Odd Oracles

I'm working on two issues of A Random Encounter at the moment, and turning some ideas over in my head. I was transcribing my interview with Patrick Stuart for Issue 4, and we talked a bit about blogging and why he started, and it got me thinking about when I started blogging about games. This blog started on 21st March 2012, but on the same day I posted something on a Tumblr that I used to use, about the very first game that I GMed: In A Wicked Age.

I like In A Wicked Age: the Oracles that produce the inspiration and elements work really well, they produce a rich fantasy world at the table with no prep, and I think that playing it a few times gets you in the flow with the dice mechanics. There's a bit of AP in the post, and I was playing with Patrick and David, so it was a good game. There were also a couple of musings about the Oracle idea itself:

[Patrick] mentioned that there were “Oracle hacks” of the game, and I can understand why this would be quite cool to do. Because the set-up is so fast, straightforward and fun, it’s quite a freeing game to play. ... In my head I’m already imagining urban fantasy possibilities, superhero settings and even - dare I say it - zombie game settings…

We hacked together an Oracle or two and played some Tales From Zero Point, which was an element of a bigger space setting that we created collaboratively. I loved that the Oracle could produce a great game with no preparation. We could turn up and really tune in to make a creative story; and at the same time, I still felt that it was a bit clunky with the mechanics, and as someone running the game I wanted something to help support making NPCs and places - even just little possible story threads for the players to explore (I'm not a railroad fan).

For a little while now I've been turning over mashing an Oracle-setting-generator-thing with the Into The Odd resolution mechanics: a strip-downed game that could get people up and running quickly with no prep. Draw some cards to get character and setting inspiration from an Oracle, and while PCs roll dice to flesh out their characters, the GM can roll some dice or draw cards to flesh out the setting in an organic way. I think it's possible to do this in a reasonably small game, that provides a lot of prompts and support for the GM and the players to come up with the backdrop for a great one-shot every time they play, or which could organically create a sandbox-y story - each session being either an "episode" or just the next steps.

And now that this idea is back in my head again... I guess I have one more thing to add to the to do list... :)

On This Day

I've grown to love exactly one aspect of Facebook over the last few months. I hate the interface, I hate the notifications I get when I logon, I hate that I see things that people have liked, I hate to see that a friend-of-a-friend has posted something and a friend has liked it. There's a lot to hate.

But one thing I love is the "On This Day" feature, letting me look back and see what happened in years gone by. For post-fatherhood this is quite nice, it lets me see my daughter a year ago (and soon, two years ago) and I can do that whole "Awwww, she's grown so much!" thing that some people find sickening. It also lets me peer back to the early days of married life, and even further to my PhD days - in fact, exactly seven years ago today I said goodbye to that and started my business!

Time flies.

In the last few days I recorded an episode of A Gaming Podcast About Nothing, and Dave and I got on to talking about terminology and blogging and "has everything been said already?" - things of that nature. This conversation is on my mind, as is "On This Day"...

People have said in the past that it might be difficult to do a regular "OSR Digest" as a site or a newsletter, but I wonder if there is some value in a site that looks through the back catalogue of the OSR and does a regular link share about posts from days gone by - with or without commentary.

For example, on this day:

• in 2008, Dave shared a post of random spellbook appearances on Monsters & Manuals, which is a neat way to spice up your fantasy game;
• in 2011, Patrick was asking whether or not he had invented drawing a dungeon on a polyhedron, and a couple of related questions;
• also in 2011, Zak S shared the Caves of Chaos as a really neat one-page dungeon;
• and also in 2011, Chris shared six random jerks you annoy in town! 

It's interesting to see people riffing on ideas as they come up, but I wonder what ideas might be re-discovered or re-examined - even appreciated more - by looking back?

Start Over

I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night. I used to, all the time, sleep for six to eight hours at a stretch every night without fail. Now, my rest is piecemeal, two hours, then three, then 45 minutes, then whatever is left until the morning.

