shelter, but at this point little else. Since the campaign has a theme the question of how outsiders survive in the real world, how much money they have is important. Over time I expect those monetary questions to be answered but they should always at least be pressing in the background. At the same time, I still don't need them to have equipment lists: we know they have a couple of changes of clothing, a fine set of Dollar Store dishware and so on.
For your classic game game, all people really need to have on their sheet is what weapon they use, why armor their wearing, and any magic/unique items they've picked up over the course of the game. Kaiju, in the Action Cards system, has a card that specifically addresses the question of having the right item at the right time-- if he pulls it he can justify excellent preparation.
Reaction Rolls: Gurps, and a few other systems, have social rules that elaborately track levels of friendship and interaction. I feel a little bad about ignoring them in Gurps since several advantages add bonuses to these initial checks. But on the other hand, if you have to leave these kinds of considerations to mechanics-- then I think you're doing something wrong. I'm not saying that social skills shouldn't have checks-- but they should be used where risk comes in and the player's had a chance to develop how they want to interact. Those skills become support for Matrix-style arguments about being able to persuade, convince, bribe, bluff, or seduce. The GM has to decide the player's comfort level with these kinds of interactions-- balancing the player who can comfortably soliloquy with the player who gets tongue tied. I, for example, try to interpret things for players if they have high social skill levels but they themselves might not be picking up on some of the subtleties.
Vehicle and Equipment Building: I like my character points to stay where they are-- with character creation. A number of games-- Gurps, Cyberpunk, MektonZ, Hero System, among others-- have elaborate systems for building devices, magic items and/or vehicles. For some games I can certainly see that-- if you're playing a giant robot game, you need to have rules for them. More often these systems involve elaborate calculations about weight, chassis strength, dollar costs, levels limits and so on. I don't want to deal with that-- I mean, I just barely stat out the bad guys. Generally these systems do align with the other systems in the game-- I mean that they ought to be simply another iteration of the character creation system, but in a different scale with a few twists added to them.
I don't think I've ever run a game where these kinds of things have been important-- the exception being Neon Genesis Zombie. Gurps and other fantasy games have extensive systems for the creation of magic items, but I've always ignored them. I just make up something that sounds cool. I always abstract these elements and ignore this sometimes literal chrome on the game system.
Modifier Charts, Range and Combat Complications: As you know I don't usually use a GM's screen. I also don't like looking at the rulebooks when I'm running-- I always feel the need to apologize when I do. Exceptions occur when something completely new comes up or when we've probably handled something wrong before. The former often happens the first time we use a power or a maneuver; the latter I try to do only if the results otherwise might screw a player who has invested points in something.
I can recall the amusement of trying to put together all the modifiers from the old Gurps Size/Speed charts-- Vatican City moving at the speed of light while on fire was only something like a -16 to hit. Most games with numerical systems spend time delineating all the possible modifiers. I usually chunk those in favor of simply giving a penalty or bonus. My favorite is +/-2-- really-- it is easy to add and usually makes a difference. Obviously if things get crazier you need to do more-- but I generally wing everything on that score. An exception would be hit location penalties-- I usually stick closer for those. One thing to watch out for, as a GM, is compensation creep. When players start out with their skills, they're usually pretty low level. As a generous GM, your instinct is to not apply modifiers. However, once players get to higher skill ranks, there's more room to impose penalties. Hence, your instinct is to begin to impose them for things you wouldn't have before. Impose penalties where the player knows that what they're doing is difficult-- otherwise don't worry about it.
Range also falls into this category of mechanics. Any game with a significantly detailed weapon chart establishes very different ranges for weapons. I remember loving the detailed number crunch of the Palladium Armory books or even the Fringeworthy/Stalking the Night Fantastic games. However, in practice we rarely paid attention to those numbers. They're like a comfortable pillow for simulationists, but in play they slow things down. Obviously throwing a knife or an axe has a shorter range than shooting a gun or a bow. But in play I only give penalties if, when I eyeball the scene, it looks, um, “far.” In practice most things will reach across your usual room or hex map. If not, then -2.
