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Dungeon Dressing – What’s a dungeon anyway?

December 28, 2009 in Advice, GMing, Inspiration by Fitz | No comments

Welcome back!

When you see the term “Dungeon” – what comes to mind? I typically think of a few different things…

  1. The great TSR gaming magazine published for from 1986 to 2007.
  2. A board game published in 1975 by TSR to simulate some aspects of Dungeons & Dragons.
  3. A place where people were imprisoned or tortured.
  4. A series of connected rooms containing possible encounters or combat opportunities.
  5. A power metal/thrash band from Sydney, Australia from 1989 to 2005.

Though I still have a few issues of Dungeon magazine squirreled away in boxes and a copy of Dungeon! the board game, I can truthfully say I’ve never heard any music from Dungeon the thrash band. That said, let’s focus on #4 because we can kind of roll #3 into it.

We often encounter dungeons when we play roleplaying games. Adventures like the Temple of Elemental Evil come to mind when I think of dungeons and dungeon crawls where you enter with your friends and try to survive as many levels and encounters as possible to escape with your loot.

But if you look at the general description, a dungeon in gaming terms is just a bunch of rooms connected by corridors. That could describe just about anything, couldn’t it?

A while back, Johnn Four raised the concept of “5 Room Dungeons”, which are awesome. Just enough space to create a unique situation for a group of players. But what I loved was that they weren’t all underground in medieval settings. Sure, some were. But mixed in were temples, swamps, islands, and other locations that didn’t have to be underground. What a concept! (You can download many of the 5 Room Dungeons at Johnn’s Roleplaying Tips site.)

So we know about dungeons in the medieval sense. Usually these were sets of rooms that existed under existing castles, keeps, or other buildings to house criminals, political prisoners, torture devices, and so on.

What about other places? Why can’t a modern building be a dungeon? Think about a modern hospital. Aren’t the floors in a hospital designed in a manner similar to different dungeon levels?

What about…

  • Spaceships or naval vessels?
  • Laboratories?
  • Office buildings?
  • Cave systems used by freedom fighters or terrorists?

Aren’t they all dungeons of a sort? Multiple rooms connected by corridors. Each room may or may not have “stuff” in it. Each room may or may not have guardians or traps.

So as we go through some other topics in this series, keep in mind that dungeons don’t have to be in fantasy settings or historically-based adventures. A dungeon can be any set of rooms connected by corridors.

Think about that the next time you walk through your house, your school, or your office building.

Next time we’ll talk about doors and what you can do with them in various settings.

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Happy Holidays from Moebius Adventures!

December 23, 2009 in News by Fitz | No comments

Hi all…

Though we approach the end of 2009 with a little hope left in the tank, I’m truly hopeful for what 2010 will bring. More gaming. More blog posts about gaming. And possibly even the first Moebius Adventures product in a couple of years. Though 2009 has had its ups and downs, it’s been good to get back to things I enjoy doing and gaming is at the top of the list (next to spending time with my wife and daughters).

This blog has undergone a radical transformation from deadwood to once again showing signs of life. So we can only hope that 2010 brings more of the same!

I truly wish you all a very happy holiday season and a bright new year. May it be a good year for all of us.

Thanks for reading and a merry HO HO HO!

–Fitz

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How do you perfect the craft of GMing or adventure writing?

December 17, 2009 in Design, GMing, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 2 comments

For me, “perfect” is an unreachable ideal. There is no perfect game, but we can work and strive for as close as possible. If everyone a) stays engaged, b) challenges each other and the GM, and c) has fun – it was a success. Without the interplay between players and between players and GMs, there is no game.

Writer Sitting B&WSo I’m always looking for other perspectives on how to create good adventures. Recently I saw an article in Entertainment Weekly about John Lasseter of Pixar fame. In the article, he stated his team’s formula for making great Pixar movies:

1) Toil to perfect the story.
2) Tackle technical innovation.
3) Take creative leaps of faith.

Why couldn’t we take that approach and apply it to… roleplaying games? If you think of an adventure as an episode or a campaign as a movie series, why not see how they work with RPGs?

1) Toil to perfect the story.

