Plumbing the depths of G+

With the pending end of Google+ (G+), I thought I'd spend a day grabbing all the various RPG things I'd tossed into a private circle. Which for those down the road: when G+ started, it had Circles which were custom mini friends lists, that also had -IIRC- some weirdly arbitrarily small number allowed in each. I think the idea was to offset the mega friends lists people have on FB. Anyways a tip I'd been given, because it was hard to "save something for later", was to create a private circle and share it there. Then you just go and pull up the private circle to find them. Google did away with limit on circle sizes, and then circles pretty much altogether. But it was still a decent way to squirrel away others post to -maybe- look at later.

That being said, its been an interesting trip. Some of the blogs that were linked to the posts are still around, some haven't updated in years. A few only posted for a brief time, and some -like this one- have starts and stops. Sadly, some of the posts were from people on G+ and they've taken down all of their work because the hassle of moving it wasn't worth it.

Things I'll miss from G+:

• The sense of actual community each of the Communities had. You had people like me rubbing virtual elbows with authors, artists, and who ever. Popular peeps and niche peeps too. You never knew who you'd bump into in some communities. The Star Wars D6 RPG Community even had some of the guys who wrote the original D6 RPG as active members.
• The level of civility that existed in those communities, which in some cases wasn't much. That said, the worst I ever saw on G+, was higher then most groups on FB. 
• Being able to find things! Having used Myspace, FB, and G+, G+ was hands down the best to use. You could actually sort by date, and its wasn't messed with by an algorithm. Finding your comments where a little touchy, but doable. Try that one on FB.
• The integration between G+, Drive, and Gmail. So useful.
• Tripping over fun little snippets of things. Like funny memes, gaming advice, odd stories people would share. 

Things I won't miss:

• Blogs spamming multiple communities. You know who you were!
• Umm... The fact that its closing???

Anyways, the point of this post isn't just a bit of rumination, its also a quick "Hey, heres somethings you might have never found other wise." kinda of thing. So keep scrolling for links.

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The Signe of the Frothing Mug - "Making it at Home", 4 Aug 2014; A post talking about how medieval towns worked, and some idea for lodgings within that knowledge.

Mythlands of Erce - "Dragonlance was a Unique Sandbox", 3 Aug 2017; Its Dragonlance and a sandbox. Why wouldn't you love this? ;P I kid, but it looks at one of the other products in DL. Most people -as far as I've noticed- only seem to know about the DL1-16. Which is the prototype for all adventure paths that came later.

High Level Games - "Eight Unusual Ways to Enter Ravenloft", 13 June 2017; When fog becomes too dull to use. I had at one point thought of using Ravenloft as a good segue within a campaign between major arcs of things. It was also going to be a good way to move the characters huge distances for now reason.

Elfmaids and Octipis - "d100 Wasteland Compound Structures", 27 Sep 2016; I'm a sucker for random tables and such. And this whole post was right up my alley.

Another post from above - "Self Aware Dungeon Generation", 19 November 2015; More 13th Age, but it does go in the Interesting Ideas mental folder.

Notes of the Wandering Alchemist - "Reskinning: Lizardfolk from Around the World", April 12, 2016; This article influenced me to include lizardmen in my Kowloon City (link), with an idea of making them cave lizards. Blind albinos are always fun when they show up in fiction.

Fantastic Maps - Their tutorials and how tos are awesome. Like drop what your doing, head over there and read some of these. I'll wait...

Done? Great right?! Continuing on...

Red Blob Games - In their own words: "I make interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms, using motivating examples from computer games." The Polygon map generator, a later version, and the article their based on "Polygonal Map Generation for Games", are worth a look if you enjoy playing with mapping software.

Burn After Running - "Tenra Bansho Zero One-Shots", 1 May 2018; Tenra Bansho Zero is a JRPG, that is built for one shots, but there is some wiggle room for long adventures, but not for long running characters. This is a great resource for getting it started. Its a system that drips anime crazy, but you need to read the rules first. Or just use the sourcebook (you get a rulebook and a sourcebook in a set) and your own favorite rules and have fun. 

Another for TBZ is: Deeper in the Game - "GMing Tenra Bansho Zero", 16 Jan 2014; Its goes into more thoughts on running TBZ. They also have several other articles of related material.

Inkarnate showed up multiple times in my stream, so if you haven't poked at it, do give it a whirl. It'll take some practice (or paying for the Pro version) to knock out some nice maps.

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Well, I figure I've gone on for a bit now. While there was quite a bit more "saved" in my stream, mostly odd die drop tables, charts and tables, and various humorous images, most of it wasn't something share worthy.

Till next time.

*Miniupdate from like ten minutes later: I need to go through my Starred blog post on Inoreader too. Its not going anywhere, but there are 150+ of them...

Stealing ideas from video games.

So while playing the lite-RPG that is Ghost Recon Wildlands -yes it is, and even a sandbox one at that- I was letting my thoughts wander as I flew yet another aircraft 5 to 10 km across digital Bolivia. I realized while doing this that the system for gaining and calling in rebel support could be partially ported over to a short set of rules and tables. Which then lead me to the fact that no matter what you do to the cartel or corrupt military force, your always hip deep in both with the slightest blunder. At max for the military, you have cobra gunships circling you like sharks, and a whole lot of troops. Fixes to this have occupied most of my time at loading screens since I first started playing the game.

