Campaign Pitch: NW Mounted Monster Hunters

In all of my years of playing, reading about and otherwise enjoying RPGs I have come across very few games or campaign settings that are set in Canada. There are definitely some out there, most notably as supplements for games such as RIFTS, oWoD and Deadlands; however none of them really have any kind of connection to the Canadian identity or history outside of superficial elements (cold weather and polar bears). Maybe there isn't much demand for games set in Canada, but as a Canadian I'd really enjoy a romp around our history with a good campaign. I have had an idea for just such a campaign percolating in my head for some time now and I'm going to hit you with my pitch.

NW Mounted Monster Hunters

It is 1880s Canada. The winters are harsh and the land is wild, dangerous and aware. The Northwest Mounted Police ride out to protect the land and its people. There are things out there in the dark forests and forgotten valleys, shadowy things spoken only of in the myths and tales of native peoples. There be monsters living out there in the wilds and they don't see any reason to hide from this latest wave of men trying to make homes in their hunting grounds.

The NWMP might act as a police force and they do police the land, but their real mandate is to hunt and kill the monsters that pray on men. The campaign would follow a group of new recruits as they hunt down monsters of all kinds and the campaign, should it last, would occasionally place the PCs at historical events which had been given a supernatural twist, such as the Klondike Gold Rush or North-West Rebellion. The game would also jump forward in time between hunts so that we could follow the characters as they get older and also so that we could hit more major events.

What Game Would I Use?

There are for potential games that I would use to run NWMMH. Whichever game I  ultimately picked would depend on the players I had sitting at my table. In no particular order the games are:

• FATE
• GURPS Monster Hunters 
• Call of Cthulhu 
• World of Darkness
• Dogs in the Vineyard

All of the above would require some adapting to make work. FATE would be the easiest to get going. GURPS and CoC would be the more deadly options, but would require the most work to get going. nWoD sits in the middle somewhere. DitV is a weird one that I hadn't been considering until I started writing this; however, I think that the style of the game fits with what I have in mind for this campaign. It would be trivial to replace Mormons with NWMP and go from there.

I guess Deadlands might work as well, especially if I used that supplement I linked to way at the beginning of this post. I'm not really a fan of classic or D20 Deadlands, though.

How Would I Run It?

I would want a game where it costs the PC's dearly to win the day, but not one that is hopeless. I see this as a game where limb loss is much more common than outright PC death. The game would be equal parts sight-seeing through Canadian history and action-horror. Think CoC, only most of the game is outdoors and the party is made up of highly competent rifle and frontiersmen. It would be Monster Hunter Alpha set in the late 1800s and without all of the American south trappings. The campaign would be episodic in nature, with each session being a self contained adventure surrounding a specific monster.

In a perfect world the game would continue until the formation of the RCMP and at that point I would like to retire the characters and the game. From there I would like to like to fast forward to a monster hunting RCMP unit in another point in time (Could be any interesting period of the 1900s or even present day.) or move on to an entirely different game.

Categories: Campaign Pitch, Canada, DitV, Fate, GURPS, Monster Hunting, Northwest Mounted Police, nWoD, RCMP, RPG

The Deck of Fate: DW Session Report #2

We sat down for our second of Dungeon World a little while ago, but due to a very busy December I have just now gotten around to writing about it. For this session we were short both of our new players. One couldn't make it due to an exam, the other just never showed up. We didn't let being without both Wizard and Cleric get us down. The remaining players were happy to don their adventuring boots and leave the warm glow of The Sideways Stallion.

It was a role play heavy session, which is a nice contrast to the straight up dungeon crawl we had last week. Things started out with Bard trying to find some leather armor in the no-horse town of Sandover. After his brush with death in the ruins to the north he was determined to get a little protection. There is no armor shop in Sandover, so our hero had to make do with the local leatherworker. It was here that Bard learned he didn't have enough cold, hard coin to get some leather armor made for himself. He bartered away his pipeleaf for a heavy leather apron with a number of alterations to make it more armor-like.

The rest of the adventuring day was spent chatting up locals and putting on an impromptu performance in the town square. The Bard worked up a great tune and the Halfling got into the spirit of things with some tumbling, when he wasn't busy chatting up locals going about their business. Their performance caught the eye Jaim Sandover, youngest son of the area's ruling lord and the party earned themselves a dinner invitation to Sandover Manor.

That evening the party met the rest of the Sandover clan and, for reasons I can not explain, they all had cheesy southern accents. Dinner was short and sweet, with a little bit of role playing before we got into the meat of things: a request from Lord Sandover for the party to return to Sandover Ruins and delve deeper. It turns out that the local ruins have long been the lifeblood of Sandover, supplying the town artifacts and metals that are its primary trade. The recent monster infestation has changed that and Lord Sandover, being an example of a responsible feudal lord, was keen to get things back in order. This exchange between the players and Lord Sandover ended up being interesting to me (mechanically) as it marked the first time that the Bard used his various social Moves. It was a bit clumsy at first as we read over how things work, but it was not a bad experience at all.

Dinner closed with the party striking up a deal to clean out the ruins so long as some locals acted as guides and porters while they make their way through the ruins. We decided to end the session at the entrance of Sandover Ruins in hopes that we would have a full group again in the new year after holiday madness leaves.

As I said above, this was a nice counter to our first game of Dungeon World as it focused on a completely different side of the game. While the night could easily have become a wash out we were able to soldier on and have a good time and I think it is a testament to DW's good design that it doesn't require a full party of four to get things done. Speaking of design, the Halfling Fighter's player told me that he thought a Paladin was much more appropriate for the character he had in mind and that he was disappointed that it wasn't an option. I'm pleased to say that it is now (and so is my player). Thanks to Dungeon World being nice and open I was able to go onto Github, grab the Paladin Playbook and add some additional options to it. The whole process didn't take me longer than twenty minutes, but it does require a copy of Adobe InDesign. The good news is you can get a 30 day free trial to work your homebrewing magic if you don't have it at your disposal.

Our third session of Dungeon World is scheduled for next week and after a month without any role playing I'm  itching for a chance to roll some dice.

Categories: Deck of Fate, Dungeon World, Homebrew, Paladin, RPG, session report

Cyberpunk Roleplaying with Technoir

I had meant to write this up a couple of weeks back, after doing the session report of my first time playing the game, but ended up procrastinating instead. Better late than never, right?

What is it?

