Observations of the Fox

Do you want to appear in an RPG?

2012-01-29T22:38:00.000+11:00

As I draw more images for the new incarnation of Walkabout, I'm wondering if there are any people in my circles who might be interested in having their likenesses immortalised as illustrations of post apocalyptic survivors...

For those who are interested in being depicted in a post apocalyptic light, find a suitable picture for me to work off and send it my way. The pictures I'll find most appropriate are at least 300x300px (preferably 600x600 or more), with an interesting lighting.

For everyone who has responded so far, I've been going through your profiles trying to find suitable photos. But a few of you have no photos at all.

When, or if, you have an appropriate photo fopr me to base a picture on. Either privately send it to me here, or direct it to my regular email address (vulpinoid (at) mail (dot) com).

I'm not necessarily looking for headshots, but you do want a headshot please be looking in some direction away from the camera. I'm not planning to create White-Wolf style, angsty portraits of dour looking tragically hip individuals.

If you want to be doing something in particular (writing, working on something, in a pose fighting and imaginary something that I can add in later...be creative) I can certainly work with that.

If you've got a picture you'd like me to use (or if you want to take a particular picture for me to use)...I'll use that.

If I don't get something from people over the next weeks or so, I'll try to find something suitable from their Facebook/Google+/Other profiles. Remembering that a close up picture will give me a better chance of depicting you...a distant shot could be an image of anyone (what's the point of appearing in an RPG if we can't tell it's you?).

If I don't get anything, and don't find anything suitable on a profile, then sorry...opportunity lost.

So, how about it?

Two More Walkabout Images

2012-01-27T00:06:00.000+11:00

Some more images I've created for the Walkabout game revision.

There are plenty more on the way. I'm hoping to have at least two dozen of these illustrated over the next couple of weeks.

Monsterhearts

2012-01-24T19:52:00.003+11:00

This has got me excited.

A chance to use all my old White Wolf books again with a gamer system that might actually do them justice.

Have a look.

Monsterhearts pitch video - IndieGoGo from Joe Mcdaldno on Vimeo.

Hell on Eight Wheels: Nine – Fouls

2012-01-22T16:18:00.001+11:00

With this new structure inplace, a simple rule for fouls becomes apparent. A skater may risk a foul byreplacing their played card with the next random card from the deck. If the newcard is more successful than the replaced card, it takes effect (altering thehit location or causing extra damage) but the skater’s foul risks being seen bya referee. If the new card is less successful, it must be used anyway.

Some skaters known for playingdirty might gain access to skills/traits that make fouls less visible toreferees or more effective.

I'll throw together some play examples with the next post.

Walkabout Atmospheric Image

2012-01-21T21:57:00.001+11:00

My other project for the year was the revision for my post apocalyptic "Walkabout"...

...here's the first atmospheric shot for it.

Hell on Eight Wheels: Eight – A Unified Core Rule

2012-01-21T21:41:00.000+11:00

Before we go much further, anew blanket rule will be instituted to help pull the various mechanisms into amore unified concept.

The highest card wins, as long as it is below the relevantattribute for the action. If two skaters are comparing cards and one skaterplays a card higher than their relevant attribute, the other skater wins; butif two cards are played higher than their respective skater’s attributes, thehigher card wins.

On the negative side, this meansI’ll need to reconfigure some of the rules that we’ve looked at so far. On thepositive side this mean that once a player understands one part of the game,they’ll have a general understanding of all parts of the game. It also simplifiesa few things, and makes them quicker to play through without needing to addfigures together to determine results.

When we apply this rule to theconcept of skater speed and distance moved, the mechanism now changes to…

Skaters have “Speed” and “Strategy”attributes, and they have a “thrust” (name subject to change). A player shouldaim to place as high a card as possible in the “speed” and “strategy”categories without exceeding the relevant attribute values. As long as theyplace a lower card in their speed, they gain a number of forward movementactions equal to the card rank (each forward movement action pushes the skatera number of sections equal to their thrust [walk = 1, run = 2, sprint = 3]). Aslong as they place a lower card in their strategy, they gain a number of strategicmovement actions equal to the card rank. If the speed category is allocated acard with a higher rank, the skater overexerts themselves and risks suffering apenalty to their speed attribute for the remainder of the jam. If the strategycategory is allocated a card with higher rank, the skater becomes confused withthe potential options available (and risks suffering a penalty to theirstrategy attribute for the remainder of the jam). If both categories areallocated cards with higher rank, the skater risks immediately falling over(and possibly causing a cascade of falling skaters).

When we apply this rule to theconcept of conflict between skaters, the mechanism remains basically intactbecause the fundamentals of the hit mechanism are based on the targeted combatmodel. But the notion of conflict results and damage can be applied to thestrength statistic…

1) Active skater moves. If the active skater moves into thethreat zone of another skater, a block opportunity arises. At this point, theactive skater becomes the defender, while the skater whose threat zone has beeninvaded becomes the attacker.

2) Attacker and Defender compare their respective strategyscores to determine how many cards they may draw and play. If the active skaterhas entered the threat zone of two opposing skaters, the opponents add togethertheir strategy scores against the active skater. If the active skater hasentered the threat zones of skaters from both teams, they must resolve theconflict sequence before any opportunity for an assist or whip.

Respective Strategy Scores	Adjacent Track Section	Gap of 1 Track Section
Defender more than 3 Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards
Defender Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 2 Cards	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards
Attacker Equal or Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 1 Card	Attacker 1 Card Defender 2 Cards
Attacker more than 2 Higher	Attacker 2 Cards Defender 1 Card	Attacker 1 Card Defender 1 Card

3) Cards are played for the assault and the defence. Bothplayers may play cards from their hand instead of the cards dealt at this timeto the skaters (this gives the players a stronger element of strategic play).

4) Once cards are revealed, each skater involved in theblock/conflict may draw an extra card by risking a foul. When an attacker doesthis, they exchange their attack card with a random card from the top of theirdeck. When a defender does this, they discard one of their defence cards and replaceit with a random card from the top of their deck. In either case, if the newcard has a higher rank than the replaced card, a foul is performed.

5) If (once cards have been finalised) the attacker plays acard with a suit unmatched by the defender, then the attack gets through.Comparison of card ranks determines how savage this attack is. The attackeruses the rank of their successful card (if they are lucky enough to have twosuccessful cards they may choose the card used), the defender uses the highestcard rank below their strength attribute.

6) If the attacker’s card is higher than their strength, theyrisk a fall (and possibly starting a fall cascade).

7) If the attacker’s card is higher than the defender’s, theyinflict an injury to the victim’s targeted attribute. If the victim has alreadysuffered an injury to this attribute, it becomes more permanent. A victimsuffering permanent injuries to two attributes is rendered too injured tocontinue play.

8) If a fall is risked, the skater must draw a card with avalue lower than their strategy attribute to avoid falling. If a fall occurs,anyone in the threat zone of the falling skater now risks a fall.

9) If the active skater still has moves remaining, they maycontinue their movement around the track.

Any more complicated rules comein the form of special abilities available only to skaters who possess therelevant skills or traits.

For example, one trait might providethe ability to cause a fall risk rather than applying damage to an opposingskater. One trait might provide the ability to adjust a card’s rank up or downby a single point when involved in a specific type of action. Another traitmight allow an extra card to be drawn when a specific action type is beingperformed.

Traits such as these would belimited throughout the game, mainly possessed by veteran skaters who havedeveloped their own special skating techniques, or available under certaincircumstances if members of the team engage in a specific play formation.

Hell On Eight Wheels: Seven – Targeted Combat

2012-01-20T11:24:00.002+11:00

If you’ve been reading through this series of game developmentblog posts, you’ll have seen many references to Freebooter’s Fate. This is agreat miniatures game released by Freebooter Miniature last year. I don’t thinkit will catch on with the likes of Games Workshop and other bigger companiesdominating the market…but I’d love to hope that it gets a good, dedicated fanbase.

In this game, combat stats are rated on a scale from 1 to5 while there are six possible hit locations on the body (Head, Torso, RightArm, Left Arm, Abdomen, Legs). The elegance of the system is the way in whichthe combat stats mesh with the hit locations…it’s so simple I have to wonderwhy no one had considered it earlier (maybe it has been used earlier and I’mjust not aware of it).

When a figure goes into combat they select a number ofbody locations to assault equal to their attack score, the defender selects anumber of body locations to protect equal to their defence score. If theattacker has picked a body part that the defender hasn’t protected, thedefender is hit and takes damage. If the attacker hits two or more parts thatthe defender hasn’t protected, then a critical hit is scored.

In the case of a regular hit, damage is marked off from apool of vitality. In the case of a critical hit, each body part has acorresponding figure attribute (the attacker must choose one of the body partssuccessfully assaulted), then the relevant attribute is weakened until healingcan occur (or until the end of the game).

When playing the game you actually get a feeling forswordplay as you sweep at certain parts of your opponent with a flurry ofblows, only to see whether or not your attacks for the round have beensuccessful. Attacks are strategic (you can choose to disable certain attributesof your opponent), combat feels like your decisions have weight (rather thanthe arbitrary whim of a die result), and the action is played out fast (fasterthan most other miniatures games anyway).

But how could you run a style of combat like this in aroller derby game?

If we’re looking at four attributes linked to the foursuits in a deck, then we can simply say that a blocking skater plays one ormore cards representing the target’s body locations when they block, while thedefending skater plays one or more cards representing the parts of their bodybeing covered by defensive actions.

Head	Spades	Strategy
Torso/Arms	Hearts	Soul
Abdomen	Clubs	Strength
Legs	Diamonds	Speed

The location/suit correspondences seem to sit fairlywell, an appropriate diagram should reinforce this notion.

The attacker assaults one or more locations, and thevictim tries to block the location(s) hit.

But how do we determine how many cards the attacker getsto use for their assault, and how many cards the victim gets to use for theirdefence. It would be nice to keep this relevant to the unfolding strategies onthe board (taking into account closeness of skaters and relative speeds), andsince this game is incorporating variability of skater skill, it makes sense toconnect these to the sequence.

Respective Strategy Scores	Adjacent Track Section	Gap of 1 Track Section
Defender more than 3 Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards (-1 damage card flip)
Defender Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 2 Cards	Attacker 1 Card Defender 3 Cards
Attacker Equal or Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 1 Card	Attacker 1 Card Defender 2 Cards
Attacker more than 2 Higher	Attacker 1 Card Defender 1 Card (+1 damage card flip)	Attacker 1 Card Defender 1 Card

Idea: Perhaps ateam member can be involved in an assist. If someone is assisting the attacker(or defender), do they add a card to one side of the conflict or do they addtheir strategy score to the attacker’s value before determining how many cardsto apply to the situation.

Cards have the ability to rank as well as suit, and agame mechanism that has variable degrees of readability can streamline theoutput. In light of this, we can read the suit to determine the location of thestrike, while we use the rank to determine the intensity of the hit.

As an example: Attacker’s Card Value plus Strength vsDefender’s Card Value plus Strength

If the assault is successful, the attacker compares theirstrength plus their card value to that of the victim. If their value is lessthan the victims, movement is impeded and the victim has to spend a bit moreenergy finding another way around. If the attacker’s strength plus card ishigher, then the defender risks falling down and/or injury.

…and this is where the damage flips (mentioned in the tableabove) comes in.

This is a mechanism I like from the Malifaux miniaturesgame. Basically, if things are going your way, you draw an extra card or twoand keep the best one for your result; conversely, if things are going againstyou, you draw an extra card and keep the worst of the two results.

I’ll write up a few examples of play, if things aren’t makingsense at this stage, hopefully they’ll clarify matters.

I seem to be heading in a few directions at once with the game, and one of my pet hates in games of this type is disjointed mechanisms. I should be able to pull the ideas together into a streamlined and coherent whole, but you'll have to bear with me for a bit while I'll brainstorm through the specific elements.

Hell On Eight Wheels: Six – Skaters Stats

2012-01-17T09:12:00.003+11:00

I’ve already decided that I like the idea of cards forthis game, they can be played out quickly or held for strategic play forms.I’ve also decided that I’m aiming toward something between the quick abstractcombat of Magic the Gathering, the targeted attacks of Freebooter’s Fate andthe “cheating” formalised within the rules of Malifaux.

I could develop a unique set of cards, perhaps for thecreation of customisable decks (like MtG), but this makes the game a bit moreesoteric. I want the game to be pretty quick to pick up and play. That leavesme with the standard 52 card deck (13 ranks in 4 suits), malifaux comes up withsome interesting effects using a 4-suited deck of this type, but links reallystrongly into the hertiae of wargaming with an abundance of stats and specialabilities for the miniatures. Freebooters fate is a bit more elegant in thisregard…I’ll be drawing more cues from there.

Four suits ties pretty elegantly with 4 characterattributes. I’ve used the concept previously in The Eighth Sea (released 2008),The Great Bard (for 2011’s Game Chef contest) and a few other games that I’vewritten. It helps that the 4 traditional suits have some esoteric connotationsthat link the different aspects of the persona.

Generally…

Hearts = Emotion

Spades = Thought

Diamonds = Mystic Soul

Clubs = Physical Force

I don’t think that this breakdown directly fits rollerderby, but it can be tweaked a bit.

Hearts = Soul – Used to determine morale, concentrationand teamwork effects

Spades = Strategy – Used to determine availability of tricksand bonus effects (key for pivots)

Diamonds = Speed – Used to determine movement rate and evasion(key for jammers)

Clubs = Strength – Used to determine combat skill, damagedealt and damage resistance (key for blockers)

…but having four attributes and four suits is just asingle mechanism, and still a long way from a complete game system.

Translating these stats across to a Magic the Gatheringtype of system (or that found in many Collectable card games), combat couldsimply be an option of comparing “strength (clubs)” to “strength (clubs)”.Higher result wins unless some specific card element dictates otherwise. If wethrow in a random modifier in the form of two cards we might get…

Combat = Strength + 2 Cards vs Strength + 2 Cards(allocate one to attack one to defence)

This gives some possible variation in the results.

A skater winning both continues skating with no penalty

A skater winning attack but losing defence may keepskating but suffers an injury

A skater losing attack but winning defence has theirmovement stopped but suffers no injury

A skater losing both suffers and injury and has theirmovement stopped, it’s likely that they fall.

This is getting close to what I’m after. It doesn’t feel exactlyright compared with the visions of game play that I have in my head…but it’s onthe right track. It also doesn’t account for the fact that blockers will havehigh strength scores and will thus be an even match for other blockers, but thejammers should be able to get past them (after all, that’s their job). So weneed to incorporate some kind of effect to give the jammer’s movement (diamonds)an influence on the combat procedure.

…but we still need to keep it fast.

Some other options running through my head at the moment.

Perhaps a combat system like the miniatures game Confrontation(2^nd-3^rd Editions). Combat is strategy versus speed, anda successful hit has damage determined by comparing the strength of the twocombatants.

Perhaps instead of adding attribute plus card to get aresult, simply use the high card to give one of the skaters a +1 to theirrelevant attribute. If attributes are left at smaller values (say 1 to 5), thenthis makes numbers quicker to add up and resolutions easier to achieve. Magicworks with a lower spread of attributes by giving many of the creatures specialabilities beyond their raw numbers.

Perhaps I move more toward a Malifaux style of play…wheretwo skaters compare their relevant attributes. If the values are equal, the twoplayers draw a single card each and compare values to determine a winner. Ifone skater has a higher value, this player draws two cards and uses the bestresult. If one skater has a value that is more than 2 points higher (or maybetwice as high) they might draw a third card. Special abilities might allowextra card to be drawn, or might prevent opponents from drawing extra cards.

The final thought here is a bit more radical, a bit morereflective of what might be going through a skater’s head, and a bit moreclosely attuned to the combat mechanisms of Freebooter’s Fate. It deserves apost of its own.

Hell On Eight Wheels: Five – Further Movement

2012-01-17T09:07:00.002+11:00

Confrontation (2^nd and 3^rd Editons)from Rackham had a quick and easy system for miniatures combat, it combined thelocation of a victim’s hit with difference between attacker’s strength andvictim’s toughness, and combined it all into an elegant solution for how muchimpact this had after an attack was resolved…all by simultaneously rolling 2dice and comparing a couple of numbers.

Malifaux from Wyrd Miniatures has a system where yourandomly draw cards. In certain circumstances a character quirk lets you drawan additional card; if it’s a positive quirk you pick the higher of the twocards drawn for your result, and if it’s a negative quirk you get stuck withthe lower of the two cards drawn. This system also allows you to strategicallyplay a card from your hand to gain an advantage during play.

I’ve found that card play works more quickly than dicerolling in the various game systems I’ve used, and since I want the strategicelement that we see in Malifaux, I’ve already decided to use cards for thisgame.

But now it’s a case of combining the elements I like fromeach system.

I have the idea that game play will basically follow thispattern.

1) Atthe start of a jam, each skater is randomly dealt two face-down random cards,and each player holds a hand of cards reflecting the teamwork and strategicplanning of the team.

2) Skatersare activated in turn around the track. When activated, their two cards arerevealed, one is assigned to speed, and one to manoeuvrability. Speed plus aconstant attribute value indicates how far the skater moves (maybe referencedoff a table), manoeuvrability plus a constant attribute value indicates howmany times the skater may move to an inner or outer ring on the track (alsoreferenced off a table).

3) Ifa skater moves adjacent to an opposing player, both skaters draw one or morenew cards to determine the result of any block attempt. A skater may be knockeddown, blocked, slowed down or might get through with no problems.

4) Onceactivation is complete, any cards used in the activation are shuffled and askater is assigned two more face down random cards.

5) Activationmoves to the next skater.

Preliminary table idea

Stat+Card Result	Walk		Run		Sprint
Stat+Card Result	Move	Manoeuvre	Move	Manoeuvre	Move	Manoeuvre
2-3	3	1	5	1	6	1
4-5	4	1	6	1	8	1
6-7	5	2	7	1	10	1
8-9	6	2	9	2	12	1
10-11	7	3	10	2	14	2
12-13	8	3	12	2	16	2
14-15	9	4	13	3	18	2
16-17	10	4	15	3	20	2
18-19	11	5	16	3	22	3
20-21	12	5	18	4	24	3
22-23	13	6	19	4	26	3
24-25	14	6	21	4	28	3
26	15	7	22	5	30	4

Skaters will have states from 1-13 (basically Ace to Kingfrom a standard deck), adding a card value of 1-13 gives a total value from 2to 26.

I’m hoping this isn’t getting too complicated.

Another Roller Derby Game

2012-01-14T10:06:00.000+11:00

It appears that I'm not the only person developing a Roller Derby boardgame at the moment.

Impact Miniatures are in the process of playtesting a game called Impact City Roller Derby. I'm not afraid to say that this game is out there, and the miniatures look good.

