Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2018

Last year I did NaNoWriMo. I really wanted to challenge myself to finish a story. I did it; I managed 50K words in a story called 'Dungeon School' where students learned how to handle themselves as real adventurers for their future careers, in the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons.

I liked a lot of things about the story but it was still very formulaic. It reminded me of Harry Potter with a little bit of high school love interest anime as well.

I plan to do NaNoWriMo again this year. Currently I'm kicking around an idea about a magic portal bringing D&D style fantasy people into the modern day. Deal with identity and escape, probably have some fun conflict between how the world works and how we resolve problems in fantasy games. We'll see if I stick with it. I'm even considering putting it here, on the blog.

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Dragon's Pool

Here's a pitch for a new game setting for D&D I'm working on. First, I recommend you read Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa. I'm enjoying it a lot; it's a fantasy Japan with a lot of great characters and fun over-the-top fantasy. The Dragon's Pool is an Asian-inspired setting that focuses on the mystical and magical. Long-term goals are to zoom out and see the lands of China, Korea, Mongolia and southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia). Short-term, Dragon's Pool will focus on a mythic Japan and the sea that surrounds it. Some of the homebrew topics I'm dealing with are the yokai (monster) races of Kitsune and Tanuki and a lot of mapping D&D Classes and Archetypes to Asian tropes. You can follow along for more and also check out the World Anvil page at https://www.worldanvil.com/w/dragons-pool-hans

Stories Never Told - Learn to Play

Stories Never Told is a role-playing game project in development! The quickest version is the new Google Form-based example that works like a Choose-Your-Own Adventure! https://goo.gl/forms/jVV3hC2FbiUxRrxi1 If you would like to see how the system works, please click the link below to view it in Google Docs. This is a longer example that shows all of the options. Stories Never Told - Learn to Play in Google Docs Did you take a look? Thank you! It would be great to get your feedback. If you're interested, fill out the following Google Form SNT Learn to Play Feedback Form The goal of Stories Never Told is to keep role-playing focused on the stories of the characters being played. Stories Never Told Role-Playing Game by Hans Chun is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Playing Cypher - Transparent Difficulties

I've realized lately that I'm doing something very different from the play examples in Cypher System books. I've been telling my players the difficulty levels of everything before they roll. I think this is because the majority of my games have been one-shots, demos and short arcs at home. But I like it! There's been little consistent growth in play, so it's been natural for me to make things really transparent for players. Here's what I mean: A player attempts a task. They describe it, saying what they want to do. I tell them the difficulty number (i.e. 5) and what they have to roll to beat it (15). We use Skills and Assets to modify the difficulty. They get the opportunity to apply Effort. Then we roll. That's how I've been running the game. I notice that the Play Examples in the book and most games I've seen keep difficulties secret. I think this is a natural thing in role-playing games but I don't know if I like the practice. It seems to...

Fictions & Fragments

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