Do you remember the first time? / I don't remember the worst time

It was February 1996. I was in the rather awkward position of having been invited to my friend Lani's birthday night out, and meeting her at my good friend Eli's house, who was her very recent ex. By about a week.
Eli shared his house with a guy called Camo. Both were (are) colossal geeks. Oh, they tried to hide it - Camo was a professional dancer and Eli was a Jujitsu champ and anti-establishment punk - but more than a five minute conversation with them and you knew they were nerds.
At the time I was friends with Eli for the punk rock and camaraderie. I didn't really know about RPGs.

All that changed on that fateful night. A night that Eli's brother Angus describes as 'the birth of a monster'.

It was snowing when I arrived at Eli's house. A good deep thick settling of snow that wasn't going anywhere fast. It was pretty much a certainty that I wouldn't be catching the bus home to my village in the sticks that night. I was snowed in in Leeds.
Awesome! A night out and a solid gold reason not to go home. Something every teenager dreams of.

The snow kept falling though, and soon we got the call from Lani saying that everyone was staying in.
Ok. What to do?
Eli and Camo fellback to their default position.
"So, what are we playing?"
"I could run a Cyberpunk cops game..." Said Camo. "Nook, you playing?"
I said yes. I didn't really have a choice. Play, sit and watch or take my chances in the blizzard. I'm sure this is how the KGB converted Western spies into double agents.

As mentioned, the game was Cyberpunk - a dark high tech future game dominated by mega corporations and street gangs.
We started creating our characters. Somehow I generated skill and ability scores and worked out the basic numbers. I had, and still have, no idea what they meant or did. It was a strange and arcane experience, reminiscent of the time I bunked a whole term of maths GCSE lessons then had no idea what was going on for the rest of the year.
Once we'd statted up our characters it was time to start buying stuff. And, my god, was there stuff to buy. Camo and Eli started to eagerly devour three separate books of equipment, picking out guns, armour, sunglasses, cyber-appendages, portable computers, tattoos, gadgets... I floundered and was given the advice "it's not so much about utility, it's about cool shit."
I bought my cop some portable electronic bongos, to positive head nods "I think he's getting it"
I most definitely was not.

Play started. We patrolled the mean streets of Night City. No crime was apparent, so I started playing my bongos. Turns out I was shit at it. I felt cheated.
Next I decided that my cop needed to drain his lizard. I hadn't grasped the agency I had to affect the story, so fell back on the mundane.
The Camo responded by making the bar I chose to take a leak a mob run speakeasy. Some stuff happened. My cop was ejected from the establishment.
I still didn't really know what I should be doing. I kind of stood there.
Camo took another tack, and radioed in a mission for us - protect a corporate limo as it traveled through the city.
Less sandbox, more mission based. Ok, I can get behind that.
We followed the limo on our cool cop bikes, keeping our eyes on the road ahead for any danger or ambush.
We didn't look up, though, which I now understand to be a cardinal error.
A rain of explosive fire fell on the street ahead and behind us, penning the limo into a tight spot.
From the rooftop above the world's least subtle sniper loaded a bullet in his chamber and took aim.
Another thing I now understand is that in a ranged fight, tactics, cover and concealment are key elements that help ensure success or, at the very least survival.
Eli's cop took cover behind the armoured limo and opened fire. The sniper was unfairly hidden, with a 12" concrete parapet as cover. Eli missed.
So I climbed on top of the limo, to get a better shot, and started aiming with my standard police issue pistol.
The good news is that I hit. My shot went through the concrete, through the snipers armour, and did him 1 point of damage. I was elated. A few more shots like that, and he'd be down.
Then he blew my arm off.
What The Fuck?! My character's actual arm! I was assured that he'd survive, and could get a cyborg replacement that would be better than the original and would only erode my sanity and morality slightly.

I remember my mind racing afterwards as I thought about everything you could do with this Roleplay thing. I thought about superheroes, gods, knights, sci-fi, everything I'd been interested in so far in my life could be filtered through this new medium.

Throwing away all pretense, here's some dice packaged up like the drug they are...

Cheating for fun and profit / Not everyone is created equal

I just remembered something important - NPCs, especially important ones, do not need to be legal starting characters.

They just need to make sense, be memorable and serve a function (other than "wank all over the players").