(Parenthood ladies and gentlemen!)

I also don't remember the last time I wrote something of substance on here, but the clock tells me it was probably over three months ago. It hit me a few days ago, when reading Warren Ellis' new "blog" morning.computer that there was an opportunity here to connect two "problems" and create an opportunity.

Even at two or three in the morning when I swing out of bed, stumble into the nursery and shush CJ or lie her back down (tangent: she learning a new trick this week, how to go from lying on her back to sitting up; this has been an intellectual leap for her. The next day she started crawling) and help her fall asleep, even when I am actually struggling to remember what day it is, or whether I have work or whatever - even then, my brain is ticking over ideas.

So: when I wake in the night, brain kicks in, ideas ideas ideas - when I get back to bed, before I lie down, make a note of them, when I get chance in the day after, write something - anything, even if (like morning.computer) it is just a short idea or observation.

Let's see where this leads.

Generating Pugs

(this is a post written in haste and ignorance and contains thoughts that have not necessarily been taken to any kind of logical conclusion; so who knows if there is anything of value here, or anything that can be taken to a valuable conclusion. Perhaps you will take a chance?)

The other day I was thinking about generating large numbers of Pugs. Pugs are a goblin-y kind of creature that I wrote about when I was DMing the Somewhere North campaign earlier this year. They start as 2/3HD creatures (clerics and chiefs have more 4HD) and are found in various group sizes, from two person scout groups all the way up to 150 strong warbands. And you would not want to look in the old Dwarven Fortresses under the northern hills. Thousands and thousands of them in there.

So. You have two Pugs running from a party. Quickly you roll four d8s and there we go, you can get their HP and know what's what.

But: the Party is ambushed by a Medium group. (dice rolled as I write to illustrate point). They've been lying in wait and are prepared. (6+3d6 leads to 19 Pugs, 6 of them are 3HD, roll for 50% check and one is a 4HD Pug Warlord's Son) So the Medium group is comprised of a 4HD leader, six 3HD Pugs (two of which are Clerics) and twelve 2HD Pugs. That's a lot of dice to roll to stat them up. You can do it, but it seems like a little chore.

Thus: I started thinking, can a reasonable generator be made? Say, roll 2d20 and consult a table that will give Pug numbers, HP values, what they are armed with and so on. Of course, the original conception of the Pug is something that I have put together. There must be a million and one similarly created opponent humanoids.

Here's the interesting thing that was occuring to me as I was sat in Costa: there is something beautifully mathematical about all of this. You create a system to model some kind of objects. It's totally valid to create the objects and move from there too. But in some respects the model is quite complicated in some ways (i.e., if you want to generate a lot of Pugs at once). So can a different model be created (a different means of generating large numbers of opponents) that means fewer dice are rolled, but the result is representative of the larger model?

As I said at the start, none of this is thought through particularly well. I'm just curious.

(and say you had A.N. Other opponent that has 2HD and appears in large groups; if there was a 2d20 table, or something indexed with two d20s or something like it - the result from the d20 rolls in terms of HP would be valid as well potentially, i.e., a group of 2HD zombies might have other features but their HP values could be generated similarly)

(all of this floating around in my head, and partially prompted by Zak S's post about Elegance, which made a connection with the idea of mathematical beauty...)

Non-Blogging

Ugh. This month has just turned into one long work day.

Every now and then I have the odd hour to think about games - and thankfully I got to play a few weeks ago, but then didn't have time to write about it. Perhaps this weekend - as it is a three day weekend in the UK - I will have time to write up running Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess with Patrick and David W, which was interesting and fun and gross to describe in places.

We also played What is a Roleplaying Game? by Epidiah Ravachol, which was a really interesting example of diceless play. Very provocative and has me thinking about nano-games as a starting point for making and completing something, releasing/sharing something. I need to write about the game and about nano-games too.