Some systems require bows a round of prep. No. I hate that. Yes-- it would be more realistic to calculate times, but it irritates me. Crossbows and Volters, which do more damage, take a couple of rounds to reload. We assume that a player (or an NPC) is only going to get one or maybe two shots from one of those-- we don't calculate it otherwise. Likewise, I don't usually assign “snap-shot” or “draw & fire” penalties. That's a cinematic action and I want to encourage it. If not, then -2.
Disease and Fatigue-- If you have to track a character becoming exhausted from being in combat, your combats are going too long. Gurps has some rules for this and Rolemaster Standard System had the most insane set of guidelines I've ever seen. Those mechanics read like a parody of a real rpg. A combat lasting that long ought to be a mass battle-- or perhaps there's a series of fights, in which case-- shock of shocks, you apply a -2 penalty. Likewise diseases should be important game events rather than something you have to roll for. Too many games have extensive lists-- with effects, incubation times, contagion levels, and all kinds of details. I'm sure some GMs follow through on these things, but I have never used these rules-- they just seem like a bizarre elaboration.
I'd be curious to know other people's experience in this regard.
3/17/09
Big goofy role-playing week-- very much looking forward to it-- Libri Vidicos with some guest stars on Friday, FWAP supers on Saturday, and possibly a slightly experimental one-shot on Saturday evening. Been working on that. All that plus there's the new Neko Case album. That doesn't have anything to do with rpgs, unless you count the cosplay.
Sunday had a delightful bout of insomnia that kept me up until 5:30 a.m.-- Daylight Savings Time hasn't helped and even with not drinking any coffee after dinnertime, my sleep schedule has been a mess. My problem with the sleeplessness comes from the lack of productivity-- if I could turn those hours into something useful, I'd be happier. But usually it's just an extended period of unfocused anxiety where I can get anything done. Of course being up that late Sunday night resulted in a Monday collapse which blew that day away. I did manage to get a few emails done yesterday and some work done on the supers game, but not as much as I'd hoped. I'd kind of schedule my week up pretty tightly so today I'm re-penciling things. So probably lighter blogging entries this week.
Sincerely Imitative Flattery
Kaiju posted a picture and a run down of the various books he was in the middle of. Like me (and I suspect everyone) he's in the middle of a bunch of books at the same time. These are the books I'm working on that I'm pretty sure that I will actually finish at some point.
Drood (Dan Simmons) Interesting so far, but I'm a little nervous about the size of the book. The question is can he sustain the atmosphere and tension for that long. I remember his Carrion Comfort starting out strong but then stumbling and ending up more like a strange Tom Clancy novel.
A Shadow in Summer (Daniel Abraham) I picked this up some time back at the remaindered bookstore. It has some interesting fantasy concepts that keep me reading, but it is also part of a set of four books. I'll probably read bits and pieces until at least the next two are out and available. I got burned by The Name of the Wind for series you enjoy but the rest aren't out yet. It does suffer a little from the fantasy writer's desire to have a variety of obscure terms and titles you have to keep straight which makes putting it down and picking it up a little problematic.
Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan (Lorna Jowett) Just started this-- a gift from H & B. Interesting in that I'm always concerned about gender issues as they relate to the fantastic. Curious to go back and look at the treatment of like issues in Watchmen on-screen versus original.
The Year of Our War (Steph Swainston) One of the authors for the “New Weird”-- reading that anthology a while ago made me decide to go back to this. Every time I do, I have to start again from the beginning. The author deliberately provides a disjointed and possibly unreliable view of the setting early on. I ought to be more grabbed by it-- I am just enough to keep going, but I hope at least a little of the payoff comes soon.
The Etched City (K.J. Bishop) A book lent to me by Lil' Devilbird some time back (um...before the fire...yeowtch). I'm still working through it-- I have the sense that things shift here. The author's also placed among the authors of the New Weird, but the story presented in the anthology wasn't too fantastic. Still, I want to get through it (and return it).
Narratology (Mieke Bal) The remaindered bookstore used to have a great section of academic books, but they've apparently dismantled that. They have a few scattered in other sections now. I found this there. It is a more Lit Crit approach to breaking down the narrative elements of a text: a method for defining analysis rather than analysis itself. I was hoping for something more useful, but I'm determined to get further in before I give up.