This one for sure applies. Story is the backbone for getting and keeping player interest. Yes, I’ve played games where all you do is clean out dungeon after dungeon. But without a reason for doing that – a reason for taking that path – all you’re doing then is stumbling through the dark killing things that move and taking any loot you find.

Occasionally, sure. I like a good dungeon crawl as much as anybody. But without having a story to explain WHY your PCs should care about these little podunk towns, why they should rescue the damsels or find the lost treasure of Whosit… they’re just going through the motions. As GMs or designers, we need to keep story in mind from the very beginning.

So before designing dungeons or monsters or setting up encounters… Make sure you have a story first.

2) Tackle technical innovation.

Now this one I’m not too sure about. As a software engineer, I have to admit I’m always looking for the next great gadget or piece of software to make my life easier (99% fail in this regard, yet companies like Microsoft are still in business – go figure). But I tend to go old school with my gaming and leave the toys off the game table.

I’ve seen many interesting and detailed discussions about using new technologies like Netbooks or Google Wave, touch-sensitive displays, projectors, and so on. However, I’m most comfortable gaming with a few books, paper, pens/pencils, and real dice.

Some of you may like to go techie when gaming – but so far I’m not one of them.

So maybe this one doesn’t apply in all cases.

3) Take creative leaps of faith.

This one I can definitely get behind. With story, you have the beginnings of a latticework you can add plot, setting, and characters to. But without being creative in how you create and present the end result, even the best stories can fall flat.

One huge creative leap for me is trusting in your players to fill in the gaps. Without the PCs, there is no game. GMs are there to set the stage and the PCs have to give it life in my opinion. So involve them from the beginning – let them fill in the backstories for their characters, let them describe parts of the world their characters would know intimately – get them involved in the creative process.

Another huge creative leap of faith can simply be presenting a heck of an idea in the story. Mix and match things in new ways. Take the Chinese Menu approach – a few things from column A, a few from columns B and C, mix, smooth over the seams, and voila…

Will the Pixar/Lasseter three-rule approach help? It certainly can’t hurt by offering another perspective.

So what are the cardinal rules for you GMs or game designers out there?

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Religion in Fantasy Worlds

December 13, 2009 in Design, GMing, Inspiration, Resources, Rules, World by Fitz | 8 comments

This post was inspired by a post at the KORE rpg blog about the topic. And it got me thinking, which is sometimes not a good thing…

monk_bwReligion is definitely one of those hot buttons in the real world, like sex, money, politics, and many other hot buttons. As soon as you breach the subject however, some people want to either convert you or condemn you – and neither option really appeals to me.

I’m an atheistic-leaning agnostic… or an agnostic-leaning atheist. Just depends on the day. From my point of view, religion is a good thing for a lot of people, so I don’t make a fuss about it. If you want to talk to me about religion, that’s fine – but I don’t like being preached to. Just a personal thing. The door-to-door folks concerned with saving my soul should just move along. (I’m nice about it, but don’t want to waste their time or mine.)

What’s funny is that it’s also not one of the things I typically think about in my roleplaying. I’m more likely to play a cleric or priest as an NPC than a PC, which goes along with my leaning towards creating worlds with conflict these days.

My Immortals’ Wake setting has a church – the Church of the Mother – that has been twisted in the last thousand years to preach a message of no tolerance. History in the real world shows that many faiths have had issues with tolerating views other than their own. And I wanted to bring that aspect into my setting.

And, as with all things, there are those people within the Church who are more liberal in their views of brotherhood than others. A militant arm has sworn to destroy a group of so-called “demons” simply because they are an affront to what they believe. Other groups within the Church are more tolerant of the “demons” and even helps them from time to time.

However, priests in my games tend to be focused on the personal aspects of the mortal condition – helping the sick and poor, aiding those seeking sanctuary, providing spiritual guidance, and so on – not just the traditional D&D cleric point of view as far as mobile MASH and holy smash unit. As mentioned, there are militants in the Church of the Mother who certainly focus on what they think of as fighting the good fight. But most priests would rather tend to their flocks than fight I think.

As such, my priest NPCs tend to be more philosophers and scholars than weapon-wielding crusaders of faith. They’re more likely to talk you to death than beat you with a blessed club. These folks are also just as likely to be warped by greed or lust as any other mortal, so they may not be the paragons of virtue they’re made out to be. They’re simply men and women doing a job they believe in (or want you to believe in).

