Building Robots (for World Domination)

Image (cc) Cameron Daigle

I happened to chance upon the brilliant Twitter bot @doskvolscores and it prompted me to start thinking about bots and automation.

I had been playing with some of the old automation stuff the blog was set up with long ago; it seems the feed aggregators are mostly gone, as RSS has gone out of fashion, but the feeds are still going strong. They're what power a lot of the links in the sidebar as well as the blogroll, so I started seeing what I could do with them.

RPG Blog Carnival - One Roll Fae NPCs

Since my last Carnival post I've been thinking about Faerie NPCs, what sort of things they might want and what interesting trades they might offer unwary PCs … grab a set of polyhedral dice or use the JavaScript roller below to find out!

The d6 - Type

1. Dryad or other female Fae
2. Satyr or other male Fae
3. Sprite or Leprechaun
4. Pixie or Faerie
5. Wild Elf or Gnome
6. man-beast of some kind: Faun, Centaur, Kitsune...

The d4 - It has an aspect of

1. spring - bright green shades, suggestions of flower buds
2. summer - vivid colours, suggestions of flowers in full bloom
3. autumn - red / brown shades, suggestions of fruits and seeds
4. winter - grey or white shades, suggestions of bark or twigs

Gaming With The Kids at Ambush Wargames Show

Yesterday I took my two eldest to Ambush which is run annually by my FLGS at our local showground.  I wasn't sure what to expect, and how long they'd want to stay...

• After a look round the stalls we enjoyed an introductory game of Blood Bowl run by the local gaming club Wolds Wargamers.  Both of them had so much fun they wanted to buy a copy straight away! It was a close and very swingy game, ending in victory for my daughter from the jaws of defeat.
• Both wanted to have a go at painting so we grabbed a free mini each and spent an hour or so in the painting area while the painting competition was being judged.  Suffice to say we didn't produce anything that could compete!
• We all got talking about all sorts of games - we didn't even get to play any of the boardgames which I thought they would make a beeline for - and my son even wanted to have a quick game of Infinity when we got home, so all in all a positive experience.

Is this a shameless plug? Maybe … but it was a great event, all very friendly, and the work put in deserves recognition. It's running today as well, and then hopefully back bigger and better next year.

Railroad / Sandbox / Other - The Third Alternative

Image (cc) Dean Peters

There is a sliding scale between the "Railroad" and the "Sandbox" when it comes to RPG campaigns, and between pre-planned and on-the-fly content.

Railroads are pre-set linear story paths that the players can break by deviating from them; this is the main criticism that tends to be levelled at traditional published adventures.  The storyteller in me wants a beginning, a middle, and an end for my campaign "season" just like a TV season, but I don't want to railroad the players. And I don't want to prep it all up-front!

Sandboxes are environments that let the plots be driven by the players; the GM leaves hooks and clues for them to find but the story follows the players' choices.  The storyteller in me loves this, I love to build in player stories, but I don't want to prep a load of stuff that won't get used and I don't want to wing too much

But these aren't the only structure options, these are just the options we see in modules because they are the options that are easy to publish.  I'm looking for a low-prep option 3.

9 Blog Posts I've Enjoyed Reading in June

Image (cc) Rachel Swallows

Here's a brief rundown of some of the gems I've found in the RPG blogosphere since the last digest, I'm going to try to do this every month...

Sheep and Sorcery breaks down what I always felt about how people build characters in D&D/d20 games vs other games. It's interesting reading as a player and a DM.

DIY and Dragons makes a very valid point about hallways and how to describe them, and provides a link to this very interesting post on how (not) to describe dungeons; we've all been faced with arbitrary left-or-right decisions...

I have enjoyed the idea of "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" over at The Other Side, and the few of the featured blogs too, you should check it out.

Rolls, Rules and Roles provides thought provoking insight into "Post-OSR" gaming and the Interactionist mindset - which I never realised I belonged to until it was pointed out here.

I stumbled upon this (admittedly OLD) post on Coins and Scrolls about an OSR Pirate game - I've always wanted to play a Pirate game - and from there to the fascinating concept of the "Counter-colonial Heistcrawl"...

There's a very interesting article on Legacy of the Bieth on a Leftist OSR and PCs investing their spoils of adventure in the community - It appeals to me as a way to root characters in the world and have them drive and see change.