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (Jacques Barzun) One of those monster tomes that I read a section of here and there as the feeling grips me. I love these kinds of cultural history books as they provide rich material for games. These are the kinds of ideas-- rather than tales of military history or swift overviews-- that can give a gamemaster nice crunchy material to flesh out places and people in the game.
Improving Your Storytelling (Doug Lipman) I was hoping for some insights on oral presentation. Or perhaps even on the structures of stories. There's some interesting bits here and there, but I think it is more for Cowboy Poets and the like. Still, I spent money on it and I ought to find something here.
The Legacy of Heorot (Niven, Pournelle, Barnes) Lent to me by B-- has a very old-school feeling to it. Clearly going to move to survival horror combined with classic sci-fi.
Viriconium (M. John Harrison) I mentioned this before, a gift from Kaiju. Strange and wonderful-- especially as you get to the later places.
Gurps Thaumatology (Phil Masters et al) Cements my hatred for Gurps Magic. I've been thinking of game systems being like programming languages or operating systems. Gurps is for those people who want to get into the command prompt line or see all of the code behind the program. On the other hand, I prefer (these days) to see the GM as a GUI-- the players press buttons and see what happens. They don't have to worry about the mechanics behind the scenes. Still, despite all of that, I'm (again) determined to at least skim this puppy to see if I can find anything useful here. I spent money on it. I want to get something out of it (unlike the Anima rpg...ugh).
Sunday had a delightful bout of insomnia that kept me up until 5:30 a.m.-- Daylight Savings Time hasn't helped and even with not drinking any coffee after dinnertime, my sleep schedule has been a mess. My problem with the sleeplessness comes from the lack of productivity-- if I could turn those hours into something useful, I'd be happier. But usually it's just an extended period of unfocused anxiety where I can get anything done. Of course being up that late Sunday night resulted in a Monday collapse which blew that day away. I did manage to get a few emails done yesterday and some work done on the supers game, but not as much as I'd hoped. I'd kind of schedule my week up pretty tightly so today I'm re-penciling things. So probably lighter blogging entries this week.
Sincerely Imitative Flattery
Kaiju posted a picture and a run down of the various books he was in the middle of. Like me (and I suspect everyone) he's in the middle of a bunch of books at the same time. These are the books I'm working on that I'm pretty sure that I will actually finish at some point.
Drood (Dan Simmons) Interesting so far, but I'm a little nervous about the size of the book. The question is can he sustain the atmosphere and tension for that long. I remember his Carrion Comfort starting out strong but then stumbling and ending up more like a strange Tom Clancy novel.
A Shadow in Summer (Daniel Abraham) I picked this up some time back at the remaindered bookstore. It has some interesting fantasy concepts that keep me reading, but it is also part of a set of four books. I'll probably read bits and pieces until at least the next two are out and available. I got burned by The Name of the Wind for series you enjoy but the rest aren't out yet. It does suffer a little from the fantasy writer's desire to have a variety of obscure terms and titles you have to keep straight which makes putting it down and picking it up a little problematic.
Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan (Lorna Jowett) Just started this-- a gift from H & B. Interesting in that I'm always concerned about gender issues as they relate to the fantastic. Curious to go back and look at the treatment of like issues in Watchmen on-screen versus original.
The Year of Our War (Steph Swainston) One of the authors for the “New Weird”-- reading that anthology a while ago made me decide to go back to this. Every time I do, I have to start again from the beginning. The author deliberately provides a disjointed and possibly unreliable view of the setting early on. I ought to be more grabbed by it-- I am just enough to keep going, but I hope at least a little of the payoff comes soon.
The Etched City (K.J. Bishop) A book lent to me by Lil' Devilbird some time back (um...before the fire...yeowtch). I'm still working through it-- I have the sense that things shift here. The author's also placed among the authors of the New Weird, but the story presented in the anthology wasn't too fantastic. Still, I want to get through it (and return it).
Narratology (Mieke Bal) The remaindered bookstore used to have a great section of academic books, but they've apparently dismantled that. They have a few scattered in other sections now. I found this there. It is a more Lit Crit approach to breaking down the narrative elements of a text: a method for defining analysis rather than analysis itself. I was hoping for something more useful, but I'm determined to get further in before I give up.