Start at the beginning / Aeon Trilogy timeline in Aberrant

I'm on a massive Aberrant kick at the moment, after the successful session I ran for my group last week and their exceptionally positive feedback.
We've one more session before our normal GM comes back from holiday and we resume our normal scheduled zombie apocalypse.

Thing is, whilst plotting out what I want to do with this next, last session, I've started thinking in terms of an ongoing game. This is probably a mistake.

Anyways, that aside, here's what I'm thinking...

Aberrant is very much a game if it's time. It was released in 1998 and is set in 2008, ten years after the first 'Nova' erupted.
Ten years of super (or Mega) participation has resulted in leaping technological progress and widespread cultural change. The world has embraced these enhanced beings, and is a different place because of it.
This is all great, until you run it in 2012. Now, the 'future' technology doesn't seem that impressive, and the world has turned. Events like 9/11, global recession, the first US black president, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese Tsunami, Swine Flu and numerous more have changed our focus away from the direction the game designers predicted. Which is understandable. And inevitable.

The core conflict in Aberrant still stands up - Novas, Terragen, Aberrants, Utopia, Proteus, Aeon, Divas Mal, The Directive et al are all functional and relevant. It's just the timeline that isn't.

Which is why I chose to run the game from the day the day the Galatea exploded in orbit and spread cosmic charged radiation all over the globe.

The player characters are new super beings in a world that has never known supers.
Right now, a lot is going to shit, and the players don't know it. They only know what happened to them, and even then they don't understand it. They're currently running scared with amazing abilities that they can barely control. They'll find out soon enough...

So, my plan is to run with the Aberrant timeline from the start, and make changes where required.
I'm pleased to discover that the Galatea exploded on March 23, and we played on March 27, so that with minimal fudging I could run a campaign in 'real time'.
Which is awesome.

Alone in a crowd

Everything stopped. Again. Tom looked up from his work to see the world perfectly frozen. A deafening silence roared in his ears. His eyes welled with tears, just like they did the last time, just like they had every time after the first. Already the loneliness was washing over him.

How long would it last?
He never knew.

Tom had no idea how long the first time had lasted. After the third, he had started recording how long it took him to grow an inch of beard, and now thought in those terms.
Last time had lasted three inches.
Three long inches of silence. Isolation. Stillness. Maddening stillness.

His greatest fear is that this time it may never end.

Tom walked home, weaving through the frozen crowds. A light rain had started falling, and he left a tunnel in it as he walked. He'd walk this way many times over the next couple of inches.

He found it as he crossed the main square.
Another passage in the rain. It went off south, towards the warehouse district.

Tom wasn't alone.
He ran through the tunnel, following it as it wound past cars and pedestrians.

His heart was thumping fit to burst. His lungs screamed in his chest as he sprinted.
He wasn't alone!

World of Darkness: Mirrors / Time of Judgement 2?

It has taken me ages to get my hands on this book. I missed the original release (which was around my birthday, which is doubly annoying) and it pretty much sold out world wide instantly. Now, some six months later, I have a musty smelling copy and am flicking through it.

The first page I read was the last page, which has coloured my understanding and appreciation of this book.
I'd not seen it explicitly stated anywhere else, which is surprising, but according to the afterword written by Rich Thomas, the World of Darkness RPG line is effectively discontinued, with 'Mirrors' being the last actual physical book that White Wolf, or more correctly CCP, intend on publishing.
In fact, I believe they have ceased the production of all gaming books. Looks like they're in the MMO business now.

Which made me look at the book differently.
World of Darkness: Mirrors is an 'option' book, focussing on alternative systems, settings and play options so gaming groups can 'open up' their enjoyment of the game and try different things. It presents alternative character creation, experience, character and general play options (or 'Hacks', as they are now commonly known), a whole chapter on different combat options - from diceless to miniatures, second by second expanded combat to streamlined fudging - a chapter on alternative settings and several essays on ways to alter your playing experience with house rules and different modes of play.
It's a legacy book. The line is ending, so let's produce a document that may empower the fan base to keep trying new things and keep the game fresh, so hopefully the system and setting will remain in use and in play despite the lack of new material.

It's a good book. It has real merit and should provide inspiration and/or depth to any World of Darkness game. It just makes me sad. I would class White Wolf and the World of Darkness as fairly high profile casualties of the recession and implosion of the RPG publishing market (for which I am currently blaming D&D, because i'm bitter).

