A recent Planet Algol post made me think of a long-lost-to-my-subconscious old Fiend Folio monster, the Dire Corby. Issue 3 of Fight On! magazine made me think back to the Fiend Folio's Crab Men. Makes me think about the great potential for totally gonzo weirdness in my monsters in the old Fiend Folio, if only I let the weirdness of the monsters become their strength rather than their weakness.
Perhaps that way lies madness, but I think there may be genius in reclaiming monsters like the Flail Snail....
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Monday, November 30, 2009
On the Nature of Magic in Athanor
At first, I had thought there would be no magic in Athanor, at least not at first. One version of Athanor used the magic system from Grim Tales, while another used the D&D 3.5 version of rituals as presented in Unearthed Arcana. Another version used powers from True20, and still another tried to use psionics or psychic powers.
I have had trouble with magic and Athanor.
Part of me wants to dismiss with magic entirely, and be purely Sword and Planet. Another part of me wants difficult and grim rituals, and be heavily Sword and Sorcery, but in the end I decided to go with something that makes for easier game play and sacrifice a little flavor.
So what is magic on Athanor? Here are three options for why it exists in game:
I have had trouble with magic and Athanor.
Part of me wants to dismiss with magic entirely, and be purely Sword and Planet. Another part of me wants difficult and grim rituals, and be heavily Sword and Sorcery, but in the end I decided to go with something that makes for easier game play and sacrifice a little flavor.
So what is magic on Athanor? Here are three options for why it exists in game:
- Athanoran magic was purely psychic in nature. Thus magic-users have developed and trained psychic ability, rogues have a wild latent talent, and fighters have no psychic talent.
- Athanoran magic involves binding spirits in service to the caster, which is why limited numbers of spells can be prepared. Casting spells involves commanding spirits to do a task. Failure to control a spirit means that it is freed from its bonds and obligation.
- Athanoran magic is achieved by creating matrices of magical energy in the mid of the caster which allow direct, specific manipulation of matter and energy. The matrices are fragile, and failure to maintain proper control and guidance will cause the matrix to collapse.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Playing with the genre tropes
First of all, I want to point out that I see Athanor playing off planetary romance novels the same way that D&D has always played off heroic fantasy — I'm not slavishly reproducing the source material and am, in fact, often going a different direction from the original source genre. It is, however, the foundation for what I am doing. I like playing with the genre for many reasons: dislike for the colonialist sentimentality of the original works, a desire to allow for rip-roaring picaresque anti-hero activity that I think is generally typical of the gaming groups I have known, and a desire to loosen the reigns of genre enforcement to allow players to make the game their own. But I like to at least give some nods to what I think of as key tropes of the genre.
One of the things I think of with planetary romance is The Princess. Now, in my head, the archetypal Princess is, of course, Dejah Thoris. (And for the record, in my head she is either drawn by Frazetta or appears as a red-skinned naked Salma Hayek. Both of which I'm sure you can find pictures of on the Internet. I'll wait here while you search for them on Google.) The Princess figure even appears in all sorts of pastiches of the literature, and is central to the genre. The courtly love trappings of the relationship with Our Hero, her frequent kidnapping/departure/maguffinish disappearances drive Our Hero to go out and Do Heroic Stuff in Her Name.
But frankly, much of this really bugs me. The sexist overtones, the cowering women with moments of bravery before becoming frail little flowers all speak of a sort of boring exploitation that I find distasteful. After all, if we are going to have exploitation, let's be more interesting about it and less invested in a sort of retro-Victorian nonsense. It almost wants me to see somebody do a planetary romance with a female heroine rescuing her useless male prince (I mean, come on someone has to have done this, right? If only in some sort of fanfic?)
So I want the possiblity of romance, and doing things to impress beloveds and allow for beloveds to be the impetus for adventure. I like that. Hell, I'm cool with half-naked eye candy popping up along the way, and the occassional damsel in distress. I like the idea of rivalries for the hand of someone.
But boring women who just show up to faint and get rescued bore me. As does the hot-headed, independent woman who, once you get past her fiery nature, is just a wilting flower. (Though if you're playing an Earth woman character, maybe I can have a red-skinned Zamoran prince who constantly gets kidnapped fall in love with you and pursue your hand. That might be fun.) I'm more likely to throw in difficult to woo women in positions of power, warriors, criminals, schemers, foils, and ordinary people with strengths and weaknesses.
However, I don't want to create a race of Joss-Whedonish superwomen on Athanor. Just make them less set dressing and more interesting in their own right.
A nod to the original, if you will, but with my own sensibilities.
One of the things I think of with planetary romance is The Princess. Now, in my head, the archetypal Princess is, of course, Dejah Thoris. (And for the record, in my head she is either drawn by Frazetta or appears as a red-skinned naked Salma Hayek. Both of which I'm sure you can find pictures of on the Internet. I'll wait here while you search for them on Google.) The Princess figure even appears in all sorts of pastiches of the literature, and is central to the genre. The courtly love trappings of the relationship with Our Hero, her frequent kidnapping/departure/maguffinish disappearances drive Our Hero to go out and Do Heroic Stuff in Her Name.
But frankly, much of this really bugs me. The sexist overtones, the cowering women with moments of bravery before becoming frail little flowers all speak of a sort of boring exploitation that I find distasteful. After all, if we are going to have exploitation, let's be more interesting about it and less invested in a sort of retro-Victorian nonsense. It almost wants me to see somebody do a planetary romance with a female heroine rescuing her useless male prince (I mean, come on someone has to have done this, right? If only in some sort of fanfic?)
So I want the possiblity of romance, and doing things to impress beloveds and allow for beloveds to be the impetus for adventure. I like that. Hell, I'm cool with half-naked eye candy popping up along the way, and the occassional damsel in distress. I like the idea of rivalries for the hand of someone.
But boring women who just show up to faint and get rescued bore me. As does the hot-headed, independent woman who, once you get past her fiery nature, is just a wilting flower. (Though if you're playing an Earth woman character, maybe I can have a red-skinned Zamoran prince who constantly gets kidnapped fall in love with you and pursue your hand. That might be fun.) I'm more likely to throw in difficult to woo women in positions of power, warriors, criminals, schemers, foils, and ordinary people with strengths and weaknesses.
However, I don't want to create a race of Joss-Whedonish superwomen on Athanor. Just make them less set dressing and more interesting in their own right.
A nod to the original, if you will, but with my own sensibilities.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Making Planetary Romance Work
I'm meandering through Lin Carter's Sky Pirates of Callisto, and I am struck with Carter's attempt to slavishly emulate Burroughs' style and storytelling structure. While he certainly does so without the sly winks and sloppy stylings of Micheal Moorcock's Mars novels, Carter's Jandar novel seems to eaily and unquestioningly latch onto some of the more annoying elements of Burroughs' Mars novels. In particular, Carter's Jandar is a bigger lunkhead than John Carter himself. And a bit of a smug ass, too.
Maybe I read the Barsoom novels with a bit of bias after having read them since childhood, but despite his general bone-headedness, John Carter comes across as charismatic, and Burroughs' archaic writing seems flavorful and strongly evocative. I think Burroughs stands the test of time.
