1st playtest of a Cyberpunk game

I'm currently working on a solo cyberpunk game, its currently in very early days... only one type of mission available and as yet unwritten look up tables and loot tables etc. So here's how the little story went...

***

The mission was a hit on a convoy. A rich lawyer had purchased a one of kind A.I. and was transporting it, my team's job was to hit that convoy, locate the A.I. and steal it for the customer.

The team was three unnamed characters (names is a table yet to be written), Engineer, Heavy, and NetLogger. They rolled up on the convoy seeking the vehicle carrying the A.I.

The first vehicle they encountered was a likely looking transporter, but it turned out to be a dummy. My NetLogger however managed to sneak into the driver's phone and grab some intel' that would make identifying the correct vehicle easier.

Next vehicle approached was a van full of gun men, some smooth nudging and ramming pushed the van out of the convoy to fall way back and beyond concern. My team now knew that any similar vehicles could be ignored.

Next vehicle turned out to be a cop in an unmarked vehicle, obviously the lawyer running the show had some contacts down town! the cops started shooting and my team returned fire, and simultaneously hacked his cop car computer. The intel, gained help eliminate other vehicles in the convoy. The cop caught some bullets and fell out of the convoy.

The team rolled up on the next most likely vehicle... but a chromed up raging cyborg punched through the roof of the vehicle and started blasting away. The team returned fire, but in a very short time Engineer was dead, Heavy seriously injured and the cyborg almost untouched. NetLogger made the call, and the team bailed on the mission, sadly unsuccessful, they lost "Notoriety". 

***

The game mechanic worked well, and I proved the mission is doable, rolling one pip higher on the dice for the vehicle check would have had my team hitting the truck with the A.I. and only dumb luck made them hit the car carrying the cyborg.

Now I need to put some more thought into the "tween-mission" rules. The team need to recruit a new team member, and I need to weigh up the factors that will figure into that. With damaged notoriety definitely playing a hand.

Life Paths for Solo play

I've come to the conclusion that RPG system that embrace a life-path mechanism for building characters are ideal for solo RPG players. The systems that do this build up a neat story around the character before the actual play even starts.

In Mekton (giant fighty robots) the life path generates not only a family for you, but breaks down the relation ships with your relatives and co workers. Do you have sibling rivalry? Hope so, because that will make for a very infesting character play. These relatives can come into your story at any point for twists and rescues.

In Vaesen, your character has to have been through a terrible mythic trauma. You can make one up yourself, or pick from a list. You also get motivations for your character's involvement in seeking the beasties. This is so much better than going in with a bland character, you are given a drive and reason to push the story forward, 

Even Classic Traveller had a sort of life-path system, you would follow the character through their employment and you would have to invent any details around that framework. BUT as the versions have iterated up to Mongoose's, they've enhanced the life path by adding events into the term system. So you start with a character's employment history, but also some life charging events that you can bring into the actual play.

With this addition of character history you are better equipped to make an interesting and rich story, you start armed with threads to pull on. 

Of course classic D&D and OSR games don't incorporate more than class and stats which is a very poor form of life path. I actually think that's fine for playing with others and the story emerges much easier between the player's characters, which is something that is just not there for solo play.

If someone is looking to make a small RPG product, can I request that you pump out a life path system for all the classic OSR races and classes? Please. Pretty please. 

Well, shit.

I've just picked up another little title from Michael Brown (compatible with CE, DC, and Trav'), simply called Hygiene, and as the title suggests it presents a few rules for centred around the title. I've so often watched films and even when reading book, and remembered the words "even the queen poops", and wondered how it applies to heroes on screen that are in action for 24 hours.

The rules he presents will need some careful application to your game session. The idea being that "personal grooming and visiting a fresher" is required in order to prevent your character entering the throne room smelling like a beavers bottom. 

A possible problem with applying these rules is players getting annoyed with having to actually say that their character is doing something so mundane as freshening up. I've come across this sort of thing  in D&D games where players want me as the referee to assume Dwarves are checking for slopes all the time, and elves are always looking for secret doors. Yet, as I've said to these players, if you can't be bothered to mention it, I can't either, and your character definitely wont.

It doesn't take much to apply these rules quickly and easily. Not visiting a fresher only matters...when it matters. Who cares about freshening up when nipping to the corner shop, but who cares when meeting the King? Huge difference. So if players talk about polishing their armour before meeting the King but DONT mention that visit to the most important room, that's when you can bring the rules into action.

Delving with NoteQuest

Today I had my second dungeon delve using the NoteQuest solo RPG system. The game is self contained so this is not an add on for any other system. At 24 pages its relatively short and a very quick read, and my game only went about fifteen minutes, although I can see how the game could go considerably longer.

Character creation is a matter of rolling on two (sometimes three) tables. My "little" fella for this delve turned out to be a Dwarf Locksmith armed only with a dagger and carrying 10 torches. Torches I should add, are the time limit on your adventure, if you're still underground when your last torch goes out, your character dies in the darkness. So... don't stay down too long. Various activities you undertake in the dungeon will consume torches, such as picking locks and searching for secret doors.

The game follows a strict loop with limited options at each stage and tables provide the results of your activities.

With your character rolled up, you roll to see what type of dungeon you'll face. There are 6 general categories of dungeon, and each has it own set of tables, for rooms, monsters, loot, etc.

You'll burn your first torch opening the door to the dungeon, then you start using the provided tables to build the dungeon as you explore. You'll need paper and pencil to draw out the dungeon and keep track of where your character is..

You'll roll up and move from room to room, checking each room for monsters, and its content. Some monsters and rooms will have loot for you to acquire. There are stairs in the dungeon leading down, and when you get to the third level you'll find the dungeon boss.

