10 by 10 room

In a brainstorming RPGnet thread on mixing D&D and, um, communism, brianm came up with an interesting scenario…

First, you make firearms as dangerous in the game as they are in real life. Bullets penetrate any mundane armours, so your AC is based only on dodge and magical bonuses. Second, give muskets exploding damage dice, meaning any roll of the maximum on damage gets you another roll, added to the first, until you stop rolling the max number. Finally, give a volley bonus, so that groups of musketeers are more dangerous than the same number of individuals.

Now you have a recipe for replacing those uppity heroes with common folk. You also have the makings of the birth of the modern nation-state.

To play epic-level heroes at this historical moments sound to me like a very awesome idea.

A thread on the on the “Roleplayers of Color” mailing list was discussing the Wish lists for non-European cultural defaults for fantasy settings thread on Story-Games. Kynn Bartlett had a great idea for judging how to do this sort of fantasy right:

It has to be the myths OF THE CULTURES YOU’RE WRITING ABOUT, not the myths of OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT THEM.

A Mythic Africa has to be based on the myths people in Africa tell, not based on the myths that white-supremacist America has about Africa.

A Mythic Ancient Pueblo campaign (my current project) needs to be based in a frame of reference of that of the Southwest U.S. native peoples, not around that of European colonialism.

I really like this, because it’s a firm, commonsensical, practical grounding for enabling both cultural sensitivity AND remixing of various cultures into good gameplay. Wins all around!

Fantasy Novel Title Generator. Also available for scripting your next fantasy heartbreaker.