This is not to say that they don’t apply their healing abilities to those who need them. Nor do they stray away from praying regularly to the focus of their devotion. And miracles do happen. But these are mortal representatives of their faith who only rarely become vessels to the divine power of their gods.

When you bring in the whole wizard vs. cleric debate and wonder whether a priest might directly oppose a wizard and try to have them lynched. Many priests would decry that wizardry is evil and therefore should be destroyed. But many others would state that if their divine hosts could work miracles through the faithful, why would they allow magicians of other types not to exist? What’s to say that the wizard isn’t working divine miracles of his or her own and simply doesn’t appreciate the divine side of the equation?

A priest whose power base is threatened might turn his flock against a rival wizard, but that would erode his power base. The wizard would most likely fall to greater numbers eventually, but how many members of the priest’s flock would die first? Wouldn’t that give them pause?

So there is definitely room for religion in my games. I’ve only had one player ever convincingly play a priest in a campaign I ran. But I’m always hoping for another!

How do you use religion in your fantasy games? Is it a force to be reckoned with?

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Need Feedback – Where do we go from here?

November 22, 2009 in Design, News, Rules, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 1 comment

Sorry I’ve been a bit lacking in the posts arena lately. I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about how to move forward.

Question MarksWith the great, constructive feedback from the October 2009 playtest session of the Moebius Adventures system, it became painfully clear it was time to rethink things. Each player at that session had constructive criticisms of various aspects of the rules, from character generation and presentation to skill resolution and combat. Though we had a good time despite the rules, I was left wondering about the future of the game.

Moebius Adventures was born in the mid-1990s when a friend (Sean Bindel) and I took a hard look at the games we’d been playing.

Like many gamers, we’d played with a number of systems in college and before. We had a great time with a campaign set based loosely on the Temple of Elemental Evil from TSR, but we used the Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game as our system. Add in some serious time playing the d6 Star Wars RPG, Call of Cthulhu, Mechwarrior, and even a little Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, and that about summed it up. And after college, we were playing in a Vampire: The Masquerade game and decided we wanted to get back to the fantasy roots we both started with.

The Moebius Adventures system started out as an exercise in discovering what qualities we wanted to see in a RPG rules system. We modeled it a bit after the Palladium FRPG (1st edition) and Dungeons & Dragons and set to work adding our own spin. The result was first published in 1997 and then in revised form in 2007. And it was the edition from 2007 that we playtested in October of this year.

Though painful, I would say it was incredibly valuable to have seen the game through fresh eyes with this recent playtest session. Almost immediately after, I started working on a slimmed down set of rules that would provide (1) quick character creation, (2) quicker skill and combat resolution, and (3) enough freedom to do all that I was looking at for a cross-genre universal system.

I believe I’ve met that goal and hope to do some playtesting in the next few months as I get more details written up and considered.

My problem now is deciding what to do about this predicament. I have a ton of ideas for free-form magic, super-hero abilities, as well as ways to integrate technology for modern and futuristic settings. And I have three entire settings from which to pull potential setting or adventure products from. But without a simple, consistent, and open system to use, I’m at a bit of an impasse. In my mind, I can’t create system-less modules or settings without having some way of modeling a consistent way to describe NPCs, monsters, items, and so on.

Am I simply over-thinking this? Obviously there are many companies and writers coming up with great RPG materials and I’m not the only one who’s run into this.

Can anyone point out some companies that are doing this already and how they’ve overcome this hurdle (that’s most likely entirely in my head)? Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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Magazine Review: Kobold Quarterly Fall 2009 Issue 11

November 12, 2009 in Uncategorized by Fitz | 2 comments

Hi all!

Along with many other folks, I had an opportunity to check out the Fall 2009 issue of Kobold Quarterly in October… And I’m just now getting back to writing up the review. But here I am!

I have to admit that I’d only seen one other issue of the magazine a couple of years ago and though I was impressed, I wasn’t blown away. This time it hit me more like the old Dungeon or Dragon magazines of yore and from the cover on I was hooked. Not only does it have great art to capture your attention, but the content covers everything from vampires to the myth of the Philosopher’s Stone and far beyond.

