Paul Beakly on improvised game design:

Basically if you’re ever creating a system of resolutions that orbit an outcome, rather than directly resolving the outcome itself, that’s improvised game design.

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Two interesting videos on medieval lighting technology:

• A broad overview by Shad M Brook introduces the idea of “rush lights”, the pith from meadow rushes that’s been soaked in tallow. I’d never heard of these before, but apparently there were the best light source most peasants could get.
• Jason Kingsley tries to make rush lights, and shows that it was harder than I assumed after the brief description in the other video.

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James Introcaso says We Can Do Better Than Boxed Text. And he’s right.

 

A player in my games who is new to rpgs has asked for recommended reading for how to be a good player. This is hard, because I have been playing rpgs longer than almost anything else — I started when I was 8 or 9, and I’m 40 this Autumn.

I tried searching the web for articles, but many of them bored or annoyed me. Perhaps unsurprising, since I’m not their target audience. However they have other problems. One common tendency is to be patronising, to talk down to the newcomer. Another is to assume a very low baseline of ordinary social skills — in contrast, what most people need is for the article to assume that and to explicitly demarcate those challenges that are distinctive to rpgs (or to common rpg subcultures).

So, despite me being a bad choice to write something on this, I have done it anyway.

Key message

Every game is different, every group is different. Some groups override the rules completely with a local version, and sometimes that’s implicit (just local practice and custom). Some groups do that for some games but not others.

Continue reading “Introduction to being an rpg player” →

To better fit my current projects, and to be more memorable, I have changed the name of this blog from “Mhu Thulan” to “The Wrong Kind of Wax”.

Some years ago, I created a play-sequence checklist for Burning Wheel Gold, explicitly to remind me of those rules features I was most prone to forget.

1. The tax benefits were substantial
2. The priest insisted
3. One is anxious, one unflappable
4. One is slothful, the other beats them
5. A love potion, mistakenly administered
6. One made the other, and felt responsible
7. One rescued the other from a troll
8. One talks too much, one never listens to anyone
9. They are both a strange shape, like a lock and its key
10. They have never thought about it, they just are
11. One’s mother schemed extensively
12. For the sake of the child
13. In the hope of a child
14. So that the child would face the curse, not them
15. Because no other would have either
16. The thing in the well told them to
17. Only one had money
18. Only one had good sense
19. To make eachother keep a secret
20. It was the only way they could share the treasure
21. They’re actually not, but nobody knows that
22. …not even them
23. The authorities won’t be looking for a married couple
24. The presence of the animal made it necessary
25. They already had the same name
26. There was nowhere else to hide
27. They are always ill in different seasons
28. They were born married
29. They are actually one creature with two bodies — saying they are “married” is just the least-hassle way to describe it
30. No reasonable explanation, but here they are

F M Geist, while talking about a variety of things in response to a post by Emmy Allen —

I’ve always thought of clerics as being like young men from the lower classes in any theocracy: they’re sent out to wage holy terror against others so that the religious order, hierarchy and viewpoint is not challenged because young men who might found a schism are busy dying somewhere. Also it would account for Clerics being somewhat capable fighters and devoted to weird shit about their religion.

(http://cavegirlgames.blogspot.com/2018/05/orcs-violence-and-evil.html?m=1)

Joseph Manola’s vision for how he would do Warhammer Fantasy now — http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/10/bringing-down-hammer-part-12-my-own.html

Manola again, on how his dystopian setting Against the Wicked City is, against appearances, a romantic fantasy setting — http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/06/romantic-fantasy-revisited-4-so-what.html .

I’ve been played Dead Cells today. It seems surprisingly good, and has given me ideas for rpgs, particularly dungeon/hexcrawl ones, and perhaps particularly for open table games:

• Parcel out knowledge in little, mysterious hints of one or two lines. In session announcement emails, on playbooks and other props, hanging on the back of the GM screen today…
• Random roll when you enter the dungeon for major state-changing events that day. E.g.
  • There’s a goblin raid ongoing in the section
  • The Goblin King has recalled all goblins for a feast, so there are no goblins other than there
• Dungeon World (or similar) location moves that don’t supplement but replace the standard set. Have as cards/sheets that you stick over the standard list while in that area.
• Enemies you can harvest for rare ingredients (seems obvious, but I’ve never done it)
• Dole out world knowledge in tiny parcels through item names, in-game events (hearing that the Hate-Dwarves attacked means that you now know Hate-Dwarves exist), creature types (knowing that the Funnymen are wretched humans with bizarre things grafted onto them implies the existence of a malevolent grafter)…
• People love treasure, especially if there’s a chance of a rare and valuable item. I’ve never got good at treasure — my default is to forget it entirely, or be realistic (and thus give far less than is best for player reward experience). For some games that doesn’t matter, but I rarely shift gears properly for games where it does.
• Let players unlock things that will outlive their character — perhaps for them, perhaps for all players. Advantage of latter is that it makes player-player balancing easier.

Want to explain a missing family member? Want to put a backstory to a grave? Want to be a dick and stop the players talking to that crucial NPC? I am the OSR, roll d30:

1. Fell through a rotten floor into a nest of vermin
2. Thrown from their horse when it was spooked by a ghost
3. Skin sloughed off and blew away on the wind
4. Became maudlin, stopped eating
5. Hung themself out of spite
6. Limbs turned into snakes and slithered off
7. Challenged someone to a duel, killed them, killed in turn by a sibling
8. Cursed by a boggart, dried out, shrivelled up
9. Got an infection, swelled up, burst
10. Took patent medicine for a headache
11. Took to bed, raved prophecy for three days, expired
12. An excess of laudanum administered for joint pain
13. Ran wild with joy, fell in a pit
14. Hit by an arrow meant for a cheating spouse
15. Cheated on their spouse
16. Ate very old beans
17. Key parts wore out
18. Bones ran away from them
19. Years of hard living
20. Years of loose living
21. Picked a fight with a bear
22. Jumped in to save another
23. Something came at them out of the dark
24. A long suffering neighbour put them out of his misery
25. With each passing year, another ailment
26. Was careless with tools
27. Was barely noticed amid the many that winter
28. Slowed to a halt over many years
29. They shrank as their spouse grew
30. No reasonable explanation, but here they are