Dicey wildcards. tabletop game players and makers

[rovingjack]

Do you like a good game of Draughts? have you whittled a chess set? Do you play senet with ancient mummies and mahjong with dragons? Have you homebrewed a D&D steampunk setting? Or mailing letters to somebody who is unraveling some eldritch horror in a game of 'De Profundis'?

Lets talk about games. games played, favorite games, game crafting and game design.

[morozow]

When I was very young and handsome, a friend had a Warhammer Fantasy rule book. In the evenings we sat in the entrance and played.

I don't know any foreign languages at all, my comrades knew a little English, in general it was funny.

Well, wonderful illustrations of Warhammer Fantasy. Somehow D & D and other systems then did not impress me. Duckling syndrome.

Oh, yes, I also wrote a couple of articles for the largest, then, Russian role-playing site, a small essay on real assains and an overview of the performance of typical tasks by various magical schools.

How long ago it was. Wiped away a tear of nostalgia.

[RJBowman]

I played in a Champions (superheroes) campaign in college. Played Battletech a few times with friends. Bought the first edition Shadowrun book when it came out; it was very impressive, but I never played. Same with the first edition Mage book.

I saw the Space 1889 RPG in a shop; the only steampunk RPG I saw back in the day, before I had ever heard the word steampunk. I wasn't very impressed by it; to much fantasy science and the setting didn't seem detailed enough for something of interplanetary scale.

I've had an idea to create my own steampunk RPG; really I'm most interested in creating the setting, and then making a big thick book with tons of setting information and lots of info about real world science and tech for background. I put out a question on a Facebook RPG players group once asking if people ever bought RPG books that they didn't believe that they would ever actually play, and I got a lot of positive response. It is really the appeal of the dense descriptions of a fictional world with illustrations that is appealing. I imaging making a book primarily for that market. The problem is, I have to come up with a playable game.

[rovingjack]

I've had an idea to create my own steampunk RPG; really I'm most interested in creating the setting, and then making a big thick book with tons of setting information and lots of info about real world science and tech for background. I put out a question on a Facebook RPG players group once asking if people ever bought RPG books that they didn't believe that they would ever actually play, and I got a lot of positive response. It is really the appeal of the dense descriptions of a fictional world with illustrations that is appealing. I imaging making a book primarily for that market. The problem is, I have to come up with a playable game.

There are plenty of system agnostic/ system neutral rpg supplements. They tend to be about settings and events and histories. Often having random roll tables for events or encounters. a good one to refer to for world building is Yoon-suin 'the purple land', it's not purely system agnostic because they stat out monsters, but it makes a sand box (open exploration play, without a defined plotline or adventure sequence) world that's easily plopped into any fantasy setting in any system. A lot of rules light OSR game material can be used as system agnostic.

in planning some rpg designs for a wide variety of games, I've learned an interesting idea about monster stats that is expressed as 'just use bears'. need a giant attack lizard mount for a character? just use a bear and describe it differently. Need an air-jellyfish to threaten your airship? just use a bear, and change it's walking speed to a floating speed. etc. and there is a variant of just use an owl bear. Because in most D&D games there's a black bear (I think they a challenge rated 1/4-12 in 5e) Brown bears (CR 1) owl bears (CR 3) and otherwise give you a decent model of a basic monster that can be scaled up or down in difficulty, and expanding it's usefulness with increasing the numbers encountered.

I've thought about using this in a system agnostic game design, where I just make up my monsters as reworks of variant bears, so that they are super easy to use in any system by just finding the stats for a bear in your system of choice and using that as the foundation for whatever monster I present in my system agnostic game. Might even create a systemless system rpg and call it the bear essentials monster rpg.

I've been playing at making a very rules light simple rpg game But I'm doing them in 8 genres. One of course will be steampunk. The idea is inspired by those old 8-bit nintendo games like the original final fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I loved the fold out charts with the monsters and weapons and armor and maps etc. and have sort of decided on doing them in a zine format. But I'm doing them in 8 genres. One of course will be steampunk. I'm aiming for being able to make them all cos a dollar... because $1 = 8 bits, bits being 12.5 cents, 2 bits being a quarter dollar. and I'm going to call them Bitty RPG

[rovingjack]

Oh, yes, I also wrote a couple of articles for the largest, then, Russian role-playing site, a small essay on real assains and an overview of the performance of typical tasks by various magical schools.

