Philcon Gaming Panels
I have confirmed that I will be on three panels at Philcon next month, the Character Creation in Roleplaying and Fiction, World Building in Roleplaying and Fiction, and Game Publishing 101.
Anyone who’s interested in any of these things is encouraged to come to Philcon and attend. I’m more than happy to discuss things before and after panels, and would love a chance to get to know a few readers in person. If plan on coming, drop me a line and let me know at Daniel (at) AlephGaming.com
New House Rules
With the new cinematic campaign about to get started, I thought I would institute some new house rules, on a trial basis.
Private Character Generation. Players may create their character sheets, in their entirety, prior to play, and without Narrator supervision. This includes the rolling of stats, HP, and the like. I trust my players, and realize that they will be the only ones to enjoy the game any less should they cheat. Players are encouraged to take their time creating their character, and are still welcome to do so in my presence and with my consultation.
Stat Re-rolls. After rolling their stats, and recording the result of each individual die, players may choose to re-roll a single die, with the new value replacing the die’s old value.
The Assured Death Rule. Players may, at any time, ask if the course of action they are pondering or pursuing will result in any sort of assured death, or any situation which is nearly impossible to survive.
The 80% Rule. In the event of PC death, retirement, or write-out, the new character may be created with starting XP equivalent to 80% of the party’s average XP total
Highlander Trench Coats. I believe I’ve seen another name for this, but I cannot recall it. In Highlander, swords as big as claymores are often stored in trench coats, cloaks, or something equivalent. They may be carried around for a near endless period of time, without revealing themselves or proving any real hindrance. Similar restrictions will be waived for PCs when appropriate.
The Respec Rule. Characters may, when appropriate time and training is available between adventures, lose the benefits of old feats in exchange for new ones which may be selected. Skill ranks may be re-assigned similarly.
Dungeon Masters Guide II
Several times, I’ve been told that the DMG II is a great resource for DMs of any game, and that while a lot of the content in it is geared towards DnD and fantasy games, most of it is very universal.
I just recently picked up a copy of it, and not only am I surprised at the quality and quantity of information contained within, I’m having a great time reading it.
This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to improve their ability to run a game.
Changing the Game
I’ve recently begun working on a new campaign which will be starting this weekend, a d20 Modern game of Dark Matter, a game of paranormal investigation, with the Future, Future Tech, Cyberscape, and Modern Magic supplements.
Aside from the equipment in the various supplements, very little in this new game is new as far as mechanics are concerned. The new directions of the game, the subtleties that proper play demands, such as the low-key nature of magic, and the widespread disbelief of it, these things are more than sufficient to make the campaign, and the game itself, seem completely new.
I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. My players have proved to be just as excited as I am at the prospect of playing this new game, all because the theme of the game has been changed from “Supernatural” to “Paranormal.”
There are a number of other ways to take a setting or situation which is ordinarily normal and change it in minor ways so as to completely change the feel/course of the game. A high-tech or sci-fi game could be altered by a very primitive understanding of the technology used - it was found at some point in the past, and while the secrets of its use, and possibly maintainence, have been discovered, the secrets of is workings have not. This minor change opens up numerous new paths for the campaign, and changes the way players will look at things.
A Star Wars game could be changed by altering some mechanics of the Force such that drawing on its power drains life from other creatures - sort of a slower and more cosmic version of the Dark Sun Defiler. This would make little difference to many Dark Side users, especially Sith, but it would place a new level of moral questions for PCs to deal with.
Have you ever implemented any changes like this to change a game around?
Dealing with Identical PCs
First, an apology for the lack of update Friday. I had thought the server was set to automatically post the article Friday morning, but I made an error saving the post, and thus it was never posted. Here is the post from Friday. Normal posting will resume tomorrow.
No matter how much diversity any game offers, whether class and level based or point based, the problem identical PCs will eventually crop up. There are several circumstances under which people are likely to generate identical PCs, and several degress to which they can be “identical.”