I'm mostly enjoying the Setting Hacks chapter, which has three distinct parts:

1. The World of Darkness Revealed - discussions on how the supernatural might go public, and how the world would react
2. The World of Darkness Destroyed - ways to blow up the world
3. The World of Darkness Dark Fantasy - ways to adapt the setting to different fantasy genres - high fantasy, sword & sorcery, modern fantasy, weird fantasy etc, and also includes three playable 'races' (sub races inspired by the 3 core game lines, so Dhampires, Wargaz [beast men] and Atlanteans), a new supernatural template - Heroic Mortals (for those Conan moments) and a named setting that can be used in a modern game: Woundgate.

The first two parts are, to me, very reminiscent of the game end options presented as part of the 'old' World of Darkness Time of Judgement. Again I am reminded that this is the last book they're putting out - it makes sense. It's just not a mandated end to the campaign.

The third part, Fantasy and Woundgate, could make a whole new game in itself. I think it needs a fair amount of further polishing, but there's definitely something there. It's very Gaiman - Neverwhere, Stardust, Mirrormask etc. The Woundgate setting introduces the idea of pocket realms of fantasy weirdness into the game. Lost worlds and secret parallels. 
I'm in two minds about it. Whilst I can definitely see how these remnants of the shattered Pangea could be used in the World of Darkness, it feels very 'old' WoD to me. Back when Mages could travel between alternate universes, pocket realms, spirit plains and alien worlds in a lunch time, when any mad idea could be shoe-horned into the setting because reality is malleable and multi-faceted.
I'd wanted a 'New' WoD Dark Ages game for some time, so I had high hopes for this setting. What they've given us is World of Darkness D&D, which is very different.

Included in the first chapter is the option to play 'Extraordinary Mortals', your Holmes', Bond's and House's. Otherwise normal people who possess a rare and exceptional skill focus. The system presents a selection of enhancements that can be taken to augment and support each skill, which allow a near superhuman level of achievement when certain criteria apply.
Extraordinary Mortals get to select three enhancements, and that's it. They do not develop any more unless through extreme and life changing challenges.

All in all, I can see World of Darkness: Mirrors adding depth and fresh twists to games that have gone on for awhile, or for groups that have played their normal game to death. At the moment I would say that I don't have an amazing amount of use for it. Yes, I'd happily use the Fantasy Shard occasionally, and may use some ideas from the character creation section the next time I run a WoD game. No, I wouldn't draw heavily on this  book for a new campaign or group. I see it as a tool box for seasoned players and storytellers.

The developer, Chuck Wendig, posted a long dissection of the book on his blog, which I feel is well worth the read. Several of the contributing writers have commented and added to the discussion, and Chuck has taken the time to answer various questions from readers and writers alike. Check it out...                                                                                              

Missions and Quests / How Grand Theft Auto taught me to love again

I recently traded in my PSP-1000, or Base Pack. It was old, battered, the battery was shot, the power pack had blown and i'd completed all the games I owned, and wasn't in any danger of getting any new ones. The last new game i'd gotten was Star Wars Battle Front Elite Squadron, on Father's day. That's when I discovered that the power pack was gone - it'd been on charge for about two months, and had the battery ran out after 15 minutes of play.
Whilst it was a hard decision, the only games I would definitely miss were the Grand Theft Auto games I had - Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. I think I actually knew my way around the streets of these two games better than my home town.

So, to help soften the blow, I bought myself GTA Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. My wife has a DS and never uses it. It's my wife now, Dave!

I was thrilled to discover that Chinatown Wars is massive, detailed, immensely playable and possibly even more morally corrupt than the LC and VC Stories games.
In short order I found myself immersed in the sandbox of the game. Sod the actual missions - they're dangerous and likely to get you wasted or busted and cause the loss of your entire arsenal - i'm suddenly running around a huge map building a rep as a reliable and savvy drug dealer, making green and putting cheese in my pockets. Either that or feeding my burgeoning gambling addiction by way of scratch cards or rooting through dumpsters looking for guns or food.
Crime is glamorous.
The game play is 'top down' like the original GTA, and makes excellent use of the lower touch screen for controlling your GPS or throwing molotovs, hot wiring cars or reading emails.

Some screens from Chinatown Wars -
two game play shots, hot wiring a car and a cut scene

One of the things I love about the GTA series, especially since GTA 3, is the way the missions are assigned by recognisable characters. I quite liked Salvatore Leone, Phil Cassidy, Umberto Robina and others from the games.
All of the characters you meet in the games are obvious stock caricatures, often to comedic effect, but they all have a position, and they all want something, usually to do with the overall plot. None are neutral, and they all credible (if not actually believable).