How long ago it was. Wiped away a tear of nostalgia.

A while ago I was playing with the idea of trying some one shot of short games using different RPG games from around the world:
I got a copy of 'Drakar och Demoner', in swedish and was translating it using translation software (had a hard drive crash that set me back)
I purchased the english translation of the french rpg 'Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros'.
I picked up an english copy of the Japanese game 'The World of Ryuutama'
I have the german 'the Dark Eye' game in english.
but after that there don't seem to be a lot of games from other countries. It seems that D&D, PathFinder, and Call of Cthulu. Have dominated the Tabletop Roleplaying Game scene, across the world.

I hear there was a game called 'Age of Aquarius' (Russian: Эра Водолея, or "Era Vodoleya") but I don't know much more than that, including where it could be found or if I would be using translation software to be able to use it for a game or two.

[morozow]

yes. I know this system. I have this book, I read it with satisfaction, but did not play.

Here is a Russian wiki about her - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Эра_Водолея_(ролевая_игра)

You can read it with an online translator.

[rovingjack]

yes. I know this system. I have this book, I read it with satisfaction, but did not play.

Here is a Russian wiki about her - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Эра_Водолея_(ролевая_игра)

You can read it with an online translator.

this seems to be like some truly hard to find material outside of your territories. I can't seem to track down anyone who has seen one outside of Russian areas.

I'd consider a pdf or a print copy and do my best to translate the way I'm doing with DoD from Sweden. But I can't find anything anywhere.

[rovingjack]

had a bit of fun finishing up the google translate of Drakar och Demoner, main info pages. I still have to translate the a few charts and stat blocks (like the monsters). and then it will be time to go over it and use the wider context to straighten out some of the grammar and weirder phrasing that comes through translation.

Some of it is quite funny. It likes to translate Gripar (griffen) as grapple, and a young one hatched to become a mount is a grapple sheep, one of the sentences for discussing Orks and their clan leadership says they are almost always ruled by a Dryer. and apparently a dragons love of treasure leads to a dragon Tax, while trolls collecting treasure leads to troll cats.

There is a larger, dumber, and more powerful version of the Ork, called Rese, which half the time translates to traveler. and I am not using the translated version of their name, thank you very much.

Which brings me to the translations of many of the spells. they are an absolute mess, and are likely to be some of the hardest things to fix. but by in some ways the bullet points about what effects they have might help. But I'm tempted to use the untranslated names of the spells with the translation underneath in parenthesis. It's a nice bit of flavor for the magic to be a very different language.

I'm off to go see if there is a mythical origin to the Rese.

edit: on the off chance my memory served me I recalled a bit of Norse mythology that used a second term for giants other than Jotun, I was thinking it was Risar, and a quick bit of google-fu and sure enough the etymology of this alternate form of giants is most often called Risi but swedish tends to use rese.

[groomporter]

We might be of interest. We sell board, dice and card games from the past including some period playing cards. http://historicgames.com

[rovingjack]

We might be of interest. We sell board, dice and card games from the past including some period playing cards. http://historicgames.com

I've thought of doing a chess set with elves carved in wood, and dwarves carved in soap stone.

meanwhile I've been trying to plan the best way to release my game, Runcible Foods: a game in bad taste. I could just open it for sale on something like game crafters or drivthru cards. But I'd also like to launch it as a kickstarter. My big hope for the game is to donate 50% of sales to a charity fighting hunger around the world. And make a big effort to reach out to tabletop game online content creators to spread the word. Maybe do a youtube/Facebook ad. ect.  Basically go big with it and see if I can get it to go somewhere more than just a few hundred sales.

