Observations of the Fox

Yes, there's probably a better title for this sequence of posts... but that was first to come to mind. In 2008-2009, at Gencon Oz, I met the team from Griffin who were spruiking their "Ultimate Table Top Terrain" (or UTTT) system. It's been that long since I've wanted to do something with their products, and a cursory glance across the internet seems to indicate they might not even exist any more (they do still have a Facebook group , so I'd love to hear if they're still active at some level) Evidence of the UTTT product can be found scattered across the web, with images on Pinterest and general search engine results. I liked the system because it was made up of hexes that could be linked together like geomorphs. The hexes were also a decent size, with 37cm (just under 15 inches) across the points of the hex, and 32.1cm (just under 13 inches) across the flats. A few hexes could be laid out, with half hexes, and "shards" to create a dec...

I love  this party crasher post . It's the kind of style I'd love to see a whole game written in. Whenever I suggest this, or try to present something this way, I invariably get a bunch of people telling me how hard it is to read the text, how bad it is for cognition, and how generally unprofessional it looks. I certainly pushed in this direction for The Law, and might go further in the sourcebooks for that game... but we'll see how things go.

In my new school, I've finally discovered the small community of roleplayers... ...and it basically consists of half of the year 11 students, who play twice a week. Now I just need to expand their horizons beyond D&D.

Since I've now got a post-doctorate degree in education, and I'm working as a teacher, I've been exposed to a lot of ideas about how we learn and how our brains work. A lot of these ideas conflict with each other, and they also conflict with the way roleplaying games handle experience and character development.   There are probably ways that these various ideas can be fused together, but there are numerous ways to link these ideas together, and many textbooks discredit certain ideas while promoting the concept that match the agenda they're trying to push. It basically reminds me of the way roleplaying games handle firearms... as soon as you start trying to push for realism you'll get different "experts" who claim that different elements of the play mechanisms are accurate, and other parts aren't, and you'll find that few of these "experts" agree with one another. Similarly, by the time you start to incorporate enough elements to make a...

Today's thing seems to be writing a list of 10 roleplaying games that have been influential in a person's interactions with the hobby. I've seen a few people writing the list with no further comments, I've seen others adding notations to their lists. There have been lists in order of most to least influential, there have been others written in chronological order of exposure or of publications. I like the idea of doing it in order of exposure, and adding a bit of notation to explain why it's influential to me, so I'm going to write my list that way. There are probably other games that have had a significant impact on me, and there will be a list of honourable mentions at the end. 1. Dragon Warriors This was the first RPG I owned copies of. I never played many games with it, but it's what started the whole journey. 2. Middle Earth Role Playing This was one of the few RPGs that my parents allowed me to own, because it wasn't D&D and it wasn...

Only one will remain. Don’t lose your head. Total Tokens = 5 x Players. Immortals have Combat and Cunning. One is d6, the other d8. Youngest goes first. Choose someone to describe the scene, and another to narrate your challenge. Challenge narrator may take up to 5 tokens to determine the difficulty. If pool empty, duel someone.       * = d4       ** = d6       *** = d8       ****   = d10       ***** = d12 Player describes their Immortal facing the challenge, then rolls relevant die. Immortal >= Challenge. Player gains all difficulty tokens. Challenge > Immortal. Challenge narrator claims a token, others returned to pool. The player’s die used is decreased by a degree. If combat < d4; Immortal dies. If cunning < d4; Immortal goes insane and must be duelled before a winner declared. Once you have tokens you may spend them to: Regain a decreased a...

(I'm not as sure about this one, but it was in my head and I had to get it out. I'm stumped on the last two questions for the second round... they need to be somehow related to the resolution of the lost soul's desire, but trying to get the feeling and the wording right with 11 words left is proving problematic. Maybe it's time to start editing words out of other sections when and where I can.) Lost Souls Requires: Masking tape, marker, stopwatch All players sit in a circle and take turns, going clockwise. On each players first turn, the player to the right is “Death” they hold the stopwatch. The player to the left (and sequentially each player around the circle) is asked a question.  The active player notes the answers.       Who is this lost soul?     How did they die?     What was their desire?     What stopped them getting it? When they stop, Death writes the time taken on the tape, an a...

The first part of Apocalypse Diaries is based on the typical teen soap opera that was prevalent on the TV channel CW, before all the DC superhero shows became popular. I guess those types follows are probably still screened, but they aren't really the kind of thing that keeps my interest for long. I've always found these shows more interesting when they get to they end of their run are are filled with stupid stuff to try and lure back the ratings. The bit between the shark jump and the inevitable axing. That's where these twisting storylines come from. Some are typical soap opera or teen drama fodder, some are a bit more extreme... they'll get more extreme as either time goes on or the apocalypse crashes across the world. The question is which events will be more chaotic, hopefully both will be good fodder for stories. I need more of these. Currently I'm thinking that there will be a playbooks depicting different types of characters, with 13 common story twists,...

I think this is a trick question. It seems that if I want a game, I have to run the game. I've got a crowd of players who irregularly are willing to show up to games when I run them, but rounding them up can be like herding stray cats... and there's never the opportunity to just sit back and let someone else do the heavy lifting.  The only real time I get to relax with a game is when I go to a convention, and even then it's more a case of knowing who is on the table more than knowing what game we're playing. I can honestly say that I don't have an answer to this one.

It's a bit complicated for words, I think in a more visual manner.