And this led to a revelation, an epiphany if you will, when I first played GTA Liberty City Stories. This may be old news to many of you, but I found myself thinking "this is what my games should be like". Specifically, any 'quests' or 'missions' handed out should be for recognisable characters that polarise the players. They can either be loved or hated, but they should never be anonymous.
The players should always have a slight, ever present fear that something is about to go horribly wrong - either there will be unexpected complications or the guy who gave them this job will screw them over somehow.
It should always be clear to the players that the person they are talking to is an individual, and wants something bad. The players don't have to know immediately what it is, but they have to know that they are being used by this person to achieve a definite goal.

Ideally I would use these ideas in a Vampire: The Requiem game, as I see clear parallels between the dysfunctional social hierarchy of the Kindred and organised crime.

EDIT: Further to my train of thought, let's talk about 'Sandbox' games. GTA games allow the player to run around and entertain themselves in any number of ways. Players are not constrained by the game plot or missions. It is entirely possible to amass an in-game fortune and be thoroughly entertained without actually gunning down a single triad or hells angel.
Players can complete time trial races, street races, put out fires, dispense vigilante justice, save lives, drive taxi cabs, smuggle drugs, run protection rackets, sell guns and stolen cars, become a pimp, take on a set rampage challenge or just blow shit up.
I have even heard of somebody driving carefully around Liberty City and obeying traffic laws.

This level of player freedom is something I think every GM should aspire to. Some of the better games I have run have allowed the players to explore indefinitely. The better games I have played have happily provided me with ample rope with which to hang myself.

Game design by idiots, part II

Oh, how I love the way that Google Buzz doesn't link into Google Blogger...

Sam H - System wise, I like the idea.
In terms of implementation, perhaps have x number of skill slots, and the player can fill them as they first come across the need. This allows relevent skills to be useful early on (and thus preventing early death). For character advancement, new blank skill slots?

Stats - I'd let Strength apply both physically and mentally. How do you envisage the bad things for running out of a stat?

I like all the settings apart from 01A, because like you I don't see how it works

Good feedback, Sam. The idea of having instantly assignable skills is interesting, and i've seen something similar used for languages in Gumshoe games (in which you just state that you know X number of languages, and assign them as and when the need arises). 


My thinking behind the free form skill system, which I didn't articulate in the last post, is that there exists a contract between player and GM. As a player, if I buy a skill, I want, no, expect, the opportunity to use it, otherwise I expect the GM to have a quiet word and tell me to spend my XP on something else, and possibly suggest an alternative that the group may require in the next couple of sessions.
I also expect GMs to tailor challenges within a game so that they are challenging to a party, and don't require specific skills the party do not possess to overcome.
Let me rephrase that - that don't require specific skills the party do not possess to survive. There's nothing wrong with non-essential encounters that require a specific skill set to beat, as long as the main plot or the characters survival do not depend on success.
Failure builds character.

I digress.
A contract between player and GM. 
I have started writing up my system, and in it I explicitly state that a player and GM must agree on a skill as it is chosen - what it is, how it works, what it covers and most importantly that the player character is allowed to take it. 
By buying the skill, the player agrees not to take the piss, and by allowing it, the GM agrees to give the player opportunity to use it. 
This is a bit deus ex machina, but plays out like a TV serial in which a new mcguffin, fact or ability is introduced at the beginning of the episode, and oddly becomes crucial to the resolution of the plot about ten minutes from the end.


So, at character creation, I have specified that players should initially choose two skills, one which they think would be useful to the group, and one which they think is cool.
The GM then designs the game sessions to call upon these skills. All other actions should then be achievable through a basic die roll or through the expenditure of Strength, Sanity or Luck.


Also, failure on a dice roll does not have to mean that a character does not perform the action - they could still scale the wall, but twist their ankle as they climb down the other side, or hack into the bad guys computer and access his files, but download a virus at the same time.


The uses of Strength and Sanity are pretty interchangeable, you just have to come up with a reason why Sanity is applicable to the physical action you are attempting, instead of the default Strength. 


Strength also acts as a characters hit points / health levels, so it's best not to burn the one stat at the expense of the other. 


What happens if you run out of either stat?
Here's an extract from my notes:

Running on Empty

What happens when a character exhausts their reserves of Strength, Sanity or Luck?

