I’m looking at the enclave sorcerers in the Book of Wishes and I have a question for you active game masters out there: Can the principal spell caster pass through the teleport tunnel or will his movement into the tunnel cause it to collapse? Here’s what it says in the book:
Teleport tunnel is a very useful tool for the enclave sorcerers. It creates a tunnel (the size of the area of effect) with one end at the principal caster and the other end at the auxiliary caster. Only two spell casters can be involved in the casting of this spell. The principal caster is the one who initiates the spell. This caster begins casting towards the other. After one turn of casting, the other sorcerer becomes aware of the teleport tunnel and has to open his or her end. The principal caster must use four power levels, while the auxiliary caster only needs to supply three. If the auxiliary does not respond, the principal will begin taking sustaining fatigue, even though the spell has not yet been cast.
Once the tunnel has been successfully opened, anyone or anything can pass through the tunnel and instantly be transported from one end to the other. Through these means, large amounts of people or products can be transported. This tunnel works much like the other teleport spells except that it is maintained. If either of the casters drops the sustaining of the spell, it will fail. The spell cannot be resisted.
By the description, it sounds like he could take a free walk into the tunnel as long as he was sustaining it. I would collapse the tunnel behind him, because it is “between” the two casters, so it cannot be behind the principal caster. Well, for that manner, could the auxiliary caster enter his own teleport tunnel? The rules don’t specify, but I have always assumed that they couldn’t. What do you think?
For those of you not familiar with the Book of Wishes, it is only currently published in hard copy. It has been re-edited, but the layout work has not yet been done to convert it into a pdf. Since the book has a lot of art, the layout work is pretty intense. We hoped to have it on our distributors’ sites reasonably soon.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Magical Theory
So hopefully those of you who have been reading this blog are starting to understand our theory on role-playing. Basically we believe that the adventurers should be out there doing wild and wooly things while the rest of the world moves forward on its own. That means that mundane stuff is going on all the time and the adventuring somehow fits in the cracks and gaps. We don’t have to dwell on the mundane stuff, as long as we know that there are NPCs out there doing it.
An Example: Just like in our culture, there are tons of people spending their lives debating things that the rest of us couldn’t care less about. In the game world, it would seem most likely that other than religion (well religions because there are so darn many gods), magical theory would likely be one of the most debated things. Take a comet ball for instance. The spell description itself says that the mage rips a fiery stone from the heavens and hurls it down at the mage’s will. I don’t want to get into the physics of it, but to actually rip a meteor or asteroid from space and hurl it down to the Earth in a matter of 10 second or less would likely be moving the rock at light speed or faster. Of course, not everyone (in fact probably no one) in the fantasy world would understand meteors or the speed of light, so they might argue this is possible. Others might argue that the comet ball was moving at magically fast speeds. There might be angels who anticipate the need for comet balls and set them in motion hours before they are needed, and the mage is simply guiding them. Maybe the comet ball is coming from the elemental dimension of earth. Maybe the comet ball is traveling through hyperspace or using space folding techniques. Maybe hyperspace and the elemental plane are the same place.
Do you as a GM or a player, care which of these is true? Well, not really. Do you need to debate it during one of your gaming sessions? Absolutely not! So does it matter? It doesn’t matter, but if you know that there are people employed by magical universities to research and try to figure out silly theories like this, than you have just built a better, more realistic, and even more interesting game world for your players. Well, and for you!
Will these ever matter? They might. If the debate is which is more powerful divine magic or sorcery, well those kind of arguments have a habit of spilling over into feuds, duels, and other civil unrest. Even if the comet ball debate ended in a fist fight, it would likely only be interesting and not important. Yes, we’re all picturing two weakling mages arguing over whether comet ball angels exist while they wrestle on the floor of an empty lecture hall. OK, maybe that was just me.