My descent was into a relatively small dungeon, I found the stairs down very quickly and had nowhere else to go. I defeated an Orc looted the body and found treasure in the room besides. The boss enemy was a dragon, and I simply ran away as the DPS of the beasty would have killed little Dwarfy long before he could defeat such a beast.

The game has out-of-dungeon actions you can do too, and my character paid to heal up, and sold off what loot he could, this enabled him to replenish his torches. On his next delve he'll be much more prepared with a magic spear, and healing spell that he'd looted on the first trip down. The character survived so he can go onto another dungeon or even back to that first one, and chance his luck.

In summary, this is neat little journaling game that lets you go-a-delving and have a little adventure. The length of game will vary based on what you roll on the dice so be prepared to stash your notes and map ready to return another day.

RPG Page Layout

I'm an avid reader of RPGs. I don't just play them, I read rules and scenarios for fun. Therefore as a consumer I've got a lot of experience. I've come to a few conclusions about the digital layout and presentation of RPG books that I want to share in the hope that the thousands of professional RPG authors might catch a glimpse.

Alternative/Optional Rules: I've seen this "sin" in a number of rules sets. The principal is especially common in OSR games that like to offer Ascending and Descending Armour class options. I recently read WhiteBox which is a prime example of doing this. They offer two AC stats every time for the two alternatives. Yet even worse, is that in the "attack" section of the rules they offer two different ways of calculating if you've hit your target.

No. Just no!

This is a bad practice in a technical sense, Instead of providing clarity the rules-book is offering a set of alternatives, a mental fog if you will. And it not just on the initial reading, its also every time you need to look up something, you will have to wade through the confusion time after time.

Much better to separate your alternate rules and mechanisms, either stick them in a side bar, or better yet, add a footnote referring the reader the appendices.

Columns: When it comes to laying out rules books, there's always the question of columns. Should I use two column layout, or three? People with a lot of rules such as the Rules Cyclopedia, just default to three columns so they can cram the rules in.

Sadly, most people are asking the wrong question. Its not what looks best, its not how to cram text onto a page. The real question is: How will this book be used?

So, who is reading the book, and how are they reading the book? 

PDFs are read predominantly read on phones, sure at the game table you might have a laptop, but the majority of reading is on the humble phone. Multi column layout sucks on a phone, keeping the reader pinching and scrolling on every single page. So if you're creating PDFs for the love of all that's good in the world, keep it in a singular column.

White Box , Silver Arrow

I recently picked up White Box and was sitting in bed reading the booklet last night when I got to the equipment list and was brought up short by the classic "Silver Arrow".

It's listed as Weight 1, cost 5gp. That's fine, but when compared to standard arrows which are 20 for weight 1, costing 5gp.

How the heck does a single arrow with a silver head cost 50 silver pieces? How on earth does it encumber the same as 20 normal arrows. I'm assuming that a normal arrow has an iron head on it.

I put on my "rationalizing head". 

I would expect a standard silver arrow head to maybe be the equivalent of 2-3 standard coins, so there must be much more to this silver arrow than just a silver head. It cant be that the entire arrow is made of silver, that would meet the strange weight statistic but there's no way that would fly from a bow, far too heavy.

So here's what I suggest. The head of the arrow is silver, but also, silver is inset in a thin line along the shaft of the arrow too. This should prevent the monster grabbing the shaft and pulling it out, as the silvered shaft would make that too painful. So now we have a delicate jewellery-level inlaid silver shaft and a silver arrow head. 

Whereas a standard arrow can take a lot of bouncing around in a quiver, this arrow needs protection from the buffeting of adventuring. Therefore the cost of the silver arrow covers the cost of the effort put into its production, as well as a special lined and padded leather holster to keep it safe.

Play by Post RPGs, and what failed for me.

Playing by Post in a forum is a way of roleplaying without the need to meet with other players in real time, be that face to face or online. Fundamentally its about working together to tell a story in text, with players taking turns...

... and its terribly slow. I've been one of those shits that just fades on a play by post game and stops posting. I'm not happy about that. So I've put some thought into why I became a shit, and have come to the conclusion that playing by post using standard RPG rules is the problem (which means I can blame the mechanism and deny being a shit, huzzar!). The normal RPG process that you would use around the table when applied to the post system fails me. It goes this way...

• The ref posts a situation. 
• Player A responds with a character action, unsure of some narrative fact asks a question
• Player B  responds with character action.
• Ref answers player A's question. And posts story progress.
• Player B responds with an attack action, maybe makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll.
• Player A responds with an attack, makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll, tells player A to make a follow up roll.
• Player A posts the new die roll result.
• etc

And with each post coming 1-3 days after the previous one, the game drags on. 

Players forget what they were doing and have to read back across a long series of posts trying to find what the story actually is and what's happening. Scrolling back over two or three pages just to read a bit of description from the opening of the scene is tiresome and the answer may not even be there in the text, meaning rather than progressing with his post they end doing nothing more than posting another question... and waiting.

With this drawn out process there's no excitement, and little to no thrill in actual play (writing).

There is a good alternative, but I don't know what it is. However I am going to put some time into coming up with an answer. The play style/mechanism needs to be altered to keep me engaged, and I'm going to see what I can come up with.

REDD Judge, solo session

The following is a write up of a short solo session of REDD Judge.

Judge Taylor is sitting on his RIDE rushing to finish a donut before the end of his mandated fifteen minute break and idly watching the feed of crime reports on the bike's console. A murder report flashes by at a nearby block, but he restrains himself, he's got 30 seconds yet until he's allowed to resume work. A raid on a clothing store, a mugging, vandalism, vehicle on fire. His finger hovers over the console. The last second ticks by, he taps the console. "Control, Judge Taylor, I'll take the body on Rudyard Kipling block". The RIDE roars to life and in seconds he's racing the half mile to Kipling.

