RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Eight

 

DAY 28 - SOLO - DREAM - OPEN - DELVE

Four Against Darkness is an interesting option for solo dungeon crawls -  I knew of it because it is published by Ganesha Games - which also publishes Song of Blades and Heroes and a few dozen other skirmish miniature games that use the same basic engine. I had suggested it for my son at some point and he just LOVES it - he got so into it and involved in the Facebook group, he has ended up play testing and editing a number of their expansions now! (Name’s in the books and everything!) 

It’s a very clever little system. Basically, you make a party of four very simple characters and run them through randomly generated dungeons in an Old School dungeon crawl. There have been expansions to include wilderness adventures and more challenging stuff for higher level characters. 

Finnegan had used it to run short one-off games for friends when they can’t play their regular D&D game because a pivotal player did not show up for the game (because character generation is SO quick and simple. 

He even ran me and some friends of mine through a few adventures when the was a lull in our groups campaigns. It was really fun. 

He’s also played in a game run by one of the writers he’s helped with play-testing and editing. 

But it is primarily meant to be used as a solo game. 

Is there really any actual “role-playing” in a solo game? Why not? He’s developed backgrounds and personalities for a lot of his characters - even written up and illustrates some of their adventures. He’s maybe switching roles between the characters while playing… but that’s something EVERY DM does and THAT’s still role-playing. 

While dreaming up scenarios and adventures for RPGs or miniatures skirmish games, I kind of play through them in my head imagining how it might go… that’s kind of like solo role-playing. I mean, just making up stories in my head is kind of like role-playing. 

I would also be interested to try out Rangers of Shadowdeep. It’s a game by Joseph McCullough (who wrote Frostgrave - which I’ve played a LOT of) and is billed as a “solo or co-operative miniatures game” - As I understand it, you make characters and go through adventures encountering wandering monsters and such… could be fun… and MINIATURES!!!!

But maybe I’ll wait for a bit… Got some KILL TEAMS to assemble and play with!!!!

Stay tuned for more Kill Teams! (and the last few days of RPGaDay2021!) 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Seven

 

DAY 27 - FRACTION - PRACTICE - KINDLE - GROUP

Fraction… Practice… Kindle… Group…

I don’t know… 

I'm burning out here... 

The time I spend actually playing games is a small FRACTION of the time I spend waiting miniatures and planning and just thinking/dreaming about gaming?

The number of games I’ve played is an embarrassingly small FRACTION of the games I OWN!?

PRACTICE makes perfect… or… at least… a bit better…?

People tell me “wow you’re really good at this, you are very talented” - referring to painting miniatures )or painting or drawing pictures) and all I can think is “no, I have a lot of PRACTICE… I’ve been doing this for 40 years…” It’s just PRACTICE, not some innate “talent” I was born with… 

I don’t own a KINDLE. I like real books. 

Oh, they probably meant, like, “start a fire”… or metaphorically doing so… Well, I’m glad I was able to KINDLE a passion for role-playing in at least one of my children… the other… doesn’t HATE the idea… They used to play… maybe they’ll be back one day. 

GROUP… My favourite GROUP…? Hard to say… What makes a good GROUP…? I don’t know… Ideal size for a GROUP…? Well that I have an opinion on… 3-4. Two just isn’t enough, and 5+ there are often just too many people trying to do too many things and some people end up spending a lot of time doing nothing and getting bored. Also, with 5+ there are too many people wanting to do stuff and end up talking over each other and the less shouty in the group end up doing nothing… 

I think that’s all I’ve got for today… 

RPGsDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Six

DAY 26 - THEORY - PLAY - ORIGIN - RENEW

Welcome to your daily dose of Tim’s stream-of-conciousness blather loosely directed by a few RPG-related prompts… 

I don’t often PLAY role-playing games. I’m most often the Game Master. In THEORY I like the idea of being a player… but whenever I do, I always end up feeling… I don’t know… like I butt in too much describing things happening - like one might as a GM - and then feel like I may have overstepped my bounds as a player. It’s not like I feel like “I could do this better” at all - I’ve played in games with some just fantastic GMs - I just get wrapped up in the excitement of it all and some part of my brain kicks into GM mode… I also sometimes lack a brain filter and just open up my yap and "remind" the GM of a rule or a modifier - or if we’re playing in a setting or historical era that I know a lot about, I’ll post out something that’s… different… something that varies from "cannon" or history… - and I immediately feel bad and worry that it will be interpreted as “criticism” (which is what I know I’D probably do if someone said something similar in a game I run) though I NEVER meant it as such… When they though pops into my bring and out my mouth, it is with the intention of being “helpful”. I’m so sorry. I never mean to be THAT GUY… But I acknowledge, it’s a thing I do. 

One thing being able to PLAY as a player does for me is gets me excited about running a game again - especially if it’s been a while and/or I’ve been in a bit of a slump. Unfortunately, if I’m PLAYING in a game… and then get excited about RUNNING a game (filling up with ideas and stuff), but then can’t - because there isn’t time to run one while playing in another or because the people I might be able to run a game for are playing in the one I’m playing in or whatever the reason… well… I sometimes lack patience and playing in a game can end up chaffing..

In THEORY I LOVE to run games as a GM. I do have a lot of problems with doing so. I can be a VERY SLOW READER and am somewhat lacking in executive functioning skills - two key requirements for being a really good GM. Also, sometimes I can switch gears and recalibrate and improv when players do something unexpected… but other times (Like, a LOT of the time) players doing so will bring the game to a grinding halt when I can’t figure out how to deal with something I totally hadn’t planned for!? 

One thing that has worked well for me in the past is running games more like a series of tabletop skirmish games. This has worked really well with Savage Worlds - which is basically a skirmish game with some RPG elements added on - a character generation system and a good experience/advancement system. I’ve often used RPG adventures as the inspiration for the plot or background of these skirmish adventures - essentially summing up what would have been the role-playing/investigative/discover part of the adventure and skipping straight to one of the confrontations with the antagonists. This might seem SUPER railroady, as an RPG, but it works really well to flesh out a skirmish campaign. 

