Fictions & Fragments

When you're playing a game, there are times you don't want to roll. Playing any version of an RPG, such as Dungeons & Dragons, there are things that you need to accomplish and things you want to accomplish. The things you need to accomplish are the things that make sure everyone has fun and feels supported. When I say 'fun' I don't mean that their characters win. I mean that they are able to be in a social situation with friends that makes them feel comfortable and like they'd want to return. When I say 'feels supported' I mean that they should be able to express how they feel about the game and the way they are able to interact with the other players. When I play a game, I do it to share an experience with others. If they're not my friends at the start of the game (probably because this is the first time we've played together), I treat them like I want to be their friends by the end. I've made some mistakes doing this. They...

These are some quick ideas about Talents for Harry Potter characters. The first are Rank 1 Talents for characters by house, expanding their Career Skills. Gryffindor Rank 1 - Gryffindor Student: Cool becomes a Career Skill for you. Hufflepuff Rank 1 - Hufflepuff Student: Survival becomes a Career Skill for you. Ravenclaw Rank 1 - Ravenclaw Student - Perception becomes a Career Skill for you. Slytherin Rank 1 - Slytherin Student - Skulduggery becomes a Career Skill for you.

Careers are an important way of defining core skills for a character type. Since all the HP characters are Hogwarts students, I tried to frame Careers like cliques, describing how the character expresses themselves and their motivation at school. The Careers I decided upon are Athletic, Mischievious, Popular and Studious. Everyone gets Arcana as a Career skill, because a HP game is going to rely upon using magic. Athletic Athletics Discipline Coordination Perception Piloting (as Riding(Broom)) Resilience Brawl Leadership Mischevious Alchemy (as Potions) Coordination Skulduggery Stealth Streetwise Arcana Deception Negotiation Popular Cool Vigilance Arcana Charm Coercion Deception Leadership Negotiation Studious Alchemy (as Potions) Discipline Mechanics Medicine Vigilance Arcana Knowledge(Magical) Knowledge(Magical Creatures)

Getting into Careers reminded me that Genesys Skills need some updating for Harry Potter! The basic skills in the game include: General Skills Alchemy --> Potions Astrocartography (removed) Athletics Conputers (Muggle skill) Cool Coordination Discipline Driving (Muggle skill) Mechanics Medicine Operating Perception Piloting --> Flying(Broom) Resilience Riding --> Riding(Animal) Skulduggery Stealth Streetwise Survival Vigilance Magic Skills Arcana Divine (removed) Primal (removed) Combat Brawl Gunnery Melee Ranged Social Charm Coercion Deception Leadership Negotiation Knowledge Knowledge --> Knowledge(Muggle) Knowledge(Magical) Knowledge(Dark Arts) Knowledge(Magical Creatures) This is a very general mapping of skills. At this point there's no need for heavy redesign but some of the skills have little use in Harry Potter. Others, like Divine and Primal don't reflect the world that we've seen so far through the s...

I like Harry Potter. It's something I can share with my whole family, because everyone is a fan, so it's a constant interest of mine to see Harry Potter and the Hogwarts world in RPG systems. Genesys seems like a very good candidate for this. It has a very open magic system that seems like it would work well with HP. Something I enjoy about the idea of Genesys is the narrative dice system. My goal in creating an HP game is to have a co-GM game where my wife and I can play without feeling the burden of creating stories rests on either of us. I'm also happy that Genesys uses incremental (non-level) character gains. It seems to me like it fits the HP model well. So running down character creation step by step in Genesys, first you need a Background for your character. This is more descriptive than statistical. You answer questions about your character's life and upbringing pre-game. In my HP example, I want to start with Year 1 Hogwarts students, so the Background w...

I've been away from D&D for a while because I've wanted to explore other games and ideas. But I'm back. As a seed for a new campaign, I present the Rediscovered Land. The Rediscovered Land is for a setting that has a little bit of blank space. In ages past, a place called Shuul existed here. Shuul was known for powerful fabulous magics in a time where other civilizations were still primitive. Suddenly and without warning, the land of Shuul disappeared from the world. Now, thousands of years later, Shuul has returned. Why is unclear. Most of the land is surrounded by powerful magical barriers that prevent scrying or entry. There is a single port where a few disinterested officials allow outlanders to trade with a variety of merchants and make their way inland. The merchants have wonders that are found nowhere else in the world but they have little interest in the currency of the outlanders. The people of Shuul are very different. They live lives deeply connect...