First off, the basic frame for the influence system would start with a paired down version of DCC's dice chain mechanic: D6-D8-D10-D12-D20. Most people have a basic dice set that includes these, so this system is not going to require more than they already have. However, if you do have a full set of DCC dice, I wouldn't go under D6 and I certainly would not go above D30. This die would then be rolled against a fixed table consisting of "Opposite of Request", "Nothing Happens", "Request Fulfilled", and "More Then Requested".

Now every group the players could influence or be influenced by, gets a dice (D6 to D20). What die -high or low- they start with, depends on the circumstances of the area and whether the players are trying to work with or against them.

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For example, if the players headed over to medieval Nottinghamshire and set themselves up as Robin Hood and his merry men, interacting with the peasantry and the Sheriff and his men. To start the groups there would get:

• Peasants - D6
• Sheriff and his men - D20

The peasants aren't to sure about this whole idea of robbing people on the road (and they certainly don't think they'll see any of the money), and the Sheriff and his men are no worse then most at this point. So if the players request aid or a favor from them, their still iffy about it. On the otherhand, if the Sheriff or his men tell them to do something, they'll most likely do it.

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Now after several weeks of robbing the rich and giving to the poor, the Sheriff's overreacting, and the players generally making him and his men look like fools, things might shift:

• Peasants - D12
• Sheriff and his men - D10

The peasants are now more likely to assist the players and not the Sheriff. Its now sure bet, but at least they won't be ratted out at every turn.

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When the Sheriff is finally run off or killed -and his men as well- things might look like this:

• Peasants - D20
• Sheriff - N/A

Cue the wedding music and the return of King Richard, and roll credits on the this adventure.

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All of this can fit on a 3x5 card, doesn't require remembering any modifiers or what not. Short and simple.

So what do ya think?

My own thoughts on "Homework" in RPGs.

An interesting topic came up over on The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms blog earlier in the week, concerning "homework" that players would have to do to be able to participate in an RPG. The thought started over on Necropraxis, and also spawned a reply at Chicagowiz's Games blog and a followup post on Nine and Thirty.

Now I know I'm sort of riding coat tails here, but I felt it a bit topical as I enjoy a good open sandbox of a game and linear-ish adventures equally. I mean, my white whale is running the complete (ish again) Dragonlance modules, so I can't say I'm total on board for minimal background knowledge on the players part. To run that, you would have to know more then a handful of bullet points as they suggested. Though Chicagowiz has a two step system -a quick page for handing out at games/conventions and a full on wiki- for his campaign world. Which seems to strike a good balance between the two. I would highly encourage you to read what they said, not just because their interesting reads, but their also better writers then I.

My own addition to the conversation goes to both sides: an even more minimal approach, that I used once, simply focuses on the game's overall tone. Conversely, there is a minimum amount of background that would be required to actually be ready for a Dragonlance Classic campaign.

For minimal I present my short lived FATE Starship Troopers game, the set of power point slides I whipped up to show my players, that pretty much summed up my thoughts on the various version of SSTs. 

Using the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly motif, I laid out my thoughts on the game's tone. Keeping their -player's characters- tone in line with the novel or the better adaptions that were the animated movie (Traitor of Mars wasn't around yet) and show, would be okay. Dipping into the movies would cause a nudge from me, and uttering the phrase -after we started; I let them get it out of their systems up front- "Would you like to know more?" would incur a painfully stiff penalty.* Thankfully I never had to use the penalty. The game started well, and if our schedules hadn't caused the game to disintegrate, our group might have had more adventures.

My approach was fairly similar to the keep it simple approaches used in the above posts. My homebrew setting details also only filled the front of a page because FATE is a very off the cuff system to begin with. The emphasis was on enjoyment and playing the game, not being overly detailed.

On the other end of things, the minimum background needed for the Dragonlance Classics modules is a bit more involved. In no particular order, players would have to know about:

• The Cataclysm 
• The Pantheon of gods and their absence
• Various races - Three major races of Dwarves; three races of Elves; dozens of races of Humans; the walking aggravations that are Gnomes and Kender; and the "Goblinoid" races. And thats just what characters might know, otherwise that list is huge. 
• Each races internal "pecking order", and how much all the races distrust/hate each other. Not to mention the various feuds that includes.
• Magic, its three schools/moons, and the rules system that goes with them
• Steel is more important than gold.
• No clerical magic (thus no healing spells) and possible persecution for those that find it  (to start) 

And thats if your not using the Innfellows (characters of the books) for characters and their back stories. Because it is a set of modules, you can't just off the cuff run things, particularly with the fact that many of its pieces are tied to specific locations in the world.**

A final thought, if you were to run a game set in the Star Wars or Star Trek universes, what would you expect the players to know? Just the movies/TV shows? Both in the case of Star Trek? If everyone is mostly familiar with the setting, would homework even be necessary?

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*As you might guess, I really don't like the live action movies, nor Traitor of Mars. The tone is completely opposite of the book's and as much as I like Robocop, Verhoeven blew it when he made the movie. Imagine the shit storm that would have happened if the guys who made the Dungeons and Dragons movie, slapped a layer of Lord of the Rings over it. The second animated movie had the same writer as the three live action movies and it shows.

**I know DLC catches flak for railroading, but it is set in a series of novels, so its kinda of implied. The fact that it pretty much caused all following modules to be railroads is a very valid point, and I don't try to fight it.