I've signed myself up as a playtester to see what they have in store, and it will be interesting to see the final product.

I'll still be working away at Hell on Eight Wheels though because I think my take will be a bit different coming from a roleplaying perspective.

I'll be focusing on the individuality of the skaters, with a bit more personality thrown their way in the form of personal rivalries, character backgrounds and development over the course of a season.

Impact City Roller Derby looks like it is going to focus on teams...but I' not going to make any guesses at this stage and I'm certainly not going to start second guessing Ho8W.

Because images are good.

2012-01-12T11:38:00.001+11:00

Hell On Eight Wheels: Four – A Closer Look at Movement

2012-01-12T11:24:00.000+11:00

Once we start nailing down the procedures used to moveskaters around the track, we define one of the core aspects of the game.

Moving on wheels is different to walking, a goodprocedure should reflect this. Without skill, this form of movement isdifficult because traction between the mover and the ground works differently.But all skaters have a degree of inherent skill, they must possess a range ofmastered skills before they may be recognised as skaters by the WFTDA.

With this in mind, even the most inexperienced skaters ina bout are not complete novices. The worst skaters simply aren’t allowed on thetrack because they are a danger to themselves and to others. Not a deliberatedanger, they would be prone to mistakes under pressure.

But the key to a high stakes game is that there ispressure…and even experienced veterans have the chance of cracking underpressure.

This brings up issues of skater statistics and thevarious aspects that might differentiate one skater from another…but I’ll leavethat for a later development post. For the moment I’ll stick to movement.

Now that I’ve looked further into the game Formula D, I’vefound some fun mechanisms. In this game you choose a gear at the start of your turn,then this allows you to roll a specific die to determine the distance moved. 1^stgear provides low movement (but more control), high gear provides high movement(but less control). This is the kind of thing I want for Ho8W.

Instead of the six gars in Formula D, it is probably betterto strip the movement down to three levels. We’ll temporarily call them walk,run and sprint; but these names are neither bad-ass nor roller oriented, so theywill be subject to change later on.

With 36 movement segments around the track, we can workout some basic rates of movement. These rates of movement are loosely based onreality, but are more defined by the competitive balance of the game. There isno way that a game like this will manage to be completely accurate according toreal world physics; and the closer we try to get, the more boring the game playwill be. We looking for the spirit of roller derby in a board game, if you wantreality, get out and buy a pair of skates….but enough rant.

A game needs to remain fairly competitive throughout thecourse of play (or at the very least, this needs to be the appearance). Playersneeds to get the feeling that they are actually progressing toward a victory, closingthe gap on their opponent, or being involved in something dramatic with everymove they make.

The slowest movement speed is not moving at all; this isn’texciting, but it is the aftermath of a crash or a fall (especially whenmultiple skaters pile on top of one another in a pack collision). We don’t wantskaters stationary for long, at most it will take a single turn to get up (unlessa serious injury has occurred).

The slowest speed while actually moving is the “walk”;this could basically be considered the default speed for the blockers of the pack.It will take 4 to 5 complete turns of movement to get around the track at thispace, and working backward with this in mind a typical “walk” action should allowfor movement of 6 to 10 segments.

The fast speed is the “run”; this could basically beconsidered the default speed for the pivots. It should take about threecomplete turns of movement to get around the track at this pace. Again, workingbackward, this means that a “run” shouldallow for around 12 segments (let’s say 10 to 15) of movement.

The fastest speed is the sprint; the default speed forthe jammers. We never want the jammer to lap the activation marker, otherwisethey would miss out on a complete activation turn after sprinting and would sufferas a result. But since the scoring is all about the jammers, they need to movefast. I’m figuring that an unimpeded jammer can make it around the track inunder two turns. This means a pace of about 15 to 20 segments with each movementactivation.

It would be easy to fit this into a triangular numbersequence…

1 = 1

3 = 1+2

6 = 1+2+3 (Minimum Walk)

10 = 1+2+3+4 (Maximum Walk or Minimum Run)

15 = 1+2+3+4+5 (Maximum Run or Minimum Sprint)

21 = 1+2+3+4+5+6 (Maximum Sprint)

But that seems a bit contrived at the moment…maybesomething to fall back on if other ideas don’t pan out.

I like the Formula D concept of acceleration and braking;it fits the ideas I have for movement in this game. Skaters start stationary,and if they want to build up speed they have to progress through stages ofwalking and running before they reach the sprint. If they want to slow down,they have to either gradually reduce their speed or fall to the ground (andstart again from scratch). I don’t know how accurate this is from an actuallyderby skater’s perspective, but it seems like a reasonable approximation.

There’s plenty more work to do on this, but I’ll leave ithere for this post.

Hell on Eight Wheels - Track Infographic

2012-01-11T15:21:00.000+11:00

The skaters move counter-clockwise, the turn activation sequence moves clockwise.

Hell On Eight Wheels: Three – The Track and The Board

2012-01-11T11:47:00.000+11:00

There are a few groups running roller derby bouts. But atthe time of writing, the largest organisation in the US is the Women’s FlatTrack Derby Association (WFTDA), in Australia most of the leagues playaccording to the WFTDA rule set, and I can only imagine that the rest of theworld follows suit (I know of Derby leagues in the UK and have heard of somestarting up across mainland Europe).

The WFTDA rules have a very specific section detailingthe measurements of the track, and since the game is being based on theserules, it makes sense that the board’s track should match these specifications.

But the actual drawing of the track only bears a vagueresemblance to the sequence of actions taken to move around it.

Move Forward, Turn Left, Move Forward, Turn Left.

If we are using figures, activation takes them a distancearound the track. But how many times should a figure activate in order tocomplete a full rotation of the circuit? How detailed are those activations?

An abstract version of the game might divide the trackinto four sections; a curved section at each end and a straight section on eachside. Figures in this type of board might move forward a single section at atime, dealing with the other figures in their section via a series of dierolls.

Another version of the game might not have sections markedat all. Such a game might be like most traditional miniature wargames wherefigures are moved a set distance depending on their statistics, perhaps beingallowed a certain break in their movement to turn (in exchange for a sacrificefrom their total move distance). If figures come within a certain range of oneanother they might gain the opportunity to block/trip/injure/foul/assist oneanother. It’s certainly a viable idea, but individual movement of figuresaccording to movement rules can be slow and tedious (as many an experiencewargamer has seen).

Since one of the inspirations for this game is Bloodbowl,a look at that board might be in order.

The Bloodbowl board is marked up into squares (elevenacross, nineteen long). It means that movement isn’t precise (especially whenyou compare diagonal movements to cardinal movements), but it allows quickcalculations and fairly rapid play.

According to the WFTDA, the standard track is dividedinto 18 sections of length (3 straight on each side and six around each endcurve), a skater typically has to skate ten feet to get through one of thesesections to the next. The average width of the track is about 14 feet. It makessense to follow this scheme for the Ho8W track, or possibly even subdividethese sections further.

A reasonable assumption is that a person can stretch eacharm by two feet on either side of their body so we could make the tracksections four to five feet wide (a foot accounting for torso width); this wouldmake a track with a width of three sections.

Since a blocking action may only be undertaken with thetorso, abdomen or upper arms down to the shoulder, it might be more reasonableto divide the track into sections two to three feet wide. This might be goodbecause it introduces the concept for foul actions. A skater can block someonewho moves through their section without breaking the rules, or they can risk afoul by blocking someone in an adjacent section. This is getting closer to whatI want from the game.

If the sections are three feet wide, that leaves a widthof five sections. There are three blockers and a pivot on each side, eachtrying to prevent the opponent’s jammer getting through. That’s 4 blockingskaters covering five section widths, always leaving a fifth section that canbe passed unless a foul is performed and a penalty risked.

If the sections are two feet wide, it becomes a bit lessgranular. That makes seven sections wide with 4 blocking skaters and a slightlywider range of strategic options. Slightly smaller sections mean that skaterscan block adjacent sections without fouls or risking penalties, we also now getthe opportunity to apply a rule where no two skaters may exist in the samesection without some kind of collision or tackle; this brings a bit morepotential for violence.

The shape of the sections on the board plays a strongsemantic role; it tells us about the nature of the game through implication.Movement in square sections implies that lateral movement is just as easy asforward movement. Movement in rectangular sections varies the degree of impliedlateral movement. Roller derby is a fast game, so from a semantic perspectiveit makes sense to have sections that are longer than they are wide.

With 18 marked section lengths around the track, thesecould be left as the section markers, leaving scaled track sections 10ft longand 2ft wide; probably a bit too extreme for our purposes, especially if we areincorporating a rule where two skaters may not exist in the same section at thesame time. It might be a better idea to halve the length of the sections,leaving them at a scaled 5ft long x 2ft wide, roughly the outline of a skaterwho has fallen flat on her face after a fall. This layout requires a skater topass through 36 sections to complete a circuit of the track, that’s not a badnumber to play with.

Forgetting semantic applications, if we make the sectionssquare at 2ft x 2ft, it will take 90 section steps for a figure to move aroundthe track. Games slow down when people have to think about high value numbers, especiallyif those numbers don’t have nice factors. If we’re using “square” sections,then we need to add some other effect that will hinder the lateral movement ofthe skaters…to keep them moving forwards around the track rather than side toside.

Let’s go with the halved WFTDA sections for the moment.It also makes things easy with the WFTDA rule that a pack consists of blockerswho are no more than 10ft in front of or behind one another (you can have nomore than a single gap section between skaters).

CURRENT BOARD CONCEPT

Obligatory 5e Post

2012-01-11T09:44:00.001+11:00

As a roleplaying and general observation blog, I need to post about the impending 5th edition of D&D...

...but since there are so many other people already doing this (and very enthusiastically I might add), I just can't find anything more useful to add to the topic.

I'll go on showing the development of my own stuff.

Hell On Eight Wheels: Two – The Influences

2012-01-08T22:43:00.001+11:00

There are a few games that seem a natural inspiration forHell on Eight Wheels. These are game combining strategy, a bit of luck andhuman interaction. I see these three aspects as being important to game play, anda good game places at least two of these in constant tension. So first, a bitof theory.

You could look back at some of my game vector theoryposts to get an idea of where I’m heading with this idea, but at the simplestlevel there are three forces interacting on the play of a game.

Luck is the easiest to spot, often in the form of a rollingdie or a drawn card. The game of “Snakes and Ladders” is a clear example wherethe only factor contributing toward a win is the outcome of repeated die rolls.No matter how many times you’ve played before, the result is purely based onthe dice. This makes for a fairly simple game, and one that can be played by virtuallyanyone with the smallest amount of instruction.

Strategy is harder to achieve, but is can be seen mostclearly in classic games like “Go” or “Chess”. In games such as these, there isno random element in play; each of the pieces has a specific function withinthe rules and the mechanisms of the game are carefully constructed to preventarguments between the players. An experienced player has an advantage over anovice in a game such as this because they understand the nuances of strategyand the way the rules interact with one another. Such games are oftenconsidered “easy to learn but hard to master”.

Human interaction could be considered the hardest aspect ofgame design to master. The last 10 years have seen heated debate within theroleplaying design community about the “social contract” between players involvedin a game. Some pastimes considered games exist without board, pieces or dice;they are purely social activities. An example of such a game might be the partyfavourite “Truth or Dare”, where everything is about the social interaction…thereare no randomisers and no strategies (unless you include the ability to bluff,or lie in response to questions).

Most games combine these three elements in some way. Somesuccessfully, others not so well.

Poker might be considered a game that draws heavily onthe elements of “Luck” and “Human Interaction”, since it is often about playingthe players as much as it is about playing the cards.

The board-game “Diplomacy” is clearly a game where “HumanInteraction” and “Strategy” dovetail into one another.

Gambling on horse racing could easily be considered agame of “Luck” and “Strategy”, especially when dealing with seasoned punterswho read the form of their competitors and play the odds to gain the highestchance of a good return.

Every combination of these elements promotes different stylesof game experience, and within these elements are hundreds of variations formechanisms that could result in very different game types.

The four main influences for Hell On Eight Wheels combinethese elements in different ways. I’ll be looking at each of them more closelyas they relate to the specific aspects of the game. Some inform the way we’llbe moving figures across the board, others inform the procedures for resolvingconflict between figures, a few provide other twisted ideas that help to tailora specific play experience.

The four main influences are:

Blood Bowl (Games Workshop) – The idea of a sportboard-game has distinct connections with what I’m doing here. It is the main influence,and will inform many of the mechanisms present.

Roborally (Wizards of the Coast) – I love the movement andinjury systems in Roborally, I’d love to work out a similar series ofmechanisms for Ho8W.

Magic the Gathering (Wizards of the Coast) – The simplicityof combat in this game is awesome, but allows for marvellous strategy. Force versustoughness with a few opportunities for keyword traits and spell effects tomanipulate the outcome; the whole conflict should be resolved in a matter ofseconds. The other major contribution from this game would be the turn sequencestructure, as a new player (when the beta set was first released in the early90s) I found the elaborate definition of the turn sequence to be complicatedand perhaps a little unwieldy…as an experienced player later, I saw that theturn sequence was in fact a carefully structured framework for many othereffects.

Malifaux (Wyrd Miniatures) – The card playing mechanismfor this game is really clever, including the way you can “cheat fate” bystrategically playing cards from your hand rather than random cards from adeck. I foresee this coming into play as a method for gaining advantages fromfouls.

A few minor influences include:

Freebooter’s Fate (Freebooter Miniatures) – I like thecombat system from this game, it’s fast and reflects a very physical form of fighting.I don’ know how well the mechanisms will survive into the final game, but theinspiration is present.

Exalted (White Wolf) – A very particular mechanism fromthis game (the combat wheel) has some very specific connections to certainmechanism ideas I have.

Formula D (Asmodée) – I haven’t played this or looked into itvery carefully yet, but a few references by people interested in Ho8W havepiqued my interest. Besides, it’s a car racing game so I can see that theremight be some good reference points in it.

Hell on Eight Wheels: One - Outline

2012-01-06T22:16:00.002+11:00

I like Bloodbowl, the fantasy football game from GamesWorkshop. I’ve never been a huge fan, I haven’t played it enough to have a favouriteteam or a series of strategies for optimal play…in fact, most of the games ofBloodbowl that I’ve played have either ended early because we got distracted bysomething else, or one of the players walked out due to arguments or someone’sblatant manipulation of certain rules, thus exploiting a loophole and gaining ahuge advantage within the game. The only team I have is an unofficial team offemale players produced by Shadowforge miniatures (www.shadowforge.com.au); andof the two copies of the rules I have, one was given to me free by a friend whenhe was tossing out some old gaming stuff, the other was the freely downloadableliving rules currently used to play the game in sanctioned tournaments (http://www.bloodbowlonline.com/rules.shtml). PerhapsI like the idea of Bloodbowl more than I actually like Bloodbowl.

Bloodbowl basically represents a game of American Gridironusing fantasy races from the Warhammer fantasy world. The game has seen anumber of versions, each of which is a rough strategy game involvingmanipulation of miniatures around a sporting field. To make the game morefantastic, it includes more dangerous injuries than you would normally see on asporting field, and since it takes a while to move figures around a board, itstrips back the number of plays you’d normally expect to see in a footballmatch to keep the duration of the game down to two hours or so. Bloodbowl isn’ta direct translation of football to a board game, but it captures the spirit ofa violence filled football match far better than most other sporting board-gamescapture their respective on-field sports.

I like Roller Derby.

It’s got athletic girls, it’s got violence, it’s gotattitude, and it’s got a whole lot of depth beyond the stereotypes. Late in2011, I watched my first derby bout; taking photos from the sideline. Iinstantly thought that it would make a great board game in the same vein as Bloodbowl.But I don’t necessarily want to do a fantasy version of Roller Derby, there isenough thrills, spills and antagonism in the sport already. I want a game thatstrips down the essence of roller derby and translates it to a board.

At the simplest level, I’m looking at few key aspects:

A team of a dozen or so miniatures on each side, only fiveof whom are on the board at one time (each team allocates a jammer, a pivot andthree blockers).

Figures literally move around the track.

Rules for blocking, potential crashes, risking theopportunity to foul in exchange for a quick advantage, strategic plays andcrowd popularity.

I could easily write a game that rolls a few dice to givethe outcome of a bout based on some arbitrary statistics assigned to theskaters. But this doesn’t give any of the excitement of the sport.

I could write a game at the other extreme, where everyaction is carefully resolved with the jammer’s effort to pass (and any jammer assistance)compared to the blocker’s attempt to prevent this (and any blocker assistance),further rolls resolving any damage that might be done to either skater’s bodyor pride. This could end up losing the thrills of the sport if a single attemptto get through a pack required three or four die rolls against each of the fouropposing team pack skaters. Twenty die rolls per attempt through the pack, andthe jammer has to get through the pack twice to score points.

Perhaps a strategic element can be used to minimise the dierolling, speed up the game and make the outcome more considered and lessrandom.

That’s one of the key places where I’ll start the project.

2012 - A New Year and a New Topic (or Two)

2012-01-05T09:28:00.000+11:00

I was pretty slack with my blogging during 2011. Too busy attending to other things in my life.

Don't worry, I haven't made a New Years Resolution to blog more often this year, or to blog with better quality...after all New Years Resolutions have a nasty habit of breaking apart after a month or so.

Instead I've just decided that I'll be focusing my personal game design projects around two topics this year.

First a redesign of the game "Walkabout".

Second, the development of a roller-derby board game called "Hell On 8 Wheels".

Over the course of the next few months, I'd like to share the development process of these game with everyone who reads the blog. If you've got some good ideas along the way, or some points that you'd like to make about my designs, please feel free to comment or get in contact with me via other means. I always love to hear other people's input.

In addition to these topics I might throw in the occasional random link to another game or topic that interests me, just like I have been over the past few years.

Anyway...on with the game developments.

Format changes

2011-10-05T09:09:00.002+11:00

I've just looked at the blog and have seen that on the last few posts it has been adding a horrible white background to the text, and has changed the font on me...

...time to do some fiddling.

Injury, Dishonour, Panic and Scourge

2011-09-28T16:06:00.002+10:00

As a part of the miniatures/live action game based in my goblin world, I've got four ways of inflicting penalties on a target:

Injury (Based on Bones) - A physical form of penalty
Dishonour (Based on Bugs) - A social form of penalty
Scourge (Based on Cogs) - A spiritual/psychic form of penalty
Panic (Based on Tools) - A mental form of penalty

If a goblin suffers a point of penalty, all actions within that spehere suffer a minor impairment.

If a goblin suffers a second point in the same form of penalty, all actions within that sphere suffer a major impairment.

If a goblin suffers a third point in the same form of penalty, they are removed from play for the remainder of the turn.

At the end of the turn there is a chance that a goblin will reduce their current penalties, but the more penalzed they become, the harder it is for them to shake off the issues that afflict them.

