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.