I have nothing even resembling mechanics, but I do have ideas for Game Chef 2013, which of course I found out was running the day I went away earlier this week for work... Parallel universes, robots with crystal brains shifting through continua to escape from The Man while trying not to lose each other. Something like that.

And then, while playing GHOST/ECHO again I had a few ideas crystallise for a time travel game that has been running around in the background for ages called (for now) SPACE/TIME. Despite the title, it runs on the Apocalypse! So lots to do and lots to write.

At the start of the year I made a commitment to myself to blog a minimum of seven times a month. It's the 24th of May, and this is the first time I've blogged this month. So I'd best get cracking...

Setting Idea: Yippee-ki-yay!

On Sunday I saw Olympus Has Fallen, which was good in a pulpy, ridiculous sort of way. Good actors making the most of an overblown plot. It has been described as "Die Hard in the White House" which is a description that totally fits.

Last night I was watching an episode of Lost (don't worry, if you've never seen it I won't spoil anything) and there came a point where a character was crawling through a ventilation shaft. Something connected back with Olympus Has Fallen and the "Die Hard in the..." summary. Which in turn lead me to write "Game/Setting Idea: Die Hard in an abandoned castle/wizard's tower" over on G+.

So...

Monster: Weaves

Art sometimes get a bad rep. On our world people look at graffiti and wonder if it has merit. They look quizzically at a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. And they just don't get why Picasso couldn't get perspective right.

In other places, people look at a bizarre statue: a creature supported by a dozen piglegs, stitched to a cow's body, the head of a gargoyle, creepers growing out of all of the orifices and tree limb arms ending in scythes. "How is that art?" they ask. Then they run screaming as it stirs into life and chases them.

They didn't hear the story about the adventurers excavating under the hill of the Dread Rabbit who found a similar composite creature: a tripod of metal, stone and flesh (a bent broadsword, a three-foot stone column, the leg of a grotesquely fat person) carries a great dead horse head, mouth held shut by nailed bands of metal. A sword spike juts out of the top of the head, tentacles that sprout rosebuds spill out of the eye sockets and nostrils. As the adventurers walked past it shuddered into movement and pursued the group.

These are descriptions of Weaves.

Games Night: Veins of the Earth

So last night I rolled up a couple of characters to take through a dungeon based on Patrick's Veins of the Earth setting/sourcebook. This was kind of a playtest I guess - I don't know if I'm the first person to encounter some of these creatures and situations in the wild - but it was all new and different and weird to me.

Creature: Grimhook Jays

They are not natural, that much is clear. Someone made these - possibly for "a laugh" - "oh, what would happen if..." - and then when they got pecked to death by them they got their answer. Maybe they were made in a wizard's lab, maybe a demon pushed malevolence into a predatory bird - who cares? They're here and they are mean.

Three-feet tall, mostly bird-like, skin-wings that unfold and unfurl and allow gliding. They run on double-jointed emu legs, and have have claws at their wingtips that help them to climb and grasp. Their head has simian and avian qualities, forward-facing eyes, short plumage that covers their torso as well.

And the grimhook. Damn. An eighteen inch razor beak ending in a four-inch downward hook overbite. Nestling between a two-inch double underbite. When it bites it tears flesh, the over- and under-bites scissoring together, the beak edge cutting. It's not just a predator, it's a killer.

When a Grimhook Jay steps out from bushes or glides down from tree-tops, a mocking "HAW HAW!" call echoing, you will flinch, but you will think you can take it. It's not that big. And it's just a bird with a sharp beak really. When a half dozen follow it, you will run. That's the only thing you probably can do.

Monster: The P'Lacki

A monstrous purple and black demon squid that crawls on land. It comes from somewhere beyond, and cannot be reasoned with in any way, although it has at least average human intelligence.

