Platonic Solid

I wanted the dark side of the force to be tempting and the struggle to remain true to the light side to be ongoing. I'm not a fan of GM fiat being used to determine when the dark side of The Force dominates a character's destiny. Also I did not want to use yet another dark side point system. FATE 3.x's composure track becomes The Force track: Resolve lengthens the track as normal. Gain a free FATE point or +3 shifts per tick. If a character takes a dark side consequence they get two free FATE points per tick for the scene. Taken Out equals full and total conversion to the dark side. May only carry three consequences at a time. Consequences may be compelled! Dark side consequences do not just go away after a conflict. They are a burden to the Jedi and must be atoned by ritual or through conversation with a master. It's interesting to see Jedi characters being challenged by Sith who jeer and taunt their very way of life causing stress to the Jedi's composure track....

So far we've statted up ogre chieftans and orcs and they're nasty stuff. But they sit near the top of the scale and do not leave much room for things such as well, dragons. We tried a few different approaches at scaling beyond D20 which is as good as it gets in Chronica Feudalis. D20 perfectly fits the natural world but like I said we're modeling fire breathing creatures here. We tried rolling an extra die with multiple ways of influencing the skills/tools/traits but it didn't feel right so we ditched it for a couple of reasons. First it always felt like we didn't have enough dice. Second and most important, it hurt the clean elegance of the core system. Keeping track of the different types of dice caused undue confusion. What was a fast clean resolution system became cluttered. The next idea was to add flat bonus to anything that was higher in scale than D20. This is what we went with. The next step was to determine how large the bonuses should be. Bonus ...

One of the easiest ways to model the force is by coupling an aspect (Force Sensitive) with a series of stunts. Force Stunts One With The Force : Requires Force Sensitive  aspect.  For a FATE point, can substitute The Force  for most any other skill as Theory In Practice from Spirit of the Century.  The character should have an aspect related to the task. The Tree, The Rock : Requires Force Sensitive  aspect.  Use The Force  as ranged Might. Force Strike : Requires The Tree, The Rock .  Use The Force  as Guns but of course requires no tools. Jedi Mindtrick : Requires One With The Force .  Use as per Hypnotic Speech from Spirit of the Century. Transfer Force : Requires The Tree, The Rock .  Use as per Medic from Spirit of the Century.  Also allows the use of The Force  skill as Science on medicine rolls. Negate Energy : Requires One With The Force .  For a FATE point a Force user may attempt to absorb an energy attack, i.e. Blasters with The Force  skill. An Elegant weapon (for a more ci...

Aspects in FATE not only are used  in the definition of characters but they also help define a game's vocabulary.  Of course Star Wars already has so much to draw from... Core Aspect: Force Sensitive Specialty Aspects: Force Surge : Available only if a trained Force user. Lightsaber Aspects: I Shii-Cho II Makashi III Soresu : Defensive.  Best for deflecting blaster fire IV Ataru : Strong and powerful.  Best against single opponents V - a Shien : Best for redirecting blaster fire V - b Djem So : Focus on domination, strength, power. Required Aspects If a Jedi: Padawan : Maximum Force skill level: Average Jedi Knight : Maximum Force skill level: Good Jedi Master : Maximum Force skill level: Superb Everything else related to aspects is full wide open and is handled exactly as in Spirit of the Century. Up next: Force Stunts

Wow.  I am far more impressed than I thought I'd be.  First of all, before I ever got my hands on the actual book I was impressed by how Lulu packaged it up.  The book arrived in mint condition.   I've never seen such care put into securing a book inside of a shipping box before.  The book was packed inside of a foam "slipcase" shrink wrapped to a sheet of cardboard cut to the size of the box's inside area.  There was no way it was going to rattle around inside getting the corners all beat up as happens far too often.  This heartens me as someone who has a PDF up on Lulu and plans on eventually offering a print product through them. Now, for White Box itself.  The quality jumped right out at me.  The cover is very glossy which really helps project the cover art.  Visually it is very impressive inside and out.  The printed page is very clear with high contrast.  How about the content? I skimmed through the White Box PDF but that's about it.  Nothing yelled, ...