Lin Carter's hero is less charming, his romantic interests unconvincing, and the writing through which we get to know him is workmanlike. While Sky Pirates is an entertaining read, the level of suspension of disbelief for the heroes' general stupidity is too much to bear. And Carter's writing style just seems too much like Carter fanfic.
I take this as a cautionary tale. Too much slavish emulation of a genre staple is bad. Heck, worse than being bad, it's dull. If a thing comes across as a simple pastiche without its own spark of life, it begins to seem forced, and just meanders about without its own direction.
The good thing about approaching planetary romance as a role-playing game rather than a literary venture is that a large chunk of the role-playing experience comes from a source outside of the Referee. While I may sow the seeds of the experience, it's the players who breathe life into the game. I need to set up some flavor and mood, but in the main I'm looking to the players to give this its own life and keep it from falling into the trap of boring pastiche.
Maybe I read the Barsoom novels with a bit of bias after having read them since childhood, but despite his general bone-headedness, John Carter comes across as charismatic, and Burroughs' archaic writing seems flavorful and strongly evocative. I think Burroughs stands the test of time.
Lin Carter's hero is less charming, his romantic interests unconvincing, and the writing through which we get to know him is workmanlike. While Sky Pirates is an entertaining read, the level of suspension of disbelief for the heroes' general stupidity is too much to bear. And Carter's writing style just seems too much like Carter fanfic.
I take this as a cautionary tale. Too much slavish emulation of a genre staple is bad. Heck, worse than being bad, it's dull. If a thing comes across as a simple pastiche without its own spark of life, it begins to seem forced, and just meanders about without its own direction.
The good thing about approaching planetary romance as a role-playing game rather than a literary venture is that a large chunk of the role-playing experience comes from a source outside of the Referee. While I may sow the seeds of the experience, it's the players who breathe life into the game. I need to set up some flavor and mood, but in the main I'm looking to the players to give this its own life and keep it from falling into the trap of boring pastiche.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Visions of Refereeing
An e-mail discussion with my old friend and current 4e DM has been illuminating. We talked about rules crunch and fluff in supplements and while he came in favor for more rules to give more character options and more detailed world background and fluff to give some shape to fantasy I came down on the side of fewer rules and much less fluff (which probably is no surprise to regular victims of the blog.)
What strikes me is that my old friend is a long-time "storyteller" DM as well as a budding writer. Part of me actually thought that he would have chosen the route of less crunch (more room for storytelling over tactical play) and less fluff (more room to strut his writerly stuff)-- but actually listening to him, it is his writer's instinct that pushes him toward liking both fluff and crunch. He chooses rules complexity to allow definition of characters on paper, and world background for setting definition on paper, and setting forth an established character and background that then interact in play, but with a set canon on which to build.
I tend to take a different approach to the whole game. My basic argument is that the game doesn't exist outside of the interactions between participants. There is no plot but the action of the characters, there is no real setting unless it is encountered in game, there is no character but what people experience in game. Now, I think that "in game" can be expanded beyond the tabletop through things like in-character journals or logs shared with the Referee and the group, shared tales of past exploits and the like, but for most groups, this kind of expansion of the game seldom happens.
It's not like we can't get together and have fun despite this difference, but it's interesting how fundamental our differences are in approaching the DM role.
What strikes me is that my old friend is a long-time "storyteller" DM as well as a budding writer. Part of me actually thought that he would have chosen the route of less crunch (more room for storytelling over tactical play) and less fluff (more room to strut his writerly stuff)-- but actually listening to him, it is his writer's instinct that pushes him toward liking both fluff and crunch. He chooses rules complexity to allow definition of characters on paper, and world background for setting definition on paper, and setting forth an established character and background that then interact in play, but with a set canon on which to build.
I tend to take a different approach to the whole game. My basic argument is that the game doesn't exist outside of the interactions between participants. There is no plot but the action of the characters, there is no real setting unless it is encountered in game, there is no character but what people experience in game. Now, I think that "in game" can be expanded beyond the tabletop through things like in-character journals or logs shared with the Referee and the group, shared tales of past exploits and the like, but for most groups, this kind of expansion of the game seldom happens.
It's not like we can't get together and have fun despite this difference, but it's interesting how fundamental our differences are in approaching the DM role.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Playing to Strengths
It seems to me that playing a game in a weirder setting (and I think Athanor does qualify as a bit weirder than average) should focus on keeping it weird. That is, the settings and situations of a weird fantasy should emphasize what distinguishes it over what is similar to other games. That weirdness can help emphasize a sense of immersion for players and build something unique about the setting.
So, when looking at Athanor, I think I need to consider what makes the setting unique. Here's my list of Things to Emphasize:
So, when looking at Athanor, I think I need to consider what makes the setting unique. Here's my list of Things to Emphasize:
- Arid, dying land.
- Ochre, lichen-covered seabeds.
- Dinosaurs.
- Post-apocalytpic ruins filled with high-tech artifacts.
- Fungus forests.
- Airships.
- Non-standard races.
- Two moons.
- Vog-Mur the Necromancer.
- The Overlord of Zamora and his "children."
- A semi-ruined domed city with lawless ruins at the borders.
- Firearms.
- Rare but present sci-fi artifacts.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Traveling Between Campaigns
While I don't really see a lot of interplanetary or interdimensional travel happening in the Athanor campaign, Blair at Planet Algol asked about including a gate to Athanor in his campaign. My answer was an unqualified yes -- I don't see Athanor as exclusively mine. I put the campaign development up for people to see and use as they want because I feel like that's part of the essence of the hobby. It reminds me of something I read in the first issue of Fight On!
In his editorial "In the Time of the Broken Kingdom," Ignatius Umlaut recounts an article in New West magazine in 1980 that describes the hobby from an outsider's perspective, with gamers hopping from campaign to campaign and tributes and crossovers to other DMs games happening, and PCs going from table to table (and from system to system!) on a regular basis. Umlaut notes that "people played in different games and worlds, of course, but there was still a sense that we were all part of one big fantasy multiverse," and that in the original New West article, the author "also describes players mailing their characters halfway across the country to visit or defend or attack other worlds, and wonders if her son’s character surviving a run in Greg Stafford’s Snake Pipe Hollow might find himself mailed away to defend Mistigar."
When I was a lad, we often moved characters from campaign to campaign (or even from system to system) with little sense that this was going to be considered wrong. It was how things were done. Now, people treat campaigns and systems as sacrosanct, and that seems, if not a loss to the community, a change in how we conceive of the openness and options at the table.
In his editorial "In the Time of the Broken Kingdom," Ignatius Umlaut recounts an article in New West magazine in 1980 that describes the hobby from an outsider's perspective, with gamers hopping from campaign to campaign and tributes and crossovers to other DMs games happening, and PCs going from table to table (and from system to system!) on a regular basis. Umlaut notes that "people played in different games and worlds, of course, but there was still a sense that we were all part of one big fantasy multiverse," and that in the original New West article, the author "also describes players mailing their characters halfway across the country to visit or defend or attack other worlds, and wonders if her son’s character surviving a run in Greg Stafford’s Snake Pipe Hollow might find himself mailed away to defend Mistigar."
When I was a lad, we often moved characters from campaign to campaign (or even from system to system) with little sense that this was going to be considered wrong. It was how things were done. Now, people treat campaigns and systems as sacrosanct, and that seems, if not a loss to the community, a change in how we conceive of the openness and options at the table.
