Observations of the Fox

I'm not going to get this project finished during the NaGaDeMon / RoleVember month, but I've certainly made a lot of headway, and the game is a lot more focused that it was before. Over the past couple of days I've been refining the spellcasting system, and that's a bit of a "make-or-break" element when the premise of the game involves casting spells, invoking effects, or otherwise bending reality. In two earlier posts, I shared how magic is rated in a character , and the procedure for invoking mystical effects in the game , but the last couple of days have been dedicated to generating a system where characters can invoke mystical effects on the fly without needing to resort to pre-defined spells, or working out how players can develop their own mystical effects for their characters. I'd always aspired back toward Mage: the Ascension for this, but a recent Facebook thread on people's favourite magic systems prompted me to rethink this idea, and ...

When I developed The Law there was an automatic driving force within the narrative of the game. This was a game about keeping the peace in a post cyberpunk dystopia. That's a good basic premise, it gives the characters something to do automatically. There are inherent things within the setting for characters to react to, because there is always crime happening, and if the character don't address those crimes then things will either gradually crumble into anarchy around them, or rapidly explode into rioting and revolution. As a GM, you don't need to define scene by scene storylines for players to be led through, but if you want to create cases for characters to investigate it fits within the premise, and you can always punctuate events with street crimes to react to when the pacing needs to be shifted. It's a fairly open world concept, characters can go wherever they want, they can be virtuous protectors of society, or corrupt monsters, but there are always expectations...

(If you have issue with any of this, let me know. I'm trying to wrap my head around some big concepts here, and I honestly believe that getting more opinions on the subject matter will give a more complete picture) I generally fit into the mainstream of game designers. I'm white, I'm male, I'm generally cis and hetero, I have enough spare time to actually work on game design because I'm not working stupidly long hours on minimum pay to support a family. Yes, I've got a degree of privilege, I accept that, and I do what I can to take that into consideration when dealing with other people. I'm not in the US or the UK where there are bigger opportunities for networking, so I'll always struggle to get my voice heard over those folks who are in closer proximity to those hubs of game design, I'm not completely neuro-typical, but I've learnt enough to masquerade as neuro-typical to most people. The reason I've started writing this post is to take...

It's been a busy couple of days, and it doesn't look like slowing down any time soon. On Saturday, we had Free RPG Day at Games Paradise. I ran a six player session of The Law, which went reasonably well, but I couldn't help but think of all the players the local designers weren't reaching for various reasons. It wasn't necessarily the location. It was in a game store, the intended destination for gamers looking to experience RPGs, and probably even looking to experience new RPGs. But I think a part of the problem was the lack of profile for Free RPG Day at this time. Most people coming to the store, and to the play area didn't even seem to know about the promotional event. Most had come into our vicinity because we were near the D&D books. Lets round things off to whole numbers... If there were 60 people who came to browse, maybe half of them only looked at D&D stuff, so we're looking at 30 flat out D&D players, 30 others. Of those 30 ot...

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,...

One of my white whale projects is called Apocalypse Diaries . The concept has generally revolved around a single player game, where the players literally buys a diary and writes entries in it day by day from the perspective of a fictional character. The entries they write form the basis of a story, where an iterative system provides writing prompts based on the previous things written while adding plot twists, benefits, complications, gradually developing the character and sometimes changing them as they respond to the events in the world. It was always intended to play out in two phases... pre-apocalypse and apocalypse... surviving in a Machiavellian world where the highest stakes are loss of reputation, friends, wealth, or possessions, followed by surviving in a world going to hell, where literal life and death are on the line. After the Catacomb Quest project, I'm thinking of revisiting the concept, perhaps running each phase of the game as a procedural engine in it's...

Yesterday's anecdotal post was intended to be more than just a trip down memory lane. There's actually quite a bit to unpack in it. A lot of good game theorising occurred in the early 2000s to give names and context to what we were doing, but at the time we were just following trial and error. The main reason I'm thinking about this is one of those many projects I've got that feeds on previous ideas and occasionally rears it's head demanding attention. I'll probably meander back and forth between a few developments where these ideas have manifested through my work over the years, but to keep things a bit more organised, I'll add a few discreet heading categories. Flat Comparisons vs Randomisers This is where I was heading with yesterday's post, before I cut things off. Standard Magic: the Gathering uses flat comparisons to determine conflicts. If a creature's power is at least equal to their opponent's toughness, they kill them. If it's...

I've got this nasty habit of overanalysing things. I come up with a concept, then I tinker with it... I add bits to it... I work out how those new bits have modified the core... then modify them or add new bits until the whole thing is a Frakenstein mess that ends up getting stripped back to a raw foundation again. Sometimes the new iteration is back at the starting point, and sometimes it's a very different beast... at which point I analyse the differences to see what fulfils my goals better. It's an ongoing cycle. I shared my intention for a Dark Places character generation system, with 3 fragments determined by rolling a bunch of dice then allocating the results between different columns of a table. I've been working on this concept within the context of generating characters who would use the same system and be vaguely comparable in power to the Agents in The Law . This basically means attributes with an average starting score of d6, four defenses, four to se...

One of the younger players in my LARP has decided that he wants a gaming experience that is deeper than what we've been able to provide with the 10 players that regular show u to our live events. His mother has bought him a copy of D&D, and has invited a few members of the LARP to run his first tabletop game for him. I've been volunteered to run the game. I would have suggested a simpler game like Dungeon World, or even one of my own game designs; but she's bought him D&D, so that's what we'll be running with. I guess it is the biggest roleplaying game, and was probably the only RPG available in the local bookstore (or local toy store, or local pop culture store...or wherever it was purchased). I asked what version of D&D it was, and the response was simply "the easy one"..."the one kids can play". Given that is was purchased in the last couple of weeks I can only assume that 5th edition was acquired. Now I just need to work out a...