A character can lose Strength due to two reasons - they can burn it, or they can sustain damage. If a characters last point of Strength is lost due to damage, the character falls unconscious for 1d6 minutes. After this time they regain consciousness, but are weak and in great pain. They can only walk slowly, or crawl, and any sudden or vigorous exertion will cause them to pass out again for another 1d6 minutes. Any further damage sustained whilst on zero Strength permanently reduces the characters maximum Strength score. Once a characters maximum Strength score is reduced to zero, they die. Trying to burn Strength whilst in this state counts as physical exertion. If this is attempted, the character does not gain an additional d6 for their roll, and passes out upon completion.

If the final point of Strength is burnt, the character does not immediately lose consciousness, but is totally exhausted, and does not have the energy to run or exert themselves. If they sustain any damage whilst exhausted, then the character will pass out for 1d6 minutes and lose a point of their maximum Strength  score and all affects described above will take affect.

When a character loses their last point of Sanity, they become emotionally exhausted, tired and unfocussed. They are quick to tears and quick to anger. 

If a character suffers further Sanity loss whilst on zero Sanity, they can develop and suffer from any number of severe phobias, extreme rage, obsessions, compulsions, ticks, delusions, experience paranoia or fall into a catatonic or fugue state, depending on the situation that caused the Sanity loss.

Running out of Luck does not impose any mechanical penalties, and a character can still function as normal, they just cannot benefit from burning Luck points. The Narrator, however, may wish to torment the character with a run of bad luck, unfortunate coincidences and fickle fate until the character regains at least one point of Luck.

I do like the concept of 01A, I just think it would work better as a hack of another system rather than shoe-horning it into this one.
Conceptually, it's a sci-fi mystery thriller. It's almost a superhero game, where all characters share the same origin - their mothers were artificially inseminated by the same alien/enhanced/bio-engineered/non-human (delete as appropriate) donor. The characters slowly realise that they are more than human, that they can do things and that there are numerous secret organisations - Government agencies, scientists, corporations, religions etc - that want to use, study, understand or destroy them.
So, setting wise, it would be a struggle to remain hidden whilst being hunted, not knowing who to trust, and trying  to discover the truth behind their parentage.
I know what I mean.
I think it would run better if the players didn't know they were playing it.

Anyways, good feedback and questions. Cheers Sam.

Game design by idiots

I've been toying with various game ideas - both setting and mechanics - for years now. The first game I ever ran, back in my halls of residence in 1996, was one I 'designed' myself.
It was rubbish, of course. You couldn't even say it was a good first effort.


Anyways, since then I have always felt the urge to design my own game, and have attempted to do so several times in the past. I have posted links to examples of these failed designs, such as Ghost Britain and the first attempt at Modern Mythic, in previous entries. Feel free to go back and have a look. 


At the moment I am mulling over a system and have started trying to pin it down on paper. 
It has a few (hopefully) simple core concepts. 
There are no defined skills. A character can attempt anything that the GM and player agree is theoretically possible, and the action is resolved by rolling a dice (any dice) with an even number being a success, and an odd number being a failure. 
My rudimentary grasp of maths tells me that this is a 50/50 chance. 


A player can add more dice to the roll in the following ways:

• They can possess a relevant skill. Skills are not defined, and are free-form instead. Therefore one character could use their Murder skill to fight with, whilst the other could use their Bitch Slap skill (these are off the top of my head examples). Possessing a relevant skill allows the player to roll an additional dice
• They can burn a point of their characters Strength or Sanity, which are slow refreshing resource pools. Strength is commonly used to augment physical actions, and Sanity for mental and social actions, although exceptions exist for compelling arguments (I burn a point of Strength to stay up all night researching this ancient language). Running out of Strength or Sanity are bad. Burning one point of either allows the player to roll an additional dice. Only one point of either stat may be burnt at a time.
• A player can burn a point of Luck after a roll has been made to change the result of one dice. Luck can be spent to alter another players roll and even the GMs roll. Only one point can be spent at a time. Luck is a slow refreshing resource pool, like Strength and Sanity. Running out of Luck is also bad.
• Certain bits of equipment may add a bonus dice, although these should be rare. I'd like to keep the number of dice rolled down with a cap of 3, making Luck a powerful stat.

Strength and Sanity also act as measures of a characters physical and mental health, whilst Luck can be used as a plot tool to get characters in the right (or wrong, if they've run out of Luck) place at the right time.