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (Jacques Barzun) One of those monster tomes that I read a section of here and there as the feeling grips me. I love these kinds of cultural history books as they provide rich material for games. These are the kinds of ideas-- rather than tales of military history or swift overviews-- that can give a gamemaster nice crunchy material to flesh out places and people in the game.
Improving Your Storytelling (Doug Lipman) I was hoping for some insights on oral presentation. Or perhaps even on the structures of stories. There's some interesting bits here and there, but I think it is more for Cowboy Poets and the like. Still, I spent money on it and I ought to find something here.
The Legacy of Heorot (Niven, Pournelle, Barnes) Lent to me by B-- has a very old-school feeling to it. Clearly going to move to survival horror combined with classic sci-fi.
Viriconium (M. John Harrison) I mentioned this before, a gift from Kaiju. Strange and wonderful-- especially as you get to the later places.
Gurps Thaumatology (Phil Masters et al) Cements my hatred for Gurps Magic. I've been thinking of game systems being like programming languages or operating systems. Gurps is for those people who want to get into the command prompt line or see all of the code behind the program. On the other hand, I prefer (these days) to see the GM as a GUI-- the players press buttons and see what happens. They don't have to worry about the mechanics behind the scenes. Still, despite all of that, I'm (again) determined to at least skim this puppy to see if I can find anything useful here. I spent money on it. I want to get something out of it (unlike the Anima rpg...ugh).
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Urban Campaigns
I planned this post in a slightly different way and then thinking about it I realized how deeply one of my penchants affected my thinking about games. My players probably can identify several of the themes I tend to stick with. There's a running joke that one of my sessions isn't complete until I've described food in some way or another. In part that comes from my desire to integrate sensory details into my games and food's an easy way. It is also an easy trick for describing cultural details. Players will also know that I like cities-- cities as characters unto themselves, hopefully each one having a distinct flavor. I have fond memories of Neutral City, City of Ocean, Hub City, Crantyle, Eyvern, Crux, and the other cities I've adapted from other materials. I like characters and cities lend themselves to those-- allowing players to continually interact with those npcs.
I think it is a natural progression, but in some ways the urban campaign was revolutionary compared to the classic traveling, wilderness and dungeon adventures of old school DnD. Fritz Leiber's Lahnkmar is probably the most important fantasy city in terms of affecting later writers, but I came to Leiber much later. Instead I first read fantasy in an urban context in the Thieves World anthologies. At the time, they were revolutionary-- volumes in a shared setting written by some of the greatest names in fantasy at the time. Eventually, like any shared world set of books, they'd spin too far away from their original material (so much like Wild Cards in that respect). At the time I loved them. I also learned what a vivisectionist was from them.
Chaosium, the first game company that took seriously licensing existing materials and putting them into RPG form, did a big boxed set for Thieves World and the city of Sanctuary. There'd been other city modules before this (City State of the Invincible Overlord comes to mind) but they always seemed like hodge-podge attempts to shove everything together without any attention to theme. The Thieves World books had all the NPCs stat'd out, ideas for integrating the city into various kinds of campaigns, discussion of how cities worked, and maps...nice maps.
I love maps. The best gift I ever received for Christmas was an atlas that I think I still have around here somewhere. Something I'll come back to later.
Anyway, I started drawing city maps-- numbering boxes and naming things. A mechanical approach, but one that I assumed was the way to go. Essentially it was the same as drawing dungeon maps and putting encounters together. I still lacked a sense of logic and place-- Thieves World had it, but I hadn't quite made the jump to see how places could have a distinct flavor. Now mind you, this was 1981, so I was only 12. Within the next couple of years I'd find some other city books that would start to fill things in for me.