I'm also hoping to launch 8 bit rpg video game inspired tabletop game. I loved the old Dragon quest/warrior games and the first final fantasy. and in the spirit of those think it would be great to do a minimalist tabletop game like those, with fold out charts of weapons and monsters and 8bit art etc. I might launch that as a a zine for next years zinequest on kickstarter. I would have done it this year but I had emergency surgeries. and I've decided to use the time to make 7 more settings (including a steam punk setting) for it.

and I need to get some folks to help me playtest 'Captain Rita Rayguns thrilling interplanetary adventures' a raygun gothic (rocket punk?) story telling card game. And my cyberpunk themed board game. Maybe my superhero dice game too.

and I want to start another youtube channel for D&D stuff. I've been converting Dark Sun for 5e, Translating Drakar Och Demoner, ...

and might solo play a D&D game from the very first edition, traveling to blackmoor, then Mystara and changing edition rules systems as the characters cross from world to world. From Mystara (with the red steel and hollow world settings on it) getting pulled into ravenloft and after finishing that escape to dragonlance (using AD&D 1st edition which it was made for) where after some adventure we get wrapped up into spelljammer as a transit to 2ed with their new unique setting of DarkSun. and Planescape out to Ghostwalk which hardly anyone remembers but was the first original setting available for 3e. Then over to Eberron for 3.5. and then to Nentir vale for 4th. and I guess The Radiant Citadel is 5e's first brand new setting for the edition. I'll be curious to see if the 5.5e in 2024 has any brand new settings.

[morozow]

this seems to be like some truly hard to find material outside of your territories. I can't seem to track down anyone who has seen one outside of Russian areas.

I'd consider a pdf or a print copy and do my best to translate the way I'm doing with DoD from Sweden. But I can't find anything anywhere.

You probably asked the wrong questions, in the wrong language, in the wrong search engine.

Rules of the first edition. It was this book that I read with pleasure. I like to read the rules and descriptions. https://www.rulit.me/books/era-vodoleya-pravila-nastolnoj-igry-get-164824.html . Click - В ФОРМАТЕ PDF

As far as I understand, the ancient sites of a groups of fans with a bunch of materials - http://comitcont.narod.ru , http://www.dusty-aquarius.narod.ru/ ,  http://elfik88.narod.ru/ , http://airaxus.narod.ru/ When looking at them, nostalgia came over me again, Bring back my 2000.

Live group on a social network - https://vk.com/club3320719

And for translation, use Yandex online translator better. He understands Russian better.

[rovingjack]

this seems to be like some truly hard to find material outside of your territories. I can't seem to track down anyone who has seen one outside of Russian areas.

I'd consider a pdf or a print copy and do my best to translate the way I'm doing with DoD from Sweden. But I can't find anything anywhere.

You probably asked the wrong questions, in the wrong language, in the wrong search engine.

Rules of the first edition. It was this book that I read with pleasure. I like to read the rules and descriptions. https://www.rulit.me/books/era-vodoleya-pravila-nastolnoj-igry-get-164824.html . Click - В ФОРМАТЕ PDF

As far as I understand, the ancient sites of a groups of fans with a bunch of materials - http://comitcont.narod.ru , http://www.dusty-aquarius.narod.ru/ ,  http://elfik88.narod.ru/ , http://airaxus.narod.ru/ When looking at them, nostalgia came over me again, Bring back my 2000.

Live group on a social network - https://vk.com/club3320719

And for translation, use Yandex online translator better. He understands Russian better.

much thanks for both those. That translator seems excellent too.



meanwhile I had the weird idea of creating a DM-less two player RPG tabletop game using a d8....
Called D8 Knights. for couples to play a little D&D style game together. lol.

[rovingjack]

I'm going to start a youtube channel to explore my ttrpg interests and worldbuilding hobby. I've just been debating if I will call it Thactotum or Thactotem.

as in THAC0, and Factotum. But debating if totem is the better ending, to add an additional implication of totems, it's likely to be the spelling people think of who don't have a familiarity with the latin.

I'm planning on playing as though Thac is my name, or in some videos pretending it stands for different things: Totally Hot Adventuring Character, Tinkering Heroic Artificer Changeling...

and also plan to build a supplement that uses cats as the base for a variety of monsters (thinking of calling it Cataloged Animal Threats: aka CATs), by just reskinning them (and there is more than one way to reskin a cat), which then allows that I can use the cat as a unit of measure for creating or remaking creatures, and plausibly being system nuetral so that a sabertooth lion in D&D 5e is a sbertooth lion in warhammer, and cypher etc. so any creature I make that uses that as it's foundation can readily be translated to any system for play.

also Caht, backwards is Thac.

