Gaming Update…

Last Friday my group finished up the character creation for our next game: Rolemaster.

The game has a name, a combo of the two suggested, which seems to indicate I’m headed for long running silliness: Six Savage Salvagers of the Seven Seas.  Before that they had named their ship the Incorrigible.  That seems to fit us.

Our framework is the characters are the officers of a salvage vessel in an archipeligo called The Beard that connects two contients.  On the eastern one is a large empire and a pseudo-Arabia.  The other is more secretive allowing trade and access only through a handful of ports.  The continents are also connected by a more northern archipeligo called The Brow.

The crew is somewhat Firefly like in that they take what jobs they can get and sometimes don’t worry too much about the morality of it all.

Interesting bits of trivia: the ships of the setting are more Chinese Junk than Western Cog/Crack.  This allows a smaller crew for a given size plus a little flavor.  Except for the Frenzing Barbar everyone is a spell caster, although only one pure one (and no hybrids).  Half the crew has a mysterious past (and the others haven’t provided backgrounds yet).  The only elves are aquatic and the only dwarves are Sea Dwarves (campaign secret: if you have the old Heroes magazine with the ships of Glorantha article those Dwarven ships roam the seas south of the beard towards the 10,000 Islands).

We don’t play this Friday so next week’s Tuesday post (gaming update) will be about my prep work for the first week.

My initial set to “An Alchemical Proposal”

Given I mentioned Jeff Rient's Alchemical Proposal in my last post I thought I should list my fantasy set for the challenge:

Rules

1. Core Rules: GORE
2. Similar Supplement: Monster Coliseum (AH Runequest supplement)
3. Dissimilar Supplement: Library of Bletherad from Palladium Books

Fluff

1. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
2. Coming of the Horseclans by Robert Adams
3. In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood.

No, I won’t give the one sentence outline like people are at Jeff’s blog.  That’s what we did in the old “pick three GURPS books” game.  This is something different.  This is an actual effort at synthesis as a form of creativity.

Alchemy of the Stars

So, inspired by Jeff Rient’s An Alchemical Proposal and a need to revisit how to go about doing my Imperial Space game given I won’t try to base it on OD&D I thought I’d try to boil it down to his rules + 2 supplements + 3 fluff standard.

Here is what I came up with:

Rules

1. Core Rules: GORE (what I picked for fantasy upon reading the original).
2. Similar rules supplement: Future World from the old Worlds of Wonder booked set.
3. Dissimilar rules supplement: Jedi Academy Sourcebook from the D6 Star Wars roleplaying game.
This book is not what I thought it was. I'll be looking for a psionics book of some kind.

Fluff

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Heretics of Dune
3. The Oresteia by Aeschylus

That’s it. Those six books are the canon sources for my Imperial Space game.

Winding down and starting up…

So, my second attempt at an old school game has been very successful.  Play has been nearly weekly for about five months, we’ve had a few character deaths, and I’ve had a blast.  I’ve especially enjoyed weaving pop culture references ranging from the Dresden Files to the old Friday the 13th: The Series to The Cask of Amontillado.  It is the most successful game I’ve run in a decade.

And I’m ending it, at least temporarily.

Why would I end the most successful game of mine in over ten years?  I could blame boredom but that’s too easy.  The problem is the game isn’t fun.

Now, before some old schooler goes on a Flame Princess style anti-fun rant hear me out.  City States is build on a desire to get back to my prime gaming roots as part of the old school movement.  But as I pointed out in a comment over at Grognardia despite having entered the hobby in the late 70s I am more in tune with D&D’s Silver Age (late 1st edition/early 2nd edition).  I think that is part of my issue.

I also poorly setup the sandbox aspect.  I didn’t communicate it well to players and only one really tried to drive his character.  But despite that I think I have to admit to my primary reason for boredom.

I don’t like D&D very much.  I was one of those guys in the late 70s/early 80s trying to fix D&D.  I bought RuneQuest as quickly as I could and played every system imaginable.  I was a big fan of The Fantasy Trip and later GURPS.  What playing D&D did for me was force to remember not only the good times I had playing it but the things that frustrated me.  While I can honestly say that they aren’t as bad as I remembered in the end OD&D isn’t, and probably never was, my game.

I’m sure someone from the old school movement will come to take my card, but you’ll have to pry it out of my hands along with my copy of Tunnels & Trolls.  You cannot deny the old school cred of a confirmed T&T referee.

