Dicey wildcards. tabletop game players and makers

[Sorontar]

If a British police officer said "you're nicked", I would expect to end up in the nick.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20nick

Outside of Britain, I am not sure whether the context would work.

[rovingjack]

I think I can just get away with it if I foreshadow the slang with an earlier encounter with scoundrels and rogues who seek to avoid or spring somebody from 'the nick' in some of their Cant. After which it's easier to accept the slang term as either a common term for a jail or at least a regional term amongst the criminal elements.

Thus the characters might find themselves caught up in time crimes, nicked by the Temporal agency (temp agency) and pressed into Temp service and provided with time passes, to serve their time, trying to apprehend a crook.

I think thus far the basic campaign outline

Spoiler: ShowHide

starts the characters in a region where they have an encounter in a DonJon that has them transported to the RoanLands where they get entangled in a conflict between a 'Formorian' warchief whose daughter was seduced away by an elf lord and the three grandsons attempted to be drowned two became the first selkies. And in the conflict a chase leads to the north and the epire of Shadowvance, where the characters get entangled in raids and on shadowvancian locations by the Spider Horde, and later have an encounter with a temporal fugative that gets them imprisoned and pressed into the Temp Service. They end up uncovering the situation of the time criminal and how they have contaminated the timeline (in a kind of Reese in the Terminator movie kind of way) and uncover some goings on at the Temp Agency, that leads to an apocalyptic event that ends the Shadowvancian civilization in a world shaking explosion  that casts the party into the future and leaves a contaminated coast with fallout and mutants. The party survives the land which has a bit of post nuclear mutant waste lands and a bit of Barsoom in it's far edge; and find their way to 'the known lands' and find traces of somebody else from the whole time travel fiasco they want to hunt down to get answers. The hunt leads to the Lost World within the planet, where they encounter a sort of reservation with zones from lost civilizations and eventually find the subject of their hunt, have an epic confrontation only for the conflict to bring the lot of them into the dark domains, a demiplane of gothic horror adventure, that they are trapped in until they beat the domains mistress and once free the find themselves released into a new world.

from the adventures in the new world that get a ride on a flying ship that goes into space and gets seized by slaver space pirates. but they lead a rebellion that overthrows the slavers but ends them up lost in space... until they find a world like no other they crash land on and have to adventure there to find a magic gate to other worlds. where they end up in a city of dimensional doors. only to get stranded on a necropolis and travel through the gates of the dead to the world of the dead and getting a chance to catch a ride on a necromancers summoning to a world of post war magic pulp city adventures, from which they will seek out the cursed land resulting from a war catastrophe and there end up climbing through a rift into another world which hides and artifact that connects it to a Place that resembles the capital of Shadowvance and drifts in an inbetween place with artifacts that lead to other worlds.

[von Corax]

Sounds a bit like something one of our DMs cooked up called DeathWorld. Getting killed was a 5 minute penalty, and we encountered Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Love Boat, but ran out of time before Pat Sajak showed up.

Bonus points: When trolls get drunk they become very rubbery, and one of our PCs happened to have an ink pad in his pocket...

[rovingjack]

my blackmoor analog (shadowvance) sits on a reserve of a mystic metal, oricalcum, that enables them to technologically advance rapidly (like wakanda and vibranium) and also allows the Temp agency to run as a secret organization manipulating the timeline to favor them but they are also struggling to uncover why they cannot seem to go forward past a certain point which is rapidly approaching the time contemporary with the main agency operations. Turns out something created an apocalyptic chain reaction that Atlantised them off the planet and created the savage coast variant (vermillion coast) with the fallout and the mutations etc. But later in the journey it may be found again ripped out of the timeline and set as a city in orbit around the time axis of the multiverse, having been there since the beginning and since the end and all time inbetween.

I did some multiversal cosmology today and yesterday. Figuring out the primordial elemantal and paraelemental dragons from whence the gods came and overthrew these titans of old.

And figuring out most of what heaven and hells and such exist. (the D&D cosmology professes to be alignment based and favoring 3 and then goes and creates 16 outer planes from a 3x3 alignment chart, which annoys me almost as much as copper alloy dragons being base meatallic dragon types along with copper... so I fixed it) there are nine outer planes. and I'm debating if and how I might do 9 inner planes. I'm building my cosmology around the 3 part mortals design of alchemy. The salt, sulpher and mercury; aka matter, soul and spirit. They souls belong to an energy feild in the astral/outer transative plane where heavens and hells and such reside. The spirits are reason thought and memory in the ethereal transitive plane (which is heavily raven themed thanks to huginn and muninn, and the raven queen, and ravenloft)... and yes there's a memory palace. It's a realm in which things both delightful and horrible enough to become imortalized in memories and legends of the worlds they came from are placed within a myst that binds the patchwork of memories together.

