[sniff] So proud.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Its a little known fact that creativity breeds creativity. That is, if you're making something creative, but
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 :)
Throughout the ages of roleplaying nearly every published role playing game has had "that" section near
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!
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.
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.
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.
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..
So that's the bitchin over. Its a good game, but a terrible book for the referee.
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 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.
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."
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.
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.
Fate points like in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, were/are a non-renewable and limited resource that you can spend to get your character out of trouble. Each one of these points should be narratively powerful, able to reverse a killing blow or allow an escape from a trap. These are precious life-saving points and you only start with 1-4 of them and you never get any more.
Another option is Patsy-Points, these work like the Fate points I mentioned above, but rather than starting with them you earn a Patsy-Point by your character dying. Each time you lose a character you get a Patsy Point. If you lose a second character, you start your next character with 2 Patsy-Points, and so on. It kind of mediates your awfulness as a player, LOL.
Are the points systems described above very OSR.... mechanically at least , OSR is all about the unforgiving grittiness, but they do have their place. Perhaps if you are bringing in new players you can soften the blow, or perhaps if playing with kids. Have a little think about before you start your next campaign, and work out if these or a similar mechanism might be worth a go.
This is an update on my current solo Scarlet Heroes campaign. I have two characters , Nerin and an unnamed Wizard (unnamed because its only level 1 and not worth the effort of getting a name), have bee through a dungeon and brought back some hundreds of gold coins. It occurred to me that if want to take these two out on another adventure, they can be carrying around all these hundreds of coins. If they go into the dungeon carrying them that'll reduce how much they carry out, so less loot!
What do they do with the coins while they go adventuring? They could just find a lonely spot and bury them, but that's hardly secure. So I decided they needed a base of some sort. The two characters only had a couple of hundred gp each so buying a castle was out of their reach. In the end I opted to rent a room for a couple of weeks and pick up a lockable chest.
But who looks after the chest while they are away? So then I recruited a retainer, dropping this new guy 10 gp a week until we get some booty at which point he'll get a promise of 15% of Nerin's future hauls. This new recruit also got outfitted with Hand axe, chin armour, shield, short bow and arrows. As Nerin is level 2 that means his retainer is half his level and therefore is promoted above "Normal Man" to level 1.
Considering that I don't name level 1 characters as they are so disposable, BUT I'm going to name this retainer. I'm doing this as I don't plan to take him on any missions. His job, for now, is just to look after the heroes gear, and have sandwiches ready when they get back from the job.
Now motivation, on table 3 we get "access" and on table 4 we get "service", so our guy is looking for a position of scholarly servitude. This could be great. I can see him running the "house" and using Wizard's library for research. Sure I've given him weapons, but this weedy guy's strength is brain work not swords. I like it. Table 8 Focus, and I roll 60 which is "antagonist", but you know what, if I nudge the dice to 61 it becomes "knowledge" which is much better for how I see this going.
A quick dive into an online name generator and I've named this guy "Lufar Hollie"
Name: Lufar Hollie
Focus: Knowledge
Motivation: Access Service
Modifier: Scholarly Professor
So there's our brand new retainer.
