At the OrgeCave I noticed that Allan playtested a new RPG from Goodman Games in this article.
Even with my association with Goodman Games I know nothing about this and the details are few. But it appears that a Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG a retro-clone is in the works.
Whatever happens it looks like interesting times are ahead as another major publisher (after KenzerCo & Hackmaster Basic) is looking back at the hobby's roots to see what they can do differently rather than following Wizard's lead.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
More comments on historical settings.
A lot of quality comments yesterday thanks folks. Two stand out;
Reverend Keith's comment particularly this line.
The importance this was hammered into me when I ran my first NERO LARP events (D&D in the woods). The main focus was about a highlander cultures. Thanks to Rob Roy, which came out that year, I did the research and managed to distilled it into it's essence. The folks doing the NPCs roles and later player really responded to this especially after Braveheart came out that same year. It wasn't the accuracy of the historical details that nailed it but select the right mix that allowed a roleplayer to feel like they were playing a Scottish Highlander.
Unfortunately my Roman analogues didn't do so well so I will refer you to Graham Bottley's Rolemaster: Rome for that.
Next Tim of Gothridge Manor asks about what about Magic and Society which I will cover in tomorrow's post.
P.S. Before you ask the reason the Romans I made didn't do so well is because I made too much the bad guy and did not add enough sympathetic elements. In short they came across like jerks.
Reverend Keith's comment particularly this line.
What I'd love are historical RPG books that don't focus on historical minutiae, but rather just provide a brief (but accurate) overview for flavor, coupled with a wealth of game mechanics for simulating the era.While I like mechanics what I think what needs to be covered as well is how to roleplay in historical settings. I think this is a critical aspect and key to making campaign work. The best historical (or genre emulation) games I been in are those where the rulebook and GM handouts gives me a clear sense of what being X was like.
The importance this was hammered into me when I ran my first NERO LARP events (D&D in the woods). The main focus was about a highlander cultures. Thanks to Rob Roy, which came out that year, I did the research and managed to distilled it into it's essence. The folks doing the NPCs roles and later player really responded to this especially after Braveheart came out that same year. It wasn't the accuracy of the historical details that nailed it but select the right mix that allowed a roleplayer to feel like they were playing a Scottish Highlander.
Unfortunately my Roman analogues didn't do so well so I will refer you to Graham Bottley's Rolemaster: Rome for that.
Next Tim of Gothridge Manor asks about what about Magic and Society which I will cover in tomorrow's post.
P.S. Before you ask the reason the Romans I made didn't do so well is because I made too much the bad guy and did not add enough sympathetic elements. In short they came across like jerks.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Difficulties of Historical settings
Zach of RPGBlog2 writes about the Rolemaster:Rome supplement. In it he wishes there was more on the geography and the city of Rome while there was great stuff on Roman life. I am not sure what issues the author of Rolemaster:Rome faced in his research. I know from my own attempts that trying to create a historical setting can be frustrating with the materials at hand. Even with the power of the internet somethings are just not readily accessible. Others are filtered through a author's point of view and omit details that would have been useful for a campaign.
But despite this, most DMs who want to run a historical campaign can overcome this by using their knowledge of the period to make stuff up that fits. The point after all is to make something gamable and fun and not be the final word in realism.
To illustrate this lets take S John Ross' Medieval Demographics. Part of the heart of Ross' article is a series of professions with SV values. You divide the population of your target settlement by the SV the result is the number of that type of establishment or professional. Any result less than one can be used as a percentage that will exist.
Very simple, very elegant, plus has the benefit of feeling right to those up on medieval history. However where did it come from?
If we look among Ross' footnotes we find that this section was developed mostly from a table found in the Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Frances Gies. A book I happened to have.
On Page 236 we find this and see where he got his starting point.
This table is based on a 1292 Paris Tax Roll. By now you notice that the SV value is not the same as what in the table. I think what S John Ross did was divided the numbers above into 55000 and did some rounding.
Notice that the table cuts off at 21 why? Because it turns out the authors omitted any profession that had under 21 professionals.
Putting my Google-fu to work it turns out that this particular document has been transcribed to the internet.
Occupational By-Names in the 1292 Tax Roll of Paris.
As you can see there is a lot more to this list. Most of the distinctions are too fine to be fun or particularly gamable. Do we really want our players to care whether they need to go to an bow & arrow maker or just the bow maker. Most DMs don't. You can now see why there are so many darn Shoe makers in Medieval Demographics. Turns out 1292 Paris had a lot of Cordovan leather shoe makers. 222 guys and 4 ladies. Heck time travelling roleplayers would be set. There are 8 dice makers to choose from.
Hope this illustrates some of the issues of creating historical settings. If you are going to do so there is going to be some editorial choices that you will need to make.
P.S If I figured out S John Ross' math right those dice makers have a SV value of 7,000. (rounded of course).
But despite this, most DMs who want to run a historical campaign can overcome this by using their knowledge of the period to make stuff up that fits. The point after all is to make something gamable and fun and not be the final word in realism.