I supposed I could make another 3x3 chart like the 'lawful, neutral, chaotic x good, neutral, evil' one. But I'm not sure memory, thought, reason x dread, delight and madness, is quite right. especially since things like madness inducing cthulu belong to a fifth outer 'far realm' .

the five spheres are matter, soul, spirit, time and 'far realm'/entropy. I think I'm just trying to decide if I'll do a nine for each or not.

[rovingjack]

I think I have a working ethereal now. I opted to go with the huginn and muninn route. where one is memory and the other is more nebulous a concept like awareness/understanding/thought. and the other axis being horror, delight, and tragedy. So that the memory of horror is one plane where entities that are so horrible that they will forever be remembered go. The memory of delight is a plane where legends of wonder will forever be remembered. and memory of sorrows will be where tragedy persists through collective memories. And then on the other side is something more like awareness/tragedy is more like sorrow based shadow real if the current world, while the awareness/ horror is more of the dark monster filled version of the shadowfell, but fear not there is also the mystically wonder filled awareness/ delight plane. and in the middle of it all is the neutral territory of the near ethereal, where visitors are essentially ghosts. Invisible and intangible to the 'real world' but percieving and being percieved by other ethereal things.

this then allows me to structure the cosmos thusly:
The far realm of madness and eldritch horrors- 1
The time line- with past present and future- 3
the elements- where the first primordial element became the four elements- 5
the ethereal plane- plane of thought, realm of spirits and memories- 7
the astral plane- life energy, permeated by the field of the soul energy where the life essence comes from and returns to- 9

it's an odd universe I guess. 

[Sorontar]

I once sat in on a game using the Amber RPG. It used Zelazny's Pattern and Trumps to allow players with the powers to travel between realities and cast magic. They ended up on the command deck of the Enterprise in space. When threatened, they turned off the life support systems and killed the crew. It allowed the DM to use whatever setting they wanted.

Another setting in another game (using GURPS), had the party in a city with no colour or writing or images, but lots of ridges and bumps on the footpath etc. Turned out everyone in the city didn't have sight so they used touch to read. It was an interesting scenario that forced the players to think from a new perspective.

Sorontar

[rovingjack]

I once sat in on a game using the Amber RPG. It used Zelazny's Pattern and Trumps to allow players with the powers to travel between realities and cast magic. They ended up on the command deck of the Enterprise in space. When threatened, they turned off the life support systems and killed the crew. It allowed the DM to use whatever setting they wanted.

Another setting in another game (using GURPS), had the party in a city with no colour or writing or images, but lots of ridges and bumps on the footpath etc. Turned out everyone in the city didn't have sight so they used touch to read. It was an interesting scenario that forced the players to think from a new perspective.

Sorontar

I have to admit I'm usually not much for the time travel, or space ships in my high fantasy. But the early days of D&D had a fair bit of it and in the process of honoring the original materials I've stretched those muscles to have some fun with it. I think it would be fun to play through what I'm working on, but I admit that before I started this if you invited me to a game that you said would involve time travel I'd likely skip it even though I'd love to sit at a table and play again with a group.

These kinds of stories are often referred to as Gonzo, which happens to be the name of my second favorite muppet, and there are some games that deliberately play to that style choice. and pretty much without exception none of them appeal to me.

meanwhile I have a homebrew setting idea I had a while back that is 1 part nausicca and the valley of the winds, one part van helsing (the hugh jackman movie) gothic horror monster hunter, and one part candy land. Lol. So clearly there is some part of me that likes bonkers weird, but the 'Gonzo' stuff somehow misses the mark.

ah well, a mystery for another time.

Todays goofing around was getting some of the details for the first section of the Campaign worked out. It's playing the original 3 book rules (before thief and paladins existed in the game) and the closest they came to providing an adventure and a setting was to use the Outdoor Survival boardgame hex map, with ponds being castles. And a half complete higher level big dungeon called the sample dungeon.

I figured out what best configuration to have my party, and even rolled up the stats. I pretty quickly had my Human Cleric (only humans could be clerics). Dwarven fighter (dwarves could only be fighters). and set up my third roll to be the future *ehem* Hobbling *ehem* thief when we move into the greyhawk supplement where Thief was made available. And then when we get to Blackmoor the additional option of the subclass of assassin. Before a move to Basic edition removes the seperation of class and race. Making the dwarf a class, the elf a class, and the halfling a class. along side clerics (with a druid subclass option), fighters and magic users (and the new mystic aka kungfu fighter).

took forever to get an elf build together that would work through the transitions of editions.

But anyway, the hex map for the first part; taken from the boardgame, I'm leaning toward the HexLand, I debated Valley or Dale instead of Land, but I felt that other features expanding on the name fit. Hexland Falls, Hexland Dale, Hexland woods, Hexland marshes... with the double meaning that it's a heagonal map, and cursed with magics by dark powers.