I remember buying Haven: Secrets of the Labyrinth from Gamelords, a book describing just a particular part of town, with its own flavor. I found it at Hobbyland, back when they used to be at Scottsdale Mall (1983). It described areas of the city and ideas for different characters-- very different from any of the DnD modules I'd read. Not a linear adventure, but instead a place to set games-- but all still very much in the spirit of classic games. It was also one of the first games I read that tried to describe things in generic terms so it could be adapted variously. I think around that time I found a copy of Umbar, Haven of the Corsairs, one of the earliest MERP modules up at Hall of Cards and Books up at North Village Mall. That was, again, vastly different from anything I'd seen. For those of you who don't remember, the earliest Middle Earth books from Iron Crown Enterprises were...crazy. They used first edition Rolemaster stats and had insanely overpowered characters and ideas far, far away from the original Tolkien source. Later they would rein things in, but if you can, you need to look at the original Ardor book and ask yourselves wtf they were thinking. In any case, Umbar had a distinct set of overlord characters-- each with their own agendas and a distinctly Mediterranean flavor which made it stand apart from any other city book. I used it for a time in a Stormbringer campaign I ran.
I've mentioned before the Kaiin book for the Dying Earth rpg-- a book I recommend for any GM thinking about running a fantastic urban setting. Here are a few other books I loved that affected how I went about running cities and city games:
Cities of Harn: Harn was among the richest of what we might call third generation rpg fantasy sourcebooks. It was intended to be a fully-fleshed out world of low-magic. Paul Dunivent first brought it to our attention because he loved the detail of it. I followed suit, mostly adapting over the Gods of Harn book (for better or worse). The Cities of Harn book was among the coolest things I'd seen. It had full-color maps of the cities, plus black and white versions you could use to color or number in encounters and such. It only thinly described the people and cultures of these places, resulting in all of them-- in effect-- being the same. In some ways it was like a really cool rpg city-source coloring book for game masters. Harn still has the best city maps and I like cutting them into pieces and pasting them back together.
Warhammer City (aka Middenheim, City of the White Wolf) and Power Behind the Throne: An interesting pair and one that really helped me develop ideas when I ran the Thonak Campaign. They fit neatly into a set of great sourcebook modules for the old Warhammer FRPG. That's a classic game and one of the first to use “career”/“profession” templates in an interesting way. The city was richly detailed and intended to emulate a classic high medieval city of old Germany. Again, great maps, interesting characters and neat potential plots. Probably the most intriguing thing that GW did was publishing the PBtT companion volume which presented a lengthy campaign to be set in the city-- complete with revels, timetables, multiple conflicting plot lines and potential tragedy for the Empire as a whole. I ended up basing the city of Rykel in my campaign on these books. Of course, once the players got into the city and began to become embroiled in the plots, one of the players (*kof* Barry *kof*) managed to get them exiled from the city. No plan by a GM ever survives contact with the players. The Empire nearly fell and great tragedy came about as a consequence. And I'd wasted $30 on modules I wouldn't get to use. I'd eventually destroy Rykel during the coming of the Unmaker as part of my continuing effort to revise, devastate or eliminate parts of my campaign too heavily based on outside sour materials. (Another explanation for why Atlantis had to be destroyed-- based as it was on the now well-known city of Waterdeep, one of the few decent TSR modules).
I've read a few other really good city books; usually if I see one readily available I'll pick it up. ICE ended up very hit and miss with their attempts. Their Shadow World setting produced a couple of gems-- but only for a few basic ideas (Eidolon and Haalkitaine for example). But those shared the same problems that plagued the city modules they did for MERP-- a focus on maps, layouts, lists of rooms, encounters rather than a greater discussion of the ethos of the city, how one would run a substantial campaign there, and what the city felt like. Some citybooks fail on different counts-- for example, the Freedom City book for Mutants and Masterminds. There the problem lies in the basic premise-- that detailing a city rich in superheroes gives useful material for the GM. Those kinds of things give little room for PCs-- great ideas, but you have to reduce the population of NPC supers to make it work. White Wolf's, of course, done many city books of the XXX by Night variety. The problem there is that they are so fixated on the particular supernatural culture of the city that they ignore what's importance about the place. Generally the structures they present could be easily picked up and dumped elsewhere-- the city serves only as a backdrop. The exception that proves the rule is something like London by Night for Victorian-Era Vampire. But it shares some of the problems of the Freedom City book-- little room for the PCs to enter.