Planetary Romance vs. Pulp Grit
The planetary romances, as typified by Burroughs' Barsoom novels and as copied by such later revisions of the genre as Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon strips, Gardner Fox's Adam Strange , or even the T.V. series Farscape play off a number of themes of strangers in a strange land who, usually because they are clever (white) Earth men, bring the benefits of their civilized minds and manners to a barbaric world. In addition to this, we see the development of damsels in distress, martial might, and heroic honor as central to this. Particularly in Burroughs and Raymond, the hero finds allies who are noble savages in a world of danger.
I don't see Athanor headed in that direction at all. Athanor is, in my head, more informed by the pulp tradition of sword and sorcery. My bias is to the idea that the player characters will be rogues and ne'er-do-wells caught up in intrigues and trouble, some of which may be of their own making. I personally prefer games wthere the PCs more resemble Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Cugel the Clever than Aragorn or Galahad. This isn't a jaded distaste for the heroic or epic in fantasy tradition, but a love of the picaresque tradition and of the worm's eye view of pulp -- whether it be fantasy, weird fiction, or even detective or crime novels of the pulp period or their descendants.
By pulp, I don't mean two-fisted Indiana Jones action. Pulp isn't a genre, but a medium. Pulp novels, the cheap novels and magazines of the mid-twentieth-century in the United States, included a lot of mass-marketed fiction often genre fiction churned out by small presses who made their profits on thin margins by using cheap paper stock and binding, garish or provocative covers, and by marketing some racy or lurid content. While I doubt that I'll move into the real of authors like Jim Thompson's gritty crime novels (not that I couldn't imagine a Jim Thompson based game), I think everything from two-fisted tough guy and crime novels to Howard's style of fantasy, to the weirdness of Clark Ashton Smith are all fair game. Which is more a matter of my state of mind.
Once you get past the pretention of that thinking, the question remains about what that means at the table top? I like the idea of a rag-tag bunch of misfits causing trouble and running across Athanor getting in and out of scrapes. While I will throw some larger plots and terrible monsters out there, and have secrets to uncover, I don't see the PCs saving the world, defeating the Dark Lord, and making nice-nice across the planet. They may find their own princesses to fall in love with and rescue (though I suspect they will end up either not such the princesses, or less in need of rescue than the heroes think), monsters to slay, and intrigues to get involved in, but the goal of the game is not to play out the Next Great Epic Trilogy. Rather, I want it to feel like the next adventure story magazine is publishing another crazy Athanor story, and we don't know how things might turn out or what weirdness will come up in the process.
While Barsoom, Pellucidar, and their ilk may be one of my major inspirations, I'm not really out to emulate them. Instead, I want them to be springboards for my imagination, and for the players', too.
I don't see Athanor headed in that direction at all. Athanor is, in my head, more informed by the pulp tradition of sword and sorcery. My bias is to the idea that the player characters will be rogues and ne'er-do-wells caught up in intrigues and trouble, some of which may be of their own making. I personally prefer games wthere the PCs more resemble Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Cugel the Clever than Aragorn or Galahad. This isn't a jaded distaste for the heroic or epic in fantasy tradition, but a love of the picaresque tradition and of the worm's eye view of pulp -- whether it be fantasy, weird fiction, or even detective or crime novels of the pulp period or their descendants.
By pulp, I don't mean two-fisted Indiana Jones action. Pulp isn't a genre, but a medium. Pulp novels, the cheap novels and magazines of the mid-twentieth-century in the United States, included a lot of mass-marketed fiction often genre fiction churned out by small presses who made their profits on thin margins by using cheap paper stock and binding, garish or provocative covers, and by marketing some racy or lurid content. While I doubt that I'll move into the real of authors like Jim Thompson's gritty crime novels (not that I couldn't imagine a Jim Thompson based game), I think everything from two-fisted tough guy and crime novels to Howard's style of fantasy, to the weirdness of Clark Ashton Smith are all fair game. Which is more a matter of my state of mind.
Once you get past the pretention of that thinking, the question remains about what that means at the table top? I like the idea of a rag-tag bunch of misfits causing trouble and running across Athanor getting in and out of scrapes. While I will throw some larger plots and terrible monsters out there, and have secrets to uncover, I don't see the PCs saving the world, defeating the Dark Lord, and making nice-nice across the planet. They may find their own princesses to fall in love with and rescue (though I suspect they will end up either not such the princesses, or less in need of rescue than the heroes think), monsters to slay, and intrigues to get involved in, but the goal of the game is not to play out the Next Great Epic Trilogy. Rather, I want it to feel like the next adventure story magazine is publishing another crazy Athanor story, and we don't know how things might turn out or what weirdness will come up in the process.
While Barsoom, Pellucidar, and their ilk may be one of my major inspirations, I'm not really out to emulate them. Instead, I want them to be springboards for my imagination, and for the players', too.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Athanor and Earthmen
The one thing that Athanor is missing so far is Earth men. After all, my big influence here is from the thread of fiction known either as sword and planet or planetary romance. Earth men are big in the genre, whether it be John Carter, Esau Cairn or Tarl Cabot (bonus points if you know all three references.) But while the importance of Earth men as point of view characters is essential to the sort of travelogue style narratives of much of the genre, I'm not so in love with those elements in the context of a role-playing game.
Part of the issue is that Earth men almost always outshine everyone. John Carter is superhuman in almost every way; Flash Gordon unites a planet when no one else can; Adam Strange is a better scientist with his archaeology training than any Rannian science academy graduate; Esau Cairn is the tougher than anyone on Almuric... the pattern is pretty clear. Even if we include Earth men, this seems hard to include in the game. We also need to deal with the fact that Earth men become alien and as such attention hogs in the game. It's hard for Earth men not to become the center of plots, reactions, and activity. And despite the current logic that lack of game balance at the table disrupts fun, I find that the thing that really disrupts tabletop fun is not game balance issues, it's screen time balance issues. A game where a subset of PCs get all the good attention is riding the rails to disaster.
I also don't want Earth men because then I will probably need to firmly declare where Athanor is in human history: past or present. And I will need to deal with questions of brining in other humans, dealing with reinformcements, interactions and travel between Earth and Athanor, connections between Athanorans and humans, and deciding whether all these Earth analogs in language and culture are really there or just abstractions to make the language and tropes make sense. I like doing a lot of hand waiving right now. Earth makes me have to make some decisions and stick with them.
Finally, I don't want the plot of the game to be about the motion of the Earth humans among alien cultures and creatures. That narrative, while interesting, is (in my totally arrogant opinion) the player's journey in interacting with the culture. I think Barker understood this in Empire of the Petal Throne. While he suggested that characters begin as barbarians to facilitate the idea that players were going to be learning about the complex cultures of Tekumel in the process of play, he didn't suggest they be from lost Earth. That would muck with too much in the setting, and (in my mind), muck with immersion. The Earthling heroes of planetary romances are already too much like Mary Sue characters to begin with. Using this trope with RPG planetary romance would be, it seems to me, a bit too much.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to address the common trope of the Beautiful Space Princess in Danger. On the one hand, I feel like I really need my own Dejah Thoris for at least one of my Athanoran adventurers, but I also think I need to make my version an interesting and competent character in her own right....