The P'Lacki wants to challenge the strong, and will instinctively move to attack an opponent with high STR. It has a body three metres long and over two metres high, but seems much bigger as it drags itself along on a combination of fleshy rear paddles and two sets of tree-trunk thick tentacles. Despite its massive form it can move quickly.

The P'Lacki's body is a purple and black segmented armour that conceals vital and sensory organs. It generally does not reveal its terrible demonic maw, which is a weak spot. A dozen rune-shaped eyes ring the 472 teeth at the heart of the fleshy death-hole.

Some say the P'Lacki is a unique creature in the world. Some say it seeks death on this plane to return to the demon realms. All who survive and have run away agree that it is a deeply unsettling creature.

The P'Lacki
AC: Platemail; 9HD, 50HP
Attacks: The P'Lacki has up to four attacks depending on how many are in melee with it. Most attacks will be simple tentacle swipes (+2 to hit, 1+d6 damage, 30% chance to knock down on unsuccessful save versus paralysis). Whoever in the group has the highest STR (currently) will be targeted for a different kind of attack. A thin needle will skewer out from a fore-tentacle and attempt to stab this person in the arm for d2 attacks. Attacks are at +1 to hit and do 1+d3 damage. The victim loses 1 STR point immediately and must make a save versus magical effect to avoid losing one more. On a critical fail the victim loses a third STR point and d2 CON points. Every STR/CON point the P'Lacki takes instantly gives it another hit die - and corresponding hit points - but confers no other attack bonuses.

If a victim is killed or reduced to 2 hit points or less, the P'Lacki will attempt to eat them. The bulb like body will split open in a stream of purple slime revealing the eyes and teeth. If the creature does this it will make one attack at +4 to bite. If successful it will attempt to swallow the victim (takes one round). In either of these (potential) rounds, any successful attacks that are specified against the mouth/eye areas will deal triple damage. Despite having concealed eyes, the P'Lacki suffers no sensory penalties and can see in perfect/magical darkness.

Any STR or CON points lost in combat to the P'Lacki will take d3 weeks per point to recover. The total number of weeks is halved if the P'Lacki is killed, and halved if the person rests - no active adventuring.

Back

Back from holidays, back from workshops in places with no mobile signal, back online after moving house - and back to playing games and writing about them.

It's been too long.

First up, am writing up some monsters that I statted up on holiday last month. First one should go up soon, followed by creatures inspired by the names of some friends...

More to follow.

Ugh

I'm moving house. This is the second time in my life I've had to do this. The first was moving in when we got married. Now we've bought somewhere; it's taken over seven months to get it sorted, and now things have just suddenly come together and we have a week to pack the house up and find things which we need for the new place.

I've still had time to do some writing about game-related stuff, but just not had time to get it on here. Hopefully over the weekend I'll have the capacity to share some things. I've been enjoying:

• making monsters out of my friends - now with a picture!
• statting up mechs and a knight for noisms forthcoming Pendragons of Mars campaign that we're going to try over G+ - really intrigued by this, especially since an almost throwaway question about mech games suddenly added giant robots to an Arthurian knights game...
• letting my brain relax from running a campaign - but now thinking that I want to get back to it before the summer comes and I try to run Apocalypse World for my nephew and his friends... I have seriously been bitten by the world-building bug with Somewhere North and now Somewhere South... It's like a permanent itch that needs scratching.

So posts to follow soon anyway, probably stats of monsters first, with horrendous ink sketches for some.

Actual Play: Somewhere South

Last night Patrick and I were the only ones available for games night. After a quick discussion we decided to play something as a bit of a oneshot, and so I used Tales of the Scarecrow as a starting point for an evening's adventure...

Patrick quickly rolled up a party for himself; while he generated four sets of stats, I used Vornheim NPC tables to create some people to populate the world, and pulled some names out of the air ("Usher Beak, who is a herbalist, has asked you to take a chest to a friend of his in the nearby city of Wetham; you've been on the road a day..."). Patrick used Vornheim to name all of his characters - including pulling the detail that Vaskin, his fighter, was in fact two goblins standing on shoulders. Awesome.