The skill list isn't terribly different from the one presented in Spirit of the Century though there are a few tweaks. Skills: Academics Alertness Art Athletics Blasters Burglary Close Combat Contacting Deceit Empathy Endurance Gambling Intimidation Investigation Leadership Medicine : This new skill includes the medical trapping that used to be in Science .  The Lab Work and Science! trappings can also be used, but only for medical, biological and cybernetic purposes. Might Mysteries : The Arcane Lore trapping can be used by anyone. Pilot Rapport Resolve Resources Science : This skill no longer includes medicine, so the Medical Attention trapping is removed and purely medical knowledge is now part of the skill Medicine.  However, it can still be used for academic/non-medical biological and cybernetic knowledge, so there is still some overlap. Sleight of Hand Stealth Survival There is one skill that stands out a bit: The Force : Requires the Core Aspect: Force Sensitive .  Specific...

This is the conversion that got me to thinking about starting a blog.  I've been sitting on it for about a year so it's about time... Right after I finished reading Spirit of the Century I immediately realized that it would make for running an outstanding Star Wars game for a number of reasons including the free-wheeling ability to narrate both direct character interactions as well as vehicle chases that are so much part of the setting.  So, I jumped on RPG.net and saw that others were thinking the same thing.  This is the start of what I cobbled together from conversations there and independent work done tinkering at the gaming table. The first thing that needed tweaked to fit the SW universe was Health & Composure .  Even though 30s pulp movies were big influences for the movie series I didn't feel as though the default damage track system quite fit.  Here's what we came up with: Physical Stress 5 boxes Treat as hit points Composure Stress 5 boxes Treat as hit poi...

We started up a side fantasy game using the FATE inspired engine found in Chronica Feudalis . One of our test characters, Jip the gnome teams up with a human named Siggurd on a mission to hunt down an ogre chieftain who has assembled a war host that is about to unleash its wrath on the local human settlements. Ogre Chieftain Vigor: 4 Ardor: 3 Skills: Brawl D20 Fitness D20 Strike D10 Command D8 Sense D6 Everything else D4 Tools: Club D10 Hide armor D6 Aspects: Massively strong D8 Proven by challenge D8 Lumbering D8 We decided that he should have an entourage (Agents in CF parlance) of orcs. We decided to make the appearance of orcs something that is frightening in the setting and not at all common so they always appear as either agents or antagonists. Orc Agent Vigor: 2 Skills: Chase D6 Combat D6 Parley D4 Subterfuge D8 Tools: Orc scimitar D6 Orc bow D8 Quiver D6 Orc armor D8 Club D6 Hobnailed boots D6 Night vision D6 To facilitate writing up an orc protagonist we put together an orc...

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I was working on a single column layout of Swords & Wizardry for printing booklets. I printed up and assembled a player handbook today just to see what it would look like: I used the free OS X app CocoaBooklet to do the imposition for me.  Printing was a bit tricky since I don't have a duplex printer at home but once I got that figured out the process was pretty easy. Update : I got the urge to tweak the prototype booklet a bit more and trimmed the top and bottom with a paper cutter. The edges didn't come out as clean as I had hoped so I'm going to try printing a faint trim line so that they can trimming can be done before folding. Here are the pics:

I just ordered the White Box edition of Swords & Wizardry in print.  Even though I love and am currently playing core, the PDF is working out just fine.  I snagged WB for its stow-and-go pickup-game-ability. FYI: The coupon code  MAYCONTEST10 yields 10% off.

