GwenCon Recap

The last couple hours were spent posting about GwenCon. For those unfamiliar, GwenCon is a micro gaming convention that takes place in the home of Gwendolyn Kestrel and Andy Collins every year. Attendance has varied between roughly 50 and 120 people in the years we've been participating. This year seemed a little lower than the previous two years, but still pretty busy.

We attended from 5pm Friday to 1am Saturday, and then again from 11:30am Saturday to 3:00am Sunday. Much fun was had by all.

Index of blog posts about other games I played at this years' GwenCon:

• Cthulhu
• Star Trek
• Blank White Cards
• San Juan, Lost Waaagh, Zitterix, and a touch more of Are You A Werewolf?

We skipped going today. Sarah's usual bedtime is between 9 and 10 pm (and I trail just shortly after her). Last night we got home about 6 hours past that, so we were barely able to leave the house at noon today. If I'd gotten into Andy's "Something Extraordinary" scenario, that would have been worth setting an alarm, and another 2 car hours on limited sleep. Since it filled up before I could email my prereg, we decided to rest.

• (While I'm at it, I'll point you at this post about my favorite GwenCon game from last year, cause that game was just that good: League of Extraordinary Cowboys.)

Sleep isn't the only thing holding us off from Sunday, to be honest. It's also that Sunday is kid's day at Gwen Con. There's all these little rug rats running around, and a lighter schedule of almost entirely kid-friendly games. Honestly, I suspect the Kid's day on Sunday is part of why attendance is down this year. On paper, having a kid's day is a way to include families, and ensure the tykes don't show up to more adult games on the first two days of the con. However, it means the third day is less fun for those who don't have kids. Anecdotally, it seems that before there was a Kid's day, you'd end up with 2 or 3 kids at the whole event, as most gamers would send the tykes to grandma's house for the weekend. Now, instead of geeking out for a whole weekend, some parents are just coming for Sunday while non-parental gamers are avoiding Sunday. When we first started going to GwenCon, we just assumed we'd go every hour it was running, and make a mini-vacation out of it. Now, the prospect of 20 or 30 kids running around makes us think twice before driving down on the last day. One day, I may have kids of my own and reconsider that stance, but for now I'm most comfortable gaming with adults.

22 more Orky Careers (Updated)

Months ago, I did a bunch of ground work for "Orky Heresy", an Orky companion piece for the Dark Heresy RPG. I put the first few Orky Careers up on this blog at that time. I intended then to keep working on it, and put more stuff up over time, but I never got around to it. I got caught up on other projects, and I decided that in general the rules of Dark Heresy and the Warhammer Fantasy RPG were more fiddly and complicated than I like to game under.

However, I'm running a streamlined, cut-down version of the system for GwenCon. Since I'm going to be doing work about it in the next couple weeks, I might as well stick the preliminary work up here. With that in mind, I posted 22 more orky careers yesterday, bringing the total up to 32. To use them, you need to read the older posts:

• Character Creation
• Character Advancement and XP
  
• Money
• Why I chose Warhammer Fantasy RPG (instead of Dark Heresy) for Career System.
• New Skills and Talents
  

The careers posted today are intended as Advanced Careers. You can't start with them, but you can develop into them as you spend XP. I don't have time to index them at the moment, but I may do so tomorrow.

Roll up a starting career via a d10 on this chart:

1. Bad Moons Clanboy
2. Blood Axe Clanboy
3. Deathskullz Clanboy
4. Evil Sunz Clanboy
5. Goff Clanboy
6. Snakebitez Clanboy
7. Yoof
8. Freebooter
9. Stormboy
10. Wild Ork

Here's an index of links to all the careers hosted on this blog:

• Bad Moons Clanboy
• Bannerboy
• Big Boss
• BigMobBoy
• Blood Axe Clanboy
• Boss
• Deathskullz Clanboy
• Drivahboy
• Evil Sunz Clanboy
• Freebooter
• Goff Clanboy
• Grotherd
• Lootah
• Nob
• Oddboy
• Outcast
• Pig Dok
• Runtherd
• Runtmaster
• Skarboy
• Slaver
• Snakebitez Clanboy
• Snakehandler
• Snotherd
• Spannerboy
• Stormboy
• Squigherd
• Syringeboy
• Waaghlord
• War Boss
• Wild Ork
• Yoof

This statement should be obvious, but I'll mention it anyway: Dark Heresy, Warhammer 40k, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying and several of those career names are the copyrighted terms of Games Workshop. It is all used without permission. In order to make use of the Orky materials presented here, you'd pretty much need to have access to Dark Heresy and the WHFRP main books. I drew upon both of those books for the mechanical framework, and upon those books plus a variety of sources from 3 different editions of the Warhammer 40k tabletop miniatures game for the setting information. The orks presented here are clearly based upon the intellectual property of Games Workshop, and no challenge is intended to their copyrights.