Part of the issue is that Earth men almost always outshine everyone. John Carter is superhuman in almost every way; Flash Gordon unites a planet when no one else can; Adam Strange is a better scientist with his archaeology training than any Rannian science academy graduate; Esau Cairn is the tougher than anyone on Almuric... the pattern is pretty clear. Even if we include Earth men, this seems hard to include in the game. We also need to deal with the fact that Earth men become alien and as such attention hogs in the game. It's hard for Earth men not to become the center of plots, reactions, and activity. And despite the current logic that lack of game balance at the table disrupts fun, I find that the thing that really disrupts tabletop fun is not game balance issues, it's screen time balance issues. A game where a subset of PCs get all the good attention is riding the rails to disaster.
I also don't want Earth men because then I will probably need to firmly declare where Athanor is in human history: past or present. And I will need to deal with questions of brining in other humans, dealing with reinformcements, interactions and travel between Earth and Athanor, connections between Athanorans and humans, and deciding whether all these Earth analogs in language and culture are really there or just abstractions to make the language and tropes make sense. I like doing a lot of hand waiving right now. Earth makes me have to make some decisions and stick with them.
Finally, I don't want the plot of the game to be about the motion of the Earth humans among alien cultures and creatures. That narrative, while interesting, is (in my totally arrogant opinion) the player's journey in interacting with the culture. I think Barker understood this in Empire of the Petal Throne. While he suggested that characters begin as barbarians to facilitate the idea that players were going to be learning about the complex cultures of Tekumel in the process of play, he didn't suggest they be from lost Earth. That would muck with too much in the setting, and (in my mind), muck with immersion. The Earthling heroes of planetary romances are already too much like Mary Sue characters to begin with. Using this trope with RPG planetary romance would be, it seems to me, a bit too much.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to address the common trope of the Beautiful Space Princess in Danger. On the one hand, I feel like I really need my own Dejah Thoris for at least one of my Athanoran adventurers, but I also think I need to make my version an interesting and competent character in her own right....
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Draft Players' handout
My latest effort for the Athanor campaign is to work on a brief handout for players to discuss the campaign, the rules, and the expectations of the game in play. Here it is to bore you all.
Savage Swords of Athanor is a fantasy role-playing game that takes place on a dying alien world where technology has largely been forgotten, magic is real, and dinosaurs roam the planet. You are one of the privileged few to survive in one of the crumbling cities that survive, but for some reason, you are called to a life of adventure and danger.
The game will be a mix of swashbuckling action, horror, and weird fantasy. You may duel for honor, be caught up in romantic or political intrigues, or face unspeakable horrors from the ancient past. Science fiction and fantasy elements can be found side by side here -- you may find arcane tomes teaching you how to summon and bind powerful extra-planar spirits alongside ray guns; you may fight skeletons one day and robots the next. Death can come easily, as can glory as you claw your way up from the streets.
9 Things You Need To Know
1) Morality is grey, and intrigues common. Churches are corrupt, assassination and slavery are legal, and money can buy you anything. Don’t trust the authorities
2) The wilderness is a dangerous place. Plants are mostly lichen and fungi, most animals are dinosaurs or insects, and the water is scarce and valuable.
3) Ruins of the Ancient tend to hold items of great power, but also are very dangerous. Signs of the Ancients should be seen as a reason for caution.
4) Many monsters are unique and deadly, but they may have particular weaknesses to exploit.
5) Humans have very distinct skin coloration. Zamorans are red-skinned with black hair, Alemanians have blue skin, white hair and pale eyes, Dumans have black skin and red hair, Khitai have yellow skin and black hair, Mal-akkans have brown skin with green eyes and hair, Throon have ochre skin and brown hair and eyes, and the Ghuls have transparent flesh, no hair, and red eyes.
6) You will be starting play in Zamora, so most likely you will be a Zamoran. If not, remember that there is a lot of xenophobia in the world, and that Throon and Ghuls in particular will be seen as sub-human barbarians.
7) Zamorans take honor very seriously. Duels and vendettas occur over minor slights.
8) Zamoran nobles often wear masks as part of the social norms of their society. So do criminals, but with different intent.
9) Bearing these weapons is legal for any free person or licensed mercenary: swords, walking sticks, daggers, pistols, and quarterstaves. Wearing armor without a mercenary or bodyguard license is a criminal act of minor sedition. Throon and Ghul may only bear weapons or armor if they are licensed, which would be very odd.
Making a Character in 6 Easy Steps
1) Roll 3d6 six times to generate your character's Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. Note any bonuses and penalties for each.
2) Choose a character class from Fighter (relies on weapons and skills), Magic-user (relies primarily on magic) or Rogue (a mix of the two). If you are a magic-user, choose three first-level spells for your spell book.
3) Determine your background skill(s).
4) Roll for your hit points. For first level only, roll two dice and choose the higher one.
5) Roll 3d6 again. Multiply by 10 to figure out the number of gold pieces you start with, and use those to buy some equipment.
6) Note your armor class and saving throw on your character sheet with all the other stuff you just figured out.
Playing the Game
Don't fall into the trap of thinking about your actions by starting with the rules. Describe what you want to do, and I will set a chance of success. This may be negotiable based on other factors you may try to introduce into my decision-making process. My goal is not to be authoritarian, but fair.
The Social Contract
Any game is essentially a social event. And any social group remains its cohesion by developing some shared understandings about behavior and etiquette. Though our social contract will evolve over time, here are some things I want to put on the table right now:
Don’t be an ass
Consider this rule number one for gaming together and, for that matter, for civil life. Respect each other, treat each other well and honestly, and don’t act as if you are the only one who matters in the room. Do that, and the rest should be a piece of cake.
Let the dice fall where they may
I see plot as a thing that evolves in the random events at the table. Surprising things may happen in the middle of a game, and I think that’s a good thing, even if it’s a lucky shot that ends a villain’s life anticlimactically or results in a total party kill.
Open play
I will set some things in motion and bait some plot hooks, but you as a player have to be the one to do something, following your motivations and pursuing goals and interests. Adventure ain’t falling into your lap.
No-shows
Real life is more important than the game. If you can't make it, it’s no big deal. However, common courtesy (and rule number 1) means that you should at least let the referee know you aren't coming. If you aren't at the table, I will generally ignore your character, but sometimes, you will have to deal with someone else running your character.
Food, snacks, and making yourself at home
Not only is it okay to bring your own food and drink, it's encouraged. Sharing is not required, but encouraged. What are not encouraged are drunkenness, smoking, or recreationals. Also, please help me by cleaning up after yourself. Toss out your fast food bags, recycle your bottles, clean up your spills, etc. No need to break out the vacuum, just be a mensch.
If we are playing at my house, we will be gaming with a dog around. A small one, mind you, but a dog nonetheless. If this bothers you due to allergies, phobias, or because you are made of rawhide and liver, we will need to talk.
Table talk and other distractions
Since gaming is a group activity, I want people to be part of the group dynamic. I may ask you to either get on task or take a break if chit-chat, texting, email, phone calls, web browsing, TV watching, or portable game systems become a distraction at the table. That said, if we are getting uncontrollably off-course as a group, it may be time to take five and declare a break.