An Example: Just like in our culture, there are tons of people spending their lives debating things that the rest of us couldn’t care less about. In the game world, it would seem most likely that other than religion (well religions because there are so darn many gods), magical theory would likely be one of the most debated things. Take a comet ball for instance. The spell description itself says that the mage rips a fiery stone from the heavens and hurls it down at the mage’s will. I don’t want to get into the physics of it, but to actually rip a meteor or asteroid from space and hurl it down to the Earth in a matter of 10 second or less would likely be moving the rock at light speed or faster. Of course, not everyone (in fact probably no one) in the fantasy world would understand meteors or the speed of light, so they might argue this is possible. Others might argue that the comet ball was moving at magically fast speeds. There might be angels who anticipate the need for comet balls and set them in motion hours before they are needed, and the mage is simply guiding them. Maybe the comet ball is coming from the elemental dimension of earth. Maybe the comet ball is traveling through hyperspace or using space folding techniques. Maybe hyperspace and the elemental plane are the same place.
Do you as a GM or a player, care which of these is true? Well, not really. Do you need to debate it during one of your gaming sessions? Absolutely not! So does it matter? It doesn’t matter, but if you know that there are people employed by magical universities to research and try to figure out silly theories like this, than you have just built a better, more realistic, and even more interesting game world for your players. Well, and for you!
Will these ever matter? They might. If the debate is which is more powerful divine magic or sorcery, well those kind of arguments have a habit of spilling over into feuds, duels, and other civil unrest. Even if the comet ball debate ended in a fist fight, it would likely only be interesting and not important. Yes, we’re all picturing two weakling mages arguing over whether comet ball angels exist while they wrestle on the floor of an empty lecture hall. OK, maybe that was just me.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Stable/Inn Campaign
Looking for something a little different? Here’s my newest idea for a new campaign. Feel free to steal it for your own use (but come on, no publishing it OK).
The party is related to each other in some way - probably cousins. They are all contacted by someone that their mutual grandperson has passed away and left them a piece of the family stable or perhaps inn. As they all return to the ancestral home, they begin to work to at the run down inn hoping to rebuild it to its former glory. Sounds dull? OK, here are some adventure ideas:
* A horse in the stable escaped and the party must go out into the wilderness in the dark of night to find it. While they likely will not encounter dangerous animals, walking around a forest in pitch black is a dangerous thing (traps, holes, branches, streams, etc). They need to get the horse back before dawn in order to avoid the bad publicity of having lost the thing in the first place.
* Rustlers stole the cattle the inn planned to butcher and serve. First the party needs to hunt some game to serve, then they need to hunt thee rustlers.
* A guest turns out to be a werewolf, but how do they determine which one and how do they stop him/her.
* An elderly guest dies at the inn and they bury him, only to learn later that they buried him with an important item that other people are now searching for.
* The barmaid has been kidnapped - was it the jealous boyfriend or the group of bandits nearby?
* Someone left a horse at the stable, promising them that if they could sell the horse, he’d let them keep X%. Of course, the horse was stolen shortly thereafter. Was it stolen? or was the “seller” the thief?
* An escaped slave has found his way to the inn, but the slave hunters are right on his trail. Hand him over or help him hide? If they help him hide, do they become part of an underground railroad that pits them against a major slavery group?
* The ghost of grandpa is now haunting the hotel - how to get rid of him without destroying his eternal soul?
There is a strong part of me that feels that this has a Scooby Doo feel to it. Adventure just keeps finding the poor owners of this hotel, but that is true of a lot of campaigns. No, there likely won’t be any major battles with dragons or flaming broad swords, though of course a dragon could decide to move in nearby and need to be killed or chased off. This could be a very fun campaign. If you need more adventure, have the inn become very close to the battle lines of a major war. Maybe it would become the field HQ for a large military unit, and then maybe a hospital for the enemy after they take the region. The players would likely be caught up in the fighting, but do they want to takes sides or simply try to preserve their livelihoods while the two distant governments fight all around them.
Need more? Know all those “The City Alchemist needs a special ingredient in order to make a special antidote” quests? Now they are “The cook needs a special spice or the special of the week will fail” quests. Quest givers, like the poor woman who lost her husband to the goblins while he was carrying a map of a gold mine, now stumble into the players’ public room instead of a miscellaneous bar somewhere. All sorts of interesting people will pass through, many of which will need help.
Off the wall can often be the best campaigns. Making the characters worry about their home also has a way of anchoring the players to their characters and making them incredibly memorable.
P.S. Sorry for the late post - tech glitch over the weekend. Last time I try an automated update.