Kobold Quarterly, Fall 2009, Issue 11As with many magazines, there are quite a few ads – but I’m guessing KQ (like many other magazines) uses ad- and subscription-revenues to keep providing us great content every quarter. On the plus side, most of the ads are well designed, colorful, and definitely meant for the target audience (of which I’m definitely a member).

The issue starts off with “A Broken Mind – Sanity and Mental Disorders” by Scott Gable – and I love the idea of merging in sanity rules with D&D. Ever since I played Call of Cthulhu in college, I’ve been fascinated by usually slow (sometimes quick) slide to madness that can occasionally overcome a character. Gable’s mechanic of adding “Mind” as a 7th ability score and a pool of sanity works great to bring in the dark overtones of a world where mortals are not meant to experience everything the world might throw at them… And I just love describing a character’s sanity points as “the currency of madness”… [insert evil laughter here]

Gable’s article presents not only the base mechanic for sanity, but how to use it (and lose it) as the character reacts to the bizarre things an evil GM might throw at his or her players. Having lost my sanity in CoC long ago, I remember going Berserk and killing the rest of my party, so I was pleased to see that slip into the list of “Temporary Insanities”. And among the “Indefinite Insanities” you have things like Fear, Obsession, and Paranoia – a trifecta of mental illness sure to cause a player to stretch some roleplaying skills!

Another great article is “Howling Werebeasts – How to Play Lycanthropes as PCs” by John E. Ling, Jr., which covers a bit of the history of Lycanthropy and how to integrate it into a game. Unless you’re playing White Wolf’s Werewolf, I think the templates covered presents both sides of the were-beast picture. As a player, you must take the bad with the good. It hurts to change. People will react to you differently. And it requires a it of work on your part. As a GM, it offers logical responses to how to work it into a game without throwing the balance off.

What I really liked about the article was how it broke the Wererat, Werewolf, and Werebear into actual, playable characters. I don’t think I want to play one soon, but it might be something to consider as a NPC should I need to throw some PCs a curve ball. And once you’ve introduced it as an NPC it’s not too much of a stretch to see your PCs get infected… [insert more evil laughter here]

The other articles in the magazine are just as good, covering the “Ecology of the Vampire,” “Uvandir: The Pride of Craftsmen” (great details about dwarven life), “Running Across the Screen (A GM Roundtable)” (great roundtable interview with 16 GMs!), and more. The book reviews were also welcome, presenting a few fantasy and science-fiction titles that might inspire GMs and Players alike.

In 82 pages you get a bit of everything, which is awesome. Be sure to check it out at KoboldQuarterly.com today!

Looks like I’m going to have to break out my wallet and purchase a subscription just in time for the holidays. :)

–Fitz

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Elemental Appearance – Should it depend on the environment?

November 9, 2009 in Articles, GMing, Inspiration, Magic, Resources by Fitz | 2 comments

While driving around during a recent snowstorm (not much snow, but lots of wind), I saw a “snow devil” as the wind whipped across the road and created a mini-tornado of snow and it got me thinking… How would elementals manifest themselves in different environments?

And after thinking about it for a bit, I’ve come to the conclusion that elementals most likely change when faced with different conditions. For example, an air elemental may manifest as a dust devil in a desert or arid climate, as a waterspout on a larger body of water, or as a blizzard or “snow” devil… Size would be determined by the materials available as well as by the power of the elemental itself… a minor elemental on a grassy plain might not be seen easily, whereas a supersized elemental in the desert might present itself as a monstrous sandstorm.

Man on FirePutting aside how the elemental got there in the first place (summoned, naturally-occurring, accident, etc.), you end up with some different ways elementals might appear in a game.

I’ve already talked about air elementals… Let’s think about fire elementals…

A fire elemental is dependent on two things – the initial spark that brought it to life and the fuel it needs to survive. So why wouldn’t an enterprising wizard wishing to consult with or capture such an elemental go to a cold place with little fuel or a place where the wizard alone controls the fuel. How vicious would a fire elemental be in a small firepit in the arctic?