The most consistently useful and interesting set of city sourcebooks, I've found, came from Flying Buffalo's Catalyst series. They produced volumes-- called Citybooks-- with ideas for businesses, characters and conspiracies which could be used across a variety of fantasy settings. Weirdly, while presented generically they made great effort to provide hooks and ideas which joined together the various places they presented. Each book focuses on a certain part of the city (Nightside, Up Town, Port of Call, etc). They're great fun to read and over the years I've borrowed heavily. Unfortunately they stopped producing them and the last volume of the seven they did was kind of a clunker. Someone needs to take up the mantle and do more things like that-- maybe someone has, but they're probably buried in the mounds of dross that exist on the rpg pdf sites-- too much crap there and I've been burned too often now to really experiment with purchases.
Finally, perhaps the most interesting city source for rpgs I've ever used is the City of Lies box set for the Legend of the Five Rings rpg. Alderac produced two city books for L5R-- this and Otosan Uchi. The later is interesting, especially in that it tries to provide a framework for the Scorpion Clan Coup historical event-- a reference for L5R geeks only-- but it ultimately fails as a city book. They also tried to emulate what made City of Lies great by doing boxes city sets for their Seventh Sea line-- but those were crappy to say the least.
City of Lies, however, is brilliant. In part it works because the author understood that most long-term L5R campaigns would be based around the Magistrate model. That is both a boon and a flaw for L5R. I have to digress to explain that. Legend of the Five Rings is a compacted, anachronistic fantasy samurai game with an amazingly interesting backstory and division of the realm by clans. Each clan has a several families, each with a different focus and essentially form an rpg class. Clans and families serve as the backbone of a player character's identity. But the Clans don't get along-- and anyone who doesn't want to be part of the power-structure is a ronin, which translates as scumbag adventurer. If you run a ronin game, you eliminate 99% of the most interesting stuff in the setting: social interactions, power plays, court life, and so on. If you don't, then you have a party of players from across the clans-- how do you get them to get along? What motivates them to work together? Why aren't they back home where they're supposed to be-- carrying out the wishes of their lords? The solution is to make the PCs Magistrates, beholden to the Emperor, and responsible for carrying out missions and investigations. So, strangely enough, the best model for the L5R campaign is actually a mystery and espionage one, if only to actually have a functioning party.
City of Lies assumes from the start that this is the kind of campaign you'll be running (which is pretty darn likely). Everything is built around this premise. The players' book is written as a collection of journal articles from various authors, including the PC group's predecessor(s) as the magistrates of the city. The city itself is hostile to the PCs-- both in the fact that it is managed by the secretive Scorpion Clan and that there's a hugely powerful criminal network in the city. Plus there are other factions involved in the struggles, buried secrets, Shadowlands taint and the small fact that your immediate predecessor was wrapped up in all this and managed to get himself murdered. The material there is brilliantly written, filled with ideas that could take years to excavate, richly detailed in the flavor of the setting, and only slightly brought down by terrible artwork. It is a great, great sourcebook-- but one that would be hard to adapt over to any other game. It doesn't even work anymore within the context of L5R since they've moved the meta-story forward by a hundred+ years. Still, if you want to see a brilliant artifact of rpg gaming, you should look at this.
I think it is a natural progression, but in some ways the urban campaign was revolutionary compared to the classic traveling, wilderness and dungeon adventures of old school DnD. Fritz Leiber's Lahnkmar is probably the most important fantasy city in terms of affecting later writers, but I came to Leiber much later. Instead I first read fantasy in an urban context in the Thieves World anthologies. At the time, they were revolutionary-- volumes in a shared setting written by some of the greatest names in fantasy at the time. Eventually, like any shared world set of books, they'd spin too far away from their original material (so much like Wild Cards in that respect). At the time I loved them. I also learned what a vivisectionist was from them.
Chaosium, the first game company that took seriously licensing existing materials and putting them into RPG form, did a big boxed set for Thieves World and the city of Sanctuary. There'd been other city modules before this (City State of the Invincible Overlord comes to mind) but they always seemed like hodge-podge attempts to shove everything together without any attention to theme. The Thieves World books had all the NPCs stat'd out, ideas for integrating the city into various kinds of campaigns, discussion of how cities worked, and maps...nice maps.
