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Protector

I gave up on Protector. The Energy System’s version of a supers game. The unfortunate thing is that it was too difficult to create art and support all the different ages the game was supposed to go through.

I do still like the way it handles powers, so I’m releasing Protector, warts and all to the public.

This is the first game under the Energy system to use a simplified dice mechanic. There are now suggestions for how to describe a depleted die using the acronym RISKED and healing is faster now because each rest phase gives depleted dice back automatically in addition to the result of rolls.

Get the file here. Protector RPG

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Updating The Energy System

We’ve been working on a streamlining of the Energy System that’s used in Jump Temp and Skree and Thrum. Currently the players all roll from their dice pool and add up all the dice. Unfortunately that’s a little math intensive. Not that people can’t do it, just that it could become tiring.

Our current thought is you pick your highest roll and all the other dice rolled add a +1.

But when we were play testing we talked about an optional possibility that a player could bring in the full value of more dice but at a cost. At first we talked about depleting that die but it didn’t feel right. It also nearly killed both characters each time that happened due to an escalation where both kept depleting dice to be ahead of the other character.

I recently had a different thought though that sounds cool to me but I don’t know how to implement yet. Instead of depleting a die when bringing in more dice, the player is “raising the stakes.” Basically putting themselves in a worse and worse position to achieve a goal.

I’m not quite sure how to do that yet. My first thought is that the other player can put a condition on the character. How to structure that condition is the question. I’m thinking that the condition is treated like any other challenge but also akin to an agent that adds a die to the roll.

The character with the condition can attack it directly to deplete it or just endure it until it depletes.

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New Layout For The Lost

David Johnston did a nice A6 layout for The Lost, my solo space survival RPG. It looks very nice when printed out in booklet form. I like it better than the original layout I did. David also drew a quick picture for the front which he said I should replace, but I don’t know, I kind of like it. It has a Buck Rodgers feel that’s raw and fun.

You can download it here!

The Lost solo RPG A6

Here’s a link to David’s ultralight game Microcrunch.

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Cassandra

In Greek Myth, Cassandra was cursed with prophecy. She could see the future but the curse was that no one would listen to her. What I didn’t realize was that her story was more detailed than I thought. Cassandra was one of fifty to a hundred children of king Priam. She would express her prophecies in cryptic language and she often had a message that was the opposite of what people were thinking of at the time.

In some ways anyone who’s trying to convince people are like Cassandra. Particularly when it comes to marketing games, you need to convince people that your new way of doing things is worth their time. Let’s look at what causes many designers to wallow in obscurity from the lessons Cassandra teaches us.

Clout

Clout is important for anyone trying to convince others. The more connected and important you are, the more people will listen. Cassandra might seem like she would have prominence being the daughter of the king but she was likely very low on the list. Meaning that she wasn’t important enough to have the other barriers to acceptance pushed through.

It can seem odd that having people like you plays a part in if they think your input is valuable. Only not really when I say it like that. Unfortunately, plenty of designers think of their games as “speaking for themselves” which they really don’t. I know I once thought that way and I can speak from experience that’s not how it works.

Very frequently, unrecognized designers lament that there is some kind of secret cabal keeping them down. In reality it’s mostly that the people on top have other voices cheering them on. There’s something called the “second voice effect” that goes a long way to being successful. When someone says “My work is groundbreaking” you tend to just ignore them. If someone else says “Emmett’s work is groundbreaking” people start to take notice. If someone that has clout says that, people will lose faith in them if they’re sounding a false alarm. That means they have a stake in only calling out people that they really like.

There really are secret cabals going on though and this is how they work. A designer with clout sees an unknown designer do something they like. The thing isn’t groundbreaking but it’s good. A lot of the time they offer suggestions to make the game better. An educated outside eye helps to shave off the rough edges and give a design focus. Something that might have happened anyway but now it happens faster. They then promote the new designer. In the process they gain the support and admiration of the new designer and their success. Networks of designers support each other this way.

Who is in your support group?

Changing Play

Cassandra told Troy to leave the horse outside. She knew her captor would die. She knew that Agamemnon’s wife would kill him. She was right every step of the way but she was saying the opposite of what people wanted to happen. Most of the Trojans wanted to take the horse as a token of their victory. In the process of everyone grieving, having being taken away from their homes as slaves, she’s giggling. Agamemnon wanted to cool his heels after winning the war.