Technoir is a cyberpunk role playing game by Jeremy Keller and was funded via Kickstarter last summer. I'm really impressed with the overall layout of the book. The book is done in a striking blue, black and white color palette which gives it a nice cyberpunk feel and is very easy on the eyes. I do wish there were more pieces of art spread throughout the book, but I'm sure Mr. Keller wanted to keep the Kickstarter goal as low as possible.  The writing is also very concise and clearly communicates concepts with great examples.

The setting of Technoir is generic cyberpunk, complete with cybernetic augmentations. There are more specific setting details to be found in the Transmissions (adventures), but even these snippets could easily fit into just about any cyberpunk game or setting.

Technoir also won a Judge's Spotlight Award at this year's ENnie Awards.

How does it work?

Technoir really shines in this department. Everything from character creation to resolution is well thought out and illustrated with great examples.

Technoir starts with something called a Transmission. You can think of a Transmission as the skeleton of an adventure. It contains key NPCs, events, objects, factions, locations and threats. The GM uses a table to randomly select a number of these, called Nodes, and connects them together in a kind of mind map. This creates the framework for an adventure. A number of other things happen with the Transmission, but let's jump to character creation for now.

While the GM selects and connects Nodes the players should be hard at work creating their characters. Character creation reminds me a little of Traveller in that characters are built out of a number of careers that act as the character's personal history. For example one player might select Criminal, Pilot, Soldier for their character. Each of these careers increases core attributes for the character, called Verbs. These are things like Shoot, Fight, Hack and Coax. They range from 1 to 5 and each point adds one more die that can be rolled during challenges. In addition to the Verbs players also select one Adjective to add to their character from each profession. A Soldier, for example, might select Tough as an adjective. These are called upon during challenges for bonus dice.

Once players have their Verbs and Adjectives sorted out they start connecting their characters to NPCs. These NPCs are listed in the Transmission that the GM is using and the players go through in turn and select an NPC and the kind of relationship they have with them. Each player makes three of these connections. The relationships are very interesting. A player might have a borrowed money from an NPC and this gives them more money to spend on outfitting their character, but leaves them in debt for when the game actually starts. There are a number of other types of connections that can be made and the players also select an Adjective to describe their relationship with the NPCs.

At this point the GM should have a relationship map that connects player characters to NPCs and those NPCs to a number of events, objects, threats, factions and so on. This is where the actual game begins. Usually by this point the GM will have figured out how everything fits together into an adventure and the loans and favours owed or friendships with NPCs are perfect for hooking player characters into the action.

The actual moment to moment game play of Technoir should be mostly familiar to role players. Dice are only ever rolled if a PC is in conflict with an NPC (or another PC). These challenges are resolved via opposed rolls where each side rolls a number of dice equal to the relevant Verb plus additional dice from relevant Adjectives. There is some extra crunch in deciding whether to use the extra dice to get a better result or keeping them in reserve to improve the quality of a success. There is another wrinkle to deal with in the form of negative adjectives, when one is applied to character (through a wound, for example) a red die is added to the pool of dice and whatever value is rolled cancels out all dice of the same value. With negative adjectives stack up this can become quite punishing.

Speaking of negative adjectives, whenever someone wins a challenge (be it NPC or PC) the winner applies and adjective to the environment or target. Someone that was stabbed might have the adjective "bleeding" applied to them and these adjectives can be called on for bonus or penalty dice. This makes Technoir play, revolve around placing and stacking adjectives on things. There are no health points or difficulty targets, the players just say how they want to affect the world and apply an adjective if they win.

One thing about the resolution system that bothered me is that there are no versus environment conflicts. The idea seems to be that if nobody is opposing a character they will eventually succeed at what they are trying to do, but sometimes you want to roll to see if someone can avoid drowning in a lake or something. Luckily, it is very easy for the GM to assign a base difficulty of 1-5 dice to oppose a player in a situation like this.

Final thoughts

I really, really like Technoir. It plays like the halfway point between Fiasco and Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020. It shines as a one-shot game, but I think it should scale into a longer campaign with few growing pains. The Transmissions are brilliant. Not only do they have re-playability due to the random elements, it also takes very little time and effort to create a new one. I can hammer out a new Transmission in less time than it would take me to do more traditional adventure prep. Technoir's resolution is fast and entertaining and any ex-Shadowrun players will still get to use their stacks of six sided dice.I do wish that Technoir had included rules for environmental conflicts as well as a little more direction for long term campaigns and character advancement, but all of these things are easily handled by the GM and unnecessary for enjoying the game.

Number crunchers probably won't like Technoir, it isn't a game that concerns itself with stats or bookkeeping of any kind. Everything is handled through adjectives and that includes cybernetic augmentations as well as vehicles and weapons. If you are the type that likes to know how much faster that upgraded engine will move your motorcycle then this game isn't going to scratch that itch. If, on the other hand, you are someone that likes the idea of Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, but is intimidated by all of the numbers and rules or just can't be bothered with keeping track of that stuff then you will love Technoir.

Technoir is available in print from the official website and in PDF from DriveThruRPG. Player's guide handouts and Transmissions are also available as free downloads, but do not contain all the rules you will need to play the game.

Categories: cyberpunk, Jeremy Keller, Review, RPG, Technoir

The Rollplay Engine

About a month ago I posted about eschewing character sheets in favour of managing everything through dice. I have been mulling the idea over and over the recent long weekend I whipped together a basic RPG system built around the concept. I am tentatively naming the resulting game the Rollplay Engine. It is a silly name, but also a relatively apt description. It is also a bit of a cheeky nod at the term "rollplaying", which is one of the few hobby-related words that make me want to strangle my monitor.

A lazy mockup of a die used by the Rollplay Engine.

What I have written is a basic system using fantasy archetypes which we can call Fantasy Rollplay for now. I have used fantasy archetypes for the basis of the system because I find them easy to work with. If I find that the system is fun then I will probably expand it into other genres. Actually, when I was writing this I thought that the game would work very well adapted to a mech theme. Right now the game is very much in a draft form, but if you take a look (or play the game) please let me know your thoughts.

I should note that I have included dice values next to things in the rules because I haven't actually made any custom dice yet (I am planning to do this with stickers). To play this game you will either need to refer to these rules or write the numbers out on cards or pieces of paper. 

Some Design Notes

Spotlight and Opposition Players

I decided to make the Rollplay Engine one of those artsy story games that feature shifting narration responsibilities. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• Narrative controls seemed a natural fit for a system that gives players limited options. By using narrative control the game becomes more about taking the options the dice give you and narrating something fun than it does about rolling to see what your character does. It puts the control back in the hands of the players instead of leaving things at the mercy of the dice.

