Risus Sorcery

The RisusTalk mailing list has been pretty active these past few weeks with interesting and useful discussions about Teams, ship combat, calculating opponent threat levels, and magic. One of the coolest ideas that came out of these discussions, for me, was the simple but awesome way to handle sorcery in Risus. And by "sorcery", I mean that Stormbringer style of magic that makes use of summoned entities that can be bound into objects or set loose to do their master's bidding.

Sorcery Dice
During character creation, players can designate one or more dice as Sorcery Dice. By making a successful Target Number roll against a cliche that implies proficiency in the dark art of sorcery, the character can exchange one or more of these Sorcery Dice for three times as many dice of summoned entities. These entities can be singular creatures or a grunt squad of disposable minions.

• Summoned entities are limited to no more than 4 dice in any single cliche, though the cliche itself can be scoped to include many unusual supernatural powers. 
• Entities can operate independently or be bound into artifacts. Artifacts can simply house the dormant creature or may act as magic items with powers related to the bound entity. In the later case, the entity's cliches can still be used to Team with whomever is wielding the item (depending on the nature of the item).
• Summoned entities are willful and often hostile to sorcerers. The GM may periodically demand a Target Number roll against a cliche that implies sorcery, willpower or contract law to keep these creatures in check.
• Sorcery Dice are restored when entities are dismissed or destroyed - not when an entity bound into an artifact is lost or stolen by enemies.

The Target Number for a summoning ritual depends on numerous factors:

• Base value is typically 5 for minor creatures, 10 for useful entities, and 15 (or higher) for really powerful demons.
• It is assumed that the sorcerer has a grimoire of known entities. This, along with the various trappings of sorcery (magic circles, hallucinogenic herbs, human sacrifices), should all be considered Tools of Trade. The GM should ruthlessly apply penalties for lacking any of these vital elements.

Based on the "Sidekicks & Shieldmates" rule from The Risus Companion.

Gearing Up For Microscope

It has been a crazy-busy week, but I am definitely looking forward to playing Microscope with a fellow blogger using Corkboard.me this weekend. I was initially clued in to this fantastic online tool by Greywulf and I described its virtues a couple of weeks ago. In that post, I opined that it would be nice to be able to share a read-only version with people to let them peek in on your game.

It looks like somebody was listening to me. It is now possible to link to a read-only version of your corkboard. Visitors can still edit the board but changes are not saved. Click here for an example from the solo game of Microscope that I played while traveling to Korea.

Geomorph #109 (In Honor of Jim Roslof)

When Jim Roslof passed last week, I wanted to do some geomorphs in his honor. I knew of at least one more of his pieces in The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide that was suitable, and numerous others from modules and such. Unfortunately, that illustration from the DSG was a tough nut to crack. I may have been better served by going to the modules (especially this one from D1-D2). But I am orderly to a fault and I wanted to finnish this source book before I moved on to the modules and Dragon magazine.

So, let's take a look at the drawing in question (shown below). The viewpoint character is looking down a precarious stair into and over a large subterranean cavern with numerous stone formation, ledges, and interesting elevation changes. There seems to be a substantial area of level ground in the middle of the scene, broken up by some stalagmites. Most notably, there are many small rectangular holes that seem to imply some kind of organized settlement or warren.

If those figure depicted in the cavern are human sized then this scene is way too big for a single geomorph. But what if they are small creatures, perhaps gnomes or jermlaine? A geomorph need not be as big as the scene that inspired it. My goal was simply to create a map that was evocative of the source material.

So, in the end, I think the tile came out ok. The elevation changes had me stumped, but I took an approach similar to what I did in Geomorph #108. In the west, there are two levels of flat ledges separated by a steep drop (steeper than the elevation lines in the north and east. The solid black portals are meant to lead off or into the map, presumably to the warrens of small humanoids. 

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

Trying... trying to find time to work on an entry to this year's One Page Dungeon Contest. I have an idea but I'm going need need several hours to put it together. That's going to be pretty tough, considering I'm on daddy duty when I get home from work until they go to bed. Doing anything productive after that is a real challenge.

So, no extensive blog post tonight. Instead, I'm posting a snippet if my play time with the boys. You may or may not find it interesting, both for the unintentionally funny five-year-old perspective on D&D, but also as one way to approach gaming with kids.

In this clip, my older son is nominally the Dungeon Master, though he insisted on playing a Lego Ninjago character named Jay as well. My younger son was playing another Ninjago character named "Fiery", but his attention was wavering back and forth between the action an my my mini collection.

Download: DDwKids.m4a

Seat of My Pants Super-Spy Adventure

I didn't think it was going to happen, but I actually managed to squeeze in a real face-to-face game session this month. My wife is sprinting towards completion of her grad school program and my gaming schedule has been taking a beating as I pick up the parenting slack. But this afternoon there was a last minute window of opportunity and a majority of our play group was able to assemble for a session of Knights of the Astral Sea.

Unfortunately, one of the players who could not make it was the character who seems to be driving the current plot arc. That would be Queen Genevieve of the Autumn Court, who was about to lead an expedition into Faerie to reclaim her realm from Maoist ("meowist") rebels when last we left the party.

That left me in a bit of pickle. Genevieve's input was critical for the next stage of the mission. I could have let her stay in the background, but that would have felt very unsatisfying (not to mention unfair to the player). What I really needed was adventure that let other characters step into the spotlight while maintaing the ability to reintegrate Genevieve and the other absent characters in subsequent sessions. In a nutshell, I needed a one-shot.

I'm really comfortable with one-shot adventures, both for convention games and for my long-running Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG series, Slaying Solomon. But my intent for this campaign was to make things much more of an old-school sandbox. My challenge was to preserve that kind of off-the-rails, player driven story while still trying to end the game in a certain way (pretty much where we left off last session).