Game makers often try and sell their titles on the basis of uniqueness. It’s natural that a designer sees something that they don’t like and decide to remake it to their liking. The pitfall in this is learning a whole new way to play is not an easy process. It takes time and energy and no one has an infinite supply of both. We naturally want new experiences but only want to expend a little bit of energy on each experiment.

Unfortunately a lot of the time designers are trying to work out problems with existing systems. To do that, they often have to up end models that people are familiar with. The players may not even be bothered by the thing that bothered you in the first place. So even if your model is demonstrably better, it may hold no value to them.

On the flip side of this is when something is too close to an existing game. Time, energy and money are limited resources. If there’s an existing game that does mostly all the same things and it’s proven itself over time, what’s the sure bet?

Ideally then, you want your designs to be novel but have an easy path to access through what a prospective player already knows. Sometimes a smart path is to write for an established game with supplements until people know the quality of your work and then once you have clout built up you can ask more of them.

Too Far Ahead

Cassandra spoke her prophecies in riddles. To her, they seemed obvious because she had seen the future. To everyone else she’s talking crazy talk about bulls and cows.

This is similar to the curse of knowledge. Because you know a thing so intimately, it seems obvious. Unfortunately you may have taken several steps already in your design process and you can’t remember why you took steps 2 and 4. When others look at your design, it doesn’t speak to them the way it does to you. They don’t know where you’re going and it’s going to take effort on their part to figure it out.

Do they need to figure it out? Maybe you’re a prophet with important insights. Maybe you’re just a lunatic. To them the latter seems more likely. It’s usually best to ignore the crazy talk.

If you’re just wandering, you may find shiny bits lying in the sand. Instead of making everyone recreate your trek through the dessert, remake the path directly to the reward you want everyone to find. That means throwing out 9/10th of everything you did and starting over.

If you have a mission or you’re remaking your map to the reward (which are the same thing), know why you’re taking each step in the design process. Beyond that, record for yourself why you took each step. These whys can be used to explain your game to others. Maybe they’re not looking for the reward you’re sharing, that’s okay. You’ll attract the people that will appreciate what you’re offering.

But don’t give them crazy talk and hope the “mystery” of it will entice them to figure out the puzzle you’ve constructed.

Try This

Make allies, help them get where they want to go. They may return the favor.

Start by doing something novel but not something that takes a lot of effort to learn.

Know your message and be ready to translate your message to others.

I’m writing this mostly to myself. I heard a podcast about Cassandra and her problems getting people to listen to her and I realized that I had done everything wrong that she did. All my false steps came swirling out in front of me. I’ll try and do better now that I know this but don’t be surprised if I slip back into old habits.

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An encounter die for Energy System

In OSR (and possibly other trad gamers I don’t know how wide spread the practice is) a hazard die is used as a clock to tell when an encounter happens. It’s a neat way of taking the load of timing when monsters show up off the GM’s shoulders and I’m for reducing loads on any player.

I have half a thought to introduce a hazard die to the Energy System but in the system’s style. In this case it would be a dice pool. The weird trick is that a hazard die is there to indicate a variable timing mechanism. In this case, that would be when a die depletes. Only that’s really weird because most rolls and their values are just ignored which seems like a waste.

Sometimes you can make a hazard die do more timing tasks. I think that’s what I’d like to do with rolls that don’t deplete but the system already handles most of the other things that people use to track with a hazard die.

It could indicate some kind of distance, or time interval. The system doesn’t really worry about those things though.

I could flip this and make the roll result be the number of dice in the next challenge. That means most rolls would be an encounter, but it doesn’t have to be a monster per se. It just indicates the intensity of the next challenge. When the pool depletes, You’ve reached the end of the adventure.

I’ll mull it over.

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The Lost Solo RPG

I always wanted to make a solo RPG and today I came up with something of a formula for how to make one. This is very preliminary but I put together a game I’m calling The Lost, about a small starship that is trying to get back home.

The Lost

I’m hoping to be able to use the structure here to do other RPGs but for this one, I would like to expand on the moves and the hazard tables.

Update

I added a few moves and clarified some language.