Damage drains either Strength or Sanity, and weapons do a set amount of damage.


I've been trying to draft up a basic intro to the rules, along with a character sheet and develop some settings for awhile now. Hopefully i'll be in a position to publish soon. Although probably not


I have a number of settings in mind, some of which feature rules variations.

• Modern Mythic - the Vanilla setting, using the basic rules. Maybe with the addition of magic. Not sure yet. The setting is street level struggle between competing secret societies to possess and comprehend the secrets of the universe. These secrets are found in unexpected places, such as junk DNA, statistical data (such as the frequency of fatal to non-fatal car accidents in Calcutta) or audio recordings of one second of every single telephone conversation happening at midnight on Christmas Eve slowed down and played backwards. 
• Danger Illustrated - A title i've had knocking around for over ten years. High adventure. Tomb robbing. Assassinations. Espionage. Danger Illustrated is an exclusive magazine available only to a select few (although it's probably a website in this day and age) that details where adventure can be found, for those brave enough to seize it. The system variation is that characters can burn multiple points of Strength, Sanity and/or Luck in one go, equal to a new Stat, Courage. This could also be applied to a pulp Sci-Fi setting as well.
• Legend - A fantasy setting, in which all the characters have a great destiny, and are capable of performing legendary deeds related to that destiny. There's a new stat - Legend - that allows the character to perform one legendary deed per point of Legend a day, as long as it relates to their destiny. For example, a character with the destiny 'Greatest swordsman ever' would be able to automatically succeed at a number of legendary sword related feats each day equal to their Legend score, whilst a character with the destiny 'Powerful Archmage' would be able to cast a number of spells per day equal to the Legend score
• 01A (Zero One Alpha) - A Sci-Fi setting, in which the characters discover that they are all related, that they all share the same biological father (but separate biological mothers), and that there are hundreds of them, scattered across the earth, all with a tattoo somewhere on their body with an alpha-numerical code that ranges between 01A and 99Ω. There are several possible explanations posited for this, from cloning to alien DNA, divine intervention to eugenics, with any number of motivations potentially driving them. The system variation would include psychic abilities and a stat called Potential, or maybe Perfection. Still not quite sure how it would work though.

Infrequent monthly update

I've not really had time to concentrate on my hobby for, ooo, about a year now, and this blog has suffered. I apologise to my legion of followers (Alex, maybe Andy. Who knows who else).

I have been randomly becoming incredibly interested in specific games of late, Exalted being the most recent.
I have a love/hate thing going on with Exalted. I love the setting, I love a number of the game concepts, I hate the rules.
Unfortunately, certain aspects of the rules are entwined with the setting.

Earlier this week I started flicking through the main rules again, vowing to keep an open mind. I told myself that the basic rules structure was solid, and the weirdness came in as an exception stemming from the irregular use of charms (magic powers).
Yes and no.

Let's quickly go over some background. I own Exalted 2nd Edition. Back in 2005/6 I had to reduce the amount of crap I own, and decided that one way was to rationalise down my gaming books. I owned about 15 Exalted 1st Ed books, most of which I had never used. I also noted that the books were being superseded in the current edition - The first Sorcery book, the Book of Three Circles, was replaced by the Sorcerer and Savant book, which clearly stated that the spells and rules presented in Three Circles were broken, and should be replaced with the ones being presented within.
The Exalted Players Guide featured a chapter which basically said "The combat rules and weapon stats used in every book before this one, including the core rules, are broken. Use these rules instead".
Baring this in mind, I ditched all my 1st Ed books and committed to the 2nd Ed, which would incorporate all this errata and would clearly work.

2nd Edition rolled around, and mechanically it is a massive departure.
The first alarm bells started ringing when the first paragraph of the combat rules stated that trying to hit somebody was the most complicated thing you could do in Exalted.
I had my misgivings about 1st Ed combat, where we regularly ran out of dice during attack rolls. They were excellent compared to 2nd Ed combat rules.
Combat now has nine stages of resolution, including three stages of dice rolling to determine if you've actually damaged somebody.
The combat order abandons the traditional turn based concept made popular by every other game in existence and instead uses a varying speed action system - Combat takes place second by second, and different actions take different amounts of time, and different weapons strike with different speeds. A knife may be used to attack every three seconds, whilst a great axe may be used every six seconds. Weapons with a quick Rate of attack inflict less damage, whilst those with a slow Rate of attack inflict more damage. There are also accuracy and defence dice adds.
I find the Rate of attack system counter intuitive, as everywhere else in the game a big number equals a good stat, whilst a low Rate number is a good stat. Mental gears clashing.
It also means that you have to keep thinking about how long an action takes. I like the simplicity of knowing that an action always takes a turn, be that 3, 4 or 6 seconds (depending on games - White Wolf, Warhammer or D&D, I think). I don't like having to think 'This knife attack takes 3 seconds, whilst this move action takes 4 seconds and this bow attack takes 4 seconds and this tend wound action takes 5 seconds.'