First off, I needed a story focus. For that, I took a look at the characters in the campaign that could use the most face-time. The obvious choice was Elspeth, the 1960's-era super-spy from an alternate history earth where WWII never completely erupted. In that world, Britain was a fascist state and Nazi Germany was the dominant power. Elspeth left her own world to escape the questionable morality of her own government, but Elspeth's player was still very much interested in returning to that world for a bit over-the-top super-spy action. And while the player has really come into her own in the Buffy game, she seemed to be waiting for her moment to shine in this particular campaign.

Next, I borrowed from my Fiasco experience and employed some narrative trickery. Rather than playing out how a subset of party might have found their way to Elpeth's world, I simply started things with the characters already there. The four player characters were all separated and various states of incarceration in a castle in Bavaria, each of them lacking memories as to how they got their. The players would need to figure out their present situations, reunite with their comrades, overcome local authorities who were justifiably paranoid about their sudden appearance, and finally return to Faerie to resume their original mission. If they were able to kill nazis and avert a nuclear war along the way, so much the better.

The best thing about this approach is that I hardly had to plan at all. The initial setup was sufficiently interesting that most of the session simply flowed from the initial premise. I had only vague notions of how the party actually arrived on the world and I invented more details as the character's memories started to improve.

True of all one-shots, the most important thing was timing. I needed to dribble out information over the course of the session so that the characters would eventually be able to return to Faerie with some sort of closure. Either I'm getting really good at this or I got really lucky. The session ended with the characters killing the SS mastermind and commandeered his helicopter to fly to the an ancient fortress that the mage character had deduced was the gate back to Faerie. A dastardly plot to activate sleeper agents inside the British nuclear command was foiled, but enough elements remained in place that future adventures on this world can easily be justified.

Gaming with Kids: DM in Training

It has been a while since I last posted an update on my forays into gaming with my boys (currently 5 and 3). Given that we've been playing quite a bit of something that resembles Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I'd bring you up to speed on my attempts to raise the next generation of gamer geeks.

In an ideal world, I'd like to sit down with my boys, crack open the old Moldvay rules, help them roll up characters, and start a real (age-appropriate) campaign with classic D&D adventurers. It would be even better if I could have the campaign grow with the boys, sort of like a table-top version the nanotech "Illustrated Primer" from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I fantasize about starting with adventures featuring my boys playing precocious children, limiting deadly violence, and learning life lessons as they go. Eventually, the content of adventures would change to reflect their maturity and we'd finally wind up with unmodified old school modules by the time we hit the tween years.

We're a long way off from that fantasy right now. But we're still having fun.

First off, I should say that my boys are enthusiastic gamers. Almost every single day, I get asked if we can play Dungeons & Dragons. The fact that we don't play more than once a week or so is mostly due to the amount of house-dad stuff I need to do when I get home from work to make up for my wife's grad school crunch. It also has something to do with my boy's still maturing concept of what it actually means to play D&D.

The boys are really too young to pick up on the structured play aspect. And perhaps most frustrating for me is the fact that they still need very concrete representations of in-game characters and locations. I swear I should just go out and buy the new D&D Essentials, because we're almost playing in that style right now. We must play on professional-grade battle mats (such as those that came with Keep on the Shadowfell). And we must use Lego mini-figs or pre-painted D&D miniatures for every PC, NPC, or monster or in the game. This is especially hard, since my entire miniature collection can fit into a large coffee can. There's only so much variety available...

Another issue is that my boys are still learning the GM-Player dynamic. The indie-gamer in me smiles at their ability to "contribute" to the narrative, but the OSR grognard in me is pulling my hair out at not being able to run a traditional dungeon crawl without my sons (especially my oldest) constantly telling me how things should happen. Of course, I do not want to dampen their enthusiasm, so I smile and find a way to accommodate all their "requests". But I'm looking forward to the day when traditional D&D really clicks for them.

So in that respect, we made real progress in our last few session. My oldest son loves the idea of being a Dungeon Master and I totally encourage this. The great thing about it is that from that side of the screen, he is starting to realize what it means to be a DM. As a player, I would clearly lay out my actions and ask him to arbitrate the results. "I do such and such. Do I succeed? Should a roll dice? What do the bad guys do in response?" I'm hoping that telling me when I fail will make him learn to expect the same thing when I resume DM duties.

As for rules... well, we're about as simple as can be. For any action, the player and DM roll dice (d20's as of late). The winner achieves some kind of success. I tried to introduce real rules and they largely fell flat. I get the sense that we're almost ready for B/X, but not quite.

Adding More Borders and Corners (B17, B18, B19, C9)

Dave's Mapper has been getting a lot of love lately, both from the community and from Dave himself (in the form of numerous improvements). One thing that is still lacking is a critical mass of borders and corners. Tonight's post is one small step towards rectifying that.

The caves above descend into a large natural chamber with a hearth or a fireplace that probably makes use of a natural vent.  There is another fireplace in the geomorph below, this time in a small collection of rooms near some recent construction.

The border tile below features a long passage that changes to metal grating as it crosses a deeper cavern. That deeper cavern has a mud or lava pit that may start roasting characters who linger too long while making the treacherous crossing.

Finally, I thought I'd try out a corner tile that featured two entrances/exits from the dungeon proper. The two sets of double-doors are built into hillside caves on the the edge of a forest.

DungeonMorph Dice

The Geomorph phenomena has spawned an interesting new project. Joe Wetzel (of the amazingly cool Hexographer and Inkwell Ideas) is proposing a pretty cool product that involves many of us OSR cartographers. In a nutshell, the idea to is create a set of geomorph dice in the old-school TSR module style. He's got the full pitch up on Kickstarter and it will only go forward if enough people pledge their interest. I think it's a pretty sweet idea and I encourage you all to at least consider backing the project. There is absolutely no risk if the project does not collect enough money to go forward.

