The Land of Nonesuch
Posted by Joshua on May 21, 2009
I’ve been working a bit on the setting for my game with the kids, which is also my backup game for the Bumblers, possibly a play-by-forum game in the future if I get my act together, and finally an example setting for the system (tentatively titled The Majyc System). So it needs a name, and possibly a hook. I’m a little leery of the “elevator-pitch” approach to game settings; too often they end up sounding like something out of They Fight Crime: “He’s an all-American white trash shaman haunted by an iconic dead American confidante She’s a beautiful antique-collecting femme fatale from a secret island of warrior women. They fight crime!“ On the other hand, there’s certainly something to be said for being able to succinctly state what the game is about, and give the players an expectation of the tone and kind of adventures they’ll be playing. And bog-standard dungeon bash doesn’t sound all that thrilling, even if you’re confident that playing it will be a blast.
For now, I’m calling it the Land of Nonesuch, and working on the premise that (unknown to the current crop of characters) they’re inhabiting a land described in a book of odd and somewhat macabre fairy tales called The Land of Nonesuch, by the mysterious George Jester. Both the book and the author appear both in our world, and in the land the book describes. My overall plan, if something so vague and inchoate can actually be called such, is that this setting will let me scratch several itches that I’ve had for quite a while now: running a game in a setting inspired by The Book of Weird, and by the Oz books; getting some use from various cast-off pieces of prior settings (such as the settings of the games with the Three Paladinos, and the one-shot To Rescue the Sun) and swiped from other people’s settings (like Thool, or Dwimmermount); to do some bottom-up setting design, where I haven’t worked out a whole map of the setting and a thousand years of history before I begin; and finally, putting that all together, to do some gaming where I haven’t systemetized everything and there’s not a way that magic or religion works, and I’m not pinging the players with info-dumps. Naturally, I have ideas on things I want to see in the setting, and spring on the characters, but I want to be much more encouraging of letting the players make up crazy stuff too, and just rolling with it. I want to recapture, at least for some of the time, some of the much more free-wheeling GMing I did in my youth, where a lot of stuff was decided on the basis of either “Yeah, that sounds good!” or “roll a die, high is good.”
Unlucky 13
Posted by Joshua on May 17, 2009
I generally like the idea of fumbles in games, being both true to life and literature, although they can be a problem if they’re too frequent or severe. A fair number of published systems would have a tenth or more of an army incapacitating themselves over the course of a battle. Another thing that I think is a problem, albeit a minor one, is that most systems tie fumbles into failure, so it’s impossible to both succeed at a task but have something go awry.
Here’s the system I’m currently using in my D&D-esque game: whenever rolling a d20, a roll of a 13 means something unlucky potentially happened. Roll a Luck save (luck is a Stat in this system, but you could substitute some other sort of save). Success means nothing happened, failure means something bad but relatively minor or recoverable (weapon twists in your grip and you can’t attack next turn, sun gets in your eyes, etc.). A second roll of 13 means something quite unfortunate happened, such as dropping your weapon or falling down. Roll again and keep rolling if 13 keeps coming up, making the result more severe the more 13′s you get.
Obviously you can adjust just how bad it is to taste; I feel that dropping a weapon one in 400 times is probably bad enough, but you might prefer that to be the result of failing the luck save, and have the roll of a second 13 be more spectacular, such as a broken weapon. You could also make it more severe, so that e.g. a weapon breaks on a failed save after the initial 13, if you want things to be more chaotic; I lean against that, in part because in most RPGs that sort of thing can really make the PCs seem like klutzes. During a campaign players tend to make many times more roles than any individual NPC they encounter, so a 1 in 20 or 1 in 40 shot may well turn up for each character at least once a night; if the failures are particularly memorable that can be a problem. 1 in 400 is more like once a session or less for some PC or NPC…enough to add flavor without being overwhelming.
I like this because it’s an easy mnemonic, which can be important for something relatively rare. It’s a pain to have to, say, check each roll to see if it missed by more than X if it’s only going to really matter 1 in 400 times. I also like it because it makes it possible to both succeed (if 13 was good enough) and still have something untoward happen, such as hitting a target but having your weapon stick.