• I wanted the game to be something that could be picked up and played with no preparation. In a game that is about improvised narration the GM role was already reduced, so it made sense to remove it entirely as a requirement

Despite the game defaulting to having no player wearing the GM/Storyteller mantle in the traditional sense, there is no reason why a group of players couldn't select someone to take on that role. The game should work fine with a single player acting as the Opposition for every scene.

Difficulty Isn't so Difficult

I think this is somewhere where I really veered off into unfamiliar territory. Most role playing games, if not all of them, have some kind of difficulty mechanic. Players need to roll over or under some target number or they need a certain number of successes or they have a percent chance of being successful at something. The only games that do not do things this way are the ones with bidding and similar narrative control mechanics, but the driving force behind these mechanics is in narrative competition.

With Rollplay I knew that I needed some kind of difficulty mechanic some way for players to succeed or fail at what they are trying to do. I came up with the difficulty dice. The idea with these is that the dice represent a chance for something to go wrong, which is something I found to be much more flexible and easy to manage than a bunch of contextual values. I then mixed things up further by having players set their own difficulty in a kind of gamble mechanic. The more difficulty dice they bet the greater the narrative reward.

If players manage their dice well and are able to tackle any complications that the difficulty dice throw their way then they should be able to overcome any challenge. Cowardly players can always gamble the minimum and be all but assured success, but a minimal success like that would be... well, minimal.

Expandable

There are a number of different classes and backgrounds listed in the rules I linked above, but the beauty of Rollplay is that more can be made with such little effort. New faces and narrative keys can be created and arranged as desired. During the very first playtest of the game we whipped up a new background (craftsman) in less than a minute for a player that wanted their character to have worked as a smith before they went adventuring.

First Playtest Observations

I playtested this game with my regular group of players last Wednesday. It went surprisingly well. Overall things flowed quite naturally from scene to scene and the constant barrage of obstacles set a kind of manic pace. 

• A flowchart laying out the game structure would be useful. I wasn't having problems with it, but I wrote the damn thing. I think it would have been very helpful for the other players to have it written down somewhere.

• We tried different was of selecting the opposition, different XP mechanics and even different ways of deciding which player narrated what. All seemed to work equally well in practice, with the exception of randomly determining Opposition. One of the players kept getting left out when we tried that and I don't think that is a good thing.

• It is clear that the advancement/XP mechanic needs work. Right now it isn't particularly satisfying and I don't like needing to write down XP on scrap paper. Rewarding a single die at the end is also pretty boring as the players seem eager to have a more fast and furious approach to advancement.

• The injury/hits mechanic also needs more thought. Right now it seems simultaneously too lethal and not lethal enough. I'll need to think about this one.

• One player expressed that they would like to be able to lower their chance of success in exchange for trading their Narrative Key for something they didn't roll. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It is worth considering. What I might do is group Narrative Keys into categories that can be swapped in this manner. For example, Might and Melee are similar enough that a player could trade one for the other at the cost of adding additional difficulty dice.

• It might be a good idea to define an overarching adventure somehow and have "successful" scenes push towards some eventual conclusion. During the playtest there was no end goal and we/the players jumped around from minor conflict to minor conflict without hitting a nice flow.

Categories: Dice, Game Design, Rollplay Engine, RPG

Characters as Dice

Today I was thinking about dice. Specifically, I was thinking about ways to use dice in an RPG that I haven't seen before. One of the most credible of these ideas was to use the dice as the character sheet, at least to an extent.

The Idea

I envision a character being made up of a handful of dice, probably six-sided. Each face on a die could represent a different aspect of the character, such as a skill or ability. 

Imagine a die flattened out:

   1
   2
   5
2 3 4
   6

Each side could be assigned a different icon which translates to a character skill or element of the character. If you can't get stickers to do this with then you could always write out on a piece of paper what each side means.

For example:

1 Stealth
2 Knife
3 Knife
4 Acrobatics
5 Acrobatics
6 Persuasion

A character has one of these dice for each level that they are. They roll 1 or more of these dice and the corresponding face determine their action/outcome

The GM can set difficulty in the number of faces that need to come up across all dice rolled with the desired effect. For example, if a player is trying to defeat a monster the GM can state it is a difficulty 2 monster, meaning there needs to be two matching faces. The player rolls 2d6 and gets Knife twice. They narrate that they stabbed the monster, defeating it. If they rolled persuasion twice they might have narrated that they were able to talk their way out of the situation or distract the monster for a turn.

Players choosing which of their dice to roll in any given situation is part of the strategy of the game. When building their character/leveling up they need to assign skills/abilities to their dice as well. So if one player were to place acrobatics on all the faces of one die they are guaranteed to always be at least somewhat successful if they role that die for acrobatics. Another player might spread acrobatics across 3 dice, two on each die. This character would be less likely to roll acrobatics in any given situation, but they have the potential of rolling up a larger set and thus beating more difficult challenges.

Powers/Sets

Further extending this system could be special abilities for characters that require a certain set or sequence to appear on rolled dice. For example if a character rolled 3d6 and got Stealth, Knife, and Acrobatics this might activate their Backstab power.

Complications

If a player doesn’t roll exactly what they want they could narrate their success, but incorporate a complication. The GM might also add in the complication depending on the group play style.

Races/Classes/Archetypes

With a dice system like this it is easy to implement things like Races or Classes. All you need to do is add another die to the character. An archetypal die might have predefined faces rather than player selected faces. After all, an elf is always an elf.

Using something like a racial die could be a good idea as it would give players an extra die to roll at the beginning of the game, assuming that 1 level = 1d6. Mind you, a starting character could always just have a number of bonus dice depending on the desired power level of the game.

Final Thoughts

You know, I really like this idea. I don't think I would like to play a regular game this way, but as a quick sit down and play kind of game I think it is a cool idea. It might be fun long term for groups that are more interested in narrative-based play, but for any group that likes numbers and mechanics I fear it would be a little too light to keep them engaged for long.

Categories: Dice, Game Design, Idea, RPG

A nicer version of By Firelight

I completed this some time ago, but only today did I get around to uploading it somewhere to be seen. Here is a PDF version of By Firelight after an editing and layout pass.

You'll notice that the pages are quite small and this is because this PDF has been formatted to display on small screen, like on an iPad or Kindle. It isn't ideal for reading on a monitor, but you're like me and are sick of game PDFs being borderline unusable on hand-held devices then you will understand.


At this point I am pretty happy with the rules, but I don't consider the game complete. I would like to include:

• A walk through of a scene or two of play.