Have fun
My expectation is that this game is going to be fun for all. I'll kill some of your characters, heap suffering on them, and often make your characters' lives hell. This is part of what I think is fun in a role-playing game. If you aren't having fun for any reason, we need to talk about it. There's no need for drama or resentment. If you think I'm picking on you, or if someone is making inconsiderate remarks, or the game is getting dull or uncomfortable, we need to talk, maybe even as a group.
Generally, I would prefer such discussions not occur in the middle of the action, so that both the game and the conversation get full attention when appropriate, but sometimes things just need to be talked about when the happen. The only thing I expect in such conversations are civility, and a willingness to accept the process of group consensus, including knowing when consensus just won't happen, and that compromises will usually need to be made.
Athanor Players' Handout (Draft)
Savage Swords of Athanor is a fantasy role-playing game that takes place on a dying alien world where technology has largely been forgotten, magic is real, and dinosaurs roam the planet. You are one of the privileged few to survive in one of the crumbling cities that survive, but for some reason, you are called to a life of adventure and danger.
The game will be a mix of swashbuckling action, horror, and weird fantasy. You may duel for honor, be caught up in romantic or political intrigues, or face unspeakable horrors from the ancient past. Science fiction and fantasy elements can be found side by side here -- you may find arcane tomes teaching you how to summon and bind powerful extra-planar spirits alongside ray guns; you may fight skeletons one day and robots the next. Death can come easily, as can glory as you claw your way up from the streets.
9 Things You Need To Know
1) Morality is grey, and intrigues common. Churches are corrupt, assassination and slavery are legal, and money can buy you anything. Don’t trust the authorities
2) The wilderness is a dangerous place. Plants are mostly lichen and fungi, most animals are dinosaurs or insects, and the water is scarce and valuable.
3) Ruins of the Ancient tend to hold items of great power, but also are very dangerous. Signs of the Ancients should be seen as a reason for caution.
4) Many monsters are unique and deadly, but they may have particular weaknesses to exploit.
5) Humans have very distinct skin coloration. Zamorans are red-skinned with black hair, Alemanians have blue skin, white hair and pale eyes, Dumans have black skin and red hair, Khitai have yellow skin and black hair, Mal-akkans have brown skin with green eyes and hair, Throon have ochre skin and brown hair and eyes, and the Ghuls have transparent flesh, no hair, and red eyes.
6) You will be starting play in Zamora, so most likely you will be a Zamoran. If not, remember that there is a lot of xenophobia in the world, and that Throon and Ghuls in particular will be seen as sub-human barbarians.
7) Zamorans take honor very seriously. Duels and vendettas occur over minor slights.
8) Zamoran nobles often wear masks as part of the social norms of their society. So do criminals, but with different intent.
9) Bearing these weapons is legal for any free person or licensed mercenary: swords, walking sticks, daggers, pistols, and quarterstaves. Wearing armor without a mercenary or bodyguard license is a criminal act of minor sedition. Throon and Ghul may only bear weapons or armor if they are licensed, which would be very odd.
Making a Character in 6 Easy Steps
1) Roll 3d6 six times to generate your character's Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. Note any bonuses and penalties for each.
2) Choose a character class from Fighter (relies on weapons and skills), Magic-user (relies primarily on magic) or Rogue (a mix of the two). If you are a magic-user, choose three first-level spells for your spell book.
3) Determine your background skill(s).
4) Roll for your hit points. For first level only, roll two dice and choose the higher one.
5) Roll 3d6 again. Multiply by 10 to figure out the number of gold pieces you start with, and use those to buy some equipment.
6) Note your armor class and saving throw on your character sheet with all the other stuff you just figured out.
Playing the Game
Don't fall into the trap of thinking about your actions by starting with the rules. Describe what you want to do, and I will set a chance of success. This may be negotiable based on other factors you may try to introduce into my decision-making process. My goal is not to be authoritarian, but fair.
The Social Contract
Any game is essentially a social event. And any social group remains its cohesion by developing some shared understandings about behavior and etiquette. Though our social contract will evolve over time, here are some things I want to put on the table right now:
Don’t be an ass
Consider this rule number one for gaming together and, for that matter, for civil life. Respect each other, treat each other well and honestly, and don’t act as if you are the only one who matters in the room. Do that, and the rest should be a piece of cake.
Let the dice fall where they may
I see plot as a thing that evolves in the random events at the table. Surprising things may happen in the middle of a game, and I think that’s a good thing, even if it’s a lucky shot that ends a villain’s life anticlimactically or results in a total party kill.
Open play
I will set some things in motion and bait some plot hooks, but you as a player have to be the one to do something, following your motivations and pursuing goals and interests. Adventure ain’t falling into your lap.
No-shows
Real life is more important than the game. If you can't make it, it’s no big deal. However, common courtesy (and rule number 1) means that you should at least let the referee know you aren't coming. If you aren't at the table, I will generally ignore your character, but sometimes, you will have to deal with someone else running your character.
Food, snacks, and making yourself at home
Not only is it okay to bring your own food and drink, it's encouraged. Sharing is not required, but encouraged. What are not encouraged are drunkenness, smoking, or recreationals. Also, please help me by cleaning up after yourself. Toss out your fast food bags, recycle your bottles, clean up your spills, etc. No need to break out the vacuum, just be a mensch.
If we are playing at my house, we will be gaming with a dog around. A small one, mind you, but a dog nonetheless. If this bothers you due to allergies, phobias, or because you are made of rawhide and liver, we will need to talk.
Table talk and other distractions
Since gaming is a group activity, I want people to be part of the group dynamic. I may ask you to either get on task or take a break if chit-chat, texting, email, phone calls, web browsing, TV watching, or portable game systems become a distraction at the table. That said, if we are getting uncontrollably off-course as a group, it may be time to take five and declare a break.
Have fun
My expectation is that this game is going to be fun for all. I'll kill some of your characters, heap suffering on them, and often make your characters' lives hell. This is part of what I think is fun in a role-playing game. If you aren't having fun for any reason, we need to talk about it. There's no need for drama or resentment. If you think I'm picking on you, or if someone is making inconsiderate remarks, or the game is getting dull or uncomfortable, we need to talk, maybe even as a group.
Generally, I would prefer such discussions not occur in the middle of the action, so that both the game and the conversation get full attention when appropriate, but sometimes things just need to be talked about when the happen. The only thing I expect in such conversations are civility, and a willingness to accept the process of group consensus, including knowing when consensus just won't happen, and that compromises will usually need to be made.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Limits of GM Vision
When I first started playing D&D back in 1981, I didn't really give much thought to individual campaign or feel. We talked about individual GMs as tough or stingy, but not about individual campaign styles. Part of that was because we were what, 13? We didn't notice that kind of stuff. But also, we just kind of played, and mood, feel and style were things that evolved out of play.
Mind you, there was plenty of assumed and imposed mood and style based on the materials we used, but that's a different story. By the time we were moving into high school, though, things began moving into the direction of mood and style. I had read the Thieves' World anthology and several Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books, and wanted to have an urban campaign filled with intrigue, secrets, and pulpy moral abiguity. My friend Brian wanted to run a campaign set in a largely isolated island filled with magical faerie tale elements, powerful and mysterious forces at work, and a strongly mythical tone. Both games petered out with our game group, and as we re-formed game groups, I found myself running pre-made modules for a party that didn't want to pursue the urban adventure I wanted. I'm not sure what happened to Brian's game idea, but from what I can tell he started to step away from RPGs to focus on theatre.