Meandering Banter meanders into player death and the brilliant idea of letting the rest of the party sit in judgement of where the character ends up in the afterlife.

Unlawful Games has a fantastic d100 Bottled Things table which frankly just about covers everything one could imagine!

And of course the Blog Carnival is focusing on Faerie/Fey themed content this month; head over to Pitfalls and Pixies for the prompts and links.

Please support the blogosphere and let me know any great finds of your own in the comments.

Dungeon World + Trilemma Adventures

Last week I got to run a one shot of Dungeon World - for all my enthusiasm about it I had never actually played it - but I'd heard good things.  I'd also heard good things about Trilemma Adventures so I decided to grab one of their free dungeons to play in.  How did it go?  Read on, bold adventurer...

We played The Sky Blind Spire by Michael Prescott

Dynamic RPG Plotting Project

Image (cc) paganjesus

I'm the kind of person who likes to have a project, so I'm setting myself one right here.

For years I've been looking for a way to weave the player characters into engaging plots while still keeping prep low and flexibility high, and it finally feels like things are falling into place. My hobby project for the rest of this year [EDIT: now ongoing!] is going to be formalising my ideas and getting them down on paper. Electrons. Like so:

1. How I Learned to Let Go and Embrace the Chaos
2. Railroad / Sandbox / Other
3. Reusability and Separation of Concern 
4. Using a Grid for Plot Components
5. Populating the Grid 
6. Using the Grid for Planning 
7. Reshuffling Items in the Grid 
8. Example Campaign 

Sounds manageable, and by the end I'll know if it works or not. Hope you'll follow along. I'll be using this post as an index as I go and post a retrospective at the end, wish me luck!

RPG Blog Carnival - A Band of Fair Folk

Image (cc) amorphisss

Fae don't seem to feature much in Dungeons and Dragons games (that I have played) and I think it's probably because they're low challenge in combat. But why would faeries, who are essentially physically weak extradimensional magic users, be interested in engaging in combat when they could be playing to their strengths?

By their nature, the Fair Folk are otherworldly, capricious, playful, powerful, and broadly disinterested in us and our world unless they can derive some entertainment or gain.

Here are my thoughts on how to take advantage of this nature to have fun at the table:

(WIP) Playbooks for Stars Without Number

Image (cc) BiPiCado

Midway through my recent SWN campaign I started reading some "Powered By The Apocalypse" games and I really liked the ideas of a) tying the story to the characters and b) character playbooks to help flesh them out.  It reminded me of what I liked about Beyond The Wall.

I started making some "playbooks" for Season 2 of the campaign when one of the players talked to me about not being sure where his PC came from or how it fit in.

They're not complete - by any stretch! - but you can download my Stars Without Number Character Playbooks in their current state from Google Drive and adapt them to your game.

Screenshot below:

Stars Without Number Ship Combat Control Sheet

Image (cc) desuran

I've talked about Stars Without Number a lot. I think I'll probably continue to do so; I love it. One thing I did find hard to keep track of was Ship Combat, fantastic system/minigame though it is, so I decided to make this control sheet. I also think I ran it slightly differently to the book - it felt right to me - so I'll explain how to use the sheet to run it the way I did. I'm sure you can adapt it.

I suggest you have:

• A copy of the Ship Combat Actions for each player (I printed handouts from the free SWN rules) for reference
• One SWN Ship Combat Control Sheet for the table - click to download from Google Drive
• A collection of minis, markers, or tokens to help keep track.  They can represent the players directly or indirectly, it's just for visual reference on the sheet.

5 Ways to Support The Blogosphere (And Why You Should)

Image (cc) Ivy Dawned, on Flickr

Way back when, round about 2010, there was something called the RPG blogosphere.  It was awesome. It was like some kind of interconnected network of blogs, a web that went worldwide. Then with the increasing uptake of "social media" the blogosphere dwindled - but now it's back I think it's important that we keep it running.

Comment
We like comments, that's why we have them enabled.  These blogs are public spaces to share thoughts, ideas, and resources where feedback is always welcome; nobody likes to think they're just shouting into The Void.  As a bonus, comments on blogs add links back to the author's blog and links mean a) more curious traffic shuttles between them and b) better SEO because it counts as a word of mouth recommendation as far as search engine spiders are concerned. It was part of the original design philosophy and it's why spammers spam and why some blogs have limitations on who can comment, or require moderation.

This is a social medium, so lets be social.  And it only starts there...