Platonic Solid

Last week we started a little experiment and went GMless with Swords & Wizardry using the Mythic GM Emulator . It may sound crazy but I've got to say that it was absolutely incredible from the first session and continues to be so after 4 sessions so far. My wife is playing a ranger named Silvia who has already had run-ins with goblins in her wood. My character a paladin named Osric is from a far away order who has come to the area of an ancient battle to discover why evil is once again stirring. This was the entire premise for the start of the game. Through play it has become amazingly complex and intricate. The joy for me is that it feels incredibly old-school. By that I mean that it feels so much like the way I played role playing games, when the game was the story. Back to the Mythic GM Emulator for a bit. It may be the best old school GM that money can buy. It's completely merciless in its decision making. For example, from the first session, our PCs walked int...

For my Heroquest 2.0 mecha conversion I started going down the path of keeping track of ammo. The tracking wasn't strict but it was tracking none the less and it never felt right so I posted up on RPG.net and got some very good replies to my question on the subject . I attached the flaw Exhaustible 12M to the Veritech's AMM-1 missiles. In action, the narrator asks a player or players to roll against the flaw at an appropriately dramatic moment. If they fail then they are out of AMM-1 missiles. Simple. I'm thinking that the GU-11 gun pod might get Exhaustible 5M to represent its low ammo capacity. This will require a bit of play testing.

On top of the Fighting Man career we've got several more in the works including Freeman, Ranger, Rogue, and Nobility. To give a little more info, the Free Man careers include Tradesman, Sailor, and Merchant. Ranger careers are Scout, Huntsman, and Outrider. Rogue careers are Thief, Footpad, and Pirate. Nobility careers are Cavalry/Knight, Diplomat, Castellan, and Rake. BTW, does anyone know if WordPress handles tables in a sensible manner?

Progress on Adventurer is afoot. Inspired by The Black Company, White Box Swords & Wizardry, and real life history we have a version of the Fighting Man career hammered out. Fighting Man Support Infantry Archer Career Progress Survival Advancement Support End 5+ Edu 7+ Infantry Str 7+ Int 5+ Archer Dex 6+ Int 6+ Qualification : End 5+ If you are aged 30 or more, -2DM Per previous career, -1DM Skills and Training Personal Development Service Skills Advanced Education Officer Skills (Minimum Rank 2) 1 +1 Str Athletics (any) Siege Engineer Tactics (Military) 2 +1 Dex Tactics (Military) Interrogation Leadership 3 +1 End Signals Combat Engineering Advocate 4 Gambler Discipline Recruiting Diplomat 5 Athletics (any) Melee (any) Navigation Animals (Riding) 6 Melee (Unarmed) Survival Recon Administratio...

For a while now I've had the idea of using Traveller as the foundation for a fantasy game. My preferred style of fantasy tends to have little magic so I'd think that it could be a good fit for the system. Currently there are multiple similar efforts in the works but I'm chomping at the bit to jump in and see what I can come up with. Typing out loud here, the goal is to put together a lean core that can support pluggable/modular life paths and events to easily represent careers, races, and cultures for both fantasy and historical settings. For all I know, this may already be possible almost out of the box. I also want to explore random hex creation to help facilitate a sandbox style of play. I own the original LBB reprint and the Mongoose Traveller core book. At this point it looks like the bulk of the work will probably be based on the MGT SRD. The working title is Adventurer .

I whipped up a multi-page character for Mike D's Ruins & Ronin . The images link to the PDF download.

We played a Robotech playtest one-shot last night using Heroquest 2.0. I gotta say it was downright entertaining. The most important part is that it felt right. We were able to do justice to the fiction because it was what drove our common understanding. I'm thinking that Mr. Robin D. Laws is onto something. ;) Once at the table the decision was made to hew toward the slightly crunchier side of things. We could have made Veritech a keyword and been done but we wanted to bring the mecha a bit more to the forefront. Using the Mecha Game Requirements Doc and the resulting PDQ Robotech Character Sheet as a guide we were able to quickly put together a multi-mode Veritech in HQ 2.0 terms. Keyword: Veritech Fighter Mode: Abilities Speed 12 Maneuverability 6 Afterburner 15 Flaws Wide turning radius 10 (-2) Guardian Mode: Abilities Speed 8 Maneuverability 8 Stable 15 Flaws Non-flight mobility 10 (-2) Battloid Mode: Abilities Speed 6 Maneuverability 12 Hand-to-hand 15 Flaws Poor fli...

