I particularly love games that have areas to explore the bizarre, but how to present those things in new and strange ways? How we present information goes a long way to emphasising the strange, differentiating things from the mundane. For games that are inherently strange, the peculiar can become mundane, because so much is weird; the classic advice of juxtaposing the strange with the mundane is something I find useful. Consider how time and space is a strange thing, and how our brains interpret them to make sense of all the noise, which is partly why it is easy for people to miss an anomaly when one occurs. Here is a great exploration of how film can explore the strange, Tony Zhou’s Every Frame a Painting video about Satoshi Kon and his strange use of editing:
Street Fighter RPG
Street Fighter has a strange setting, on the one hand it seems to be almost the real world, but then there are a few people using mystical abilities to hit each other!? So far the designing of my adventure Game of Death meets Twin Peaks has been a fun and strange experience, but I’m also aware I need to be careful in regards to not overwhelming things. The setting of Kabuki Town, presented in Punho do Guerreiro (Warrior’s Fist), is already an interesting place, so adding the Red Room from Twin Peaks might be a step too far for some. I’ll not put any spoilers here, but I wanted to highlight that Twin Peaks itself includes the idea of punching a supernatural entity, so why not take it a step further and make it a Dragon Punch?!
The Red Room as an arena?! Just think of the strange arena effects that could be in play. Can mortals even fight in that place?
"Aw, come on! We fought against dozens of monsters and literal tentacled cosmic horrors, and you get to call MY cake 'strange'!?" "B-but of course! It just means my opinion is more than qualified about the subject!"#RPGaDay2020#ttrpg#dnd#pathfinderpic.twitter.com/KPVip7IVPQ
Lily-Bulb Conveying: There are those who know how to place a message of no more than five breaths into a star lily; and since these lilies spread by great thin runners, and spawn many bulbs, the word can creep.
This is a non-exhaustive list; I still have many posts to read today, so I might be adding more links. I’d recommend searching the hashtag and judge those great answers for yourself: #RPGaDay2020, some people use #RPGaDay.
So many RPGs are about living on the Edge, primarily of mainstream society, the exceptions to the norm. It was one of many things that I appreciated about Cyberpunk in my youth, the view from the edge; Edgerunners: “3. Always take it to the Edge.” Cliché fun 🙂 Building upon Cyberpunk, countless other games, and studying psychology, my passion the last few years has been exploring the edges of identity. Understandably not everyone wants to deep dive the topic in an RPG, so fiction writing has been my main outlet for this.
Quick mention of the importance of the Edge in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (VTES) card game. My friends and I used to use random objects to represent it at the table, which was not always sensible, as inevitably somebody would run off with our Edge to show others. This led to us using a dice, boring but sensible. The picture below is at our local Nightclub; thankfully we invested in plastic card sleeves. 😉
Edge for Street Fighter RPG
For my SFRPG answer, I’ve spent the day trying to think of an alternative to my initial thought: the wrestler Edge (Adam Copeland). I pondered fusing more Cyberpunk in to SF, after all it already has Cybernetics, but I was not inspired by this. Of note, Warrior’s Fist Issue 12 (English), Punho do Guerreiro 12 (Brazilian) expanded on cybernetics some more. Then I started getting ideas relating to my Game of Death meets Twin Peaks adventure. Edge is an actor and has been in various shows; in particular he gives a brilliant performance as Kjetill Flatnose in the Vikings TV series. So, maybe somebody in Kabuki Town has cast Edge.
#RPGaDay2020 23-Edge. Edge is in U2. It's good to have music you enjoy when you prepare your gaming notes. You could say, it will give you The Edge…. favourite songs-All I want is you, Desire, With or without you, Where the streets have no name.
#RPGaDay2020 "Edge" When you're writing a setting, always remember the classic acronym EDGE: Edgy Doesn't Get Entertaining. Don't think you have to add parts to your setting that are DARK AND BROODING. Feel free to mix things up, edge highlights the more amusing parts. Have fun.
