RPGs
This is seriously awesome!
Pictish Rock Art a Written Language. (from Boing Boing)
Although I suddenly realise I’ve never seen anyone use pictograms for a fantasy language. Odd. But my theoretical ‘Celtic islands dark fantasy game’ is definitely going to have a ancient pictographic language in it.
It’s been a while – how about some links?
I have totally let Thursday link day get away from me. But here’s a few…
- The LA Times writing on D&D.
- An interview from Wizards with Zak S. Zak writes a really cool blog called Playing D&D With Porn Stars which is mostly general musings on his style of D&D and playing with a group who aren’t traditional gamers. Seriously – it’s a really interesting read from a rally interesting guy.
- E6 – it’s a style of D&D that involves limiting levels to level 6 and not progressing further. Low level play for the win! There’s rules for 3/3.5 and rules for 4e. My favourite levels of D&D are a bit beyond this – say 8 till 12 – but I like the basic idea a lot.
- A Spanish Civil War card game! Two of my favourite obsessions in one! The Spanish Civil War is a really underutilised part of history for gaming I think – one day I’ll write my Call of Cthulhu Spanish Civil War game.
Finally here’s a TED talk from game designer Jane McGonigal about how if we increase our weekly online gaming hours to 21 billion we can save the world. It’s complete bullshit, but it’s interesting bullshit!
Meet Victor Wong
A while back I said I’d put up some old PC backgrounds. Here’s another one from another of Kyle the Viking Hat GM’s games. This one was Osere, a modern espionage game using Kyle’s home-brewed rules. Here’s the character – Victor Wong. Criminal.
Victor was born Wong Ke Lo to a comfortable middle class family in Taipei in 1979. His father, Wong Fai Hun, was a businessman with vague connections to the Bamboo Union, one of Taiwan’s main triad organisations, through his Kuomintang background. An only child, Victor was an unimpressive student, a loner who only found solace in the gymnasium. Victor was a good gymnast, but lacked the competitive drive to truly excel.
After the senior Wong annoyed the wrong Bamboo Union functionary, Victor was targeted for recruitment – a subtle punishment for the upstanding businessman. He was an easy target as his antisocial tendencies made him comfortable with the life of crime while welcoming the social contact the triad provided. His father was mortified, but warned to stay away by Victor’s new ‘friends’ He was only 16, but quickly became a useful second story man for the Triad, breaking in to allow enforcers into buildings as well as minor thefts. The Union taught Victor to fight and use a gun as well as the basic intricacies of alarm systems.
At 17, Victor was nearly convicted for burglary after a job went wrong. Fai Hun interceded to bribe the cops responsible for the bust and decided he had to get the family out. Immigration to Australia seemed the best way to get Victor away from the triad as well as avoid any further shame to the family. In 1996 the Wongs moved to Melbourne as economic migrants, buying a news agents and settling in Box Hill. Victor was just young enough to come with his parents.
Melbourne didn’t help Victor’s behaviour. He quickly fell in with 14K, a Sydney based triad with Melbourne offshoots, and got back into his old ways and quickly became estranged from his parents. But a period in jail in 2001 helped scare Victor, convincing him he wasn’t invincible. After he got out, he moved to Bidawal, not telling any of his triad friends where he was going. He started to look around for other ways to make a living, scraping by on odd jobs and the occasional break in but generally trying to keep his head down. Eventually Sonny Kim, the Bidawal Police Department’s Asian Community Liaison officer, told Victor that he might know of some work for someone with skills like his. Sonny was as corrupt as they come, but he could see that Victor was trying to get out. Now Victor is with OSERE. He’s hoping that he’ll be able to make a living, find some of what attracted him to triad life and stay out of jail.
The coolest sounding RPG book I’ve heard of in a while
Lucha Libre HERO! I can’t imagine ever getting around to running this but I like the fact that I live in a word where it can exist.
(via Ken Hite)
Need a 1920′s character photo?
I had a GM a while back who required us to all get photos for our characters. It wasn’t something I’d done before and I’m not sure we really used them much but I thought it was a decent idea.
Today I found (via Very Short List) this cool flickr set of 1920′s passport photos. They’re of famous people but they’re largely not recognisable (and not all of them are still famous). Perfect for a Pulp game or some 20′s Call of Cthulhu.
Want to play ars Magica? Live in Singapore?
If so check us out!
My Gamemaster is looking to expand our group up to 4 players (we’re currently at two). It’s a fun game (that I should post about more) so hopefully we’ll find someone soon.
Monday Musings: A gaming conundrum
In the last few years I’ve come into contact with a heap of different table top roleplaying games some of which I’ve played and others that I’ve just wanted to.
Recently though I’m finding that the games that I play which demand a high level of player buy in and direction are the ones I’m enjoying the most. This doesn’t just mean “dirty hippie indie games” (or small press games, or shared narrative games or what ever you want to call them) but also more “traditional” games in which the players take an active role in trying to develop the plot, rather than just waiting for the GM to tell them what happens so they can react to it. This often means that I get disappointed as both a player (when a GM refuses any input from me into the outcome of an action or scene) and as a GM (when the other people I play with want me to tell them exactly what I want to happen, with no input from them) because I see this roleplaying thing we do as a a shared story telling experience.