I'm debating making up a monster called a Thac, to be a totem animal.

[madamemarigold]

I have several ideas for both a steampunk and a western RPG game and also a steampunk chess set idea as well. I have some of the adventures partially written and the chess set is still in the idea of possibilities stage only so far. I have just been procrastinating. 

[rovingjack]

ooh, does the steampunk chess set have wind up pieces? I can just imagine a set of clockwork chess pieces with bases that you twist to wind up and when set down it performs one cycle of an action. kind of like how you wind up a music box and it does nothing until you open it.

it's be interesting to do a set of pieces that move on the board by themselves but that's something I imagine even the finest swiss watchmakers would struggle to achieve with large pepper mill sized pieces.

[Sorontar]

Steam chess!
Mechanical pawns that can be pushed one square in any direction by other pieces (but otherwise only function as normal pawns)?
Wild card knights that can change to a two square bishop or rook by lying down, but need a turn to lie down and a turn to stand up and return to being a knight?
Steamtrain rooks who can travel to the end of the board, and take out any pawns in the road, but the rook is also lost. If anything else is in the road, then the train stops there, destroyed.
Just my thoughts.

[morozow]

It sounds beautiful. But a real party is impossible, because of the control system of the figures. How to specify exactly where he goes.

but the possibility of automatic "drawing" of famous chess sketches and games.

If you cheat a little and use modern technologies for movement (the first thing that comes to mind is magnets) and control, then honest mechanics will be able to perform some kind of civic gestures, like touching a spear.

[rovingjack]

It sounds beautiful. But a real party is impossible, because of the control system of the figures. How to specify exactly where he goes.

but the possibility of automatic "drawing" of famous chess sketches and games.

If you cheat a little and use modern technologies for movement (the first thing that comes to mind is magnets) and control, then honest mechanics will be able to perform some kind of civic gestures, like touching a spear.

I was thinking more in line of the pawn thumping their shield or spear, or the knights horse rearing, and the bishop raising their hands and gaze to heaven or kneeling and praying. stuff like that. not actual board movements.

anyway, I posted a few questions to a few places online: essenitially whether to do Thactotum, or thactotem? if anyone would be willing to help playtest a minimalist rpg system that I'd like to pitch for zinequest on kickstarter in february? and whether I should do a solo playthrough of various classic settings of D&D as they are, or should I do the 'knockoff' versions of them. I posted the questions seperately to some facebook groups, and reddit. and my reddit posts were downvoted into the ground, and my facebook posts were pretty much ignored aside from a few like to the playtest post but nobody saying they would playtest it.

One of the reddit posts that was downvoted into nothing was a voting post, and while the post was downvoted it still got 11 to 4 in favor of reworking the adventures.

I expect that with this sort of response that any of these things I do will get little to no audience, and likely to attract haters any which way I go anyway. and I will get zero useful answers from asking people what they prefer. Buuuuut...

The way I'm thinking about it now. ThacTotum is the name, ThacTotems can be pins, badges and merch. I can make puns about being a total thac idea/move/etc. With me being the character Thac. While allso making jokes that it stands for Totally hot alfar cleric, or something else. and play with the idea of Thac being Cat spelled backwards. also allowing me to do an about page and answers column called FAQtotum.

I think I'll just have to see about the playtesting and whether much if any gets done before launch for zinequest.

and as for the adventures: The idea is to start a character or two in the very first version of D&D using the adventure survival game board as a map like they used to do. Then with things like the greyhawk and blackmoor supplements expand the rules befor using Adventures in blackmoor that offers a transition to the Mystara/known-world (including savage coast and hollow world) and Basic+ rules system. And then get pulled into ravenloft as a transition to both 1st ed AD&D and Dragonlance (which was the first setting released specifically for 1st ed.

From there I spelljammer to second edition and Darksun. Going through the editions and the settings introduced as new for the editions.

