[I found the notes for this yesterday and thought I'd share it here. I originally shared this idea in a Wave with my gaming group.]
How do we get the most out of a game with a big, rich setting?
Given our busy lives, big setting books aren’t the answer.
Weapons of the Gods monetized setting info in the form of Lore Sheets. But part of the problem is you still need to read through (or at least skim) all of them to decided which ones you want. Regardless it got me thinking about using Lore Sheets to deliver setting info.
There may still be a better way. Life Paths are certainly an option. As you create the Life Path, setting info is embedded in the various points along the way. There’s some cool ideas along these lines over at Conspiracy of Shadows (here, here, and here.)
With that in mind I though about using Lore Sheets as setting delivery and here’s what I’ve got so far.
* Each Lore Sheet has 3 ranks. Basic, Knowledge, Experience.
* Each Rank provides a bonus when applicable. Right now this is system independent.
* The info in each rank of a lore sheet is cumulative.
For purposes of the game I am envisioning, you would create Lore sheets for what you wanted, but only the rank which you had it at. I would then fill out the rest, then we could share them so anyone could take those created by someone else. You might have say 3 rank 1, 2 rank 3, and 1 rank 5. Then, after they were created, you could take one more of each rank.
Below are two examples.
Order of The Knights of Mitra
Basic [1] An order of noble warriors of Fortia who fight in the name of their god, Mitra. Their sysmbol is a golden sunburst.
Knowledge [3] Dedicated to The Chapters on Fidelity by Arabraxes the Elder, Knights of Mitra hold themselves to a strict code of honor. Rarely found outside of Fortia except as elite units within a larger Fortian military expedition. Within Fortia they keep the Church of Mitra “pure.” They consider their sword sacred.
Experience [5] The Chapters on Fidelity emphasizes personal honor as dedication to courage, benevolence, loyalty and purity. Knights of Mitra abstain from sex, wine and spirits, and all meat save fowl. The sword is a symbol of office and has a mystical connection to Mitra’s Sword. All oaths sworn on a Mitran sword are matters of life and death. The Order is organized into chapters with five ranks.
* Postulants are new applicants and act as servants in the chapter house.
* Novices act as squires and foot soldiers,
* Knights are the primary rank of most members,
* Knight-Commanders lead a platoon of Knights (usually 3 within a chapter), and
* Knight-Generals lead a chapter.
The entire order comes together in a conclave where the Knight-Generals hold council. Chapters are regional and root out heresy, defend the faithful, and usually have another chapter-specific duty (charity, hospital, care for widows and orphans). the Royal Chapter serves as one of the 3 main units of the Emperor’s Guard.
The Ishkai
Basic [1] The Ishkazi are a tribe of fierce horse nomads who range over the Iskun Steppe. They wear pointed hoods and are excellent archers.
Knowledge [3] Ability is the only requisite to be an Ishkazi warrior and their ranks include men and women. They keep herds of reindeer and nearly all their material culture is either reindeer or horse derived. They practically live on horseback and intermittently raid the lands that border the Ishkun Steppe. They sell slaves taken in raids and have a fascination for silver.
Experience [5] Three main tribes of Ishkazi are divided into clans. Clans are further dived into families. Arranged marriages are the norm, but they always between different clans or tribes.
Ishkazi worship the Horse Lord, Hazun, and his mate the Reindeer Queen, Azami.
Ishkazi society is divided into three castes: warriors, herders, and the helpless. Warriors tend the herds and herders fight to defend their territory, but only warriors raid other tribes or outsiders.
Technically children are included in the helpless until their 13th summer when they are tested. Adult helpless are either foreign captives, warriors or herders no longer able to ride, or elderly. Helpless are those unable to fight or herd. Unless they are elderly, they tend camp and gather wild food.
Outside the 3 castes are the Shamans. They live separately from the camps, but usually nearby.
Not to long ago I ran a Star Wars RPG set in the Old Republic. Instead of using one of the published games, I used the PDQ# system as found in Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. It was a perfect fit for the kind of high-action, swashbuckling adventure I wanted my Star Wars game to be.
I mentioned on Twitter and the S7S yahoo group that I was doing this.
Just today someone emailed me asking if I had any notes on the hack and so, without further ado, notes on the SOTOR/S7S hack I did:Swashbucklers of the Old Republic.
My entry for the OPD contest is called Tomb of the Sea Wraith and can be found below. the list of entries, many linked, can be found here.