• 3 “adventures”. I imagine a By Firelight adventure to be a little different from what we typically call an adventure. It would consist of some ready to go characters, suggested words/phrases to put into the draw bag and several key scenes for the Guide. I would like to include one adventure set in a house, another at a campground and a third in a graveyard. I imagine that all of these places would be a good spot for a game of By Firelight.

• More advice for the Guide/Storyteller.

• A better layout and a PDF in 8.5×11 so that it views on a monitor and prints better.

Categories: By Firelight, RPG, Storytelling

Won't someone please think of the newbs?

One thing that I've noticed about the role playing hobby is that it isn't friendly to new players. I'm not talking about the community itself, most message boards I've seen are filled with people that are happy to lend their experience. No, I'm talking about the actual state of the hobby.

Despite role playing games being easier than ever to actually obtain thanks to the wonders of digital distribution, it seems like the hobby really caters to existing players. Where are the new player guides? Where are the introductory adventures? Wizards of the Coast and Paizo may have gotten their acts together and finally published some competent introductory products, but, judging from all of the forum threads featuring people looking for a product to start with, they haven't done a great job of advertising them outside of the people that already know how to play.

Not good enough.

WotC and Paizo aren't the only publishers to blame, though. Take a look at the introductory chapter of your favourite RPG. You know, that "What is an RPG" that you usually skip over. These chapters are almost uniformly terrible. They raise more questions than they answer, they assume the reader already knows what they are doing or they explain the wrong things. If you move on from there and into he actual "How to Play" chapters you will find that these are no better. They all assume the reader already understands the concept and structure of role playing games and from the viewpoint of a completely new player are mystifying and unhelpful.

Part of the problem is no doubt how difficult it is to actually explain in writing how role playing games work. Since the birth of the hobby this has always been something that was easier shown than told. Decades ago when TV and Film and Video Games were limited a prospective player would probably spend the time to puzzle things out for themselves, but these days? In the age of the Internet there is very little chance that someone is going to spend more than a little time trying to puzzle out your game. They're going to move on to some other form of entertainment or, if they are set on tabletop role playing, they will turn to the Internet to answer their questions. Why don't you go do an Internet search on how to play? I'll wait.

Back with me? Nothing particularly useful, was there? A few lazily written guides that cover the physical steps but don't really communicate the actual how of it. If you're lucky you will find that an out of date primer from WotC that tries to sell you products that are out of print. This is a problem. Our hobby can not grow if it has too large a barrier of entry. Programs like D&D Encounters and products like the Red Box and the Beginner Box are a good start, but they aren't enough. A new player needs to be able to type a few words into Google and get the answers they need.

What I said about the community earlier wasn't strictly true. Gamers might be willing to offer help in a friendly and welcoming manner, but that help is awful. Many of the threads devolve into experienced players arguing about which game or edition the new player should be playing. The advice is contradictory or just plain unhelpful. I'd be surprised if many prospective players leave such a thread any more enlightened than they were going in, some of them are probably more confused.

The Solution

The tabletop RPG community needs a definitive "Newbie Guide". A guide that the entire online community can get behind and point newcomers at. It should come up in web searches so that people curious in role playing can find it on their own. Ideally, the guide would have a nice CC license that would allow anyone to customize and update it. It could birth a hundred more new player's guides.

This guide needs to be something free of system bias and argument. It should explain all of the most basic elements of role playing and contain system-agnostic advice. The ideal guide will point potential players in the direction of clearly written, beginner-friendly and free RPGs. It should contain overviews of various beginner products, such as the Red Box, and links to quick-start rules for the more popular/well-known games. The very basic play structure should be explained along with advice on creating players and organizing games. All of the most frequently asked questions should be answered. Things like "How can I play online?" or "How do I find someone to play with?" need to be answered by the guide.

I'm probably not the guy to write this guide, but I'm going to do may best anyway. New players deserve something like this and the role playing hobby needs new players to thrive.

Categories: Beginner's Guide, New Players, RPG, RPG Community, WotC

Ninjas & Nerf Swords

I was browsing through /r/rpg and I came across this thread asking for a simple resolution system that uses Nerf weapons instead of dice or some other randomizer. The twist? The mechanic can't be to actually fight with the weapons.

The person asking the question also presented what they wanted in the way of character stats:

I'm thinking of three stats - Magic, Cunning, and Brawn. I'm not sure what the three stats actually do at this point, but I'm thinking characters get to assign a 3, a 2, and a 1 to the three stats, prioritizing however they want to. Then, for each point in their stat, they can throw in something like an aspect of fate. So it looks like this:

Sarkar Dark-Eater Elven Warlock Magic: 3 Summoning, Brain-Eating, Creepy Dark Eyes Cunning: 2 Lying, Insulting Brawn: 1 Gut-Tearing

Being the person that I am, I couldn't resist taking a stab at this challenge. I whipped up this simple game in about 20 minutes.

Ninjas & Nerf Swords

Character Creation

Characters are defined by 3 stats: Magic, Cunning, and Brawn. They have 6 character points to distribute among the 3 stats. For each point they have in a stat they can apply one Aspect related to it. They can tag these Aspects for bonuses during play.

Ex: If a character has 3 Brawn then their Aspects might be Bulging Muscles, Built like a Brick House and Ox-like.

Aspects as Powers

Players may choose to define one or more of their Aspects as powers. If they do so the Aspects may not be tagged as described later in these rules. Instead the player defines the nature of the power. This could be something like raising the dead or being a "totally bad-ass backhanded axe-cleave that beheads any monster". A player may activate each of their powers only once per scene (as defined by the GM).

Resolution

Whenever there is need for resolution the GM decides on the difficulty. Based on the difficulty the GM selects an object to pitch at one of the players. The harder the difficulty the smaller the item and the crappier the pitch can be. The challenging player must hit the thrown object with their Nerf weapon. If a caster is using a Nerf gun place the target farther away from them. Players get a number of attempts to hit the target equal to the relevant stat. An assortment of different sized whiffle balls and stuffed animals would likely be best for this. You may also wish to play outside or in a large space free of things that could be broken.

Tagging Aspects

During any challenge that a player is involved in they may declare one of their Aspects relevant. This is called tagging. When they do so they can alter one thing about the difficulty of the challenge. For example, they may make the target bigger or demand that the GM pitch underhand. Alternatively, they can be granted 1 additional pitch/shot. Once an Aspect has been tagged it may not be tagged again until a new scene (as defined by the GM) has begun.