The whole point here is that a goblin can drive off their foes by doing various types of harm, whether physically injuring them, scaring them off or using psychologcal warfare and simply bamboozling them.

The game is meant to be quick; no complicated formulas, no table references, in much the same way that combat between opponents is quick in Magic the Gathering (or most other collectible card games). A quick comparison of numbers determines the winner and inflicts penalties on the loser.

The issue I'm facing here is that the ability to cause "Injury" can easily be modified to accomodate for an attacker's bonuses due to weapons, or a defenders bonuses due to armour.

What would modify the ability to cause "dishonour" or "panic" in a similar fashion?

It's something I'll be thinking about more once the Goblin Tarot project has run it's course. After all, the goblin tarot deck (www.indiegogo.com/the-goblin-tarot) will be the core driving mechanism for the game....but more about that later.

Goblin Numbering

2011-09-15T17:03:00.000+10:00

I don't like it when an author or artist simply uses a different font to represent another culture's language. To make the goblins distinct, I've been working on a numbering system and a complete language from scratch.

The language won't be ready for a few more months (maybe even a year or two), so it won't be a part of the tarot release, but the numbers are ready and will be used to mark the cards.

For more information on this project, see http://www.indiegogo.com/the-goblin-tarot

Goblin Tarot Companion Sample

2011-09-14T07:57:00.002+10:00

After a few weeks of work, here is the sneak preview of the Goblin Tarot Companion.

http://vulpine.110mb.com/goblin_tarot_companion_sample.pdf

I'd still love to get a few more sponsors to make sure the project is kicked off properly, but at this stage it seems to have stagnated.

The Goblin Tarot

2011-09-10T17:04:00.003+10:00

For those of you who are unaware, I've started an IndieGoGo project to fund the first part of my Goblin game.

This project is called the Goblin Tarot and begins by providing a tarot deck derived from the mythology of my goblin world. Those who contribute a little more will receive a booklet containing some games to play with the card deck, some further insight into the goblin world and some goblinesque methods of divination.

For information about this project, visit the IndieGoGo site.

(P.S. If you've got any available funds and you'd love a fun present for this years festive season, I'd appreciate a few new backers)

PC Upgrade

2011-08-17T18:31:00.001+10:00

There could be a break in transmission as I transfer files from an old laptop to a new one.

Especially when it comes to transferring those frequently used programs such as the Office Suite, Photoshop, and the various other programs I use for 3D rendering and game design.

Hopefully this should take no longer than a day or two.

One small step for goblins, one enormous leap for a game about them.

2011-08-17T17:21:00.003+10:00

Goblins are a race of huge genetic diversity; there are big ones, small ones, scaly, furry, green skinned, brown.

Trying to catalogue them all would be a nigh impossible task.

Trying to create a roleplaying game or a miniatures game capable of capturing the diversity is surely a fool's errand.

But that's the task I've set for myself.

So how do I do it?

At this stage I'm treating goblin desriptions fairly simply, with two modular parts. Firstly a racial heritage that defines a series of baselines, then a series of occupations that boost those baselines.

It seems to be fairly ordinary stuff, many games have a similar structure.

But I get the feeling that a genetically diverse and decadent race that has evolved into hundreds of niches requires a carefully structured society to avoid devolving into complete anarchy. Goblins are traditionally treated as anarchists, so this might be their tendency when far from the central authorites of their race. The "powers that be" would take on a tyrannical view to keep their masses in check. Human history has seen groups do this through religion, military, nobility, commerce, and other means. Goblins add magic into the mix.

This is complicated further by a goblin's short lifespan, weeks rather than years.

Goblins don't have long to make a mark for themselves, and they find themselves oppressed by a cultural society that will certainly outlast them. Goblins may choose to rebel against their situation, subvert the society around them, or use it to their advantage in the hope of gaining access to a means of extending their lifespan and thus gaining more chance at notoriety, fame or wealth.

I'm trying to delve into a very alien mindset here, but there needs to be something familiar for outsiders to latch onto. It needs to make sense.

I'm starting to ramble here...in the attempt to explain my thought processes,,,but I'll just provide the next part of character description.

Occupations come in three levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. These are clustered into groups within a tree structure.

As an example for a warrior's occupation tree.

The basic level might be a footsoldier.

This branches to two types of intermediate warrior: infantry and cavalry.

Then each intermediate offers the choice of two advanced warrior occupations.

Each occupation takes a week or so to progress through. As a result, characters could pick two or three basic occupations from separate trees, but they'll probably die before getting very far in them.

Gaining access to an occupation requires performing some kind of feat in goblin society; these feats get harder as higher levels are being accessed. Once access is gained, each occupation offers bonuses, but it also offers obligations.

If you become the high courtier, you'll be expected to fulfil obligations associated with running court proceedings.

I'll be writing more to clarify these ideas shortly.

Goblin Labyrinth Blues

2011-08-06T09:10:00.002+10:00

A bit more information regarding my thought processes on the Goblin Labyrinth.

First a few key design points for the project.

The game uses a combination of live play and miniatures.
The game needs to be scalable for a variety of play group sizes. Ideally, anything from 2 players to 200. But it's more likely we'll be looking at the 6 to 30 range.
All players need to be connected to at least 3 other players through some kind of relationship (whether that comes in the form of an alliance or a rivalry).
The game needs to be fairly self-sufficient in terms of ecosystem and economy within the game world and narrative potential. (Any GMs need only be present to help resolve rule disputes between players, a small game between experienced players shouldn't need GMs at all).
The game needs to generate story through meaningful player decisions.
The game needs to be fun and easy to learn.

It's a tough set of criteria, but I'm gradually finding my way towards a rule set that fulfils each of these objectives (in my mind anyway).

Point by point:

The game uses a combination of live play and miniatures. If you've read my Raven's Nest posts, you'll know that this is possible. If you know the origins of roleplaying games as a hobby, you'll understand that this is basically just the ultimate old-school revival...the first braunstein games basically fulfilled this criteria and most other forms of roleplaying have been divergences from this tradition.
The game needs to be scalable for a variety of play group sizes. Ideally, anything from 2 players to 200. But it's more likely we'll be looking at the 6 to 30 range. I'm envisioning the game to run more as a board game with smaller numbers of players, perhaps more akin to a standard miniatures game, but with story driven elements required to achieve success rather than simply beating down an opponent. This is easily driven through mission objectives acquired at the start of play. A mission from a shadowy cabal of benefactors, a mission related to a current occupation, a mission for family...This becomes inherently scalable as larger groups of players will have more conflicting missions, but larger groups of players will also find groups sharing the same mission.
All players need to be connected to at least 3 other players through some kind of relationship (whether that comes in the form of an alliance or a rivalry). The application of missions immediately links players through rivalries and alliances, so this one's covered. To advance the concept here, I'm working on an idea of sharing favours with one another, or making public declarations of ill-will.
The game needs to be fairly self-sufficient in terms of ecosystem and economy within the game world and narrative potential. (Any GMs need only be present to help resolve rule disputes between players, a small game between experienced players shouldn't need GMs at all). A standard miniatures game needs no GM because the rules are procedural and can be looked up if necessary. A large freeform game only requires GMs to help resolve conflicts that extend beyond the scope understood by the players. Hopefully, by tying players and characters to specific goals within a specific framework of activities, the use for GMs can be reduced if not eliminated. This is the tricky one.
The game needs to generate story through meaningful player decisions. The goals assigned to characters will be conflicting, players will have to choose what is more important to them. This will become even more dramatic when characters require other to help them complete their goals, because you can never be certain whether the person you are asking for help will end up being a hindrance. An action will often lead to new actions, and the first quests completed in a game will change the dynamic of the scenario for the others involved. Thus the story will work toward a climax, but you can never be sure what climax will be generated. In many cases I'm foreseeing the ability for players to generate their own goals on the fly, thus creating a truly interactive experience driven by the economies of the setting.
The game needs to be fun and easy to learn. The actual miniature rules needs to be intuitive, they need to help drive the action in subtle ways, but not complicate the setting. The rules should make sense on the first turn, and with every action performed. The same general system should be used for all activities.

That's my basic design goals for the project. More details to come.

Mob Rules Update

2011-08-04T14:15:00.004+10:00

For the last couple of nights I've been crossing and meandering between two projects.

Number 1: Finishing off "The Great Bard", my game chef entry which seems to have drawn a bit of interest (Thanks for the review Steve).

Number 2: Getting the goblin mob combat rules to sit right in my head.

I've revised and refined the concept a bit.

We now follow a standard pattern for all different types of actions, whether combative, mystical or otherwise.

It works off a few simple notions.

a) Goblin characters are surrounded by mobs of lackeys, the mob can be any size as long as you've got the money to keep paying them. Lackeys are expendible and work like a combination of special abilities and hit points...once you lose a particular lackey, you lose access to the ability provided by that lackey and your mob size gets smaller.
b) When a goblin engages a task or enters conflict with another mob, they select a team from their mob. This team size is based on the leadership of the goblin, it may be higher if the goblin character leads them into battle, or it may cause morale loss if the goblin character sends his lackeys in to fight while he hides in the mob.
c) All team members get a single active action each turn, but they may defend themselves as many times as necessary.

With this in mind, the 3-minute turn sequence basically works as follows...

Minute 1:

Choose your active team
Draw an active hand of cards (1 plus the size of the active team)
Allocate a single card to each member of the active team

Minute 2:

Player with the larger active team goes first, they choose a member of their team to act, this goblin is the assailant.
Acting goblin targets a member of the opposing active team or a random member of the mob. The target of the action is the victim.
Play a random card on the assailant and the victim. Each player may choose to expose and use their allocated card if it is higher. Higher card adds 1 to their attack (or defence if the higher card is gained by the victim).
Compare scores, if assailant is higher, an effect is applied to the victim.
Move to next goblin's action (alternate turns between players).

Minute 3:

Chance of goblin recovery after the round has ended.
Any other end of turn effects manifest.
Begin new round.

It seems quick and simple at this stage, but will probably see further refinement as special abilities are devised.

More Goblins

2011-08-04T14:03:00.003+10:00

I've added a few more goblin tarot images to my deviantart page.

I figure I'm about 3/4 of the way through the collection now.

I'm happy that these images are getting a good viewing by people who haven't previously seen my work. I'm starting to get a few more regular watchers out of this series.

If you'd like to have a look, a link to the gallery is here.

Freebooter's Fate

2011-07-28T11:27:00.003+10:00

As an avid miniatures painter, and a fan of small press and indie games, I'm always interested in the new products available from the smaller miniatures manufacturers.

Those who appreciate fine figures will probably be familiar with the work of Freebooter miniatures already, with beautifully sculpted and delicate miniatures that are a joy to paint.

But in the last few months, Freebooter has released their own game system, Freebooter's Fate.

It's a card based system, rather than dice (so that gets my seal of approval). But the use of cards is really clever. So much so, that I'm thinking of using a similar system in a game of my own.

Characters have attack scores and defence scores, they also have areas of the body where they can be hit. The areas of the body are identified by cards (Head, Torso, Abdomen, Right Arm, Left Arm, Legs), and an attacking character plays a number of these cards equal to their attack score, while a defender plays a number of these cards equal to their defence score. The cards are revealed and if the attacker has played a card that the defender hasn't, a hit is scored on that party of the body. It's elegant, it makes sense.

If an attacker hits two or more areas that the defender hasn't blocked, they choose which area to hit and they score a critical hit.

Then you do other stuff to calculate the amount of damage based on weapon strength, armour toughness and a random card...but the essence of the hit mechanism is so simple and beautiful that I wonder why someone hadn't thought of it earlier...maybe they have and I just haven't seen it.

I haven't actually played a game yet, I like to paint my figures before they hit the table. I'll post a play report once I've actually had a chance to indulge my pirate ways.

Back to the Goblins

2011-07-27T15:18:00.003+10:00

Game Chef is over.

I'm not too happy with my result.

Lots of potential in it, but I just wasn't able to realise that potential in time.

So it's back to my pet project of the Goblin Labyrinth.

The Goblin City (Status Report)
I've sculpted up the first two of my blank hex templates for the labyrinthine Goblin city, these blanks are made from plaster and I'll be carving them and adding to them until I get the desired result. I'll probably be sculpting a few dozen more of these blank templates before I'm done. If I get the chance I'll update the vulpinoid studios website with a few works in progress.

Goblin Tarot (Status Report)
I've started generating a few more images for the minor arcana. Just assorted goblins displaying a wide range of cultural heritage, and posed in a variety of comical, macabre or slightly odd manners. I'll be compositing these images into cards shortly for uploading onto deviantart.

The Miniatures Game (Status Report)
Last night I started compiling my notes again for this part of the project. I think I've found a new streamlined way to handle conflict between packs of chaotic greenskins, something that adds tactics and drama. When I'm happy with this incarnation of the rules, I'll be sending them out to my usual forum haunts to see if I can elicit any feedback.

Games for Goblins (Status Report)
I'd still love to develop this side of the project, but I think I've got enough on my plate at the moment.

The Great Bard [Game Chef 2011]

2011-07-25T20:19:00.002+10:00

I've finished my Game Chef Entry, it's not as good as I'd hoped, there are a few issues with it.

I've just uploaded it onto 1km1kt, it's called "The Great Bard".

Have a look, I'll be critiquing my own work shortly.

Knights of Badassdom

2011-07-25T20:01:00.001+10:00

I don't know how many people are already aware of this movie, but as a LARPer myself it instantly grabbed my attention. The fact that it has Summer Glau, Ryan Kwanten and Peter Dinklage in it is just an added bonus.

Knights of Badassdom

Game Chef 2011 (Progress Report)

2011-07-21T16:39:00.002+10:00

I've come to the conclusion that what I'm trying to write for this contest is basically "Primetime Adventures" for an Elizabethan/Jacobean play instead of a TV show.

It's mostly all about relationships between characters, and fitting that into a 5 act structure.

...the problem is that I keep trying to add "Realism" into the mix. I want characters to have relations to one another, but I also want them to have relationships to areas ("This is my home ground", "This is somewhere I'm not liked"), and I want these relationships to evolve in play. In fact, that's one of the important parts to this game and to the plays of the era. Characters grow, relationships change.

But I don't want the final product to become a convoluted mess of systems and subsystems.

Maybe I need to sleep on it again.

Paintrix Miniatures

2011-07-20T14:47:00.002+10:00

At the moment I'm painting up a series of figures from the Malifaux and Freebooter's Fate ranges.

Some of these are absolutely beautiful miniatures, and they deserve to be painted with the utmost care and attention. Otherwise the paintwork just doesn't do justice to the raw metal.

So I decided to do some research, and looked into a few websites focused on miniature painters.

Cool Mini or Not came up, and there is always some great work on that site, but a lot of that is hidden amongst the mediocre...I was looking for something with a bit more information.

A bit more looking and I found the Paintrix.

Finally, a licensed game to get excited about.

2011-07-19T14:47:00.002+10:00

I just found out that Adamant Entertainment is releasing a roleplaying game based on the classic cult sci-fi masterpiece...

BUCKAROO BANZAI

...Awesome...!!!!

Now back to working on Game Chef.

Shakespearean Game Board

2011-07-17T21:36:00.003+10:00

I've been working on a game board for my Game Chef rpg contest entry.

The Shadowy Cabal

2011-07-17T13:50:00.004+10:00

The point that prompted this post was over on one of my regular haunts, 1km1kt...

So the question is, how can we be proactive about this situation. Could we implement a 1km1kt rating system based on either reader votes of a shadowy cabal like the MPAA? If we haven't already, a "your top five free games" might help to ensure a person's first contact with free is something good and not yet another attempt to re-write D&D.

...so the question is whether this would be feasible, who would be involved and how would we ensure that the feedback is meaningful.

Perhaps there is already something that could be used as a basic model for the concept, a site like Cool Mini or Not), or maybe I could generate up a computer database system allowing people to assign a value from 1-10 for specific categories (innovation of rules, readability, layout, etc.), then applying weighting component to someone's votes based on the number of products they've voted on, reviews they may have written...all of this takes effort and you'd need some kind of incentive program to make it worthwhile.

I still think it's an idea that could be worth pursuing.

Chain World

2011-07-17T10:56:00.002+10:00

Chain World

An amazing story of a game as art and religion.

I'm not going to write any more on this except to say that a similar type of thing was attempted within the indie rpg design community last year with a set of components passed from one designer to the next in a chain of creativity.

Read the article, tell me what you think.

Law and Order: SVU (Shakespearean Victims Unit)

2011-07-16T15:42:00.002+10:00

I've had a few ideas for Game Chef this year. But I'm not sure which one to run with.

I've also had a few ideas for mechanisms.

The soft 3000 word limit is the killer for me. That's about 3-4 pages of text. Far less than I'd normally write. But that's all part of the challenge I guess.

Game Chef 2011: First Thoughts

2011-07-14T07:54:00.002+10:00

The theme this year is "William Shakespeare".

I've just watched "Gnomeo and Juliet" a few days ago.

I love "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", and I've long toyed with the idea of writing a novel in this vein, where the plot of my narrative intertwines with the narrative of a classic, key points in both crossing over at twists and junctions.

I can even justify some of these ideas within the context of my vector theory of RPG design.

The players choose minor characters from a Shakespearean play, characters who don't die in the traditional text (or if they do, maybe it only seems that way...and they'll have to make deliberate efforts to avoid appearing in future crossover scenes). If such characters die in the new story, perhaps someone can masquerade as their role when the next crossover occurs.

Spontaneous thought: In the last run of David Tennant as the Doctor (in Dr Who), there is a notion that some events in spacetime are fixed, while other are mutable. I'm imagining that crossover points between the Shakespearean play and the game are those fixed points. But how much diversity of story can you achieve between those points.

It's a bit railroady, but when a game focuses on relationships outside the context of the core story I can see some interesting drama unfolding.

It's a hell of a concept, we'll have to see what the ingredients are for this years contest...hopefully, they'll refine the game ideas for me.

...but how do I incorporate the gnomes without it getting silly???

Game Chef 2011 (and other contests)

2011-07-14T07:06:00.003+10:00

It's Game Chef time of Year again.

One Theme, Four Secret Ingredients (from which you must choose two), then 10 days to produce a fine-tuned gaming hot rod to compete among the dozens of of entrants.

I've done Game Chef a few times, I usually just make up the numbers. Maybe my games a bit too pedestrian in some respects, maybe they're just a bit too long winded (my entries are usually twice the page count of the average entry). Or it could be that I'm still not a "recognized" name in the independent gaming crowd.

In an attempt to remedy this, I've submitted FUBAR into the mix for the 2010 Indie RPG awards.

Spicing Up Your Game #5: Props

2011-07-03T08:34:00.003+10:00

I love props.