He pulls off the main drag and descending the down ramp sees a crowd in front of the block. His arrival innevitably leads to a few people fleeing the scene at speed, and more leave as he barges his way through the crowd. In the centre of the crowd a man lies in a spreading pool of blood . He's flattened some what, Taylor looks up at the block towering fifty stories above him, but by the looks of it the victim didn't fall more than ten floors. He kneels flips the body over, sees what looks like a bullet hole in the man's side. "Anyone know him?" he asks the crowd, but no one answers. Nothing unusual.

He heads into the block, contacting the block management and telling them to get the scene cleaned up. Ten stories up he uses his ident to open an apartment door. "REDD authorised entry, citizens stand back do not interfere." He commands any occupants. Inside he finds the only occupant is a small child, no sign of any adults. "Control, Judge Taylor. Residents apartment 10-67 Rudyard Kipling block have left an underage child alone, schedule a custody retreival for the child."

He slides open the window and takes a half step into the six inch deep "balcony". There's a splash of blood on the ledge, looking up he sees that it's dripped from the balcony above. A glance down confirms that he's directly above the corpse.

As Taylor closes the front door he activates a REDD block to prevent the residents access, and takes the stairs to the floor above. The stair well is filthy and Taylor has to step over a couple of drugged citizens. At room 11-67 he notes the door is damaged, he uses his REDD ID to digitally reverse the spy hole in the door. Peeking through he can see into a living room that's in disarray. A man lounges in a chair a pistol dangling from his right hand.

Taylor draws his BEAST and activates a STUN. In one smooth action, he kicks the door open tosses the STUN and steps aside. After the first flash and stunning warble he rushes into the apartment. The occupant has dropped the gun and is covering his ears, he's in cuffs before the STUN shuts off.

"I was defending myself." He cries.

"Sure." Taylor acknowledges and pulls out his TRUTH. "Tell me what happened, no stories, just the facts."

The citizen tries to slow his breathing then starts. "He burst in, had a knife. I shot him and he fell out the window."

The TRUTH registered a lie. "Lieing to a REDD Judge is two years buddy.We'll get the rest outta you back at headquarters."

REDD Dept. Gear , released

In my game REDD Judge players get to write "Extras" onto their character sheet during play. Extras are pieces of extra equipment that the player character is carrying or has access to that are in addition to the default equipment all Judges carry. By giving players the agency to come up with this gear just when they need it. It acts almost like a super power.

This book lists equipment suggestions that players can use directly or as inspiration for their own ideas.

Alone Against the Flames, Call of Cthulhu

I've just played through Alone Against the Flames which is a choose-your-own-adventure style short solo adventure using Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. I've not done a solo Cthulhu game before so I was pretty excited to give it a try.

The book is designed as an introduction to the 7th ed' and so you literally follow instructions built into the text of the story to build your character. This is pretty clever, there's no need to spend half an hour building a character before you start. You read a few paragraphs, do your stats, do a few more paragraphs, do your career and skills, do a few more, calculate your hard/extreme values.

Its really well done, and fun to play. Alas, my character didn't make it on the first play through. Am I inclined to try again? Not yet. Once is enough for me at least, but I'm the same way with the full length game books too. I only go back to them after a few months, when I've forgotten enough about them to keep it fresh again.

Recommended if you have an hour or two to fill. I printed out the character sheet, and used the PDF on screen. You could go all digital if you can find a fillable character sheet. You dont need the core rule book to play, I  only had to look up one thing, "what is a hard skill check", but if you want you can download the quickstart rules for free.

And as I'm mentioning Call of Cthulhu ... please consider listening to my fiction podcast which is called "Cthulhu"

Waste Runners scenario, Going Nuclear

Waste Runners is a cool RPG where players are making raids into "The Sector", the devastated remains of central Europe. With bizarre anomalies, destroyed towns, mutated people, and monsters, The Sector is a hugely interesting and fascinatingly dangerous play space.

When I read the rules I was immediately brimming with ideas for missions. Central Europe is full of juicy "things" that waste runners would want to get their hands on. LOOT!

So I went ahead and put together a scenario for the game. Going Nuclear is my first Waste Runners scenario. It builds on the lore of the base game, creating a UK overrun with Europeans that escaped the devastation of the continent, and are reduced to living in shanties covering entire counties. Spain has changed to a fascist dictatorship and stands on the brink of war with a UK-allied Portugal. 

The players will be British agents racing a Spanish expedition into the wasteland to recover something that should never have existed.

REDD Judge, world building video in the wild!

My little drop-in drop-out game REDD Judge has started to take off. John over at Terminal Goblin Games has put out a REDD Judge world building video. If you like big-city post-apocalyptic lawman on the street kinda games, this might be one for you.

Franchise Play

A couple of years back I found myself excited about playing in various franchises (or IPs), and wanted to run games in about fifty different genres. I ended up running games in the universes of Tron, Judge Dredd, and Dune.

At the time Tron had no RPG, Dune was out of print and out of my price range, and Dredd was represented by an old Games Workshop game I disliked intensely, and a Mongoose version that I rejected because of the high cost of entry (you had to buy Traveller and their Dredd publication, and I just noted the Dredd book isn't for sale on DriveThru anymore).

What I did was to fall back on the FATE system. FATE is generic and generic systems usually lack all the flavour and weighting of odds to make a session feel like you are really in the universe of the IP you are playing. BUT! Fate overcame that problem for me. In each case I produced a bunch of IP-based skills and a small collection of IP-based feats and tags. I also produced themed character sheets with art that set the scene. 

The sessions were a success, and I think that's because the "taste" or "feel" of the world was modelled in the changes I'd applied to the core FATE system through skills sheets, and tags. I would generally suggest that you should go with a franchises actual rules if available as usually (we always hope) the author has put the flavour into the game mechanisms, but a generic system can work as a fall back.