Meanwhile I have begun to take the jumbled half finished sample dungeon, and make The DonJon of Othac the dreaded necromancer and numeromancer (debating if I will allow him to says "There are some who call me... Tim."). Othac is a play on Both THAC0 and Orthanc... oh doesn't Aczeroth sound like a magical word... anyway DonJon is another word for a Keep (often a tower within the skirt walls of a castle), while also being where we get the word Dungeon. So I'm diasassembling the parts of the dungeon that are all underground and stacking them into a tower/DonJon. With proper Bailey and Barbican with a portcullis.

and the sample dungeon comes with a trapped hallway that sneakily transports the adventurers one way to another hallway in some far away place, so this offers a means of transporting the party to The Roanlands (the next part of the edition shift based on Greyhawk). Not sure if I will treat it as chasing the villain 'Tim Othac' into the next setting and pursue him there as a recurring villain until the time machine element comes into play, or if it's just a trap that banishes the characters to another land with no way back.

[rovingjack]

got some basic lands for the MTG decks. now should be able to play with somebody where we can build a deck each from 'modules'. but also I might experiment with some of those solo-play style rules out there.

I made an order on amazon today for some peeple pawns, they look like funco pop versions of the bathroom door sign person.
I will have 100 in 9 colors. and I think they will do just fine for a bunch of game design and play options. as well as serving as monsters in mini combat games. (depending on how well they take paint or sharpie markers it could be fun to customize them too) and I'll be honest, I'll probably make a mold and make some out of other materials. Like paper clay that I can press details in and make little skeletons, polymer clay. Ceramic clay, glass powder to fuse, silicone rubber, maybe even make metal ones. Or make chocolate or gummy versions for edible gaming, lol.  maybe use some craft hacks to enlarge or shrink some molds to make them in other sizes.

and have gotten curious about play by post tabletop rpgs, there's plenty of talk about it seen online but nobody seems to show it happening like we can see some videos of group play and solo play. I would think that a play by post would be easier to do a play through demo for, nobody has to be on camera, or speak, and you have time to compose responses. The dm can look things up and check rules, and solve problems between posts. and as for making a video of the play, it literally looks like you can just read it into a mic, or even cut and paste into a doc file and use a text to speech program. yes I know that a single one shot adventure can take two weeks to play this way, but people are playing that way, and it would be great to see some examples of play.

(I'm thinking of running one for D&D style game with a combat mod to use a sort of 'oceans 11' technique over a modded Ironsworn rapid combat mechanic. Basically ranking types of combat challenges so that it's not down to a single roll and you get degrees of injury and resource use, but Combat is literally decided in a minute or two for the player rolling... and then the player flashbacks to narrating the combat to fit the rolls made) this would enable the slowest most fiddly part of D&D, the combat, to not require days of back and forth posting and messages to resolve.

meanwhile I've continued to prep my storyline of the 0-6e D&D setting tour campaign. It's mostly coming together so all the pieces fit together and allow for the play to happen in the middles.

[rovingjack]

I'm doing the advent calendar random table generator for D&D npcs, places and magic items.
I built a huge list of over 200 options:
32 npc backgrouds, 10 basic races, for npcs
4 catagories of location (building, settlement, region, encounter) each with sub tables with 20, 12, 8 and 10 options respectively.
13 groupings for magic item subtables, ranging from d6- d12 each.

did my first daily generate and uploaded a youtube short of it. Trying out some screen cap software and a few hacks. generated an NPC, hermit, half-orc. Whose call to hermit is based around discovering dead gods.

But I could help myself, I kept playing with this generator I'd built. I generate A gnomish Gnoble, Elvish sailor and Dragonman Laborerm in a warehouse with the Ember Flail (a flail with a head that resembles a glowing coal from a fire, attached to the handle made from the thighbone of a Fiend, by a 'chain' that seems to be a wisp of smoke).

It occurs to me that this would be a very interesting reskin of the classic clue game.

[rovingjack]

I screwed up one of my advent-your: person place or things. I rolled a magic instrument or utensil catagory, but read it as a magic bottle bag or flask. so I made the Flask of forceful fog (part fog machine, part steam rocket) instead of what I should have created. I have failed at playing a game I came up with and whose rules I created.   

for the most part I've been having fun, and created some great people, places, and things. But have been unable to resist playing with it more than once each day. creating handfuls of ideas that I can string together to make story concepts and adventure hooks for games. I might bundle some of those and throw in the correct item that I did wrong the other day; and post them up on the holiday.

meanwhile I've been hammering out some kinks for my 8 bit NES RPG inspired tabletop game mechanics and hoping to get some play test done before Feb so I can launch it during zinequest.

[Xenos]

Righty O, so!

I am designing a Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Am I doing a good thing? I don't know. I've been a bit cagey on the details of the system thus far when I post places not my immediate circle, since, ya know, I'm paranoid, but I'm pulling enough from the OGL and SRD that if someone ganks ideas well, more power to 'em, I'll be releasing it under CC BY-SA (possibly NC, haven't decided on that one yet) because I believe in that kind of thing. But you're not hear to hear me prattle on about how copyright is a broken system that needs reform, and is only the way it is to protect ol' Mickey, now are ya? Nah, you're not. You're here to hear me talk about the SYSTEM!