Running a skirmish campaign where all the players are on the same side playing against the antagonists run by me - where each player gets one hero and maybe a few small units of extras are shared between them has been a lot of fun. Ideally the scenario is never a straight up KILL ALL THE BAD GUYS - I try to make that impossible (there’s too many of them and/or more keep coming) to keep the players focused on the objective - which is usually something else - fight through the baddies to secure an object or rescue a person or disrupt a ritual - the ESCAPE off the board before being overwhelmed by them or the volcano erupts or the burning warehouse full of dynamite explodes.  

This is harder to do online… 

I’d really like to RENEW the Wrath & Glory campaign that I was running most of last spring-summer-fall. I really LOVED being able to reconnect with a few of my favourite humans and gaming buddies that have moved away. But I feel like I bit off more than I could chew running a investigative Inquisition campaign. Running a game like that requires a web of intrigue for the players to unravel… but building such a web requires… planning and the aforementioned executive functioning skills that I kind of lack. I fear that I’ll just run up against the same problems I experienced last year - idea burnout and being able to stay one step of the players in building that web for them to unravel… 

Sometimes I think I should revisit Savage Worlds.. but then I remember it had it’s problems too - especially when the characters DID advance to levels where they were pretty mighty indeed. It was fun for them to wade through units or hostile extras, but eventually they had to bump into a boss-level baddie and that’s where things ground to a halt - when two really powerful characters butted heads it was hard for them to actually deal damage to each other and when from a dynamic, exciting, flowing adventure and ended up becoming a very static dice-rolling match… which gets really boring, really fast… 

I’ve been thinking maybe I could do something similar to what I did with Savage Worlds but with the skirmish systems - Necromunda or the new Kill Team. Have multiple players as part of the same gang/kill team playing against enemies/hostiles played by ME - both games have some sort of experience point system. Necromunda has the added advantage of stats like Leadership, Cool, Willpower and intelligence - which could be used for scenario specific actions/tests to accomplish an objective in a scenario - get to the control panel to take out the power grid that run the… uh… tractor beam…? Or… whatever… 

That’s probably enough for today.. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Five

 

DAY 25 - WELCOME - TRADITION - FRESH - BOX

All I can think of is BOX… the new Warhammer 40K Kill Team: Octarius Box that is to be release this weekend, which I am SUPER excited about… I know, it isn’t a “Role-Playing Game”, per se but I’d argue there is SOME element of role-playing in miniature wargames. You are, essentially, taking on the ROLE of a battlefield commander, ordering troops into combat, here and there. 

The above image is ©2021 Games Workshop and used here without their permission for review purposes only.

With a small skirmish game, like Kill Team, this is even more pronounced, as you take on the role of a commander of a small team of fighters - where individual actions matter - and those individuals are often named. It really reminds me of my early days of playing D&D - where we all playing with more than one character in those first dungeon crawls. 

Skirmish games with campaign systems - where experience and injuries are tracked from game to game and individual members of the team can improve through play - especially lend themselves towards more role-playing. The members of a squad/gang/team can end up developing their own “personalities” and a team dynamic can begin to unfold and a narrative develop. What is a role-playing games beyond cooperatively building a narrative about a group of characters? 

Who can forget everyone’s frustration with Pavel - the sniper in my Mutants and Death-Ray Guns team - whose rifle was constantly jamming - always when the team REALLY NEEDED him to suppress a team or take out a particularly terrifying opponent that was keeping them from fulfilling an objective… and… nothing… and everyone started shouting “GODDAMMIT, PAVEL, CLEAN YOUR FUCKING RIFLE!” That all developed because of a couple of really unlucky rolls that ended up with a weapon jamming… for the sniper… the one guy everyone would think would have a well maintained precision weapon in the team. 

Some Skirmish games even PROMOTE role-playing more than the original D&D did. The previous edition of Kill Team had tables of Demeanours you could roll on for the individual members of your team. 

What is Frostgrave besides a competitive game of role-playing a Wizard - with an apprentice and a bunch of hirelings - exploring a frozen city full of magical artifacts to be collected and monsters to be slain. Again, playing that brought me right back to those initial days of playing D&D! 

Back to Kill Team, though… I didn’t want to get so excited about the new Kill Team. When they first announced it, I thought “Ugh, hard pass”. I has been so excited about the previous edition - and did play a LOT of games of it (33 recorded on BGG) - but ultimately it was a big disappointment. I figured I would just carry on this fall with my original plans of building Age of Sigmar armies and playing that - ideally as part of a Paths to Glory campaign!) and maybe some Warcry (Age of Sigmar skirmish game - also building a campaign) and some Warhammer Underworlds (also set in world of Age of Sigmar) and revive/reboot my Age of Sigmar: Soulbound Role-playing game… basically keeping focuses on Age of Sigmar (with maybe a few games of Necromunda with Orion on the side… maybe even start a CAMPAIGN of THAT!?)… 

And then I started reading and watching reviews of the new Kill Team…

The new rules look really great. Basically, this new version of Kill Team is looking like it might be everything I’d really HOPED the previous version would be! Possibly more!? Alternating, individual activations with action points, a solid-looking campaign system, tracking experience for everyone. 

Oh, and the toys… Death Corps of Kreig? SIGN ME UP!!! (Because, apparently, I just don’t have ENOUGH Imperial Guard forces already). Ork Kommandoes!? (Another one of my first loves and first 40K forces - that box of metal Space Ork Raiders, which was eventually reinforced with a very heavy Attack Buggy and a halftrack flamer bike thing…). Orks were Finnegan’s first 40K force as well, so HE’s pretty excited about them too (though, not so excited as to want to paint them himself!) AND all that terrain - which could double as necromunda terrain or any sort of post-apocalyptic terrain (Mutants and Death-Ray Guns!) 

Yeah… SUPER EXCITED… I know what I’ll be doing all weekend! Madly assembling and prepping all the new toys - and maybe even trying to cajole Amanda or Finnegan into trying out the new rules with some of the Kill Teams we can cobble together with the models we already have. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Four

 DAY 24 - TRANSLATE - SHARE - ANCIENT - SOLVE

TRANSLATE - I once made a droid character that was an IG series assassin droid that some joker had reprogrammed to be a protocol droid - complete with the inability to harm living beings… came as a bit of a shock to the new owner (Amanda’s Smuggler character), when the droid she’d bought as “extra muscle” wouldn’t shoot some bad guys that ambushed her. 