The game also includes the concept of Social Combat, which applies combat rules to courtly debate and intrigue.
Why? What value does it add, other than making the social charms offensive? Well, it does allow munchkins to approach a roleplay situation as though it were a tactical assault, without having to worry about actual characterisation. That could be seen as as value add, although not by me.

I also have a massive problem with the editing and layout of the book. It's really badly written, falling back on formula at every step.
One of the main criticisms raised about writing for D&D by an acquaintance who wrote some d20 Judge Dredd material was having to come up with a new and interesting name for every feat, ability, spell and power. Exalted has a similar issue, and they have a set naming convention, which appears to be to unimaginatively add the words Prana, Stance, Mantra, Method, Meditation or Technique to the end of a power.
Charms are presented as trees and mapped out using flow chart boxes and arrows. 1st Edition actually mapped them out as trees. 2nd Edition, no doubt to conserve space, just presents a block of boxes with the minimal amount of space between them, and arrows crammed in at angles. It's poor visual management, it's poor documentation.

The developer tellingly didn't use the normal playtest methodology employed by other writers and developers, which is to circulate the game around established and differing groups and solicit feedback. Instead he just used his mates.
Which probably explains why there's so much errata being produced for 2nd Ed.

Now, there is a lot I love about Exalted, most of which is the setting. I like the way they've fused classical mythology with Wuxia/Manga and the established old World of Darkness mythology.
I like the defined world - geographically, politically, theologically etc.
I like the way that the setting is so open, you can legitimately play a wide range of games, from classic dungeon crawl to courtly intrigue to high fantasy sword and sorcery to insane martial arts to low fantasy grit to world exploration to epic world conquest to reality bending magical effects to simple quests.

One day i'll try applying the setting to a better system, or find somebody who has.

Lost?

Well, TV has now ended - Lost, Heroes, Flashforward, all consigned to the great DVD box set in the sky. Even Big Brother is about to end, although that's mercifully outside the remit of this blog.

Anyways, I, like many right thinking people, was disappointed by the resolution of Lost - i.e. there was no resolution, just a break for a spin off that will never happen and more questions.

So, I've been thinking about how I would have ended it, which tailed into how would I run a Lost game.

I'd always presumed that the World of Darkness / Storytelling System would work well, and stand by that presumption, however recently I started thinking about about using Changeling: The Lost the run a Lost type game.

Obvious puns aside, it kind of works. The player characters find themselves in a strange woodland environment, which could easily be an island, following a disaster / accident.
The Jacob / Man in Black (smoke monster) cold war works well in the context of two Fae beings engaged in an endless contest governed by strict rules, manipulating the players as pawns in their struggle.
The Man in Black (smoke monster) works especially well as a Fae, with Jacob kind of being a bit too benevolent (although he does display a fairly cavalier attitude towards the lives of the survivors, so he works ok).
The time delay and circuitous means of entering and exiting the island / hedge work within the setting, as do any bizarre electro-magnetic disturbances, walking dead people, misplaced animals and anomalous statues.

I'm less sure how to include the time travel and people like Desmond. I guess the hedge could allow for some degree of temporal dislocation, or the illusion of time travel.
I'll have to think more about it.

The major incongruity between Lost and Changeling: The Lost is that the survivors in Lost are human, and the player characters in C:TL are not human. You could use human PCs in the setting, but they'd die very quickly if you use the canon rules and antagonists. That's easily fudged though.

I think i'd like to do it, and see how it turns out. I do believe that the writers of Lost pretty much made up the lower level detail as they went along - I mean, it's kind of telling that they created the character of Hurley because they liked the actor, and Hurley became the 'new' Jacob at the end - so I think that a GM should be able to wing the individual sessions as long as they adhered to a main story arc.