The What:
Mists of Avalon is a Roll Under D20 System similar to The World's Most Popular Roleplaying System, in the fact it's a TTRPG, it uses a D20, and you narrate your encounters. UNLIKE the aforementioned Dragons and Dungeons focused system, you're not rolling said polyhedral to get a big number, but rather, trying to roll under a target. So say the goal set is 10. You want to roll a 9 or lower. Kind of like D&D Golf, as it were.

More to the point, there are bonuses for rolling way over, and boons if you're on a streak of bad luck, where you can save up "Luck Points," so everyone can still contribute, regardless of how the dice are/not favoring them.

I've chosen to go with Ancestries rather than "race" or "species," since due to the lore of my world one of the lineages are actually full-blown from another plane of existence, and are essentially invaders that were hellbent on the subjugation of the world. So.

Still working out backgrounds, and brushing up classes. Funnily, since I chose Ancestries, that gives me the ability to say "The ABCs of Character Creation," which just makes me giggle.

Ability Scores include your standard STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA, but also add Sanity (SAN), and Honor (HON). These are actually important to the world the system is designed for, as it's a world on the brink of apocalypse.

The Where:
Not a "Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes!" kind of apocalypse, but the slow, inexorable march of time, towards the inevitable heat death that comes from Entropy and Chaos. In fact, Entropy personified is the BBEG--known as The Knight. Everything grows colder, the sun offers little heat, even the deserts slowly freeze. The Goddess of Death is known as the "Empress of Dreams," and revered as one of the primary deities of the smallfolk, since she offers a release from the constant suffering that is living in this dark world.

It is a grimdark setting. The heroes of the world are the people who dig a well in a village. Those who save a farmer's livestock from ravaging wolves. Bring a bandit to justice. Corruption is rampant. The rich prey on the weak. All the while, the Knight watches on, dreaming his monsters into existence. The mists move over the face of the world, choking out what little heat there is, swallowing crops, bringing with them madness and despair.

The Knight cannot be stopped. Only slowed. Will heroes try, knowing it's naught but tears in a river?

The Who:
Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, Keith Moon.

So yeah. It's fantasy grimdark horror, with apocalypse elements. I'm very excited for it. Think Dark Sun meets Frostgrave for aesthetic, AD&D+GURPS+5e for Mechanics, and you're getting close to what it looks and feels like, the world though has to be experienced to understand is about the best I can explain that part.

[rovingjack]

Sounds like a fun project. nice to know I'm not the only person nerding out over building a game. A lot of swedish games use a roll under method: 'Trudvang chronicles', and 'Drakar och Demoner' do at least.

The Dying earth genre always reminds me of The Book of Skaith, sci-fi sword and planet book. An Eric John Stark trilogy.

as far as RPG games, 10 candles comes to mind, where it is really the end of everything, no character will live, the game is just exploring the characters in their last days. And then there is the game MÖRK BORG, in which there is actually a count down til the prophesied end comes (and I can't remember if the point of that one is to stop the end). I think there is also Shadow of the Demon Lord.

I'm a huge Dark sun nerd too.

Have you decided if you are going to use a skill system?

[Xenos]

Sounds like a fun project. nice to know I'm not the only person nerding out over building a game. A lot of swedish games use a roll under method: 'Trudvang chronicles', and 'Drakar och Demoner' do at least.

The Dying earth genre always reminds me of The Book of Skaith, sci-fi sword and planet book. An Eric John Stark trilogy.

as far as RPG games, 10 candles comes to mind, where it is really the end of everything, no character will live, the game is just exploring the characters in their last days. And then there is the game MÖRK BORG, in which there is actually a count down til the prophesied end comes (and I can't remember if the point of that one is to stop the end). I think there is also Shadow of the Demon Lord.

I'm a huge Dark sun nerd too.

Have you decided if you are going to use a skill system?

I can't say I've heard of either of those systems--though I have heard of MÖRK BORG! I won't say I'm going quite that grimdark, but I'm likely going to have an option to run it that way if you want (maybe not the countdown to the end or whatever, but certainly the injuries, madness, and death tables). Glad to see there are other roll under systems so it's fairly easy to grok. I went with that because GURPS more than anything, and to differentiate between D&D, really.

Book of Skaith... *quietly adds to "to read list* Yup, I don't have an obsession with that particular genre at all, has nothing to do with having grown up in a barren wasteland of a country on the edge of collapse, during a war. Nope. Nothing at all to do with that!

Dark Sun is my ***FAVORITE*** D&D setting. I adore it. It's amazing. Been trying to get my table to run it for a while--I have literally one willing player--he's an OSR player, so that explains that one!

As to skills, I will be using them. Just haven't got 'em all sussed out yet. Was working on that today, but today has also been a bit of a mental health day (looking like tomorrow will be as well, yay mental health issues). That being the case I'm mostly doing fluff related things for the system, punching up ancestry things, background info, that sort of stuff. Nothing related to the actual crunch/mechanics of it. Just lore things. The easy stuff.