New Knackathon

I just posted a bunch of new Knacks for Scion. Does this mean I spent the day dreaming up new Knacks? NO! It means I came up with these months ago, and shelved them with the intention of waiting till Scion Companion part 2 came out. I didn't want to do a bunch of work designing and developing knacks if that book was just going to render them redundant them a week later. Surprise! It didn't. But hey, once bitten, twice shy.

• EDIT: It's worth mentioning that since these were written several months ago but have yet to see any use in game or development analysis at the forum, I can't attest to them being perfectly balanced. No big problems with them jump out at me, but I haven't looked that closely at them, at least not lately. Use at your own risk.

Here's a list of what I just put up:

Charisma Knacks: (Most of today's posted knacks are Charisma knacks, because at the time, that's what it seemed we'd run out of first with my group. All the PCs have at least 3 or 4 dots of Epic Charisma, and about 30% of the published Charisma knacks in the Hero/Demigod/God books are willpower refreshers.)
Band Of Brothers
Standing Invitations - Behind Closed Doors
Nothing But The Truth
Entourage - Worshipful Throng

Strength Knack:
Like A Fish In Water

Stamina Knack:
Aggressive Immune System

While I have a big brainstorm list that may one day become another 20 or 30 finished knacks, it probably won't be for a while. In the wake of Manifestations of Ichor (Scion Companion, part 2) there's a much stronger demand for new Boons than for more Knacks.

Turning my attention to Arete

Things that were on my to-do list:
1) Revise Jotunblut
2) Revise Prophecy
3) Revise Mystery
4) Figure out some way to make Magic cool again once the Companion brings us alternate boons for every Purview
5) Revise Arete before my campaign gets to the God level where it could break down
6) Minor tweaks to all Pantheon-specific purviews and special purviews so that they can all function under the same XP/purchase rules as All Purpose Purviews.

Obviously, 1-3 are dealt with. Not all are perfected, but they don't suck anymore, either. Minor tweaks may occur over time, but I don't need to do anything in the short term.

#4 is almost irrelevant. No PCs in my campaign have Magic, only NPCs, so the need to keep their powers "cool" is pretty minimal. Also, the Companion section with all the alternate boons won't release for over a month, so there's no point to working on it yet - for all I know, they may deal with it directly in the Companion and do the work for me. I'll hold off on it.

That means it's time for project #6: Arete.

I brought up the subject over at the Scion forums. Most people thought I was just trying to make a joke about how much Arete causes flamewars - there's a steady stream of faux insults going back and forth now. Someone actually got flamed for not being flaming enough. It's amusing, but not terribly useful. My own fault, that. I knew it would result in arguments, so I made a joke or two at the get-go, and now everyone takes it as a big laugh.

Alternate Prophecy Purview

I just posted 10 new boons for the Prophecy Purview in Scion. For campaigns using this version, Prophecy moves from being a Special Purview to being an All-Purpose Purview, and uses the cost and progression rules for APPs. The existing powers (and dice) presented in the Scion: Hero rulebook are NOT used in conjunction with these boons, which totally replace that system (except for the Avatar level).

The new boons are:

1. Minor Visions
2. Danger Sense
3. Search For A Sign
4. Lateral Prognostication
5. Foretelling The Messiah
6. Forespeak Destruction
7. Friend or Foe
8. Voice of Fate
9. Negative Prophecy
   
10. It's A Wonderful Life
11. The Wyrd (The Avatar level given in Scion: God by White Wolf)

Those interested in the rationales behind this change should click here and here. These boons would not be possible without a great deal of brainstorming and feedback by people at the Scion forums - thanks, guys - and, of course, the framework and ubercoolness provided by White Wolf Publishing.
EDIT: This is now also available at the White Wolf Wiki. You can see all the boons on one screen here by clicking on the Prophecy (Scion) label.