Oh… and the droid could TRANSLATE over 6 million forms of communication… but not Wookie… same joker programmed the droid to THINK it understood wookie, but programmed it all wrong. Keiran was playing a Wookie co-pilot… that the Smuggle character didn’t understand. So when the wookie wanted to say something, Keiran would roar and moan and grunt like a wookie and the droid would dutifully “translate” it as gibberish or something ridiculous that had nothing to do with the situation. That, or the droid would just make a comment on the Wookie’s statement “I hardly think this is a time to be concerned about what’s for lunch!” or “How am I supposed to know where the toilet is in this place and if it’s of an appropriate size for your bowel movements”… 

It was probably my favourite RPG that the family played together -  despite the fact that I just don't care about Star Wars anymore (which is weird considering how HUGE a part of my youth it was...).

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Three

 

DAY 23 - MEMORY - INNOVATION - QUICK - SURPRISE

Which to do…? With some of these prompts I’ve had a hard time coming up with anything. Today, I had a few different ideas for each, but not sure which I could actually flesh out to more than a sentence or two… I think the easiest would be to focus on memory, specifically some of my salient memories of how I got started in all of this…

I’m not sure where I first heard of D&D I might have heard about the concerns of the satanic panic (and heard of Mazes and Monsters - but never saw it) I know it was mentioned briefly in the movie Taps (1981 - staring very young Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise - one of my favourite movies as a young pre-teen… or… pre-pre-teen, I guess I was nine when it came out) I think it also made a brief appearance in E.T. (also a favourite that year!). I can’t remember if I saw an actually copy of the game or the Endless Quest books which came out that same year. 

The first physical copy of Dungeons and Dragons that I saw was the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Second Edition) which included the red-covered basic rules and a copy of Keep on the Borderlands. Strangely, the place that ai saw it was a small toy store in the Wildwood Mall (which later combined - via underground tunnel -with the newer Circle Centre Mall to become the Centre at Circle and 8th). I’d bought Playmobil and smurfs and other action figures in that same toy store. The D&D game - and a small handful of Ral Partha miniatures display case at the back of the store near some standard family board games of the era and a couple of Avalon Hill “bookcase games” (Panzer Leader? Outdoor Survival?). 

It was the miniatures that REALLY caught. My eye. I’d had loads of plastic toy soldiers and models in 1/35 (and later 1/72), but those were almost exclusively World War Two models at that point (I think later I had an American Revolution set red British and blue Americans, and maybe a box of Napoleonic French in grey?). I was THRILLED by the idea of knights and wizards and fantasy creatures in miniature! 

Somehow I convinced my parents to buy it and my dad to play it with me - I did not know any other kids that played it at that point. My Dad read the rules and ran the game to start, but I was just too excited and full of ideas and quickly took over the role of DM.

My dad played a Cleric names Zaddoc and a thief named Runkha. We ALWAYS played D&D with multiple characters in that day - it wasn’t until years later and encountering different RPGs that I was even aware of the concept of playing a SINGLE character! Some time later I discovered two kids at my school that played D&D. Chris who I only played briefly with over a summer before he went to a different school, then Paul, who moved away the following year. Later I went to a different school… met a couple new friends, played different games (Top Secret, Star Frontiers… later Palladium games) . 

Skipping ahead, my next salient MEMORY is in my first year of high school. I met J.C. waiting out front of Miss Roger’s Grade 9 History class. He’s spotted me reading REvsed Recon in the hall and recognized it and came over to chat and invited me to join a D&D campaign just starting up with some of his elementary school friends, Christian and Paul. For the rest of grade nine we met every Sunday at Paul’s mom’s place and played all afternoon wandering through the Temple of Elemental Evil. 

I played a Human fighter and a halfling thief. I know Christian had a wizard… someone had a Paladin and someone had a cleric…? Maybe a Ranger…? The halfling collected all the jewelry that he could. I had a long list of all the jewelry that had been found - what they were made of and their value - he wore ALL of it. The other players couldn’t understand WHY I didn’t sell it in town when we went back for provisions and buy… stuff..? 

It was one of the longest campaigns I ever played in and still have very fond memories of it, despite how it all ended. I missed one session which wrapped up the campaign and Paul, the DM, let the others use my characters as meat shields in the final battle. They both died and just about everyone else survived and made off with all the loot - including looting all the jewelry that my halfling had collected. 

My other thought that I’ll touch on briefly is how much INNOVATION there has been in role-playing games SINCE those early days of D&D or AD&D - where you only got experience points for killing things and collecting treasure. Occasionally my son will dig out the books and make “old school” characters with his friends and laugh at how “absurd” the system is… I pretty much dropped D&D as soon as I discovered new games that focused on things other than slaying orcs. 

I have to say I DO appreciate all that INNOVATION that has taken place and love so much of all the games that are currently available, but none of that diminishes the fantastic, magical memories of those early days of play. We made due with what we had and despite there being little systemic encouragement to do so, MUCH role-playing happened if you were playing with the right people.  

As fond as those memories are, I have no desire to go back and play those same games - as many of my generation do - with the original games or games like Dungeon Crawl Classics. There’s so much better stuff to do, now! 

Once again ended up prattling on MUCH longer than I meant to… 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Two

 DAY 22 - SUBSTITUTE

All I can really think of is the used of proxies in miniatures games. For the record, I'm just not interested in using proxies. I try to keep things as WYSIWYG as possible. I guess you could say I WILL ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES. 

I love using miniatures in my role-playing games. For ME it helps a lot with immersion into the game. Nothing kills that for me more than putting on miniature on the tables and saying it is something completely different. (This knight in full-plate armour, one handing a great sword with a giant shield with the coat of arms of an important noble house of the real… yeah, that’s my Halfling thief with a sling and a dagger and a codpiece and NOTHING ELSE!?) Honestly, I’d rather someone use a meeple or some other featureless token. 