I've been reading a lot of quick starts for games recently. These are the short 30-page-ish versions of games that are designed to entice you to buy a full-priced product. I generally find these lacking in one way or another, which can keep me from buying the game altogether. The Gamemaster (GM) section of a book is really important to me. There are many games where I skip it altogether, but in others I really enjoy the rules. Some of my favorite books for GM sections are the Cypher System Rulebook by Monte Cook Games, Blades in the Dark by One-Seven Design and Fate Core from Evil Hat Productions. They all have good examples and advice for Gamemasters to prepare their games. I've found that there are a few things that are really important to me to understand a game. 1. A well-explained task resolution system. I feel like most games need a single primary mechanic, which needs to be well-explained with examples and commentary. Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars series does...

This Saturday I did my first Twitch stream of Numenera. I've been streaming D&D for about 11 months and this was my contribution to the growing energy of the Numenera 2 Kickstarter. The group that we assembled was mostly first-time Numenera players. The exception was a friend who has played Numenera twice with me before at Meetup events. It was a blast! I made myself nervous with my initial scenario, which was intended to tie into the Ellomyr narrative of the Kickstarter. As the KS campaign went forward my scenario fell out of touch with what had been unveiled. I tried a couple of revisions but knocked out my final scenario that morning in about 45 minutes. The players were amazing. They went through the Numenera Player's Guide in the days before the game and got their characters set. They developed connections between themselves and gave me a lot of detail to work with! As much as I love reading the Numenera setting, my players immediately started declaring details an...

One of the best ways to keep a Cypher System game interesting is to use GM Intrusions! I've found that they take the place of random/wandering monster encounters, add dramatic or comedic moments to games and give GMs an opportunity to reward or challenge players when a session demands it. To explain the idea to the unfamiliar, Experience Points are a currency in the Cypher System. You use them to re-roll and to declare story details, similar to FATE or FFG's Star Wars RPGs. In a GM Intrusion, the GM gives a player 2 XP - 1 is a reward the player keeps for themself, the other they give to another player. As a GM, you need to give out a couple of XP during a game, otherwise your players may not be able to make character advances at the end of a session. Those XP can be crucial for re-rolling failed rolls and keeping the story favoring the characters! As a GM, your reward for helping your players gain this crucial currency is to craft an exciting moment for the game in the for...

I've been interested in FATE for a while. It's a great premise for a game system but so different from games like D&D that I'm really taking some time to wrap my head around it. One of the great things about FATE is that there are so many great ideas in the base material! The Evil Hat Patreon/Worlds of Fate series has amazing ideas. The Fate System Toolkit and Adversary Toolkit are awesome products - in fact, the Regency Romance spread in the Adversary Toolkit will probably be the first FATE game I run, because it's something my wife has wanted for a long time. The hardest thing to understand how to do well in FATE is aspects. Suggestions in Fate Core is that aspects have both positive and negative connotations as well as boundaries. Instead of 'Strongest Man Alive', a good aspect would be 'Strongest Man in the State'. That final quality defines the possibility of conflict with other 'strong men' in other states. There are many other th...

Game Master (GM or in D&D, DM) prep is a chore. No matter how much you love world building and creating stories, there is a lot to get done in order to play a game. Generally, GMs end up handling scheduling, educating players about the game, creating stories and maintaining the flow of the game. To make things as easy as possible, the Cypher System uses a simple level system to determine difficulties and levels of effect. This can be a wonderful thing when you want to focus your prep time on stories and interactions. The level system is very simple and applies to everything the GM is responsible for. The difficulty of a task is given a level from 1-10 (sometimes greater). To achieve success, a player needs to roll equal to or higher than the difficulty * 3 on a 2-sided die (d20). So a level 10 difficulty requires a 30 (which is impossible) and a level 1 is a 3. Anything that is a difficulty 0 is automatically successful. To create Non-Player Characters (NPCs), traps, Cyphers ...