SF and Gaming Blog

I’m slowly getting somewhere with the Kalyr RPG. Parts of it are almost ready for playtesting. Other parts still need to be written, of course.

The character generation chapter is taking shape, and it’s proving hard work. I’m starting to wonder if I’m making my template-driven system more complicated than I need it to be. I’m going to present subjective character generation as an alternative, and I bet most hardcode Fudge players will probably just use that. I’ve had to retool many of the templates when I started ‘unit testing’, and realised that my sample characters were coming out with too few skills. I’ve now upped the number of skills in each template, so starting character will have 32-38 skill levels rather than the original 26-30. Of course, I’m now wondering if all my Talents will still make sense, or whether some will need to be merged because I can’t think of eight related skills.

On the other hand, I’m getting some positive feedback on the Fudge mailing list to my proposed way of handling faults.

Consternation is the latest of a series of RPGs held every other year in New Hall in Cambridge. I attended the previous event, called Conjuration, in 2003, and that was a whole heap of fun. This one was even better.

The focus of the convention was RPGs, with a lot of tabletop games covering just about everything except d20 and World of Darkness (somebody described the convention as ‘a bit elitist’). Nobody was running Skyrealms of Jorune this time, though. I wonder when someone’s going to run Tales of Garghentihr? The convention’s special guests were Alan Varney (of Paranoia fame) and Marcus Rowland.

As well as tabletop RPGs, there were several LARPS, some of them sounding quite surreal, such as a Paranoia/Cthulhu crossover called “Will All Elder Gods Report for Termination”, and the even stranger “Gamer’s Wives”, billed as “Footballer’s Wives” with gamers. There were panels running throughout the con, one or two of which I’d like to have attended had they not clashed with games I really wanted to play.

As is typical of college venues, the rooms were spartan but clean. One very welcome change from Conjuration was that the college refectory was serving meals this year. Last time there was just breakfast, and we had to subsist on takeaways the rest of the time, which meant I suffered the worst Chinese meal I’d ever had in my life. This time they served dinner on Friday and Saturday, and lunch on Saturday and Sunday. And the food was far, far better than the ‘skool dinner’ fare I’ve had to endure at some other college venues.

Over the course of the weekend I played in no fewer than six games, the most I’ve ever managed in a single convention. I also managed to cover most bases genre-wise, with the exception of costumed superheroes, a genre I don’t care for much anyway.

Friday Night was Call of Cthulhu, a game I always try to play at least once at every convention. This one had the PCs as an elite British commando unit parachuted into the Swiss Alps, where a high-ranking general’s plane had been shot down. Although Switzerland was supposed to be neutral, this town near the German border was crawling with Nazis. Our mission was either to rescue the general, or failing that, make sure any battle plans contained in his head couldn’t fall into enemy hands. Naturally we ran into squamous and rugose Mythos entities, gruesome deaths and failed SAN rolls almost immediately. It ended up with us disrupting a unspeakably blasphemous ritual, featuring tentacles and an 83% PC mortality rate. In the end, my character was the only survivor.

First game on the Saturday was the current game of the moment, Dogs in the Vineyard. I signed up for this largely to see if the game really does live up to all the hype. The theme is psuedo-Mormon religious police in 1850s Utah, and the system involves buckets of dice. Not just d6s either, it can also use lots of d4s, d8s and d10s! In this game we ended up having as many conflicts between PCs as between us and the NPCs, caused by the fact that one PC was a little too fond of summary executions (“You’re a sinner!” Bang!) Interesting game, even though the focus is bit narrow, and I wonder whether it can sustain a long term campaign. As a one-off one-shot, though, it’s fine.

Second game was “Diana: Warrior Princess”, run by Marcus Rowland himself. This one was the spin-off series, “Elvis, the Legendary Tours”, with the PCs as Elvis and his band, including Vlad Lennon, Senator Joe McCartney, and the Roadie Bob “The Builder” Marley. As you should have gathered by now, this not a remotely serious game. My best line was, when confronted by a werewolf in Memphis was “I stun him with a bass solo”.

Final game on Saturday was classic Traveller. We were the survivors of a starship crash on an ice planet, a mixed group including a general, the ship’s first officer, a big game hunter, a nun, and a Duchess’ secretary (me). Our first problem was to avoid dying of cold, and our next problem was to get off this forsaken planet. The complications were that not only was the planet inhabited by nasty squid-like creatures, but we eventually discovered that the we were deep in Zhodani space; it was a very bad misjump before the crash.

I played two shorter games on the Sunday rather than the more usual one longer one. First was a World War Two schoolchildren game run by Mark “L’Ange” Baker, using Unisystem as the game system. Being a Mark Baker game, it came with his usual vast amount of research and reams of handouts. What were the mystery lights on the cliff? Is the German master really an enemy spy? Can the children save the day? All with lashings of ginger beer!

The final game was Ars Magica, the game of medieval magic and Latin nouns and verbs. This was an introductory adventure, in which the player characters were a bunch of apprentices sent out to the Summer Fayre with a shopping list, and a collection of things to trade for them. Naturally we weren’t told what any of the things we were supposed to buy actually were, or the true nature of the things we had to sell. That we had to find out for ourselves!

Overall, it was a great convention, thanks to Phil Masters and the rest of the convention committee. Roll on the next one in two years time!

Update: Ozzy has some photos online. There are even one or two of me…

I’ve got out the habit of doing gaming memes, but I’ll do this one. Lunchtime Poll 30: Whaddaya Got?