Have You Seen Me?

There have been many Risus fan sites produced over the years, most of which were originally listed on the Risus home page. S. John has been diligently adding new links but dead or missing sites are still lurking.

Enter the Larry Bullock (the Ruminator). Larry maintains Risus TOTM, the other Risus blog, and is also the mastermind behind the great Risusiverse wiki. He is trying to resurect to these missing sites, either through the wayback machine or by directly giving the content a new home (with the original author's permission).

If you or someone you know have Risus material that is no longer publicly available, please do the community a favor and consider moving it to the Risusiverse.

If you have Risus material that is available online and is currently languishing in obscurity, please drop a link in the comments section or post little note on the Risus mailing list.

This has been a Risus community public service announcement.

DungeonWords: d30 version

Completing my induction into the Order of the d30, I hereby present to you the d30 version of DungeonWords. This handy little PocketMod now has 360 evocative words distributed among 12 tables - that's 120 new words for your dungeoneering needs. But wait, there's more! The new version of DungeonWords also features a brand new microdungeon, inspired by rolls on the expanded tables.

DungeonWordsD30

I've had some issues printing PocketMods with my new print setup, so be sure to print without scaling and make sure the document comes out centered. If you are new to PocketMods, folding instructions are as follows:

I have also uploaded a non-PocketMod version that is perfect for iPhones and other mobile devices: DungeonWordsD30Mobile.pdf.

Kalaran's Unrest

For my upcoming D30 version of DungeonWords, I thought I'd put together a new microdungeon with words drawn randomly from the expanded tables. Interestingly, I drew three words that directly implied some kind of undead activity. The rest were easily made to fit the theme.

Kalaran's Unrest

A somber monument to Kalaran, the greatest hero of the Cartolan Alliance, stands amidst the gravestones of the long-abandoned People's Cemetery. Now covered in verdigris, the towering bronze statue points to the tomb of the warrior-sage who mastered the Necromancer's own weapons and beat back the advancing dark. In those final days, the savior of man paid the ultimate price for his heroism and succumbed to vampirism. Even in undeath, the Highest Thirteen could not destroy their fallen champion. Instead, they sealed him in the very vault where he had bargained with countless spirits and scried at the Pool of Unspoken Fates. Now, the ghost of his fallen squire holds vigil for his lost soul and the whispers of the departed threaten madness to any who approach his hidden sarcophagus. But it is the swarms of horrid vermin, mutated by necrotic energies once housed in funerary urns, that are the true ward against those who might unleash the ancient vampire upon an unsuspecting world.

words: Urns, Necrotic, Scrying, Vampire, Verdigris, Ghost, Slab, Whispers, Swarm

Joining the Order of the d30

After almost 30 years as a player of D&D and other RPGs, I have finally joined the ranks of the ultra-geeky. I finally own a 30-sided die (GameScience, of of course). To celebrate my entrance into this elite circle, I am working on a d30 version of DungeonWords. I'll post it as soon as I complete a new microdungeon to go with it.

A Warm Welcome

Seems like I'm not the only one to discover hidden gems in a recent re-read of The Hobbit. Greg Gorgonmilk (of the most awesome Gorgonmilk blog) makes the astute observation that The Hobbit reads like an old school D&D campaign report. Like many true old school player character parties, Thorin and Company are motivated first and foremost my a desire for treasure. Their trip to the Lonely Mountain is a business venture and they have all sorts of encounters across a barely civilized land on the way to some serious loot. And there is, of course, a nasty dragon involved.

Well, yeah. :)

Anyway, I'm up to Chapter X in my own re-read. You can read previous installments here. Professor Pope's installments are here.

A Warm Welcome

For the benefit of my readers that (gasp!) haven't actually read The Hobbit, this chapter concerns the coming of Bilbo and the dwarves to Laketown after a wet and miserable escape from the dungeons of the elf king. Laketown is a cool little island of civilization (literally - it is built on pylons out into a lake)  in a land decimated by the coming of the dragon. It's inhabitants include refugees from Dale, men who used trade with the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain. These men remember the riches of the dwarven kings and these stories are recalled as Bilbo and the dwarves are welcomed with (mostly) open arms. Our protagonists are nursed back to health, feted with numerous honors, and equipped for the final stage of their quest.

This is the third and final chapter in The Hobbit that is entirely about Bilbo and the dwarves receiving some form of hospitality. But in each case, the nature of the hospitality differs greatly. In A Short Rest, the party receives unconditional support from Elrond and the elves of Rivendel at almost the very beginning of their adventure. In Queer Lodgings, the party must carefully negotiate with a potentially dangerous ally and follow his rules precisely. In this latest chapter, the party arrives as heroes straight out of tales of old. The townsfolk of Laketown shower them with gifts and place exceedingly high expectations on them. As we will see in a few chapters, the townsfolk will suffer the consequences of these misplaced expectations.

Though these three chapters can be viewed as transitions between the exciting parts of the tale, I find them to be quite inspirational for fantasy sandbox gaming. Inevitably, a party of player characters will need to rest and re-equip before moving on to the next stage of their adventure. The Hobbit shows that these little interludes and can be handled in many different ways. Without even turning these into adventures in their own right, even describing them differently can provide for some interesting roleplaying and will allow characters to place their adventures in the context of living breathing world. This chapter's example is especially interesting to me, because I've never done anything like it. I love the idea of a party being hailed as heroes as they arrive in some remote outpost of civilization. Picture the so-called heroes receiving more generosity than the townsfolk can actually spare. Now imagine the angst that (some of) the characters will suffer when their subsequent adventures bring destruction and despair down on their former benefactors. 

