The LIDT

Remember how many times I've mentioned the LIDT?

A fair number, actually.

It's not been an easy sell to North American fans, because we want to get something for membership. Last years' membership cost 10€, and what did I get out of it?

Access to some restricted parts of the forums. Preview information about Dungeon Twister: Prison.

For me, that was enough. There were a few other benefits, as well. But - again - not something that has been an easy sell to the North American audience.

For 2010, there is a new benefit available. For an additional 5€ (plus shipping), members can obtain an exclusive miniature of the Disciple. That's not right: Members get two figures: One in Yellow, the other in Blue. This mini is not available anywhere else, and may never be available elsewhere. The cost of shipping, BTW, is something we're working on minimizing. "We" meaning "all of us involved with the LIDT." The North American team - Geoff Heintzelman, Samuel Miuccio, and myself - will likely each receive a number of figures that we can ship out to North American members, thereby reducing shipping cost dramatically.

In a marginally related note: People are constantly asking me when Dungeon Twister will be available on the XBox. The answer is, "When Microsoft lets it through." The finished program has reportedly been handed off to their approvals team. I'm not involved in this one at all, however, so this is second-hand information.

Oh - there are rumors in the LIDT forums about the future of DT.

Iconica

Etsy is an arts-and-crafts fair for the internet. Like most arts-and-crafts fairs, there is a lot of really good stuff, if you poke around. There also a fair number of things to steer clear of. A lot of them.

A quick search on etsy for game yields a number of results, most of them projects made from game pieces, not actual games.

Because of this, a post on Wired about a game called Iconica caught my eye a few months ago. On my next payday, I purchased everything that was available for the game. The game is gorgeous. Eric Torres is a graphic designer by trade, and it shows. The art on the cards is clear, simple, and evocative. Enough that I've considered buying an extra set to use as decoration around the apartment.

Each character also has a short paragraph of text explaining their role within the setting of Rynaga. This information could be easily extracted for use in an RPG. If you purchase the Prelude book, you can get even more information about the setting - it reminds me a bit of the old Chronicles of Talislanta book, which was a setting in search of a game.

I brought the game home, and read the rules. It seemed a bit simple. I then went and played the game solo a few times, to see how it worked. It was ... okay. Nothing spectacular.

The next step, of course, was playing it with an actual opponent, so I packed it up and hauled it to my usual Wednesday Game Night to give it a shot.

Maybe it was a shortage of characters, but it just didn't feel like there was much interaction or decision making.

The game is quite simple in play. Each player drafts a team of three characters, and then you take turns rolling dice to kill your opponent's characters. Each character has six actions (one of which is available each turn, depending on what is rolled on the dice).

The most important part of the game is over before actual play starts. Seriously. Character selection is the make-or-break of the game. You need to balance offense with defense.

One your turn, you resolve effects which have lingered since last turn, and then roll the dice. Once the dice are rolled, you choose one character to activate using the number you rolled. Then you choose which opposing character to target with that action. Unfortunately, those are the only decisions you make on your turn, and neither one is particularly difficult.

The first decision: Which character will act? Usually, it's abundantly clear which of your three options is best. If your choices are, "Deal 30 points of damage (Melee)," "Deal 30 points of damage (Ranged)," or "Deal 10 points of damage," then obviously, you're going to choose one of the first two.

In general, it's like D&D: You want to figure out which opposing character is the most dangerous and target that character repeatedly until it's down before moving on to a second character.

It means that gameplay isn't all that strong, as there are not actually any true decisions to be made most of the time.  I think it has potential - but strengthening game play will require more than just adding new characters (in my opinion).  Maybe adding equipment cards or giving players a hand of cards to alter the game environment in some way.  I don't know. But the game needs more than just new characters (Sorry, Eric).

Don't get me wrong - new characters are great, and I love the peeks they provide into the background setting. I'll be buying new ones as fast as Eric Torres puts them on the website (and, of course, I have the money to spend). But the game won't be hitting the table all that often.