Resulting from the Mecha Requirements Doc here is the PDQ Robotech character sheet that I whipped up: Note the bolded abilities. These abilities are common to all mecha modes. If a common ability suffers impairment all modes are affected. For example, while in Fighter mode if the Speed ability is impaired one rank and is reduced to Good [+2] both the Guardian and Battloid modes take one rank of impairment to Speed. Guardian speed is reduced to Average[0] and Battloid Speed is reduced to Poor [-2].

For the last 9 months we've been hard at work developing 'Solus' a post apocalyptic setting for our live-action airsoft game Firefight! After setting the premise and constraints of the game world much of the process has consisted of creating individual gaming events that fit our vision. Brainstorming and LEGO-style snapping of ideas together takes the concept of developing "adventures" in a game world only so far. Typically what looks like a complete event outline has holes and leaps of logic that are not only inelegant but also difficult to bridge once the game starts moving. The gaps can be closed on the fly but this isn't an optimal approach because in live action hand-waving an NPC as an agent of change into or out of existence is quite difficult. In attempt to close holes ahead of time we've been using tabletop gaming to jump into the setting to test our outlines. As we have increased utilization of this technique the positive feedback given a...

It's obvious that I haven't been posting much recently. It's certainly not because I don't have much to say. We're full bore into prime airsoft season and it has taken most of my attention for game development. At the moment we're running our Firefight! Solus campaign and I'm developing software to manage MILSIM games. In parallel I'm reading Heroquest 2.0 and am loving it. I could have skimmed the book and started running but I'm taking it slow so that I can absorb the HQ lessons of approach and style. I'm glad for doing so. Much of what I've read reinforces my notions about story telling through gaming. Some of it doesn't but that's okay because everything makes sense. It feels good to be learning something. Over and out.

A modified FATE aspect system originally put together for Castles & Crusades but could easily be ported to a retro-clone. Choose 3 Aspects at character creation: Skill (gem cutting, rock climbing) Profession (blacksmith, apothecary) Personal trait (nimble, greedy) Edge Points: 5 Edge (FATE) points Refresh when CK/GM says so 1 FATE point gained when a character aspect is invoked by the CK/GM Spend Edge Points to: Re-roll 1d20 Invoke character and scene aspects for +2 each Boost any +2 modifier to +1d4 Boost any +3 modifier to +1d6 Boost any +4 modifier to +1d8 Boost any +5 modifier to +1d10

I ordered Hackmaster Basic the first day the pre-order went up. I had never played the game before but I have Aces & Eights so I was intrigued. After the book arrived I dug in and liked what I saw. I loved the idea of the roundless second by second combat time tracking. I started out doing it all on a sheet of paper and found that I kinda lost track of individuals so I moved on to using index cards which was an unintended hybrid of the poker chip idea. After switching over to poker chips the game started to fly and players became even more engaged. Timing became evident to everyone around the table. The chips become a sort of action meter and players try to bend time to their will because they can see that the goblin or bandit is going to get to act a second or two before their fighter. I love it. To give you an idea of what's going on in the picture let me explain. The fellow with the stack topped with red chips has failed his Threshold of Pain check after being shot b...

Last week I blogged about the some aspect cards that I made for my Chronica Feudalis game. So, without further ado, Here they are in PDF format.

I've been churning away on my Mecha Project . The goal is to evaluate and test the listed systems to see what I can make. Over the last week I've written up characters/mecha for the following systems: PDQ OVA Cortex Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2 It doesn't seem like a lot of work but it has been. Deciding how to handle the tri-mode Veritech in each of the systems has been the bulk of the work but I also had to learn how Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2 worked to give the game a fair shake. The good part is that there are a lot of lessons learned from both the process and the documentation that I'm putting together along the way. I plan on posting about each of the systems evaluated to talk a bit about what I've discovered and learned. The Requirements and Findings doc has been republished with the latest updates.