Availability of Adventurer gear, and adventure seeds

Imagine the situation. Playing Basic Fantasy, or OSRIC, or even RuneQuest, your PCs walk into a small town, a couple of hundred people live here, and it serves as the local hub for outlying villages and farmsteads. Now your Elf character looks around the town square, wanting replacement arrows. the Dwarf too, is seeking repairs to his armour.

Let's "f" with the players.

There is a blacksmith, so Dwarf heads in and shows that his helm needs repairs. The blacksmith looks at it. "The linings come away, torn off the rivets. The lining's is leather bring me some leather and I can rivet it in."

Instantly we have a scenario brewing. They need some leather, where an they get it from? Is there a leather worker, is there a tanner, do they have stock, can they cut up a leather belt? Let them know that if they don't have the proper thickness of soft leather its going to rub, hurt and otherwise be a pain in the butt-head.

What about the Elf's arrows? Sure there's fletcher in the town who can put the arrows together, BUT... there's no twine to bind the feathers to the shaft, the blacksmith is on a rush armour job and won't break off to make arrowheads, the goose-herd has no feathers cos a bugbear ate his flock, the coppiced wood that provides the arrow shafts has been infested with Orcs.

How long to get new plate mail?

Does the blacksmith have a full set of armour he can just sell you off the shelf?

In mediaeval reality the answer to that would be no, as armour worth its salt has to be tailored to the individual. Yet in every fantasy RPG I've noted, they just give you prices with no delivery time. 

Now consider it takes a long time to make armour, even using modern machine shop tools which can be months. Consider doing that with a blacksmith's hammer and anvil, it'd take an age. Mind you advanced mediaeval blacksmiths would have access to water-wheel driven power hammers which would help. So lets assume that the PC can return to the armourer for repeated fittings, 

I estimate that it should take about 6 months to produce a full suit, provided that the armourer is ONLY working on that one suit and is provided with access to all the quality metal he needs. This scenario is only likely to be the case if the armourer is in the employee of the PC, your average trader will be having to service other customers in order to make enough money to live, and this could easily double the time it takes to make the armour.

Of course someone at sometime would have been knocking out mail shirts with a one size fits all, yet I think this should come with a penalty, perhaps a -1 DEX mod. If the armour isn't tailored then that crease, or fold, or articulation is going to be in just the wrong place!

Okay, lets assume that the local armourer has 1 or 2 helmets for sale, perhaps a set greaves, maybe one gauntlet from a customer who died before paying for the second one, so where does that leave you when trying to work out the AC? Clearly you shouldn't get the benefits of full plate, but a few solid sheets of metal over some vitals should offer some in-game benefits, and do so in a way that doesn't slow the game too much.

Lets assume you PC is wearing a full suit of chain, but has started adding elements of plate armour to their gear. A quick way to do handle this could be to roll a D6 at the start of every battle, scoring a success on the die means the PC uses a slightly higher AC for the duration. What constitutes success on that die, could change over time depending on what upgrades there have been. 

Greaves 1 in 6

Greaves, vambraces  2 in 6

Greaves, vambraces, helmet, 3 in 6

Greaves, vambraces, helmet, chest plate 4 in 6

...and so on.

REDD Head Guide, released

It's time announce the third product in my REDD Judge line. I've recently release "REDD Head Guide" which is kind of a DMs guide for this pocket system.

I did struggle with this product, wondering if I wanted to expand the system at all, as the main aim of the system is to avoid complication. So... what this guide ended up containing is not new rules, but rather tools for the referee (Head), tables for generating names, crimes, blocks etc along with a few tips for playing. 

REDD Judge is a post apocalyptic RPG where players take the role of lone lawmen trying to bring law and order to the tough streets of one of the few remaining cities. 

Trying out Note Quest

I thought I'd try out a solo game today that has had some good reviews in a few places. It's called "Note Quest", and is a fantasy game that takes you on an adventure using procedural mechanisms a similar fashion to Four Against Darkness.

The first step is to generate a character. Which is done with a couple if 2D6 rolls.

My first roll gave me a Human with 20 HP. My second roll turned my blank Human into a Locksmith, able to open locked doors, and with an additional 2HP, bringing total HP to 22. I also got given 10 torches and a dagger that does 1D6-1 damage. The torches are a clock, if they run out while the character is underground your PC is dead.

Three more rolls and I was going into a dungeon called "The Sanctuary of the Broken Rest".  I named my character "Jon".

Jon opened a trap door and descended to a door which opened onto a corridor with two doors. This first move burns a torch. Jon opened the first door to another staircase which he then descended to another door. Beyond the door a short corridor with two more doors.

Jon opens the door onto a small room with another door at the far end. The walls of the room are lined with statues but one plinth is no mere statue. It turns out to be a Sentinel Angel. Jon attacks but rolls a 1 which the -1 for a dagger reduces to zero. This 1 on the die activates the Angel's Sorcery ability. The Angel does 3HP damage but sorcery adds 1D6 (2 in this case), and Jon is reduced to 17HP. Jon fights back and his dagger brings down the Angel.

Wondering what the Sentinel Angel was guarding Jon searches for a hidden door (burning a torch in the process) but instead of a door, find a dart trap that stings him for 1HP, reducing him to 16HP.

Open the door at the far end, Jon finds a room lined with pillars with a splashing fountain in the centre. Worse, three fungoids move out from behind the spray of water. Jon attacks, inflicting 2HP damage on the first beast. The 3 of them attack back inflicting 2HP each reducing Jon to 10HP. He attacks once again, but only inflicting 1HP which isn't enough to kill even the first fungoid. They attack once more pounding Jon back to 4HP. Jon realises he can't win this fight and runs for the surface!