I was really excited to work on this–a project whose scope I can handle! I even started working on a Temple of the Croc Gods. Crocs are my personal GMing trope. Nearly every campaign I have run with my current group has a croc somewhere. Even my Deadlands game had a friendly lady werecroc.
But then I realized I was making a very cliched dungeon-no way to win a contest. So I scrapped it and started from scratch. I asked myself what would make an interesting scenario. How about an combining things that don’t belong together..like ships…and dungeons. Oh and a giant squid monster.
So we’ve got an underground ship, the titular Sea Wraith, and a giant squid monster trapped together underground.
The other thing I did was to use a diamond grid (or whatever the technical term is) for a 3-D look. I think it works better for a ship, and gives me more real estate to add some flavor text and a picture.
Speaking with Jason at lunch and talking about Dokkodo duels. Had some positive feedback and interesting ideas. Because dueling is deterministic (no randomizer) he suggested adding a few more decision points (speed, feint, false attitude)
Current pieces of a duel: Ryu: Determines values for 5 Attitudes Ryu Rank: Added to Attitude Rank for final comparison 5 Attitudes: The 5 “techniques” of each ryu: Upper, Middle, Lower, Right Side, Left Side. Has a strike and defend value. Strike: The offensive value for an attitude Defense: The defensive value for an attitude. Attack: A specific combat maneuver. If successful, does damage. Probe: A specific combat maneuver. If successful, reveals a weakness (gives a bonus to next Attack, cumulative over multiple tests.)
I am considering making dueling like a card game: You begin with 5 Attitude Cards, 1 Attack Card, 1 Probe Card, and any other cards (okuden, special weapons, etc).
You lay your Attitude card face down (the reverse shows what attitude it is, obverse show the stats) and either the Attack or Probe card. You zen out your opponent and can change cards at any time. When one declares attack, the other gets to change cards one more time. Then revela all cards and compare.
I love the deterministic/fatalistic way this sounds (no randomizer) and the fact that a highly experienced bushi would have several attitudes that he was hittable by lesser foes.
Thanks to an Amazon gift card for my birthday I was reading some new (to me) volumes of Usagi Yojimbo last night. And this got me churning on Dokkodo.
I started by reviewing GRG’s Usagi Yojimbo RPG. I love this game–even though I’ve never played it. It reads really well and captures the feel of the game. Usagi Yojimbo’s Japan is perfect for an RPG, just enough depth to be satisfying, but with plenty of room for players and GMs to bend and stretch without “screwing-up.”
I also like the “rock-paper-scissors” combat mechanic. But parts of it don’t seem well integrated with Instant Fuzon and I am still not sure how the normal Instant Fuzion combat maneuvers work with rock-paper-scissors. Also, some of the special abilities aren’t mechanically well defined (Dog and pig for example)
So I made a character. I didn’t dig too deep, just species (dog), occupation (retainer), and extra skill points. As I was doing this I was also digging around the combat rules…which led to notes on Dokkodo.
Some Design Goals:
Edo Period
Fights are quick
vs. minions/mooks 1 hit=1 kill; also dispatch many easily
vs. named opponents combat is very deadly (what do I mean by very deadly?)
Duels have a “stare-down” phae with mechanical impact
Duels have a “testing oponents technique” options that look for a weakness. These techniques would kill a mook
lethality of combat encourages social solutions
culturally relevant mechanic (cho-han, shoji, go, prayer slips as inspiration)
I immediately started thinking about how the 5 Attitudes could be used in combat. I am no martial artist, and hove no idea how these things really work, but as part of an RPG here’s my current thoughts.
Characters are trained in a specific Ryu. Each Ryu teaches some weapons and other techniques.
For combat each Ryu has an attack and defense rating for each attitude. So If you take the Upper attitude, you might have a 4 Strike and 2 Defense.
Oppents choose to attack or test. Test is a way of finding an opening in your opponent’s technique.
Opponents secretly choose what attitude they are using (playing cards would work well for this: Red for Strike, Black for Defend). Opponents compare the Strike and Defense of their attitudes (which are different for each Ryu) and determine the results.
If Attacking: Strike>Defense=Damage (difference of Strike and Defend as a multiplier?)*
If Testing: Strinke>Defense=Bonus to next turn (difference of Strike and Defend)
If Defense is greater, no change.
* I want single strike kills possible. Need to calibrate this so that minor strike is wounding, major strike is crippling, and a fatal strike is fatal.
I still need to figure out how ones skill in combat works. Perhaps rated 1-5 and added to the Strike/Defense values.
Before any of this, I want to have a sizing -up your opponnent, wherein you may get some indication of their abilities.