Once I got to college, we all played around with mood and feel of our games. The GM vision became part of the whole play style, and was one of the things we talked about. Geoff runs a gritty game, Fred runs a political game, Tina runs a high-power hack-and-slash game. Our styles as GMs and players had changed.
As I put together Athanor, there is a lot of vision both implicit and explicit in the setting. With that comes the trap of being too caught up as a GM into your precious world and its trappings. It's easy, after investing so much time and energy into developing your world and your ideas into something playable to want to dictate what kinds of adventures, characters, and plots can develop in your world. To some extent that is, after all, your job as a GM. But the problem with that is that your players always get some say. They only play along if they want to. You need to give them some direction, some guidance, and some abiity to be the exceptions to the rules.
Back to high school: my game involved Brian and two others, Harry and Todd. Brian like the paladin types, and loved my previous campaign in which huge epic conflicts had come about. He had a hard time coming up with a character that fit his ideas of being a "hero" and fit into the mood of the campaign. What evolved was that his character sided with the law, while Todd and Harry became a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser style pair of rogues. Only more criminal and less charming. This set up a two-on-one conflict early on, with adventures being about Brian's pursuit of the criminals and their escapes. After a while, it was frustrating for everyone. Brian knew this was a criminal-centered campaign, right? He'd have to live with swimming upstream! But all it did was make it feel like he couldn't get involved in the game.
If this happened to me today, I would work with all three to adjust characters and the setting to allow for some sort of cooperation. Back then, I foolishly thought my vision would force it all to work. Everyone needed to compromise, most importantly I did, by opening up more options to play.
So with Savage Swords of Athanor, I need to find ways to be more open to interesting options. While I like the idea of unstoppable horror, swashbuckling, science fiction and fantasy living together in sin, I need to make sure that the style of game stays good for players. I need to switch things up and let them set agendas. I need to bait hooks, drop some rumors about, and see where things lead. I need to let this be their game, even if it is played on the backdrop I created.
Mind you, there was plenty of assumed and imposed mood and style based on the materials we used, but that's a different story. By the time we were moving into high school, though, things began moving into the direction of mood and style. I had read the Thieves' World anthology and several Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books, and wanted to have an urban campaign filled with intrigue, secrets, and pulpy moral abiguity. My friend Brian wanted to run a campaign set in a largely isolated island filled with magical faerie tale elements, powerful and mysterious forces at work, and a strongly mythical tone. Both games petered out with our game group, and as we re-formed game groups, I found myself running pre-made modules for a party that didn't want to pursue the urban adventure I wanted. I'm not sure what happened to Brian's game idea, but from what I can tell he started to step away from RPGs to focus on theatre.
Once I got to college, we all played around with mood and feel of our games. The GM vision became part of the whole play style, and was one of the things we talked about. Geoff runs a gritty game, Fred runs a political game, Tina runs a high-power hack-and-slash game. Our styles as GMs and players had changed.
As I put together Athanor, there is a lot of vision both implicit and explicit in the setting. With that comes the trap of being too caught up as a GM into your precious world and its trappings. It's easy, after investing so much time and energy into developing your world and your ideas into something playable to want to dictate what kinds of adventures, characters, and plots can develop in your world. To some extent that is, after all, your job as a GM. But the problem with that is that your players always get some say. They only play along if they want to. You need to give them some direction, some guidance, and some abiity to be the exceptions to the rules.
Back to high school: my game involved Brian and two others, Harry and Todd. Brian like the paladin types, and loved my previous campaign in which huge epic conflicts had come about. He had a hard time coming up with a character that fit his ideas of being a "hero" and fit into the mood of the campaign. What evolved was that his character sided with the law, while Todd and Harry became a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser style pair of rogues. Only more criminal and less charming. This set up a two-on-one conflict early on, with adventures being about Brian's pursuit of the criminals and their escapes. After a while, it was frustrating for everyone. Brian knew this was a criminal-centered campaign, right? He'd have to live with swimming upstream! But all it did was make it feel like he couldn't get involved in the game.
If this happened to me today, I would work with all three to adjust characters and the setting to allow for some sort of cooperation. Back then, I foolishly thought my vision would force it all to work. Everyone needed to compromise, most importantly I did, by opening up more options to play.
So with Savage Swords of Athanor, I need to find ways to be more open to interesting options. While I like the idea of unstoppable horror, swashbuckling, science fiction and fantasy living together in sin, I need to make sure that the style of game stays good for players. I need to switch things up and let them set agendas. I need to bait hooks, drop some rumors about, and see where things lead. I need to let this be their game, even if it is played on the backdrop I created.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Mapping the Undercity
As I write this, I am finishing up my presentation day at the conference. I have breakfast tomorrow, then I'm back to the airport for a flight back to San Diego. By the time I post this, though, I'll probably either be in the airport or back home.
I'm a strange social animal. Put me in a defined role in a defined place (in front of a class, making a presentation, doing an orientation program, doing my job, DMing) and I'm outgoing and very social. When I'm done, I'm back to being an introvert. So when I'm at these conferences, I have a hard time sitting in the bar doing the networking other people do. I do my talk or go to the presentations I want, talk to my wife on the phone, and go to my room to read, write, or sketch.
This trip, I took some time to start sketching out old-school megadungeon maps. I have 4 done, and may have more done by the end of the weekend. I'm hoping to put together 9 of them. Keys will come much later. Hell, I still haven't put in doors and the like yet.
This has been an odd experience for me since I haven't really run a dungeon crawl since I was eighteen. That's almost twenty-four years. I stopped because I had decided at the time that dungeons were silly and illogical, and that I had better things to do with my GMing time. Diving into other games for quite some time, the dungeon never came up again.
As I started thinking about Athanor, I put mentions of the Undercity into my early notes because I decided that the dungeon allows for something I had wanted to do with Athanor -- include elements of the gratuitously bizarre and alien. Stange monsters, horrifying traps, and alien architecture would seem out of place in the middle of a city, even an ancient city filled with crumbling ruins of buildings like Zamora. Why would people allow them to continue to exist? Wouldn't someone just demolish them? Wall them off? Burn them down? But in a strange and dangerous underground, such weirdness takes on a mythical quality. Odd things are under the city, like baby alligators grown to huge proportions or C.H.U.D in the sewers. The dungeon transforms from a silly affectation to a weird mythical underground.
So I've started mapping it out, at least. Just need to figure out what to do with it....
I'm a strange social animal. Put me in a defined role in a defined place (in front of a class, making a presentation, doing an orientation program, doing my job, DMing) and I'm outgoing and very social. When I'm done, I'm back to being an introvert. So when I'm at these conferences, I have a hard time sitting in the bar doing the networking other people do. I do my talk or go to the presentations I want, talk to my wife on the phone, and go to my room to read, write, or sketch.
This trip, I took some time to start sketching out old-school megadungeon maps. I have 4 done, and may have more done by the end of the weekend. I'm hoping to put together 9 of them. Keys will come much later. Hell, I still haven't put in doors and the like yet.