I'm also trying to conceptualize a crafting system, so players can make/maintain equipment and adventuring gear, potions/poisons, and trade goods. Just havenae figured that out. Legend of the Five Rings has an interesting looking system on *paper,* but in practice it looks a bit... daunting. 5e's system is garbage. And something like in an MMO just doesn't work for a TTRPG.

This will require me to bust out my old uni books and look into system design theory again (has it really been a decade?), brush up on the basics, and all that.

Fun fact: this is actually what I went to university for--simulation and game development, focus on world building and systems development!

Now I'm curious about what you're doing--is this advent calendar for a TTRPG, or an 8bit NES inspired video game, both, or what? Also if it's a video game, what system/emulator/program are you using for the actual programming of it? If it's a TTRPG, are you using a computer for RNG (that's what it sounds like from reading the last couple of posts--I've not read the entire thread)? Sorry, I should read the whole thing probably, and will when I'm more awake.

Also the fog bottle steam rocket sounds hilariously amazing, not gonna lie.

[Sorontar]

Your concepts of heroes reminds me of the Joe the Commoner DnD campaign, which was all about an ordinary bloke, not a hero, who used XP to be better at being an ordinary bloke.
https://zioth.com/roleplay/campaign/joewood/index

Sorontar

[rovingjack]

Dark Sun is my ***FAVORITE*** D&D setting. I adore it. It's amazing. Been trying to get my table to run it for a while--I have literally one willing player--he's an OSR player, so that explains that one!

I used to have an expansive collection of the box set and supplements, that got damaged. I spent some coin in the last 5 years getting digital replacements for the parts I liked most. I've also been homebrewing conversions to use 5e to run dark sun. Stuff like reskinning half orcs as Mul, Kenku as Pterrans, making Templars a type of warlock, and changing the sorcerer class to use the mana points optional rules and meta magics as a better way of psionics.
I've been using the Curse of Strahd as a foundation for creating the Tyr region, with Strahds Castle being Kalaks golden tower. reskinning the sun sword as the heartwood spear, the amulet of raven kind as the obsidian topped halfling staff, and the book of strahds is replaced by the two heads of the champions that sided with Rajaat that Kalak keeps and consults. There are some equivalent characters between the two settings, and city states have some commonalities with things like domains of dread.
I'm going to get somebody to play it one of these days.

As to skills, I will be using them. Just haven't got 'em all sussed out yet. Was working on that today, but today has also been a bit of a mental health day (looking like tomorrow will be as well, yay mental health issues). That being the case I'm mostly doing fluff related things for the system, punching up ancestry things, background info, that sort of stuff. Nothing related to the actual crunch/mechanics of it. Just lore things. The easy stuff.

Games like Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk and Traveler are called skill-based games, they often lack character level and or class systems (though they can have archetypes or careers) but in general the experience points are a currency to purchase skills. It tends to also mean you don't end up with suddenly having characters suddenly doing things they couldn't in a previous level, or not suddenly growing in hit points, so there's not as likely to be a character who can go for a swim in a pool of lava because they can tank the damage with their huge HP reserve.

I'm also trying to conceptualize a crafting system, so players can make/maintain equipment and adventuring gear, potions/poisons, and trade goods. Just havenae figured that out. Legend of the Five Rings has an interesting looking system on *paper,* but in practice it looks a bit... daunting. 5e's system is garbage. And something like in an MMO just doesn't work for a TTRPG.

crafting has always felt like a tough thing to usefully emulate in a game. The risk of too thick a set of rules and it loses it's flexability, but it's so easy to go the other way in which you don't have any guidelines at all. Bob World Builder on Youtube has a video on weapon quality and degrading ideas that is pretty simple and easy to grasp.

Now I'm curious about what you're doing--is this advent calendar for a TTRPG, or an 8bit NES inspired video game, both, or what? Also if it's a video game, what system/emulator/program are you using for the actual programming of it? If it's a TTRPG, are you using a computer for RNG (that's what it sounds like from reading the last couple of posts--I've not read the entire thread)? Sorry, I should read the whole thing probably, and will when I'm more awake.

Also the fog bottle steam rocket sounds hilariously amazing, not gonna lie.

I built a document of nested tables in november, and on december 1st I used my phone to record some video of dice rolling each day and then I record a video short for youtube where I show a loop of the dice rolls and the tables for the results.
So right now there are 21 videos under 1 minute in length on the youtube channel that cover one NPC, Place, or Magic Item that I came up with based on the random rolls for that day. I don't do a full stat block or anything just the general idea. most of the short videos have a written description that expands on it slightly. But while technically done with D&D 5e for some of the references it's possible to use the ideas for most any fantasy.