30. Share something cool you made if you can at all justify it as RPG related. Last One. With the Shonen Knife concert this week, and the production of an image to possibly get signed by one of my favourite bands, things have been thrown out of their regular schedule. This has been made even worse by other complications around the house, and generally not feeling well. As a result, this post is two days late. One of the curious things I saw as I was doing research for this picture was the fact that on the Band's bio page, two of the members indicate that they enjoy playing games. No specification as to whether they lay board games, card games or RPGs...but the fact that they indicated game play on their biographical details was awesome in itself. Still, I probably can't really justify this as an RPG related share. Instead, I'll have to share the Vulpinoid Studios online store. I've got heaps of things for sale there, and some of it even sells occasionally...

29. Goblins are great. Why or why not? Silly question, of course they are. Here's my Goblin Tarot... I wouldn't have created 78 images for just any old race...  

28. What's a really cool imaginary place you've made up? Draw a map of it. Don't worry it's just a map. E'rybody can make maps. Oohhh... don't know if I can draw maps, this one could be tricky. Here's a few cool places I've made up over the years. This is the setting I've developed for the LARP I've been running over the past 2 years. This is the tilted world from my white whale project, Walkabout.  One of many steampunk settings I've helped work on over the years...this one for a graphic novel and film script project that fell through. Part of a collaborative world project from over a decade ago. I've got no idea if the setting is still active, but it was fun to work on for a few years.

27. So what's with that overly-elaborate locked box? Oh, that one?  For generations, the Guild of Locksmiths has had a final test that allows an apprentice to attain the rank of journeyman. It looks simple enough, an apprentice just needs to open the elaborate box, and they pass the test. There's a slight catch though, open it incorrectly and one of the many mystic wards will activate... roll a d6 to see what happens. The box instantly becomes red hot, the apprentice takes minor damage, but any lockpicking tools used are instantly melted and rendered useless. The box crackles with St Elmo's Fire, the apprentice is electrocuted for minor damage, and is stunned for a few minutes. The box vanishes, along with any lockpicking tools touching it... it appears again after d6 hours. The box seeps a greenish mist through it's cracks, there is a chance that the apprentice breathes it in and passes out for d6 minutes, then suffers a disadvantage to anything in...

26. Your childhood pet is now a monster. How is it going to kill me?  I never really had a childhood pet. Does my lack of a pet kill you with it's oblivion to the material universe? Or do I go with the first pet I got as an adult? Ōkami is certainly more dynamic than a void of nothingness. But in this picture it looks like the same sense of nihilism will completely obliterate anything it touches.

25. The last thing you drank is a potion. What are it's effects? A potion of enhanced alertness and motivation. Poured into the lips of a recently deceased corpse, this restores them to life for a single day. The following day another draught of the potion will be required, but as long as the potion continues to be taken orally the subject may remain alive indefinitely. Drunk by a living person, this potion enhances speed and alertness for a half hour. Of course the problem is that after that half hour there is a chance that fatigue may set in.

24. If the object closest to your left hand right now was a magic item in your campaign, what would it do? Calling her an object is a bit harsh... but the true question here is "what wouldn't Pirate Rosalie do?" She is already an escape artist extraordinaire, a master climber, a stealthy ninja and achilles tendon assassin. Adding magic to her repertoire would probably make her like a Blink-dog, capable of teleporting herself even more quickly than she does already...actually there are certain dys when I'm sure she already has this power. Perhaps she'd talk, but she's pretty stubborn and ADHD... ther's a good chance she wouldn't bother talking to "the boring giants" anyway. So maybe she's already got that power too.

23. How should gods work in a game? This really depends on what the game is trying to say. Based on the way the question is worded, it's safe to assume we aren't discussing a monotheistic setting. The presence of clerics, paladins, divine and infernal magic users also plays a part in how gods might work in a game. I always liked the idea of gods who gain power from the belief of their followers...the more followers, the more power the god has...but the more followers a god has, the more an individual follower needs to do in order to gain their deity's notice. So, let's say every doubling of follwers increases a god's power level by a degree. 1 follower = lvl 1 2 followers = lvl 2 4 followers = lvl 3 8 followers = lvl 4 ... 1024 followers = lvl 11 2048 followers = lvl 12 .... Etc. Gods form pantheons because a follower's belief in a pantheon counts as a half measure for all allied deities. They fight within pantheons for the biggest share o...

22. Describe Milk Demons for me. What do they do, what are their names, what do they taste like?   Milk Demons are a subclass of imps. Where imps are typically affiliated with the major elements, Milk Demons are one of the many impling forms related to non-elemental forms of matter. In most cases, Milk Demons are named for the effects they apply to milk when they die immersed in dairy. So there's Yoghurt, Edam, Gouda, and Haloumi, among others. If it weren't for Milk Demons, these dairy byproducts would not be possible, which is a carefully guarded secret among dairy farmers across the world. It is rumoured that there are obscure forms of Milk Demons which turn into the most exquisite desserts if they are boiled alive in milk, but any truth to that rumour has never been confirmed.

21. Most unexpected spell that helped you get past the walls of the Fortress of See. The fireballs were definitely useful as we approached the fortress and confronted the Guardians of the Sacred City, the levitation spells would have been useful to get over the walls but the nega-psychoc barriers prevented almost every form of magic from working. The only spell that did seem to work was that odd little Chance Minutiae spell that Devali concocted a few years ago. We left it running for a few hours just beside the wall, returning to the spot only to find that the thaumivorous nature of the spell actually ate away chunks of the wall, leaving enough opening for us to crawl through the wall and into the fortress.