But I'm going to do homebrew variants. In part to avoid spoiling any adventures players might want to play in the future, get around copyright of those settings as I effectively play the stories out in videos, and theoretically allow me to make and distribute the adventures available for players and DMs to play.

I've already started with some setting rewrites. Like instead of Greyhawk which was Gary (?gary=gray?) Gygax home setting I'm calling the first setting after the custom altered survival map 'RoanLand' (an anagram of D.L. Areneson, Dave Arneson the other creator who came up with the idea of D&D and whose home setting was blackmoor). Roan being both a color (like grey) and a word that means seal I will make it a series of islands with selkies among the cretures. I will treat the land similar to the invasions cycle stories of Ireland.

Blackmoor is now called ShadowVance (shadow/black, moor/vance but also the type of magic in the game is referred to as Vancian based on the dying earth novels by author Vance), and is a sort of viking/altantis nation for important reasons that come into play for the setting progressions. The Ravenloft homage is the dark domain of ?Corvidania? where the Vampiress Stasia Ravenova is more based on the literary Carmilla the Vampire Countess that was written 26 years before bram stoker wrote dracula.

I've been playing around with including Thac in names for each one, just as a bit of Fun. The Dragonlance setting has the evil goddess Takhisis, who is a dragoness with 5 heads, one for each color of evil dragon. I have made Thac-isis the Goddess of good and having 5 metalic dragon heads. The world of Athas, the burnt world, is the location of the Dark Sun setting, which I'm playing with calling Thacos the sorched earth. etc.

I'm making some substantial lore edits and some of these feel so different that you couldn't really know what setting some of them are an Homage to. So I may do an introduction before each explaining what they are an homage to.

Though at the heart of it you will be able to see that the Wild Coast (with it's oricalcum and magic metal poisoning) setting and Inner World taking place in the Known world of Arathac are The savage coast with it's red steel, hollow earth on the world of Mystara.

And in particular the Dark Sun, Eberron and Planscape city of Sigil are distinctive enough settings that even with substantial lore and name alterations they will be obvious. But since D&D has a history of taking inspiration from other sources, and there are other things that use and play with the same ideas outside of D&D, that it won't be taken as a rip-off. I mean spelljammer as a setting of sailing ships flying through space to other planets seems uniquely distinctive but then they is stuff like treasure planet and sky pirates in steampunk ships.

[rovingjack]

I visited a friend yardselling a few months after his father passed. I helped with some yardwork and afterwards he offered to show me how magic the gathering worked, It's a gap in my game knowledge and he was big into it when he was younger. I had imagined it to be some great fantasy game with narrative elements and had a few years back gotten an ebay lot of common cards, with the idea of using the artwork and some of the spell or artifact cards in games I create or items in an rpg.

we played a game with hands exposed to help me learn a bit about the game, and frankly I feel like it's some kind of insanity. It has about as much narrative and story as a game of checkers or backgammon. but maybe a better example would be something like shogi... only there are 600,000 variant pieces to choose for your side of the board, your turn consists of you draw each piece randomly from a hat, and place them on a random spot on your side of the board and then moving one or more of your pieces on the board. and as you keep drawing pieces each turn.

the 'premise' of the game is that you are a wizard traveling between worlds of a multiverse, and have encountered another wizard doing the same... so naturally you are battling each other to the death, by summoning creatures artifacts and casting spells to attack the other wizard, and to defend yourself against their attack on you.

I'm not sure I'll get much enjoyment from playing this game. But there is some degree of entertainment in sorting through the box of a few hundred common, non valuable cards and seeing if I could build a few decks that could possibly play a game between them.

as somebody who sorts m&ms by color and eats them in amounts that will create and maintain a pattern ... I think this games designed specifically to tap into both the blind pack opening dopamine hit, and the sorting and organizing impulse, and then the desire to win and beat somebody else.

the last parts don't appeal to me as much. and I really don't want to participate in the present opening/ blind pack aspect, or for that matter the other side of it where there is the person who buys the power pieces and collects the rares and ultra rare cards.