I’m not saying this to be a gate-keeper, or sound elitist or a snob. I do not care at all what other people do. I have used other tokens and am fine with that. But if I’m going to use a miniature in my game, I’d like to use an appropriate one. 

At this point, I have over 12000 painted 28mm foot figures organized into those drawers in my game room (each drawer has the capacity for about 100 28mm foot on the bases I use, do the math - No, they're not ALL completely full, and yes, I do have cavalry and they take up more space, and yes, there ARE a LOT of unpainted miniatures in those drawers - that I WILL NOT use n games until they ARE painted). If I have them, I’d really like to make USE of them.

One substitution I WILL make is, if a published adventure calls for one type of foe and I don’t have miniatures for them, I‘ll usually have something similar that I could use I will SUBSTITUTE a different antagonist into the story. If the adventure calls for Kobolds and I don’t have those… but I do have LOADS of painted Goblins - that tribe of Kobolds will simply become a tribe of Goblins. In a Wrath & Glory game the characters were to encounter a Plaguebearer of Nurlge. I don’t have any Plaguebearers… but I DO have loads of Daemonettes of Slaanesh and Bloodletters of Khorne… so that’s what they faced… (I don’t remember which, I think it might have been the Blootletter). 

For what it’s worth, I also will not play with, or against, unpainted miniatures or terrain. When I have SO MUCH STUFF that IS FULLY PAINTED Why would I play with unfinished stuff - just change the scenario to incorporate on of the THOUSANDS of miniatures I DO have available. 

As I said, this is what I do in my house, at my game table. I do not care what other people to and do not judge you for it, I am KEENLY aware of extremely fortunate I am to I have access so many painted minis. It has taken a LONG time (4 decades of collecting and painting!) to get to this place. It's been a lot of work. Why would I do all that work to have an unpainted mini on the table - when there are 12000 painted ones within reach that could be used.. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-One

 

DAY 21 - SIMPLICITY - CHALLENGE - FEAR - MOTIVE

Whoops… totally missed day 20… ehhhh… not going back… 

You’re kind of getting raw, stream-of-conciousness, drivel with some of these… sorry… with so much other stuff going on, I don’t really have time to polish them much. Maybe if I actually remembered that this was a thing in august and looked up the prompts BEFORE august happened and started to work on them then or making notes… I don’t know. I’d like to use the prompts to DRAW a picture one year - like Inktober… but none of these have really struck me as something I could come up with . 

I like to use the K.I.S.S. principle - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. I’ve mentioned this many times over the last week or so of posts - while I used to love details and tables, these days I greatly appreciate a measure of SIMPLICITY in any system I use, that keeps the action/narrative moving along and not getting hung up on details and looking things up. Role-playing, I feel is best when it focuses on the characters being able to tell their story - and, ideally, an interesting one or one that is fun for them. 

I guess there are some that would suggest where is the CHALLENGE in making use of practices like “fail-forward” - where critical rolls or key events or clues are not held back by a bad/failed dice roll. Failing said roll just means static is introduced - you do find the thing, open the door, but something happens that makes the mission a bit harder or there will be some sort of consequences down the line. 

I like to use devices used in tv and comic and novel and movie storytelling as inspiration - the heroes (player characters) rarely ever DIE, unless it’s central to the plot that they do so - like the characters whole motivation was to do a thing before they die or the character is noble and willing to sacrifice their lives that their side may prevail over the antagonists. 

Even TPKs can occur - TVs and movie end with all the characters dying - maybe at the end of the series or show - that can wrap up a campaign or story arc - and possibly be a springboard to a new campaign, The MOTIVATION for the next generation to take up the cause and avenge those who went before them and fell to the ultimate ever. But it shouldn’t be and ignominious death at the had of a band of wandering monsters that happened to get a few good rolls and the characters shocked on a few of their own… 

Do RPGs HAVE to be “CHALLENGE”? Some might like that, but I don’t thing they have to. There are plenty other games and activities available to those that want them from video games to crosswords and sudoku to non-coop boardgames and CCGs and competitive miniature games… 

For me, at this stage in life, I’d like my RPGs to be about having FUN with friends - or at least like-minded individuals (you could say FUN is my MOTIVE for playing these days?)  and NOT come down to how well you were able to design a totally optimized character (or party of characters) within a given game system or come down to succeeding at critical dice rolls or personally being able to figure out the GMs deceptively difficult and convoluted riddle or puzzle that they’ve ensnared you in. 

Keep it simple, keep it moving forward, have fun. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Nineteen

 DAY 19 - THEME - STORM - STYLE - PATRON

I have come to like campaigns where the group has some sort of PATRON or someone to give  them sone sort of “marching orders”. It could be that they work for some sort of larger organization (Law Enforcement, Military, THE INQUISITION, etc) and are given specific cases or mission. OR they could be self-employed (as, say, private investigators) and their clients, which may be different from adventure to adventure) are their “patrons” who give them cases to solve. OR they just have some sort of powerful or influential figure that they work for (whether through pay or extortion or whatever) - the king or a wizard (like Gandalf was for the Dwarves in the Hobbit or the Fellowship in Lord of the Rings) or an old-school noble or senator in the Roman Republic or Empire (as in Eagle Eyes or o=possibly Cthulhu Invictus). The Patron can give the group a focus and a mission to accomplish. It doesn’t have to e railroads - the player characters can have considerable leeway in HOW they accomplish the mission or objective.

Ideally I’d LIKE to run campaigns, with PATRONS that are highly episodic in STYLE - where in one session players are given their mission and can complete said mission in that session and “return to base” or whatever by the end of it. I like this idea because the campaign is less disrupted by the absence of any particular player, which I feel happened more and more as… y’know… adults are busy people… NPC replacements can be brought in for a session to substitute for missing team members that have skill that would be vital to the success of the mission.

I have tried to do this… but it hasn’t often worked - adventures take MUCH longer than I anticipated and drag out to two or three sessions… But I like the IDEA!!! 