Other Thoughts

• The self-serving Master of Laketown appears to be a unique sort of slimy, self-serving but not-entirely evil character that isn't found in the rest of the Tolkien oeuvre. He's not some heroic king like Aragorn, or tragically mad character like Denethor, or ensorcelled old man like Theoden. He's just a cynical politician. And he makes the town of Laketown that much more real as a result. 
• I really love Laketown as a setting. It's an iconic locale that serves as a great model for frontier settlements in fantasy games.
• Other than the elves, who do the people of Laketown trade with? In the map of the Wilderlands included the Hobiit, the River Running runs off the map to the southeast. Presumably, they trade with people down there. Who are those people and what are they like?
• When's the last time one of your player characters ever caught a nuisance illness like a cold? Adventurers suffer all manner of environmental hazards and even though they are a tough breed, it's hard to imagine them not getting sick from time to time. 
• The Risus Companion has a whole chapter of Dirty Little Thrills - little moments that can make your player characters squeal with delight. One such moment, "I Told You So", appears in this chapter as the elvish trading party in Laketown realize that Thorin and Company have escaped from their dungeons, their unjust imprisonment reflecting very badly on their king.

Power to the Players

Ceding some measure of narrative control to players is not just for those of us who choose to play fancy pants indie or "story" games. It's a technique that I had been applying to more traditional games for years before GNS theory or the Forge or even before White Wolf (though not by much). Giving up narrative control is not directly related to being touchy-feely or melodramatic. It's a technique that can be very effective for games involving mercenary treasure hunters and monster slayers in a half-civilized fantasy landscape. Moreover, it's a technique than can easily be employed using your favorite classic role-playing system with no adjustment to the rules.

One small technique that I will mention in this post is the "How Do You Kill It?" technique (better name pending). In Risus, the rules explicitly state that a player who wins a combat has absolute control over what happens to the loser. There is no reason why some variation on this can't be applied to more traditional games. In fact, I have.

When I run Dungeons & Dragons (new school or old), I allow (and encourage) players to describe their killing blows in exquisite detail. When I do this, I borrow from Risus and allow the character to deviate slightly from the rules, if only to give them latitude to come up with a move that is cooler than the last. The character can flip and dip like a crazed monkey ninja for all I care - he has already done the hard work of defeating the enemy with "to hit" rolls and lots of damage. That killing blow is a chance for the character (and the player) to be all iconic and badass without rolls getting in the way. And as I said, the dice have already done their job.

I'm up late on a work deadline, so I may speak to this more in subsequent posts. There is a whole range of options between "How Do You Kill It?" and ditching the GM entirely for games like Fiasco and Microscope. In fact, I even discussed this a bit with Target Numbers and the Single Scientist (for Risus but adaptable to other games).

Geomorph #108

The original Dungeoneer's Survival Guide contains a treasure trove of drawings that illustrate great dungeon locales. In today's installment, I'll be considering the following piece:

The scene conveyed is just a single gigantic subterranean gallery. It's the sloping walls, numerous (climbable) stalagmites, and giant mushroom forest that make it interesting. Translating this to a geomorph presented a little challenge, as I had to distinguish between the fungus and the elevation rings. Deviating slightly from previous tiles, I added tiny hash marks to the elevation bands and stems and polka-dots to the mushroom caps.

The Secret of Atlantis...

The myth of Atlantis provides a weird history foundation that lies at the heart of several of the alternate history and modern fantasy games that I have run (including Silverlode and Knights of the Astral Sea). That is why I find the following news story so incredibly interesting and ripe with gaming potential:

Lost city of Atlantis, swamped by tsunami, may be found

NORTHAMPTON, Mass (Reuters) – A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago in mud flats in southern Spain.

[...]

To solve the age-old mystery, the team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city to find the site just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multi-ringed dominion known as Atlantis.

The team of archeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping, and underwater technology to survey the site.

Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave researchers added proof and confidence, he said.

Atlantis residents who did not perish in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he added.

The team's findings will be unveiled on Sunday in "Finding Atlantis," a new National Geographic Channel special.
[full article here]

Barrels Out Of Bond

Just starting to recover from a very, very long trip. I managed to get out of South Korea, despite the air traffic disruptions caused by the Tsunami (and wow, talk about an apocalypse...). Trying to get back in the blogging swing of things, I realized that I'm a little behind on the Hobbit re-read. I'm actually on "Inside Information" with the boys, so I have a little catching up to do as far as my write-ups go.

Barrels Out of Bond
This chapter concerns the dwarves' capture by Wood-elves and their subsequent escape in a bunch of empty barrels (as facilitated by Bilbo and his magic ring). From the perspective of a gamer, this chapter reminded of a D&D 2e game that I played in some fifteen years ago where there seemed to be a minor theme of getting captured and escaping. I believe the running joke was that we had become connoisseurs of prison gruel. As the party thief, I fell into the role of Bilbo and usually had to bust everybody out (at least I recall doing it at least twice). It was great fun... for me, anyway. I can't remember how the rest of the group took it.

Getting captured is great for drama, but it is very hard to engineer in a game. In many cases, genre conventions demand that the heroes get captured, stand by as the villain monologues, and then must navigate some outrageous death trap. But players characters rarely go down quietly. Until games came around where I could dangle Fate Points or Awesome Points or what have you to submit to capture, I consistently failed to choose the correct amount of force or the proper tactics that would allow me to satisfy that genre convention. Risus would have worked perfectly in this situation, of course (due to the nature of its combat system), but I have yet to use Risus for that particular genre. [Note to self... time to make a super-spy adventure].

One other note (not much else to report on in this chapter)...

In the previous chapter, the elves came across as very inhuman and fairy-like. In this chapter, they seem all too human as they easily succumb to Dorwinion vintage. I like this, though. It grounds the elves a bit and makes them somewhat more suitable as a player race in a Hobbit-based Middle-Earth game. They are not human, but they have their share of human fallibility.

