10 by 10 room

Check out this character descripton by ‘Simple Man’ on RPG.net. It began with him and a friend invite to a game of D&D, which wasn’t their first choice. But, they were determined to find a hook they could get into. And so…

3 seconds later, my friend hit me with a statement that I should have known all along: “Dude, we’re the boondock saints!” And from then on, our characters were brothers by blood.

And so Wolfgang and Albrecht were born, a Paladin and Cleric (respectively) who drank heavily (often toasting Pelor), roughhoused in the tavern, and basically partook of anything seedy but still considered acceptible by D&D standards of Law and Good. If there was Evil, we smote it. If there was an innocent in danger, we would quickly sober up and save the day.

But we played brothers first and foremost. We played darts in the bar, then beat eachother up when one started to get ahead. If one ran headlong into danger, the other followed. And if one was insulted by a townsperson, the other decked said townsperson. We also tried to get the rest of the party in on it, as we were roleplaying becoming fast friends with everyone, lovable drunkards who were really decent fellows down at the core.

Awesome. Even when the focus is on tactics and challenge, a good D&D game absolutely needs vibrant character hooks you can riff off of.

Polaris is a game known for use of ritual phrases to negotiate the fiction. In an RPGNet thread, Ben Lehman clarifies the key difference between two of the phrases, “But Only If…” and “And Furthermore…”

Heart: I walk across the street.
Mistaken: But only if a giant ice worm eats your beloved.
Heart: It was not meant to be. Seriously, dude, what the fuck?

vs.

Heart: I walk across the street.
Mistaken: And furthermore a giant ice worm eats your beloved.
Heart: Ahw, crap. Now I have to deal with this. Uh… It shall not come to pass.

The rest of the thread is also useful, with actual explanations and discussion of the 5-player variant.

My friend Shreyas was making this post on RPG.net. He was looking for a system for a game that presumably had emphasis on high action…
(15:30:02) willows: my xiaolin showdown thread sucks
(15:30:14) willows: “i wanna run this with not exalted or wotg“
(15:30:18) willows: person 1: “hey use wushu“
(15:30:32) willows: “didn’t you see that i want toy quality, wushu is a bad toy”
(15:30:37) willows: person 2: “but use wushu anyway”
(15:30:40) willows: “uh”
(15:30:44) willows: person 3: “what else is there”
(15:30:53) willows: “i did start this thread for a reason”
(15:31:14) willows: person 4: “hey use wushu it’s light hearted”
(15:31:31) willows: person 5: “i know you rejected wushu but use it anyway”

Me? I like Wushu. Why not just use that?

From RPGNet: Greg Stolze on How much money should Industry types make?. His vision is a bit negative on the traditional gaming / distribution model, but he’s upbeat on how gaming as a hobby will endure and remake itself. He outlines a 5-step process, and here’s step 2:

2) Mass FLGS extinction. Some of them get hit by the asteroid of “we have terrible customer service and a desperately fragmented consumer base” while some evolve into birds by ditching RPGs and concentrating on TCGs, minis, DVDs and computer games.

I will take any and all reports of industry-death with several grains of salt! But Greg has shown to be firmly interested in trying alternate distribution methods, as his frequent use of the Ransom Model.

No comment.

Shortly after Dan Bayn released Wushu under a Creative Commons license, a popular Wushu Wiki soon emerged, with both the original rules texts as well as suggested modifications and ideas. Kiero took the initiative start building a Wushu Index of the various RPGnet threads about the game. In the same thread, several posters (and especially the wiki owner Emprint) worked together to despamify and revive the Wiki. Good job!

From Malcolm Shepherd’s new “Shooting Dice” blog: Getting Real About RPGs and Mainstream Culture. A lot of intersting points, including a skewering the two most common modes of rpgs:

RPG design usually picks one of two routes. We either get well-defined complexity or vague simplicity. Neither of these fly with people who aren’t going to get fannish over it.

Here’s the originating RPGnet thread: RPGs need their Neil Gaiman…

The idea is that he managed to make comics more acceptable to the mainstream, albeit by rebranding them as “graphic novels”. So there’s a wish by some (which Malcolm, above, feels is misguided) to upscale/intellectualize RPGs to make them more acceptable as art. Rebecca Bergstrom was mentioned as a possible analogue; “Forge games in general” was also suggested.

I’m not looking to make things more highbrow myself, but I have seen inadvertently occur. I have a friend who didn’t really “get” the RPG thing, and was even turned off by Nobilis (!) or at least from overhearing a geekish discussion of Domains, Powers, etc.

However: when I described Primetime Adventures to her, she very clear change in understanding, saying “Wow, so these are more like improvisational storytelling than roleplaying games…” I found that a very interesting reaction.

Bear in mind that I don’t have an investment in actually making a distinction or break between kinds of games or terminology, nor am I selling any particular set games as fancy heralds of fancy intellectualism. Nonetheless, this is still the one time I’ve seen that change actually occur.

(If you’re unfamliar about the larger past discussions of the mainstream and roleplaying, check out the Forge for Mainstream: a revision, and other related threads.)

Interesting RPGnet thread on Wushu. In case you’re not familiar, Wushu is a game by Dan Bayn that’s focused entirely on action – the mechanics basically just do two things:

• pacing a conflict (usually a fight)
• incentivizing free narration, where each extra embellishment on your action gets you an extra die to roll towards your ultiamte goals

And beyond that, it’s quite nearly free narration. So reading this thread (and hwo people have internalized how Wushu works) is interesting, because I see two things going on here.

Firstly, Wushu’s rules are focused towards just those two things there (pacing conflicts and incentivizing narration).

But secondly, Wushu’s rules don’t give you ANYTHING else towards playing into a genre, and it seems like the consensus is that while you can add crunch to Wushu to fit it into a genre, it runs contrary to how many people play. Getting play to fit a genre or other expectations seems to be accomplished by the group at the social level, and with the rules just getting out of the way.

So it’s both: focused rules that also get out of the way. (It reminds me of dicussions of designing what matters vs designing what doesn’t matter.)

A recent RPGNet thread discussed how to tie up loose ends in an in-genre way. In a Buffy game, there was a nasty villain who was defeated, but the players were stumped about how to deal with him. Killing him felt “out of genre” at this point, but there was no other convenient way to stop this villain from becoming a threat again. John Kim observed>

There are many possibilities which have been suggested. Strangely, though no one seems to have asked about who the characters are. Who are your characters, and what are they like?

It’s interesting how often we’re willing to address a situation in a game without looking at its most fundamental elements: the players and their characters. I find that the most useful Actual Play accounts always begin with who the players are, and what characters they’re playing, before describing any kind of setting or events.

An RPGnet post from Loseth discusses ‘realism vs. verisimilitude’ in two popular games, The Riddle of Steel and Burning Wheel. Both these games are known for a “gritty” depiction of combat, but it is said they differ on being realistic, and seeming realistic.