An example was rolling a d6, and getting a 5 or 6 which is an item, the item table is a d100. rolled a 54-55 on that table which is boxes, bottles and bags table, a d12 table. Roll a d12 and get a 9. Which is the Can. I've got a small collection of prompts for some most all of this level of rolls, and in this case I picked the Can of Worms, the familiar in a can. It's a swarm of worms that act as your familiar, with a burrowing speed instead of a fly speed. but otherwise treat as one familiar. If banished or killed it's transported back to the can it came in.

the tables can roll up an npc, (the follow up tables for that are a d20 backgrounds with one of the rolls being to roll on a PC class table, and  a d10 for anscestry with a 10 being roll on another table for more exotic or monsterous ancestry). Or roll a place (with the first sub-table being Building, region, encounter, or settlement subtables; which can end up suggesting everything from a schoolhouse to an interplanetary region, and inbetween. I quick build simple maps or images of what is prompted)

It's especially fun to roll on the tables until you have at least one person, place and thing. Often you will have a few people or multiple items. Then I just come up with how they are linked and it generates some great plot hooks or story ideas.

My 8 bit inspired tabletop rolplaying game idea is a different project I'm aiming for the simplest base version to be ready to kickstart for zinequest in February. It's heavily inspired by the dragon warrior/dragon quest NES game. Even to the point of having the zine pages unfold to have charts of magic items and monsters as well as a map, like the old fold out charts for the NES game.

The 8 Bitty RPG, will be simple minimalist rules that can be applies to 8 different genres of Tabletop RPG, including a steampunk version. That should play with a set of d6 s and very simple rules. and the hope is to be able to get all the rules onto mini-zine pages, and then have a mini- adventure on another set of 8 mini-zine pages, both attaching to the cover but able to fold out into a chart and a map. And if done right I should be able to get photocopies made that can be folded and assembled for under a dollar each... because the currency of 8 bits (also where we get that term pieces of is a dollar. But even if that is tricky to manage I should be able to sell a print and play version as a PDF for a dollar easily enough.

Meanwhile I'm hoping to post some roleplaying game content on the channel I made specifically for this topic. Basically some ideas and guides to running things like Dark Sun in 5e. world building and homebrewing content.

as well as a series of me playing a solo game, starting with the very first version of D&D, and playing some characters that travel through various editions of the games and hopping worlds to various setting from D&D in order. Basically 0d&d, through basic, to AD&D1st, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e and whatever it becomes next. while going from the survival game map, through Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Mystara (savage coast, and hollow world too), Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ghostwalk, Eberron, Nentire Vale, and probably the Radiant citadel for 5e.

the same characters (if they survive) going through each setting and edition.

[Xenos]

I will reply to this one properly when I have a bit better health, I've had a couple of seizures in the past few days and Long COVID is kicking my arse. Just wanted to pop over and say I'm not ignoring and haven't forgotten it!

[rovingjack]

No worry. this is a thread for sharing what you're interested in, not an obligation. there are literally no stakes to posting and talking about games and their creation.

The New craze in D&D world is Dungeon23 (and by extension Hex23, and City23). The concept started as a challenge between creators to start making a room a day in a planner so that by the end of the first month you have level one of a 12 level dungeon with 28-31 rooms per level by the end of the year.

The hex23 is a hex of a hex map a day (usually 6 mile hexes).

City23 is making a city a bit at a time each day for the year.

So I've decided to try all three, only bigger.

for Dungeon 23 I've been calling it 'My world is a dungeon, and it cities and ruins are it's rooms'. Basically imagining my homebrew setting world as a big mega dungeon with the roads and paths from cities and towns being like the hallways in a dungeon, and the cities, towns, ruins, dungeons, camps and wilderness encounter maps being done like the rooms of this setting as dungeon. Each of these rooms will be based roughly on the designs of a one page or five room dungeon design, or a city/town map.

In my setting there is a Capital city, which is where the multiple factions/ancestries meet in trade and political negotiations. It would be a good option to flesh it out as a city23, doing a bit of it each day for the year.

and finally the hex crawl map where a hex a day is made, I'm going with a 7 hex cluster a day because if each hex is 6 miles the 6 hexes around the middle seventh on will actually map the main continent reasonably well (as it is a airborne island nation similar in size to the middle half of Japan or a bit more than the UK). So by the end of the year I'll have covered the 'known world' of the main continent.

And I'm trying to plan it out enough to establish territories and region in a way that the end result map could be view as and even played as a game of 'Diplomacy'. Though my experience with 'diplomacy' map variants is thin at best. I just think the alliance and betrayal mechanisms of the game of 'Diplomacy' and it's Realpolitik make for great faction management and even offers a background additional way of playing (whether that's something like fan bases playing the political game in the background that impacts the world structure of the world that a D&D takes place in, or if the players themselves manage the political mechanations ongoing at certain intervals for a more dynamic world as they play) 

But in the meantime my work was disrupted by my landlord getting frustrated trying to order a movie on his smart TV, and canceled the in internet here, and then it took a few days to get it reestablished. so that's been fun.

and now there is news that the company that owns WotC, which owns D&D is going the nintendo/disney route of locking people out of making any reference to or about D&D in game content. Which is a whole other topic.