Until Next Time, South Korea...

A flurry of posts about Microscope aside, I really was on a very busy business trip in South Korea. I'm wiped out and have a very long trip ahead of me tomorrow. I'm bummed I missed the Hot Elf Chick Google bomb, but I'll be there for the next round of blogger silliness. :)

I'll be back online when I am home and fully recovered. Until then...HOT ELF CHICK! :)

Tinkerballa from The Guild

Solo Gaming in Flight (Part 4): Making More History

I'm having a little trouble adjusting to the time zone, but here's a (not as short as I thought) transcription of more notes from my solo Microscope game I played on my flight to Korea... 

***

Making History (Max): I like the Time of Legends Period that Kate created and I'd like to create a Light Event featuring some heroic adventurers in the classic D&D mode. Old Hob wasn't around in the Time of Legends, so I need a similar kind of Period later in the history. I'll call it the Second Age of Darkness (was the Time of Legends the first?) and place it after Landfall. This ties into the focus because Old Hob can be assumed to have been an adventurer during portions of this age.

SECOND AGE OF DARKNESS

Dark Period

Making History (Ian): That scene with Harami was fascinating and I'm really interested in exploring the prophesy that she mentioned. Since it seems to concern Old Hob, I'm going to create an Event during the Age of Enlightened Emperors where a much younger Harami first learns of the prophecy. I'm thinking that Harami is not the first to witness that prophesy, but that it has been lost for ages. This can lead to a specific scene, but the Event is going to be broader - The Discovery of the Falarven Scrolls. That event may have even led to the formation of the Nagari Cult, making it a Dark Event. It takes place before The First Animates.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE FALARVEN SCROLLS

Dark Event

Making History (Kate): I'm going to create a D&D-like Event to go with Max's Second Age of Darkness. I imagine a specific adventure where Old Hob and his companions will survive the Ruins of Kulvuk and recover the lost Spear of Elector Polhansur.

OLD HOB & COMPANIONS RECOVER SPEAR OF POLHANSUR

Light Event

Making History (Me): As the lens, I get to create two more nested elements that relate to the focus. Right now, there has been a focus on Hob as a primary character. To wrap things up for him, I'd like to pull him into the background in the distant future. To that end, I'm going to create a Dark Event in the final Period called the Wreck of the Fell Hilloska. Nested within that Event, I'm going to dictate a short scene that answers the question "What becomes of the remains of Old Hob?".

Drawn off from his daily trek to the watering hole by a terrible commotion, the boy came across the still-smoking wreckage of the Fell Hilloska. The rust-red skyship might have blended in with crimson dunes of Temaria were in not for the throng of his fellow villagers picking through the debris. The vessel had obviously suffered terrible violence and very little in the way of useful equipment could be salvaged. But the boy's village was a poor one and a cart-full of damaged etherium plating could finance next year's crop. 

The boy fell in  with others and picked his way through shattered staterooms and twisted metal supports. The bodies of the crew and passengers were horrific, but the boy had seen many become food for the carrion lizards when the Emperor's mercenaries terrorized the village during last year's drought. Instead he averted his eyes and made his way into the twisted ruins of the engine room. Unlike his fellow villagers, he was small enough to squeeze through the collapsed catwalks and brass piping. 

The boy's persistence was rewarded when he stumbled over some kind of metal ball. Picking it up and turning it over in his hand, he exhaled in wonder at the stylized and almost lifelike sculpture of a metal head. Smiling at his luck, he carefully found his way out of the metal hulk and back to his village, the eyes of the old animate glowing ever so faintly in the coming dusk.

 

Corkboard.me for Online Play

I'm taking a brief break from posting about my solo Microscope game to jump on the Corkboard.me bandwagon. Many thanks to Greywulf for bringing this my attention. It's an amazing little tool that is perfect for playing a game like Microscope online. Check out the simple board that I whipped up for my recent game:

Other games that could benefit from Corkboard.me include Fiasco and Danger Patrol. Heck, any rules-light game could be played entirely online using a corkboard and the built-in chat functionality (I'm looking at you, Risus).

I really like the simple interface (create notes with a click and scroll/rearrange just by dragging). I also dig the hassle-free security... there is none! Simply send the unique URL to your fellow collaborators. Of course, it would be nice to share a read-only version with people to let them peek in on your game. But perhaps something like that is in the works? Backup or the ability to copy an existing board would be would be nice too.

Solo Gaming in Flight (Part 3): Making History

Wherein I continue to document the solo game of Microscope that I played on a very long international flight...

Imagined Table Arrangement (clockwise)
Me, Max, Ian, Kate

Turn 1 
Lens: Me

Focus (Me): The first focus is going to be an animate named Old Hob. Animates [magical droids - see previous post] are essentially immortal, though they can break down or fall into disrepair. I can easily imagine him showing up as a recurring character in many different Periods. However, my intent is that he doesn't steal too much thunder from human and alien characters since animates, like droids in Star Wars, are mostly viewed as appliances by society.

Making History (Me): As the lens, I get to create two elements. The first will be an Event called the Suppression of the Nagari Cult, set during the Age of Enlightened Emperors and after the First Animates. While the Nagari Cult is a dark secret society that practices human sacrifice and communes with abominations from other realities, their suppression exemplifies the heroic spirit of the age (and is thus Light). This relates to the focus because military animates, like Old Hob, are employed for the first time in the conflict.

     SUPPRESSION OF THE NAGARI CULT
     Light Event

Next up, I'd like to create a scene  to see how it works out in solo play. 

Question: "Why does Hob (not yet "Old") desert his unit during the siege of Falarven?"

Setting the Stage: The scene takes place during the Suppression of the Nagari Cult Event. Animates have only recently come into existance and this is the first conflict that they are used in warfare. The Nagari Cult is a despicable organization that is righteously opposed by the forces of the Enlightened Emperors.