In fact, at many conventions I've been known as the "GM with the props".

Oversized water pistols given to commando characters and space marines.
Elaborate little trinkets to evoke a specific feeling for a character.
Diaries filled with hastily scrawled diagrams and barely legible handwriting.
Show jewellery.
First aid kits to designate the party's medic.
Bottles of wine to depict an alcohol (or wine connoisseur).
Toy coins to depict the use of actual currency in a game.

I've used all of these and many more.

It's not that I don't trust the imaginations of the other players involved in a session, it's more that I find people's tactile response engages at a quicker pace and a more instinctive level. If you don't have to imagine the boring bits, you can focus on the drama and the action.

This might also stem from my background in Live Action roleplaying; costume and props certainly play a more prominent role in games of this type. But I've found that bringing props to the table adds a degree of immediacy to the events at hand, they allow new roleplayers something to focus on and opens up their creative potential, they allow veteran roleplayers a new tool for their arsenal.

Some games include a props within their coded mechanisms, the first instance to come to my mind is the dagger used in the game Mist Robed Gate (here or here), but there are a few others.

But you can explore the use of props on so many levels within the context of roleplaying. They are a great way to keep track of who possesses which important items in the game.

As an example...

The most impressive prop I ever used in a game was at a convention held on the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales, it was the mid to late 1990s. We had an unused 12 story building at our disposal, with working elevators. So we made the elevators into a system of portals and defined each level of the building as a different alternate reality. The majority of the game occurred on the ground floor (with 20 odd players), while certain groups would be sent up and down the building when they went off to explore other parts of the setting. It became easy to determine who was where in the game because different players would physically be on different floors of the building. Of course a prop of this magnitude requires a few GMs to handle properly.

I'd love to hear about props other people have used in interesting ways.

Timelord

2011-07-02T08:03:00.003+10:00

I've been thinking about a Doctor Who RPG for a while, one that stays true to the spirit of the series, rather than a piece of generic rubbish with a Doctor Who veneer glossed over the surface.

So, when I found this link I was interested.

I don't know if it's the first Doctor Who RPG, or if it's just an early one, but the fact that it's now freely downloadable for personal use makes it a great starting point for exploring systems and settings within the universe of our favourite Gallefreyan.

I haven't thoroughly delved into it yet (or the free expansion), but I plan to shortly.

Perhaps there will be a time travelling FUBAR expansion on its way.

Unexploited Resource #5: Music

2011-06-28T16:48:00.003+10:00

Looking through my old posts, I see a few ideas that really need re-addressing.

One of those is the "Unexploited Resource" series.

So to resume the concept, here's an idea I've been thinking about for a while. Music in games.

I remember a few years ago, actually it was the mid to late 1990s. It was the traditional "end of convention" trip to the pub...a common occurrence that still happens at Australian RPG conventions. A friend of mine was sharing an idea over a drink. He had recently placed a computer game in a regular CD player on a whim,and he found that the background tracks and theme music for the game were readable as music files on the CD player.

This game him a few key music loops that might have proven useful as introductory fanfares for specific NPCs, but more interestingly, the game included a heartbeat.

In the computer game, the heartbeat soundtrack sped up as the character became nervous, excited or stressed, and it slowed down when the character achieved a more peaceful state of mind.

The friend was discussing the idea of having this track on constant single-loop throughout a game, when player characters became more agitated in the game he'd ascend to the next track and loop through this, gradually getting faster with each track progression, or moving back through the looped tracks when things were calming down.

I don't know what game it was (I vaguely think it was something in the "Battletech" game line), I can't remember who suggested the idea, and I don't even know if the idea was put into practice.

What I do remember thinking was that the concept sounded awesome to me at the time. Especially if used in conjunction with other soundscaping ideas.

I did run in one convention game where a GM used music to great effect.

Vietnam War setting, so he used the movie soundtracks to "Apocalypse Now", "Good Morning Vietnam" and a few other great period songs to set the tone for the game.

In this way, music isn't really a way to mechanically change things up, instead it's a tool for characterisation and mood.

I ran an infamous Sabbat Game for White Wolf's Camarilla around 2002 (where I spent a bit too much hiring a pair of high-class strippers for the gamers...the strippers were more freaked outthan the gamers...but that's another story). In this game I went through my MP3 collection and picked as many death related songs as I could, gradually building up the intensity over the course of 3 hours. Then finishing off with the classic disco song "I Will Survive" for the ritual climax at the game's end.

A few people remarked on the song choices, most didn't even notice them, but it was a great way to add a bit more texture to the game, beyond the specific events occurring physically around the players.

I've been wanting to use music more in my games, and It's certainly something I've haven't seen used enough in a roleplaying context.

New Job

2011-06-18T07:06:00.002+10:00

I've been posting away at this blog for a while now (since early 2008) and have had a variety of jobs. The blog actually started off early with a string of posts about my dissatisfaction regarding the corporate world.

In the time since I've been writing this blog, I've been an IT specialist, a printer, a bookseller, a freelance game writer, a layout artist, a student and a web designer...Most of those roles I've been paid for.

For the last few months I've been struggling to make roleplaying books my primary source of income. It's not been easy, especially when other issues keep cropping up. I'm probably earning enough money through RPGNow that I can adequately sustain myself on packet noodles and a few cheap cans of food...certainly not comfortable, and not even enough to pay the rent, but it's a start.

So that's meant I've had to look for more substantial work (the job-hunting has cut into my game design time immeasurably).

On the positive side, I have now found a job that I can really sink my teeth into.

I now design companies, corporate identities and retail environments. It's like designing insidious factions for a cyberpunk game, but it's real, and people are paying me to do it. AWESOME!!!

Taking it back for my people

2011-06-13T15:37:00.002+10:00

According to a number of people within the Facebook group Wenman Family Reunion, it appears that I could be related to gypsies.

I find this hugely ironic, when a number of people told me not to pursue my ideas for the game Brigaki Djili. My most vocal opponents decried my work as an act of "cultural appropriation", but now it seems I can counter their arguments by saying that I am actually exploring my ancestry and cultural roots through my work on this game.

I realise that if anyone traces their family tree far enough, they can justify almost anything, but this gypsy/traveller connection only stretches back a couple of generations, and it seems that there are still a high proportion of travellers who bear the Wenman name.

In fact, one of the origins of the surname "Wenman" is said to be "Wain-man" or "Wagon-man".

Maybe it's time to start working on that project again.

New Goblin Tarot Images

2011-06-08T14:54:00.003+10:00

Just to show that I'm still ploughing away on the Goblin Tarot Deck, here are a few more images to entice and enthral.

At this rate I should have the full deck knocked out in a few weeks.

Have a look at my Deviant Art profile for more updates on this project.

Spicing Up Your Game #4: Getting Everyone on the Same Page

2011-05-26T09:30:00.001+10:00

Another one of those common topics of discussion on independent gaming forums involves the concept of shared imagination space, or shared imagined space, or simply SIS. I’ve heard a dozen interpretation of what this actually is, but the concept I like the best is like a communal daydream where everyone adds something into it, and everyone else reacts to the addition. Three types of contributors add to the communal daydream, the GM who sets the stage, the players who act through their players within the setting and the game mechanisms which often impose a level of coherency or apply genre specific physics to the situation.

All of these forces are pulling at the SIS, the GM is often trying to pull the story toward a predetermined goal, the players are typically pulling the SIS in a way to highlight the advantages and strengths of their characters, the system often works to stop players or GM from gaining absolute control over events, thus turning the story into a game experience.

With these forces pulling in different ways, the SIS is pulled tight like the mat on a trampoline. It has a certain degree of give, but if things get too tense it becomes a fragile thing that can easily be broken. If you’ve been roleplaying long enough, you’ve probably seen this. One player pulls in a direction opposing another player, it starts with each believing a different version of a specific event, and as they are unwilling to back down, they continue to interpret new events in ways that reinforce their belief about the storyline…until eventually the two stories become incompatible and the SIS literally tears apart, destroying the game in the process.

In another situation, the players engage in an action that isn’t quite covered by the game’s rules, so a new rule is devised ad hoc (perhaps by the GM, perhaps by consensus of the group). With another situation and another ad hoc change of the rules the story drifts away from the rules as they are written in the book. Some players might realise this and simply think that this is just the GMs play style, perhaps they give it a name like “drift” because they are gradually drifting away from the rules as written and are developing their own evolution of the game more suited to their style of play. Eventually the players realise that they are actually playing a brand new game completely separate from the book where everything started.

Anything can cause a degree of tension that rends the SIS; at first it might be unnoticed, but eventually it becomes obvious and destroys a game. Not all games end this way, some games might walk a fine line, where nothing gains enough strength to cause this damage to the SIS, or maybe the storyline resolves and the game ends before things get too out of hand.

If you’re planning to run a long term game, it makes sense to give the SIS a bit more strength. Make it a bit more resistant to those pulling effects. If all the players and the GM are sharing the same ideas about where the story is going, what has happened and how the environment around them works, then there is a lower likelihood that they’ll pull in mutually incompatible directions. (Don’t get me wrong, there will still be friction between characters, that’s all a part of roleplaying, but now the players should be aware of what they are doing to the story rather than simply pulling at it without understanding the results of their actions.)

There are some easy ways to reinforce the SIS, but most involve a bit of preparation and some homework on the part of the players.

Find a movie that’s similar to the setting you’re trying to portray, or a TV series. If it’s something that most members of the group are already familiar with then you don’t need to sit and watch it again.

If your game idea sits somewhere between two or three movies, get everyone to sit and watch them all…taking notes along the way. Or even take the opportunity for everyone to pick a movie within a specific genre…action movies, sci-fi movies, road movies, post apocalypse…once everyone has picked a movie, everyone should write notes, picking half a dozen aspects from each movie, then discussing their choices during the credits, or before the next movie starts. Once all the movies have been watched, consider which elements are common to them. For example, if you’re going sci-fi and one person picks “Blade Runner” while someone else picks “Alien”, then there is a common thread of very human looking androids, and another common thread of crude space travel with an exodus from the earth. Choose a few of these common elements, and define them as immutable truths about the game setting. Choose a few of the characters as archetypes for NPCs. Limit the weaponry in the game to items that are specifically seen in the films. If you see an action occur in a few of the movies, then it should be pretty easy to accomplish in the game; conversely if you deviate beyond what you see in any of the movies then things would get more difficult.

In this way, everyone gets on the same page about what can be done easily, what should become harder in the game, and what just shouldn’t be possible at all.

You could do the same with books, but this would be a bit harder. It takes a lot longer and a bit more effort to read a book than watch a movie.

Once everyone has the same starting point for a game, and they understand where the boundaries of the imagined world exist, then they can explore the space within those boundaries instead of trying to test the edges and pull the game apart.

That’s the theory anyway.

Real Time Mob Warfare

2011-05-26T09:22:00.002+10:00

(I apologize to the people who've been following the development of this game, those helpful people who've provided insight and encouragement as I've been plugging away at this project...but I've provided a deeper background for those people who aren't up to speed, or who just want to see where my current thoughts lie in context)

I’m stuck.

I’m trying to write a skirmish level wargame that plays out in real time.

Each player takes on the role of a goblin in an ancient civilization that long ago conquered its entire world, laying a grand labyrinth across entire continents before opening chasms in time-space and spreading their labyrinth to new worlds. The goblins have such a huge empire that they have fractured as a people, fighting among themselves more often than they fight outsiders, they have mutated into dozens of subraces. The subraces commonly fight each other through political intrigue and occasionally by brawling in the streets. The great goblin empire has little control over its vast lands, local imperial barons wage war against guerrilla warlords and powerful crafting guilds. They fight with a teeming horde of youngsters ever eager to prove themselves in battle, with clockwork robots, with alchemical beasts and with trained animals. Occasionally one side might enslave or recruit outsiders who have been swept up in the eternal goblin struggle; humans lost in the labyrinth, giant trolls, or other strange beasts.

Typically, goblins have very short lifespans and a breeding cycle that would drive their numbers exponentially out of control if they weren’t always fighting. A goblin is hatched, becomes sexually active at the end of a month, reaches optimum maturity after a second month, retires by the time the third month has passed, and has died of old age by the end of the fourth month. But there are special potions, artefacts and places in the world that slow down a goblin’s rate of aging, turning weeks into years or even decades. Gaining control over these goblin treasures are the main source of conflict across the empire.

That’s where the wargame comes in.

The game is a massive skirmish level free-for-all. Each player controls a goblin hero, someone who has transcended the goblin masses and has obtained a method for enhancing their lifespan. As a hero, they have gathered an assortment of lesser goblins, sidekicks, pets and war machines to their side. So at this stage we’re looking at a hero with an assortment of skills and special abilities, and a half dozen or so lesser goblins and other fighting assistants each with an ability or two of their own.

…and this needs to play out in real time with more than twenty players playing at once, in a few factions with four or so hero members in each.

It’s a tough ask, but if it can be pulled off, it should be utterly spectacular.

I’m toying with two core ideas at this time.

The first employs the goblin tarot deck I’m working on.

The second employs rolling heaps of dice.

The goblin tarot deck idea is more mystical, the dice rolling idea is more chaotic…but both are quite potentially goblinesque.

Idea 1: Goblin Tarot Combat

There are a range of major arcana, each describing a battle tactic. Different characters will have access to different tactics.

Members of a squad (the hero and their companions) are represented by cards. At the start of a round, a player sorts these cards into an activation order. When they come into conflict with one another squad, they reveal the top card of their deck with the squad they are fighting against. Minor arcana are drawn, the face value of these arcana are added to relevant skills on the squad cards before comparing to opponents. Players may activate a single ability for each squad member as they activate, they might be able to activate a second ability or gain some kind of bonus if the minor arcana has the right suit. In this way an exchange should only take a couple of seconds, and once one exchange is dealt, a second exchange begins. This continues until all troops have activated once (some may have the ability to be re-added back into the activation pile). Once a new round begins, surviving squad members are sorted into a new activation pile; with the next round, follow up actions are made.

Using this type of system all of the members of a squad can be provided with different abilities that might prove useful (or might be completely ineffective if certain opponents are flipped not.

The system can also be used for resource gathering (which will also be an important part of the game), scavenging for scrap in junk heaps to build contraptions to wage more war, or trade to wanna-be warlords. Perhaps different troops types are more effective at gathering different types of resources in different areas.

The whole idea still needs work, but that’s the basic system. The reason I’m liking this system is that it’s hard to cheat when you’re drawing cards from a deck, and a goblin game of this magnitude will keep the GMs on their toes as it is; the game needs a system that is easy enough to regulate between payers so that the GMs can be . .

Idea 2: Handfuls of Dice

The goblin tarot idea activates a single character at a time, handfuls of dice are a free for all.

Under this concept, all roll one or more dice…one die for basic inexperienced goblins, two dice for veterans (a month or two old), and three for the hero. All the dice are rolled at once, then allocated to squad members as they activate.

If a 1 is allocated to a goblin, the opponent gets a free attack on them.

If a 2-3 is allocated, the goblin is distracted and doesn’t act except to defend themselves.

If a 4-5 is allocated, the goblin acts normally.

If a 6 is allocated to a goblin, they get the chance to activate a special ability.

Experienced goblins and heroes with multiple dice may combine their successful dice for spectacular actions against individuals, or may split their successes against multiple enemies.

It would still work off the idea of activating squad members, but I’m not sure how a fast activation mechanism would work under a dice related system.

This type of system matches more of the existing wargames, so it might be easier to pick up. But I think I’m tending toward the first idea at this stage.

I’m open to ideas.

Spicing Up Your Game #3: Making Player Decisions Matter

2011-05-26T09:17:00.000+10:00

I’m one of those GMs who runs a reactionary game. I ask every player to devise some kind of goal before trying to determine a story outline. I’ll develop a game plan for a session once the first scene has played out and I’ve got an idea of where the group would like to take things.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to organise things. I’ll prepare a setting, with an assortment of locations ready action, a rogues gallery of NPCs ready to throw into scenes and a few potential treasures or maguffins. In some circles, I think my GMing style is called “playing unsafe” but I prefer to think of it as allowing players to actually make decisions for their characters, providing the opportunity to explore the setting and explore the characters within that setting.

As a player, I’ve participated in sessions run by similar GMs and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve also played in sessions run by GMs who prefer to simply run things according to a set scenario with no allowance for player decisions to really affect the story flow. Sure, the players can stop, go, speed up or slow down the course of action; but with no chance of taking side routes or simply dismissing anything not related to the GMs story at hand, it’s all just railroading. I’ve delved into a bit of this with my various posts on Vector Theory.

So, there’s nothing really special about this particular method of spicing up your game. If you’re a GM, just allow your players to make decisions, don’t be afraid to follow where those decisions might lead the story. If they lead to new and interesting places, keep notes. If they peter out, go back to the planned story you had, and incorporate some of the exploration that the players took you on while they were leading things.

Spicing Up Your Game #2: Danger Dice

2011-05-26T09:13:00.001+10:00

In the independent game design crowd, there are plenty of discussions and arguments about what makes a next generation roleplaying game and how this compares to the old generation of games (and their legacy). One of the common things brought up is the ability for players to take more control into their own hands. Taking risks for added chances to achieve important goals, being able to accept responsibility for your actions by deliberately imposing complications to your own character. Instead of accepting the railroading or deprotagonising effects from the GM, you step up and become a true protagonist again. Destiny is back in the hands of the players and the story becomes a collaborative effort once again.

It sounds a bit over the top. A lot of us got into roleplaying because that’s the kind of thing that our game books promised us, quite a few people never experience this and they either become jaded and leave the hobby, or they change their expectations of the hobby and become content to let a GM tell the story while they just follow aong for the ride through their characters.

This idea is pretty simple, but it pulls the players back into the storytelling process without pushing the intimidating step of “full GMing” on them.

At the start of every campaign, a character should have three or four things that might be useful, depending on your game system, these might be piece of equipment in the inventory, they might be specific traits, relatives, merits, or they might be simple keywords if your game system doesn’t normally keep track of things like equipment. At the start of each new session, a character might gain a single new item, or maybe they’ get refreshed back up to the starting number…

During the course of play, every time a skill check is made, roll an extra die of the type appropriate for your system.

If you are rolling d20s, roll an extra d20; if you’re rolling percentiles, roll an extra pair of d10s.

If you are rolling 2d6 and adding the results together, roll an extra d6.

If you are paying a game with a step die mechanism, roll another die equal to your highest die type (or your lowest die type...whatever you choose, be consistent through the whole game).

Before a skill check is made, the player should describe one of the objects/items/keywords important to their character. This important thing needs to be related to the events at hand, something that can be risked to improve chances of success. If the character doesn’t have something suitable, they still roll the extra die but risk something nasty happening to themselves (perhaps they’ll risk taking some damage in the skill attempt, or some kind of other penalty or flaw).