Also: My blog is now available for Kindle.

Pardon My Dust

It's been ... really busy, lately. I have finished a couple of rush revision projects and my (non-gaming) day job has been in process of blowing up in my face for several weeks, now. Enough that I've burned through my advance post cushion, and am writing this a day or two in advance of its going live. Thankfully, it looks like things are about to stabilize. Well, as much as things stabilize at my office.

Of course, they are stabilizing just in time for me to start gearing up for GenCon. Go figure. (As an aside: We have our flight reservations already. This just serves to make it more real.)

Those of you who actually visit my blog via visiting the site as opposed to via RSS feed will notice some changes since last week. I've changed my layout, and I'm not done, yet - I'm working on the background image (I want to use a photo of my own, for starters).

I've also purchased a domain - gamethyme.com, so the blog will now redirect there. Over time, I may put more there than just a blog. Time will tell.

Further, I'm considering making my blog available to Kindle users, which means I need to up my game a bit.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to talk about:
Iconica - The only game I've ever purchased from Etsy.
The Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume III (which I like a great deal)
Dungeon Twister (Shock. Surprise. Amazement. I know.) - There are things brewing in the LIDT that may make membership more attractive.
I also hope to have our first Character Generation post up by GenCon. But that may be stretching a bit.

Making Characters

I spent a part of my afternoon today tracking down character sheets for some of my games for a project I'm starting to work on, and it reminded me of how much I love character generation.

One of my greatest joys was always taking a pencil, some scratch paper, a character sheet, and the necessary books and creating something out of nothing.

Did I say something? I'm sorry. I meant someone.

It was always fascinating to me how many different ways there were to create characters, too. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition was strict die-rolling. FASA's Star Trek was a free-choice lifepath. Cyberpunk had a lifepath, too, but you had to roll on it - and it was more of an add-on to provide post-generation flavor to your character.

Over time, I grew to appreciate systems that gave me more control over my character. At the same time, it's easy to see why those systems were the most frustrating to GMs (I was young enough that the concept of a GM limiting our character generation in some way was an alien concept).

The first time I saw GURPS, my head about exploded. It was the first point-buy system I'd seen where everything came out of the same pool of points. And there were so many options! I spent close to 60 points on skills for my first character. I could have achieved the same results by spending more points on my attributes and fewer of those points on my attributes - and long-term, it would have been a more powerful character.

In fact, looking back, I see a lot of "mistakes" on my older characters. Optimizations that experienced players would have taken that a beginner to the game could easily miss. Character options that are more important than they appear to be - or that are worth more points than you spend on them.

And I'm curious in some cases: How will a total beginner to a given system handle character generation? Can I catch some of these "mistakes" on my own? How about my readers?

Thankfully, I live with someone who is a fairly inexperienced roleplayer. My beautiful wife, Stephanie. While she is a boardgamer, her roleplaying experience is limited (another reason I keep doing the one-shots). When I asked her if she'd be willing to participate, she was excited. And I'm excited to have her involved.

Don't look for this to be a regular series - we have a lot of games we're going to work through, but we need to schedule character generation into our (severely limited) free time, and then I need to write about the results (and scan the sheet, and so on and so forth).

I hope you enjoy reading about our experiences.

Kickstarter

As you may not know, I'm very fond of the RPG Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone¹. Part of it is that I'm such a huge fan of Greek Mythology. Part of it is that Space Opera itch that it scratches.

The first supplement is entitled Hellas: Princes of the Universe, and they are Kickstarting it.

The use of Kickstarter reminds me of Arc Dream using the (now defunct) Fundable.com to get Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity in print. The difference is that Princes of the Universe (if I'm reading the Kickstarter page correctly) will see print regardless of the Kickstarter outcome - the Kickstarter is to get it in full color instead of black & white. I promised my $60 as soon as I saw it (especially because it includes another copy of the core book at that point).