But someone seeking to give rise to a large, uncontrolled fire elemental might summon one in a forest to consume it in flames, in a fuel depot (oil for lamps, etc.), or a brewery (or other alcohol-rich depot). Imagine the devastation with such a wild creature loose consuming large amounts of fuel or tinder…

Or what about earth elementals? Far too often I think of the rock monster from Galaxy Quest as your usual earth elemental. What about one made entirely of sand in the desert? Or tiny stones? Or even the silt from the edge of a river or lake?

Water elementals are also very dependent on the immediate environment… An elemental summoned from a puddle would be tiny when compared to one from the ocean or a large lake. Or what happens when one of these has a constant supply of rushing water vs. a finite supply? Then consider the consequences of a slow-moving water elemental made of snow or ice as opposed to one made of freely flowing water…

Then consider battles between different types of elemental and how they might appear in the world. A blizzard may be the battle between a large air elemental and a water elemental or a forest fire raging out of control may actually be a fire elemental and an air elemental at odds with each other. Stormy seas could be air vs. water and tidal waves could be created by undersea battles between earth and water…

Really the combinations are as endless as Mother Nature herself.

So the next time you want to include an elemental in a session… Think about how to introduce it to the characters, what form it may take, and the effects such a creature would have on the surrounding environment.

I know I’ll be paying more attention to the weather. :)

Leave a comment and let others know how you use elementals in your campaigns – I know I’d like having more food for thought!

–Fitz

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Friday Links for November 6, 2009

November 6, 2009 in Advice, Articles, Friday Links, Resources by Fitz | No comments

Hi all!

While my own efforts have been bashed in the head with the baseball bat that is reality… I have to show the work of a few other folks whose creativity makes me realize that even if my brain has a dent, I should keep plowing on – because how can you not be inspired by these people??

  • Friday Links Banner 150x150Over at the Free RPG Blog, Rob Lang has done a review of… the Nevermeet Press website?? Yes, that’s right – he’s reviewing the website as a source of great, free, system-generic resources for roleplaying games. This has to be one of the best breakdowns of what a particular site provides that I’ve seen. Jonathan and Michael have done amazing work and Rob is just letting us all know we should pay more attention. :)
    http://thefreerpgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/illuminate-your-tired-grey-matter-with.html
  • At Game in the Brain, Nikolas has provided a list of great free open source resources you can use to create your game materials. Everything from OpenOffice to create the textual content to GIMP for the graphics to Scribus for the desktop publishing. As someone who has been working in open source for the last 4 years or so, it brings tears of joy to see open source applications heralded outside the software industry! I’d also add FreeMind, an open source mind mapping tool, to his list as a great resource.
    http://gameinthebrain.blogspot.com/2009/11/some-open-source-tools-for-game.html
  • From The RPG Athenaeum we have a wonderful list of 100 street scenes for Medieval settlements – otherwise known as “adding crunch” to what might otherwise be a static world. I know that I will soon be leveraging any number of these simple prompts in a game to spawn some creativity when things go stagnant. Why don’t you roll 2d10 and see what you end up with? Ah… #50 “While walking past a temple, a hero is struck in the back with rotten fruit (in warmer months) or a snowball (in winter). The only person visible when the hero looks behind him is an elderly woman, ambling about nonchalantly.” Happens to me all the time!!
    http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/one-hundred-street-scenes-for-medieval-settlements/
  • Wimwick at Dungeon’s Master.com has some thoughts on getting players engaged. Starting with a little, tantalizing bit of information sometimes gets the imagination going into overdrive and causes players to… ask questions, get involved, and generally dive into the world and adventure to find answers to the questions that they have to answer or else go insane… :)
    http://dungeonsmaster.com/2009/11/engaging-your-players/
  • And Yax over at Dungeon Mastering has come up with 30 fiction writing tips to make us all better GMs… And, like Wimwick’s thoughts about engaging players, Yax’s #1 tip is to focus on the well crafted detail or NPC to help tell a great story. How can anybody really argue with that?? This is the first 10 tips… more are coming in the next couple of days!
    http://www.dungeonmastering.com/tools-resources/30-fiction-writing-tips-that-will-make-you-a-better-dm-part-1

Hope everybody has a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!! And if you feel like providing some feedback, take a look at my Design Question of the Week and throw your $0.02 into the mix. I’d love some more input!