The "warforged" animate known as Hob is attached to a squad of Imperial Shock Troopers as they are busy rooting out Nagari cultists in the dusty, ruined city of Falarven.  Hob has only recently come into its name, as its comrades in arms have begun to humanize what should theoretically only be a piece of equipment.

Required/Banned Characters: Hob and at least one Imperial Trooper are required. No characters are banned.

[Though undocumented, I used the Mythic GME quite a bit here for other personas to keep things suprising. I assumed Chaos Factor of 5 but random events won't come up until the actual scene roleplay.]

Choosing Characters (Kate): I'd like to play local partisan woman named Kosrema. She was fighting the Nagari Cultists before Imperial troopers arrived on scene and probably has mixed feeling about how much distruction they caused when attacking her city.

Choosing Characters (Ian): I'll take Hob. I imagine that he looks something like the warforged of Eberron and has been painted up and decorated by his comrade soldiers. Though he carries an echanted vibro-pike, he is mostly employed to carry the troopers' gear. As a result, he is loaded up with packs and satchels and bandoleers of incendiary elixirs.

Choosing Characters (Max): I'll play Lieutenant Maeda, a young and idealistic Shock Trooper officer. He wears rust-red Etherium plate armor that is effectively weightless and carries a pistol crossbow and a basket-hilted sword. He has blond hair and blue eyes and this is the first time he has seen real action since graduating from the Imperial Military Academy.

Choosing Characters (Me): I'll play an old woman named Harami, who has just been rescued by the troopers. She's a wise woman and a member of a religion that has been brutally suppressed by the Nagari. She's also an untrained sorceress who can see magical auras. I'm thinking that she's going to have an interesting reaction to Hob and may be the key to answering the question.

Reveals (Kate): Kosrema is a follower of the same faith as Harami and will obey her unquestioningly. She is also anxious to see the Imperials leave her city since they have caused so much collateral damage in their siege.

Reveals (Ian): Since nobody has stated it before, I'm going to say that animates come into existence with very little in the way of personality. However, they accumulate personality based on what is projected upon them. Hob had a minor defect that gave his walk a slight limp and as a result of the trooper's jokes, he has begun to feel like a wounded old soldier who would like nothing more than a nice retirement. He is what he is, though, and a geas demands that he follow orders from a designated authority. Somehow, I think he's/it's going to become confused about that authority in this scene.

Reveals (Max):  Lieutenant Maeda is a bit overwhelmed by everything he's seen in this battle. Rescuing Harami (and other civilians along with her) has pulled him out of blow-shit-up mode and he's like nothing more than to hand responsibility of her off to someone else. But it'll have to be someone he trusts, because duty demands that she be cared for.

Reveals (Me): Harami is not so much grateful at being rescued as satisfied that it has finally happened. She will be surprised at the appearance of Hob, who she percieves to be an embodied spirit of her particular pantheon. Her goal will be to get Hob to help reclaim her sacred shrine that had been decimated by the Nagari.
 
Playing the Scene (with undocumented Mythic GME support)

Me (Harami): Harami's frail hand reaches for the young, strong hand of the solider [Lt. Maeda] lifting her out of the Nagari holding pen. Blinking in the unaccustomed light, she tries to inhale fesh air after countless days in stinking darkness.

With a brief cough at the unexpected smoke, she shakes her head and focuses on the task at hand. Looking back, she watches other troopers carry up surviving children, each one thinner and more pathetic than the last.

Max (Maeda): I motion my his men to continue helping the former prisoners and carefully helps the old lady steady herself in the rubble-strewn street. My eyes are tearing up from smoke and emotion and I'm trying desparately to keep it together. Fighting Nagari was easy compared to this. "Easy m'am, I got you. Let's walk over here and I'll have Hob get you some chow. Do you even understand me? I could get Kosrema to translate. Kosrema!"

Me (Harami): "I speak you language, son. And something to eat would be nice. Just be sure to feed the young ones first."

Kate (Kosrema): I answer the call and approach Lt. Maeda. I'm wearing a dark headscarf and the ramshackle clothes of an urban street fighter. When I see Harami, I lower my eyes and drop to one knee. I imagined that Harami is bathed in light from the Exalted Septons (though everybody elose probably just sees a small break in the smoke and clouds).

"Honored mother! Praise be the light of Ashfehen the Illuminated and Linias the Luminar Maiden, thank the Septons that you are safe! Those Nagari pig-dogs will pay for their blasphemy. Are you well? These soldiers here weren't too rough, were they?"

Ian (Hob): Hob sees a soldier motioning in his direction and he makes his way toward the scene, opening a satchel carrying battle-rations as he closes the distance. He walks within full view of Harami, though not intensionally, of course.

Me (Harami): "I'm fine my chi... Child! By Asdomar the Maker!"

I dig my nails into Maeda's arm with one hand grasp for Kosrema with the other, my eyes completely fixated on Hob.

Kate (Kosrema): "What is it, Mother?"

Max (Maeda): "Hob, I think you're scaring the nice lady".

Ian (Hob): "Would you like me to go elsewhere, sir?"

Me (Harami): "No! Come closer so that I can see you?" My voice is clear and commanding and more than a little urgent.

Ian (Hob): Hob perceives clear authority and approaches. He stands at attention before the old woman.

Kate (Kosrema): "What is it?"

Me (Harami): "The Prophecy, child. The spirit of Mohan has taken form.

Kate (Kosrema): My eyes go wide as I comprehend the significance of Harami's words.

Me (Harami): Cut to a scene later that evening. The soldiers and rescued prisoners are camped in the shell of a burned out building. Harami has already asked Kosrema to gather some supplies and bring Hob to her.

Kate (Kosrema): I do as the old woman says and I think I see where this is going. I load up Hob with supplies and quietly escort him/it to the edge of the encampment.

