#RPGaDay 2015: Day 12 - Dig if you will a picture

Prompt: Favourite RPG illustration

The new World of Darkness, by William Harper; (c) William Harper,
willworks-studios.com

I love this thing. It's gorgeous, and clearly describes a damned complicated cosmology formed from the interactions of half a dozen game lines.

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Part of the reason I love this image is that I like cosmology. I'm a big fan of fictional realities with layers of different worlds; faerie worlds and underworlds and overworlds. I'm a compulsive cosmology scribbler myself, and while the 3 x 3 afterlives of AD&D's alignment system is a little more celebrity squares than I like, I enjoy looking at the way they interact with the material world and its human - or other - cultures.

Maybe it's the anthropologist in me, but I love this stuff. Perhaps the best game for it is Heroquest; not the boardgame, but the RPG of magical barbarian tribes, in which the myths of the tribes occupy the God Time in which they happen constantly, and humans can enter the God Time via heroquests to interact with the myths and bring good shit back for their tribe just like their gods and founder heroes did.

Anyway, that's me up to date (haha!)

Catch more talk about RPG art on the hashtag #rpgaday and, as usual, checkout James Holloway's video posts for a far more informed and exhaustive offering. I'll be back tomorrow to talk about the thing that we have to talk about on day 13 (favourite RPG podcast.)

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 11 - Beyond Our Ken

Prompt: Favourite RPG writer

This is another topic in which my shocking ignorance of the people who make the games I play shows. Honestly, it's especially disgusting since so many of my friends have them all over their G+ circles.

Ken Hite is the one I know best, having followed him on and off since Suppressed Transmission. More recently Grant Howitt, author of Goblin Quest.

I was going to talk about writing RPGs in general, but it's late and I'm tired. Still, I'm almost up to date.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 10 - Publishers

Prompt: Favourite RPG publisher

Okay, this one is where I show my ignorance. I barely think about publishers, so... Well, actually that's not true. I follow Onyx Path's dev blog because I find their open development process interesting, even if I'm unlikely to buy much of their stuff (or any stuff; stoopid penury.) I am also constantly in awe of Fantasy Flight and their ability to add bits to a perfectly ordinary game.

That's all folks, as I'm still behind and I won't be able to write anything this weekend either.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 9 - Off License

Prompt: Favourite media you wish was an RPG

I hear swell things about Leverage, but notably
that is a flagship application of the Cortex Plus
system.

Well, last year I covered most of this in my post about licensed RPGs. I'm not typically sold on licensed RPGs and thus rarely feel that what I really want is for someone to publish an RPG of my favourite media, especially when I could alternatively just hack something under Fate Core or Unisystem, or - although I have less experience of this one - Cortex Plus.

Cortex Plus seems to be pretty much designed for licensed products, with notable releases including Leverage, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Smallville and Firefly (not to be confused with the Serenity RPG which was mostly noted for having a character sheet complex enough to make your eyes bleed.) Pretty much all of the above have been well received, but I would still rather have a basic system to play with myself (although I entirely understand the fiscal appeal of the licensed property.) Some day I may pick up the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide, but I don't actually know if it contains the basics to run from.

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Fate Core is a lovely system because it's built to be adaptable without additional material. Adapting an existing setting to Fate Core is a three stage process:

1) Define Aspects - By default, Fate Core characters have five Aspects: Their High Concept, their Trouble, and three relating to their background which are defined in concert with the other players (Fate Core is a fundamentally cooperative system.) By changing these categories, you can alter the focus of the game. Perhaps in a supers game, 'Trouble' could be replaced with 'Power Source', an Aspect that defines where your powers come from, and by extension how they can be taken away. In an espionage or heist game, each of the later three Aspects could be a lesson learned in a past gig: 'Never Trust a Dame', 'Don't Get Personal', or 'Always Check Your Exits'. In a more structured horror setting you might have a High Concept, a Dark Secret, a Known Fear, a Secret Fear and a Survival Trait.