Tom Cruise vs Emperor Palpatine

I would like to start this post with an assertion: Star Wars is ace!
I mean, don't you just love the imagery, the look and feel, the cross genre cool.
I mean, check this out and tell me that you're not stirred.

Star Wars is awesome. Specifically, Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplay Game is also awesome. It's award winning, for one (Ennies 2008 Gold Winner Best Rules, Best d20 Product, Best Game. Silver Winner Product of the Year), and rightly so.

Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG products have traditionally been used as a testing ground for new D&D rules, which is a little odd considering Lucas Arts charge through the nose for the license, so you would have thought that the rules used would be tried, tested and definitely not experimental.
However, WotC have been using SWRPG as a testing ground. The 2nd Edition was a bridge between D&D 3rd Ed and 3.5, and resulted in some aberrations and jarred a little in places.
Saga Edition is no exception, and straddles 3.5 and 4th Ed.

The only difference is that it rocks!
They've kept all the stuff that worked in 3.5, and introduced all the stuff that works in 4th Ed. The result is a really easy rules system, multi classing options that make sense and Jedi that don't piss all over the other classes.
I love it.

The only downer is that due to the RPG market being in some form of vegetative state, and Lucas Arts demanding so much money for the license, WotC have decided to drop the game.

Not to worry though, there's still stock on Amazon, and my wishlist includes many Saga Edition books. Buy them now before they become rare.

However, onto the the actual point of the post, hinted at by the title.
Hands up if you've seen Valkyrie. It is also ace.
After I watched it, my immediate thought was 'Wouldn't this make a great Star Wars game?'
And it would.
Concept: The players are all high ranking Imperial officers - Moffs, Admirals, Generals etc. The Emperor has just dissolved the Senate, disintegrated Alderaan and allowed the largest, most expensive and most ambitious space station ever built to be destroyed by rebel fighters.
These are dark times, and Emperor Palpatine is leading the galaxy down a path of madness and destruction. He, and his enforcer, Darth Vader, must be stopped. The Empire must be preserved.
The players plot to assassinate the Emperor and Vader, and to take control of the Galactic Empire.

I originally saw it as a letter writing campaign, but wouldn't really know where to start with that, let alone run it.
It would have to be high intrigue and involve meticulous planning by both myself and the players.
It would also be fantastic.

Edit/Update: Well, WotC have now discontinued their Star Wars RPG pages. It's the end of an era. Everybody hand their heads during a moments silence...
On the topic, Will Hindmarch has blogged a post (is that the correct terminology?) regarding why Sci-Fi doesn't sell, which is kind of relevant to this topic.

Deep fascination with game design... Crunch vs Smooth

A couple of weeks ago I tried to drum up some interest in this blog by spamming a bunch of my gaming buddies, new and old, and basically begging them to follow it.
I've received a couple of replies, and one, from Andy Mason, made me think.
He said he'd add it to his RSS feed, but as he didn't share my deep fascination with game design, he didn't see himself commenting that regularly, all of which is fair enough, however it did surprise me, as I've never seen myself as preoccupied with game design, or even game crunch.
In fact, this blog was not supposed to be about design, it was supposed to be about play.

So what went wrong?

When I started nook.geek, I was happily playing every week at my local gaming group, and really just wanted a medium to froth about what I think are cool ideas and moan about the world not understanding my artistic vision (or not liking zombies as much as I think it should).
Then, pretty quickly, the world turned (hello unexpected pregnancy and potential redundancy) and weekly gaming stopped.
Which is where I think things changed. Rather than plot out countless chronicle ideas i'll never run or generate dozens of characters i'll never play, I decided to start writing a system.

I've quickly discovered that writing your own system can bog you down with details and questions almost straight away.
I mean, I started with a nice idea about what I thought should be in a cool game, and then started trying to think of a way to express that with mechanics, but not complex mechanics, and then suddenly i'm spending hours trying to think round combat/damage/defence mechanics and what exactly should a gun  or a knife do?

Which is what I always hated when running store bought games. In fact, I recall banning certain firearms from my 1950's vampire chronicle simply because I couldn't be bothered with the various gun rules.
Thinking on it, I stuck with the White Wolf / World of Darkness games not so much because I liked them (I do), but because i'd learnt the system and therefore did not want to have to learn another one.
I also developed a hatred of D&D 3.x simply because the system got so number heavy, with so many different permutations and exceptions.

So, yeah, i'm surprised that i'm spending so much time on crunch, as i've always preferred smooth.