–Fitz

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Friday Links for October 30, 2009

October 30, 2009 in Friday Links, Inspiration, Resources by Fitz | 4 comments

Hey all…

Yes, I’m a bit late this week. Sorry about that. First ugly cold of autumn for me and work has been keeping me busy. That didn’t stop a whole mess of people coming up with some interesting articles to keep us all thinking about gaming. :)

Friday Links Banner 150x150We’ll get the list started off this week with some Halloween-themed posts:

  • Dungeon’s Master has an awesome Zombie Survival Flowchart this week, which made my week. Definitely check it out! I started giggling as soon as I hit “Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse?” -> no -> “You wet yourself.” -> “Do you change into clean clothes?” :) Zombie Survival Flowchart
  • And from Dungeon Mastering, we have an awesome summary of all things “zombie”… You must know your enemy to combat it! And it definitely helps to follow rule #4 – “Find the Necromancer.” :) Zombie-pocalypse

A few posts about magic:

  • Tankards & Broadswords today brought up using magic actually inspired by the realms of the occult, wicca, and so on. And though I won’t be sanctioning trying to summon beings from the lower planes in real life, I have to admit to a fascination with the “rules” of magic practitioners in the real world. Great food for thought, whether your campaign is in a fantasy realm or the “real” world!Putting Some Real Magic in Your Gaming
  • At Troll and Flame, I found myself presented with an idea that I’d bounced around with Mike (our GM) a number of times. “Magic Missile” is a pretty boring spell name when you think about it. I changed it to “Finger of Death” so I could give your enemies the “finger” whenever we were in combat… The solution in the article is to NOT name the spell – but let the player name it. What a concept – easy way to get the player involved in the world by defining a part of how his character interacts with it!Magical Monday – Personalized Magic

A few posts about the RPG industry:

  • The Seven-Sided Die has an interesting article about the cost-effectiveness of POD and shipping, which I found very interesting because I’ve used Lulu for publishing Moebius Adventures Core Rules. It is definitely not cost effective for one copy, but gets more cost effective the more copies you buy.A Comment on POD and Shipping
  • LivingDice has a very interesting way of looking at the RPG business model, from The Citadel to the Beer Garden and finally to the Bazaar. Anybody involved in publishing (or trying to, like myself) RPGs should give it a look and see what they think. I know I’ll be spending some brain power on it.The Citadel, the Beer Garden, and the Bazaar
  • Another article about RPG business comes from Wondrous Imaginings by Joe the Lawyer… He contends that D&D at Wizards of the Coast might not have gone the same way it has if it had focused more on PR and customer service. It definitely makes me think that PR & customer service should be high on the priority list for any small game company or game designer. Honestly that’s a good idea in any business. :) The Role of Customer Service in a RPG Company

And finally, a scattering of posts on a variety of other topics:

  • Over at the Sea of Stars, I found a well-thought-out view of evil and why evil characters work in a campaign. It’s along the lines of my own idea that there really is no good or evil, but an individual working toward a goal. If you think it’s ok to chop off a few heads along the way, you might be evil. :) Game Theory: Moral Dilemmas – Playing Evil
  • At Abstract XP, we get a bit of a primer on the difference between plot and story. And it’s a great refresher if you haven’t considered the difference for a while (like me!).Plotting Adventures: Part One
  • Also in the vein of defining “evil”, at the World of Alidor blog we find them discussing a greedy, but not quite evil god named Yol. But what really got me thinking was the comparison of evil to a deadly virus like ebola. Sure, it can spread, but it typically kills so quickly that it dies out and becomes dormant, waiting for the next opportunity to strike. I like the analogy. :) The Good, the Bad, Gods and Spirits of Alidor
  • Critical Failure – the GURPS Podcast pointed us at a great article on the anatomy of Japanese folk monsters, with some amazing images. You have to love the Japanese for their dedication to detail, even if it’s for a mythological creature!Potential Encounters: Anatomy of Japanese Folk Monsters points you to… Anatomy of Japanese Folk Monsters
  • And lastly, in the category of “go ahead, lay some history on me” we have an amazing article on the Persian Empire from the Sea of Stars blog… This is another one I’m going to have to devour a piece at a time to milk as much as I can out of it. :) Through the Lens of History 5: The Great King

As per usual, thanks to all the writers of these great, thought provoking posts! Have a great weekend and a wonderful Halloween!