The party is related to each other in some way - probably cousins. They are all contacted by someone that their mutual grandperson has passed away and left them a piece of the family stable or perhaps inn. As they all return to the ancestral home, they begin to work to at the run down inn hoping to rebuild it to its former glory. Sounds dull? OK, here are some adventure ideas:
* A horse in the stable escaped and the party must go out into the wilderness in the dark of night to find it. While they likely will not encounter dangerous animals, walking around a forest in pitch black is a dangerous thing (traps, holes, branches, streams, etc). They need to get the horse back before dawn in order to avoid the bad publicity of having lost the thing in the first place.
* Rustlers stole the cattle the inn planned to butcher and serve. First the party needs to hunt some game to serve, then they need to hunt thee rustlers.
* A guest turns out to be a werewolf, but how do they determine which one and how do they stop him/her.
* An elderly guest dies at the inn and they bury him, only to learn later that they buried him with an important item that other people are now searching for.
* The barmaid has been kidnapped - was it the jealous boyfriend or the group of bandits nearby?
* Someone left a horse at the stable, promising them that if they could sell the horse, he’d let them keep X%. Of course, the horse was stolen shortly thereafter. Was it stolen? or was the “seller” the thief?
* An escaped slave has found his way to the inn, but the slave hunters are right on his trail. Hand him over or help him hide? If they help him hide, do they become part of an underground railroad that pits them against a major slavery group?
* The ghost of grandpa is now haunting the hotel - how to get rid of him without destroying his eternal soul?
There is a strong part of me that feels that this has a Scooby Doo feel to it. Adventure just keeps finding the poor owners of this hotel, but that is true of a lot of campaigns. No, there likely won’t be any major battles with dragons or flaming broad swords, though of course a dragon could decide to move in nearby and need to be killed or chased off. This could be a very fun campaign. If you need more adventure, have the inn become very close to the battle lines of a major war. Maybe it would become the field HQ for a large military unit, and then maybe a hospital for the enemy after they take the region. The players would likely be caught up in the fighting, but do they want to takes sides or simply try to preserve their livelihoods while the two distant governments fight all around them.
Need more? Know all those “The City Alchemist needs a special ingredient in order to make a special antidote” quests? Now they are “The cook needs a special spice or the special of the week will fail” quests. Quest givers, like the poor woman who lost her husband to the goblins while he was carrying a map of a gold mine, now stumble into the players’ public room instead of a miscellaneous bar somewhere. All sorts of interesting people will pass through, many of which will need help.
Off the wall can often be the best campaigns. Making the characters worry about their home also has a way of anchoring the players to their characters and making them incredibly memorable.
P.S. Sorry for the late post - tech glitch over the weekend. Last time I try an automated update.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Research
You know, more and more of these posts are coming out of me trying to teach my young sons how to play. One of my sons was reading the book Castle by David Macaulay. I told the older one that he too should read the book. “But, isn’t that...informative?” Gasp! No! Not that! Heaven forbid! Ok, enough of that. Yep! It is informative. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t have the information contained within that book, you should not be running a fantasy role-playing game that in any way mirrors feudal Europe, which, let’s face it, most of them do.
I’m not saying that this is the quintessential book that must be read, but the information in that book is needed. The book Castle is just the easiest way I know to gain that information.
So forgetting the book - how much research is required to run a game? I do tons of research; probably way too much. Other guys are running things with absolutely none. Where’s the happy medium? I’m interested in your opinions. I think it depends on the education and personalities of your players. Some re-enactors need to have everything exactly right, and the slightest coat of arms out of balance ruins the game for them. I’ve even had arguments a couple of times where I insist that Fletnern (my game world) is NOT Earth and therefore the development of certain technologies would not have followed the same course. For some realists, that isn’t good enough. So again, where is the middle ground? Does it matter if you place a swamp next to mountain and a desert? Maybe not. Does it matter what the mass of the planet’s moon is and how that mass would affect either the gravity while standing on the moon or the rise and fall of the tides? Probably not. Should there be some sense of realism? I think so.