#RPGaDay2020 Day 23 Something bothered me when playing video games. There was always an edge, a point you couldn't pass. You can only ever go as far as programmed. With #TTRPGs there are no edges. You are limited only by your collective imaginations. pic.twitter.com/7oIcjU7vRP
Be like a cat and don't hesitate to push your story/mechanic over the edge. It's better to pull back if it breaks than to never explore its limits. #ttRPG#gamedesignpic.twitter.com/W0rmCtkKcQ
My hot tip for writing RPG examples is to deliberately not use a typical situation, but choose an edge case. That way you're illustrating how the move is used but also clearing up a potential ambiguity. pic.twitter.com/y5BetAeScN
— Josh Fox (the artist formerly known as rabalias) (@armadajosh) August 23, 2020
This is a non-exhaustive list; I still have many posts to read today, so I might be adding more links. I’d recommend searching the hashtag and judge those great answers for yourself: #RPGaDay2020, some people use #RPGaDay.
Before I get to my Twin Peaks meets Game of Death Tulpa character for SFRPG, let us consider how time towers above us all, everything dies; eek, that is a bit abstract and dark. Well I live in Blackpool, we have our own tower. 😉 I wonder what the future of clock towers will be? Something that was once a prominent feature, sort of a magical tower of bygone years.
Like many people, I associate towers with power but also crucially with hubris, linking the idea back to the Tower of Babel tale; likely why the Tarot uses this symbol to mean impending disaster/change. Although the Tower symbol can also represent higher learning, but there is the inbuilt reminder to not build too high, to have good foundations or else. Appreciating the importance of the belief of the stars upon peoples’ lives is key to understanding why the symbol is important to many cultures, and why the Wizard Tower became a trope. With most fantasies having magic, along with the power of the heavens (culturally or literally), it goes a long-way to justifying how and why these anomalies are built. Both positive and negative meanings fit wonderfully with either Mage: the Ascension or Mage: the Awakening; particularly Awakening with the importance of the Watchtowers. The Flight of Dragons film had the Mage Tower linked to the individual Mage’s personality and magic style.
If we step away from magic, Towers are still important. Years before Mage I played many games of Cyberpunk. After the iconic adventure Never Fade Away, visiting the Corporate Plaza in Night City was generally avoided. 😉
I started a megadungeon in 2017 that was effectively a Haemonculi Tower, hidden in ancient Warp Tunnels. The Warhammer 40,000 universe has many towers, especially if we view the Spire Hive Cities like Necromunda. Games Workshops long running relationship with Judge Dread and Mega-City One is likely a source for why the 40K Hive Spires are so ridiculous. 😉
Street Fighter RPG
With martial arts, towers are not a majorly important concept, but there are a few standouts like the legendary Bruce Lee in his yellow jumpsuit in the Game of Death. Then there is the epic and intense film The Raid, which in addition to being a solid movie with incredible action sequences, it feels like a step away from being Judge Dredd.
The game Kung Fu Master was based upon Game of Death, plus also supposedly the first beat’em up. Oddly, apparently the game had a film tie-in with the incredible Wheels on Meals, even though there is 0% plot relationship?! Anyway, I have briefly mentioned Kung Fu Master before in regards to my RPG roots, Fist 2 and adventure martial arts, so it is funny that decades after playing it, I am working on adventure inspired by it.