Beyond that I’ve learned one other important lesson in this: I generally don’t do well with complex rules.  I’ve offered my group and all the players in the local club six options for a new Friday game as well as a second week night game.  Of the six three use very simple systems: Prose Descriptor Quality for two and Savage Worlds for one.  Of the three complex ones two are Basic Roleplaying variants and while the recent BRP book is a good three hundred pages either game is really about 50-100 pages of rules.  In fact, that was my goal: rules in under 100 pages for new games.  I’d also argue all three of these systems have a lot more reliance on the referee’s judgment than many modern games, especially PDQ.

What is the old man out? Rolemaster 2nd/Classic.  Yes, that is the antithesis of simple and ruling driven.  However, I’ve long thought a RM 2nd edition game in the Forgotten Realms had lots of potential and with three players interested in RM and the recent series over at The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope on the  FR I’m willing to give it a swing, although I pitched it as two games: “Masters/Questers of the Forgotten Realms” with Rolemaster and Questers of the Middle Realms (a PDQ game) as possible rules respectively.

And now it is for us to continue...

Grognardia is reporting Dave Arneson has passed away.

Yes, there are many of the founding generation left but with Dave's passing the two names on those little brown books are gone. For a variety of reasons, both fair and foul, Dave's name is not associated with D&D the way Gary's is. But certainly in our little community he is remembered.

And we should not forget his passing means the last final burden of duty falls to us. Our creators have left us and now it is for us to continue their creation in a way it hasn't been yet, not even after Gary died.

As for Dave, I hope that now both he and Gary have gone on to a place where the old wounds are completely healed and they can once again enjoy together the game they gave us. As Scott over at World of Thool pointed out this is a capstone to two bad years but man, that is one hell of a set of tables they can have going up there.

A Musical Tangent

Tonight's Oscillator Series Show was a multiple band CD release party. Among the releases was the new boxed set by Great Unwashed Luminaries, which gather and releases their first three albums plus a bonus disk. This is worth mentioning here for five reasons:

1. I'm thanked in the liner notes.
2. The boxed set is called Saving Throw vs. Spell.
3. Their second album was Unearthed Arcana with songs: "Power Word: Stun", "Power Word: Blind", "Geas", and "Power Word: Kill".
4. The back cover art for that album includes part of the Holmes cover dragon.
5. All the CDs are numbered with a D20.

For those interested the set is a 25 copy limited edition for $10 at Sink Hole Texas, Inc

My entry in the intro game idea sweepstakes

Since both James have recently argued for an intro boxed set (here and here I'm going to be contrary and say "no, it isn't".

What we need is an RPG S&T.

It was James Edward Raggi IV who got me to realize it:

Now I'm envisioning a game book in the form of a magazine, 128 pages, with everything in it, and the Mentzer-style tutorial intro as an attached (centerpiece pull-out?) item. Attach a covermount CD with various optional rules and adventures and idea-builders and maybe historical essays on role-playing and different methods of playing.

Okay, first, imagine all those computer, art, and music mags with DVD ROMS on the cover, especially the ones from the UK (go to the bookstore and check them out if you don't know what I'm talking about). Imagine his 128 page magazine as one of those.

Re-arrange the content some. Each one has that intro Mentzer booklet in the center, matching the theme of the issue (we could use LL, BRPG, Four Color (the original Marvel had a similar booklet), Mutant Future, and the Star Frontiers clone). The rest of the magazine has a printed version of a bit more than BD&D...maybe levels 1-6, 1-2 full adventures, and those historical essays, an idea builder or two, an interview (every issue needs an interview...learn from music mags), a book column, and some ads.

The cover DVD ROM can have all of the free RPGs from the old school movement and maybe some others (Computer Music has a consistent and growing studio of computer instruments they recycle each much), new adventures, previews of comerical games, a podcast, and so on.

Put it out quarterly and sell it at the major book stores.

The hard part is dice. I'd say that pullout HAS to be d6 only. One, polyhedrons can be off putting. You might be able to include die but even if you can a dice roller can be on the DVD ROM and a pointer to "buy some D&D dice" which most bookstores carry for the full game would be great.

The mags I'm talking about cost $12-$18 here in the US. I think this is doable.

Score one for the old school...

One of the players in my Friday game surprised me when he accepted a spot in it. He's very much a modern RPG kind of guy. As in playtesting work on games like Noblis.

A few weeks back he said he wasn't really getting into it and might drop out but would give it a few more weeks.

Today he emailed me saying he's thinking of running B/X with mostly my houserules (but some mods). Would I be interested in playing?