In the past I've used index cards for FATE 3.x based games to help everyone keep known aspects straight. Write the aspect on a card and put it out onto the table. Anything that keeps the GM and players from repeating themselves is a good thing. With Chronica Feudalis the blanket term Aspect is not precise enough so I made cards for Aspects, Injuries, Conditions, and Tools. Each card has a number of ranked checkboxes for indicating rank/severity. The photos are from our first game using the cards.

Introduction: Off and on (mostly off) for the last year I've been working on a FATE based mecha (Macross) game. Each attempt mostly ended in frustration mostly because I didn't have a clear vision. Instead of continuing to flounder I decided to put together a formal requirements and evaluation document. This is a live Google Docs document so as it evolves the changes will be published to the Platonic Solid blog. Comments and suggestions are very much welcomed. Requirements: Provide bonus for transforming/changing modes. Provide differentiation between mecha modes i.e. Jet, Battroid, Valkyrie. Support fluid combat in the game space. (freewheeling action) Support massive missile clouds with light keeping. Support evading/fighting way out of massive missile clouds. Provide support for mooks in combat. Support scaling between personal/mecha/ship levels. Explicitly support tactical dogfighting. None of the systems will support this. Instead of a nitty-gritty tactical system I a...

Last night I ran a mini test session where Jip the gnome goblin slayer and his human friend Siggurd are tracked down a party of goblins that were led by a goblin shaman. We approached magic the way we did when playing Middle Earth with Spirit of the Century but with some CF specific tweaking. A magic user's potential casting pool: Skill: (Command or Perform depending on the spell) Tool: (i.e. Magic staff) Aspect: (i.e. Dark Arts D8) Casting a spell costs a point of Ardor and includes invoking the Aspect: Dark Arts D8. Casting was handled much like maneuvers and inflicting conditions. Spells are also able to create tools on the fly. A single success creates a D6 tool, double D8 tool, triple D10 pool just like conditions. As Siggurd's arrows were killing goblins, on the fly the shaman created a magical camouflage cloak D6 that would be crucial for his eventual escape. All the while Jip was sneaking on a flanking maneuver hoping to get close enough to launch an attac...

I ran a short session of White Box Swords & Wizardry the other night and was caught by surprise. The oldest and best serving hireling, the map maker was killed during an attack that seemed to be out of the blue. Now the party is wondering how to approach his family about it because they feel terrible. Three or four sessions ago after a bad wilderness encounter the party made their way back to the map maker's house to recover. Once there, while the PCs were strategizing a new approach to the ruins on the hill the map maker himself was out working his connections to plug the gaps in the party's skill set. Now he's gone. I'm caught by surprise because "the game" is even better than I had remembered it.

Last night I received the the ready for print Chronica Feudalis PDF from its author, Jeremy Keller. Immediately I was struck by the cover. The first thing that caught my eye was the worn leather look. My eyes then snapped to the mounted knight set off by the red tint of the background. I'd buy it. The interior art and layout are on par with the cover. The chapter head artwork is by Miguel Santos and the spot illustrations are by the author. There's a peek at the artwork over at the Chronica Feudalis web site .

Last night I ran the most excellent Mouse Guard hack called Realm Guard and it was incredible. There was only one player so she was running both a recruit and the recruit's mentor. There was also a captain character that both of us played when required. So much ground was covered and so much story told in such a short amount of time (about 2.5 hours) that it was stunning. Here's the ground that we covered: Recruit Gayle is on a simple mission to deliver a sealed letter to a hermit who is known for his eclectic wisdom. It was part of her endeavor to prove herself to the guard. A pathfinder roll is unexpectedly failed so a twist is introduced. A bandit ambushes the recruit within sight of the hermit's abode and demands her cloak. As well as some loot the bandit is out for blood while the recruit simply wants to drive him off. With the stakes set we enter into a conflict. The recruit successfully drives off the bandit (losing only 1 die from her disposition) and immed...