27. August 2010 by Samldanach.

(Note:  This was also posted in my LJ.  I’m cross-posting it here to keep it with all my other writing.) 

So, in discussing 7th Sea over on Rob’s blog a couple days ago, I got bitten by that bug again.  Nothing gets my juices fired up quite like that setting.

Today’s post is about how to use DFRPG to do 7th Sea.  And I’m rambling and spitballing, so don’t expect a lot of organization.  I already did some of this work using SotC as a model.  DFRPG opened up a couple new options, though.
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5. May 2010 by Samldanach.

So, I’ve been thinking about my post-apoc fantasy setting.  Incidentally, for now, I am calling it Aurelian.

One of the bits is the presence of psionically-gifted humans.  Another is the presence of “monsters.”  After much thinking, I think I can tie many of these elements together fairly neatly.

It all starts with a virus….

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3. April 2010 by Samldanach.

So, as I’ve mentioned here, I’ve been toying with a few different systems and settings for RPGs.  I was thinking about whether or not I could actually devise a new and improved RPG.  I’m sure that there is ground yet to be trod.  But, how to find it?

An awful lot of the indie games seem to delight in spewing forth wacky mechanics.  I think that, as a community, they are attempting to derive the perfect RPG through some sort of Darwinian process.  They create games like you create creatures in Spore, then have the games compete for “survival” (measured in mentions on Forge and RPG.net, as many of them don’t actually have sales).  Key features are then re-incorporated in newer games (though generally with the key terms changed, so that the writer can convince people his work is “original”).

I thought that I would rise above this mish-mash, powered by nothing but my own hubris.  I will devise the perfect RPG, not through some messy evolutionary process, but with SCIENCE!!!  (Please don your protective goggles at this time.)  (Ze gogglez!  Zey do nothink!!!)

In some seriousness (since I seem to be incapable of all seriousness), what I am looking for initially is some idea of what RPG rules actually do.  I know what an RPG is.  And I know a couple dozen rules sets.  But, if I want to make a contribution that is an actual revolution, and not just a gimmicky new mechanic, I need to have some idea what my goals are.  So, what needs do the rules of an RPG need to fill?

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31. March 2010 by Samldanach.

So, one of my biggest stumbling blocks in designing my post-apoc RPG setting is gear.  All the rest of it is actually relatively simple in concept, just somewhat lengthy in execution.

Here’s the basic block:  Gear needs to matter.  Post-apoc is one of the few settings where hand-waving gear actually detracts from the feel.  Scavenging for parts, babying your car because you can’t find another, and fighting off desperate bandits who want your stuff are all key features of the setting.  And yet, most of the solutions I’ve seen either fail to provide mechanical support for these features, or have a system that is over-detailed and heavy on the bookkeeping.  Indeed, the solution I’ve been working with to date falls into the “heavy on the bookkeeping” side.  I was looking at it a few weeks ago, and realized that, much like your average encumbrance system, no one would actually use it.

I had a brain-wave last night.  I think I now have a tweak to the system that radically reduces the bookkeeping, while still maintaining most of the effects I want.

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4. March 2010 by Samldanach.

IMO, any post title that has me singing Sting lyrics is a good one.

In working on my new PA setting, I came to a startling conclusion.  Our information-based infrastructure is like a gigantic balloon.  Press it at any point, and it will give.  Remove the pressure, and it will rebound.  But pop it, and it cannot be repaired.  It can only be rebuilt from scratch.

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26. February 2010 by Samldanach.

So, I’ve been kicking around taking the work I did on d20 Rifts and porting it to the “MasterCraft” system (making it a variant of Spycraft 2.0 instead of Spycraft 1.0 and incorporating elements of FantasyCraft).  However, if I did so, I’d want to toss it over the fence to the guys at Crafty, which means I need to seriously file the serial numbers off the setting.

So, how else do you make a gonzo, kitchen-sink, post-apocalyptic setting?

My first idea (a series of mega-crises rather than one big event, plus a pretty awesome idea for introducing aliens) didn’t work.  Not kitchen-sink-y enough.  I had a fabulous explanation for non-human intelligences wandering around.  But, I had to hand-wave the introduction of both magic and psionics.  It was way too forced.

Percy Jackson, oddly enough, prompted the seed for the new idea.  Some time in the late 21st century (long enough for super-tech to be invented, short enough for the society to have not gone to singularity and become unrecognizable), the Second Coming of Christ occurs.  He is the child of both the line of Jesus (borrowing from Holy Blood, Holy Grail and suchlike) and the line of Fatima (and hence Mohammed).  (Being of the line of Jesus also, obviously, makes him of the House of David.)  He is the Messiah for all three Abrahamic faiths, uniting them for the endtimes.

He is opposed, however, by scions (see what I did there?) of other faiths.  The Norse Gods see this same time as Ragnarok.  The Greek Gods see the return of the Titans (*cough*Dark Inheritance*cough*).  Shiva the Destroyer returns.  I think you get the idea.  The point is, god war.

After several bloody, destructive years, the gods drive each other from the Earth, leaving the wrecked shell to the relative handful of surviving mortals.  They also leave behind two other gifts.  First, some of the gods indulged in shore leave while fighting the war, and left a passel of half-divine children behind.  By the time the setting proper begins, the bloodlines of those children are effectively psions.  Second, the knowledge of how to work true magic has returned to the world.  Oh, and they one other legacy: several creatures of myth now wander the world.  That is more curse than gift, though.