Here’s a big one - If 10 coppers = 1 silver and 10 silvers = 1 gold, does that make sense compared to our modern sense of money? No way. Does that mean its wrong? Maybe, maybe not. This is not the planet Earth we’re dealing with here, and maybe the supply of gold and silver are completely different on that planet. So is game balance and ease of monetary conversion so important that we can ignore this sense of reality? Yeah, I think it is.
Here’s my completely unscientific answer to how much research is needed: Enough that your players believe that within that world, this is reasonable, but not so much that you feel like you have homework every night just so you can have fun one day a week.
I’m not saying that this is the quintessential book that must be read, but the information in that book is needed. The book Castle is just the easiest way I know to gain that information.
So forgetting the book - how much research is required to run a game? I do tons of research; probably way too much. Other guys are running things with absolutely none. Where’s the happy medium? I’m interested in your opinions. I think it depends on the education and personalities of your players. Some re-enactors need to have everything exactly right, and the slightest coat of arms out of balance ruins the game for them. I’ve even had arguments a couple of times where I insist that Fletnern (my game world) is NOT Earth and therefore the development of certain technologies would not have followed the same course. For some realists, that isn’t good enough. So again, where is the middle ground? Does it matter if you place a swamp next to mountain and a desert? Maybe not. Does it matter what the mass of the planet’s moon is and how that mass would affect either the gravity while standing on the moon or the rise and fall of the tides? Probably not. Should there be some sense of realism? I think so.
Here’s a big one - If 10 coppers = 1 silver and 10 silvers = 1 gold, does that make sense compared to our modern sense of money? No way. Does that mean its wrong? Maybe, maybe not. This is not the planet Earth we’re dealing with here, and maybe the supply of gold and silver are completely different on that planet. So is game balance and ease of monetary conversion so important that we can ignore this sense of reality? Yeah, I think it is.
Here’s my completely unscientific answer to how much research is needed: Enough that your players believe that within that world, this is reasonable, but not so much that you feel like you have homework every night just so you can have fun one day a week.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Switching Genres take 2
OK, so the last post was why Westerns are good. Here is why others are not so good:
Super Hero stories - Too often the super hero is a solo act. Too often the villain is a solo act. Few fantasy role-playing games are set up for fight, escape fight again. They’re kill or be killed. That doesn’t work as well with superhero stories. Also, the hero(es) often gain power in astronomical proportions. The hero doesn’t gain a better weapon, he learns to channel his inner self and go from throwing small flames around to going super nova. That doesn’t work for extended campaigns. The action pacing is often very good though.
Fantasy stories - Too often the hero is a solo act or a hero with less important followers. Too often the players see the similarities immediately. Too often there is one super powerful weapon - not the kind of thing that groups of friends can share. Often the action is paced wrong and the hero and his lady love are important aspects.
War stories - They typically use “parties”; this is good! They are kill or be killed; which is good! Typically they are far too dramatic, with massive amounts of character building and not the right action pacing for a RPG. Sometimes, TV series can be useful for mission ideas (Think Combat! or Rat Patrol). The enemies work because they are always the same. Trying to get a plot line where your party members HATE the enemy, but its a new enemy every week? Yeah - nope.
Off genre action - This is some of the best ground, but it depends on the movie. A classical space opera might work, unless its all about one hero, though you’ll never hear me say anything bad about Flash Gordon. Some of the pulp action stories, typically about Wild Africa - can work nicely, but they do rely on their location for some of the mystery and suspense. That can be extremely difficult to reproduce. Of course, there is no better hero than Allan Quatermain, and in his first two books, he does travel with a party. It comes down to the same issues as we laid out here. As we all know, a sci-fi movie can be a classic Western style, or a war movie or a super hero story. Victorian, Future, post-Apocalypse, they really don’t change what we’ve already listed.
Super Hero stories - Too often the super hero is a solo act. Too often the villain is a solo act. Few fantasy role-playing games are set up for fight, escape fight again. They’re kill or be killed. That doesn’t work as well with superhero stories. Also, the hero(es) often gain power in astronomical proportions. The hero doesn’t gain a better weapon, he learns to channel his inner self and go from throwing small flames around to going super nova. That doesn’t work for extended campaigns. The action pacing is often very good though.
Fantasy stories - Too often the hero is a solo act or a hero with less important followers. Too often the players see the similarities immediately. Too often there is one super powerful weapon - not the kind of thing that groups of friends can share. Often the action is paced wrong and the hero and his lady love are important aspects.