Character Health

Characters do not have health points. Instead, anytime they would take damage reduce one of their stats by 1. The reduced stat should reflect the kind of damage they took (Magical, Psychic/Emotional/Social, Physical). The player may avoid this damage by pounding back a beer (or some performing an embarrassing task if they are under age). If a stat would be reduced to 0 the character falls unconscious and may be revived by tagging a healing Aspect or a friendly NPC in a subsequent scene. If it falls below 0 the player should be ridiculed and forced to create a new character with a smaller, less fearsome weapon.

GM Challenge Rule

If the majority players believe that one of the GM's rulings is "bogus" they may select a champion to challenge the GM to a duel. The first to score 3 clean hits with a nerf weapon is declared the winner and a new rule is codified into the game. A player may not use a challenge to overturn an existing rule created in this manner.

The Anti-Power Rule

The GM may reduce the effectiveness of a power at any time for a single usage if it would cause narrative problems (such as gut-tearing the BBEG). When the GM does so they must give the affected player a +1 temporary stat bonus. This does not grant an additional Aspect. It is removed at the end of the scene. Players may challenge these rulings on an individual basis by challenging the GM (as above).

Sarkar Dark-Eater, Elven Warlock

Magic: 3
Cunning: 2
Brawn: 1

Tag Aspects: Creepy Dark Eyes, Lying, Insulting
Power Aspects:

1. Summoning - Summons a 1/1/1 demonic familiar to aid him for the remainder of the scene.
2. Brain-Eating - May consume the brain of a foe to restore 1 point in any stat. May learn one memory from the eaten brain.
3. Gut-Tearing - May designate a single previous attack by either himself or his familiar as "Gut-Tearing". This retroactively kills the target.

Categories: Game Design, Nerf, Ninjas and Nerf Swords, reddit, RPG

By Firelight: a campfire storytelling game.

UPDATE: You can read By Firelight: The Campfire Storytelling Game here. This post is about the original conception of the game.

Around two weeks ago I came across someone asking for suggestions for an RPG that they could play around a campfire. A lot of people were recommending games with few rules or dice needed to play, but to me that doesn't seem to capture that special something that telling tales around a campfire has. At the very least it doesn't take advantage of that magic.

This got me thinking. I already knew of one RPG designed for being played while hiking through the wilderness. It’s called Sherpa and it takes advantage of the changing surroundings as you make your way through a trail. I thought why not come up with something that takes advantage of a campfire in that same way? I typed up a reply that featured some quick brainstorming as well as a couple of suggestions. You can read it here if you are curious.

I really liked the quick little set of rules that had formed out of that comment and I’d be lying if I said the positive feedback didn’t encourage me to expand those initial ideas. That is exactly what I did. I took that initial set of ideas and I compiled them into a proper set of rules, changing things as needed.

The most important aspect of the game is that it incorporates the campfire right into the mechanics. It really would have been a shame to not use the fire since it was going to be there in front of the players anyway. I decided to use it in a kind of ritualized manner. Players are given pieces of paper with character traits on them and they are also given a paper cutout that represents their character. Traits are consumable and burned once used. Any harm that comes to their character results in pieces being torn from their cutout and being tossed into the flames. It’s simple, but I think really helps provide an atmosphere for the game.

Another thing I needed to consider and overcome for this game was that playing a game at night are not ideal for most traditional ways of playing RPGs. There probably won’t be a lot of flat and dry surfaces, light will be low, and outdoors there could be rain or wind causing all kinds of problems for things like character sheets. As someone that grew up in the Pacific Northwest I am intimately familiar with these conditions, so I wanted to make things easy on the players.

The first step was to remove character sheets. The character cut out doesn't have anything written on it. There is nothing to read so light is no problem. It is still paper and will be susceptible to wind and rain, but it won't be used unless it needs burning so it can easily be shoved in a pocket or held down by a stone. The same thing goes for the Traits, although they would all have a single thing written down on them.

Randomizers were the second problem. Dice were going to be a pain to use because the numbers could be difficult to read in the dark and without a large flat surface they would bounce all over the place. Cards had a similar issue, only they would also be susceptible to the elements. I thought about how this game would likely be played in the dark by the light of the fire and how burning things as a game mechanic was very ritualistic. I got thinking about playing on ritual and I recalled all of the films I have seen and stories I had read where people voted with black and white stones or had to draw stones to determine their fate. This was something I thought I could use in my game. It reinforced a certain mood and was something that wouldn't have problems with light, wind, or rain. To top it all off, there are plenty of stones available outside at a campground or park. It would be a simple matter to gather up some dark and light stones for a game if nobody thought ahead to bring something to use. I decided to go with drawing stones as a mechanic and used a simple system where black equaled a negative result and white a positive one. Easy to teach and understand, which was perfect for the kind of impromptu setting this game would be for.

I now had all of these ritualistic and borderline spooky game mechanics. I decided to go for broke and make it a horror game. I suppose it could be played in any genre, but ghost stories have a long tradition of being told around a campfire so it really all fit together rather nicely. I wrote the rules with that in mind and added advice for playing the game that kept the art of the campfire ghost story in mind. The only thing left that I really needed was a title that fit the game I had created. I decided to go with By Firelight. I think that the reason I went with that title is pretty self explanatory.

I wanted to capture that feeling of telling creepy stories and turn it into a game and I think I’ve managed to do that. I have posted the draft of By Firelight on Google Docs where anyone can read it. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Categories: By Firelight, Game Design, reddit, RPG

The Daughter of Padua (Game Chef 2011)

I’m participating in Game Chef again this year. You couldn’t keep me away after how much fun I had with it last year. This year’s theme was Shakespeare and we had to pick 3 of the 4 ingredients (Daughter, Exile, Forsworn, Nature).

My entry this year is titled The Daughter of Padua. It’s a game where one person plays as a sickeningly rich man’s daughter that has been put up for marriage. The twist is that she gets to pick her groom and the other players are her suitors.

I used the Daughter, Forsworn, and Nature ingredients for TDoP. The daughter one should be obvious, but the other two aren’t nearly as easy to figure out. For the Forsworn ingredient I have set each of the Suitors to have a secret Oath. This is a negative thing (for the Daughter), it’s an ambition or goal that the suitor has that is the true reason he seeks her marriage. Through the course of the game he will have the option to forswear that oath for the sake of true love. To satisfy nature I went with nature as in “human nature”. Each character has natures which are hidden aspects of their character. In the case of The Daughter there are 10 of these which The Suitors will need to figure out if they want to win her heart. For The Suitors, they each have one nature which The Daughter’s brothers will try to reveal (if they enter the game). All of these natures are taken into account in the epilogue of the game, which the losing suitors narrate.