One place where I feel this DID work for me was running largely combat focus Savage Worlds tabletop games (which were played with a number of different THEMEs or settings). Players were generally given a mission in the first scene, there might be a scene or two of role-playing their way to the final battle - either literally getting there through a hazardous environment or just following up leads and clues. They might be given Lead #1 in the “mission briefing”, that is followed up and the encounter/discussion/interrogation role-played out gives up a clue  as to what going on and/or who is doing it or where or how, etc, these might lead to a second lead/clue and more role-playing, which ultimately leads to the final confrontation where things are set up on the tabletop and played out. But sometimes It might just be a mission briefing, and then set up the tabletop and let them run through the maze of terrain shooting and/or stabbing (or blasting with magic/supernatural abilities) until the bad guy is taken down or the mission is otherwise resolved and everyone is home in time for tea. Ideally… I mean, it works for 20-40 minute TV episodes, how can it not be played out in a 3-4 hour game session! 

I do find it works out easier with simpler systems that focus on keeping the narrative moving along rather than getting bogged down in details.  

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Eighteen

 

Day 18 - WRITE - DUEL - HONOUR - RIVAL

I… I have to admit, I’m having a rough day and drawing a bit of a blank here… I just don’t know what to WRITE.

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Seventeen

 

CRIME + FOUND

I don’t know how many times an adventure involving the investigation of a CRIME (or similar) has come to a grinding halt because the pivotal club - whether an physical object or vital piece of information simply cannot be FOUND by the characters!? Reading through or planning out the adventure I’ll be so excited, thinking “Oooh, this is brilliant, for sure  they’ll find this clue here and move on to the next stage!” But when it comes to playing… If the clue is in a desk drawer, the Characters either completely ignore the office or study altogether - maybe they painstakingly explored all the empty rooms on every level of the building and got bored and decided to skip the last few because “nothin here…” or when they do get to room and I describe the room and the desk, no one suggests looking in the desk (which, if they did, I’d just say YOU FIND THE THING!) so I let them all make a search or notice or whatever appropriate skill roll there is in the given system… and the ALL FAIL!? So they leave the room without that key to the whole conspiracy or whatever. What do you do then!? 

I mean, you CAN just relocated it into the next room that they DO go into, but then the same thing happens all over again - no one looks in… the closet, or whatever place it could possibly go in the room… and the all fail their search checks again… because no ono put point into search skill despite you telling them at the outset of the campaign that it THIS WILL BE AN INVESTIGATIVE CAMPAIGN… it all gets very frustrating for both players and GMs, very quickly.

Now with “Fail Forward” introduced into so many games, you can just say, “Well, [despite FAILING YOUR SEARCH CHECK] you find the thing in the drawer… YAY! BUT, you trip an alarm or made so much noise breaking the locked drawer open that you alert the lurking minions/cultists to your presence or a nearby passerby hears you and call the police or whatever, to introduce a bit of static and a new problem to deal with… 

The one problem I’ve found with “Fail Forward” is if they FAIL everything - a) it feels like you’re just GIVING them everything, and  b) it generates SO MUCH static and new problems to deal with, it makes it impossible to move forward and complete the investigation/adventure in a reasonable amount of time… what should have been an evening’s adventuring drags on for four more sessions just dealing with all the problems they generated by not being able to do the thing… which gets tiresome, really fast! 

Maybe with some groups you just need to stick to classic dungeon bashes - kick in the next door, murder all the monsters, loot their bodies and repeat… 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Fifteen

 This would be half way... If I'd started on Day ONE!?  

A day late and a dollar short... but better late than never...?

Rather than discussing the obvious noun-version of supplement (my favourite suplement for a role-playing game or what I like to see in a supplement), I'd rather address the verb.  I very often feel I have to SUPPLEMENT published adventures with my own content as they are often so full of plot holes a battle cruiser could be flown through them...

I often feel this was due to the adventure not being play-tested by enough different people! If you just play things with the same group - that has the same sensibilities and assumptions about how a game is to be played, you will miss out on so many potential flaws. But that level of play-testing takes time and time constraints with having to keep up with the need to crank out NEW PRODUCT to keep everyone's attention (and money rolling in) prevents publishers from being able to do so. 

I think players DEMAND more "realism", in some ways, much like with making modern films. Making a World War Two movie in 1970s was easy - you just used whatever tanks you had on hand - Use modern Leopards for generic german tanks - why not? Nowadays, you can't get away with that. If that Tiger tanks doesn't look exactly like a Tiger tank - there will be a LOT of whiners. 

Maybe it's because we play as and with adults who "know better". If we played the same adventures as kids, no one would have noticed. 

As an example, I tried to run the classic Dragonlance games a few years back using Savage Worlds... in the FIRST adventure (of TWELVE!? - which I had spend some time and not a small amount of money to track down an acquire) one of the key plot points is recovering the Discs of Mishakal. Of course with the adult group I was running it for, when they came upon them, one of the players (an engineer) said "Wait, what are they made of...? Platinum...? There are 16 discs, each a foot in diameter and a 1/4" thick...?" Whips out phone, looks up density of platinum, calculated the volume of said discs and then the weight and declares... "yeah, that bunch of discs would be over a tonne..." Kind of just KILLED the momentum in that whole campaign right there... 

On the spot I suggested that the Discs of Mishakal were magical and, if carried by someone of Lawful Good alignment, it weighed next to nothing... but what about when it was loaded in the back of a cart - did they have to sit in the lap of someone with a lawful good alignment? Did the person holding them weigh more if someone not of lawful good alignment tried to push them or pick them up? 

And then there was the escape from that first dungeon - The cavern is slowly collapsing around the characters and they have to get out quick and the most obvious escape route is this "elevator" that's basically two bit "pots" attached to each other with a cable over a great big pulley at the top and you ring the bell and a bunch of slave Gully Dwarves at the top jump into the pot at the top, creating a greater weight than what's in the pot at the bottom, and the one descends while the other goes up... but... the Gully Dwarves aren't Lawful Good... so do even MORE have to jump in to help lift the carrier of the Discs of Mishakal... Is a character with Lawful Good alignment REALLY going to be cool with sending a giant pot full of Gully Dwarves to their ultimate doom so the player characters can make their escape? I could go on...