The most common place to see identical PCs is at low level or in low power games, where the characters haven’t had as much time to diversify and “bloom.” The best solution in this case can be to simply wait, and give the characters time to develop, in personality and character development as well as on paper.
Some players come to the table with similar concepts for their characters in mind, which leads to similar character building or execution. If this is the case, try to emphasize the little differences in the characters, especially the ones that don’t make a difference as far as rules and game mechanics. If two characters are wielding two different swords that are near identical, place them in a role-playing situation where the differences are seen as important, either due to a fighting tradition which glamorizes one, or the weapon has some symbolic importance based in religion or myths.
Some players will purposefully build characters which are very similar, often creating a reason for this in their characters backgrounds, such as being siblings, or trained by the same teacher or order. If this is the case, you may wish to offer the players an extra bonus for this, because even if the mechanics don’t suggest it, two duelists/slashers/casters acting as a team or in tandem should be more effective than the two of them separately. Of course, this bonus shouldn’t be offered all the time (unless the mechanics normally call for it.)
Another common place to find identical PCs is among spell casters who are able to learn and teach new spells. PCs who wield magic with this kind of mechanic will often share spells freely with each other, in order to benefit the party. Try offering your players a way to specialize in different ways. If necessary, rule that only a certain number of spells or spells per level may be known by any caster - this will encourage them to learn different abilities in the interests of versatility.
Universally, the best way to deal with identical PCs is through role-playing. No matter how identical PCs may be on paper, they will almost certainly have different personalities, inclinations, mannerisms, and beliefs. Shining a light on this makes characters unique and special, and provides players with a reason not to min/max, another common cause of identical PCs because of bottle necking.
How do you deal with identical PCs?
Aleph Fantasy Preview and Demos
The Preview for Aleph Fantasy will be released on November 16th, and made available for free PDF download. A Pre-Release Event is being held at PhilCon that same weekend, where demos of the game will be run for free.
Aleph Fantasy uses the new Aleph System, which features:
- The new Continuous Combat System, which provides roundless combat.
- Non-linear class design, giving players a new level of control in how they advance
- A percentile skill system, where growth depends on Intelligence and use, not character level.
- A new magic system, leaving Spell Levels and the old Fire-and-Forget systems behind.
- One of the industry’s easiest Multi-Classing systems.
One Month Anniversary
It’s been one month since this blog went live, and since then over 900 unique visitors have dropped by, using over 140 megabytes of bandwidth. I’ve gotta say, this is more than I had hoped for in the initial month. The response from the community has also been great, from other people providing links and other word of mouth recommendations, to the people commenting on the site.
Inspiration From Old Bad Ideas
Recently, I picked up a copy of Quantum Leap, Too Close For Comfort, which has turned out to be a marvelous read with some surprising gems inside.
Those of you familiar with Quantum Leap will remember the premise: Sam Beckett (not the writer) stepped into the Quantum Accelerator, hoping to travel through time to observe events which had occurred in the past. Instead, he was thrown back in time and possessed a stranger’s body. Sam finds out the only way for him to go home is fix something which went wrong in the past. Only when he does so, he doesn’t go home, but Leaps into a new body, with a new task.
In the show, they were unable to explain how this happened. WHY did Sam Leap right after making things right? Why not before? The show offered the only explanation they could: May-be God’s doing it. (They actually worked this into a number of good story-lines later, but it never made much sense.)
In the book, another theory is expressed: Sam’s leaping around in time has caused fractures in the time space continuum. He leaps around after fixing one crack, which often creates cracks elsewhere. If he ever fixes them all, he gets to Leap home. This theory provides some interesting concepts to use as story premises, and satisfies the logical part of my mind enough for me to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the story.
More things in the books were explained far better than in the show: The reason Sam is able to see the holographic Al, and the other way around, is because the computer which links their minds was built using nerve cells from each of their brains. In the show, the best explanation was that their brainwaves were “compatible.” But here, now, we know why!