To illustrate this lets take S John Ross' Medieval Demographics. Part of the heart of Ross' article is a series of professions with SV values. You divide the population of your target settlement by the SV the result is the number of that type of establishment or professional. Any result less than one can be used as a percentage that will exist.
Very simple, very elegant, plus has the benefit of feeling right to those up on medieval history. However where did it come from?
If we look among Ross' footnotes we find that this section was developed mostly from a table found in the Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Frances Gies. A book I happened to have.
On Page 236 we find this and see where he got his starting point.
This table is based on a 1292 Paris Tax Roll. By now you notice that the SV value is not the same as what in the table. I think what S John Ross did was divided the numbers above into 55000 and did some rounding.Notice that the table cuts off at 21 why? Because it turns out the authors omitted any profession that had under 21 professionals.
Putting my Google-fu to work it turns out that this particular document has been transcribed to the internet.
Occupational By-Names in the 1292 Tax Roll of Paris.
As you can see there is a lot more to this list. Most of the distinctions are too fine to be fun or particularly gamable. Do we really want our players to care whether they need to go to an bow & arrow maker or just the bow maker. Most DMs don't. You can now see why there are so many darn Shoe makers in Medieval Demographics. Turns out 1292 Paris had a lot of Cordovan leather shoe makers. 222 guys and 4 ladies. Heck time travelling roleplayers would be set. There are 8 dice makers to choose from.
Hope this illustrates some of the issues of creating historical settings. If you are going to do so there is going to be some editorial choices that you will need to make.
P.S If I figured out S John Ross' math right those dice makers have a SV value of 7,000. (rounded of course).
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Burgess Shale Traveller
To further reinforce what Grognardia says about Traveller here. Here is this article from a long time fan site - Freelance Traveller which speaks about the pre-imperium days of Traveller when campaign were one or two sectors in size and empires spanned dozens of worlds.
Thanks to Far Future Enterprise you can still buy the original and see what everybody is talking about. Thanks to Mongoose Publishing we have a near clone that has been released under the OGL. So today anybody can pursue their own vision of what Traveller is. Although to be fair Marc Miller (and Mongoose) are pretty liberal about the fan community is allowed to do as long as a few simple conditions are met.
Today many are debating whether the dominance of the Third Imperium setting was good for Traveller or not. At the time nobody really had the idea of classic gaming. It wasn't just D&D that was afflicted with the idea that the next edition had to be bigger and better as succession of Traveller, Mega-Traveller, and Traveller New Era showed. The classic version of Traveller ceased to be supported when Mega Traveller came out. Afterwards the only thing that united the fanbase was the Third Imperium.
But since the release of the reprints and the OGL version of Mongoose Traveller. Now we can have it both ways. The Traveller market can cater to fans of the system and too fans of the Third Imperium. And because the Third Imperium grew out of the assumptions of the classic Traveller rules, both can benefit from the work of each other.
If there is an ideal situation for a revival of a classic game Traveller has it right now.
Thanks to Far Future Enterprise you can still buy the original and see what everybody is talking about. Thanks to Mongoose Publishing we have a near clone that has been released under the OGL. So today anybody can pursue their own vision of what Traveller is. Although to be fair Marc Miller (and Mongoose) are pretty liberal about the fan community is allowed to do as long as a few simple conditions are met.
Today many are debating whether the dominance of the Third Imperium setting was good for Traveller or not. At the time nobody really had the idea of classic gaming. It wasn't just D&D that was afflicted with the idea that the next edition had to be bigger and better as succession of Traveller, Mega-Traveller, and Traveller New Era showed. The classic version of Traveller ceased to be supported when Mega Traveller came out. Afterwards the only thing that united the fanbase was the Third Imperium.
But since the release of the reprints and the OGL version of Mongoose Traveller. Now we can have it both ways. The Traveller market can cater to fans of the system and too fans of the Third Imperium. And because the Third Imperium grew out of the assumptions of the classic Traveller rules, both can benefit from the work of each other.
If there is an ideal situation for a revival of a classic game Traveller has it right now.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Traveller and Computers
Grognardia has an interesting post about Traveller and Computers here.
Around the mid 80s it began to drive many Traveller fans crazy that it's computers were so limited compared to what was coming out. Most just accepted it as part of the premise but a significant minority developed all kinds of handwave to explain why the Model I/bis was the size it was.
I was part of the just accept it crowd. At that time my vision of an advanced computer was that you ask it question in natural language, and the computer gave you answers. I even did a computer voice that worked nicely.
MP3 of a morning greeting
Something of general use to SciFi RPGs is that computers today come in a large variety of configurations, sizes, and and purposes. While the mainframes of yore are far fewer in number there still exist large sever farms that would not look out place in the imaginations of SF roleplayers in the 80s.
My day job involves programming software to run the metal forming, and metal cutting machines my company manufactures. Computer that are used for control and process applications, like those needed for starships, are often quite specialized. The reason for this is primarily I/O, the computer needs to access a variety of wires each with different electrical characteristics to control different operations. These are not indefinitely flexible. Since much of the limitation of Traveller's computers involves swapping programs that do process and control the size and limitations seem reasonable although on the large size.