So there you have a session report. It is very simplistic and mechanistic, perhaps even more so than Four Against Darkness. The fun is what you make of it, the story once again is what you inject into it. The rules themselves are pretty bland, and I feel like its a stepping stone for first time soloists to get onto the ladder of game complexity.

REDD Judge, in the wild!

As a game author, it's always wonderful to see, hear, or read people playing your game, John over at Terminal Goblin Games has done just that! He did some audio work for me as a promo for REDD Judge, and then decided to take the scenario from that audio and turn it into a solo play game.

[sniff] So proud. 

Experience Points in Traveller

Experience Points are a staple of the role playing genre, but of course being a huge fan of the original Traveller, which was my first played game, I played without XP. In fact I've never really got the taste for XP railroad. I don't even get a hit of self-affirmation when a character I'm playing goes up a level. That's all because I started with Trav' and didn't hooked on the XP crack!

At this point I actually see XP as a concept that I reject in principal. Whatever its original purpose may have been, XP has devolved into a "reward" system that players "earn". It has become a focus, a driving force in the game play. Players make decisions based on XP that can be earned as opposed to what makes sense in the game. Yuk.

But I go even further!

Later versions of Traveller started doing the "training" thing. So you could spend "N" weeks studying and gain a new skill level. This still turns my stomach a little but for no real reason other than it will lead to skill bloat, which is a separate complaint I have with later versions. However its waaay better than giving players chocolate peanuts treats (XP). Players may have their character "train" during jump which is generally much better than encouraging the chasing down of the last orc to get a few extra XP. It certainly effects play considerably less.

When I create a Traveller character I consider it to be "fully formed", with only life to be experienced ahead. I don't look to, or to seek and "improve" the character, I'm playing to tell a great story. So I rarely consider the mechanics of improvement as worthy of consideration.

Back in the last long running Traveller campaign I started issuing XP to the players, as a joke. The points had no effect whatever in the game and they were totally arbitrary. In my opinion, that's the full extent  to which character improvement should exist in Traveller.

YouTube Recommendation: The Basic Expert

I have hundreds of youtube subscriptions that I've subbed to over years, but I'd like to introduce one of these to you as being an exceptional breakout. 

The Basic Expert channel is hosted by Mr Torres and he brings his calm demeanour, his smooth voice, and his insightfulness to the role playing stage. Many of the channels I subbed to have devolved into rage anti-woke rants, but not this one. 

That's not to say he doesn't bring the odd rant to the show, but its not his focus. His channel presents a mixed content of art creation, rpg stream-chats, deep dives into RPGs, topic discussions, and he recently added actual-plays into the mix too. 

I've especially loved the deep dives into Basic Fantasy, and Classic Traveller.

The Basic Expert channel

REDD Judge Case Files 001 released

I've just released what I expect to be the first of a series of "Case Files" products to support my REDD Judge game. departing from my usual money-grubbing I've pushed this out as Pay What You Want. I consider it as a promo for the core game/app itself, so if people decide they want it free that's fine by me,

After the first 16 hours on the store it seems to be going well, I've had one person purchase it for the suggest price of 99c, but I've also had three sales of the core game. I call that a win for Pay What You Want marketing.

The Case Files 001 is itself another pocket mod PDF like the original game, and contains 7 cases of crime that the referee can throw at his Judge players. Each case tells you what crime was committed, by whom, their motive, and some expanded details on how the NPCs will react, behave, or sourced the illegal materials. The REDD app that you get with the core rules does something similar but with less details, but this PDF means that the referee doesn't need to have a way to run the app, as its PDF/paper based.

Anyway, based on the sales I've seen so far, I'm encouraged to write a second Case Files to release the next few weeks. Who knows, these might become a regular feature!

Lovecraftian Scenario Plotter

 

This is a promo post for one of my own products, the Lovecraftian Scenario Plotter. This is a tool for the "keeper" 

Lovecraftian Scenario Plotter is a scenario generator for any horror game, but includes some elements of the Lovecraftian mythos. Using 45 cross-indexed tables of inspiring terms you can quickly “roll up” the main plot for your scenario and as many sub plots as you need.

This tool is ideal for coming up with a scenario in a hurry, or for inspiration when you have more  time. It provides the elements you need to make an exciting adventure.

Blip-Out Baddies Bad

If you've been the DMing for any length of time you've likely run into the situation where the play characters have battled through your dungeon or tower and come up against the big-bad of your campaign. Then be it, luck, be it fate, whatever, in two rounds one of the player makes a roll that will "end" the big bad.

You panic. The campaign can't end like that! Going out like a fart in the dark! What about the rest of the session? You don't want to waste all the months of build up!

You might decide to "blip" your big bad, pretend he's not dead, have him cast a teleport spell, or slip through a hidden door, ANYTHING to stop it end this way!

Stop. Don't do it.

As bad as the fart in the dark might have been, the blipping baddie that just nopes out is worse for the players. Instead let them defeat the bad guy. Even congratulate them, tell them what a bad asses they are. Big them up.

Then, when they go to loot have them find a missive, a message cylinder, a graven tablet, or just a clue, that highlights that the recently dispatched big-bad was just a lieutenant of the real "big bad" , and that the real "big bad" is due to visit any day now.

Now you've got the set up to continue your story, a new threat. You've made the players realise that whatever they thought was going on, was a mere charade. You've turned from an unsatisfying "blip" to an exciting threat or grander mystery and everyone will be happy.

D6 Damage

 

I remember reading in my earliest copy of D&D how there was an option where every player would roll a single D6 for damage regardless of weapon being used. Back them I thought it was a bit odd. I wondered why you'd have all the different weapons, and then make them all the same. That was because I was a fresh newbie roll-player focused entirely on the rules rather than considering story.

These days I'm much more story focused so the idea of D6 damage matters much less to me. Today, I'd rather have an historically accurate spear and shield combo, that's more important that carrying a D12 two handed sword. That extra damage is less of a concern to my style of play.