When the skill check is made, one die is allocated to the actual skill attempt, while the other die is applied to the risk.

The risk die has three levels of effect:

If it rolls really badly (like a natural 1 on a d6, or a 1-2 on a d10) the risked item is lost for good.

If it rolls fairly badly (less than half of its maximum value; eg. up to 3 on a d6, up to 5 on a d10), the risked item is lost temporarily. Perhaps it is gone until the next period of rest, or until the end of the session.

If it rolls relatively well (more than half of its maximum value; eg. 4 or more on a d6, 6 or more on a d10), the item survives unscathed.

As an example…John is playing one of the newer editions of D&D, he is playing a ranger and has chosen a family heirloom and a few pets as his key bonuses. Skills in this version of D&D use a d20, where a die roll plus a skill level must meet a target number in order for the skill attempt to succeed. Normally, if the Dungeon Master wants something to happen, they’ll offer a low target number before getting the player to roll…if they don’t want it to happen, they’ll offer a high target number.

This time, since the Dungeon Master has decided to turn the focus back onto the players. John attempts to get some information and he chooses to risk one of his pet ferrets. The Dungeon Master declares a target number of 20. John’s Ranger has +8 on his rolls when attempting to find information in this way. John rolls 2 dice, 7 and 14. If he allocates the 7 to the skill attempt, he won’t find the needed information (7+8=15), but the ferret will survive intact. If he allocates the 14 to the skill attempt he will prove successful (14+8=22), but something nasty might happen to the ferret until the end of the session. John has to make a choice that is important to him, the story or the ferret.

A similar effect could be applied to almost any game, this is basically adding the concept of “Otherkind Dice” onto the system.

Spicing Up Your Game #1: "...as played by..."

2011-05-23T20:13:00.003+10:00

I've had an idea for a series of posts about ways to spice up your roleplaying games.

Just some simple things that can be applied to just about any system or genre.

A lot of these things are probably ideas that you already incorporate into your games (especially if you are a story-gamer or a "non-traditional" gamer), but I know that there are quite a few groups who will find these ideas new.

The first idea was something that I picked up in a forum a few weeks ago, I don't remember which forum it was in, or what game it was suggested for, but I was really tempted to throw it into my rewrite of FUBAR. I didn't, and instead I'll be incorporating it into one of the genre expansions for the game (maybe one focused around action movies)...

...anyway, enough with the background for this post...on to the meat...

A few of the old games I remember playing had a distinct problem with characters, it might have been something to do with the players (we were teenagers with few social outlets other than our gaming), but then again it might have been something to do with the fact that none of our games provided explicit instructions on how to "play" a character.

I think it was when I engaged in live roleplaying that I really picked up the idea of personifying a character by indulging in stereotypes, or really playing up certain character aspects. Before that, the games were all about numbers on a page, rolling dice and determining who'd end up with the biggest share of XP or treasure.

Going back to tabletop play, I saw a lot of players who still thought in this mind set, but who thought they were missing out on something.

This idea doesn't really push a traditional gamer into exotic territory like "shared narrative" or "GM-less play", it's more like an expansion of the concept of alignment.

When a player devises their character, they should add a single extra step into the process...simply identify which actor you could see playing the character you have in mind. Then play the character with the mannerisms and stereotypes common to that actor...

How would this character be played by Arnold Swarzenegger? John Cusack? Edward Norton? Keanu Reeves? Jack Black? What about applying the exact same set of attributes and skils to a character being portrayed by Angelina Jolie? Judy Dench?

It's just an interesting idea for getting into a mind-set.

It's worked for me in live games, and I've brought it to the table successfully on many occasions.

The Goblin Tarot

2011-05-18T08:24:00.002+10:00

Here is one of those many backburner projects that I've been working on for quite some time.

I've just been waiting for the right moment of inspiration to hit, and over the last few days it has.

Over the course of two days, I've drawn up a dozen or so images for a deck of cards based on Goblins; the kind of goblins you see in the movie "Labyrinth", also known as Froud Goblins. But these goblins are my own variation on them.

The suits for the deck are "Bugs", "Bones", "Cogs" and "Tools". I'm not sure if these preliminary suit images will act as the background for the numbered cards or if they will simply end up as atmospheric pieces to inspire creativity for the deck.

I have also generated the "Ladies" for each deck (roughly equivalent to the Queens in a standard deck of playing cards).

More details and images to come.

FUBAR Director's Cut Now Available

2011-05-12T17:57:00.000+10:00

FUBAR has been doing pretty well.

Over 1000 downloads from the various sites where it is available, and most of the feedback I've had from it has been pretty positive.

The game has appeared on a Russian game related database, as well as appearing on a few English speaking databases (where I wasn't the one to add the game)...it seems that people are taking notice of it, and I've got to be happy about that.

With this in mind, I've taken on board some of the feedback I've received and have expanded the game from 30 pages to 50...thus making the FUBAR Director's Cut.

To make this version of the game even more open, I've specifically released it under a Creative Commons license. I'd love to see a few people pick up the mechanisms, and run with them in entirely new directions

The new version is currently only on the Vulpinoid Studios RPGNow store.

Kickstarter and Other Options

2011-05-10T10:15:00.003+10:00

Daniel Solis is releasing Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple via Kickstarter.

And the success of this project has basically gone viral for the purposes of indie games. It even got a shout out on Wired.

It looks like it's going to be a great game, and Kickstarter looks like an awesome way to fund a project.

...but it can't be used to fund projects outside the USA.

I've been looking for similar funding forums that do work outside the US. My searches probably haven't been as thorough as they could have been, since I've always come away with a generally negative response.

But now I've found IndieGoGo, and I might be able to put together a project of my own.

I'm thinking about putting together a physical copy of FUBAR, now that I've written up a second edition of the game...maybe putting out a proper version of Walkabout...or something new.

I haven't decided, but they'll probably all get a run at some stage.
mjnh

Background Work

2011-05-07T09:28:00.003+10:00

For the past 12 months I've been working on a number of projects, some of which I've publicised, others of which I've kept very quiet about.

There have been stints in hospital, moving of house, looking for work...but on the more creative side, I've probably been generating more artwork than I have in over a decade. Some of this can be found on my deviantart profile, a great deal more is found on scraps of paper, cardboard and scattered computer files.

A lot of this work has been an attempt to get my head straight about future projects, I've built up a catalogue of inspiration images, atmospheric photography, sketches and diagrams.

...which means I've basically put the Game Mechanism of the week project on sabbatical. At this stage I'd have fifteen weeks or so to catch up on, and I'd rather be designing than theorising about design.

Over the next few weeks I'd like to reveal some of the design ideas I've been working on, to see if there is any interest. I'll also be looking at a redesign of the Vulpinoid Studios website, but no more on that for the moment...I don't want to release too many spoilers.

Font For Sale

2011-05-03T11:23:00.003+10:00

With some interest being generated in my online store over at RPGNow, I've just put up my first font for sale.

If this generates a few sales, I might consider adding a few more.

New Internet...hopefully.

2011-04-28T17:04:00.001+10:00

After six months as an internet nomad, I think I now have a stable connection again.

Stable enough to start being accessible again anyway.

Time to start catching up on those freelance projects and my web store over at RPGNow...

...and time to get back on top of my blog posting.

Arguably the best gaming supplement ever!!!

2011-04-12T15:47:00.002+10:00

I wish I'd seen this at the beginning of the month when it was first released.

I know so many people who'd want to buy a copy.

Have a look at the official page...(Yes, I do know the significance of the day when it was released).

Spider's Dance

2011-03-19T12:16:00.002+11:00

Surprisingly, I just uploaded my new game "Spider's Dance" to RPGNow.

In just over a week it's sold almost 20 copies. My highest selling opening week so far.

Almost time to start loading up my first FUBAR supplement.

Then I promise to upload all those blog post entries for the last few weeks.

Quincunx Issue 1 Completed

2011-02-03T13:08:00.003+11:00

I'm so relieved, after years of working on it, my graphic novel is finally coming together.

I've now completed a beta draft of the first issue...and here are the first few pages.

If you're interested in reading it (before I send it off for submission to various pubishers), I'll try to send across a pdf of the first issue.

Anyway, here's the first few pages...

QR Code

2011-01-21T11:28:00.003+11:00

I just thought I'd share this cool site that encodes those new QR Code squares that we are starting to see all over the place.

Here's the Vulpinoid Studios website address as QR code.

Apologies

2011-01-19T13:40:00.002+11:00

My internet situation still hasn't improved much...still living the life of a Wi-Fi nomad. As a result of that, I'll still be writing the series of Game Mechanisms of the Week, but they'll probably be uploaded sporadically in bursts...a few weeks at a time after they've been written (or even a couple of weeks in advance if I get the chance).

Hopefully this won't put you off from reading them and offering some kind of feedback.

I've still got the spam filter activated on the blog, so if you are making comments and you don't see them for a few days (or even weeks), don't send them through multiple times...it probably just means I haven't had the chance to authorise them yet.

I'd ike to think the internet issue will be resolved soon, but it's really not a high priority at the moment....finishing up the writing of my comic and a few other personal projects are actually getting completed without the distraction of the web.

Thanks for the perseverance.

Game Mechanism of the Week 2011: 2 – Legend of the Five Rings 2nd Edition Core Mechanism “Roll and Keep”

2011-01-19T13:35:00.003+11:00

The version of L5R that I’m most familiar with is 2^nd Edition. I’ve played a bit of 3^rd Edition, so I know that a lot of the fundamentals are very similar….as for other versions I’m not as sure.

The basic system for the core mechanism is fairly similar to the structure I described for the percentile system, but there are enough differences to make it worthwhile examining…especially the fact that it allows players to take a bit more control for themselves when the GM is using the system correctly. It should also be noted that a GM can use the system incorrectly, and when they do this it is barely any different to the basic percentile system. I’ll describe this later.

The basic system follows 4 steps:

1. Scene is set for the action. Target number is determined, along with a pool of dice to roll based on the attribute and skill to be used in the task.

2. You may choose to raise the difficulty to gain an added effect from the action.

3. Dice are rolled, the best are kept (the number kept depends on the skill of the character) and totalled, the total is then compared to the target number.

4. One of two results occurs

a. You beat the target number and you either gain an advantage or avoid a penalty (if you applied any raises, you get the benefit of these as well).

b. You fail to beat the target number and you either suffer a penalty or don’t gain the advantage.

It the addition of that new second step that makes this system more interesting; it integrates the idea of player choice into the action and allows characters to be more dramatic in their actions. Any time a player decides to introduce a raise for their character, they make a conscious choice regarding the events at hand. Such a choice is grounded in the events at hand; with certain options provided by the skill being used, others becoming available through certain character advantages, and some possibly being made available by the GM to reflect the specific circumstances of the scene.

A raise invokes the possibility of a new event node. It might create an additive filter to provide extra advantage to the character at a later time, it might alter the velocity of the story (giving the characters extra time to prepare, or reducing the time for a nemesis to ready themselves), it might open a diverging lens to take the story in an unexpected direction, or it might allow players to avoid an upcoming mirror. Each of these options is a wild card, and an open GM will often be able to run with the choices provided, while a closed GM will simply say something along the lines of “No, you can’t make that kind of raise in this situation” or they’ll simply ignore the effects of the raise. I’ve ranted about this type of “GM shut-down” in L5R games before. Without the subtly of the raise, you might as well just be playing with a percentile system (or a “beat the target number” system).

A basic diagram of the system shows how this added step provides a new degree of complexity into proceedings.

(I could draw up a half-dozen permutations of this flowchart, some where the player introduces different types of raises, others where raises are not added in, then I could vary whether the specific actions has positive filters resulting from successful actions, or negative filters resulting from failed actions, but by this stage you should get the general idea. If an action has a potentially beneficial effect, then the positive filters apply; and conversely if the characters are caught in a potentially bad situation then the negative filters apply.)

The important thing to note about these charts compared to previous charts is the outlined diverging lens. This is where a deliberate choice is made by a player. In L5R this inclusion in the mechanism has a reflection within the setting. The players portray heroes (and villains) of the setting; they are the active agents who make the change within the world. Without them, the masses of peasants and honour bound nobles would become locked in stasis. If a character doesn’t make a conscious decision to go beyond the call of duty, they will not make their mark on history and they will be forgotten. Anyone can take the safe route, engaging the standard target number and accepting the standard conditions of victory or failure. Once you step up and start pushing for your own thing, things might get harder, but the success is all that sweeter.

Another interesting thing to note about the basic system is the lack of additional penalties when the raises are invoked. In some systems, the offset for a more spectacular success is a potentially more spectacular failure; but in this system, the offset for a more spectacular success is simply a higher difficulty. If there is no penalty for failure when undertaking a given action, it’s often in your best interest to throw down a couple of raises.

It’s this synergy between mechanisms and setting that make games more interesting, and that’s the sort of thing I’m trying to focus on in this series.

Game Mechanism of the Week 2011: 1 – A typical percentile skill system

2011-01-19T13:25:00.006+11:00

I’m going to start this analysis with one of the old chestnuts of roleplaying, the percentile skill system. This is found in earlier versions of D&D, as well as the range of Palladium roleplaying games, Call of Cthulhu, and plenty of the Old-School Renaissance games. It’s a simple game mechanism following three basic steps.

1. You have a target number; the target number is typically based on your character’s skill level plus or minus a difficulty factor. The reason for the difficulty factor is typically described in the fiction.

2. You roll a percentile die and compare it to the target number.

3. One of two results occurs

a. You beat the target number and you either gain an advantage or avoid a penalty.

b. You fail to beat the target number and you either suffer a penalty or don’t gain the advantage.

This mechanism can be applied in a few ways in a game.

In many “railroaded” linear games, the percentile roll is simply used to determine whether advantages are gained while on the inevitable path to the confrontation at the end of the story.

Some percentile rolls have a chance of providing bonuses.

Other percentile rolls have a chance of inflicting penalties.

Some novice GMs think it’s clever to create scenes where there is a chance of both bonuses or penalties. There is nothing overly revolutionary about this and when analysed, it follows the same basic event structure.

When moving to “non-railroaded” storylines, the simple percentile roll still only offers two possible outcomes. Either you are successful and you follow one story path, or you are unsuccessful and you follow another story path. Depending on the specific scene, one character might make the roll for the entire group, or multiple players might get the opportunity to try their luck.

At a more complex level, some systems may allow players to introduce advantages to maximise their chances of success (such advantages might be equipment that provides a +X% bonus, or special benefits that decrease a difficulty number in certain situations). Some systems do the same with penalties (perhaps injuries cause a general negative to all skill rolls). In a computer roleplaying game, these advantages and disadvantages are often calculated automatically before randomised outcomes are generated; in a table-top game players and GM need to remember which effects modify the target number at which times. On the whole though, a percentile system such as this doesn’t offer a lot of player agency. Instead, it’s binary; either you do it (you follow one set of results), or you don’t (you follow the other set of results). Any chances of maximising a character’s potential are resolved before the scene begins (during the character generation phase), the rest is basically a crap shoot. To properly protagonise the characters, you need to incorporate other game mechanisms….but then again, some players don’t like being forced to make decisions for themselves, they just like to build their characters then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Vector Theory 2011 - Lexicon

2011-01-19T13:10:00.004+11:00

Converging Story – A story with a fixed end point. The GM has a specific idea of where they would like the story to go, and even though the path may be twisted and erratic, the story will end up there regardless of the actions undertaken along the way.

Real Play Example: A story has a tyrannical despot as the core antagonist, he is gradually gaining power and there is no way out of the land except to face him. Regardless of what the characters do the despot will gain power and eventually he will have to be confronted (either on his terms or the character’s terms).

Diverging Story – A story with a fixed starting point. The GM specifically sets the opening scene to put events into motion. The events that occur later within the story are commonly derived from this particular opening moment, or from a fixed series of events that lead to that moment.

Real Play Example: A story begins with the characters stranded somewhere, they don’t know why, they don’t know how. Events leading up to the stranding are fixed (but they might be explored in flashbacks, and these might give new perspective to later events); events after the stranding are purely left in the hands of the players and their characters. The story could go anywhere.

Event Node – The point at which a Narraton changes due to events imposed on it, such events could be choices provided within the story, reactions to outside forces, results of specific game mechanisms, real-world time constraints or anything else that might affect the way the story is being told. An event node can change Story Vectors (Heading or Velocity of the Narraton) by adding or resolving Tensions. An event node can change a Narraton’s Intensity by applying bonuses or penalties to the characters or the situations around them. An event node can change a Narraton’s Wavelength by playing with the Narraton’s specific tendencies within the story.

Real Play Example: Any time the players roll the dice or make some kind of choice that affects the ongoing story or their effectiveness in it, that’s an event node.

Field – A field is a wide ranging effect that might gradually change the velocity, heading, intensity or wavelength spectrum of all Narratons that encounter it. Unlike a mirror, lens, filter or other event node, it doesn’t make a sudden change to the Narraton, instead it gradually subverts the Narraton over a period of time.

Real Play Example: An example of a field effect might be the social dynamic in a bandit town. Everyone distrusts the characters, and it takes specific actions to gain their trust. But over the course of time, if you don’t keep up those actions to maintain that trust, they level of distrust gradually builds back up again. Another example of a field effect might be the concept of “natural healing” where characters simply improve their state of being over time (gradually restoring their wavelength spectrum to its optimum state).

Filter – Filters change things that pass through them; polarising filters align the oscillations of light along a certain axis, coloured filters prevent certain wavelengths of light from passing through them and thus they change the colour of the filtered light. We don’t use an analogue for the polarisation of Narratons (there’s enough complexity in the theory as it currently stands), so Filters in Vector Theory merely manipulate the wavelength of a Narraton. In the real world, filters only remove (remove the randomness of oscillations, remove parts of the spectrum passing through them); in Vector theory, filters may also add to the Narratons passing through them

Real Play Example: . Any event that reduces the effectiveness of a Narraton is considered a subtractive filter, where examples include characters taking injuries, a loss of status, suffering from a curse or developing a bad reputation. Any event that increases the effectiveness of a Narraton is considered an additive filter, where examples include finding a magical sword, acquiring useful information, gaining status, finding a new ally or being bestowed with a beneficial enchantment. Some filters neither add nor subtract, they merely change effectiveness; examples include trading in a favour for a specific material possession or paying money for the services of a henchman.

Heading – A Narraton’s Heading is a general overview of where the story seems to be going if things continue on their current course and the players make no changes to their actions. Heading may be altered in two ways, blatant and subtle. A blatant heading change is a specific event node described to the characters and prompting a response. An example might be a damsel in distress (change heading to follow the story into a series of scenes about rescuing the damsel, or continue straight ahead and avoid the diversion). Another example might be the death of a loved one (many choices: mourn the passing, fall into depression, avenge the death, avoid the topic and gradually become jaded/cynical, every choice has consequences and the chance to lead to new story opportunities).