So I'm not really sure I'm going to get a lot from the game as intended, but for now I'm playing with sorting the cards I do have into their colors and types, and then eventually into single color decks that can be played in single color games, or paired with another color for two color deck play. If I'm feeling adventurous I may take a deck to a game night at a gaming store even knowing it's lacking any really good cards, and I've not 'worked at building a deck' based on a strategy that suits some gameplay style or something.

Likely only once (maybe twice if I ever go to game and genre conventions again and just bring my scrap deck with me just in case).

I like my games to be more narrative based. I would probably be more enthusiastic about MTG, if it was not PvP but something like two players finding a lost temple of power that they each try to beat the traps to be the first to gain the artifact at the heart of the temple. or to play in teams in a similar scenario.

[Sorontar]

MtG is an interesting game. I first played in the 90s when it was new. I have picked up a few packs that were given away at conventions, which is fine for social games but I would never stand up against the experts and their custom sets in a competition.

What made MtG different is that it as the first (I think) of the tactical collectable card games. In a way, it is wargaming with cards. Each card has its cost, its attack and defence (or health). You can choose to deploy/use or just hold a card in your hand. Some cards are for reuse in multiple rounds. Some are good for defence, some are good for attack. Some give bonuses to other cards. Its isn't about what you can do with one card; it is about what you do with a combination of cards. It is more than just a game of trumps.

The artwork and "quotations" on the cards is also nice.

Sorontar

[rovingjack]

MTG cards mostly sorted into types and colors. I have a big and little deck of Enchantments, sorcery, complex lands (I do not have any basic lands and might trade some of my overflow cards to get 15 basic lands for each color), and instants. the big and little decks for each have only one of each of the cards in them, no repeats.

There is a sixth deck that is for the multi color cards. I also have artifact, and artifact creatures as their own section since most of them work for any deck.

I sorted a massive number of creature cards into color. but I've not sorted them into big and little decks, or so that there are no repeats in a deck. I'm not sure that's desirable for the creature cards. I can see the value in having multiple 1/1 goblin card to play in hand. But there are literally so many cards for creatures that I may have to go through them more gradually and pick out creature rosters into sets that I can modularly assemble into a balance of big hitters or swarming mobs to suit play at any particular game.

Like I said I do need to get some basic lands to really make something playable.

In other news I've been playing with my mechanics in my 8 bit themed Tabletop rpg. Because it's 8 bit and I love word play, I've been sorting things into sets starting with B.I.T.S. but am tripping up on the Hit Points and nimbleness/dodge/evade (alternative to armor class, armor type will be handled differently later). The B in their set is for Bravery (a sanity like feature) and S is for special-efffects (spells in fantasy, swashbuckling in pirates, STEAM as in science tech engineering artifice and maths in steampunk, super powers etc). So that leaves HP and Dodge/AC to fight over the letters I and T. I can see I being injury points, but can't for the life of me figure out how dodge/evade points could use a T word. But it's possible that I could put HP in as Trauma points, far less apt a title, but allows that dodge/AC could start with the I instead... only I can't figure out one for that either.

beyond that I've the four basic attribute scores as Body, Intellect, Toughness, and Suave. another section of the character sheet would be Background, Inventory, Trade (class), skills. and the 'pillars of play' are Battle, Investigation, Travel and Social.

Thats: stats, traits, backstory, game pillars, all broken down into BITS (once I resolve the HP AC conundrum). and 4 of the 8 BITS.

I do feel a bit guilty that I'm using d6 and not D8. But d6 is just easier to come by.

I intend there to be 8 genres. and the print and play PDF and a black and white folded mini zine style version will both be able to kick start for the price of $1... aka 8 bits (a bit being 12.5 cents). The format I intend to use will be two large charts like used to come with the old 8 bit Nes RPG games, that fold up into 8 page mini zines that fit together inside a mini 'slip cover'. The hope is one of the folding sections is 8 pages of minimalist rules, and the other is 8 pages of an adventure. The charts will hap maps done in 8 bit sprite style, and mosters and items lists on the other (probably class and spells too).

just need to sold the AC-HP naming issue and get the rest of my 8 BITS.