More recently I ran the first (of five) adventures in the first campaign book for Wrath & Glory and in said first adventure they are investigating the murder of a high-ranking member of a Noble house... the FIRST location they are sent to investigate the crime scene and, right away, one of the characters makes the completely sensible and obvious suggestion of asking to see the surveillance video... Despite the fact that that is the FIRST THING characters in EVERY modern investigative TV cop show, there is NO mention of any sort of surveillance - and indeed if there was, that would make ALL THE OTHER CLUES completely irrelevant!? So I said, "There are no surveillance cameras"... He said, "You're telling me, that in the far future, in the most paranoid, heavy-handed, authoritarian dictatorships... there are no surveillance cameras... anywhere!?" I feebly countered with "Not here, nobles prefer their privacy...?" He started to moan about how ridiculous that was and I said, let it be or I murder your character or you start losing glory point or something... In retrospect, I COULD have said, sure there were surveillance cameras... but they'd all be tampered with... but the level of technical expertise required to do so would have been vastly greater than the bad guys had at their disposal, if they had, they would have done much nastier things than just murder this one dude... and if they WERE that professional, they wouldn't have been so sloppy as to have left all of the other clues... GAH!? 

I almost feel like I just shouldn't bother with published adventures and just go with a hook and make shit up as I go... but that's hard when so much of a setting is about large webs of conspiracy - it's very difficult to make that shit up on the fly and make it seem believable. Also, with a system and setting I am new to, I like to use the published adventures as I feel like they SHOULD have thins sorted out - like having the right balance of bad guys for a starting party to deal with an "set the tone" for how the game is to be played... but so many just fall flat in that regard. 

Don't get me started about Tales from the Loop... i don't have all day. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Sixteen

 Whoops... totally forgot to do one yesterday! The day kind of just got away from me and I forgot just about EVERYTHING I was supposed to do. I had an online book club in the evening that I ORGANIZE and completely forgot about and would have missed if it weren't for the fact that I just happened to sit down to update Strava after getting home from a ride and say a message from one of the other members saying "Hey, I tried to get into the room, but it doesn't seem to be working!?" So, in a panic I got it open and had to sit in sticky, sweaty clothes for the entirety of the discussion!? 

Will I go back and do Day Fifteen... Not sure... but here I am to press on with Day SIXTEEN! 

Let's go with Move today!

I like the the newer trend in abstracting movement in combat situations into zones - I've seen this in FATE and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - moving away from the nit-picky, bean-counting methods of tracking every centimetre of movement and facing and allowing a more fluid, dynamic narrative approach of describing the fancy maneuvers you might want to do without having to fuss too much about whether you have enough movement allowance to do so. I do LOVE using maps and miniatures - I mean, this IS a MINIATURE WARGAMING blog, after all -  but I don't think this takes away from the ability to do so. Areas can be defined as zones on maps or the tabletop and your pretty miniatures can be used as really fancy markers to define which zone you are in, and which enemy combatant you are engaged with, within that zone. 

It's like using point-to-point or area-to-area movement in wargames - as opposed to hex-grid-maps, which I also very much prefer. Hex maps in historical wargames often allowed players to do things that simply would never happened historically - ad. could not happen, for very good reasons. that mountain range is completely unpopulated with no roads or passes... that desert cannot be crossed in this direction because of the lack of water... that jungle is so dense you'd need and army of engineers and three years to carve a pathway to get to the place that would take three weeks of marching around the other way on the established roads/trade routes. Getting to those places would mean half your force dying of exhaustion or starvation! You shouldn't get a simple movement penalty, it just shouldn't be possible. I'm sire there will be people that will argue that the most successful generals were "out-of-the-box thinkers" - which always seems to be used by rules lawyers to justify the abuse of absurd loop-holes in the rules.

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Fourteen

 

Day 14 - SAFETY - LIMITS - FUN - MOMENTUM

SAFETY and FUN

In Ralph Koster's wonderful book A Theory of FUN for Game Design he suggests “The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games” and that “Games serve as a very fundamental and powerful learning tools” because there is that SAFETY. The Idea is that within gams there are systems and things that can be learned and improved through practice - just like any skill in the real world.  Though there may be consequences in the game - and in role-playing games, for YOUR CHARACTER, there are no REAL WORLD consequences (well… unless you are a total asshole to your fellow players and they all end up hating you and never want to speak or talk to you again…) The book is about games in general, slightly leaning towards video games and simulations, but everything he talks about applies to RPGs and I think it RPGs ESPECIALLY can be have a LOT to teach people in FUN and SAFE environment. No, you can’t learn to be a better marksman or other PHYSICAL skills by rolling dice, but through role-playing, with a good GM, there can be a lot to be learned about social interactions and tactics and cooperation and other systems of all kinds! I should to on with more examples - but hopefully can think of your own from your own gaming (and maybe share them!). I don’t have all day to write and essay (or my OWN book) about it… 

ALSO SAFETY

A comic I recently came across - not my own - I think it speaks for itself. 

MOMENTUM

I’ll admit I DO have a problem with keeping the momentum going in RPG campaigns that I’ve run. I am eternally envious of those forever campaigns that go on  for year. It’s always been my dream to play a character (or run a game where the characters) starts a lowly, first-level peasant and work their way up over the years (of game time… but maybe also IRL) to become powerful figures in their world and possibly “carve out a kingdom by [their] own had” as Conan once said. But, in reality, my campaigns generally last from a few session to a few months and then fizzle with no satisfying conclusion.

 

Now, a large part of that is me ( and due to neurodevelopment issues that tend to make me highly prone to distractibility), but one thing that I find that kills MOMENTUM for me and makes me even more susceptible to said destructibility is people not showing up. I get it, life happens, people can’t ALWAYS make it to a game… but I often feel, for some people, that the game is a thing that they do if there isn’t something else going on… “Sorry, man, I got to play hockey tonight”… “Sorry, man, some friends are going to see a movie”… etc… are the excuses I hear and it makes me wonder if they would ever consider saying to the others “Sorry, man, that’s GAME NIGHT”. I mean, when I set up a game night I carve out that time-slot and make is SACRED - I WILL tell people “nope, that’s GAME NIGHT!” 