One thing that I really wanted to work into a game about Shakespeare was the use of direct quotes from his works. I thought this would be a lot of fun and it was a mechanic I’ve seen used in another RPG called The Dying Earth. In that case they used Jack Vance quotes. The mechanic I used was pretty basic. Players draw random quotes and if they can work them into the game they get bonus dice.

The overall concept for this year’s game came to me pretty easily. I knew that I wanted to do a comedy because I’ve always liked Shakespeare’s sense of humour. I also thought that most of the other contestants would be going the tragedy route with their games. Daughter really stuck out at me and I thought it would be pretty Shakespearean to do a comedy about social climbing suitors competing to win the heart of a very rich heiress. For a while I had thought about going a little bit meta and making a play on words with players (as in actors) and players (as in the people playing the game). I couldn’t really make this work, but it still amuses me when reading the rules that the terms can be used interchangeably.

I picked Padua because it was a pretty large Italian city around Shakespeare’s time and, to my knowledge it wasn’t used in one his plays. I thought that it was just the location that Shakespeare could have used and would make a great setting for my game. I later realized, while collecting Shakespeare quotes, that it was where The Taming of the Shrew is set. Oops. I guess I don’t know my Shakespeare as well as I should. I should earn points by correctly guessing a setting he would use though, right?

My original draft of the game ended up being dangerously close to a Fiasco rip-off. My main mechanic in the game is that The Daughter rates her suitor’s seduction attempts with either a flirty smile or an evil scowl. To represent this she hands out different coloured dice. Originally these were rolled against a chart at the end of the game exactly like you do in Fiasco. Not only was this too close for comfort, but I realized it just didn’t work. I needed a flat happy or sad ending and no scale. I kept the dice roll but ditched the chart. All the dice are used for is determining the winning suitor and whether it is going to be a good (read happy) marriage or not. The rest comes down to interpretation from the losing suitors. They use the natures of the bride and groom as well as how high the dice roll was and whether the oath was broken or not to narrate an epilogue. I’m confident that the final game is different enough from Fiasco to be its own game, but there is definitely a similarity in using two different dice for good and bad scenes.

If there is a weakness (that I can see) in my entry this year it will be in the lack of play examples and the suitor oaths. We’ll see what the reviewers have to say.

Speaking of reviewers, this year each contestant must review 4 of the other entries and recommend one to the next round. Watch this space for my own thoughts on 4 other games.

If you’d like to play The Daughter of Padua then you can find it on the Games page or just click this link. I also made a character sheet for this game which you can find here.

Categories: Design, Game Chef, RPG, Shakespeare, The Daughter of Padua

A review of the In Between 2.0 from Poland

Those Polish gamers are at it again. This time they have played my revised version of In Between and it looks like they had a pretty good time with it. You can read their review here. It does happen to be in Polish, though.

The review author was kind enough to send me the gist of it via email. It sounds like most of their problems were due to vagueness in the writing, something that I’ll definitely fix when I get around to updating the game again. They also spotted a few mistakes. Whoops, looks like I need to spend more time proofreading. They seemed pretty happy with the less competitive nature of the game and the system mechanics rework.

I love hearing from people that have played my games so please let me know if you give them a try.

Categories: In Between, Poland, RPG, RPG Kepos

In Between v2 is finished.

I’ve spent a lot of time procrastinating in regards to the second version of In Between. I’ve had all kinds of notes and ideas sitting in a dropbox folder for months, but when it came down to compiling them all I just kept putting it off.

No more! I sat down this week and put them all into the lackluster layout that is the official version of In Between. Those of you that are actually interested will want to know what is new. To help with that I have provided this handy list:

• No longer requires more six sided dice than any reasonable person owns.
• Play now moves through distinct phases and provides a more on topic and ritualized way of playing.
• The narration control system has changed significantly from a very open universalis-like approach to one more focused variety.
• This means less direct competition between players.
• The Power economy has been reworked to require less dice rolling and has a few more quirks than before.
• Much less competitive than before. You don’t need to possess a mortal in order to fulfill your atonement goals.
• Demons have been fleshed out. They actually affect the game now and more selfish characters can walk down the demonic path.
• Exorcists have been added to the game. A new threat (or ally) in the quest for redemption.

There are a few other things, but that'll give you a good idea. The game has gained around 4 pages of new content all in all. It still lacks a lot of examples and those may eventually come if I do another revision.

I’ve put the game up on Google Docs, so check it out! 

Categories: In Between, Release, RPG

Foundation: a kingdom-building rpg (idea)

I have always loved the kingdom and city building elements of video games like Suikoden and Actraiser. There is something compelling about searching out people to fill your city, managing the day to day conflicts and the dealing with politics and war. It is something I really enjoy, but aside from a few supplements it's also something I rarely see in the tabletop RPG world.

I remember the Birthright setting for D&D, but it seems to have slipped away into obscurity. Birthright doesn't seem to have had the staying power that other D&D settings, like Plansecape or Spelljammer, did. Then there is Reign, but while that game does have some great rules for player organizations it doesn't have the kind of focus that I'm interested in.

The popularity of the Kingmaker Adventure Path shows that I'm not the only one that thinks this style of play is fun. I got to thinking, "How would I make an RPG focused around this kind of play?"

Concept

A game in which the players build up their own fantasy city/country/kingdom from the ground up. Each player controls a Founder or Leader (if no Founders are left living). A founder is only as good as their followers and throughout the game the players will regularly role play as both their Founder and the followers that work under their Founder. Additionally, players will also have opportunity to role play as a follower of one of the other founders under certain circumstances. The followers a Founder gathers affect the skills and abilities that are mechanically available to a founder.

Design Goals

1. To capture the fun of city building and kingdom politics while maintaining an easy to use/learn system.
2. To provide a fun game for both players that want to build a mighty utopia and play through the obstacles towards that goal as well as allowing for political conflict for players that want to play something a little... sleazier.
3. Provide mechanics for conflict between other cities/kingdoms as well as internal conflict, either between players (founder) or NPC factions.

Some Rough Ideas

This game is strictly in the "batting around ideas" phase. What follows are some of the things I have been thinking about.

Player Characters as Founders

For me, at least, I see this game beginning when the player characters stake out some territory and found their new city. In Foundation each of the players takes on the role of one of the founders of a new settlement/city/kingdom/etc.

A Founder would be made up of a few key elements, but the most important of these are their Background, Influence and Entourage.