Real Play Example: A GM might have a general idea about how consequences of certain actions will lead to different changes in the environment. If the players indulge in violent actions, the people around them will react more violently; conversely if they take a low key conversational approach, intrigue might become the order of the day. These two extremes could be plotted on one axis (let’s say the vertical). A second axis might simply measure degree of success within the story (in this case the horizontal; left = failure, right = success). If players are progressing through violence, their heading is up and to the right. If their violence is leading to problems that are preventing them from proceeding, they are heading up and to the left. If they are succeeding through political intrigue, they are heading down and to the right…etc. The GM could set up certain trigger scenes to occur when the Narraton’s heading takes it to a specific part of the chart. For example, in the lower left of the chart, there might be a scene with a political figure who gives them a boost in the right direction. If the players have been too violent, their heading won’t lead them to him. If the players are too successful, they won’t need his help so there’s no point introducing him. Entire campaigns could be plotted out in this way, perhaps using three or more axes for multi-dimensional charts.

Intensity – A Narraton’s Intensity is a measure of player agency, the ability of the player controlling that Narraton to alter the events around them, make choices for themselves, or overcome the obstacles in their path. A Narraton with low intensity is subject to the whims of the event nodes they encounter, in some games they might have a severely reduced ability to introduce event nodes of their own into the story. A Narraton with high intensity is more able to confront event nodes on their own terms, in game where players may introduce their own twists into the story, a high intensity Narraton may indicate an ability to impact the story’s flow (trading some of that intensity for a shift in heading or a change in velocity).

Real Play Example: In a traditional game like D&D, intensity could be easily identified by a character’s “level”, the higher the level the more effectively the character will be able to overcome adversity. In games without levels, intensity becomes harder to gauge as it requires combining all the relevant data and individual abilities. In certain situations, Mr Blue might be more powerful than Mr Grey, but when you average out their chances in a wide variety of circumstances they might have an even chance of beating one another.

Lens – Lenses are capable of converging beams of light into points or spreading them into diffusions. Similarly, the event nodes referred to as Lenses in Vector Theory are points capable of converging the paths of Narratons into single stories, or diverge a single Narraton’s path into a range of possible options. Convergent lenses don’t offer new choices, instead they simplify the possibilities, collapsing waveforms into predetermined states. Divergent lenses open a world of possibilities. The use of these two types of event node are often used to determine whether a GM is considered to be “railroading” a story to a predetermined outcome, or allowing the story to evolve naturally from player decisions. This is especially true if players are allowed to introduce their own lenses into a play session.

Real Play Example: Pre-written modules often have decision paths that will lead players along a different series of scenes depending on the choices they make. At the most abstract extreme, consider a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book; any time a page offers you a choice of “Do you perform action A? If so, go to page X. Do you perform action B? If so, go to page Y.”…that’s a diverging lens. It gives you options. Converging lenses sometimes exist in these books too, but they are harder to pick up. If two different pages both direct the reader to a single page further in the story, the twin storylines merge and a converging lens has occurred.

Mirror – In a perfect world, a mirror deflects a beam without changing its speed, wavelength or intensity; in the real world, a beam of light becomes a little dimmer as parts of its wavelength are absorbed by the mirror while the remainder are deflected. By this same logic, in Vector Theory a mirror is an event node that deflects the path of a Narraton in a new direction.

Real Play Example: The players have been fighting their way through armed guards on their way into the halls of the corrupt sorcerer. Near the inner sanctum they find a note written by one of the sorcerer’s henchmen; the note describes a plan to use naïve outsiders to kill off the last of the loyalist guards, thus allowing the sorcerer’s revolution to occur with minimal resistance. The story suddenly changes from a sequence of fights into something a bit more sinister and political; the actions of the characters are seen in a new light and the story shifts direction.

Mixed Event Node – Many event nodes seem to have multiple functions, they might deviate the narraton’s path along variable vectors while changing the Narratons wavelength. In virtually all cases, these mixed event nodes can be broken down into specific Event Nodes with small Story Vectors between them; combining their incremental effects into the mixed overall effect. But for the purposes of brevity it is often easier to simply combine the smaller Event Nodes into a gestalt entity.

Real Play Example – A discussion with a local priest is a mixed event node, if things go well the characters will be blessed (resulting in an improvement to a certain part of the Narraton’s wavelength) and will gain access to a few key story scenes (directing the story in a specific heading)…if things go badly, the characters might be cursed (resulting in a deterioration to a certain part of the Narraton’s wavelength) and will require facing a different set of story scenes (directing the story along a different heading).

For simplicity, when mapping out the story, a single decision point might be used.

When analysing it more deeply, there might be a few decision points.

You’ll note that in each case, the story still alternates between simple event nodes (in grey) and short story vectors (described in the blue boxes). The entire sequence of event nodes defines the procedure of this particular scene within the story.

Narraton – An imagined particle of roleplaying experience. A Narraton can change its heading according to the direction in which the story is proceeding. A Narraton can change its velocity depending on the pacing requirements of the story. A Narraton can change its intensity depending on the degree of player agency within the story. A Narraton can change its wavelength depending on the tactical options available to it.

Real Play Example: This one is hard to give a real play example for. The manifestation of the Narraton is the instance of play, where things are heading, how they are getting there, and why. The Narraton might be perceived by different participants in different ways. One player might be looking at the specific journey of their character through the events of the session, another player might be looking at the movement of a Narraton cluster as the overall journey is chronicled. The path and the effects of the Narraton are far easier to analyse than the Narraton itself.

Story Vector – The heading of a Narraton between Event Nodes. A Story Vector has no changes in heading, velocity, intensity or wavelength without encountering an Event Node, it simply proceeds in a straight line infinitely until it encounters a new node or loses relevance. As an example, a “Happily Ever After” Vector might lead away from a story in a generally positive direction but it doesn’t prompt new story events. Another example might be a “Conversation” Vector, where an event node might prompt the conversation to start, while the conversation itself will lead to a new event node where the players must either make a new decision or react to a new change in circumstances.

Real Play Example: If you know the general tropes of Kung Fu movies, you’ll know that many sessions of roleplaying games follow the same principles (and virtually all computer roleplaying games also). A fight scene occurs, jam-packed with all sorts of action, stunts, manifestation of powers learnt along the way…then once the fight scene is over the fallout of that scene is described, often leading to a new scene of revenge (by the protagonists or the antagonists), or a movement to a new location where a new menace can be faced in a fight scene. The fight scenes are clusters of event nodes, the atmospheric scenes and dialogue in this genre are the story vectors (no choices in themselves, they just lead to new fights or critical moments).

Tension – Tensions are motivations pulling on a character, aiming to draw the character’s narraton into certain types of stories or pull them toward specific end goals. Caricature characters and stereotypes might only have a single tension pulling on them, while complex characters might have dozens of tensions pulling at them for different reasons. Tensions may be integrated into the rules, but often they exist as personal concepts written on notepads separate to the character sheet, or as vague ideas within the head of a player. The magnitude of a tension will often change due to the circumstances of a story; sometimes new tensions will manifest during the course of a story while others will vanish completely if they lose relevance.

Real Play Example: A tension might be static, simply pulling them in a single direction regardless of the events in the story; this might be the case when a character has a simple goal like “Accumulate Wealth” or “Defend the Church”. It might pull in different direction but always toward a certain point; such a tension might be to maintain the balance between different factions depending on who has the balance of power the character will be forced to confront different people using different tactics, but they are always trying to pull everything back to a central balance point regardless of where their story may have taken them. In many more interesting stories, a tension will be dynamic, transforming as the events around them change; such a tension might link a character’s story to that of another character, or it might pull them in a cycle doomed to be repeated until some specific event occurs.

Velocity – A Narraton’s Velocity determines how quickly proceedings are undertaken. When a Narraton moves slowly, elaborate and copious details are provided, there may be numerous twists and turns between major event nodes with players getting the opportunity to meander and explore the setting though minor event nodes that have little impact on the overall story. When a Narraton moves quickly, only the most significant facts are divulged and in many cases the Narraton simply skips over time (and minor event nodes) until the next major event node is encountered.

Real Play Example: In many games, a Narraton’s velocity speeds up during rest periods (where many hours might be skipped over in a minute or two) while it slows right down during combat sequences (where a matter of seconds might be described over the course of minutes or even hours).

Wavelength – A Narraton’s Wavelength is a complex thing that links specifically to the game mechanisms of the system being used. In a traditional game with attributes, skills and saving throws, the various parts of the wavelength represent which attributes are stronger than others, which skills have better capability and which saving throws have the best chance of avoiding outside influences. In a game where everything is measured by traits, each trait might be a specific point of energy along the wavelength. In general, Wavelength is probably better described as colour (but this has some slightly different predefined connotations in Forge Theory so I’m leaving it as Wavelength), it can be viewed as a spectrum with various degrees of energy radiating from different areas.

Real Play Example: If you’ve played with any image manipulation software, you’ll know that a monitor uses Red, Green and Blue in varying degrees to create the full range of colours displayed. As an example; Red might be equated with “Combat Prowess”, Green with “Social Influence” and Blue with “Mystic Insight”; a warrior’s wavelength in this simple scheme might be “75% Red, 20% Green, 5% Blue”, while a priest’s might be “5% Red, 40% Green, 55% Blue”. The average capacity of the character to influence the world around them is dictated by their Narraton’s Intensity, but their specific chance of gaining positive result depends of which part of their wavelength they choose to exert on a specific situation. This is probably one of the more complex parts of Vector Theory.

Spider's Dance

2011-01-11T09:59:00.002+11:00

Spider's Dance

Here's a little something I've been working on as a solo game project for the Solo Game Design Challenge.

I'm trying to leave it pretty self explanatory.

Tell me what you think...

Game Mechanism of the Week Redux

2011-01-04T13:22:00.001+11:00

I had fun doing my “Game Mechanism of the Week” series in 2009, so I’ve decided that I’ll do it again. It’s not that I’ve instantly thought of 52 more mechanisms to look at, but rather that I could do the series better. Maybe do things in a more focused manner; then combine what I’ve developed in Vector Theory in the hope that both concepts will be stronger for it.

Where possible I’ll be trying to pull in some new game mechanisms, but I’ll be drawing on some of the previous mechanisms for a more detailed analysis. It’s the kind of things that I was hoping to do the first time around, but this time I have a better perspective, grounding in my own game design theories, and hopefully a better way to explain things.

The concept of the “Game Mechanism of the Week” is important to me for a few reasons. It’s my way of understanding the elements that make up games, and the way those elements combine into unique play experiences. Finally, the way I see it, the analysis of game mechanisms takes a step toward a new layer of game design theory. I joined up with the forge after the theory discussions had closed down, and I was one of those many people who encountered the mass of posts and essays with a bewildered WTF before sitting down to read a few of them, misunderstanding them at first, then finding elements that meshed with actual play and achieving zen-like moments of satori (“Oh, so that’s what he means by Step On Up”). Where possible I’ve tried to share my understandings in the hope that other people might also see the value in these ideas. I didn’t realise until 2010 that “The Big Theory” (around which the Forge is centred), was actually just a method of describing the issues inherent in play groups. It doesn’t really affect the design of games, it affects the way those games are played. The way I understand it now, it was never intended to be a design methodology, but numerous new designers would encounter it for the first time, misunderstand what it was truly trying to say; then they’d have a head full of slightly-off but dangerous misconceptions as they plunged off to design a new game.

In the posts describing the “Winter of the Forge”, Ron Edwards and a few others have written some great stuff that confirm a few of my posts about the Forge and the Big Theory in the last few years. I guess that I was starting to “get it”, even if I didn’t realise it. The big theory was only ever intended as a tool to show people why certain aspects of the game were falling down…different people seeking different types of rewards, different people imagining the fiction in different ways, different people using different methods to interact through their characters. Once it has been categorised we can see an issue for what it is; that’s the aim. Once we can identify the problems we can move to the step of resolving them. If we try to resolve them without identifying them we might get lucky, but it’s far more likely that well run into new problems (often without successfully resolving the first lot). “The Big Theory” gives us a starting point to fix games in play, it even provides a few tools for looking as specific inputs and outputs for the game to understand how they might best be played within our gaming circles (“What does this game give rewards for?”, “Is the game setting internally consistent?”, “If there are inconsistencies are they intended to produce competition between participants, or simply the result of poor design?”). In the past few years some key independent designers have latched onto one or two identified inputs/outputs and have used these as starting points to develop games that have shaken up the way we play. These design methods have even begun filtering through into mainstream games. Many gamers (and game designers) are not only starting to see that their experiences have been good or bad, they are starting to understand why. The core gamer audience of D&D* still have a preconceived notion of what a roleplaying game is, and why their game is a proper roleplaying game while other games aren’t. They still work off the idea that “Joe is a good GM, Dave is a bad GM”, rather than analysing the techniques used by each GM and working out how either of them could be better. Many still cower at the thought of stepping up to take control of the story for themselves, believing that this is the sacred space of the GM, while they simply undertake the role of a reactive audience (“When do I roll?”, “What kind of die?”, “What number do I need to roll?”).

I’ve also mentioned the work of John Kirk, who has created a great book on the design patterns of successful RPGs. A few steps removed from Forge theory, it gives some great analytical tools of it’s own. It offers some nice flowcharts for how systems and patterns work within a game, noting how one die roll might lead to another die roll, a table, a comparison to another die roll or a target number. For a guide on how randomisation and die rolling principles work in an RPG, you’d have a tough task trying to surpass it; and while this isn’t it’s intended purpose, if you’re looking for a way to abuse one of the mentioned gaming systems, this text is downright brilliant. But I don’t recall it providing information on how to interact with the flow of the story being developed communally through the games.

Vector Theory was my attempt to link these two ideas into a tool that could actually be used to create mechanisms of specific types. Then by mixing these mechanisms, very explicit play experiences could be tailored.

I’m hoping that this year’s round of Game Mechanisms will be more focused than the 2009 offering. With the context of Vector Theory I’m hoping that I can really show my points about why mechanisms seem to work in specific ways.

But first, a lexicon for the year (there will be a webpage for this lexicon soon, to allow for updates and amendments).

*(that should probably say d20/D&D/Pathfinder these days)

2011

2011-01-04T10:44:00.003+11:00

New Year...new ideas.

No, actually its going to be year of revisiting old ideas. Getting them finished...Getting them right.

I've been plugging away at my Quincunx Graphic Novel over the past few weeks. The first 28 page issue (of 6) is getting its final touches, and I have about 75% of the CGI renderings, photographs and ink paintings to complete the remaining issues. The last few days have been all about compiling the stuff I've got rather than fussing over details and avoiding the task of actually compiling the end product.

Hopefully that labour of love will be done soon.

This year I've also committed to releasing a few new variants/expansions for my Hold Em Scene Generator, a product released late last year on RPGNow. It's already started selling and might actually turn out to be a decent earner if the current numbers keep up. One release per month would be nice easy target (as long as things don't get too chaotic elsewhere in my life).

I also have to get the final touches done on "High Plains FUBAR" with a dramatic twist on the FUBAR/Walkabout rules for tense gunfights, going native and dealing with bounties. These FUBAR genre expansions I hope to release on a monthly basis as well.

2010 was a year of going through crap and setting things up with mixed results. 2011 is shaping up to be a year of building on the past and structuring a framework for the long term future.

Here at the blog, I'll be going back tomy Game Mechanism of the Week, since that seemed to be a pretty popular series. This time I'll be analysing things a bit more carefully, and the next post will go into detail about that.

Anyway...

...to everyone who's reading, I hope 2011 brings you success, fun and good gaming.

One more post for 2010...

2010-12-26T21:56:00.002+11:00

Two quick things in this post...

First a link to a post on someone else's blog.

I read it and instantly thought it might be useful for those people who come here looking for design advice. I agree with the sentiments in this post, I've had game ideas in the first stage that have been sunk through option paralysis when other contributors have had great ideas to contribute, but haven't offered a decent way to integrate them into what has already been defined...and I've had just as many projects sink when other people who claimed early interest simple disappeared when the call for playtesting or constructive feedback was announced.

The most important thing when designing a game is to give it your enthusiasm and don't let others demoralise you.

My second part to this post...

When did Storygames come back online? I've been looking at it once or twice a week for over a month now and have always been getting a page indicating that Storygames is suffering database difficulties. Yet now it seems as though there was nothing wrong for most of that time...

Last Post for 2010

2010-12-19T18:44:00.003+11:00

This may be my last post for 2010, it's been a pretty wild ride. Loss of a job that I thought was going well, moving house, declaring bankruptcy, meeting new friends, getting disillusioned by old friends.

My thoughts on Vector Theory have been refined somewhat through the posts I've made. The games I've written throughout the year have started receiving some positive attention, and that's always good. My comic is getting ever closer to completion.

It's generally been a year where unfinished projects have been worked on and exploration in the left field has proven useful. I had hoped to get a few more projects completed this year, but that just didn't prove to be.

Sometimes life just gets in the way...and if you worry about this too much, you forget to live life and just enjoy it while you've got it.

Let's see what happens next year.

Alternatives for Hit Points

2010-12-19T18:33:00.002+11:00

I've been thinking about the idea of hit points in games.

They appear in computer "RPG" games, and they've been a staple in tabletop games since the beginning of the hobby. I've discussed them a few times in old posts, and ways that they might be looked at. Alternate suggestions in other games have included a standardised range of "health levels", or penalty levels incurred for different degrees of damage.

But what I'm more interested in today are the alternatives for damage. In a social game you might look at political penalties that make it harder for you to accomplish social activities, or a pool of reputation points that absorb the insults and treachery of your opponents. In a digital "Tron"-style setting, you might have a pool of energy points that fulfill the dual purpose of absorbing incoming effects while being used to fuel attacks of your own (a precedent for this might be blood points in Vampire: the Masquerade/Requiem).

I'm trying to think of some other alternatives that might more closely link this absorption pool into a specific setting or genre of play.

A New Design Collective

2010-11-23T14:31:00.002+11:00

Just a quick post to see if any readers out there might be interested in joining a design collective. A group of designers who are interested in cross promoting their games and game ideas, who will help each other out with industry ideas and game design advice. This group will probably also work on a few communal projects, as well as getting the support they need to get their own games going.

There are a few core members, and the finer details are being worked out. I just thought I'd share this news to see if anyone else was interested.

Reply to this or send me an email if you'd like more information.

Project Death Race

2010-11-23T09:34:00.003+11:00

Seems that my "Babes and Bitumen" idea already has someone designing something similar.

Project Death Race can be found here.

It's associated Kickstarter project is here.

It's similar to the concept I was going for, but I was thinking of developing a bit more story around the cars and the teams that support them.