[von Corax]

So that leaves HP and Dodge/AC to fight over the letters I and T. I can see I being injury points, but can't for the life of me figure out how dodge/evade points could use a T word.

T = Tactics

[rovingjack]

So that leaves HP and Dodge/AC to fight over the letters I and T. I can see I being injury points, but can't for the life of me figure out how dodge/evade points could use a T word.

T = Tactics

As is kind of par for the course with me, right after posting I'd started to play with the idea of Tactical Evasion (because it feels important to make it clear that it's a stat that reflects active avoidance of other attacks) and feeling a bit like two words are cheating... but then Hit points or injury points are 2 words, as is Armor class.

So I suppose Injuries and TE(tactical evasion), are perfectly fine as options. At least enough to move on to making the rest of my fun game design experiment complete.

I'm not sure I will restrict spells/special effects to the BITS format, and it might be a tall order to expect to make a group of classes/trades for each of 8 Genres that fits the BITS template. I do think it may be possible to do 8 classes/trades per genre as rough analogues/reskins, as mostly a rogue is a rogue, a fighter is a fighter, etc.  But D&D 2e that was my first RPG and the New Playtest of the D&D One they are doing both kind of organised them into Groups. Roughly in line with the original editions Fighting man, Magic user, theif (expert classes in newer editions) and cleric. So I'll play around a bit with that concept and see about getting a BITS in that.

It also amuses me that I can organize the sections as the 'ability score bits' 'the class bits' etc.

[rovingjack]

Somebody else jokingly suggested THACO starts with a T. I Joked that I could use Thwak Avoidance, or I could make TACOS, Tactically Avoiding Combatant Offensive Strikes. Cuz Who doesn't like Tacos. 

I set that Aside for a bit to brew on it's own for a bit. Like one does when a project gets sloggy, doing something else for a bit and coming back fresh later can often help.

So I've been playing with my "HomageBrew" campaign idea. Still trying to figure out the "call to adventure" but the outline of the solo-play game is:

Starting with the original 3 book set of D&D, And a custom version of the Outdoor Survival boardgame map. A party of adventurers are rolled up (hopefully getting stats that allow for an elf, dwarf and *ehem* hobbling as this version had no PC races so to speak, Elf was a class like magic user and fighting man) I will probably have some encounters that have a character killed, and even if they all survive I may cycle a few out for replacements to demo the limited options early on.

Then when i think the party is ready, there will be an encounter that sends them to somewhere off map. That being into a region near my homagebrew variant of Greyhawk setting (since Gygax was fond of word play, and I strongly suspect Grey to be a play on Gary, I felt it only fair to take the other Creators Name, D L Arneson, and make my Greyhawk Homagebrew Called the 'RoanLands', not only is it a 'color' but Roan is irish for seal, from what I've been told, so it's a color and animal in the title that plays on a creators name) It'll be strongly connected to the ocean, being and island nation with small islands on the coast whose original inhabitants have a connection to the sea, and one of their war chiefs predicted to be killed by a grandson, sought to keep his daughter from having any... only for her to be seduced by an elf warchief, and bare 3 sons. The grandfather orders them drowned, and two become the first selkies, and the third is rescued to become a mighty demi god/ god among the elves. (this is based on irish myth actually). This all uses that additional material of the Greyhawk supplement. which adds the thief class, and Paladin as a follow up class to the fighting man class.

In the old days Greyhawk was first created on a map of north Amaerica, with the Castle and city of Greyhawk being where Chicago is. and legend tells of a land to the north of there Called Blackmoor, which was Dave Arnesons setting, and the next supplement to the original D&D.  And the first official adventure "Temple of the Frog" (based on a Star Trek TOS episode) was in the "Supplement 2: Blackmoor".

So the Homagebrew takes us from Greyhawk (Roanlands) to Blackmoor variants (Shadowvance, cuz the magic system in D&D is called Vancian after the writings of Jack Vance which had a system of magic that inspired the one used in the game).