War stories - They typically use “parties”; this is good! They are kill or be killed; which is good! Typically they are far too dramatic, with massive amounts of character building and not the right action pacing for a RPG. Sometimes, TV series can be useful for mission ideas (Think Combat! or Rat Patrol). The enemies work because they are always the same. Trying to get a plot line where your party members HATE the enemy, but its a new enemy every week? Yeah - nope.
Off genre action - This is some of the best ground, but it depends on the movie. A classical space opera might work, unless its all about one hero, though you’ll never hear me say anything bad about Flash Gordon. Some of the pulp action stories, typically about Wild Africa - can work nicely, but they do rely on their location for some of the mystery and suspense. That can be extremely difficult to reproduce. Of course, there is no better hero than Allan Quatermain, and in his first two books, he does travel with a party. It comes down to the same issues as we laid out here. As we all know, a sci-fi movie can be a classic Western style, or a war movie or a super hero story. Victorian, Future, post-Apocalypse, they really don’t change what we’ve already listed.
Switching Genres
Sorry for the delayed post - I was out of town. Better yet, I’ll be gone again this weekend, so I’ll post both now. It was a two-parter anyway, so it sees to fit.
We fill a lot of space in some of our books (most notably Forge of Imagination and Character Foundry) talking about switching genres. So what works? I think that flat out, the best genres to borrow ideas from are the Westerns. They work perfectly for fantasy games. Now, I’m talking about John Wayne style Westerns here, not those Clint Eastwood ones. Unless your gaming group likes to spend hours staring intimidatingly at one another, forget most of the Clint Eastwood stuff.
So why do they work? Well, first off, there is typically a “party” or at least a pair of guys or the hero gathers together a posse. You know, a party, like a standard fantasy game. Then there is the pacing of the action. Westerns have some of the best pacing. Small events turn into bigger events, which get confused with other things, until the big climax. Plus the villain usually has a small army of guys. Let’s go to an example:
Imagine a typical Western - Two buddies stop by a small town and have a drink in a bar. There they see four guys jump one guy in a bar fight. They help him out, and get embroiled in his problems. The victim tells the heroes who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Beautiful adventure development without the unrealistic, you walk into a bar and a guy hires you to go...
At this point, the villain might appear and try to turn the good guys to his side, but since he hasn’t done anything really villainous yet, they can’t just go kill him. Likely there is some side mission that needs to be done - the good guy’s boss needs medicine that he is carrying, the victim guy was in town to meet a string of ponies, etc. This provides another action packed encounter when the players are fighting the villain’s minions. Eventually, the good guys (your players we’re assuming) need to fight their way through all of the villain’s minions until they get to him and kill him. Sound familiar?
What else? Well, how many times have the good guys escaped from some bad guy trap. Just as they look over their shoulder and say, “I think we lost them” the entire Sioux Nation comes riding over the ridge. The Indians don’t have anything to do with the good guys or bad guys, but they still serve as enemies. The same thing can be said for the desperate struggles against the environment. Whether its trying to cross a raging river or survive travel across a desert, these man vs. nature encounters are great as well. Hey, throw in a burning barn if nature isn’t going to fit the bill.
I guess this all makes better sense if you’ve read Forge of Imagination, but I think you’ll still get the drift! (RPG Now Links)
We fill a lot of space in some of our books (most notably Forge of Imagination and Character Foundry) talking about switching genres. So what works? I think that flat out, the best genres to borrow ideas from are the Westerns. They work perfectly for fantasy games. Now, I’m talking about John Wayne style Westerns here, not those Clint Eastwood ones. Unless your gaming group likes to spend hours staring intimidatingly at one another, forget most of the Clint Eastwood stuff.
So why do they work? Well, first off, there is typically a “party” or at least a pair of guys or the hero gathers together a posse. You know, a party, like a standard fantasy game. Then there is the pacing of the action. Westerns have some of the best pacing. Small events turn into bigger events, which get confused with other things, until the big climax. Plus the villain usually has a small army of guys. Let’s go to an example:
Imagine a typical Western - Two buddies stop by a small town and have a drink in a bar. There they see four guys jump one guy in a bar fight. They help him out, and get embroiled in his problems. The victim tells the heroes who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Beautiful adventure development without the unrealistic, you walk into a bar and a guy hires you to go...