After realizing this was the case with the Quantum Leap novel, I thought back and was surprised to realize that this was actually very often the case. Star Trek novels from the Original Series era often provided new insights and explanations for things which were glossed over or simply ignored in the show - and they all provided ideas and inspirations for stories.
There’s no scientific way to find these tidbits directly, but I would not be surprised if picking up some old science fiction or fantasy novel would yield a good number of ideas and concepts which not only provide peace of mind for the more retentive readers, but also plenty of ideas to apply in stories or games.
Organizing Old Game Material
Martin over at Treasure Tables brought up the topic of organizing old game material on Saturday, and I thought I’d share a few of my methods.
If a PC dies, I take the character sheet and put it into a folder which is dedicated to collecting PC information after that PC’s death. I started doing this after a number of characters were returned to play sometime after their death due to various circumstances, some resurrected as themselves, and some as bad guys. The original information was always missing, however. Additionally, being able to look at the characters that participated in an adventure can help fill in many blanks which might exist.
All of my old notes get transcribed and saved on my computer, to make sure that they are not lost and are easy to edit. Once a set of notes becomes about a month old, I go back, and copy whatever information still seems relevant into the master notes file, which I used for quick references.
During particularly long campaigns, I will release some of my notes to my players, especially my limited notes about what they believed and experienced first hand during the game. This allows the players to be sure that they are remembering things as they happened, and they have an additional source of notes to refer to. Releasing the notes as a meta-reward has worked well for me in the past.
PCs versus Players
In Wednesday’s post, I discussed my Personal Rules for Narrating, and Uncle Dark pointed out that I was making a series of distinctions between the players themselves, the characters, and the party, though these distinctions were not made clear. Today, I thought I would correct this by explaining.
The Players. The Players themselves make up the core of any game, and without them the game obviously cannot exist: solitaire without a player is just a deck of cards. When Players come to any game, they have a set of expectations, not only for what the game will be like, but also how they would like the game to play out. In RPGs, these expectations will usually take the form of goals for their characters and the setting.
The Characters. Without the Players, the Characters are little more than pieces of paper and empty concepts. Characters are as essential to an RPG as the Players themselves, as the Characters are both the vehicle of the story and the game itself. In role-playing games and games where the player is introduced to their character over a period of time, it is not uncommon to discover that the goals of the Player and the goals of the Character are not one and the same, often due to a lack of knowledge about the other.
In most games, Players have two ways of playing their Characters:
- As Their Characters. Playing as a Character means that the Player has assumed the role of that Character, and the game is played as the Character would play it out and react to situations. Playing as a Character in this fashion may be considered role-playing, even if it is unaccompanied by role-acting.
- For Their Characters. Playing for a Character means that the Player is playing the game and participating in it in while not focusing primarily on how their character would react. This type of play is often passive, and can be found while playing video games, and in the behavior of many veteran role-players who have discovered that their play experience is not enriched by further role-playing in some situations, and that the outcome of many mundane situations is not altered by constant role-playing.
How will the goals differ for a Player/Character between these two modes of play?
A Player playing as their Character focuses primarily on the goals of the Character, and during actual play place their personal goals for the Character or the game at a lower priority than any in-game goals their Character might have. The immediate rewards of this type of play are often focused on the Character, while the long-term rewards are often focused around the experience of playing itself.
A Player playing for their Character will play often with their own personal goals as a Player placed first over those of the Character in-game. The immediate rewards of this type of play are often focused around the Player, and character rewards and goals, if in existence, will most likely be identical to those of the Player.
Why are these distinctions are important? The Player who plays as their Character has placed an amount of trust in the game and, by extension in RPGs, the Narrator who runs it. The Player trusts the game to be a rewarding experience simply through play itself, and that the game will meet any additional goals the Player may have had, either for themselves as a Player, the game itself, or even another Player or Character within the game.
Everyone has goals, Player, Character, or Narrator, and meeting the goals of each, both as a whole and on an individual basis, ensures play will be a success,