First Steps to Alignment

In a space setting where the major currents are the silent war between two groups of metaphysical warriors modeled on the Jedi and the Sith seen from the back of a sandworm with analogs of Greek Oracles, Bene Gesserit, Mentats as non-aligned (or both aligned) metaphysical players the Law/Neutral/Chaos system of OD&D seems to be a poor fit. Expanding it via Good/Neutral/Evil doesn't seem to help.

I was looking for an idea of what the Imperial position would be and considered "anti-life" but not in the sense of death but in terms of the Anti-life Equation of Jack Kirby's New Gods comic. Knowledge of it allows one to dominate others by removing free-will. At the end of the Wikipedia article on the topic (linked above) I found this note:

The Anti-Life Equation is similar to Nietzsche's Aristocratic equation, Good = Humble = Powerful = Beautiful = Happy = Loved by God.

For those unfamiliar with Nietzsche one key idea is social evolution from a Master morality to a slave morality in society. A slave morality is the Judeo-Christian morality of charity, faith, and sacrifice. The Master morality is one that values wealth, strength, health, and power which is also, interestingly enough, a good summary of the Classical (Greek and pagan Roman) virtues. Interesting notes for a game with a heavy Greek mythological patina.

Another Nietzchean idea is "the will to power" which can be variously interpreted to mean internal power (self-mastery) or external power (ruling, being a master). A key idea in Dune is maximizing human potential, which fits very well with the first interpretation. If we take both interpretations and filter them through the Greek heroic virtues the Imperial clans see themselves, through their ability to master both themselves (metaphysics) and others (the metaphysics the Clans call "anti-life") as the natural rulers of everyone else.

So my Imperial alignment is "The Will to Power" but what would the Hidden Clans be and how do I give that a mechanical importance.

Well, what other wills can we think about? The will to live, to serve, to survive, to achieve, to master, to transcend, and so on. Hold that thought.

In thinking about classes and abilities it's been clear to me that traditional Vancian magic is inappropriate to this setting. I had decided to represent them by either using the OD&D/AD&D psionics, importing force powers from the various Star Wars RPGs, or some combo of the two. While I'll take some notes I'm going to hold off given a reworking of the Eldrich Wizardry psionics rules is in progress. One thing I wanted to do was to find a way to insure that Imperials, Clansmen, Oracles, Sisters, and Muses took different powers.

Now I have it. Alignment will be replaced by a system of wills. A character will select one or more (probably two, three at the most) compatible wills from a list (both with each other and class). Each will gives access to certain psionic powers and some powers require a combination of wills. Characters with drift will find their powers failing yet or, as appropriate, having different effects.

Of course, as always, the devil is in the details but I think I've got the basic framework in place.

Some Social Positions of the Late Imperial Era

Some notes I just jotted down for my Mythological Space Setting

Immortals: The legions of the imperial families are composed of large clone regiments and smaller companies of natural borns. While the families would like to stick with purely clone armies the seed DNA degrades over time and clones of clones tend to be inferior. Thus, the small natural born companies allow new seed DNA to be found in the form of exceptional warriors. Selection for cloning is a high honor and the chosen are Immortals, formed into special crack regiments and not only cloned and personally rewarded but their families are rewarded onto three generations. It is not unusual for the family to place a second Immortal in that period and each noble house has a group of semi-permanent Immortal lines (the oldest know line has been able to place an immortal at least once every three generations for 29 generations).

Oracles: Metaphysics whose vision is of little day to day utility but able to engage the flow to see forward in time to possible outcomes. Trained in temples on a handful of planets there are too useful to the Empire to be wiped out despite fear of their ties to the Hidden Clans.

Muses: The grand advisors, Muses are trained in memory, calculation, and integration of knowledge. Separate from the Imperial Houses, the Hidden Clans, the Sisterhoods, and even the Merchant Guilds they are sought by all (except the Sisterhoods) as advisors. Their schools claim Muses have no agenda but merely exist to provide inspiration.

What's interesting to me is how writing these notes create so much more information. Both the descendants of Pylades/Solo and those of the Leia/Electra now have names (the Hidden Clans and the Sisterhoods) and the later are expanded (I know know there are three Sisterhoods, one for each of Agamemnon's daughters). The Muses (pseudo-Mentats whose name came from a RPG.net thread) had appeared and immediately displaced the Sisterhoods in part as a Bene Gesserit analog but also creates a mystery of "what is their agenda". I have no idea where the Merchant Guilds came from but I needed someone to provide another purchaser of services from the Muses.

Of course, all these names and expansions are tentative but I think it's a grand example of how just writing brief descriptions of three things creates new details and directions.