What’s the last board, card, or roleplaying game you bought, and what do you think of it?

That would be Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne

Empire of the Petal Throne is one of those legendary games. It was one of the very first fantasy RPGs to follow in the wake of the original Dungeons and Dragons, and has been through several editions with wildly different rules. Earlier version had the reputation of being next to impossible to GM unless you were the world’s creator, Professor M.A.R.Barker. One of the claims for the new edition is that they’ve made it much more accessible for new players.

Tékumel is a a pulp fantasy, with a setting that’s not the usual generic fantasy mix of medieval Europe and American wild west. Instead, the cultures are inspired by those of India and pre-Columbian South America, with caste and clan-based societies, and polytheistic religions that fit naturally rather than looking crudely bolted-on. It’s a style of game that’s rather out of fashion nowadays, about deep immersion in a strange culture, some of whose values look barbarous to our own eyes.

The system is based on the d10 version of Guardians of Order’s “Tri-Stat” system. It avoids fashionably funky dice systems or dubious mechanical gimmicks in favour of something that looks solidly straightforward and playable, although I have yet to put this to the test.

I have to admit that this is a game I’m unlikely ever to run, although I may well sign up to a Tékumel game if I see one running at a convention. I’ve really bought it as much to mine for ideas for my own games as for anything else.

I’m still considering the possibility of writing a full-blown Kalyr RPG, to be sold as a PDF download. I’ve got as far as putting together an outline, and writing first drafts for one-and-a-half chapters The game will be based on Fudge, and is intended as a standalone game.

Although it’s based on the large amount of material already online, the whole thing’s going to be rewritten and revised, with some cool new things added, and cheesy ideas that didn’t work taken away. At least that’s the idea. Consider it as a second edition.

The outline reads as follows:

1. Introduction: 4-5 pages. This is an attempt to distill the essential flavour of the world in a few pages, without going into too much detail.
2. Character Generation, probably 15-20 pages. The template-driven system means this chapter also includes a lot of world background. This chapter will also include the full skill list.
3. Game System, another 15-20 pages, mostly taken from OGL Fudge material, with some Kalyr-specific examples. Covers skill use and combat, the usual stuff, in other words.
4. Psionics, probably 8-10 pages, covering both game mechanics and a brief overview of the Academy of the Mind. I’m in two minds as to whether to expand this chapter, or whether to cover just the basics, leaving the rest for a later supplement.
5. Technology, probably 8-10 pages again, with an overview of The Academy of Knowledge, and a list of available gadgets.
6. Culture, 10-15 pages. This one’s a bit more nebulous, and I’m wondering whether even to have the chapter at all, or whether to distribute the material through the preceding chapters. I do need to cover Religion somewhere, though.
7. Bestiary, 5-10 pages. Covers races other than kandar and human, as well as native flora and fauna.
8. Campaigns, 10-15 pages. The all-important GM’s chapter, covering campaign frames and scenario advice.

At the moment, I’m not shooting for a specific page count. I intend on writing a first draft of the manuscript and seeing how long it comes out.

If it actually reaches the stage of having enough material to playtest, I’m going to be recruiting playtesters. What I’d really like is a mix of Fudge experts who can scrutinise my rules, a couple of existing online players who can tell me how well I’ve captured the feel of the world, and gamers familiar with neither who can tell me if the thing can be understood without prior knowledge.

Good news from Silkenray

After almost 7 months being detained by immigration, my beloved husband is now a free man! Yay!

Now to get onto the same continent again.

I think I’ll give him a few days grace before demanding a response to the seven month old GM post in the Kalyr PBeM

Carl Cravens has a dilemma. He’s got an idea for a space opera setting, and wonders whether to submit it as an article to Fudge Factor, or whether to polish up a longer version to sell as a downloadable PDF product.

I’ve wondered whether there’s any commercial potential for a Kalyr RPG. In terms of quantity, I’ve certainly got more than enough material for a 128-page worldbook. Much of it’s pretty disorganised at present, and I will have to rewrite the bulk of the actual text. The game mechanics would be Fudge, which is released under the OGL. I don’t have any real idea as to whether I’d be able to sell the thing to anyone who wouldn’t qualify for a playtest copy (i.e. my current players) The other issue is that much of the material is already available online, and The Phoenyx have a non-exclusive licence to it.

The post by Mike Mearls about core stories also makes me think. Successful RPGs have a standard storyline for adventures; D&D has “Adventurers kill monsters, take their stuff, and go up in levels”, Call of Cthulhu has “Investigators explore strange places, discover Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and go horribly insane while saving the earth. What’s the core story of Kalyr? (As the GM and worldbuilder, I think I know this, but I wonder how clear it is to anyone else)

Unlike those people who start new RPG campaigns every six months or so, I’ve been using the same setting for almost all the games I’ve run for the past fifteen years or so, including the eight years old PBeM, the face-to-face game I ran for about five years before that, and the convention one-shots I’ve run in the last couple of years. Even after all this time, the setting is still evolving; you get a lot of depth after all that time.

The Kalyr Wiki has been around for quite a while. Originally it merely duplicated all my existing static web pages, but more recently I’ve added some new stuff. The latest entries cover Political Systems and Crime and Punishment. Food and Drink and Family Life and Customs, howerver consist only of a few sketchy ideas.

The great think about a Wiki is that other people can contribute and add ideas. I’d appreciate comments or further ideas, especially for the entries above.