This has been an odd experience for me since I haven't really run a dungeon crawl since I was eighteen. That's almost twenty-four years. I stopped because I had decided at the time that dungeons were silly and illogical, and that I had better things to do with my GMing time. Diving into other games for quite some time, the dungeon never came up again.
As I started thinking about Athanor, I put mentions of the Undercity into my early notes because I decided that the dungeon allows for something I had wanted to do with Athanor -- include elements of the gratuitously bizarre and alien. Stange monsters, horrifying traps, and alien architecture would seem out of place in the middle of a city, even an ancient city filled with crumbling ruins of buildings like Zamora. Why would people allow them to continue to exist? Wouldn't someone just demolish them? Wall them off? Burn them down? But in a strange and dangerous underground, such weirdness takes on a mythical quality. Odd things are under the city, like baby alligators grown to huge proportions or C.H.U.D in the sewers. The dungeon transforms from a silly affectation to a weird mythical underground.
So I've started mapping it out, at least. Just need to figure out what to do with it....
Monday, August 17, 2009
Access vs. Individuality
One of the things that has been interesting to me over the last year has been reviewing older versions of D&D to see them with fresh eyes. I’m currently playing in my best friend’s 4th edition campaign, and one of the players at my table is a RPG newbie. Teaching him the nuances of 4th edition have been easier, from what I have experienced, than teaching similar levels of experience in 3rd edition, but it seems to me that the whole idea of teaching the later versions of D&D to a player new to role-playing games is a much bigger leap than teaching new players the rules of the game when I first started.
Some of this is because so much of the rules mastery portion of older versions of D&D was distributed differently. In Ye Olden Days, the DM was the only one who had to master much of the rules structure—though there were always older players who had learned things as well, often because they were DMs, too (but sometimes because they were just rules lawyers.) This was also because there was less in the way of choice for players in developing characters in the rules. The limited customization options and rules-opaqueness were good for hopping right in.
However, the down side was often a period when new players for whom the restrictions and tropes of the game were not central conceits, became frustrated with the arbitrary limits of the game. (“Why can’t my wizard learn to fight with a sword? Can’t he just take some fencing lessons? Why can’t I increase my strength? Can’t I just start exercising?”) That’s where limited options become a challenge to overcome for new players.
So I understand why over time different RPGs began to include more options to customize characters. I’m all for players having choice, and I’m supportive of customizing characters to help players feel that their characters are different from the next player’s. But choice often leads to complexity, which leads to puzzled new players who start to look panicked as you tell them to start making choices about their characters when they don’t know the impact of them.
As I put together my house rules, I want to make sure the game stays in a shape that allows play with minimal rules mastery, focusing instead on smart play that involves players mastering their interaction with the game world. However, I want players to feel that their characters have some depth and are different from each other, which is harder to do in an environment of limited class options and limited rules elements to distinguish characters. Yes, it’s good to make your character’s personality his or her difference, but my experience is that players want their characters to have something in game play that distinguishes them, too. That’s a major reason for the proposed skill system I have been working on, though I also want to encourage the kind of specialization (personality, play style) that I find actually is more enduring in play.
Some of this is because so much of the rules mastery portion of older versions of D&D was distributed differently. In Ye Olden Days, the DM was the only one who had to master much of the rules structure—though there were always older players who had learned things as well, often because they were DMs, too (but sometimes because they were just rules lawyers.) This was also because there was less in the way of choice for players in developing characters in the rules. The limited customization options and rules-opaqueness were good for hopping right in.
However, the down side was often a period when new players for whom the restrictions and tropes of the game were not central conceits, became frustrated with the arbitrary limits of the game. (“Why can’t my wizard learn to fight with a sword? Can’t he just take some fencing lessons? Why can’t I increase my strength? Can’t I just start exercising?”) That’s where limited options become a challenge to overcome for new players.
So I understand why over time different RPGs began to include more options to customize characters. I’m all for players having choice, and I’m supportive of customizing characters to help players feel that their characters are different from the next player’s. But choice often leads to complexity, which leads to puzzled new players who start to look panicked as you tell them to start making choices about their characters when they don’t know the impact of them.
As I put together my house rules, I want to make sure the game stays in a shape that allows play with minimal rules mastery, focusing instead on smart play that involves players mastering their interaction with the game world. However, I want players to feel that their characters have some depth and are different from each other, which is harder to do in an environment of limited class options and limited rules elements to distinguish characters. Yes, it’s good to make your character’s personality his or her difference, but my experience is that players want their characters to have something in game play that distinguishes them, too. That’s a major reason for the proposed skill system I have been working on, though I also want to encourage the kind of specialization (personality, play style) that I find actually is more enduring in play.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Athanor
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Athanor
Once in an early conception of Athanor, I had used a lot of the ideas from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the WInd in thinking about Athanor. Over time, I had cut most of that away and forgotten about it. Generally, I don't use manga as an inspiration for much of anything, in particular RPGs, but I think Miyazaki in general (and Nausicaa in particular) is particularly worth mining for ideas.
I just realized that the use of fungus forests and ancient wars that devestate a planet still come from those early ideas. So add the Nausicaa manga as a recommended reading. Yes, even if you hate Manga and anime. It's well-written swashbuckling with some interesting ideosyncratic Miyazaki twists. I'm not anywhere near as fond of the anime, even less so of the English dub "Warriors of the WInd," but it's passible if inferior work (done when Miyazaki had just started working on the manga).
The themes of the dangers of technology, the response of nature to imbalance, and the dangers of human ambitions can all be found in Athanor as I hope for it to unfold. We'll have to see what (if anything) actually comes out in play.
Once in an early conception of Athanor, I had used a lot of the ideas from Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the WInd in thinking about Athanor. Over time, I had cut most of that away and forgotten about it. Generally, I don't use manga as an inspiration for much of anything, in particular RPGs, but I think Miyazaki in general (and Nausicaa in particular) is particularly worth mining for ideas.
I just realized that the use of fungus forests and ancient wars that devestate a planet still come from those early ideas. So add the Nausicaa manga as a recommended reading. Yes, even if you hate Manga and anime. It's well-written swashbuckling with some interesting ideosyncratic Miyazaki twists. I'm not anywhere near as fond of the anime, even less so of the English dub "Warriors of the WInd," but it's passible if inferior work (done when Miyazaki had just started working on the manga).
The themes of the dangers of technology, the response of nature to imbalance, and the dangers of human ambitions can all be found in Athanor as I hope for it to unfold. We'll have to see what (if anything) actually comes out in play.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Problem of Fiddling with the Magic System
As I have noted, I really want the magic in Athanor to feel more like magic in pulp stories. However, I have come to realize after years of play and my experiences with D&D Third Edition that playing with the magic rules in D&D (or a simulacrum game) can really go wrong rather quickly.
The original rules, after all, have a balance of infrequent magic use with very powerful effects. Once you start making magic more frequent (like in Third Edition), then spells that made sense before start to seem less sensible. Magic-using characters begin to be capable of doing things better than almost anyone else, and their spells will be completely reliable. This gets worse if you also add in easy-to-make scrolls and wands and the like. In the end, Third Edition's magic rules suffered from one major flaw: it didn't change enough, and it didn't keep enough the same.