PROBABLE SPOILERS FOR TALES OF THE SCARECROW BELOW!!!
But I'll try to keep as many details out as possible.

Future Spending Spree

Some day soon, the stars will align. On that day I won't have to think about saving for house-moving, or be immediately wondering about how to fund some crazy work idea. On that day I will be free to go wild and buy games! And when I do, these are the ones at the top of my list...

Hot War (link)
This looks interesting. An alternate 1960s, the cold war has gone nuclear - and then things went bad... I love the vibe of the description, and the illustration and design in the preview. Something sinister in 1960s London gives me a hundred ideas all at once for setting and plot hooks.

3:16 (link)
The reviews at DriveThruRPG say it all really. After playing Diaspora a little, I would love to play a sci-fi game, and 3:16 looks like it would comfortably fit the bill. David W, one of the players in our group, has mentioned running something sci-fi, possibly Traveller. Maybe once we reach a suitable pause point with Somewhere North we will head for the stars...

Weird New World (link)
I've only read the description, but from that it sounds like this might give me some neat ideas for what lies beyond the mountains in Somewhere North. The hidden valley of the halflings is not simply going to be ten miles past the mountains. There are Drazils to be sure, but what else is there? Maybe Weird New World can help to fill in some of the blanks.

Tower of the Stargazer (link)
Several things attract me to this pdf; first there is the price, you can't go wrong for a couple of euros. Second is that it is more LotFP goodness, and I'm quite hooked on that at the moment. More importantly, there is the inclusion of the following phrase in the description: "Tower of the Stargazer is a specially designed introductory module with material specifically for beginning Referees, with notes detailing not only what is included in the adventure, but why." I'm really enjoying writing stuff at the moment for the campaign I'm running, but am also wondering if the stuff that I am writing is only usable by me (because I know my own shorthand, I know what I might do with a prompt - would someone else? etc). Seeing some discussion on that might be helpful - especially if I decide to do something with these materials later.

Death Frost Doom (link)
I've read lots of bits and pieces about this, and everything I've read about it leads me to think that it's near a small village, about fifty miles from the city of Zelman in Somewhere North, on the road between the Bridge and the city. I think that on the long road between the Bridge and the city the players might find cause to stop there and to wonder whether they have what it takes to go near the church in search of treasure...

Somewhere North: A Guardian

The now-extinct northern Dwarves were not natural magic users, but they were very capable in crafting magical effects from various rare ores. This extended to giving life to various pseudo-mechanical creatures and beings, and even to giving life to assemblies of flesh. An unhealthy competition arose between various lords as to who could create the most dangerous guardian for their palace or home. One of the most feared, by legend, was the Guardian of the Palace of the Perfect Moon.

Making Things Up

Just bringing together some thoughts on where the setting for Somewhere North is coming from...

It all started with wanting to run something using Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And since it was nearly Christmas, I offered to do a one-shot. I made up an "evil Santa's house" and saw what happened when noisms and Patrick went there. After that they seemed to be enjoying things, so we kept playing. A campaign was born.

In Other News

I'm a bestselling author!

On sale for two days and hit the number one spot in paid ebooks in the Kindle Store's College & University Education chart for Amazon UK.

Today: Amazon. Tomorrow: THE WORLD!!!

(we now return you to ideas for role-playing games set in a frozen northern setting...)

A Chance of Snow

Every day in the frozen north brings a chance for snow. By leaving the relative safety of Rovaniemi and the surrounding villages behind, Külk and Joonas are taking a chance on the weather and the terrain. The wilds are not to be travelled without careful thought...

I had been fast and loose with the environment and weather up until now. I had always assumed that the PCs had some kind of provisions, and that they were wrapping up warm. I kept dropping hints that the weather was going to get worse though, and that heading north would lead to severe snowfall. Precautions must be taken etc.