[rovingjack]

The whole deal of the attempt to void the Open Game Lisc. has me doom scrolling. and Thinking 'of course the ttrpg industry takes a hit like this and begins dropping off the map for most of the world right as I start creating content and make a new youtube channel to delve into this hobby of mine.'

But I also admit that there is a part of me that got snarky and started planning out a series about reviewing a game called Hexes and Heroes. and constructing an elaborate history with parallels and satirical reskins that file the serial numbers off the real deal and are distinct enough to be legally okay, but for which I can create additional materials that with a simple key magically work with the forbidden system.

meh. whatever. I look forward to see what they reap.

[von Corax]

The whole deal of the attempt to void the Open Game Lisc. has me doom scrolling. and Thinking 'of course the ttrpg industry takes a hit like this and begins dropping off the map for most of the world right as I start creating content and make a new youtube channel to delve into this hobby of mine.'

But I also admit that there is a part of me that got snarky and started planning out a series about reviewing a game called Hexes and Heroes. and constructing an elaborate history with parallels and satirical reskins that file the serial numbers off the real deal and are distinct enough to be legally okay, but for which I can create additional materials that with a simple key magically work with the forbidden system.

meh. whatever. I look forward to see what they reap.

This is interesting; it's even made it to the blog at Hackaday. Things have changed a lot since my days playing 1^st edition AD&D.

[rovingjack]

This is interesting; it's even made it to the blog at Hackaday. Things have changed a lot since my days playing 1^st edition AD&D.

Through the attempts to invalidate the OGL 1.0a they thought they were going to get to completely control the brand identity of D&D, while not letting something happen like what lead to Paizo creating Pathfinder when D&D came out with 4e and tried releasing all content under an alternative GSL that was pretty toxic. Meanwhile they imagined they could just chunck in a clause that that allows them to steal the content of anyone who published 3rd party works under the OGL1.1 and neither pay or credit the original creator when they publish their content in official D&D works (literally is Critical role signed on to the 1.1, D&D could sell the Tal'Dori setting books as ther own, and not pay Critical role and worse prevent them from selling thier own works or even releasing anything related to it free to the fans). They Imagined they built the perfect trap...

and now people are quitting the online sites like D&DBeyond, content creators are referring people to other game systems. Kobold Press (the ones who WotC hired to write some of their first 5e books, and has published increadible 3rd party content for 5e, announced they are working on a open source alternative system that cuts WotC out of the game. MCDM studios is also working on a D&D alternative, not sure if Kobold and MCDM are working together, it's been implied that some of the 3rd party publishers and combining efforts to create alternatives for D&D, so that content creators and 3rd party publishers can all keep creating materials to supply varied and wide content for a widely supported tabletop RPG.

There will come a point where WotC will be standing there begging people to buy their Game which will increasingly try to get subscriptions to their web tools and loot boxes and microtransations for use... while everybody else will be producing stuff for one or two new systems that 10s or hundreds of creators are releasing great new content for, and allowing young creative game designers to create their first creative game design elements for.

WotC in it's ambission , and desire to kill Pathfinder have Backstabbed their community and greatest pool of content creators that drew fans in and kept them in a game with a full buffet of materials they could use in D&D. Meaning that people always knew they could find something be other creators for D&D, and so more people knew that buying the base/ core game was a good investment. Now that they have made it financially impossible, and legally hazardous to be involved with them at all, the buffet is now prepackaged egg salad sandwhiches out of the petrol station cooler... But there's a couple of Buffets opening up nearby. lol

WotC salted the earth and I don't think they realized just yet that nothings going to grow around them now.

[Sorontar]

I have been reading and listening to various Youtube lawyers (like Canadian lawyer Runkle of the Bailey) who are also roleplayers discuss the WOTC OGL saga and it seems that it is not totally clear how to view the legality of the proposed new OGL. They agree that it isn't an open game license in the same sense as open source software, but doubt that that would matter. The issue of whether a previous OGL can be revoked/made no longer valid is also not clear. The main argument as that even though the old OGL says it is "perpetual, worldwide, royalty-­free, non-­exclusive license", the new OGL can still revoke the old one because the old one didn't include the word "irrevocable". It is pointed out that WOTC has been saying for years that they wouldn't undo the old licence but now they are suggesting they will.

Hasbro, who own WOTC, need to quickly change their direction and start working with fans to try to rectify the problem. There are many other problems with the proposed new OGL that I won't bother discussing here, but this might end up in decreasing the popularity of WOTC products and systems and promoting smaller, independent systems. It will be very interesting what directions Hasbro and the RPG community head in.

Sorontar

[RJBowman]

From the beginning I thought that it was a bad idea for independent creators to produce material under the Open Gaming License.

I'd like to think this was because I was smarter than everyone else, but it might have also been because in the mid 1990's, I was involved with a brief negotiation with Hasbro's legal department, so I was aware that they were corporate bullies and contrarian assholes.

[rovingjack]

From the beginning I thought that it was a bad idea for independent creators to produce material under the Open Gaming License.