Background

Unlike with a lot of RPGs where player characters start out as relative unknowns the Founders have already made a name for themselves. They already have the necessary fame or infamy to gather people for their cause. Think of their Background as being a package that sums up their career to this point. It's equal parts character class and back story.

An example Background might be "War Hero" or "Noble". Backgrounds could give the character some abilities or starting stats. I might throw in some more narrative mechanics into the background by giving each Background some blanks that need to be filled in. For example, a War Hero would have to define the war, where it happened and if they were on the winning side. I could see this working something like Apocalypse World's Hx or Fate's Aspects. I could also imagine using some random tables with the Backgrounds that work like a limited lifepath, something like what you see with Traveller's Careers. This is definitely something that needs some more thought.

Influence
Influence is a currency stat. It would be used during play to make things happen. I see Influence as a stat that powers a Founder's abilities and can also be directed towards different factions and goals. For example, if a Founder has 10 Influence they might decide to spend 3 of it towards the Ranger's Guild, 4 to Bankers and the remaining 3 to Public Relations. This influence could be slid around during the course of play and provides bonuses/re-rolls when dealing with those factions/goals.

Entourage
The Entourage is the meat of any Founder.  Founders didn't just get up one day and decide they would build a community from the ground up. They are powerful and influential people with a history. An Entourage includes all of the Followers that are at the disposal of a Founder.

While part of an Entourage a Follower grants skills and abilities to their Founder. For example, a thief's knack for procuring items grants their Founder the ability to pickpocket while a mage allows for the casting of spells.  A Founder that has a bodyguard in the Entourage has increased physical capabilities to overcome challenges (or rather, they have someone to overcome it for them). A bodyguard might also give them the "take a hit" ability which would allow the player to sacrifice the bodyguard so that their Founder can avoid death.

Followers are not always part of the Entourage. There are times when a Founder may assign a Quest (more on this in a bit) to one of their followers and when they do that follower must leave the Entourage in order to accomplish it. If a follower leaves an Entourage then any skills/abilities granted by their presence are lost until their return.

This size of the Entourage should be limited and increasing the size of the Entourage is one of two "leveling" mechanics in Foundation. (The second is increasing the size of the city/kingdom.)

Multiple Characters for Each Player

Taking a page from Ars Magica's book, Foundation has players to take ownership and play from the veiwpoint of any of the characters in their Founder's Entourage. A Founder doesn't leave their city to track down some magical item or a skilled artisan, they send one of their trusted followers. At this point the game could change to that character's viewpoint and players could enjoy a dungeon crawl or just RP out a quick scene.

Not every group is going to like switching the focus like this. In fact, maybe the players want to keep things at the macro level. That's no problem, if I include some tables for players to get an idea of how one of their followers does on a quest then that should allow for quick resolution for those that want it.

City/Kingdom as a Character

The city/kingdom should be treated like a shared player character. It should have its own set of stats and abilities determined by its demographics and physical makeup. Founders could spend Influence to activate abilities.

Ideas

• Unrest as a stat. This would probably be a percentage and would be determined by events and actions of the Founders. Unrest rolls would be rolled regularly and if the roll falls within the Unrest % then something bad happens. (Maybe there should be an Unrest table that could be used to generate a random Unrest event?)
• Buildings and Factions each grant abilities to the city. A cathedral might allow for a Holy Day ability that could be used to lower Unrest.

Player "Generated" Starting Map

I think it would be a lot of fun to have the players generate the map that their city is founded on. This could be done using a set of hexes with players taking turns rolling on a table and then placing elements in a desired hex. Things to place could be resources, points of interest, threats (monsters/rival settlements/bandit camps/etc.) and geographical features. I could look to How to Host a Dungeon and Dawn of Worlds for inspiration on how to put this together.

Passage of Time

The game should proceed in rounds, with each round representing a chunk of time. The players should probably decide on how much time to start with, but I think either 1 month or 1 season would be a good place to start at.

For each of these chunks of time the players decide what their Founders want to do. That might be trying to make connections with a certain guild, expanding their Kingdom's borders or even trying to lure someone important to their city. In addition, for each one of these rounds some rolls should be made. The first would be the Unrest Roll discussed above and the second should be on a Random Events Table that would have things on it like "besieged by goblins" or "crime wave". These events would create obstacles for the Founders to overcome or risk the Unrest rising. Of course, not all events should be negative. There could be windfalls, important people joining the settlement and other positive results.

GM?   

This one has me a bit stumped. Should this game be GMless or should it have someone in the traditional role of storyteller/game master? It wouldn't be hard to tweak Influence to work as a narrative currency like you see in games like Universalis. It might also work to have the GM role switch to a different Founder for each Round. This one definitely requires more mulling over.

Afterthoughts

Phew. That was quite the brain-dump. I really do like the idea of this game, but I don't know if all of these ideas fit together as snuggly as I would like them to. I definitely need to let this game bounce around in my head for a while and see what happens with it.

Categories: Foundation, Game Design, Idea, RPG

Combining card games and RPGs

Gamma World relaunched as a D&D 4E based game a couple of months ago. I picked it up since I’ve always been a fan of randomly generated character creation and the wacky universe that Gamma World is set in. We only played it once and it could only be described as a failure. I had intended it as a pickup and play kind of game when our regular games get waylaid for one reason or another; that's how we use Icons. It doesn't work too well for that. 4E is too heavy a ruleset and none of us are particularly familiar with it, which amplified the problem. We did, however, somewhat enjoy playing with the cards.

I didn't really think the cards were used as well as they could have been. They really were not used to any better of an effect than a table in the rulebook. Still, an interesting experiment.

Not long after our disastrous Gamma Worlds game, when I was poking around on the ‘net, I discovered an odd game called Dragon Storm. Dragon Storm is a mashup of RPGs and CCGs. I took a look at some of the cards and art and decided that it wasn't really for me, but it did get me thinking. How would I put together a mashup of RPGs and CCGs?

I’m not really looking to take on another project right now, at least not until In Between has been rewritten, but here are a few ideas I have bouncing around.

• Character cards are split into 3 types: Ancestry, Ability, and Equipment. For random character creation these are split into 3 seperate piles and 3 from each are drawn.

• Player Characters are built out of 9 card loadouts. They do not necessarily require 3 of each character card type, but randomly created ones will.

• Ability cards may be changed through retraining and Equipment cards can be changed at any time.

• A communal “Hit Deck” is utilized. This deck would consist of numbers on different suits as well as a few other special cards.

• Cards from this deck are drawn instead of rolling dice.