At this point, the villain might appear and try to turn the good guys to his side, but since he hasn’t done anything really villainous yet, they can’t just go kill him. Likely there is some side mission that needs to be done - the good guy’s boss needs medicine that he is carrying, the victim guy was in town to meet a string of ponies, etc. This provides another action packed encounter when the players are fighting the villain’s minions. Eventually, the good guys (your players we’re assuming) need to fight their way through all of the villain’s minions until they get to him and kill him. Sound familiar?
What else? Well, how many times have the good guys escaped from some bad guy trap. Just as they look over their shoulder and say, “I think we lost them” the entire Sioux Nation comes riding over the ridge. The Indians don’t have anything to do with the good guys or bad guys, but they still serve as enemies. The same thing can be said for the desperate struggles against the environment. Whether its trying to cross a raging river or survive travel across a desert, these man vs. nature encounters are great as well. Hey, throw in a burning barn if nature isn’t going to fit the bill.
I guess this all makes better sense if you’ve read Forge of Imagination, but I think you’ll still get the drift! (RPG Now Links)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Lower Level Bad Guys
I was making bad guys to throw against some younger kids (8-12) who want to play Legend Quest and it occurred to me - Why would really minor bandits be warriors? Look, there are kids who grow up wanting to be soldiers. They play soldier, they watch soldiers, they get into military academies, and then they become soldiers. These guys are going to be warriors through and through. OK, so they will learn some auxiliary skills, like carousing and maybe a foreign language, but by and large it will be combat skills and those skills that promote good military life (etiquette, weapon craft, maybe senses, etc.)
What about our rabble of bandits? Did they decide at a young age they wanted to be bandits? Probably not. Did they grow up playing bandits? Well, maybe yes. Did they go to a bandit academy? Nope. So what skills should they have? Well, if they are low level bandits, they probably tried to do a number of other jobs first. Maybe they were porters, common laborers, maybe caravan guards, lumberjacks, bartenders, cotton pickers, or all of these at various different times. I went with these guys tried to make it under a number of jobs, but kept getting fired for not working hard enough. Slackers seem to be more inclined to turn to banditry. I figure they were lumberjacks longer than any of their other minor professions, so they wield axes (tool strength), and the one guy who worked as a caravan guard also has a bow. Are they weak in combat? Sure, but they’re supposed to be - they’re starter bad guys.
Gotta tell you - I’m really proud of these losers. They make sense. These are exactly the type of guys that would try to pull off this job and get killed for it. They are tougher than a typical farmer, enough so that most people would hire mercenaries to protect them from them, but not offer enough money to get the really good mercs, just the starter ones. I’m also really happy with the LQ character creation process that allows me to create guys like this quickly, and not have to pigeon hole every character like he spent his life in a gladiatorial training camp. Try it - You’ll like it!
What about our rabble of bandits? Did they decide at a young age they wanted to be bandits? Probably not. Did they grow up playing bandits? Well, maybe yes. Did they go to a bandit academy? Nope. So what skills should they have? Well, if they are low level bandits, they probably tried to do a number of other jobs first. Maybe they were porters, common laborers, maybe caravan guards, lumberjacks, bartenders, cotton pickers, or all of these at various different times. I went with these guys tried to make it under a number of jobs, but kept getting fired for not working hard enough. Slackers seem to be more inclined to turn to banditry. I figure they were lumberjacks longer than any of their other minor professions, so they wield axes (tool strength), and the one guy who worked as a caravan guard also has a bow. Are they weak in combat? Sure, but they’re supposed to be - they’re starter bad guys.
Gotta tell you - I’m really proud of these losers. They make sense. These are exactly the type of guys that would try to pull off this job and get killed for it. They are tougher than a typical farmer, enough so that most people would hire mercenaries to protect them from them, but not offer enough money to get the really good mercs, just the starter ones. I’m also really happy with the LQ character creation process that allows me to create guys like this quickly, and not have to pigeon hole every character like he spent his life in a gladiatorial training camp. Try it - You’ll like it!
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