It's fair to question the original OGL. There are some consequences to such agreements, one of which is that it ties so much of the industry closely together. One game to bind them, as it were. But it's also greatly benefitted the tabletop and even video gaming industries in the last 2 decades. Without it most of the independent games that exist now wouldn't be here. In part because the creators of independent games practiced first game content creation on a system that was more widely available and had enough of a fanbase to tap into for figuring how to improve their own future works.

The homebrewing community finds a huge audience who benefitted from a common seed to start from and tweak and bend the game to do other things and eventually the amount of changes made make the thing you end up looking nothing like the original, and in those cases the work can depart from the original seed into their own thing.

and as much as I sometimes like other systems to explore gaming with, it can be harder to secure people who want to play a system they don't know and never heard of before. And some system cover genres and story types I like, but the mechanics of the system are brutally crunchy. I for example like cyberpunk, but both shadow run and cyberpunk 2020 (or the cd prject red tabletop) have combat systems to slow to a crawl and are way too fiddly for the games I'd want to play or run. (incidentally the folks from Mork Borg launched Cy-borg, which I think would be the right cyberpunk system for my table games, though I'd homebrew another setting than the one they include in the game materials).

But in general the core or D&D has versatility onto which can be grafted settings and homebrew mechanics to suit the games we want to play. But WotC has mistaken that for the belief that they have the best system and monopoly on how games should work. Guess they will be learning some things either way in the near term.

They were supposed to hold an update video today but have canceled that and continue to remain silent, while it's been leaked from an imployee that some of the corporates think this will all blow over and people are just overreacting and will eventually settle down. They consider the people obstacles between the profits of the company and the company itself. And people are building a mass of unsubscribing from D&D beyond, and there have to be some people in the company watching with horror as the numbers are plummeting as a reaction to the company line.

I think I will post on my Thactotum channel and put it to the option of whether I go forward with D&D stuff or explore other systems.

[Sorontar]

The second-level companies are looking to provide a unified alternate.

http://rpgnews.com/?p=310214


Paizo: "We have no interest whatsoever in Wizards' new OGL. Instead, we have a plan that we believe will irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License.
...
so we invite gamers from around the world to join us as we begin the next great chapter of open gaming with the release of a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

The new Open RPG Creative License will be built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers. Paizo will pay for this legal work. We invite game publishers worldwide to join us in support of this system-agnostic license that allows all games to provide their own unique open rules reference documents that open up their individual game systems to the world. To join the effort and provide feedback on the drafts of this license, please sign up by using this form.

In addition to Paizo, Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and a growing list of publishers have already agreed to participate in the Open RPG Creative License, and in the coming days we hope and expect to add substantially to this group."
----------

I think that Hasbro weren't expecting the second-level companies in the industry to get themselves organised together this quickly and that fans might not be on Hasbro's side. We will still have to see what the outcome of the ORC license  is (love the name). It will be interesting what aspects of RPG rules appear in the ORC. It won't be a rudimentary rule set, I imagine. It will be a template license for rule sets, but it might have reference to elements of rules & resources, like player and non-player characters, character actions (like spells and attacks), character assets (like health and capability scores), gaming sessions, campaign settings, defined challenges (like adventures), software applications, web interfaces, and tools like dice, miniatures and gaming boards/maps. It may also be usable for wargaming in general.

Sorontar, the observer

[rovingjack]

WotC finally issued a statement. Including so much gaslighting and 'Some people will say they won by ... they are half right, we both won'.

They state that they will rework the new OGL to get rid of the predatory royalties, and work on the wording so that it doesn't 'accidentally' imply they can steal others work.

Noticably absent is anything about agreeing to not change the deal when and where they feel like it, or the ability of anyone to continue to use the OGL that they've been using for the last 20+ years just fine.

They sure did a lot of saying this was a draft meant to give them feedback about what the creators and players would like in the agreement. Pretending that we had to get the info from unnamed leaks, that the leaked versions were sent to creators and publishers with attached contracts only after they signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). And those contracts heavily implied that as of yesterday those peoples existing agreements and contracts were considered null and void, and they would be commiting copyright violations if the continued to operate under them instead of the new one in the form.

They only really came out with their statement when people began unsubscribing from the D&D Beyond accounts. They didn't even admit to wrong doing, instead saying the equivalent of 'we're sorry you felt that we were doing wrong'. I don't think they fully realize how badly the screwed up.

Last year D&D was the only thing giving great returns for Hasbro, and they thought they could use it as a flotation device for the rest of the companys failing portfolio. So they tried to ring it out of D&D.

But they for me one of the funniest things is how they keep thinking their gonna sneak something by a community of easter egg finding rules lawyers.

I mean they were so worried about the unsubscribing from D&D Beyond that they edited the site to bury the unsubscribe feature (pretty sure they can't legally get rid of it, as people have to be able to cancel a service they are being charged for) but it was found and spread around the internet in less than an hour.

The corpos pulling this stuff really don't know anything about the game, the players, and the community. Like the game literally is filled with sneaky traps and tricksy wishing spells and monsters. Pssshh.