There's a new index of independent RPGs going around...and I'm surprised to actually be included in it this time. It's called Fictioneers.net , and on further investigation it has been around since 2014. I'm on the index because of my game El Casador , which I never got around to finishing for a few specific reasons. One of those reasons was wanting it to be completely numberless, because that was the challenge I was a part of when designing it... a second reason was trying to develop a card based AI system for the monsters in the game. The AI system just frustrated me and so I abandoned it. I've thought about it a few times since then, but not much has ever come from those thoughts. One day a breakthrough will probably come, and one day I'll be happy with it. ...but for the moment it will probably be quicker just to add a gew more of my finished games to the Fictioneers listing.

The background on the blog has been disconnected. Photobucket have changed their policy on linking images to external sites, and I didn't even know that it had occurred. I'll fix things up when I get a chance.

After struggling to find the terrain tutorial series I created a few years ago, I have just updated the " Other Tutorials " page in the menu at the top of this blog. I basically just walked a school class of 11-12 years olds through the processes described in that tutorial and I'll be providing them with more details regarding that in the next couple of weeks. Now I just need to update the rest of the links in those menus, because I've needed several of them a few times over the years and have given up searching through the 1800-odd posts on the blog. (In the process I discovered that I use the "Rant" tag far more often than I thought I did)

Over the years I've found that the kinds of people who scream "CULTURAL APPROPRIATION" are the kinds of people who give progressives and the left wing a bad name. There are cultures, there are people who belong to cultures, there are people to adapt the stories of their own cultures, and there are people who adapt the stories of other cultures. Sometimes the people who adapt the stories of other cultures, do so without understanding the context of those stories, and thus their adaptions ring false, or highlight the wrong things about the culture being presented. When this occurs, I've found it is often due to a lack of understanding more than anything else. Do not attribute to malice, that which could just as easily be attributed to stupidity. I'm not saying that there aren't people who deliberately twist words to make others look bad, a quick look at modern politics shows this sort of thing at all levels of society; instead I'm saying that a call of ...

How do people feel about "odd" book sizes? I'm starting the process of compiling my arcology tower maps into a single book (which will probably be 160 pages or so). There will be two versions of this book, one of which will be fully statted out and ready to run as a sandbox game environment, the other will be fully illustrated, but designed to be used as a game prop that is filled in as the tower is explored by the characters (with an optional booklet describing random location/npc generation, and how to tie these random ideas together into a coherent ecosystem/economy). I'm looking at the DrivethruRPG book sizes, and I'm really tempted to go with 8.5"x8.5", with the optional random generator booklet at 8.5"x5.5". But I can find it annoying to have a row of uniform books on my shelf, with one or two odd ones. Just wondering about other people's thoughts before I go ahead with this.

What is it about groups of people that cause them to degenerate into petty squabbles once a certain critical mass group size is reached? Well actually, I should clarify that, as the group reaches a certain size petty squabbles develop, as the group reaches a slightly larger size those squabbles become full-on arguments. I say this on reflection of three social groups I'm a part of. The LARP group I've been a part of, is starting to fracture because certain members are being continually kowtowed to. The community of aboriginal elders are having major issues with the land council board members who do not respect the old ways and are simply in it for personal gain. The ferret welfare society to which I belong is also crumbling. Maybe it's just my presence causing an increase of entropy. Or maybe there is something deeper, something that can be exploited as a resource for driving tension in games. I'm not sure at this point, and a lot of the political issues are sti...

There are projects that you pour your energy into, they may be small things, and once they're done you move on to new ideas. They may be collaborative efforts where you do your bit and then see the project move to someone else before seeing a final unveiling...maybe big events with a deadline where the energy has to reach a culmination otherwise you lose face. But this post is not about those... This post is about the big personal projects, some might call them heartbreakers, others might call them a "magnum opus". It's about the projects that have the creative vision of a single person behind them, and that single person pours their heart-and-soul into every aspect of it. The visionary looks at similar projects that other people have laboured on for years at a time, sometimes viewing their work as rubbish, occasionally wondering if people reciprocate this view. The visionary looks at projects that are good, things that are certainly better than the crap which s...

Looks like it's time to generate up another new font. This time incorporating the glyphs for the Town Guard game rules. Up until this time, I've been using Photoshop with different layers holding text, while other layers held glyph symbols. It will take a bit of work to set up the font, but it will save a lot of hassle in the long run.

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...

This would have to be a moment from the type of RPG I usually run... Prisoner Makes Gun from Match Sticks

One of the inspiration words in the Stockade's game design challenge is "Gypsy". I haven't really done a gypsy inspired game, but I've considered it a couple of times. I love the unusual cultures of the world and like the chance to do some good research in a field that I haven't explored too thoroughly. Over the years I've had a couple of ideas for unusual mechanisms that might be used in a game and I thought I'd really like to tie the gypsy concept to the token bag . I started with my usual method of opening up a word processor document and starting to type away with a stream of consciousness style of writing that often gives some great insight as I start digging through the words later. Brigaki Djili is a romani/gypsy term meaning "Sorrow Songs". I'm using it as a name for a new project in which players take on the role of Gypsy seers who reveal the past through communal storytelling. Each player takes on the role of one of these gypsy ...