As a quick explanation this adventure can be considered to be a fusion of Twin Peaks and Game of Death. Thus I have made a strange character, which is inspired by Hakim from Game of Death, played by amazing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but is neither of them, the version is the one in Kabuki Town, not the version inside The Pagoda. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris stats were in Punho do Guerreiro 17(Brazilian), the English version for Warrior’s Fist has been translated, but it needs the cover and formatting finalising, I’ll add a link when that is completed. 🙂
I couldn’t find an image that is not copyrighted, but there are some great pieces of art out there, like:
I'm a huge fan of this fight in particular. Actually started designing Hakim as a Street Fighter character. Would love to see a Game of Death fighting game. Obvious throw back to the yellow jump suit! pic.twitter.com/Xjqn3S9oL7
"…and there was that time when the paladin saw a tower made of corpse and gasped, saying 'By the gods, this is horrible!' and I replied 'No, it's bodybuilding'." "… you got kicked out of the party, right?" "Yup."#RPGaDay2020#ttrpg#dnd#pathfinderpic.twitter.com/rH8sWivEBl
#RPGaDay2020 Tower: it is said there had been once an isle with a gigantic light tower in the middle of the inner sea. Some say it was the axis mundi of #Veitstanz, but nobody is sure who built it or why it vanished. #ttrpgpic.twitter.com/YRSzQGErja
Question for y'all, what makes a good dungeon module? What are the best tips you have for someone writing a dungeon / keep / tower crawl? What helps you? What do you include to help others run it?#DnD#DnD5e#OSR#TTRPG
— Joel Salda runs The Big Tabletop (@Saldamandar) August 19, 2020
#RPGaDay2020 19. "Tower": Not every wizard resides in a tower. Roll 1d8 for alternative abodes: 1. mountain cave 2. stilt hut 3. geodesic dome 4. ziggurat 5. cottage 6. bungalow 7. A-frame 8. penthouse
Die Gruppe Schwarzmagier*innen wird von einem Sukkubus angesprochen. Ihr Beschwörer wurde von einer Bauersfamilie aus dem Turm gezogen und soll mit seinem Blut das Feld düngen. Helft eurem Kollegen und besiegt die Landwirt*in
#RPGaDay2020 Day 19: Tower. The cathedral with the highest tower is the one in Caput Lucis, the capital of the Mother of Light. But there are other cities and cathedrals making themselves ready to outstrip this building. Will the Mother of Light let them do as they like?
This is a non-exhaustive list; I still have many posts to read today, so I might be adding more links. I’d recommend searching the hashtag and judge those great answers for yourself: #RPGaDay2020, some people use #RPGaDay.
Huzzah, I’ve just submitted a story for another writing competition; this one was for New Writers North. During my writing breaks I chatted with a few players about game ideas. Some more Play-By-eMail games have been preliminarily arranged. Besides tabletop games, I am currently running PBEM:
#FatefulMemories this is a fusion of Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and the World of Darkness; plus bits from other games. This game has been slow but steady, so far it has been ‘mostly’ set in the Forgotten Realms, but is likely to go full Planescape soon 😀 If the player agrees, maybe in the future I will publish some of the game turns.
A Mage the Ascension freeform discovery game.
One of the World of Darkness games I had started in 2017 was #SecretRage; I had previously blogged about this as Prelude – Secret Rage PBM 6. This game led to a spin off game, set in modern days, which then metamorphised in World of Darkness Sliders. I am running Sliders primarily as a tabletop, but it still involves PBEM 🙂
I might now also be running
A Twin Peaks game, likely another freeform game. Probably using Esoterrorists, Mage and Cosmicism. I saw some recommendations for other games to look at, which focus on providing a Twin Peaks like experience #Lynchcraftian
I’ve touched on Satyros’s: Powerchords with a music friend.
I have big plans for an epic Reality War game. Sadly I’d need a lot of infrastructure to do that, I’m not healthy enough to tackle so much coding; speech recognition is so annoying with code.
I had put a lot into the primary #SecretRage chronicle. Originally it focused on Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The idea changed to allow the PC to be a spirit, and I also incorporated some of my designs and code from old PBM games. The game would span the whole World of Darkness, allowing for any time or place to be explored. Despite being quite ill at the time of planning this, I managed to do a lot of preparation. I even made a comic; not bad for a rubbish artist with hand problems. Sadly, #SecretRage faded away, but I kept tinkering with it, making new scenes, hoping it would get going again.
Motivated by various chats, as well as discussion tonight in the Mage the Podcast Discord server, I have tweaked the comic that I made and uploaded as a complete PDF.
Batjutsu 