I love maps. The best gift I ever received for Christmas was an atlas that I think I still have around here somewhere. Something I'll come back to later.
Anyway, I started drawing city maps-- numbering boxes and naming things. A mechanical approach, but one that I assumed was the way to go. Essentially it was the same as drawing dungeon maps and putting encounters together. I still lacked a sense of logic and place-- Thieves World had it, but I hadn't quite made the jump to see how places could have a distinct flavor. Now mind you, this was 1981, so I was only 12. Within the next couple of years I'd find some other city books that would start to fill things in for me.
I remember buying Haven: Secrets of the Labyrinth from Gamelords, a book describing just a particular part of town, with its own flavor. I found it at Hobbyland, back when they used to be at Scottsdale Mall (1983). It described areas of the city and ideas for different characters-- very different from any of the DnD modules I'd read. Not a linear adventure, but instead a place to set games-- but all still very much in the spirit of classic games. It was also one of the first games I read that tried to describe things in generic terms so it could be adapted variously. I think around that time I found a copy of Umbar, Haven of the Corsairs, one of the earliest MERP modules up at Hall of Cards and Books up at North Village Mall. That was, again, vastly different from anything I'd seen. For those of you who don't remember, the earliest Middle Earth books from Iron Crown Enterprises were...crazy. They used first edition Rolemaster stats and had insanely overpowered characters and ideas far, far away from the original Tolkien source. Later they would rein things in, but if you can, you need to look at the original Ardor book and ask yourselves wtf they were thinking. In any case, Umbar had a distinct set of overlord characters-- each with their own agendas and a distinctly Mediterranean flavor which made it stand apart from any other city book. I used it for a time in a Stormbringer campaign I ran.
I've mentioned before the Kaiin book for the Dying Earth rpg-- a book I recommend for any GM thinking about running a fantastic urban setting. Here are a few other books I loved that affected how I went about running cities and city games:
Cities of Harn: Harn was among the richest of what we might call third generation rpg fantasy sourcebooks. It was intended to be a fully-fleshed out world of low-magic. Paul Dunivent first brought it to our attention because he loved the detail of it. I followed suit, mostly adapting over the Gods of Harn book (for better or worse). The Cities of Harn book was among the coolest things I'd seen. It had full-color maps of the cities, plus black and white versions you could use to color or number in encounters and such. It only thinly described the people and cultures of these places, resulting in all of them-- in effect-- being the same. In some ways it was like a really cool rpg city-source coloring book for game masters. Harn still has the best city maps and I like cutting them into pieces and pasting them back together.
Warhammer City (aka Middenheim, City of the White Wolf) and Power Behind the Throne: An interesting pair and one that really helped me develop ideas when I ran the Thonak Campaign. They fit neatly into a set of great sourcebook modules for the old Warhammer FRPG. That's a classic game and one of the first to use “career”/“profession” templates in an interesting way. The city was richly detailed and intended to emulate a classic high medieval city of old Germany. Again, great maps, interesting characters and neat potential plots. Probably the most intriguing thing that GW did was publishing the PBtT companion volume which presented a lengthy campaign to be set in the city-- complete with revels, timetables, multiple conflicting plot lines and potential tragedy for the Empire as a whole. I ended up basing the city of Rykel in my campaign on these books. Of course, once the players got into the city and began to become embroiled in the plots, one of the players (*kof* Barry *kof*) managed to get them exiled from the city. No plan by a GM ever survives contact with the players. The Empire nearly fell and great tragedy came about as a consequence. And I'd wasted $30 on modules I wouldn't get to use. I'd eventually destroy Rykel during the coming of the Unmaker as part of my continuing effort to revise, devastate or eliminate parts of my campaign too heavily based on outside sour materials. (Another explanation for why Atlantis had to be destroyed-- based as it was on the now well-known city of Waterdeep, one of the few decent TSR modules).