One of the projects that I'm working on is taking the content of the S&W Word Doc and putting it into a single column layout to make it easier to use when printed as a booklet. I'm not modifying any of the rules in-place. Instead, the house rules are placed beside them. This way the players can see the how, where, and why of the changes. And if they so choose they can take the document and play the original game. In order to proceed much farther I've got to decide where to break the document up for the physical "books" because it's getting a bit thick for a single booklet. I'm thinking booklet 1 will be everything necessary for character creation and playing the game sans spells. Booklet 2 will be the spell listings for both clerics and magic-users. Booklet 3 will be the rest of everything else for use primarily by the GM.

Old School Recently, I kicked off my first Swords & Wizardry campaign. I wanted dwarves and elves and much of the things that many may consider cliched and trite. But at the same time I didn't want to completely abandon my modern gaming sensibilities. New Premise So, I needed a premise. I wanted an explanation in place for why the world is littered with ruins filled with treasure awaiting the intrepid adventurer. At the same time I didn't want to build a large overarching meta-plot that often becomes an unproductive exercise. Too often I don't actually run the game at hand because I grow weary from the novel-esque preparation. It's back to old school so none of that. Harkening back to my halcyon days of gaming there was no need for any stinking premise. Anything and everything I could get my hands on became a potential ingredient for the upcoming adventure. Implicitly the world was what it was because I as GM said it was. Or because it was that way in the cu...

I found a really cool game called Chronica Feudalis by Jeremy Keller. The premise of the game is that it was written in the 12th century and just recently has been translated. This sets an implicit evocative tone of the medieval period that really works. Last night my wife and I gave it a whirl... Walter Atwell a town guard was sent to a local village to escort the witness to a crime, a little boy to the magistrate for an upcoming trial. A local outlaw knight doesn't want that happening so he hit the village with his goons and attempted to take the witness hostage if not outright kill him. Awoken from his slumber before the crow of the cock, Walter peers out the window and sees men attempting to set fire to thatched roofs. It's a dreary morning with the swirl of fog and a slight drizzle. Walter slowly opens his window and grabs his long bow. He takes aim at the nearest torch bearer and looses an arrow killing the man instantly. He lays back into the room waiting to see if his ...

I'm going to take a cue from John Harper's Agon and use weapon type to help determine individual initiative timing in an attack round. A rough guideline for weapon categories is: Bow > Spear > Sword > Dagger > Fist Initiative is determined for each group in a conflict by rolling 1D6. Starting with the highest group initiative, all individuals within a group with the longest weapon type make their attack. Continue with the next lower group initiative and so on. Once all attacks are made with the longest weapon type start again with the group who rolled the highest but this time with the next shorter weapon type. Continue till everyone who can make can attack has. This gives some mechanical benefit for having a spear, for example, without altering to-hit modifiers for weapon length, etc. Update: After some feedback over at the Swords & Wizardry forum : When two groups are considered to be corps-a-corps (body to body) flip the order: Fist > Dagger > Swo...

I like options and I know that other people do as well so I whipped up a simpler [ than this ] version of the multi-page character sheet. It keeps all of the graphic elements except the parchment background. A print test run showed that it used a lot less ink and was much faster. Swords & Wizardry Simpler Multi-Page Character Sheet

Note: On my HP C5180 printer the "fast draft" option works great for the sheet and saves a lot of ink while keeping that cool parchment on paper look. Next up: A sheet for my Jaws of the Six Serpents game.

Here's my latest for Swords & Wizardry.

Earlier, I mentioned that I've had a fantasy game in my head for a long time and that for the last three years I've been actively looking for a system to express it. I kept an eye on the 'net and grabbed anything that looked like it might do the trick. For some reason I couldn't find what I needed to scratch the itch. It seemed as if the vehicle to help evoke the game that only I knew about would not be found. I began to think that the game was was less a figment of my imagination and more an unplayable figment of nostalgia that at best could be propped up by mementos. The notion seemed more and more real because it was evident that most of the games I tried were fantastic in their own right and were not the precise problem. Through the evaluation process I found some gems that became favorites. What I didn't realize was that I lost the frame of mind and perspective that helped mold that fantasy game whose origins lie at the nexus of my maturing imagination an...