Everway Realm Index - Alphabetical

Below is an alphabetical index of all the Everway Realms that Sarah and I made for our old campaign. Each Realm has a post on this blog, corresponding to the page about that location that we gave to the players in our campaign. In addition, some Realms have multiple pages, either GM secrets, or additional player hand-outs. Every player got a big binder with 30+ pages of info. These Realms were used for the background of PCs and NPCs, plus plenty of clues were hidden in the binders as well - some hidden too well. It'd be fair to say the campaign was a tad bit overproduced, but it was fun.

• Amber - the Everway campaign was a follow-up to an Amber campaign where the PCs failed to prevent the universe from being rewritten.
• Bamboo City
• Beauteous Sea
• Bess's Nut
  
• Boundless. Originally a vacation paradise, but by the time the PCs got there, it had been overrun by zombies.
• BrewerBarrow was documented for the players. They never got the full disclosure on the magic beer, the ghosts, or what inspired it.
• CornDale and HamLeg: Corndale is the Realm. Ham Leg's Gate is a village within it. GM Full Disclosure files included The Unicorn Craze and minor villains.
• Crone Crater
• Earth Maze
• Enduring Fall
• Flashfire and a tiny bit of extra info that wasn't on the player's handout.
• Fossil is being reborn due to the efforts of King Incontrovertible. You can also read about his subjects, both mundane and notable.
  
• Frostbridge is a Realm inhabited by Giants, such as a spoiled princess named Valkyrie's Pride. There is likely to be war between Frostbridge and Fossil.
  
• Grand Pelt is a Realm. One of the villages within is Foamy Falls.
• Legs of Ra
• Moon's Trial is where the campaigns plotline originated.
• Night's Adornment is a very fashionable and noteworthy place. So are the inhabitants. If that's not enough info, you can also read more about them here. We prepped a few random encounters as well, and did some brainstorming for the names of Extras.
  
• Opal, Westcliff, and Golems: Opal is the Realm. The capitol city, Above, has been totally co-opted by the Opaline Center for Golemic Studies. They, of course, make Golems. Beneath the city and school is Westcliff.
• Pasture Days
• Pure Heart
• Red Sky
• Restriction
• Rustheart
• Slidemount
• The Empire of the Stag & Sovna: The Empire has expanded recently, including swallowing up the Olive Isles. Here's some villainous NPCs stats to go with it.
• The Seeking

Special bonuses: Two Realms we never made. Add to that this partial realm that never made it into the campaign: Pleasure In Communion. Lastly, here's a Formatting Example to help you understand the other entries - though I bet you can figure them out yourself.

Today's Challenge = Decisions

Today, I wrote up a nine-part exploration of challenges in RPGs, and specific mechanics that challenge the players to make decisions that alter the course of the campaign. Parts one through three should be of interest to all GMs, and the parts thereafter address particular game systems.

Part One: Dice ≠ Challenge. Why challenge is important to RPGs, and why challenge has little to do with high target numbers.

Part Two: Decisions = Challenge. Defines the difference between flavorful decisions and mechanical decisions. The nature of challenge lies mostly in hard decisions.

Part Three: Documenting and defining 5 issues that often mar otherwise brilliant resource-decision systems in RPGs.

Parts Four through Nine: Specific examinations of resource decision systems in a variety of RPGs. Luck Points in Cyberpunk 2020, Action Points in d20 Modern, Spell-slots in D&D, Drama Dice in 7th Sea, Graces in Continuum, and Virtues, Deeds, Legend and Willpower in Scion

Scion House Rules

There's a forum thread asking GMs to share house-rules they've implemented in their campaign. Here's a list of my houserules...