For the 80s Cartoon game I hope to run some day, I'd go with something like: High Concept, Focus Flaw (the problem you have when the episode gets to being about you), Meaningful Codename, Weapon and Vehicle/Suit/Totem Animal.

2) Set Skill list and Refresh level - Decide how many and what skills to use. Small skill lists result in more generalist characters; longer ones demand specialists. You then set the Refresh level (starting Fate Points), which can be dropped to buy additional stunts an (if you have them) powers. More Refresh means potentially greater powers and more flexibility; less means specialise and chose your moments carefully.

The Cartoon game is unlikely to need a large skill set, and much is likely to be determine by dramatic twists. I'd go for a short skill list and high Refresh.

3) Determine extras - This is either the biggest or the smallest job, as you could do anything from deciding that, fuck it, you're good with the core system to adding complete magic systems, super powers and other weirdness.

Again, taking the 80s Cartoon example, you'd probably need something tailored around the vehicles or powers that form the theme of the 'show', probably represented by a set of Aspects and Stunts to be used when in the vehicle/suit/Mummy form, either in place of or in addition to the regular ones.

And that's it, pretty much. Stunts are freeform, so no major front-loading is required there. As I say, this is what I love about Fate Core. It can't do everything, but anything it can do it does simply and easily.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 8 - Picture this...

Prompt: Favourite appearance of RPGs in the media

Gamers are winners (and winners don't do drugs!)

So, I was going to talk about Community's use of D&D, but I figure that it's pretty much been done, and that James has summed up why at least as well as I could. To paraphrase, although gaming is part of the joke, it is primarily a vehicle for a different joke, rather than being the joke itself.

I will say that I enjoyed seeing gaming presented positively, instead of either as a shorthand for social ineptitude or the incarnation of evil a la Mazes and Monsters or Skullduggery. My favourite part of Community's D&D appearances is in the second episode, when it is just dropped in that the study group, having assembled to run a single game for a particular purpose, have also taken up D&D as a hobby (and potential psychological healing tool.) While I know that it bothers some people, I also quite like that Abed is depicted as a thorough, but overall quite poor DM due to his absolute insistence on a strictly simulationist approach.

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More recent appearances of RPGs reflect a shift in perception away from the Patricia Pulling, Jack Chick 'gaming is the devil's work' approach. Through shows such as Glee, Freaks & Geeks and perhaps most deliberately the (ultimately flawed) The Big Bang Theory, we are moving past the occasional resurgence of the 'geeks are cool' idea to something rather more important; the perception that nerds are normal. I'm a professional administrator and I have no problems telling my colleagues that I sometimes spend the weekend shooting Nerf guns at friends; something I would not have done when I started in this gig fifteen years ago.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 7 - Free, to do what I want

Prompt: Favourite free RPG

The free edition has a cover that is just a
starfield, but a) all available images are tiny,
and b) with enough time you could count the
stars, making the title inaccurate.

This is a tough one to answer, because I'm not really clued into the sort of gaming networks that would point me to promising free games, and because there are so many of them I don't tend to grab them without that guidance. Time is as limited a resource for me as money. 

The free game I've had most fun with Stars Without Number, but actually while I had the free version, the full game was also sold commercially. SWN is part of the Old School Renaissance, based on the rules of early versions of D&D and their contemporaries, with at least three different resolution mechanics (roll high on d20 attack rolls, roll low on d20 saving throws and roll high on 3d6 + modifier skill rolls,) 3-18 attributes converting to -3 to +3 modifiers and class-based progression, set in a sprawling space opera universe where the once mighty domain of the Mandate has been shattered by the catastrophic loss of much of their technology and infrastructure in an enigmatic event called the Scream. It's a lot of fun, but of course in part that's down to the GM. 

I also had a lot of fun with a one off called Lady Blackbird, which is presented as a free introductory scenario and quick-play rules for a larger game that doesn't exist. The creators, One Seven Design, do a lot of these, and while their replay value is limited, they all look pretty interesting.