Two other quirky bits.  Artificial intelligences were created and became self-sustaining before the god war.  So, you can play a robot (some are just brains in boxes, but I’m not sure those are really playable), or a cyborg with a pet AI sharing your body.  Second, genetic engineering was on the verge of a massive breakthrough.  One of the surviving societies is able to grow carefully manipulated Genetically AUgmented Beings (known generally as GAUBlins) in vats.  Gaublins are treated more like clever livestock than even slaves, despite having human-level intelligence.

One area has also developed the ability to create massive robot vehicles, that run on bio-diesel and magic.  They have animal-level spirits bound to them, helping to animate and control them.

So, let’s see.  Psions, mages, ordinary humans, cyborgs, genetically-enhanced humans, robots, robot vehicles, monsters.  Tech levels will range from hunter-gatherer/cargo cult level, to a typically early industrial age, and in a few areas up to post-modern.  One of the sky gods ripped down all the satellites from orbit, destroying the global communications infrastructure, and no one has put together the resources to start lifting satellites back into orbit.  (This serves to isolate settlements from one another, an important element.)

Have I left anything out?

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10. December 2009 by Samldanach.

I have a bunch of things pinging around in my head currently.  So, maybe the month of blogging was good for me.  I think I’m about ready to start writing pretty frequently again.

So, I’m still kind of digging the system concept I was working on before.  I still need to post up a few more thoughts on it before they flit away.  I also want to make sure that I pare the system down pretty ruthlessly.  I have a tendency to want to add more and more complexity to a system, just to have nifty toys to play with.  In this case, I explicitly want a game that is not heavily detailed.  That’s going to be a real challenge for me.

OTOH, I am currently very enamored with FantasyCraft.  It’s an awesome system.  And, it does have a huge number of fiddly bits.  So, I would like to pour my tendencies towards detail into that.

The basic problem is that it’s hard to work on both at the same time.  I’m not sure my brain will split that way.  It would be easier if I had a setting to work with.

Hmm, I still have 7 Kingdoms kicking around.  Maybe I’ll try to apply FantasyCraft to it as a “generic fantasy” setting.   I’ll also apply my new system to it as a “Renaissance-era supers” setting.

I have a Rifts clone that I’m working on.  I really want to use FantasyCraft (or, more correctly, MasterCraft, the base rules) to do that.  Especially as I already did a bunch of work to convert Spycraft 1.0 to work with Rifts.  And, the more I look at it, the more I don’t feel I can adequately model the world with the looseness of my new system.  (That may be a flaw with the system, or it may be a flaw with my thinking.)

Day before yesterday, though, I had a braingasm.  I’ve started reading Doc Savage, which has my pulp tendencies flaring up again.  A setting that has been percolating in the back of my head for years suddenly had a lightning bolt flash through it.  Actually, I should say Flash through it.  It is heavily based on the Flash Gordon universe, especially as depicted in the 1980 movie.  Not coincidentally, one of the first D&D campaigns I was ever in was based on it in a very similar way.

Elevator pitch:  A slightly mad and ludicrously powerful Emperor rules an entire reality as very nearly a god.  He “collects” other worlds.  He smashes the planet apart, then takes the best bits and sets them floating in the vast nothingness of his realm.  His Empire has combined the best that each world has to offer, creating a fusion of science, magic, and other forces that powers his civilization.  His subjects include an inconceivable variety of beings.  The PCs are the usual band of misfits, trying to carve out a niche for themselves in this decadent jigsaw madhouse of a realm.

It will have a very strong pulp sci-fi flavor to it.   Fortune favors the bold.  Anything you can imagine is out there somewhere, both for good and for ill.  The PCs can be literally anything they want to be, from cyborgs to barbarians, from Jedi to faeries, from superhero to devil.  Magic, religion, super-science, psionics, genetic engineering, and more will all get mashed up together in a marvelous kitchen sink.

This will work exceptionally well with my new system.  Once I flesh it out, I might also do alternative write-ups for using FATE 3.0 and PDQ# (which just published a space opera variant, handily enough).  Both would also work well for it.

See what I mean?  All kinds of ideas going on up there.  And that’s just the gaming stuff I want to write about…

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20. November 2009 by Samldanach.

This is a concept that was birthed from the “Life after People” show on The History Channel.   Essentially, as our metropolises decayed, skyscrapers would become vibrant micro-ecologies.  As windows shattered and fell out, dirt and seeds would find their way in, creating gardens 15 stories up.  Birds would be the obvious inhabitants, but insects and rats would also dominate, living off plastics, woods, and insulation.  As the joists and beams deteriorated , the whole structure would become too unsound for any large animal, and would require significant climbing ability to negotiate.  The apex predator of this new ecological niche?  Cats.

In my post-apoc setting, Manhattan Island was abandoned, and all the bridges blown.  As water levels rose, the edges of the island became submerged under up to 6 feet of water, with skyscrapers towering above these channels.  Skyscrapers ruled by cats.  And, over the years, the cats had…changed.

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19. November 2009 by Samldanach.

With Stats must go Skills.

I’m a little torn on Skills.  On the one hand, I’d kind of like to do “define your own” skills, like Unknown Armies.  On the other, since I am introducing Aspects, that would severely blur the line between Aspects and Skills.  Probably not a good thing.

So, here’s some rough thoughts on how to do Skills.

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10. November 2009 by Samldanach.

So, I did mention before that my prior post on magic was version 1.  Rather typical fantasy.  The second version is a bit different.  The biggest difference is that it combines two genres: fantasy and superheroes.  One of the big tasks to pulling off that combination is drawing a sharp distinction between magic and super powers.  It should be constantly obvious to both players and characters that there is a fundamental difference, not just in execution, but in feel.

In order to really maximize that distinction, there are a few other changes that would need to be made to the setting as well.  Look for those towards the end of the post.

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