Babes and Bitumen

2010-11-22T11:44:00.002+11:00

I've been thinking about some alternate ideas lately. It's an annoying habit that I have.

When I'm meant to be working on something, I inevitably start thinking about something else.

When I tried to create Bunraku nights for the Cyberpunk Revival Contest, my mind spontaneously generated FUBAR as a side project (which has now reached over 1000 downloads)...and now that I should be refining Walkabout, my mind has taken a wild turn into a completely different genre.

What would roleplaying be like if it developed from slot cars and model race tracks rather than wargaming with toy soldiers? Instead of stories about dungeon exploration, a game might centre around a big race. Buying gear in town might instead become upgrading a vehicle, and haggling with the thieves guild might become negotiation with corporate sponsors.

The intrigue would still be present with different race teams developing animosity toward one another. Relationship maps could be drawn up for the individual members within a team.

Betty the mechanic likes Janet (the team's "media liaison") due to a one night stand a few months back, but he doesn't like Roxy (the team's "ace driver") because she's reckless on the brakes and keeps burning out the clutch.

It doesn't need to be an all female team, I just thought that might boost up the soap-opera angle, and it's makes for a catchy game title.

Is it an option worth pursuing?

Post Apocalyptic Instructions

2010-11-16T10:43:00.004+11:00

If you knew the end was coming and there was nothing you could do about it, how would you prepare?

I just read this article on Wired...it's a couple of years old as I write this, and it discusses a mystery that is decades older still.

But reading it really made me think of my game WALKABOUT, and some interesting directions where it could be taken.

Table Consensus

2010-11-16T09:32:00.000+11:00

In my readings and podcast listening, I’ve noted a few people discussing the idea of collective GMing, especially in regard to the notions of dividing up responsibilities such as narrative framing, awarding experience and determining if a character is “being played correctly”.

Each of these is a very different topic, but the last one has seen some controversy. So that’s where I’ll be turning my attention.

GMing is a delicate art of maintaining a collective dream (that mysterious thing that many people refer to as a “Shared Imagination Space”), and by keeping a degree of authority imparted to them by the gaming group.

In traditional roleplaying games, a group might impart virtually limitless control to their GM. They allow the GM to frame scenes, tell them when to roll dice, and then tell them how the results of those die rolls manipulate the unfolding narrative. Often, in this type of set up, the players don’t even mind when a GM fudges die rolls just to ensure their story unfolds in a predetermined manner.

It’s a lot of responsibility on the GM. They basically have to prepare the story in advance, prepare the scenes and any props that might help make things more immersive for the players. The GM basically plays the role of a raconteur, telling a story to their group and occasionally allows their players to become scene focal points when the story demands it. The players sit back and either enjoy the ride, or get bored/frustrated and find a new GM. It’s just the way things have been and most players put down a bad gaming experience to a “bad GM”…and as a flipside to this, most traditional players feel fearful of the idea of stepping up to GM duties.

The main “expected right” in a traditional game is the idea of player advocacy or protagonism. When a GM is given the rights over everything else in the story, a player expects the right to make choices that are important to their character, and through the process of character generation and backstory, they expect the right to decide which choices will actually be important.

If I make a character who is a “high school kid seeking popularity while coming to grips with newfound psychic powers”…I expect a story where seeking popularity will play a role, where I’ll get to use my character’s psychic powers in interesting ways, and where I’ll probably face issue of being something other than human. If my GM isn’t planning to tell a story relating to any of those things, I’d like him to tell me from the beginning. That way my character choice won’t clash with the GMs story and I won’t get frustrated.

There is advice like this in GMs guides for many games, White Wolf’s Storyteller system is riddled with it. But that’s the whole point of the storyteller system; it’s right there in the title. The system is designed for one person to tell a story with their friends portraying characters in some of the key roles. It gives you the tools, gives you pages and pages of advice on how to use those tools and offers suggestions for how to tailor those tools to your group. Too many GMs I know simply ignored those pages of helpful hints and advice, simply running the World of Darkness as a dungeon bash or concocting elaborate conspiracies regardless of the character types devised by the players. To make things worse, a lot of GMs would then tell their players “make any type of character you want”, to appease their players up front, not realising the treachery of their words in the long term.

On a few occasions, I was one of those GMs; but over time I learnt the art of incorporating the chosen concepts of player characters into my stories, getting players into the story generation right from the point where their characters are created.

But is it enough to ensure characters are integrated into a story to ensure that they have a degree of fidelity and internal consistency.

I’d say probably not.

These are just the elements for valid testing of integrity. If a character is incongruous with a story, none of their decisions make sense in context. If a GM declares that I’m not playing my character right, I need to have a valid point of reference if I’m going to take their critique. Metaphorically, if an accurate portrayal of a certain character is 23.5 degree Celsius, an inappropriate story is like trying to determine that temperature with a ruler. If my “high school kid seeking popularity while coming to grips with newfound psychic powers” was critiqued in a setting riddled with immortals, vampires and werewolves in the southern states of the US, it would probably get a very different critique to the same character played the same way in a sci-fi space opera. If I knew what the Gm was planning from the outset, I’d tailor my performance…and my performance would tailor the way the true nature of the character was portrayed. I guess it’s a symbiotic feedback loop. When certain things get tested, those are the things that become the defining aspect of the character.

That could be argued as one of the important reasons why “system matters”… but it’s probably more of an important reason why everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to story, character and the shared dream.

That gets me back to the topic title, and sets groundwork for the actual things I’d like to delve into.

In a traditional game like Dungeons & Dragons, characters advance based on their success in encounters. More recent (but still traditional) games, like the Storyteller system and certain variants of d20, characters get the chance to improve based on a player’s consistent portrayal. Maybe they earn Willpower points (or some other mechanism altering benefit) for acting according to their “nature”; in other games they might earn a few bonus XP for achieving goals associated with their personal agendas. This type of advancement is another arbitration decided by the GM, but many groups I’ve been a part of have allowed this decision to be arbitrated by the other players on the table.

Here’s where the controversies arise in the discussions I’ve been reading/watching/listening to.

How do we determine what is an accurate portrayal? How much do we want to reveal about a character at the early stages of a story, especially when a character is meant to be slimy or treacherous?

How much do we allow meta-knowledge into the game? How do we persecute it when we discover that it has been used/abused?

I’ve been playing with the idea a bit in some of my recent game writings…

I’m trying to find a way for a player to be rewarded for sticking their character to a core concept, while allowing that core concept to grow.

It’s one of those problems seen fairly frequently in the fan-fic community. One person writes a story about Leia Organa in the extended Star Wars universe, carefully defining the character’s reactions through the instances when the character has faced something similar in the past…another person says that the character isn’t portrayed correctly because things worked out badly the first time the decision was made and now they’d make a different choice…another person still claims that certain events aren’t canon and therefore the whole piece of prose is inaccurate.

The shared dream just isn’t there so the gauges of character fidelity are instantly skewed. With established and famous characters it’s hard enough to get agreement on the accuracy of the choices made. Therefore, trying to get an accurate assessment of a personally created unique character must be next to impossible. It seems like a great way to get the players more active in the decision making for the game, but is it sound judgement to base a game reward mechanism on a system that is inherently flawed? Is there something we can do to make the system more structurally sound?

Theory From The Closet

2010-11-13T14:31:00.005+11:00

With over 50 episodes under it's belt, "Theory from The Closet" (referred to hereafter as TFTC for this post) seems to have become one of the heavyweights of unconventional/non-traditional/independent roleplaying podcasts.

After being referred to a recent episode in regard to my Game Chef entry, I decided to download the entire back catalogue. I figured that I needed a bit of context before I just sat and listened to a new podcast, and I can be a bit obsessive so I just went whole hog and downloaded the lot.

It's not like Here Be Gamers which I started listening to from close to the beginning (besides, I know Nathan from GenCon Oz, so I understood a bit more where he was coming from in his podcast)....but I digress, this post is about TFTC.

I've been plugging away at listening to the whole thing, in my spare moments and when I'm writing away at my assignments and own gaming projects. Trying to listen to the whole thing in chronological order where possible, and condensing years worth of podcasts into weeks worth of listening.

A few things stand out to me:

Clyde L. Rhoer seems like a really interesting person. I like the fact that he doesn't shy away from the mistakes he makes in the sound recording and the awkward pauses in conversation. The discussions/interviews he holds with various designers throw up a fresh perspective on a lot of the people and the games they produce.

He seems to have a bias towards the Burning Wheel team, and the IPR guys but since they're basically the heavyweights in our gaming scene it's not really surprising. They've been doing some cool stuff, I didn't realise how cool until I actually listened through the interviews with Luke Crane and his posse, and with Fred Hicks. But, to be fair he has also interviewed Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker (with Ron being especially noteworthy as he is often seen to stand on the opposite side of the indie game fence to the Story Game crowd).

It's weird being here on the other side of the world, knowing the names of the people involved and now being able to put voices to those names. There's no way I'd be able to actually head around the world and chat with these people face-to-face, but it's added a level of familiarity with them.

I guess that's one of the cool things about podcasts.

TFTC has settled into a rough pattern of interviews, with a scattering of pure theory monologues by Clyde. I don't know which of the two options I find more interesting, both certainly have their merits. I think it's actually a good thing that the show hasn't become too formulaic and polished. That really doesn't seem to go with what we're about as a community.

Independent game design is about experimentation, expression of gaming individuality, not giving in to the demands of "the man"...but I guess that's one of the reasons why we don't make any money off it either (not much anyway).

So far for me, some of the highlights have been:

Episode 12...about 28 minutes in...where the discussion seems to draw some amazing parallels to what I was trying to achieve with Vector Theory. Even the terminology gets close, but then the conversation drifts away.

Episode 59...sorry, I can't remember the time reference (it's at least an hour in)...where I think Clyde was raising a question to Vincent Baker, in it he states how the "Forge theory" and the big model aren't really about game design at all. They're about social design around a game. The rest of the conversation basically meanders around the topic that "The Forge" was designed to set up a parlance for discussing game design and it's basically taken 10 years to get to the point where a meaningful conversation can now be had. We now have a range of mechanisms, and we have a range of outcomes that various people want from their games. Now we can start the process of designing the connections between those two sides of the equation. Now we can actually start designing rather than just theorising.

And that's another point where I was trying to go with my Vector Theory. It's not about defining outcomes, it's about the minutiae of actual game design...this mechanism affects the game in this way...that mechanism affects it in that way....this affects the flow of the story, this changes the direction of the story, and that alters the characters effectiveness within the story.

It's been really insightful to get the combined perspectives of dozens of game designers. Seeing that we all share issues, and the various ways we've used to overcome them...or at least the ways we're continually struggling to overcome them.

Maybe I'll get interviewed in a podcast one day...then my thought patters can filter through the world via a different medium.

...it's too much effort to set up a podcast of my own at this time.

Anyway, if you're interested in game design, I'd recommend you have a listen to a few episodes.

NaGa DeMon

2010-11-08T15:09:00.002+11:00

Crackpot genius Nathan Russell has come up with a bastard variant of the National Novel Writing Month.

He has called it the National Game Design Month...(or NaGa DeMon for short).

Participants basically spend a month writing a game, getting as much done as possible. Hopefully turning out a complete product by the end of the month.

I'm going to be refining Walkabout over the course of the month.

I've done a little so far...

A progress report shortly.

The Myth of Cultural Appropriation

2010-11-03T11:37:00.001+11:00

This is a rant, it's designed to stimulate thought.

It is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, because there are certain people on the periphery of the independent roleplaying community who get very vocal about the topic.

Cultural appropriation is argued vehemently by a number of people who have very strong opinions on the topic, but in many cases when I’ve tried to nail someone down on the subject they get very ephemeral in their responses. The more I look into it, the more I feel like this should be a topic for the Penn and Teller television show “Bullshit”.

As far as I can see (based on the rhetoric and histrionics), cultural appropriation is the taking of a cultures elements and the use of those elements to pigeon-hole or even belittle the culture. If you take the stereotypes of a culture and use them to engage the typical stereotypes of the group, then it seems you are engaging in cultural appropriation. If you are prejudiced toward a culture, drawing opinions about them based on the information of others and not doing research for yourself; that also seems to be a case of cultural appropriation.

This idea seems to be a very secular view of things, almost a reaction against religion. I say this because most religions have a view where their version of salvation or redemption is deemed the “correct path”, while everyone else is considered wrong. Those who indulge in cultural appropriation are engaging in the same tactics, by claiming to know something about other cultures and then claiming specific facts about those cultures based on their assumptions…a fundamentalist Christian says that all Muslims are going to hell because their belief system is flawed, a devout Buddhist might claim that a Christian will never achieve enlightenment because they draw their faith from a part of the illusion that surrounds us all. Those who take a stand against cultural appropriation seem to believe that the Christian fundamentalist and the Buddhist from the example are both flawed in their thinking. The religious examples provided are simply human nature:

I join a group.
I identify with the group I’ve joined.
I know that there are groups that exist outside the group I’m a part of.
I don’t identify so much with those groups.
5. In my opinion, the ways I don’t identify with those groups are ways that those groups are wrong.

“Cultural Appropriation” says that everyone makes their first choice to identify with a group, and in that way everyone is unique. It further seems to push the notion that you shouldn’t categorise other people based on the groups they identify with, in fact you shouldn’t categorise them at all.

It’s a nice doctrine, generally inoffensive; you shouldn’t judge others without engaging in their deeper aspects of being. But like most doctrines, when you push it a bit further it starts to crack. That’s when the adherents start to get defensive.

In Australia, we’re seeing this idea filter through the news. No longer are you allowed to say that a crime was perpetrated by a man of middle-eastern appearance, because that’s considered ethnic profiling, or even racism. You can say “light skin”, “dark skin”, “olive complexion”, but as soon as you get more specific you have a backlash from somewhere. I guess the same thing has happened around the rest of the western world. We saw the same thing come out of the United States a few decades ago when it was declared racist to use the word “Nigger”, the race had to be referred to as “African American”, “Black American” or whatever new catchphrase was deemed appropriate in each passing year…then the “African Americans” decided to take the word back for themselves. They were allowed to call each other by the name “Nigger” (or “Nigga” if they identified with street culture), but if someone not of their race used the term is was still considered an affront. This has left a generation of people unsure of what is offensive any more.

So it seems that people just take offense to anything and everything, just to be safe.

We’re getting to the point that descriptions are meaningless…you can’t say “Black” because that will offend someone, you can’t say “Muslim” because that will offend someone else, you can’t call them gypsies because that’s a racial slur that has been perpetrated for centuries. As soon as you try to identify someone according to some context, you run the risk of offending someone.

Those who oppose cultural appropriation seem to be the types who will take offense for the sake of taking offense. They take on the role of old ladies who tell young children that roads are dangerous because of cars; the kids don’t know where to play anymore because all the flat areas around them have been paved by people of a previous generation (people who had been told that grass caused allergies, so they couldn’t play there).

Everything offends someone, and it seems that there are some who are offended by everything.

That leaves us with a dilemma.

If we can’t describe people according to their appearances (because that’s prejudicial or racist), and we can’t identify them by their cultural affiliations (because that’s cultural appropriation or just another form of racism), how do we describe them?

You could describe them by the sum of their actions, but that would take a long time to assess and just as long to divulge the information. What if you only caught a glimpse of them or heard a few heavily accented words in a conversation? You can’t describe their skin colour or their accent due to claims of racism, blatant stereotyping or some other form of offense taken by someone.

I was referred to a TedTalk by an African author Chimamanda Adichie (Here). This was referred by one of those people who are vocal opponents of cultural appropriation. It was an interesting talk, but it seemed to be hedging around the issues rather than confronting them. An interesting point she made was an anecdote about an American university lecturer who claimed that her writing didn’t sound “African”. Obviously the professor had a prejudice about what an “African” novel should sound like; he had appropriated her culture and had pigeonholed it. She thought it seemed odd that as an African novelist her novels didn’t sound “African”. I’m not going to say that her novels are bad, I haven’t read them. Apparently they seem to be pretty good because she was invited to present the talk and has sold numerous copies of her work. Africans can identify with what she writes, but my question would be how well other people identify with what she writes.

She might be a good novelist who is African, but does she write good “African Novels”. What is an African novel?

As soon as we start to identify traits of an “African Novel”, someone will claim that we are appropriating the culture. Perhaps she writes good stories about living in a newly urbanised environment within a specific African nation, but is that just generalising that particular urban area. Perhaps she writes a good story about a specific person, but who is that person out of context?

As humans we need descriptors to identify people.

Using cultural stereotypes may not be a perfect way to describe people, but surely it’s a distinct part of the whole.

If I write a story or a game about Australian Aboriginals and simply write them using common English speech and inoffensive mannerisms, how do I show that they are different to the Europeans around them? If I use a couple of stereotypical terms to place them in context, they actually develop character. Granted a stereotype will only generate flat characters, but it gives a reader a common ground, allowing potential for further and deeper exploration once the common ground has been set. If I don’t place them in context, the actions of these characters will be much harder to connect with.

If I write a story about the Lebanese community in western Sydney, I could use the stereotypical conflict between the Islamic and Christian Orthodox families within the community, tying this conflict back into their homeland. There are people who’d find it racist, but there are far more people who’d instantly grasp the background of the story. I could do the same thing through the car culture commonly found among young Lebanese males in the area. Again, it’s a stereotype, but it instantly sets up degrees of conflict within the setting. If I apply both stereotypes, I run the risk of generating caricatures of the community members, but if I apply other cultural templates across the characters to build up something deeper, they each become more complex.

That complexity just wouldn’t be possible without the cultural context.

Maybe I could rewrite one of Chimamanda Adichie’s novels using characters from the Lebanese community in western Sydney, simply changing the place names and the character names. If it still resonated as a moving story, then maybe it’s not a good “African Novel” after all, it’s just a good novel written by an African.

Hopefully time to settle down (and a bit of FUBAR)

2010-11-01T10:53:00.004+11:00

The move has been completed, rubbish has been thrown away, rooms have basically been sorted. We've actually unpacked boxes that were never unpacked after our last move...so things are seeing the light of day after six years or longer in careful packaging.

Some stuff had to go, there simply isn't as much room in the new place as we had in the old place. I had the luxury of an empty double garage to use as a workshop/storage area in the old place, and now the range of ephemera once locked into that "warehouse" has had to integrate into the house, justify it's continued existence or be thrown away.

With this in mind, I've done a little bit of work on my first genre supplement for FUBAR. I'll hopefully have it out on RPGNow by this time next week. The aim will be to generate a supplement each month for the foreseeable future, I've got enough ideas to keep going in this regard for a couple of years.