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I was going to talk about the OSR in my expanded section of this post, but honestly I know jack about the OSR and other people have already discussed it much better. Besides, I'm now four days behind, having skipped the weekend for gaming away from computers and internets, so let's move on.

#RPGaDay 2015: Day 6 - Core competences

Prompt: Most recent RPG played

Like Feng Shui before it, Fate Core rocks the
appeal of combining gunplay, swordplay, magic and
cyborg apes.

The most recent game I've played is my by-Skype Fate Core game, Operatives of CROSSBOW. If this were the prompt for Monday it would be No Rest for the Wicked. So it goes. I talked about Fate Core a fair bit last year, I think, but what I love most about it is its flexibility. It's designed as a moderately universal system, and it is in terms of content. You can run pretty much any sort of story under Fate Core, which is not to say that it is the only game you'll ever need. It only has one style of play; as crunchy as you might make the skill set, it is fundamentally a collaborative narrativist game and will never be hardcore simulationist or competitive.

The content customisation is vast, however. Permanent and transitory qualities of people, objects and places are described by Aspects, the abilities of animate beings by Skills and special abilities by Stunts. Anything else can be tacked on. I created three magic systems for CROSSBOW in about an hour, although I'd spend longer if they were a major part of the game or if how they worked mattered.

The next game I have planned will likely also run in Fate Core, because I like being able to stat an NPC in seconds and because an 80s action TV inspired game isn't right for Gumshoe.

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So, my broader discussion is on adaptability.

Generally, the simpler a system, the easier it is to adapt. Fate Core is designed for it, and keeps things nice and simple. Skills are trained abilities and give a flat bonus for rolls based on that skill. Aspects define intrinsic properties and can be invoked by spending Fate points or by Creating an Advantage, an action which either creates or exploits an existing Aspect and usually gives free invokes. Stunts either provide a narrow +2 bonus or some means of bending the rules in a specific situation. Stunts can easily be expanded to provide systems of magic and superpowers, and Aspects to include a heroic origin or mystical nature. Skills are tailored to setting.

Power systems are always the most complicated, often requiring substantial front loading (see for example the Dresden Files RPG,) and the one restriction I would tend to go with in any similar game having played The Dresden Files is 'all wizards or no wizards'. They're just too much more complicated, and while an all-wizard group would all know the rules pretty well (we hope) the players of a vampire, a sea monster and a faerie have no cause to learn those rules and you can end up with the wizard's player and GM spending a lot of time referring to the book (seriously, they're complex as hell, and I played Ascension.) I guess you could be more flexible once you were comfortable with the system, but not at first.

Unisystem Lite was my old go-to for conversion, but again it requires a lot of front-loading. My Stargate and Star Wars ports each had a few bits of description and a crap tonne of Qualities and Drawbacks. Still, it worked pretty well. Gumshoe would almost certainly port easily to pretty much any investigative setting, again with a bit of front loading on career profiles.

D20 on the other hand, basically needs a core book to use. You could work from just the basics, but creating and balancing classes is hard to do and pretty much impossible on the fly, and just look how many professionally produced licensed games screwed it up. This is because D20 is complicated. Its simplest iteration is D20 Call of Cthulhu, best described as an interesting experiment, which pares the system to the bones (its classes are 'offence' and 'defence' and are only very slightly different.) D20 works pretty well for a game with a zero to hero ethos, where PCs start off weak and become mighty, facing appropriate enemies all the way up.

Similarly, anything gritty and simulationist is likely to be rules heavy and thus hard to adapt, even though it should be pretty straightforward since its job is to be a simulation engine and thus relatively free of fiddling narrative conventions. The problem is that each setting then requires fixed rules for anything specific to that setting, which are often difficult to develop on the fly.

Ironically, the worst system to approach for adaptation is something like GURPS, which was to all appearances designed to be a universal, largely simulationist game engine and then incorporated a massive corpus of specific exceptions, including rules for simulating narrative conventions such as Anime Hammerspace.