Also not my own - a meme I lifted from the internet, I'm not sure of the original author. 

I don’t know… maybe this is just me blame-throwing to cover for my own problems… But, as I said, nothing makes me, as the GM, more prone to the aforementioned distractibility and losing focus than getting super excited for a weekends game and putting in a lot of my own time preparing for it ,  only to have to cancel because too many people “can’t make it” and I am thus left with nothing to do that evening by be along with my thoughts and despair about why I’M the one that’s the lowest on everyone’s priority pole and then my internal mechanism for cheering myself kicks in… NEW IDEAS! And suddenly everyone shows up next week to find HEY, I’M STARTING A TOTALLY NEW CAMPAIGN! And everyone is, like, WTF? 

Some coping mechanisms I’ve tried to imply, with variable success, is to keep sessions episodic - so that it’s easier to make an excuse for why someone isn’t there and make it so no one character is absolutely vital to the game and will cause it to come to a grinding halt if they aren’t there. This is easier for me to do when playing in person and playing a game with a strong tactical combat element and all characters belong to an organization that issues orders for missions (its why I’ve LOVED military RPGS - Recon, Only War, Behind Enemy Lines, etc) - also worked well with narrative campaigns of tabletop miniature skirmish campaigns using Savage Worlds or similar. 

Also, I’ve had to try really hard to lower expectations for how long a campaign will last and tell the players (AND MYSELF) up front that we are only going to play this one adventure… and MAYBE it there is still interest and MOMENTUM I’ll run a second short adventure or story arc… 

What do YOU do to keep momentum going in adventures and campaigns? 

I think my friend Bruce is on to something with GMing professionally and charging players money to play. People are less likely to blow off thins if they’ve made a MONETARY commitment to - because then it’s “real” and has “value”… 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Thirteen

 

IMPROVISE

Improvise or Plan? This is my constant dilemma. So many publish adventures are just railroads that, despite most my players saying they’re okay with and just want to jump on and take a ride, insist on derailing at EVERY available opportunity! 

As Clausewitz once said: “The best written adventure never survives first contact with the player characters…” (or maybe it was Sun Tzu…?) 

What I’ve been trying to work towards is a very flexible plan and be ready to improvise. I try to come up with a timeline of what the antagonists are up to and plan of clues that could lead to the party TO the antagonists or inform them of what they are up to and just let them GO! I try to make it possible for those clues to not be tied to fixed location or at least be moveable - if they don’t find it where they’re supposed to, move it so it’s right in their path. Nothing wrecks an adventure that a vital clue in one location that they don’t go to or miss because of a failed Notice roll. When the players wreck part of the the antagonists plan - make them ADAPT - what would they do if someone starts wrecking stuff - attack? Hide? Ignore them and carry on? I try to think those things through. 

Anyway, that’s the idea I’ve been trying to move towards… It isn’t really as simple as it plans and still doesn’t always work out… It’s a process…. I’m still learning. 

POOL

I like dice pools. I think my first introduction to them was West End Games Star Wars Role-Playing Game (First Edition). When it came out I snapped it up because I still had warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings about the whole Star Wars universe (or….galaxy, far, far away…?). I did not like them then. Why roll a shit-tonne of dice when a pair of d10s would do (I did love my percentile dice at the time). Since then I have grown to appreciate and, in fact, prefer dice pools. 

There's a longer explanation of why exactly that is... but I don't have all day. if you want to hear more about it, ask. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twelve

 

Let's go with CONSENSUS 

Some of the best role-playing experiences have been when a party can’t form a consensus on something and passionately debates or argues, IN CHARACTER - especially when the players know it’s really a bad idea, but their character doesn’t (or the character has some sort of “stubborn” disadvantage and is just playing that out!). 

Whenever this happens I just sit back and smile and think; “THIS is what I’m here for!”

Some of the worst role-playing experiences have been when a party (or, rather, PLAYERS) disagrees on something and argue about it, but it makes no sense for their character to do so in the game setting… 

Fortunately, the former is far more common with the gaming groups I’ve played with recently. The latter was much more common when I played as a teen. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Eleven

Day 11 - WILDERNESS - LISTEN - HEAVY - DESPAIR

WILDERNESS - for some reason this prompt made me think go basing - like, miniature basing. Miniatures have ALWAYS been part of my role-playing - I mean, it was the little lead Tom Meier/Ral Partha miniatures that drew me to Dungeons and Dragons in 1980. Yeas ago (decades, actually) I worked towards a uniform basing scheme for all my miniatures regardless of period/setting. It was basically brown dirt with a couple clumps of grass - initially green flock, later static grass, still later pre-made static grass clumps - or brush or flowers, just to mix it up a LITTLE bit. As almost all of my miniatures were metal I based them on round metal washers (unless required to do otherwise by a ruleset - DBA/HOTT being the main one - where everything was on thin (1/8”) rectangular MDF multi-figure base, but it STILL used the brown dirt with grass, bushes, the occasional stone. This gave them all a look of being outdoors - in the WILDERNESS, if you will… For more modern or sci-fi miniatures, I would sometimes leave off the grass and such and try to smooth out the dirt a little bit to still mesh with other miniatures.. but also have a neutral brown look, should they ever need to be used in a more urban environment - or the interior of a spaceship! 

For the longest time I could not STAND plastic bases (I wasn’t really a fan of plastic miniatures either). They seemed so thick and tall - almost plinth-like making miniatures tower over other to-scale items that weren’t on bases. Terrain had to be exaggeratedly tall to make it look like the miniatures hiding behind them were actually in cover. In some cases it made them rather top HEAVY and tippy - if it were a larger metal mini on a smaller plastic base. (Oooh! I worked into one of the other prompts!) 

What irked me even MORE about plastic bases was the guys who painted the sides of them BLACK. I always felt that bases should blend and match the environment to make the figures on them stand out. The harsh contrast of the black sides stood out and just looked unfinished to me. Why wouldn’t you paint them to match the top of the base or what you expected the ground to be. 

All that kind of changed about four years ago when I painted some Warhammer Underworlds miniatures for John. 