–Fitz

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Playtest Update, Food for Thought, and a Story

October 29, 2009 in Design, Events, Playtesting by Fitz | 3 comments

Hi all…

So Tuesday night, through the Colorado Springs RPG Meetup group and the nice folks at Gamer’s Haven, I ran a sample adventure as a playtest opportunity. We had 6 folks, plus myself, so we had a great turnout this time and an amazing amount of input.

  • RPG DiceShannon was nice enough to arrange everything on the CSprings Meetup board and book a table at Gamer’s Haven. She played the thief Kress.
  • Johnny played the fighter Hans, battle axe in hand.
  • JP played Father Goul, the priest of the group.
  • Frank played the guard Rod.
  • Nathan played the huntswoman Andra.
  • And Arpie played the huntsman Andrax. (I’d run out of characters, so we improvised.)

It was a great mix of players, some of whom have game design experience, which led to some very interesting conversations about game mechanics and impressions of the system based on the quick start summary of the rules and the character sheets.

Among the food for thought provided was:

  • The d12 mechanic for characteristic and skill resolution didn’t work well. After a 45 minute discussion of bell curve distributions for die rolls, we ended up with using 2d6 for the rest of the night. A 2 or 3 was a critical success and an 11 or 12 was a critical failure. The goal was to roll as low as possible under a target characteristic score (either the characteristic we’re “checking” or the highest characteristic for the skill).
  • The “feet per action” mechanic didn’t really work when we moved it to a hex map. We changed it to “hexes” per action, where a hex was 5 feet across. I believe some of this was due to a misunderstanding about how possible actions worked in combat, but we just went with it.
  • It came up that it would be nice if characters who were cooperating on a task requiring a skill (such as Tracking) gained a bonus for working together. Since party collaboration is a great goal in gaming, we decided that if cooperation was declared, each character would roll their skill separately and gain a +1 on the attempt. And all characters cooperating would then gain the best roll for that action.
  • The other main thing that came up was that 16 characteristics seems like far too many and the Random characteristics (Beauty, Wealth, Family, and Luck) should roll into other characteristics (like Beauty could be considered part of Charisma) or become separate entities (like Luck could simply be a pool of points a player could buy with XP or at character creation).

I think all of this is great. I really appreciate having the input of other folks. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been wearing blinders when dealing with some of the “system” aspects, so it’s nice to see things with fresh eyes.

The whole process has kick-started some serious noodling over the rules and how I could simplify the mechanics to keep things fast, easy, and open so players can focus on roleplaying and creativity. We’ll see where it leads me.

Man on FireI owe a big thank you to Shannon and everyone who showed up, as well as Gamer’s Haven for providing us a table on a Tuesday night!

Before I sign off however, I have to relate a story from the end of the session that will stick with me for a while.

The group had attacked the brigand stronghold and dispatched the four useless guards patrolling within the partially ruined/rebuilt walls. Among the buildings are the ruins of a crumbled tower with an open doorway and stairs descending into the ground…

Hans, axe in hand, bravely headed down the stairs into the darkness. Near the bottom he heard the movement and growling of something large. He smelled it too – the musky scent of an animal den was unmistakable. But he couldn’t see in the dark, so he climbed back up, grabbed a torch, and headed down again…

Meanwhile, Andrax had come up with the idea of dousing one or more of the straw-filled mattresses in the guard’s bunk house, tossing it to the bottom of the tower stairs, and letting it smoke out anybody who might be down there. So, oil-soaked mattress in hand, he went down the stairs…

During this time, Hans had been attacked by the far-too-large wolf and was fleeing back up the stairs, axe and torch in his hands. Running up, he stumbles into Andrax with the oil-soaked mattress, setting it and them on fire, with both of them falling back down the stairs to the bottom. The wolf took a number of steps backwards and had a WTF moment. :)

It was a classic “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” moment as the torch met the mattress… :)

–Fitz

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