Observations of the Fox

There's an adage in writing that you should write what you know. Some take this literally, saying that no--one should be writing fantasy, because no-one lives fantasy...but that's a bit silly. If you read a lot of fantasy, and know the tropes, how they work, know how to modify or subvert them for your own work, then you know your stuff. If you know art theory, then you could easily add elements of this into your work, alluding to colour, shape, and tne psychological way these impact on characters or readers. If you don't know these things, tnen trying to add them in will ring false. I guess it's a bit like that old "cultural appropriation" bugbear, if you add stuff in from  another culture just because "it's cool" then it won't seem authentic... if you add stuff in and really connect it to the other things you've got going on then it will add depth to the final product. That brings me to some discussions I've been having with othe...

The tower project I was working on a couple of months ago was a part of a larger plan...I don;t know if it was a part of a larger plan at the time when I was doing it...or if it was, I don't know if that plan is the same plan that it's now a part of. Either way, another fragment of the grand plan is a fairly simple RPG, based loosely on a Judge Dredd concept (with serial numbers filed off). Here's the first few pages. Illustrations, character sheet and the remaining pages coming soon.  

At the end of part 1, we were cutting up 150-odd scales out of a dozen soft drink bottles. Not sure whether this would be enough (but seriously suspecting it wouldn't be). The next stage is to get these scales to stop looking like cut out pieces of plastics, and instead make them look like polished pieces of metal, or insect chitin, or some other material from which our armour is made (in the context of the game) at the moment, this project is proof of concept, so I'm taking a deliberately simple course of action. I've considered that later repetitions of this armour might see every scale painted with a dark green vein, then lighter green to represent a series of leaves, but for the moment, a simple silver will suffice. Painting Step The silver needs to be protected from the hits of the swords, so I'm going to use one of the properties of the material to it's advantage...that being its transparency. I'm going to paint the underside of the scales. Thus givi...

The idea of campaign stories in Ghost City Raiders was directly inspired by a similar concept in the miniatures game "Confrontation". In that game a number of "character" figures had collections of three to five cards, each of which detailed a mini game that could be used as an "act" in a tale featuring that character as a hero. The same thing basically applies here, except that some of the tales I'd like to create might be playable by a range of different characters (perhaps granting some special bonus if the the is completed). This particular tale, "The Cryptid's Tale", allows a very unstable character type to be played temporarily, and if the tale is completely, it makes the unstable character more viable in the long term (or provides some kind of special bonus to another character if the Cryptid successfully wanders back off into the mystical "dreaming"). But now I'm thinking about the specific events that make up the ...

With an expectation of no more than 6 sessions, and a maximum of five players per session, I've printed off the following... For the players... 30 pocketmods containing the core game rules for Walkabout 30 pocketmod character booklets (Based on experience, roughly half the players like to keep mementos of their games, while the other half leave their stuff behind...with this in mind I could probably handle another session or two) and 10 sets of Oracle rules (for those players who might be interested in learning more about what 'm doing as the GM) For me... 10 pocketmods for assorted survivors and spirits to be encountered along the way 2 story charts (I only need one, the second is just a back-up) 2 local maps (again, I only need one, the second is just a back-up) I already have a hundred (or so) trait cards from earlier game sessions of FUBAR, these will be fine to use since the basic game mechanisms in FUBAR and Walkabout are generally the same (one uses dice...

The idea is a cross between Munchkin and Small World. Each player gets a character made up of a trait and a race...eg. "Studious"/"Elf", "Beserker"/"Halfling". The assorted characters are the members of a town guard, they will be paid bonuses for completing assignments and keeping the town in order. But they each want the bonus, and they aren't afraid to sabotage their fellow guardsmen. The characters move across a town map and complete missions that will keep the peace. Undertaking those mission requires meeting a certain difficulty/target number, you need to play cards to boost your skill up to the target number, and you can play cards to boost the target number facing your fellow guardsmen. Characters who complete missions earn gold, allies, equipment and other rewards that make future missions easier to achieve.   It's for the Game Crafter's Miniature Based Game Contest. Anyone interested?

I recently posted the idea of using Fudge dice to develop room moods devised by Fred Hicks A great and simple system for developing a wide variety of social settings using four dice capable of producing results of positive (+), neutral (O) or negative (-). I've been trying to develop something similar for walkabout that can be used to develop random scenes on the fly. This would use the basic mechanisms found throughout the rest of the game, in a new and innovative way. With this in mind, the basic system is to draw three tokens and allocate them to three categories. One category describing the basic upside of the situation, one describing the basic down side of the situation, and one providing story input to the situation. The second side of the basic system lies in the colours of the tokens; Black tokens [+] being good, White tokens [-] bad, Red tokens [R] destructive, Green constructive [G] and Blue transformative [B]. The basic idea of defining a scene on the fly wo...

Stage 1.0: Basic Rookie Rules Play Requirements 1 x Track Board 10 x Skater Markers (5 per player) 20 x Speed Tokens (10 per player) 1 x Activation Marker 10 x Practice Skater Profile Cards (5 per player) A Standard Deck of Cards Practice Skater Profiles 1. 1 x Jammer Soul: 8, Speed: 8, Strategy: 6, Strength: 6 (Ignore Abilities and Traits) 2. 3 x Blocker Soul: 6, Speed: 6, Strategy: 8, Strength: 8 (Ignore Abilities and Traits) 3. 1 x Pivot Soul: 8, Speed: 6, Strategy: 8, Strength: 6 (Ignore Abilities and Traits) Set Up: Team Set Up: Place the five rookie team cards on the team board. Shuffle the card deck, and deal ten cards to each player, then deal a face down card to each team member.  Once all cards have been dealt out, thirty will be on the table or in player’s hands, with twenty-four remaining in the deck. Board Set Up: Each player places their skaters on the designated starting grid markers. A team’s three blockers and p...