Frankly, I don't want to come up with a new magic system. At that point, I might as well as pick a different rule set. So how to fiddle with things for mood while keeping things essential the same? I'm pretty sure the idea is playing with fluff while leaving the rules intact.
The original rules, after all, have a balance of infrequent magic use with very powerful effects. Once you start making magic more frequent (like in Third Edition), then spells that made sense before start to seem less sensible. Magic-using characters begin to be capable of doing things better than almost anyone else, and their spells will be completely reliable. This gets worse if you also add in easy-to-make scrolls and wands and the like. In the end, Third Edition's magic rules suffered from one major flaw: it didn't change enough, and it didn't keep enough the same.
Frankly, I don't want to come up with a new magic system. At that point, I might as well as pick a different rule set. So how to fiddle with things for mood while keeping things essential the same? I'm pretty sure the idea is playing with fluff while leaving the rules intact.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
My Appendix N
Zach's "what is your appendix N" meme is making the rounds, asking people to list their version of Gygax's Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading in the AD&D Dungeon Master Guide. I decided that I wanted in on that action, especially since I think doing the exercise will help me think about my influences and directions for Athanor:
Books
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: the Barsoom and Pellucidar novels
Herbert, Frank: the Dune trilogy
Howard, Robert E. : Almuric, the Solomon Kane stories
Leiber, Fritz: the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series
Lovecraft, H.P.: the Cthulhu mythos
Wolfe, Gene: Book of the New Sun
Comics
Dahm, Evan: Rice Boy
Foglio, Phil and Kaja: Girl Genius
Grell, Mike: Warlord
Mignola, Mike: Hellboy
TV & Movies
Thundarr the Barbarian
Pirates of Darkwater
Books
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: the Barsoom and Pellucidar novels
Herbert, Frank: the Dune trilogy
Howard, Robert E. : Almuric, the Solomon Kane stories
Leiber, Fritz: the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series
Lovecraft, H.P.: the Cthulhu mythos
Wolfe, Gene: Book of the New Sun
Comics
Dahm, Evan: Rice Boy
Foglio, Phil and Kaja: Girl Genius
Grell, Mike: Warlord
Mignola, Mike: Hellboy
TV & Movies
Thundarr the Barbarian
Pirates of Darkwater
Friday, May 8, 2009
Inspirations for Mood and Weirdness
To give you some insight into the kinds of weirdness I find inspiring, I have recently read through Evan Dahm's Rice Boy webcomics (http://www.rice-boy.com) and been struck by the mix of epic fantasy, surreal strangeness, and terrible strangeness of the world. In many ways, this is the kind of weirdness I want out of Athanor, but with less of a high fantasy feel and more of a sword and sorcery meets Edgar Rice Burroughs feel.
Of course, RPGs are different works than comics or literature, and no DM should feel too attached to things like mood, feel, or themes. Players will trample your favorite ideas and insist on their own, and that's how collaboration just has to work. Still, there is still some value in starting with a vision, so long as you don't go out of your way to cram it down your players' throats.
Of course, RPGs are different works than comics or literature, and no DM should feel too attached to things like mood, feel, or themes. Players will trample your favorite ideas and insist on their own, and that's how collaboration just has to work. Still, there is still some value in starting with a vision, so long as you don't go out of your way to cram it down your players' throats.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Horror, Mood, and Athanor
Jim over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess posted his musings on D&D as a Horror Game which got me thinking a bit about where I want to go with Athanor mood-wise. In my mind, I wold love to have Athanor feel like a swashbuckling horror game -- romance, adventure, political intrigue, and nameless horror all intertwined. I was especially mindful of this since I had just been reading Fight On! # 4 this morning, and going thorugh the Tower of Duvan'Ku by the very same Mr. Raggi, and trying to figure a way to balance the feel of a horror adventure without it seeming so much like an intentional act of PC torture (which it struck me that the Tower could feel like) without much positive experience for the players.
Not sure that I have an answer, but having been out of the active DMing game for a couple of years, I find myself musing about this mood thing a lot, even though part of me know that much of the mood and feel of a campaign is actually out of the DM's hands and in the players'.
Not sure that I have an answer, but having been out of the active DMing game for a couple of years, I find myself musing about this mood thing a lot, even though part of me know that much of the mood and feel of a campaign is actually out of the DM's hands and in the players'.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Athanor Update
Right now, I'm deep in the project of doing a literature review for my doctoral program, and I find that shifting between intense academic writing and writing for Athanor is harder than I thought. My mind is wrapped up in educational research right now, and while I could think of ways to apply that to gaming, I just don't want to. And my time is being squeezed by the American Educational Research Association national conference this week, and a statewide academic advising conference next week. I'm all conferenced out, and a bit overwhelmed by my academic life....
So my work on Athanor right now is focused on writing up a chunk of undercity as a dungeon. After I finish a couple of levels, I will start posting things again -- some scanned maps and some encounter keys. I tried something new with the maps. Inspired by a map by Gabor Luz in Fight On #1, I am doing freehand, grid-free maps sketched out rather than done as combat grids, so I'll be interested in what people think once I post them.
So my work on Athanor right now is focused on writing up a chunk of undercity as a dungeon. After I finish a couple of levels, I will start posting things again -- some scanned maps and some encounter keys. I tried something new with the maps. Inspired by a map by Gabor Luz in Fight On #1, I am doing freehand, grid-free maps sketched out rather than done as combat grids, so I'll be interested in what people think once I post them.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Dungeons, Adventures and Athanor
I have made some opportunities for traditional adventures in Athanor, including the presence of the undercity, the four scions of the Overlord and their fortresses in the vast expanse of ruins at the edges of the city. I have also made some opportunities for wilderness adventure (and further dungeons) in my wilderness map and slowly developing map key. But these only provide some of what I want happening.
Now I need to think about intrigues and backgrounds. In my past days of running superhero games, Storyteller system games, and action/adventure games using Feng Shui, I have GMed games with a strong plot and story element. And these went fine. But I want to give more freedom to my players in discovering and creating plots rather than having them driven by me. I'm just not interested in being the author of a semi-complete plot that the players play in right now. I want to watch what the players make out of the world.
So how do I get more sandbox-ey, but not focus on megadungeons, wilderness exploration, or heavy detail like the old Judges' Guild City State? I'll have to mull that over (somewhere between the lierature review, data project, readings, papers, orientation programs, publications I'm rewriting, and three conferences I'm attending this quarter.... For those of you considering full-time work while doing full-time graduate school, heed my advice: Don't do it!)
So many questions to get the game I want to run to actually take shape....
Now I need to think about intrigues and backgrounds. In my past days of running superhero games, Storyteller system games, and action/adventure games using Feng Shui, I have GMed games with a strong plot and story element. And these went fine. But I want to give more freedom to my players in discovering and creating plots rather than having them driven by me. I'm just not interested in being the author of a semi-complete plot that the players play in right now. I want to watch what the players make out of the world.
So how do I get more sandbox-ey, but not focus on megadungeons, wilderness exploration, or heavy detail like the old Judges' Guild City State? I'll have to mull that over (somewhere between the lierature review, data project, readings, papers, orientation programs, publications I'm rewriting, and three conferences I'm attending this quarter.... For those of you considering full-time work while doing full-time graduate school, heed my advice: Don't do it!)
So many questions to get the game I want to run to actually take shape....
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