I love how fatalistic this is. There is no randomizer beyond the picking attitude in secret.
Perhaps find a way to use Cho-Han as a dice mechanic for Dokkodo. From what Wikipedia says, it’s a very simple even/odds game. I wonder how a game of 50/50 odds became so popular.
The Dokkodo contains 21 precepts.
Each precept is rated according to how well you have mastered it. Sensei 2, Student 1, Aware 0, unpracticed -1, fool -2.
If you act against a precept you must subtract a point from it. If it is already at -2, subtract from another, related precept.
Perhaps Precepts should be divided into categories:
Self/Others/Worlds
Self/World
Interior/Exterior
Perhaps based on the eight-fold path?
Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
Yeah, I know, what’s up with eleven? I basically started counting and stopped when I felt like I was grasping at straws.
This is in response to Zach’s poll for the Top 25 RPGS.
AD&D 2e. All through high school and college. We truly created legendary tales that are still discussed at the gaming table.
Savage Worlds. Hits all the sweet spots I want from a trad. game.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Opened my eyes to a different way of doing things. I can sharply divide my gaming experreinces into pre and post WtA epochs. This was before the internet and I had no idea thath RPG mechanics could be so different from what I was used to.
Deadlands Reloaded. Same as Savage Worlds plus the coolness of the setting. It may be my favorite published setting.
Risus. For so many reasons this is a perfect game. Simple mechanics that disappear into the background, simple presentation (6 pages), and free! Influential on my own game design ambitions.
Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (second attempt). Perfect marriage of presentation, setting, game design, and damn fun to play. Our group usually has a fair amount of table talk and tangential banter. When I ran Lacuna, I don’t think the players breathed, much less bantered tangentially.
WFRP 2e. Brought me back to the joy of a good fantasy game. I had pretty much given up.
Weapons of the Gods. I have had so much playing this game. From the fairly siple basic mechanic to the transparency of spending Destiny (xp) I love it.
nWoD. I have had a great time playing in a mortals game and I really it for a trad. system.
Usagi Yojimbo (GRG edition) I have neither run nor played this, but read and reread it many times. It constatnly leers at me from the shelf and begs to played or run. Hopefully someday. For a very trad. game I like the combat options.
Sengoku. Another game I have neither run nor played, but it is IMO the best historical RPG product ever, in terms of setting information (not interested in the Action! system). A vertibale cyclopedia of the Warring States period. Someday, I’ll run a samurai game and Sengoku and Usagi Yojimbo will be sitting next to me on the table.
Honorable Mention:
Houses of the BloodedI haven’t played HotB yet, but I will at some point. There’s a lot I like about this game, from player author stance to fixed target number.
Duty & Honour is my current darling. I am rereading it every chance I get. I am planning a game of this in May. I love the chargen rules and the whole mission rules.
[I wrote this for an RPG forum, then realized how far it veered from the topic. Nonetheless, there's something worth saving here for later use.]
Low-prep gaming doesn’t equal Tabula Rasa.
I enjoy creating detailed imaginative worlds. In fact I’ve created several that have barely been touched by my gaming group. I also enjoy no/low-prep GMing. Here’s the thing, the two are not mutually exclusive. Low-prep gaming can mean different things to different GMs. For some low-prep is specifically the prep given to a particular adventure or session. The setting may be a richly detailed home-brew, but the GM need only glance over a few notes to be ready for the night’s game. Conversely, the setting may be fairly generic, but with specific tropes and shared expectations that require few details.
What makes a successful (fun) low-prep game is something I’ll call the 3Cs*.
1. Comfort. The GM is comfortable with the setting and rules to be able to create content on the fly.
2. Confidence. Similar to comfort, confidence is about presentation. Comfort enable the GM to create content, but it is confidence which empowers the GM to present the content in an enjoyable way.
(A GM may have comfort without confidence or confidence without comfort, but sooner or later, the lack of one will become appearant to the players.)
3. Cooperation. Players must cooperate with the GM to generate the story at the table. They must have enough familiarity with style, genre, and expectations of play to participate in a meaningful manner.
My own experience with low-prep games has been that rules-light systems work best. But I believe that’s because I prefer rules-lite (comfort and confidence). Groups used to 3.5 should probably stick to it for a low-prep one-nighter.
In one of my best low-prep games, we were playing cinematic swashbuckling pirates. Even though I was the only one with much historical knowledge of pirates and things nautical, everyone had seen Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan, and Treasure Island. We could all jump into the setting feet first because we all knew the tropes.
*-Obviously this only applies to rpgs with a traditional GM/player breakdown.