Me (Harami): "Will the soldier's pursue us?"

Kate (Kosrema): "Possibly, though I think they have their hands full. Maeda's a good man and won't leave the children unattended."

Max (Maeda): On the other side of the camp, I am telling a bed-time story to a cute little girl we rescued. The little girl exchanges a knowing glance with Kosrema.

Me (Harami): I look deeply into Hob's glowing eyes. I speak with that same voice of authority that I used earlier. "You must come with us."

Ian (Hob): Hob nods and quietly says "I will".

I end the scene here since the question has been answered. Old Hob is being commanded to desert his unit by Harami. The specifics of Harami's plans will have to wait for another scene.

History Thus Far
(Start) FIRST AGE OF EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION (Dark)
TIME OF LEGENDS (Dark)
AGE OF ENLIGHTENED EMPERORS (Light)
     FIRST ANIMATES (Dark)
     SUPPRESSION OF THE NAGARI CULT (Light)
          Q: "Why did Old Hob desert his unit during the Siege of Falarven?"
          A: He was commanded to by Harami
          Light
DECADENT EMPIRE IN ITS LAST DAYS BEFORE LANDFALL (Dark)
(End) REPUBLIC OF THE RED SKY (Light)

Solo Gaming in Flight (Part 2): First Pass

In my previous post, I began to document my experiences playing a solo game of Microscope on a long international flight. I described several imaginary personas that would be playing with me and I started the setup of the game according to the rules as written. In this post, those imaginary personas start to matter as each will get a chance to come up with a historical Period or Event (with undocumented help from the Mythic GME).

First Pass
Wherein each player persona takes turns inventing a Period or Event. I'll be switching to the voice of each persona as they take their turn.

Me
This is a new Period encompassing the era leading up to and including the Landfall, when the homeworld of a corrupt and decadent empire suddenly falls out of the sky. This era is Dark, not only for the cataclysm but for the rot within the empire that led up to it.   

DECADENT EMPIRE IN ITS LAST DAYS BEFORE LANDFALL

Dark

Max
I'd like a Light Period that features that old empire at the height of its moral standing.  Something like the Old Republic of Star Wars, but different. Perhaps an era of benevolent and enlightened emperors supported by a robust Council of Electors. Obviously, this occurs prior to the Landfall Period.

AGE OF ENLIGHTENED EMPERORS

Light   

Ian
I'll be different and create an Event. The obvious choice is the Landfall itself, but I think I'll pass on that for the moment. Instead, I'm going to riff off the Palette and place an Event in Max's Period that concerns how a rising Sorcerer's Guild learns how to create animates, this setting's magical equivalent of the droids in Star Wars. The event itself, though immensely useful for the Empire at large, involves some morally questionable rituals and raises troubling ethical issues.

FIRST ANIMATES
Dark

Kate
I like the idea that there might be a Time of Legends way before Max's Period, when travel between worlds was challenging and rare. We know that humans fanned out in a wave of conquest and colonization in the Start Period, but that may have stalled out due to lack of resources or war or environmental factors. Of course, such a dark age would fit nicely in the era after Landfall, but I'm trying to go for something that is lost in the mists of antiquity. Sort of a mix of traditional D&D and wuxia China, but with skyships (sail, not powered). Definitely a Dark Period lit with the bright action of heroes.

Keeping Track of Historical Elements
Sitting in coach, juggling a stack of index cards wasn't really an option. Instead, I managed  things with a simple outline:

(Start) FIRST AGE OF EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION (Dark)
TIME OF LEGENDS (Dark)
AGE OF ENLIGHTENED EMPERORS (Light)
        FIRST ANIMATES (Dark)
DECADENT EMPIRE IN ITS LAST DAYS BEFORE LANDFALL (Dark)
(End) REPUBLIC OF THE RED SKY (Light)

Next up: Regular Turns

Solo Gaming on a Long Flight

With over 18 hours of air travel, I was hoping to spend some quality time doing solo gaming. I have been way out of the habit of playing with the Mythic Game Master Emulator and I have at least three games that I'd love to continue. Unfortunately, I have a set way of playing those games that involved using google docs and an internet connection which is not really an option on an airplane.

So I broke out one of my unused moleskins and proceeded to attempt a solo game of Microscope.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, Microscope is a new game by Ben Robbins (of West Marches fame) that is essentially a world-building story game (I talk about it more here). The whole point of the game is for players to build on each other's ideas and explore a setting fractally. The interaction of different worldbuilders should create a rich and surprising historical tapestry. I knew that playing it solo would lack that crucial component so I decided to try something a little different. I used the Mythic GME to emulate three other players.

Before even thinking of a game concept, I came up with three player personas that were different from myself. Sure, each of them has elements of my personality (how could they not?) but I mostly based them on charactertures of other people that I have gamed with at one point or another. Names were selected to protect the innocent.

So we had:

MAX: A pretty conservative guy with a interest is military history and traditional national or religious organizations. I imagined that he would favor scenes featuring important military and political figures struggling against human nature and a fallen world. Of all the personas, he'd be the most likely to push for combat in scenes.

IAN: An artsy liberal guy who is primarily interested in quirky but relatively low-status characters on the fringes of historical events. He tries to find redeeming qualities in even the worst characters and generally believes that societies improve over time (though, perhaps contradictorily, he likes the notions of long lost utopias). He has a strong interest in the occult, mysticism, fantasy/horror, and conspiracy theory.

KATE: Apolitical (but left-leaning) woman most interested in romance and archetypal stories of good vs. evil. Favors strong female characters and underdogs of all stripes. Likes epic happy endings or weepy world-shaking tragedies in equal measure.