Within the rules of the game the D6 damage makes sense in the low levels, when a D6 can kill PCs and monster alike. I'm not so sure it would work at the higher levels. Once monsters get into the 80+HP level that D6 limitation is going to make combat into an incredible slog. AND that slog dose worry me, narrating too many rounds where a lowly D6 is rolled for damage would grind even the best story teller to dust. 

I'm not sure even having a D12 for damage scales well, but as PCs progress they tend to add a lot of plusses to damage from magical weapons, so there is some level of scaling there. Therefore if you allow the plusses and mods to be applied to that D6 you'd at least get the same scaling effect as they level. So I hope the D6 rules allows for that.

Please let me know below if you've used the D6 rule, and how it turned out for you.

REDD Judge RPG , the supporting App'

A while back I released REDD Judge, my drop-in drop-out game for players who come and go, to Big Geek Emporium. I've now released it on DriveThruRPG but this version includes an app'.

The app runs in your browser, so you can easily run it on a  laptop, and it doesn't need an internet connection. "But what does it do?" you scream!

It provides a constant stream of crimes. In the game fiction its a readout on the Judge's bike console. Round the table its an ideal tool for the referee, constantly feeding him new crimes to throw at the players. Alternatively the ref could turn the laptop round and let the players pick the next job.

Anyway the video below does a poor job of explaining the game and the app.

Game Designer ADHD

Its a little known fact that creativity breeds creativity. That is, if you're making something creative, but

then brake off for a while, getting back into the creative groove can be extra hard. On the other hand staying in the creative groove means you can keep producing more stuff. But staying in the mental-creative-mode has its own problem.

There are different types of creative and in this case I'm talking in terms of RPG product creation. This process relies on the bright-idea-spark-plug, the free association of originality with well understood tropes, and for me at least, my mind can get thrown into ideas-only mode. I'll be making notes on my computer and on the pad beside my bed, or voice recording the ideas on my phone, it becomes utter chaos. But at teh same time its the very core of the RPG product production process.

The not so fun part of writing for RPGs (and board games too) is the hard grind of actual work. Translating those bright sparking ideas into human comprehensible text. Making clear rules, Play-testing. Researching. Drawing art or commissioning it. Editing text. Finagling layout issues,. Publishing process. 

All that effortful drudgery is the the exact opposite of the idea-engine. So much so in fact that it can stall the idea-engine you need to start the next product.

So here's what I do to cope with the famine and feast of ideas and drudgery. ...

Work on five different things at once. Have the projects overlap each other, so that you are in effect doing all the parts of the process at once (or at least every couple of days). It also means you don't get "stuck" in one les interesting process for weeks on end. You can keep switching up the "mode" you've got your brain working in, and that keeps the creativity running.

Now, go by my gamebook Dwarven Vengeance :)

Corpse of Sky God - Adventure

 "Corpse of the Sky God" is neat little dungeon delve, for any OSR game. Its currently available free  from Big Geek Emporium and is worth grabbing to add to your library. I've looked over it but haven't played it yet, but I'm thinking I'll try it solo using (of course) Scarlet Heroes.

What is an RPG

Throughout the ages of roleplaying nearly every published role playing game has had "that" section near

the beginning of the book. The name of the section may vary, but content rarely does. They always give a stilted explanation of what role playing is and often follow it by descending into a long drawn out example of play.

The VAST majority of people who pick up an RPG, know what it is, and know how to play RPGs. So what purpose does this section even serve? Most players would only read the poorly acted "how to play" script to laugh at it. In the end this type of content could be dropped from the books  and maybe, if you really wanted to, you could print a link URL to some online resource that explains what the hobby is.

Imagine a person deciding to take up fishing, who walks into the fishing-shop without a bloody clue about what a rod is, or a hook, or bait, or a lure, or anything. That's kind of what you're suggesting is happening with these RPG books. I guess back in the day, it made some kind of sense when D&D was just taking off and it was a new hobby, but not now, not today. The first book I noticed that took the brave step of consigning this section to the dustbin where it belongs was Weird West. bravo Stuart Robertson, bravo!

History of the Cepheus Engine

Here's a brief history of Cepheus Engine.

Back in the good old days, anyone could write Traveller products and slap the Traveller logo onto the cover. Then that liberal license was withdrawn and replaced by a much more restrictive less profitable license. That left a bunch of RPG authors wondering what to do with their creativity.

In jumps Jason "Flynn" Kemp in 2016, who took the existing Traveller SRD and generated a new SRD under the OGL and named it "Cepheus Engine".

Lots of ex-Traveller authors jumped onto Cepheus Engine and started writing under its easy to follow and liberated license.

In 2017 Samarden Press spruced up the Cepheus SRD and produced a product named "Cepheus Engine" which clarified, en-nice-ified it, making a pleasant to read PDF.

In 2021 Stellagram Publishing brought out "Cepheus Deluxe" which was an evolution on the original SRD rules. It made changes to system and character generation (including character "traits"), along with some other changes to the rules, and added in a pile or artwork.

The SRD, Samarden, and Stellagram versions are all compatible, and pretty much any product written for them or Traveller will be compatible with all of them.

Of course all this time authors were throwing out adventures, ship books, background books and so on, and then people started bringing out rules books based on Cepheus Engine in different genres. A couple of notables being Cepheus Modern for all your modern tactical battles, an Sword of Cepheus for those fancying a bit of fantasy sword play. We've even got SOLO for people who want to play with themselves.

 

The Sandcaster in Traveller

Since the first version of Traveller all the way through to modern Mongoose Traveller and Cepheus Engine, space combat has included the "sandcaster" as defence against lasers. The simplest description of the sandcaster is as a shotgun that fires sand into the void to disrupt incoming laser beams.

Here's my take.