Random Exotic Traits Table
Posted by Joshua on May 17, 2009
- Is a Shape-shifter
- Is a Were-Creature
- Inherited 1d10 * 100 times the usual starting money
- Has Random Magic Item
- Has an Unusual Pet
- Has a Magical Power
- Inherited a Noble Title
- Gets one Wish,which may be used before the start of play or saved
- Never fumbles (ignore rolls of 13)
- Savant: automatically has rating of 6 + 1d6 in starting Talent
You’re allowed to roll for an Exotic Trait if you have no Stats above 11 and at least one stat less than 9. This is inspired by Mac’s campaign, where she has a similar rule where you can be a shape-shifter if you have no stats other than Charisma that are higher than 11.
Shape-shifters roll a d100 on a table of random animals, ranging from aardvark to zebra. Were-creatures have the standard immunities to weapons except silver, and so on, but it’s a genuine curse, complete with attempting to eat people when the moon is full. In both cases clothes and equipment don’t shift.
Refusal to mourn the death by Orc-blade of a child in a dungeon
Posted by Joshua on May 16, 2009
For after the first character, there is another
Stonehell claimed it’s first victim in the kids’ game last night, as Charlie’s character Revenge fell to a mighty critical by an orc. The dice weren’t particularly kind to him on his new character, either, which he promptly dubbed Expendable 1401, though really it’s pretty much average:
Expendable 1401: Human Fighter Str 8 Int 12 Wis 11 Con 7 Dex 12 Cha 11 Siz 14 Lk 9
King, Oxy-lock’s war dog also succumbed in that fight, though an impressive miracle from Horatia (Grace) brought him back (about a 1 in 1440 chance, if I calculated the odds right). This cheesed Charlie off a bit, but it wasn’t as if Grace saved her miracle for the dog…
It was a fun session, with a lot of Orc and rat bashing thanks to a pair of random encounters right outside the orc’s watch-post in the Contested Corridors area. Things might have gone much worse if the party hadn’t managed to break the Orc’s morale with some threats in Orcish conveniently backed by a lucky Smite from Horatia and her false god. They retreated to the surface with a great sense of satisfaction, and then spent the last ten or so minutes of the session giving Charlie’s new character a hard time because of the suspicious and weaselly way he chose to answer their questions about why he was on the island and whether he was Good. I’m not entirely sure what that was about; I’m not a big fan of D&D alignment but I’m using it in this game for continuity with Mac’s game, and Charlie made his character Lawful/Good so he had no reason to be evasive.
I was a little concerned that I let the gore level rise a bit too high, but the kids really seemed to get a kick out of it, and Mac thought it was ok when I asked, since I didn’t dwell on the descriptions. I more or less took my cue from her and her rather gruesome bluff against the Orcs (“Look! Your bowels are coming out!”). While I’m not trying to teach any moral lessons, and in the context of the game killing Orcs is jolly good fun, my personal preference is not to make combat too sanitary. I think I achieved a reasonable balance, but as I said I had some qualms.
Chgowiz On Getting Your Family to Play D&D
Posted by Joshua on May 15, 2009
Chicago Dungeons & Dragons Examiner: Getting your family to play Dungeons and Dragons
4. Make your games simple and fun
First impressions are always the most lasting impressions, so make your first games simple and fun. Leave the complicated plots and backgrounds for future games – make your first games simply about exploring a long lost temple or dungeon, or a simple rescue or some other common fantasy trope. Your family will feel familiar with the story and it won’t be a stretch for them to participate.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! My wife played RPGs with our group every week for six months, and never really got it until she started playing in Mac’s game where the plot was “Go into the dungeon, kill monsters, take their stuff.” Once it clicked for her, she started enjoying the more complex story-lines in the other games, but there was just too much to absorb being thrown in the deep end of the hobby. Learning the ropes one room and monster at a time was invaluable for her.