Next on the agenda was to select a concept for my Microscope history. Here's where I cheated a bit. I know that I'd like to play Microscope with others, so I held in reserve some ideas that I'd like to explore with a full group. Instead, I selected an existing concept that I had played around with quite a bit and might be less willing to share with others. That concept, which I call Cloudlands, is a dieselpunk space opera set in a universe of floating cloud islands and infinite skies. It is a very reminiscent of Lady Blackbird or Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, even though I've been noodling with the concept long before those games existed.

So here's the Big Picture statement:

From the the dawn of air-travel, the free peoples of the Cloud Sea overcome tyranny to establish a grand republic of the sky.

The Bookends:

Start Period (Dark): On a war-torn homeland, humanity discovers how to navigate the Cloud Sea. War and tragedy follow the first explorers and colonists to other worlds.

End Period (Light): In the final days of the last great empire, a coalition of free peoples defeat the tyrants and establish the Republic of the Red Sky.

Selecting tone seemed to be a bit of a challenge. In the End Period, for example, I imagine that there might be stretches of the Period that seem pretty dark until final victory is achieved. But it is the end state that (for me) seems like it should determine tone. Similarly, there will definitely be Lighter elements to the Start Period as well.

Palette
To assemble the palette, I returned to my original Cloudlands concept.

YES	NO
Diesel Engines	Jets
Magic	Gunpowder
Steam Engines	Electronics
Multitudes of Aliens	Alien Dominance
Airships	Known limits to the sky
Teleportation Engines	Personal Teleportation

So far so good and the influence of the other personas have not really come into it yet. In my next post, I'm going to continue the Setup phase by having each player persona create a period of event.

Taking Off

No time for a real post tonight since I need to get up way before dawn to catch a plane to South Korea. I have no idea what my posting schedule will be like for the next week, but I suspect that I'll have a bit of free time to work on various projects that I've been kicking around. I'm especially keen to try my hand at the One Page Dungeon Contest, but I'll see how that goes. I'm packing books to read, graph paper, How To Host a Dungeon, and might even be able to resume some of my Mythic GME games.

Then again, I could be out drinking every night with my hosts. :o

Look for a definite return a week from Sunday with intermittent blogging until then.

Geomorphs and Map Tools

A couple of news items for those of you interested in geomorphs and map tools:

Matt Jackson (aka snikle) at Lapsus Calumni has recently thrown his hat into the geomorph ring. I've long admired Matt's maps and one-page dungeons and his new geomorphs look great. What's doubly interesting about his tiles is that they are produced entirely on his iPad. As of this writing, he has four tiles posted.

Anthony Bridge sent me a link to a dungeon mapping utility that he is developing. It's still a work in progress but it definitely shows potential. I was able to whip up a few interesting maps in just minutes. Check it out if you live in the PC world (or just work there like me).

Check out: https://sites.google.com/site/dungeontiler/

Microscope

Ben Robbins, the originator of the much beloved West Marches sandbox concept, has written an awesome new game that is (at least in part) a role-playing game. An alternate and perhaps better classification is that it is a collaborative world-building game that can fractally generate a setting over vast swaths of history.

Here's the product summary:

What is Microscope?

Humanity spreads to the stars and forges a galactic civilization...
Fledgling nations arise from the ruins of the empire...
An ancient line of dragon-kings dies out as magic fades from the realm... 

These are all examples of Microscope games. Want to explore an epic history of your own creation, hundreds or thousands of years long, all in an afternoon? That's Microscope.

You won't play the game in chronological order. You can defy the limits of time and space, jumping backward or forward to explore the parts of the history that interest you. Want to leap a thousand years into the future and see how an institution shaped society? Want to jump back to the childhood of the king you just saw assassinated and find out what made him such a hated ruler? That’s normal in Microscope.

You have vast power to create... and to destroy. Build beautiful, tranquil jewels of civilization and then consume them with nuclear fire. Zoom out to watch the majestic tide of history wash across empires, then zoom in and explore the lives of the people who endured it.
Mock chronological order.

Defy time and space.
Build worlds and destroy them. 

A role-playing game for two to four players. No GM. No prep.

As a compulsive world-builder, I read that description (and a bunch of design posts at Ars Ludi) and immediately bought the PDF.  Microscope seems to be a distant cousin to Greg Christopher's Statecraft, albeit one with a very different perception of time and space (and storytelling, for that matter). This is what I very much wanted Aria: The Canticle of the Monomyth to be.

Without going into a full-fledged review, I would like to say that I think game is very well done and has tremendous potential for some very interesting play. More importantly, it looks like it would be a great tool for developing a shared campaign world. My only experience with collaborative world-building thus far has been when Professor Pope and Cthulhu's Librarian and I tried to come up with something for the great WotC setting search (the one that ultimately yielded Eberron). If we had had this game back then, I think our proposal would have bene much stronger. It also might have yielded a setting that we would have used in play.

Other thoughts:

• It might be possible (and potentially awesome) to take this game and use a more traditional gaming system for individual scenes. A system that can support near-instantaneous character generation (Risus, Over the Edge, old school D&D, Old School Hack) is a great candidate for an alternate scene resolution mechanic, where the lens player becomes a temporary GM. Of course, it goes without saying that any rules system could be used to run games set in the world that is created using this game.
• Even without rounding up other players, the game provides an interesting framework for world design that could guide a solo world-builder (with or without the help of the Mythic GME).
• Though it is specifically warned against in the rules, this is the first game that had given me an inkling of how to run an Immortals game (i.e. a flashback-heavy game of Highlanders, vampires, and assorted demigods). I've been chewing on that idea for well over a decade.
• This game would be perfect for extrapolating alternate histories.
• It would cool to use Microscope for a game based on familial legacies. The relationships between the characters of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon immediately comes to mind.
• I can totally see using this to create the history of a very particular place over the ages...like a megadungeon! (See How to Host a Dungeon).