It also reminds me of the 2008 Diana Jones Award-winning Open Design project. (My wife was a patron of one of the Open Design projects, and she loved the end result.) You see, donors to Targets of Opportunity didn't get any input into the final project. Donors to Open Design are able to provide input at every step along the way, starting by providing input into which of several possible projects to pursue. The first ten people who donated $100 or more to Princes of the Universe got to create a character for inclusion in the book.

And these are not the only patronage projects active right now - this one uses the same system as the Amber RPG. And ... um ... it sounds like Amber with the serial numbers partially obscured. Rite Publishing does have the best description I've found of how Patronage works that I've been able to find (and they give credit to Wolfgang Baur and Open Design)

It's yet another fascinating trend in the industry. Something to keep an eye on.



¹ Okay, the game is cool, but I don't think it's $85 cool. There are other places to buy print copies, or you can get a .PDF copy here.

Sunken Empires

As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I don't write many reviews. Part of this is because I don't tend to write about things I dislike. Part of it is because I'm not a fan of negativity and too many reviews are just too negative, even when the reviewer likes a product.

That said, however, I'm going to try to write more reviews.

As my regular readers know by now, I'm running a series of one-shot games with a variety of systems and genres for a small group of friends (and I have good news on that front, too, by the way).

Being who I am (a voracious reader of books), I like to pull ideas in fron a variety of sources. Especially for those games without built-in settings.

I recently read this, and it started me thinking about a coastal fantasy or fantasy/horror game. While I could easily integrate the sunken forests into a Call of Cthulhu game, I didn't want to do another Cthulhu-flavored game this soon after my last game.

I received an e-mail last week informing me that the latest Open Design project, Sunken Empires was now available for review. That's right: I got a free copy of this one for review - and I'm glad I did.

Now, I have the Seafarer's Handbook for D&D 3.0. It ... it was okay. It was (unsurprisingly) rules for playing sailors and having adventures on the sea. Like most of the "Legends and Lairs" series that Fantasy Flight Games did, it was long on rules mechanics and short on flavor.

I'm a big fan of flavor. Flavor is especially important when your plan is to translate ideas to another system.

Sunken Empires was written by Brandon Hodge for the Pathfinder system. Like most RPG's, it begins with an introduction. It's interesting enough, and tells the history of the Aboleth. It's worth reading, too - especially because the Aboleth are referenced a number of times throughout the rest of the book. I'd forgotten about the D&D tournament scene - it was something I was unaware of until the late 90's, by which time (I think) it was dead and gone.

The first chapter of the book is all about "historical" sunken cities in real-world myth and legend. The author specifically discusses Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu. Each of the three cities begins with a discussion of the history of the city - Atlantis, for example, was first written about by Plato. Plato's description (as written by Hodge) reminds me a great deal of the Biblical tales of Sodom and Gomorrah - humans become corrupt, and God (or Gods) decide to destroy it as an object lesson.

Hodge then discussed the cities in a bit more depth - not much more, but enough to give us some flavor. Each city gets just over a page of its own, plus a sidebar. These sidebars call themselves "Design Notes," but what they are is plot hook generators.

Following these three cities, Hodge designs a lost city of his own - just to show us how it's done. The resulting city is as believable as any of the other three, and is rich with plot hooks and story ideas for a fantasy game.

Most importantly to me, this chapter is 100% rules-free. It's usable with nearly any game. I could easily see using this chapter in a Spirit of the Century game (not least of which because both Mu and Lemuria feature heavily in pulp writings from the 20's and 30's). It wouldn't be too difficult to move the twin cities of Cassadega forward to a more modern pulp setting, either.

Chapters two through four are rules-and-stat-heavy. I'll be honest: they were a bit of a slog for me, especially as I am not currently playing any Pathfinder games. I can take a few of the ideas from these chapters and tweak them to work in the games I'm more likely to be playing, but Chapter Five is where things start to heat up for me. I am familiar enough with Pathfinder to be able to say "nothing in these chapters seemed hugely broken," however. These chapters are your lists of weapons and armor and spells and Feats and so on. One thing did catch my eye, here: There are no new classes. There are suggestions for modification of existing classes, instead.