Updated again 4-16-18

Added two new navigation hazards.

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Whisperers using Gut Reaction

Some time ago, my son and I did some world building on a modern day setting where people were being turned into monsters. The monsters look like regular people but they take victims and turn them into more monsters.

The players are hunters, regular people that have lost loved ones to the monsters or “agents” that are pulling strings for a shadowy organization.

This time we’re telling it with a little twist. It’s said that the Whisperers will destroy the world but who are the whisperers?

The trick to this setting is that it can’t be all written down because knowledge is the real power in this game. That fits pretty well with the Gut Reaction RPG that I just wrote.

So here it is, Whisperers

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Gut Reaction RPG

I pounded this out today. Let’s see where it takes you.

Gut Reaction is statless game. You roll and go with your gut because there are no numbers to base things off of.

Go with your initial feeling. “You study long, you study wrong!” Says it all. Don’t over think it, just go.

Here’s the PDF link.

Gut Reaction

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An update to an old system

For Lojec Redemption we’re using a system based on The Artifact’s Fraction Column system. It is hopefully a streamlined version of the engine that may eventually make up a 4th edition of The Artifact.

What’s different? I’m going from a percentile system to a base ten system. It lacks the granularity of the 1-100 scale but it simplifies play to an extent because of simplified math.

It also makes rolling faster and simpler. This sounds like a trivial gain but after twenty years of seeing beginning players confused by percentile rolls and more commonly the 2d10 bouncing off each other and one flying across the room, It’s nice to have 1d10 drop and it be instantly read.

The biggest problem with a base 10 scale is that the success columns don’t step down as nicely. These are really important to the system and how it functions. That’s complicated to explain unless you’ve looked at the system but suffice to say it’s how good rolls are rewarded.

Because the game is less granular I’ve had to make skills more complicated. They now have the ability to have multiple values. I know that sounds weird, but it’s not a big deal if it’s laid out in front of you, so far my players are cool with it. It does make skills take up quite a bit more space on a character sheet though and that’s a bit of an annoyance. I’m having to prune my skill list down dramatically.

Players have commented that they like the simpler list so I guess it’s not all bad. For LR the smaller list makes sense. For The Artifact it might be a problem because the setting uses skills to differentiate character abilities.

This change is really forcing a large drop in the granular nature of the system in favor of simplicity. It’s a real trade off and maybe it’s not the right move. We’re going to have to keep testing to see if it really benefits the players in a significant way.

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Some ideas for Lojec Redemption

I have a lot of ideas for Lojec Redemption that I’m struggling to express. My mind is full of data points that don’t have structure yet. I’ll spew a couple here.

A main one is to equate the main threat, the AIs called Mind Shells to dragons. Not that they are giant fire spewing lizards but that they are something beyond human ability. Some theories about the dragon mythos is that they are an amalgam of all the threats people faced. I want to double down on that image. The Mind Shells are an amalgam of everything we fear about technology. For example, they see through us. They cannot be lied to. They know us better than we know ourselves. Their powers of perception are beyond what we understand or can imagine. Their abilities are not limited to a single physical form, they are data, and can move from “body” to “body” (these would be technological bodies). They can “infect” humans with meme viruses (this one I’m least prepared to flesh out). They instantly understand the complexities of a situation as soon as you turn one on, you can’t surprise them.

There would be grades of mind shells. The lowest of which is a general intelligence a bit lower than a human’s intellect. These are referred to as “golems” as they respond to instructions and carry them out.

My players have run into mimics already. They are artificial creatures that appear to be animals but reveal terrifying abilities when they attack. Common folk call them goblins. These enemies are by design unpredictable and they go a long way in conveying the weirdness that I want for this setting.

There are combat robots. At this point however most are over 100 years old, most without receiving any maintenance. Some may barely function. Better preserved combat robots are very dangerous.

My players have also encountered “intelligent terrain”. This is a region under the control of an intelligence. It may be a golem level intellect that is simply given the task of maintaining a park or natural wildlife refuge. It may be more intelligent and or aggressive. These terrains can sometimes be appeased or offended and react accordingly. I’m still fleshing out this concept but it’s best to keep the reactions subtle. Nothing that couldn’t happen in the terrain normally but definitely reactive.