• Every card is assigned a suit. This is used when determining critical success and fumbles and may be important for abilities and other things.

• There should be at least one GM only deck. This could be split into two. One containing monsters/npcs and another containing adventure seeds. These could be drawn from to create random adventures and other such factors, but would be by no means mandatory for play. The GM may or may not utilize their own Hit Deck, although its purpose would be the same.

That's all I’ve got for now. It should make for quick and dirty games right now, but maybe one day I’ll flesh it out some more.

I’m actually aware of two other RPGs that use cards as a core mechanic. The first is the StoryCards system, which is really more of a tarot deck. The second is the 6d6 Fireball RPG in progress. I don’t know much about it yet, but they seem to be playing around with some similar ideas.

Categories: 6d6 RPG, Card Games, CCG, Dragon Storm, RPG, StoryCards

A New Version of Seedfall + More In Between News

As promised, I’ve put together another version of Seedfall that contains a number of changes and (I hope) improvements. I’ve added quite a bit more background information to the setting, mostly because people wanted to know a bit more about what kind of technology they have at their disposal. There has also been some major changes to The Seed, specifically puppeteers. I’ve made them significantly scarier at the cost of the overall viciousness of being impaled by a vine. Still, the change is for the best and I think making them inhalable so that they might fill your lungs and then squirm their way out of your mouth more than makes up for it. I also added an entire section on role playing as a colonist or puppet along with specific rules related to becoming a puppet, cures, and other puppet features. There are quite a bit more changes since the game grew by quite a few pages, but the changes are escaping me at this time.

You can get the latest version here.

I’ve discovered another quick review of In Between, this one is quite a bit more favourable than the official Game Chef one, but also not as in depth. It's short, so I'm going to quote it entirely:

The Good: Stuck between worlds trying to atone for sins? I love the concept and I like how the bidding system works with the dice and your power pools. It gets harder the more you accomplish because you lose power.

The Bad: Dice, lots and lots of dice. You need at least 15d6 per person. If one theme this year is maps, the other one would be dice.

The Other: I love how striking the title page is. It’s simple black and white, but it really made me interested in the game.

Would I play it? Yes, several times because apparently like a cat I have nine lives.

Thanks to Jonathan for his quick thoughts. He has also gone through and done the rest of the 58 Game Chef entries. What a job! Check out his blog.

Categories: In Between, RPG, Seedfall

A review from Poland.

I also got a very cool email last night from a group of people that had played my Game Chef entry. The neat thing is that they're all the way in Poland! They liked the game but had many of the same problems that came up in the Game Chef judging. Looks like I'm going to be hard at work getting a better ruleset put together.

If you can read Polish then go ahead and check out their review. I found Google Translate did a good enough job to get the general idea across.

Categories: In Between, Poland, RPG, RPG Kepos

In Between didn’t make the Game Chef cut.

Not everyone can win and I'm glad I wasn't the person that did. There are many games better than mine that were submitted to Game Chef. I liked In Between, but I knew that it was a mess mechanically when I submitted it. That's what slapping a game together in just a few days will do if you aren't careful.

Here are the judge's comments:

Concept: Players take the roles of dead souls traveling back into the mortal world through reflective pools in the Wasteland, a purgatory-like afterlife, and attempting to make amends for their crimes and regrets. The first player who removes all their fetters to the living world can enter the Golden City, a different and hopefully better afterlife.

Execution: This author was nice enough to include a very simple, sketchy layout, but it does wonders for the ease of reading and understanding the text. Nested subheadings, woohoo! I feel spoiled, almost. Overall, this game takes a couple steps forward compared to some of the other abstract and setting-free games in terms of providing a attractive premise that is substantially more provocative. The Wasteland, its silver pools, and the Golden City all sound pretty awesome. Plus, seeking to make amends and fulfill regrets is both emotionally and narratively powerful. However, this game continues an apparent trend of taking a GMless game of personal exploration and structuring it by having the players (if not necessarily the characters) compete directly with each other using limited mechanical resources. This trend is especially striking to me because it does not seem very natural to match the mechanics of inter-player competition to the theme of individual exploration, yeah? When you watch The Fountain or American Beauty, is Universalis the first game that comes to mind? Probably not. And yet several designers have made just that connection, which suggests that inter-player competition may be the sort of dynamic they feel most comfortable designing around. But there are other ways – Polaris, Great Ork Gods, Geiger Counter, Fiasco, Montsegur 1244, etc. – to design GMless games and encourage other players to take on NPC or antagonist roles without putting the players themselves in direct competition to win. I feel like this game and several others may have been more successful if they’d taken a different route and created a more cooperative GMless dynamic between the players, which might have also led to more innovative mechanics. I don’t mean to pick on this game overly much in this regard, but just wanted to point this out explicitly since it’s at least the third or fourth game to do it.

Completeness: There is some missing text between pages 5-6, describing demons. Otherwise, there are some places where the “power” token economy seems to have issues. For example, there doesn’t appear to be any incentive to spend tokens on narrative control if players are ultimately trying to spend them on winning control of possessed mortals and resolving their issues. I also wish there were more guidelines for what was supposed to happen either in the Wasteland or the mortal world, because right now that’s entirely open-ended, even though it comprises the vast majority of play. Additionally, as with some of these other GMless games of personal exploration, I wonder if the game could be strengthened if the various characters could actually meet each other in the Wasteland or mortal world and interact directly. That seems possible according to the premise and maybe even the rules, but isn’t discussed at all. Finally, what’s the point of having these different classes of dead souls – wanderers, unmarked, and demons – if they players don’t get to choose or explore which one their character ultimately is? Seems like a wasted opportunity.

Cookery: The theme is definitely here, and the ingredients are well included. The author did a clever and evocative job with the requirements here. Very impressive.

Conclusion: The solid premise of this game makes it at least as strong as the World Riddle, perhaps more so, and ultimately more narratively compelling than Symbolon and If Wishes Were Horses, I think. However, like the other games mentioned, which all operate in similar thematic space, this game needs a bit more work if the rules are truly going to support the potential of the premise. I really want to see a game in this vein make the playoffs, but I haven’t quite found one yet.

As you can see, they aren't all bad. It looks like they quite liked the premise. That's good because I’d thought the setting was the strong point and my actual game mechanics were the stumbling block. All of the judge's criticisms are valid and I’m already working on putting together a version of the game that does away with competitive structure. No idea when that will be done.

Speaking of games that will eventually get some work done on them; a new version of Seedfall is forthcoming. It should see the light of day sometime in the next week.

Categories: Game Chef, In Between, RPG