The miniatures had highly sculpted bases, specific to the miniature that was to be mounted on them. I quite enjoyed painting them - the base was really an extension of the miniature - making almost a miniature diorama (something I’d tried to do with larger bases miniatures before (though still keeping with the generally brown, wilderness-looking bases). I also painted them with black sides. Mostly for uniformity/consistency. I mean there were different things going on on those bases and I couldn’t decide which colour to go with and, besides, they were to be used in a board game and the boards were mostly dark and greyish and black worked as a transition between the two. 

But that was for someone else. I stuck with the same old scheme for my own miniatures. 

Then I ended up painting Finnegan’s Terminators and Genestealers for the last edition of Space Hulk. The miniatures didn’t come with bases. I decided to put them onto bases partly so they wouldn’t be so tippy and partly so they would mesh with other 40K miniatures should they ever be USED to play 40K (or any other scientist-fi game). By the time I got to painting them, the latest version of Necomunda was out and the plastic under hive bases could be bought separately. So I did them up on those. 

I used the 32mm bases for all of them, as the 40mm ones weren’t available - which means the Terminators are on the wrong size of base for 40K… but… whatevs.. the 40mm bases would have been just too big for use on the Space Hulk rooms and corridors. It required a bit of carving away of some of the miniatures and, in one case, sculpting with green stuff to make the miniature work with the bases. I painted them grey with a bit of rust - including the sides - and they looked pretty okay…

Then I actually started PLAYING the new Necromunda. I had a few of the old metal minis - and sourced more of them through eBay to use with the game. 

Initially I used the standard metal washer to base them and did them with a neutral brown… but then just looked WRONG on the interior rusted metal looking boards… so I tried picking up a few of the plastic Necromunda bases and embarked on a massive re-basing project. 

I did the bases a bit differently from the Space Hulk. Some was grey and rusted - but there were bits of yellow and black hazard stripes and splattered look and pools of spilled substances. The painting technique I used on the sculpted top of the bases, just didn’t translate well to the smooth sides…. so… I ended up trying painting them black… and that didn’t bother me at all, I rather LIKED the look of it! 

I was also starting to play 40K and Kill Team again at this point and acquiring some plastic miniatures and using more plastic bases and started with using “Sector Imperialis” or "Sector Mechanicus" bases for a lot of miniatures - especially those part of dedicated Kill Teams (these are more sculpted plastic bases - but different from the Necromunda bases). All painted with black sides - to conform to the new standard and bring SOME consistency to them 

Then came Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress and here I went completely off the rails, making my own bases to look like detritus in a ruined alien space fortress! (Also black sides) 

Non-wilderness bases have creeped into my fantasy basing as some new Skaven I started working on for Warcry, and other minis I’ve been working on for Frostgrave, I ended up trying to do with grey rubble of ruined cities. 

Most recently I even picked up some flagstone and cobblestone rollers from Green Stuff World… with some of these I started painting the sides grey, but later started painting them black - AND painting the sides of the newer bases I still did with wilderness-brown-dirt-scheme black - just so there was SOME element of uniformity between them (because I didn’t like the look of grey-sided bases next to brown-sided bases). 

I have a problem... 

I am a bit of an idiot… 

So… Wilderness… That’s my convoluted take on it… What does WILDERNESS or LISTEN or HEAVY or DESPAIR bring to mind for the rest of you?  

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Ten

 

To be honest, when I first saw “TRUST” as the prompt for today, the first thing thought that popped into my head was “Yeah, but can I be TRUSTED?” It's a line from a Wayne and Shuster album I listened to endlessly as a youth. In addition to frontier Psychologist and Shakespearean Baseball, it included “Rinse the Blood Of My Toga” and the line is Brutus talking to Flavius Maximus about potential suspects in the "Julius Caesar Caper", which Brutus has hired Maximus to solve. It got me thinking about how that album and all the Mad Magazines and Monty Python and later improv sketch comedy that’s informed my role-playing (and possibly deeply flawed coping mechanisms for the rest of life). There is a meme with two pictures and the words How All My Campaigns Start and How All My Campaigns Turn Out - the first statement is a picture from the Lord of the Rings movies where the fellowship is leaving Rivendell and the second statement is over a picture of King Arthur and the Knights of the round table from Monty Python and the Holy Grail… which I can kind of relate to. I try to play “serious” games, sometimes… but in the end, it’s a game, and I can’t take anything, in a game, too seriously. As a GM I try to keep things LIGHT (ooh! I worked in one of the other prompts!) and never let rules get in the way of a good story or having a fun time. This is why I've never been all that keen on the competitive/matched play aspect of Warhammer and such. 

Also, I have to admit, I find I am less trusting of strangers as I get older, which has made it challenging to connect with new people to play games with… role-playing, miniatures or boardgames... 

I do count myself so very fortunate to have a family that's been willing to play games with me and a core group of friends that will roll dice and flip cards and push toys and counters around a board or tabletop. Also that so many of those I've encountered along the gaming journey have become such great lifelong friends. The ONE good thing that'd come out of Covid was being able to reconnect with some of those friends that have moved away to play role-playing games with them online. The game kind of fizzled - for now - but I have high hopes I'll get it going again in the fall. 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Nine

 

A Day late and a dollar short… 

Once again it is over a week into August when I remembered “Oh, yeah… RPGaDay!?” 

Medium 

One of my favourite characters I can remember was in John Burt’s short-lived GURPS modern supernatural game. WE were all part of a private investigation agency and… there was supernatural stuff in the world… and some of US had supernatural abilities. My character was, essentially a MEDIUM of sorts… Well… He could see dead people and talk to them - but had no control over it - restless spirits just sort of visited him and he was terrified of them, but it helped solve a LOT of cases! 

One of the things that was great about making the character for this game was that it came from a concept - which I presented to John and said “this is what I’d like to play, I have no idea how to do it in the rules” and we just made shit up. 

I guess also falling under "Medium" could be the medium I prefer for role-playing games, and that would be printed hardcopies (over, say, PDFs or other digital versions).

Percentage

As a teen I LOVED games with Percentile dice and skills. Call of Cthulhu, WFRP, and Revised Recon are a few that instantly come to mine. Now I just can’t stand them.