However, I didn't want to railroad any blizzards or consequences. I wanted the weather to be unpredictable. So before the session on Tuesday I thrashed out a kind of probability-based "Fibonacci-like weather generator". A Fibonacci sequence is dependent on the numbers that came before. So the third number is dependent on the second and first numbers, the fourth number is dependent on the third and second and so on. I decided that a simple way to include this was to say that "today's weather is dependent on the previous two days, with some randomness."

Good Folk, Bad Guys

So far my approach with Somewhere North has been to plan for some possibilities (dungeon exploration, different towns that people might visit), but not really to focus on other people. I'm not talking about the incidentals, like shop owners and so on - in fact, some great NPCs so far have come about purely through table interactions.

But I realised that one of the big differences between how I had run Dogs in the Vineyard and how I was running LotFP, is that in the former everything was built on thinking about the people in the towns first, whereas in the latter I was thinking about the world and what was in it. Is one or the other "better"? I'll leave that for another time - or perhaps your comments.

Four sessions in, and with everything that the players have been doing - stealing money from mean village leaders, cursing an entire village to indefinite silence, heading out of town with intentions to delve into an ancient Dwarven tomb - these are actions that get you noticed. There is only so long that you can stay under the radar. If you curse an entire village to silence, then pour scorn on that (fairly wealthy) place, aren't they going to send people after you? If you insult a bookshop owner who offers to buy something from you (while being probably evil and up to no good), isn't he going to try and get that book from you somehow?

And these things are not about the world but the people in it. Who gets sent after someone? What kind of groups are out there looking? What is in it for them? Could they be persuaded to do otherwise? What would help them to do that? What haven't people seen in the world yet?

I love questions.

I spent part of my weekend thinking about NPCs and bad guys in particular, or at the least, if not bad guys then people we might loosely term "rivals". If an NPC needs a job doing in a role-playing game, they turn to the players to ask. But if that job involves stopping/killing/apprehending the players, who do you call?

That's the question I answered this weekend.

(insert mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha and moustache-twiddling here)

Hate Bear

The Hate Bear is a monstrous white bear that grows to three metres in length. It is the only known species of bear-mutant to not have a typical head. The Hate Bear's fur thins out near the top of the chest, revealing a great muscular maw, surrounded by spiky tentacles that seek to grasp, ensnare and then swallow prey.

The tentacles of the Hate Bear move and seem to track prey without any visible eyes. They respond to sound and can elongate to the length of the Hate Bear. A deep bass growl echoes up from the pit of the stomach. Encountering humans and other sentient species, the Hate Bear tends to only attack if surprised, otherwise it will snarl, growl and posture to intimidate. If weakness is shown too quickly, the Hate Bear will attack. If a bear is encountered with a cub it will fight to the death to protect the little one.

The fur of Hate Bears is extremely flammable; the shoulder blade and chest bones of bears are quite valuable, as they can be fashioned (by a skilled armourer) into a flexible armour that is as tough as chainmail but as light as leather armour.

Hate Bear (originally designed for play in LotFP)

Found "Somewhere North"; icy, snowy conditions. Lives in caves.

AC16 (equivalent to chainmail)

5HD

Can swipe big paws twice (2 attacks) for d8 damage each but at -2 to hit. After a successful swipe and if close can try to grapple with tentacles at +2 to hit. No damage, but restrains successfully trapped prey; will not attack but will attempt to swallow on next turn. Very difficult to escape. Swallowed victims will take d4 crushing damage and d2 acid damage (damages armour first).

A Hate Bear cub has AC12 (no armour), 2HD and only one swiping attack that does d4 damage. It's too small to grasp and swallow, but has tentacles. All Hate Bears have 2d4 spiky tentacles.

TL;DR - a huge polar bear with the pre-Special-Edition-Sarlacc's maw instead of a head!