For a start it doesn't fire sand. If fires  polychromatic glass-like granules that have some resemblance to sand.

Furthermore it isn't a shotgun. It is a large barrelled launcher that fires the highly engineered somewhat guidable granule dispenser.

The sandcaster round is a short cylinder 8" across with rounded ends. As well as having a few small manoeuvre jets the surface is covered in perfectly arranged tiny dispenser holes. So the next questions are, why is it complicated and why isn't it a shotgun?

Imagine you're leading a stern chase and your opponent is using beam-laser bow chasers. If you shotgunned a blast of sand off the stern, that sand would likely blast past the enemy before they even fired. Much better would be to fire my sandcaster, that distributes its "sand" over time as it slowly falls behind your ship. My sandcaster would thereby give longer lasting protection.

Imagine you're not in a stern chase, but instead hiding in an asteroid belt, fire an intelligent sandcaster and you can deposit a shield of "sand" around your hiding place that not only gives you a defence if you get surprised, but also gives you some defence against enemy sensors.

Now your enemy is vectoring in on you from your port beam, a well placed intelligent sandcaster can be launched ahead of your ship and angled slightly towards the enemy, pouring out its "sand" in a perfectly arranged cloud of protection between you and the enemy.

Now you're about to emerge from behind a station into the sights of the enemy. You launch your sandcaster ahead of your planned path laying down a protected route before you even start thrusters.

Please, upgrade your sandcasters from shotguns for bags of sand, to a tactical device for increased survival. The humble sandcaster round is a complex somewhat programmable device. 

OSR Consumables, arrow recovery

Last month I made a post about the amazing "Consumables" rule I found in the WWII OSR game The Front. As quick reminder, the rule meant you allocated your consumable resource a die type, and as you consumed the resources the die type shrank D20 > D12 > D10 > D8 > D6 > D4 until you had nothing left.

During my recent solo Basic Fantasy/Scarlet Heroes game I had a fight scene where a character ran through is arrows and got all the way down to the D4. That left me wondering about where all those arrows had gone. In normal play DMs tend to have a rule for arrow recovery, such as you can get 50% back, or roll a D6 and recover the arrow on 1-2. Clearly that doesn't work when you are not actually counting arrows. So on the spot I made up the following arrow recovery rule.

After a combat ends, if the PC has reduced the arrow-consumable die by at least one die type (or reduced from D4 to NONE), they may make an arrow-recovery roll. Roll the current consumable die type (D4 if NONE), any result of 3 or more, increases the consumable die type by 1 level.

e.g. During a scene, Wizard character fires arrows into the Death Orc and in the process reduces his arrow consumable die from D10 down to D4. After the combat is over Wizard spends the time to see if any of his arrows are reusable. The PC rolls a D4 (his current Consumable die). His result is a 3, therefore he recovers one die type for his consumable, and notes that his new die type is D6.

Clearly this rule only applies to consumables that can be recovered...bullets, grenades, fire-bombs can not be recovered as they are destroyed in use.

Bitching about Alien RPG

This post is bitching about the presentation of RPGs, or more accurately a real bugbear I have with the Alien RPG.

I love the Alien genre, the movies, the books, the comics, and even some of the games. But the layout in this RPG hurts my brain. The cover is wonderful in fact the art throughout the book is wonderful. But the problem I have is the layout of the text in the book. Nearly every page wastes a huge amount of space, in a way that seems to be strictly there to bloat the page count rather than be pleasing to user. That makes it a coffee-table book rather than a usable tool for the role player.

Many pages in the book have only a single paragraph of text, and these are not just in order to present the art. Many times this has vast empty space has art in the background, but its still empty space, such as pitch-black shadows, or distant stars appearing as specs.. 

Even the pages that have the most text are spaced out, often using puzzle piece framing that grinds my gears with its visual effects. It separates the text where normal presentation would use headings, BUT these puzzle pieces actually fracture the text in a way that breaks the flow of the text. It makes reading more difficult to read. the changing colours and contrast between paragraphs actually makes reading more difficult on the Mark I eyeball. It may be visually appealing to run your eyes over the page as its left open on the coffee table, maybe you might even read a paragraph here and there, but its just plain difficult to read as a book.

So that's the bitchin over. Its a good game, but a terrible book for the referee.

Dungeon Traps, do they make sense?

In my time of playing OSR type games, and of course the original "Dragons & Dungeons" I think I must have read a thousand adventures. Its been starting to grind my gears a bit when I come across traps that make no sense.

For instance in my recent Basic Fantasy/Scarlet Heroes solo games I'm come across a trap that makes sense and one that didn't.

The first trap, the one that made sense was a pit trap that guarded the entrance to the dungeon. It made complete sense because if you knew there was a safe ledge on one side you could scoot past the trap. That makes sense because then the dungeon owner could go outside, and leave the dungeon protected, rather like having a key to a door. Furthermore the trap had an attached and hidden lever that could make the trap safe. Thus the dungeon owners could make it safe and transport goods on pony-back straight in over the sole entrance to the dungeon.

A similar but senseless trap was another pit trap that fully blocked the only entrance to a section of the dungeon. There was no secret side passage, nor was there any way to make it safe or reset it. That makes no sense. I mean, had the dungeon owner locked themselves in, or locked themselves out? 

Why would you lock yourself out of a dungeon? Are you a recovering alcoholic and put all the dwarf-beer on the other side? I suppose you might have found a nasty cthulhu-resurrection device and are trying to stop anyone finding it...but even then you'd be better off burying in rather than building a disguised pit.

Why would you lock yourself in? Are you entombing yourself? Beats me.

Dungeon traps need to make sense. Like the first example above they need to be resettable, re-useable, or bypass-able. Maintaining the "sense" of them makes the traps feel real to the players. Without it you run the risk of out-of-character moments while players try to work out what the heck its all about.