In a machine I work on that takes sheets off of a coil of metal and forms them into rectangular tube the computer is a Dell you can buy on-line. But the cabinet it is part of is a 2 1/2 foot cube. The rest of the space in occupied by the wiring needed to connect the computer to the different station along the production line.
Future Tech may shrink this a little, wireless certainly may be able to eliminate some wires. But physics limit how far you can shrink or get rid of some of this stuff safely.
One pieces of technology has eased the wiring situation greatly. That is the PLC or Programmable Logic Controller. Basically it is a box with inputs on one side and outputs on the other. The magic is that you connect the inputs and outputs however you like by downloading a program. Thanks to the ever shrinking CPUs today's PLC programs have all the features of a programming language used for general purpose computers.
A Traveller Starship probably has a crapload of PLCs that offer normal and redundant paths for sensors and controls. Part of the dealing damage to your starship probably involves going into your network of PLCs and downloading programs to reroute functions around the damaged sections of the ship.
My point in relaying this isn't to tell you how to play your sci-fi. But rather in hopes that some ideas will come out of it for your campaigns.
Around the mid 80s it began to drive many Traveller fans crazy that it's computers were so limited compared to what was coming out. Most just accepted it as part of the premise but a significant minority developed all kinds of handwave to explain why the Model I/bis was the size it was.
I was part of the just accept it crowd. At that time my vision of an advanced computer was that you ask it question in natural language, and the computer gave you answers. I even did a computer voice that worked nicely.
MP3 of a morning greeting
Something of general use to SciFi RPGs is that computers today come in a large variety of configurations, sizes, and and purposes. While the mainframes of yore are far fewer in number there still exist large sever farms that would not look out place in the imaginations of SF roleplayers in the 80s.
My day job involves programming software to run the metal forming, and metal cutting machines my company manufactures. Computer that are used for control and process applications, like those needed for starships, are often quite specialized. The reason for this is primarily I/O, the computer needs to access a variety of wires each with different electrical characteristics to control different operations. These are not indefinitely flexible. Since much of the limitation of Traveller's computers involves swapping programs that do process and control the size and limitations seem reasonable although on the large size.
In a machine I work on that takes sheets off of a coil of metal and forms them into rectangular tube the computer is a Dell you can buy on-line. But the cabinet it is part of is a 2 1/2 foot cube. The rest of the space in occupied by the wiring needed to connect the computer to the different station along the production line.
Future Tech may shrink this a little, wireless certainly may be able to eliminate some wires. But physics limit how far you can shrink or get rid of some of this stuff safely.
One pieces of technology has eased the wiring situation greatly. That is the PLC or Programmable Logic Controller. Basically it is a box with inputs on one side and outputs on the other. The magic is that you connect the inputs and outputs however you like by downloading a program. Thanks to the ever shrinking CPUs today's PLC programs have all the features of a programming language used for general purpose computers.
A Traveller Starship probably has a crapload of PLCs that offer normal and redundant paths for sensors and controls. Part of the dealing damage to your starship probably involves going into your network of PLCs and downloading programs to reroute functions around the damaged sections of the ship.
My point in relaying this isn't to tell you how to play your sci-fi. But rather in hopes that some ideas will come out of it for your campaigns.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Calendar and Log for the Majestic Wilderlands
I dug out my notes on the calender system I use for the Majestic Wilderlands. It also include a basic log to note what the party is doing when. You can download it here.
As always comments are appreciated.
The calendar system is one of the few customs that continues unbroken from the earliest days of civilization. The major difference in between the different cultures are the names of the gods as well as who is honored in the 10 great festivals of the year.
One year has 360 days divided into 12 months of three tendays each. Each tenday is divided into three days. The Wilderlands has one moon, which has a cycle of 36 days for ten lunar months.
Rest days are taken every Starday. Along with the day of the new moon, which is considered an unlucky day. With minor festivals thrown in most of the Wilderlands winds up working four days in five.
As always comments are appreciated.
The calendar system is one of the few customs that continues unbroken from the earliest days of civilization. The major difference in between the different cultures are the names of the gods as well as who is honored in the 10 great festivals of the year.
One year has 360 days divided into 12 months of three tendays each. Each tenday is divided into three days. The Wilderlands has one moon, which has a cycle of 36 days for ten lunar months.
Rest days are taken every Starday. Along with the day of the new moon, which is considered an unlucky day. With minor festivals thrown in most of the Wilderlands winds up working four days in five.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Explaining our wierd hobby
A year and a half ago I made a post on the Anti D&D Movement relating my experience being a D&D geek back in the early 80s. A got a comment by Jennifer yesterday related her experience trying to explain D&D to her mother. It brought to mind my own attempts.
When all else fails I say it a form of improvisational theater performed among friends. That seems to leave the listener with a "oh I get it" expression.
When all else fails I say it a form of improvisational theater performed among friends. That seems to leave the listener with a "oh I get it" expression.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)