1. When someone channels a virtue, I give them one auto-success and they roll the extra dice. That way it's always at least as good as just spending a willpower.
2. I allow Channels and Legendary Deeds per session, not per story. This allows for some really exciting back-and-forth on contested rolls, as well as empowering the PCs to succeed whenever they set their hearts on it. It also means having one less thing to track between sessions.
3. At character creation, when PCs bought an Ability that required choosing a specialty, I squared the dots and told them to split them between any number specialties. Example: someone took Science 3. I told her "You get 9 dots to split between different fields of science, but no single field can be rated higher than a 3".
4. I allow Abilities and Birthrights to follow the same caps as Attributes: Greater of 5 or Legend rating. The PCs all have a 6-dot relic or creature currently. I let them upgrade old birthrights at Demigod. As a result of all this, all birthrights (even followers) have remained relevant through Legend 6.
5. I have extensive house-rules for Improvised Weapons and Squishing/Pinning. That keeps Relics competitive vs skyscrapers at God-level Strength.
6. Turf war system. Needs some revising.
   
7. We roll damage vs extras, but use the reduced health levels. They go down fast.
8. I award Legend by story events, not by XP.
9. I make the target to hit someone be DV, (not 1+DV). This was actually a mistake, but it went unnoticed for 10 sessions, and resulted in shorter fight scenes, so we kept it.
10. I make Divine Wrath cost 5 Legend instead of 1. In general, I keep Agg damage rare.
11. I don't allow regeneration or health 7 to heal Agg unless your Legend equals or exceeds the Legend of the source of the damage. I don't let it restore lost limbs/parts unless your Legend exceeds the source. That way, Tyr's hand and Osiris's phallus are gone for good.
12. To speed up combat, I have followers act in squads, assisting one-another for bonus dice on a single roll.
13. I've revised the combat wheel a couple times, because I don't like the way everyone piles up on tick 6 if one player has massive Epic Wits. Still not completely happy with the latest version.
14. I've eliminated the "spend a willpower to shrug off any mental/social power" rule, but had to tone one or two powers back a bit to make it work. This was the one change that heard any grousing from my players, as I was hammering it out amongst the chupacabra.
15. I've created several new knacks, and allow most of the knacks on the wiki.
16. Houseruled Untouchable Opponent to boost by Dots, not Successes. In retrospect, I wish I'd gone by Legend Rating instead of Dots, as that'd reduce some of the "need" for high Epic Dex.
17. Houseruled Holy Rampage and Divine Rampage to reduce Soak as well as Hardness. As written, reducing hardness rarely did anything.
    
18. I've tweaked a few boons and knacks to make more sense - some seemed written from the assumption that Epics wouldn't add to rolls, others from assumption they would. I brought them all (at least the ones being used currently by my group) into rough balance by level.
19. I've clarified that Knacks are all 5-tick misc actions unless specified (book just says Boons, it seemed logical it should apply to knacks more)
20. Overland and marathon rates rules governing long-distance travel.
    
21. Instead of "If you don't have the ability you don't get your Epics, and it's +2 difficulty" we use "If you don't have the ability, treat your Epic as one dot lower, and it's +2 difficulty". This way a Demigod loses out on 1-6 successes, not 20. This is a really recent change. It started as a mistake, just missing the "no epics" clause. After 10 sessions or so I noticed that, and decided nothing was gained by using it. However, recently, I've begun to think a bit more of a penalty is in order, hence the "-1 to Epic" idea.

Overall, I've shaken a lot of the kinks out of the convoluted and contradictory Scion system, and our whole group is really pleased with the results. The downside is it means a lot to document, and could prove problematic if we ever add a new (but experienced with Scion) player mid-campaign. Sometimes it makes it hard to converse on the forums, too, because I'll forget something is my houserule, not the default. I always have to "fact check" before I hit submit, and have looked like an idiot the couple times I forgot.

Old Amber Index

Lately, I've put up several posts that simply restored/archived my old Amber Diceless RolePlaying Game website. This is stuff predominantly from 3 to 5 Amber campaigns ago.

New Powers (well, several years old now, but new when when I first wrote them):

• Chaotic vs Orderly Shapeshifting and Dynamic Form are two marginally different takes on the same concept. The former is more open-ended, whereas the latter stats things out better.
  
• Entropy Mastery is a new power based on the stuff Chaos does in books 1-5, not 6-10.
• Mentalism is a power allowing Amber PCs to be psykers, jedi, gypsies, or savants.
• Here's what I could recover and recall about Lamarkian Shapeshifting. I wish I could find the rest of it.
  