One other nonsense I can do without, is traps in the middle of a dungeon for no reason at all. There needs to be a reason for the trap, otherwise you might as well just randomly kill the characters without rhyme or reason. 

Please if you are including traps in your dungeon, spend some time thinking about how the denizens of the dungeon move around the trap, and why the heck it was there.

Solo session, Shepherds of Pineford

Today I continue my solo campaign using the Scarlet Heroes rules blended with Basic Fantasy. Today we start "Shepherds of Pineford", an adventure for Basic Fantasy.

***

 Nerin, Wizard, and Lufar and drinking in the town tavern when a boy comes in and starts handing around flyers. Lufar is attracted to anything written takes one from the boy.

"Its says they are seeking swordsmen to rid Pineford of a beast. Something is killing sheep and a priest."

"A blessing then," Wizard puts down his flagon, "to be rid of a troublesome priest."

Nerin hurumphs his response into his beer. Lufar reads on. "There is a reward offered to any that rid them of the beast."

"How far is Pineford?"

Lufar ponders for a moment. "A morning's walk I should say."

Nerin stands. "Lufar make up our packs."

Wizard is incredulous. "For a priest Nerin?"

"For the reward."

***

Entering Pineford from the east, they find its a mixed population of humans and halflings forming a farming community, the road is lined with small dwellings and walled fields. They soon come to the "Shepherds Hall", the largest building in the village, and make their way inside. They're greeted by a collection of elders who offer a reward of 150gp for the destruction of the threat to the village. They also offer food and board for the duration.

When Wizard asks where the enemy is, they shrug their shoulders. The leader lays it all out. "It seems to come at twilight to kill the sheep, at least, its shortly after that we find the animals."

"So we watch the animals at night. I presume you've set watch yourselves. What did you see."

"Nothing." The other elders nod. "The animals were found dead, ripped apart, the blood gone."

That night Erin and Wizard organised a patrolling watch of five villagers. The patrol would rove around the village and stock fields, while Erin and Wizard stand watch in Pinefords one and only inn.

The night passes the patrol do not see anything, but in the morning another sheep is dead. Our two heroes wander over to the site of the attack, made obviously by the bloody remains of a fleece. Wizard studies the ground and sees a bloody trail leading into the woods.

"It comes from the forest."

"Can you track it?" Nerin readies his spear.

"Yes."

The two heroes set off into the wood following the trail. After two hours they find ground soaked with blood, and a large writhing spiked plant sitting in the center over the body of a sheep!

"We have it!" Wizard smiles.

"Put it to sleep."

"It's a plant Nerin, it does not sleep."

Nerin grunts and drops his pack extracting a flask of oil. "I'll burn it." He tosses the oil towards the spiked vine. The flask explodes into flame behind the vine. It clearly feels the heat and starts moving slowly away from the flames.

Nerin pulls out his second and final flask, and lobs that at the plant, this time it engulfs the spiked plant, which starts wickedly throwing out lengths of spiked tendrils lashing at anything within reach, Nerin and wizard keep back.

The flames burn for quite some time but when the last lick of orange light snuffs out the vine continues to move, now dragging itself towards the heroes. The back up keep their distance.

Wizard starts shooting arrows into the largest vines, many arrows miss, but those that hit, cause it to bleed red sap. He down to his last couple before the things stops moving.

While Wizard rests, Nerin builds a fire over the remains and burns the thing to ashes. Before the fire dies completely back, they head back to the village and collect the reward.

Once they get home Nerin notes the room is well kept, apart from a small table being covered in papers, clearly Lufar has been doing some of his own research. Lufar's eyes light up when Nerin hands him his 12gp share.

Notes: There is more to this adventure another whole location, apparently the evil vine came from this evil location, but there is nothing in the scenario that directs you there, so nothing drew my PCs that way. I'll likely visit that site as part of another adventure.

REDD Judge

Back in August I released a new RPG over on Big Geek Emporium. The game evolved out of a requirement for a certain style of play. I wanted a game that I could referee at any time with any players who turned up.

Obviously a campaign game with an ongoing story was not going to suit, I needed a story, or stories that would be simple to grasp so the new player could jump right in, and of course jump right out when the kids wake up or whatever. That was the real problem. Sure someone might not turn up to the session, and we've all dealt with that, but I was thinking of running a two hour session where one player might be there throughout but other players would drop in and out at random.

Further, I wanted the game to be open to strangers I haven't played with before. That meant there might be new players, people who've not role played before. So that meant the system needed to be really simple too. Thus 5e, CoC, and FATE like systems were waaay too big for anyone to get their head around quickly enough.

I started with the genre, asking myself how can I have players dropping in and out? A dungeon delve didn't really make sense, how would PCs pop in and out while underground? Even overground a party with PCs yoyoing in and out didn't make a lot of sense. In the end I remembered running game in the world of Judge Dredd using FATE a few years back. I know Judges are always coming and going, handing work off to other judges, dropping in to assist and so on. That settled my theme. Sadly FATE was too heavy a system, and the Mongoose version of Judge Dredd was likewise too burdensome for newbies or people in a hurry, 

Thus was born my game "REDD Judge". The background similar to Judge Dredd but set long before Dredd himself, before Lawgivers, Lawmasters, Stumm grenades, and block wars. But similar enough to Dredd, and similar enough to modern cop-dramas on TV to be approachable to pretty much everyone.

The system used in the game is entirely 1D6 based, which made it about as approachable as any game could be. The skills sets available are limited and deliberately vague, and players just choose the four they like the sound of. So players can be given a character sheet throw together a Judge in a minute, and then that PC rides into the scene being played. If the player has to leave, HQ calls their PC over the radio and diverts them to another job. Thus players can come and go without destroying the fiction.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, well if so, its also the mother of REDD Judge.