I really enjoy shared narration games. I love how they promote more player buy in for their characters, especially in the compressed time frames of Con games. The fantasic play experiences the I’ve had with these games have made me expect more from the people I play with, and made me fight against the idea that as a GM I’m just here to “bring the fun”. Being GM doesn’t stop me from being a player, it just means I have a different role.
So what to do about this? How am I going to continue to play in and run games where I feel that I’m getting out of them what I want? Well for starters I’m going to write games where that kind of buy in is needed. Some times that means mixing more traditional games with shared narration ideas, like I did in a recent Mongoose Traveller scenario I wrote, Still to Come. Other times it will be to ask the players for the things they want to happen, and if they don’t focus on those who do. As a player I’m going to offer ideas to the person running the game and if those ideas are consistently ignored or sidelined I’ll find myself another game.
All these things are easier said than done. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, so expect more posts of my random game related musing.
Dragon Age RPG mini review
The other day I pent 4 or so hours playing through the introductory Dragon Age adventure The Dalish Curse. This gave me my first taste of the new Dragon Age RPG ruleset in play and over all my impressions were positive.
The stunt system was a fun way to make combat more dynamic, with out bogging down the rules. I’ll be especially interested in how they add new stunts as the box sets are released. I noticed even in our one session that people gravitated to the same stunts. Unfortunately the other day my dice weren’t in the mood to pair up, which made each time they did that much more exciting.
Otherwise the system was easy to pick up and didn’t seem overly intrusive in play. There was some discussion around the table on the Dragon Die and it’s place as the decider of success levels. Personally that didn’t bother me too much. If you succeed at a task, you succeed. The number of successes you have only matters occasionally. Using them in extended tests did seem a little cumbersome to me however. But as with all these things I’d just adjust how I used them so it didn’t get in the way.
I was playing a Dalish ranger type so didn’t have much to do with the magic system. there was quite a lot of discussion after the game on whether mages are ineffective. Reading through the rules I’m not sure it’s such a problem. The ability for people to turn aside a spell seems like a good one, especially going forward. Perhaps it could have been streamlined so that you have a Magic defence score rather than needing to do a roll every time to see if it gets through. But I’m sure that is the type of thing groups will house rule if they feel strongly about it.
I’d be a little reluctant to kick off any sort of campaign (even if I had the time) until I had a firm idea of when box set 2 will be out. I have a feeling that many of the gripes I’ve read in forums about the lack of setting info will be addressed in the up coming box sets. There are two releases already announced, the Blood in Fereldan adventure pack and the Dragon Age Game Master’s Kit. No release dates for these yet however.
All in all I liked the system and think it works well and has room to grow with the additions. If you have been looking for a light weight fantasy system then this might just be it. I’m planning on running an adventure at KapCon this month, so look out for the actual play report of that.
Ashelle Litwyn – Sophie’s character backgrounds
Following on from Nick’s post the other day about an old PC of his, I thought I’d do the same. This is a PC I’ve just rolled up for (possibly) a one off game of the new Green Ronin Dragon Age RPG (first impressions here), but for some reason I’ve got a really good sense of who she is, maybe due to her being from a world I’m already familar with.
Ashelle Litwyn was born as just another of the Dalish Elves. Both her parents were well liked and active members of the Clan and she wanted fo nothing.
As she grew she was expected to take a more active role within the Clan and it was noticed by most that she had quite an abtitude with the bow. It is this that lead to her nickname, Ash. She was never seen with out her ash wood bow. She started ranging far and wide as the aravel made their stately way across Ferelden learning more and more as she went.
However it was her first meeting with humans that really started her down the path she is on now. Unlike many of her kind this meeting was not particularly traumatic and it didn’t end in the death of all her family. Rather, Ash stumbled across a human child lost in the forest and returned her to her farmholder parents. In gratitude the family invited the young Elf in for dinner and told her stories of their familes.
Since that day Ash has been fascinated with Humans, Human culture and Human history. Her parents dispair that it will inevitably end in her death and the rest of her Clan think her slightly mad to be interested in the race that almost caused ther distruction.
She is slightly short for an elf, but with her peoples natural grace. She is naturally inqusitive but it is her naivity that really amazes people. Despite having encountered the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity she still sees them as facinating creatures and wishes to know all she can about them.
Dragon Age the RPG – first impressions
Just before Christmas Green Ronin announced that they were starting to take pre-orders for their new licenced RPG, Dragon Age. As an extra insentive they offerd a free PDF version for ever hard copy ordered. Being a bit of a Green Ronin fan, and also having just spent the majority of my free time playing the Xbox version of the game, I decided to take advantage of this offer (which if any one is interested is still avalible).