The spells, Feats, and items all seem to be relatively well-balanced, with very few exceptions. Every land-borne wizard bound for an aquatic adventure, for example, should take the "Will to Live" feat. The next time I play a Wizard in Pathfinder, I'll take "Puddle Jump" over "Dimension Door." Every time.

Chapter Five is the chapter on underwater adventuring - he starts out with guidelines for GM's to keep from just utterly annihilating characters from the beginning. These guidelines are broken down by level, but are easily adapted to other game systems. Low-level characters, for example, shouldn't be pulled into the deepest parts of the ocean. It's common sense, but a lot of GM's can still handle a reminder or two.

The author then breaks ocean terrain into three zones, with a few pages on what to expect from each zone. It's a good breakdown and has some rules suggestions for GM's. The paragraph on "Sea Stacks" reminded me of Haystack Rock in Oregon (If you've seen The Goonies, then you know what Haystack Rock looks like).

Chapter Six is the monsters chapter. There are some excellent creatures here that I will be adapting to the Burning Wheel RPG when I have some spare time. I'm especially fond of the Goblin Shark. The end of this chapter (and the book) is dedicated to the Aboleth. They are presented as monsters and villains, and the book provides a number of variants which serve to make the Aboleth more versatile and less predictable. These variants also make Aboleth society seem a bit more well-rounded and realistic.

All in all, I'm satisfied with this book. Even though I won't be playing Pathfinder any time in the near future, I will definitely be using some of the ideas from this book in a Burning Wheel game in the not-too-distant future.

Oh! And the most important question for me: "Does it Kindle?"

This book rendered on my Kindle DX with no problems or hesitation. The font was a bit small, so those of you with the Kindle 2 may want to wait until you have the 2.5 update before trying to read it on your Kindle.

Sunken Empires is available from RPGNow and the Kobold Quarterly store.

A Role-Playing Game I'd Like To Play

A few years back, I was trying to figure out how to do Oz as an RPG. No, not the HBO TV series. L. Frank Baum's setting.

I think most of us have seen the movie, but the movie is not the book, which is in the public domain. As are most (if not all) of the (more than you think there are) Oz books. Project Gutenberg has most of them in a variety of formats. And they're worth reading.

Yes, they're aimed at kids. This is actually one reason I abandoned the project - the setting was too saccharine to make an effective game. Good always triumphed over evil, who - really - never even had a chance. Most of the character background elements that GM's use to hang story hooks on just don't fit in an idyllic setting such as this.

I gave up completely. Tossed my notes.

Then I watched SyFy's "Tin Man" film. It wasn't spectacular, but it was entertaining and grownup. And got me thinking about Oz again.

Then I saw this a few weeks ago. Go. Watch it now. I'll wait.

Suddenly, the land of Oz doesn't seem like quite as idyllic a setting, and I'm pondering pulling the project off of the back burner.

I can see it run as a Sorcerer game, with each PC haunted by their own demons, as it were. After all - the classic four characters were all deeply flawed in some way. In the first book. After the first book, they were just as flawed, but they didn't let their flaws get in the way - and they had different flaws.

Or maybe it would be playable in Fate - after reading through Spirit of the Century, I think it could be a good match. After all, each character had a number of distinctive traits that could easily be picked as Aspects.

Maybe it could be done in The Burning Wheel. I'm not sure which flavor of BW - it'd either have to be the core BW game or a Mouse Guard hack. Burning Empires isn't really as translatable to a different setting. I just got the core game, so I don't know how adaptable it is, yet (based on what I've seen so far, it's very adaptable). Mouse Guard, on the other hand, has an entire forum devoted to hacks such as this one.

I may have to think about resurrecting the project, which means reading the books again, looking for shadows I can amplify.

Sounds like a great way to spend a few days - reading.