Other stuff relevant to Character Creation:

• Player handout for Chaosite PCs in the campaigns that Dynamic Form and Entropy Mastery started in.
• Expanded Shadow World Worksheet along with some house-rules on Personal Shadows.

GMing advice and tools:

• A painstaking thorough analysis of the physical laws in Amber proper. The formating is painful, but the content is clever in places. Simulationists seeking to properly model the first five books of Amber will love it.
• Tips on running an Amber campaign, and most specifically portraying the Elder Amberites. It would have done me a world of good to reread that before my most recent ADRPG Campaign.
• Here's as much as I could find and reconstruct of the Bergstrom Method. This was guidelines (kind of an alternate system) for determining the winner of combat in Amber. It's been a grail quest for me. It used to be all over the internet. Then I went through a dark era where I lacked confidence and just wanted to hide from the world. Sometime shortly before I recovered from that, all the sites it had been on vanished. Trying to reconstruct it was a pain in the butt. The post linked above might not be everything I ever wrote about it, but it's enough to use. EDIT: That link proves to not be the Bergstrom Method, and may have even been the Testerman/Trimmer system which inspired it. The real "Bergstrom Method" is here.
  

EDIT: Since posting this earlier today, I've added two Amber-related "fluff" items.

• A colorful vignette from my best Amber Campaign ever.
• A philosophy statement and opening context constraint from a good (but not my best) Amber Campaign.

7th Sea index part 2

I've been on a real "clean up the cobwebs / post the old stuff" kick lately. For a couple days this focused on the 7th Sea RPG.

Here's an index of 19 posts (within 24 hours) that were related to 7th Sea.

Since then I've added:
In-depth expanded Sorte rules. Custom-tuned for a one-player fate-witch campaign.
Alternative (simplified) Weather Chart.
Terrain tiles from the montaigne sewers and ancient temple.

Index to Yesterday

I put a lot on the web yesterday.

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Here's the one non-7th Sea item to hit this blog in the past 24 hours: a link to an RPG I'm tempted to buy

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Everything else was related to the 7th Sea RPG. Most of the posts were specifically house-rules from my old campaign.

Fluff, campaign notes, and opinion-pieces:
list of systems and elements I really admire from 7th Sea
ensemble cast list from my old campaign
fluff blurb on a historical German fencing school

Combat-related and other action-scene rules:
speeding up 7th Sea combat and damage
summary of combat modifiers, plus a few house-rules related to fight scenes
fight-scenes in a moving carriage
house-rules on falling
chase chart for rugged terrain such as forested mountains

Skill- and knack-related:
9 new and 3 house-ruled 7th Sea Knacks
2 new Civil Skills, 1 house-ruled Civil Skill, and 2 house-rule Martial Skills
2 Porte sorcery knacks

Social-Related: Expanded Repartee and Reputation Actions
Inquire, Charm, Intimidate, Taunt, Acquaint, and Befriend.

LARP-related:
House rules for Rapier's Edge

Knackathon retouched

While I often complain about the folks at the Scion Forum, several of them have pretty sharp minds. Grumpert, Sidhe16, James McMurray, and (even) Zeev (whom I've fought with many a time) all contributed lots of useful feedback so I now have updated and better-balanced versions of my recent knacks. Scion GMs will find it worth taking a second look...

Strength - Steel Drivin' Man
Dexterity - Australian Horizon
Stamina - Hands of the Vise (Thickheaded was deleted for irreconcilable balance issues)
Charisma - Friends Everywhere - Icebreaker
Manipulation - Divine Wardrobe - Memetic Torture - See The Inner Self
Appearance - Terrible As The Dawn - Proactive Wake - Star Power
Perception - Subvocalization
Wits - Paranoiac's Positioning - UPDATE 3/27/08: added Brains Over Brawn and moved See The Inner Self to Manipulation (from Wits).

40k index

Wow, that's a lot of 40k stuff for one day.

What I love about Warhammer 40k

The upcoming 40k RPG: is almost here and must have been hard to make

Stuff that bugs me about Warhammer 40k:
Inconsistencies from setting to rules and all those damn die rolls and the most broken army I ever dreamed

As a bonus, I'll throw in this random link to humor only fans of 40k and Jeff Foxworthy would appreciate on some total stranger's website, and remind you of the video on modern power armor that I linked to a month ago.