The D&D game shifts a bit after that with the split between Basic D&D, and Advanced D&D. The Basic game was very similar to the previous edition and it's supplements, but were forbidden from using the Greyhawk and Blackmoor settings. So the team leads used their own setting called the Known World, Later called Mystara. The map of Mystara is based on earth in 160 million years past (late Jurassic) with the mainly covered region 'Known World' basically taking place in North eastern Canada. and maybe a bit of the nearby islands of the Spain (Plate tectonics after all). And the Mystara setting also has in it's long ago past an advanced kingdom that blew itself up called Blackmoor... and there is an adventure that introduces a time travel gimmick.

So my homage brew will take my characters and get caught in the time warp (again) and find themselves transported from Shadowvance (blackmoor) a technologically advanced atlantis like place to the variant I have for Mystara after the fall of Shadowvance in the distant past. Mystara has some subsettings (Savage Coast, with a magically contaminated fallout region that can make mutants, and it's coast of pirate ships and smoke powder for fire arms. And the hollow world, another world inside the sphere of the world, with ascendant mortals now become immortals who preserve and kind of collect the past of the world in regions almost like zoo exhibits of entire civilizations.

I have variants for those. and the idea that the characters seeking the remains of their homeland and peoples make their way to the hollow world from the savage coast and known world, to get caught in a conflict that drags them into ...

Ravenloft (well actually it's more based on Carmilla that predates the writing of dracula by 26 years, and modifies the lore and setting a fair bit) the dark domain that draws people into this demiplane of gothic horror and should they win the day, they may find escape ... to a Dragonlance homagebrew.

I'm having insane amounts of fun creating funhouse reflections of the various settings of D&D over the years. Often finding plotholes and dangling threads and finding ways to change things to address those aspects.

Like I love the idea that Greyhawk used North America and that Blackmoor was north of it and a technologically advanced empire that blew itself up in the past of Mystara... which is based on North America. And has a region in the gulf of mexico contaminated by a magic curse/fallout that causes magical mutants... and since the map is from the Gondwana-Larasia tectonic timeframe, and we know that the magnetic poles reverse a few dozen times between the Jurassic and now... Blackmoor could have been north of Greyhawk (chicago), by being in the gulf of Mexico, and blew itself up, leaving the magical fallout in the region and be the Chicxulub impact of the world that drove the preservers to the center of the hollow world in the first place.

It feels like putting puzzles together. But also like creative writing with very specific prompts. Like I'm having fun with rebuilding the mythology of the Dragonlance setting, and also dealing with the fact that the good metallic dragons (traditionally- Gold, Silver, Copper, bronze and brass) are 3/5 elemental metals, and 2/5 alloys of one of those metals. and the evil dragons (usually- red, black, blue, green, and white) are supposed to be corrupted versions of metallics tempted by the Diety of evil. When we could just Make Bronze dragons tin, and brass dragons zinc, and not only resolve the 3/5 to 2/5 split, but still allow the tin dragons to have bronze dragon offspring with a copper dragon, and even open up the possibility of rose gold and electrum dragons... but if evil corruption of the metallics gets the chromatics, then what better symbol of that corruption than contamination with brimstone leading to the corrosion from metallic to red for gold sulfate, black for silver sulfate, blue for copper sulfate, yellow for tin sulfate and white for zinc sulfate (cause red, blue, yellow, black and white, are the patinas you get from those metals and brimstone, and they also happen to be a better primary color set than red,black, blue, green and white

Spoiler: ShowHide

yes I know about RGB light mixing

) the whole thing changes the whole dragon ecosystem of the dragonlance setting and is just the beginning of the rewrites I'm playing with for just that one setting.

sorry for the ramble but I'm enjoying myself greatly.

[rovingjack]

Today I find myself playing around with the time travel element of the story arch of the D&D campaign. In the originals Dave Arneson based an adventure on a Star Trek TOS episode. But a later revisit to the setting uses an Inn (the come back inn)which opens to different points along a timeline.

I find myself wanting to tweak things a bit, and maybe not use an inn, but the best idea I have so far is a jail aka a nick... of time. They characters get involved in some time crimes, and they get Nicked and they get a 'time pass' that lets them get out for a limited time to catch the criminal that got away. looping back again each time they fail, to start over again. might even have the Nick, be out of time.

I'm just not sure Nick as a term for jail is still in Use enough to have people get it.