Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 34 of 156)

General heading for all RPGs.

What I Would Like to be Playing Now

August 1, 2017 / Bear

Taking a cue from S. John Ross’ Google+ post, I plan to be flexible with the RPG a Day questions from time to time.

I would like to be playing TSR’s Marvel Super Hero game again. While working on The Red Concordant, I re-discovered my love for this game. I only played it once in college, but I’ll never forget it. I would like to say that I was a master of the rules, but I wasn’t. Fact is that I floundered my way through our adventure. I was the tank of the group relishing in spending Karma points to obliterate cars, chunks of buildings, and alien robots. You see, I didn’t need to spend the points, but I wanted to have the highest success possible. My dream was to be have Shift-Eleventy Billion Endurance to take down cosmic threats like Ego, the sentient planet.

If I were to play again, I would be a magic wielding character. In studying the magic system again, I noticed that even the weakest wizard would have guaranteed spell effects. One example is Alteration – Appearance. With this spell, you could also change your face and appearance to be someone else with a similar face and build. Anything beyond this required a roll. I read this to mean that I could change my hair color, add a small scar, change clothes, and/or freckles and not require a roll. I figure that it is the easiest way to maintain a secret identity. I cast Alteration – Appearance as a means to get into costume. Presto! I change my hair, add a birthmark, and change eye color to keep from being easily recognized in my normal form.

As I improved my magical abilities, my costume would become more wild. It would require a roll, but if my character has really improved, it shouldn’t be too difficult to change height, have freakishly blue skin, scales, and/or a tail.

Yes, I use and/or frequently.

Maybe I could transform into Mogo one day and challenge Ego to a duel…

Anyway, I would love to play this classic game again. There is a facebook group that loves the game. I believe they play online on Mondays. (Need to check.) As I can’t do Mondays right now, so playing will have to remain a dream.

Wait Five Minutes

Another game that I’d love to play is Microscope. I would really love to play this game. I read history and love many of Turtedove’s alternate histories. I know almost nothing about this game except that you and a bunch of friends make an epic history thousands of years long. The part of me that loves the next big shiny would seldom get tired of generating multiple epics.

This is the Flexible Part

What I’d really like to do is play both of these games. If Marvel can have mutants from Ancient Egypt, I can have an epic history with the rise and fall of supers. Who knows what the other players would generate. A primitive supers society falls to the dinosaurs? Neanderthals had mental psi powers that could counter supers making it so that modern humans with some Neanderthal DNA are collected together in an underground school to learn to fight supervillans? Magic is a force that rises and falls to meet the threat of mutants? Would there be any mutants at all?

Once the world is defined throughout history, generating characters to fit into this history becomes easier. This magic wielding person? She would fit in the world’s Middle Ages where magic ran high and an organized college of wizards hunted so-called monsters. A tank? A dinosaur killer fighting to keep an ancient civilization from destruction. Modern times could have just about anyone with teams of Neanderthal descendants, regular humans with super-tech, cosmic enemies that unite the various factions of supers, etc.

So my short answer is that I would like to play two games. Microscope to set up playing FASERIP.

Excuse me while I go read the books again.

Epilogue

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I would probably use Zak’s house rule to use 3d20 instead of the resolution chart. Don’t get me wrong, I love the chart. It’s art! However, as I get older, I really enjoy hearing the rolling of dice for everything.

Until next time, true believers…

The Red Concordant

May 17, 2017 / Bear

This is my current project. I am about 19 percent finished with the first draft of my Black Hack based game. So far, character creation is finished. The goal of The Red Concordant is to provide a few more options and examples for newer players. The final product should be about 10,000 words.

The text of the game will always be 100% OGL. I will publish a PDF, RTF, ODF, and DOCX version of the text.

I have been writing updates on Google+ in my RPG Ideas and Projects collection. Starting with this post, updates will also be posted on my Facebook page. I’ve quoted the beginning of the book below to explain the game.

What is The Red Concordant?

The Red Concordant is a game that provides classic fantasy adventures. The rules are broadly based on role-playing games of the 70s and early 80s. Specifically, the rules are based on The Black Hack to give it a simpler, streamlined flavor. The goal of this game is to have fun in a series of adventures, not to get bogged down in the minutiae of the rules.

The Red Concordant is also a framework for you to have adventures in your own worlds. A standard world is sketched out, but tools for making this game yours are provided near the end of the book.

In short, there is no wrong way to play this game if everyone is having fun.

What now?

Hopefully, I’ll have the first draft finished by June. Stay tuned!

Skills and Classes for the Younger Set

April 27, 2017 / Bear

Two players from my old Dungeon World group are looking to play something different. They have expressed interest in either my White Star house rules (but fantasy) or 5e. They don’t know that my White Star game house rules are essentially Swords & Wizardry classes with The Black Hack mechanics. The only concern for my old school proclivities was a lack of differentiation between characters of the same class.

I know, I know. I believe the memories of a characters’ exploits make them different from other characters, not the character sheet. Yes, it took me many months to train them to stop staring at the character sheet to see what they could do. Still, I feel like it would help them if they had a system that felt more like 5e. Selfishly, I think it would also help me ease into running a 5e game, so maybe we can all win.

I am considering a skill system bolt-on that adds only two rules:

You can try a skill, roll per normal rules against the attribute the GM names.
If you have the skill, add +2 bonus to the attribute being tested, a roll of 20 is always a failure.
You can add a new skill every 3 levels.

The list of skills would be the standard from 5e, but wouldn’t be tied to an attribute. On the character index card, skills would be listed next to special abilities. Since I haven’t had a game go beyond 10th level yet, three skills doesn’t feel like too many. At higher levels, since their primary attribute will likely be 17 to 20, it encourages skills for weaker attributes. This fits with the goal of making characters of the same class feel very different mechanically.

The only difference mechanically between a character with a skill and a special ability is that a character with a special ability rolls with advantage. More specifically, a Conjurer with the skill can roll under Dexterity for Sleight of Hand (which could mean picking pockets, palming a coin, or something) while a Thief rolls the same task with advantage. In fact, using the 5e skills (because they are more broad than 3.5 skills) also gives me tools for building classes.

A Bard is a character that rolls with advantage (Charisma) for Persuasion and Performance tests. An Ranger rolls Perception tests with advantage. Thieves could range in abilities (roll with advantage to deceive, or to gather food while adventuring outdoors.

The benefit I see mechanically occurs at lower level, but the bonus is low enough that it might encourage diversification. I’ll have to play with this some more.

Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 34 of 156)