The genre supplements will follow a basic pattern:

An introduction to the genre (one or two pages).
A twist on the core rules to help reflect this genre better in your games (one or two pages).
Two or three optional rules (one or two pages each).
A roughly laid out setting for the genre (a map page, a pair of suitable NPCs, some story hooks, and some evocative descriptions to help set the mood, all up about 4-6 pages).
A range of sample trait cards applicable to the genre (followed by a page of blank trait cards)
A range of sample location cards applicable to the genre (followed by a page of blank location cards)
A range of sample item/objective cards applicable to the genre (followed by a page of blank item/objective cards)
A range of sample organisation/plot-twist cards applicable to the genre (followed by a page of blank organisation/plot-twist cards)
A blank character sheet
(About 20 pages on average).

The cards and character sheets will be formatted in a style to match the genre; thus the first genre supplement is "High Plains FUBAR", a wild-west inspired setting. The character sheets look like wanted posters, and the trait cards are shot through with bullet holes.

Like the core FUBAR rules, there will be plenty of images and nicely laid out pages.

I haven't fully decided on the prices yet, but the supplements will probably be released at about $2 each (US). The core rules will always remain free, I'm hoping that interested players will show their devotion by buying a couple of supplements from me over the course of their play. Given that I've had over 700 downloads of FUBAR so far, it would be nice to think that at least 10% of those downloaders would be willing to occasionally fork out a modest sum for a way to invigorate or transform their game. I could hope for more, and maybe if the game develops a bit of a following those numbers might improve with time.

Once I get a few similarly themed genre supplemenets under the FUBAR banner, there might be the opportunity to print up a batch of limited edition physical copies.

We'll just have to see where things go.

House Move Finished

2010-10-26T15:54:00.001+11:00

I've finally finished moving house. Now my biggest issue is getting some kind of internet connection back. Hopefully that shouldn't take too long.

Walkabout Page Updated

2010-10-06T08:35:00.003+11:00

It cam as some surprise that half of the Walkabout page was missing.

There must have been some issues during the last update. Maybe the server got disconnected halfway through the process.

As a result of this, the Walkabout Page on the Vulpinoid Studios Website has now been updated.

It can be found here.

The dangers of Commitment

2010-10-05T07:28:00.003+11:00

The annoying thing about committing to impending projects is the fact that inevitably, things will occur that you haven't planned for.

I've been preparing for moving house for two months now...which has left me in a flux state for an indeterminate period, living off borrowed internet (because we shut our accounts down, not knowing when the move would actually hit), throwing myself into computer based activities (because the laptop is unpacked while most of my art supplies, DVDs and other amusements are packed), and other disruptions to the normal routine.

I had hoped for a weekend of release over the past few days, but even that didn't work put right. I was aiming to play a few sessions of FUBAR at Sydcon, to iron out some bugs and seriously put it through it's paces with a variety of people. But things went catastrophically wrong for two reasons.

First, the real estate decided to give an open house viewing of our property, right in the middle of Saturday. The house was in no state for an inspection, but messages had been left on my phone which was for various times uncharged, or out of mobile reception coverage on the way to the new house. I couldn't cancel because they'd already booked people to view the property, and I had to spend the morning cleaning up. That knocked out any chance of getting to the convention on Saturday.

Then, Leah decided we'd try to move out as quickly as possible now that leases had been signed at one end, and termination notices had been given at the other. So Saturday consisted of two trips with a heavily packed trailer down to the new property. That wiped out Sunday.

To make things worse, my neighbour with the unprotected wi-fi decided to shut off his router (he obviously went on holiday for the three day-weekend). This meant I was cut off from my most regular form of communication with people I had tried to organize events.

Makes me feel really bad, because I've let down a heap of people (maybe 20 or so, who would have played the game on the weekend...including many of my playtest regulars).

This whole collapse of a weekend meant that I wasn't able to get any of my college Web Design assignments done either...and now we're in heavy moving mode, so my attempts to write up Game Chef reviews have had to be put on temporary hold. I'll be moving pretty solidly for the next two weeks. I'll see what I can do to get a few reviews out in my gaps of rapidly filling timetable.

So my new priorities...

Moving House
College Assignments
Freelance Writing Stuff (Avalon and QT Games)
Game Chef Critiques
Walkabout
Other Personal Projects

Once the house moving has completed, things should reshuffle.

Anyway...that's enough rant for the moment, back to regular scheduling.

My Game Chef Review Criteria

2010-09-29T08:40:00.001+10:00

As I said yesterday, I've been plugging away, reading the Game Chef Entries. A long slow train trip to my parent's house gave me time to take some notes as I read. I figured that I'd try to be pretty transparent in my review criteria and my reasons for liking some games and not liking others. As a result I've come up with a general scoring system based on the things I think are important in a game and the things that I think should be sources of challenge in a contest like Game Chef.

Game Chef Review Criteria:

0-5pts: Use of Ingredients and theme in an appropriate manner

+0.5: per ingredient used in a cursory manner (either a flavour addition or a throwaway mechanism name)

+1.0: per ingredient integrated into the game through flavour and mechanism

+0.5: if the game has a cursory connection to the theme.

+1.0: if the game resonates with the theme at a deeper level.

0-5pts: Clarity of Rules

0.0: The rules are an absolute disgrace; I can’t even fill in the gaps through intuition.

1.0: The rules are pretty sparse, and they don’t seem to address the actual methods of playing the game.

2.0: The rules seem pretty solid but there seem to be a couple of pieces left out (or just not explained clearly).

3.0: The rules carefully explain the methods of play, either through elegant terminology, or careful play examples.

4.0: The rules are at about the quality you’d expect from a good game entry; easy to read and clear to understand.

5.0: The rules are very good, at least of the quality to expect to find in a professional game from one of the “big” companies.

0-5pts: Completeness of Rules

0.0: There aren’t any rules at all.

1.0: There aren’t enough rules to play any part of the game in any meaningful way.

2.0: There are rules enough to handle the basics, but I can foresee a lot of situations that just aren’t covered by them.

3.0: The rules are a solid set; they may not tie in with the themes and there might be a few disjoints, but reasonably complete.

4.0: The rules cover pretty much everything; and they do so in a way that gives a sense of uniqueness to the game.

5.0: The rules are extensive and well flavoured; anything you could want to do is easily covered by their depth and scope.

0-5pts: Originality of Rules and Concept

0.0: It might as well have been copied verbatim from a book pulled off the shelf in my local game store.

1.0: Nothing overly original about it, but at least the author changed some of the names or added their own touches.

2.0: It fits squarely into an existing genre, or game system; but there are some intriguing elements thrown into the mix.

3.0: It combines a few systems or setting I’ve seen before, but in a way that makes it a bit different or original.

4.0: I’m unable to remember where I’ve seen some of the elements, either it masks them well or adapts them effectively.

5.0: This has simply blown my mind with its originality.

Bonus Points:

0-2pts: Layout

0.0: No Attempt at formatting

0.5: Minimal formatting (maybe a font befitting the game or a two column layout)

1.0: Decent formatting (different fonts for headers and text, maybe some text boxes)

1.5: Good formatting in a style suiting the game (maybe with text boxes for rule clarity/actual play)

2.0: Well formatted in a style suiting the game (with decent indexing/table of contents)

0-2pts: Imagery

0.0: No images what-so-ever

0.5: One or two images, or some kind of play aid of basic quality

1.0: A title image, and a map or other play aid of good quality

1.5: A scattering of images through the text to evoke mood or theme.

2.0: Fully illustrated with evocative pieces (whether hand drawn or otherwise)

0-1pt: Title Page

0.0: No title page

0.5: Simple title page, maybe a list of contents

1.0: Elaborate title page.

Multiply total result by 4 to gain a percentage score.

Game Chef Reviews (In Progress)

2010-09-28T16:39:00.002+10:00

I'm still living the life of an internet nomad at the moment.

We've luckily got a neighbour who is tech-savvy enough to have a Wi-Fi network, but not quite tech-savvy enough to have a password protecting it.

Depending on where the laptop is in the current house, there might be good reception, poor reception or a signal so weak that it doesn't actually allow signals through.

When I work on my laptop in bed, I can't get any signal at all because we have metal security shutters on the window, and the winder snapped...thus a thick metal plate barring any signals from getting to me. So I find myself typing in a room filled with packing boxes while most of the other rooms in the house are bare, or packed similarly.

The good news is that we've secured a new house, the bad news is that it's a bit of a distance out of Sydney. Our broadband network supplier doesn't have cables or ADSL boards installed in the phone exchange that far out...and most of the service providers I've managed to contact are the same. As a result we're going to have to spend $100 to break our internet contract, annoying since we couldn't continue with them if we wanted to. What's even stranger is that the $100 contract breaking fee is less than the $150 change of address fee that we would have had to pay even if they were in the area we are moving too. I'm sure it makes some kind of corporate sense to somebody, but it makes no sense to me.

So, for the next three weeks, the joys of moving house.

I've read through a few Game Chef entries and I could easily see myself playing some of them. I've written up a page of notes each, for the five entries I've read so far. I'll compile them into some semblance of a decent review shortly.

Game Chef 2010 Critiques

2010-09-23T07:51:00.002+10:00

Now that Game Chef 2010 is over, I've looked through a few of the games produced and have been generally impressed with the diversity and quality of the games produced.

9 Days isn't a lot of time to generate a professional quality piece of work, but a lot of people have produced some finely polished pieces of semi-professional writing and game design. Quite a few of them could probably do with a good read-over and like all new games I'm sure they need a bit of playtesting to iron out the bugs. But, all in all, there are some great games in there and quite a few I'd like to play if I wasn't in a limbo state of trying to move house, and caught between groups of roleplaying friends. I don't know how many of the games would hold up well under a two person play scenario (I can probably rope in a third, but only for short periods of time).

As a result, I'm going to give a general critique on the games that stuck out to me as being interesting. My criteria of interesting is based on the blurb written on the game chef site, the number of comments made on threads during game development (on praxis, the forge, or 1km1kt), and whether or not I've been interested in the games produced by the author in the past.

With 59 finished games produced for the competition, I could have just limited myself to to the 10% that met all those criteria, but I really could have missed some of the gems of the competition. Instead, I've downloaded and printed out the top half of the entries according to my criteria. Remember that 2 of my criteria are highly personal things regarding my tastes in gaming, so my top half might not be your top half. But the third is pretty quantifiable.

The first five I'll review will be from the praxis feedback group to which I belonged in the contest; but beyond that, there's no particular order that I'll be reviewing them in. I'll try to alternate between longer games and shorter games where possible.

If there are any games on the short-list that I haven't critiqued, I'll make sure to add them to my list.

I'll be trying to get a critique done once a day; but given that I'm in the middle of moving house, I

can't 100% guarantee that I'll keep up that schedule.

Feel free to make your own comments if you think my critique is off in some way, of if you appreciate what I've written about the games. Anyway, on with the reading, and then the critiquing.

Walkabout

2010-09-21T16:14:00.002+10:00

In case anyone's interested in downloading my entry for Game Chef 2010...it can be found at a new page on my website.

http://www.vulpinoid.com/walkabout.html

After getting 400+ downloads of Walkabout from the shopfront on RPGNow, it was fun to see how well I could twist the fundamentals of the game into a new setting and story style.

I think it seems to have turned out relatively well, but now it could do with a few weeks of fine tuning and some good playtest sessions.

Game Chef 2010 ideas

2010-09-11T14:37:00.001+10:00

This has been cross posted to 1km1kt and the Forge.

Awesome list.

I'm really tempted to do something along the lines of Dark Sun, but a lot of people have already suggested this as a possible inspiration.

Mechanically, since hacks are allowed, I think I'll try a twist on my own recent game FUBAR. Instead of a revenge tale, I'm going to twist the rules to reflect a post-apocalyptic road trip, or perhaps a chase across a shattered desert landscape.

That's the intention for the surface layer of the game, but I like things to have a bit of depth to them.

With that in mind, I'm thinking of the alchemical journey of the soul...a progression from initiate to adept to master...and beyond

A single session will be about a physical journey between places or the pursuit of a quarry. The campaign play will be about the enlightenment achieved by engaging in the metaphorical journey multiple times.

These are my initial thoughts prompted by the ingredients.

But like normal, I'm starting to deviate from the actual words and delving into abstracts. So I'll try to pull things back to the actual terms of the contest.

City - An urban location...the voyage beyond the accepted culture is a path taken by outsiders, it is in this path that enlightenment is achieved, but without the buffers of the community it is easier to fall into insanity or simply lose one's way.

Desert - As a noun or adjective this could refer to a wasteland basically devoid of plant and animal life ("this place is a desert")...as a verb it can mean to flee an area with no intent to return ("she doesn't like it here and is going to desert the place")....then it also has the meaning of a reward or punishment ("he got his just deserts")...so much potential in this term.

Edge - Another ambiguous term that could be used many ways...as a noun it could represent the border between two things, the sharp side of a knife, or the advantage someone has in a situation (I already use it in this way in FUBAR)...as a verb it can mean moving cautiously toward something ("he edged his way toward the fence"), or sharpening something. Hmmm.

Skin - This has a variety of meanings that typically apply to the outer surface of something, examples include the outermost flesh of a creature and the visible interface of a computer program (which can be "re-skinned")...but colloquially it could refer to a drum, a condom or a dollar note. As a verb, "to skin something" typically means peeling away the outer layers.

Straight up, two of the terms have a juxtaposition...Desert/City. One is devoid of life while the other is a place of community.

Two of the terms have a commonality...Edge/Skin...both refer to an interface between two objects.

It's a push to link "edge" and "desert" as movement terms. As movement, edge tends to imply moving slowly toward something, while deserting implies moving away with reckless abandon.

Again....just more thoughts.

I keep pulling back to the idea of enlightened tattooed nomads, living between the worlds of city and desert. A journeying people who take sacred journeys between the civilised realms and into the wastelands of the physical and the metaphysical spirit deserts. They make these journeys to reclaim the lost, or discovers insights about the future...with these journeys achieved, they return to their home cultures to reveal the truth. If they travel too far (physically or mentally), they may get lost. Becoming physically lost means being unable to return to their home, while becoming lost in a mental/spiritual sense means that the character has lost their ability to commune meaningfully with their people, perhaps they have gone insane, or maybe they have transcended the mental state of their people to such a degree that people simple can't understand them.

With this last idea in mind, there could be other wanderers in the desert/wilderness...dangerous lunatics who have devolved and gone insane...and strange enlightened mystics who have lost contact with their people but who might still have useful advice for those who are still capable of returning from their sacred journeys.

Maybe doing something about the Australian aboriginal community and the Dreamtime. They didn't have tattooing as a common practice, but traditional scarification processes fulfil the same basic function...and if I make the setting a post-apocalyptic wasteland, then tattooing might become a viable option again.

With these ideas bubbling away in my head, it's time to head off and think about some other stuff. The ideas can ferment for a while, who knows where they might lead.

Deathwatch Collector's Edition

2010-09-08T14:12:00.003+10:00

I've long had a passing interest in the rich mythology surrounding Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k. The Space marines with their almost Nazi zeal aiming to eliminate the other races of the galaxy, the ancient Eldar who are a vague mask for the normal elves in a fantasy setting, the inhuman Tyrannids, and the other races that make up the milieu.

They've been pumping away at this stuff for decades, and they've had a dedicated following...but it's only recently that they've had a proper roleplaying game within in the setting.

I never really got into the setting as well as I could have because I didn't want to paint up hundred of figures just to get into a game. I liked Necromunda, and I had a couple of teams for that game...it came close to role-playing, but with a story guided by the exploits of a small team...the scope didn't cover the breadth of the Warhammer 40k universe though, and the other races simply weren't represented (not in the same way that Mordheim allowed teams in the fantasy equivalent). Then we had Inquisitor, a curious game focused on the exploits of long Inquisitors and their entourages of lackeys, cybernetically implanted slaves and flagellants. This was a lot closer to what I was after in a role-playing game because it allowed a wider range of exploration. I even generated up a few hacks to play other races using this system. I never got the chance to play them though.

But with Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and now DeathWatch we're getting the chance to really delve into the rich mythology of the setting. I haven't actually opened up one of the books and started reading, but they seem to be keeping the fanboys happy, and I haven't heard much bad about them in the reviews I've read.

But now I look at the Deathwatch Collector's edition. If I had the money, I'd drop it in a heartbeat for this sucker. Solid metal case, parchment pages within, each copy printed with dedicated lines for it's prospective owner. A true gaming artefact that sets the tone for the product within.

Great marketing ploy.

I'm wondering if I could do something similar with a product of my own....sculpt up some bas-relief forms...use moulds to cold-cast metallic front and back plates with a hinged spine...use this to encase a gaming tome of some type. It would certainly be a step in a different direction to the pdf market, providing a uniquely crafted artefact in exchange for the money dropped by the consumer. Might be worth exploring.

Off Kilter Globe

2010-09-07T14:24:00.003+10:00

I had an idea a while back...

There are a few theories about the shifting magnetic poles, and how the world might shift off it's axis and rotate in a new way if they become too far out of alignment. The movie 2012 touched on this a bit, and at least one theory about Atlantis uses this as a hypothesis.

As a result I've considered the idea a few times.

What would the map of the world look like if you pplaced the north pole at an arbitrary point on the globe, placed a south pole diametrically opposite, and then spun the world on a new axis as defined by these points.

It either of the pole locations was on land then it would become locked in polar ice (much like Antarctica), if it were close to land then there would probably be an ice-shelf packed with glaciers along the shoreline. Much like the northern coasts of Russia and Canada.

A map of the world drawn from the perspective of this new spin would probably look vaguely familiar in places, but dramatically different in others. After a few hundred years you'd note changes in the vegetation. With rain tending to fall toward the east of mountain ranges while a rain-shadow of dry land falls to the west. Imagine enough of a tilt to cause the Amazon rainforest to now become a vast desert, while the rolling desert plains of Western Australia and Africa might become a lush and fertile ecology.

I've looked for programs that might redraw the map from a tilted perspective, but haven't met with any success so far. I haven't been expecting such programs to account for ecological changes, I've just been looking for coastline manipulations. But no luck. I didn't think I was after anything that was overly revolutionary (no pun intended).

I'm considering the idea of drawing up a few sample maps, perhaps to use as the basis for a new project. It's just one of many ideas at the moment.

RPGNow

2010-09-07T10:37:00.004+10:00

I now have products available through RPGNow through two distinct stores.

Avalon Games has put up it's first piece of work by me...How to Make a Great Dungeon. Hopefully there will be a few more of those going up on a monthly basis.

And more importantly (to me anyway), Vulpinoid Studios has established a web store on RPGNow.

In the first 12-hours, I've sold 4 copies of the Eighth Sea pdf. Sure it's only $1 for the pdf, but that's more copies than I've managed to sell in the last few months. I hope there will be some feedback on the game from at least someone who has purchased it.

The new version will hopefully be made available before the end of the year...like all those other projects I'm working on.