I've read a few other really good city books; usually if I see one readily available I'll pick it up. ICE ended up very hit and miss with their attempts. Their Shadow World setting produced a couple of gems-- but only for a few basic ideas (Eidolon and Haalkitaine for example). But those shared the same problems that plagued the city modules they did for MERP-- a focus on maps, layouts, lists of rooms, encounters rather than a greater discussion of the ethos of the city, how one would run a substantial campaign there, and what the city felt like. Some citybooks fail on different counts-- for example, the Freedom City book for Mutants and Masterminds. There the problem lies in the basic premise-- that detailing a city rich in superheroes gives useful material for the GM. Those kinds of things give little room for PCs-- great ideas, but you have to reduce the population of NPC supers to make it work. White Wolf's, of course, done many city books of the XXX by Night variety. The problem there is that they are so fixated on the particular supernatural culture of the city that they ignore what's importance about the place. Generally the structures they present could be easily picked up and dumped elsewhere-- the city serves only as a backdrop. The exception that proves the rule is something like London by Night for Victorian-Era Vampire. But it shares some of the problems of the Freedom City book-- little room for the PCs to enter.
The most consistently useful and interesting set of city sourcebooks, I've found, came from Flying Buffalo's Catalyst series. They produced volumes-- called Citybooks-- with ideas for businesses, characters and conspiracies which could be used across a variety of fantasy settings. Weirdly, while presented generically they made great effort to provide hooks and ideas which joined together the various places they presented. Each book focuses on a certain part of the city (Nightside, Up Town, Port of Call, etc). They're great fun to read and over the years I've borrowed heavily. Unfortunately they stopped producing them and the last volume of the seven they did was kind of a clunker. Someone needs to take up the mantle and do more things like that-- maybe someone has, but they're probably buried in the mounds of dross that exist on the rpg pdf sites-- too much crap there and I've been burned too often now to really experiment with purchases.
Finally, perhaps the most interesting city source for rpgs I've ever used is the City of Lies box set for the Legend of the Five Rings rpg. Alderac produced two city books for L5R-- this and Otosan Uchi. The later is interesting, especially in that it tries to provide a framework for the Scorpion Clan Coup historical event-- a reference for L5R geeks only-- but it ultimately fails as a city book. They also tried to emulate what made City of Lies great by doing boxes city sets for their Seventh Sea line-- but those were crappy to say the least.
City of Lies, however, is brilliant. In part it works because the author understood that most long-term L5R campaigns would be based around the Magistrate model. That is both a boon and a flaw for L5R. I have to digress to explain that. Legend of the Five Rings is a compacted, anachronistic fantasy samurai game with an amazingly interesting backstory and division of the realm by clans. Each clan has a several families, each with a different focus and essentially form an rpg class. Clans and families serve as the backbone of a player character's identity. But the Clans don't get along-- and anyone who doesn't want to be part of the power-structure is a ronin, which translates as scumbag adventurer. If you run a ronin game, you eliminate 99% of the most interesting stuff in the setting: social interactions, power plays, court life, and so on. If you don't, then you have a party of players from across the clans-- how do you get them to get along? What motivates them to work together? Why aren't they back home where they're supposed to be-- carrying out the wishes of their lords? The solution is to make the PCs Magistrates, beholden to the Emperor, and responsible for carrying out missions and investigations. So, strangely enough, the best model for the L5R campaign is actually a mystery and espionage one, if only to actually have a functioning party.
City of Lies assumes from the start that this is the kind of campaign you'll be running (which is pretty darn likely). Everything is built around this premise. The players' book is written as a collection of journal articles from various authors, including the PC group's predecessor(s) as the magistrates of the city. The city itself is hostile to the PCs-- both in the fact that it is managed by the secretive Scorpion Clan and that there's a hugely powerful criminal network in the city. Plus there are other factions involved in the struggles, buried secrets, Shadowlands taint and the small fact that your immediate predecessor was wrapped up in all this and managed to get himself murdered. The material there is brilliantly written, filled with ideas that could take years to excavate, richly detailed in the flavor of the setting, and only slightly brought down by terrible artwork. It is a great, great sourcebook-- but one that would be hard to adapt over to any other game. It doesn't even work anymore within the context of L5R since they've moved the meta-story forward by a hundred+ years. Still, if you want to see a brilliant artifact of rpg gaming, you should look at this.
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