Comments on the Top 25

Zachary completed his Top 25 list over on his blog. Given that the responders were mostly self-selected readers of his blog plus those pointed there by readers of his blog, the value of the result is highly limited to say the least. But I think Zachary would be willing to admit that freely.

So it was fun, nothing more. But it's not fun to fail to take it at least a little seriously...

So in that line, if it doesn't tell us much about the hobby as a whole- what does the results say about the people who self-selected themselves?

1. Many have been around a while, or have been influenced by those who have. Newer players wouldn't have heard or cared about Tunnel & Trolls (#8) or Pendragon (#15). Small print runs, almost no influence in the greater hobby. They'd say HERO System, not Champions (#9).

2. Older games far outshine newer ones in that list. All those new designs of the recent and coming years- wastes of time for these people.

3. They're a varied group with just about every type of RPG represented at one point or other except for the losers at the Forge (maybe they could claim RISUS...).

4. Except for Champions, they like really bad games :)

5. Their tastes are completely different than mine.


And that's about all I determine from the results. Anybody else see something?

Lurid Voyeurism in RPGs

It's not Friday, but I'll won't be making a entry then as my time will likely be taken by all sorts of cool family stuff. Given that, I decided to move up my Friday rant by a day and close out my week of blogging.

G. Kinslayer is a common guest blogger over on Unclebear's blog, and I'm afraid he's dragging down what used to be a great site. So much so, that I've dropped my link to it. I like Unclebear, and think greatly of him, but between his love of Salvage Worlds (boring IMO) and his current choices of guest bloggers- there just not much of interest to me there anymore. And my blog list reflect more what I want to read than anything else.

The straw that broke the humped beast of burden's back wasn't really all that major by itself. It's just part of a trend not only of the guest blogger, but of the hobby as a whole. It's about torture devices, nicely detailing out how they are made and what they do.

The question is why? What does this speak for and to? What type of game would need this detail, and what type of players require it? How would it be used? Coming on the heels of a previous series of posts by the same author about screwing the players, I don't think I really want the author's answer to those questions.

I guess it may be useful if you're playing SAW the rpg or something.

Not that I think much of that idea. What drives a section of the hobby towards such subject matter? My first thought is that it's related to the same drives behind Torture Porn in movies. Thus the title I picked for the article, a type of voyerurism related to the worst elements of mankind.

Whatever the case, I have no desire to take my fantasy games to such places. And I think it says something sad about those who do, and the hobby where it's become so accepted.

Just how common are RPG Merchants...

Things have been busy for a while, getting ready for my son's visit (he's got an extended weekend leave from the Coast Guard) so things have been slow on the blog as a result.

Having one of your family (one that games) leave is something of a bummer, you've lost a player at very least, and that adds to the whole empty nest thing (the remaing one is leaving for the Navy in a month). One of the ways we keep in touch is through MMORPGs, in this case EVE online because it can easily handle long periods without being played (due to it's real time based skill training), and its rather undemanding client that can work on his older laptop and weak Internet connection.

It's not as good a table top play of course, EVE (like all MMORPGs) has serious mechanics/concept problems, and so on. But it's better than nothing and can be relaxing and fun in its own way.

With that preamble out of the way, I have a simple thought/question. Often in MMORPGs there is a subset of players who's main reason for playing is crafting/merchant like subsystems. Very common in EVE for example.

I've never encountered these in table-top RPGs, either in system support or the player type. The one possible exception was the Stock Market in FASA's version of Star Trek, and it wasn't quite the same. (edit: Traveller had lots of support for buy/sell- but no real crafting).

I imagine the cause is that it's boring handling all the mechanical details, and this is one area where the computer is just so much better that it's really the only option.

So what do others think? Is that the case? Has anyone ran a 'merchant/crafter' rpg campaign? What was it like if you did?

Reviewing the Week of 4-10-09

It's Friday and time for my look around web. It's been an eventfully week, with more to comment on than normal. So I've picked two items from the blogs instead of one, I'll likely get in trouble with everyone with these.


First up was a great deal of ranting from the blogs about WotC pulling the plug on selling PDFs of their old work. This hit the 'old school' crowd rather hard, but from where I sit I can at best summon the effort to shrug.

They own the product, and can sell it or not as they like. Given that I don't like their products, the impact on me is effectively none. Those that do like them are understandably upset. But WotC is under no obligation to provide material that supports old games and thus undermines sales of their current publications. People claim that isn't the result, but the only people truly able to make this claim are those ranters buying and playing 4th edition. A passingly small number, and even those aren't singing the praises of 4th and thus marketing it on their old school websites.

Given that simple fact, those PDFs were in effect a net lost to a company who needs every dollar to go towards supporting its core business. Thus WotC's action is completely understandable.

I'm amazed that it took this long.

It also shouldn't impact anyone that much. There are now old school copy cat publishers out there, and people can make and add as much as they wish to out of print games, or even take the concepts and make their own.

Yeah, it's a bummer that something you like is gone. Now move on with your hobby- in whatever direction you like. If needed, leave WotC behind.


Second up is a two part series of posts over on Unclebear by a G. Kinslayer.

So the idea given there is to lie to your players, misled them, and in general cause them to waste their gaming time or worse.

How depressing.

That the author is a creater of a "dark fantasy" rpg is no surprise. And I guess that those drawn to 'dark fantasy' in the first place will likely enjoy such things.

But gaming isn't about that for me. In fact gaming is much closer to the ideas I found in this unrelated post on movies. Movies aren't rpgs, there are great differences. But the ideas I found in that article mirror those that I run my own RPGs with to a degree.

And those ideas don't have room for "screwing with the players".

Designing for Generational Campaigns: Part IV Life Spans

The last requirement of my series on Generational Campaigns (see parts I, II, and II) is a method of dealing with character aging and natural life spans.

The first is rather obvious: a person's abilities change over their life. A old boxer may have great skill, but he's not as fast nor as strong as he once was. Ideally a Generational Campaign should reflect this. Simple stat modifiers are the easiest and perhaps the most effective solution, and that argues for a system that has defined Stats and Skills- so that they can be modified independently. This highlights the differing effects of age vs. experience, and details the characters with respect to each other.

Thus stat-less systems are at a disadvantage here, as are systems that simply add the total of Stat+Skill giving equal weight and range to both. There either is no place to apply the modifiers, or they come across as a flat 'level' decrease with is directly counter to the 'old but experience' feel we're going for.

There's a side benefit here as well, given that character's skill will generally increase with age (causing them to widen the difference between them and new characters), their stat will decrease. Thus it's easier to keep both in the same adventure (although the combat system in use still is the most important fact in doing this).


In addition to aging modifiers, one needs to be able to determine the natural lifespan of the character, i.e. when he'll die assuming he isn't killed as a result of an adventure. Again, one of the points of Generational Campaigns is to represent the complete lifespan of characters- and that includes when they die. It's in this way we get the final handoff to the next generation, much as we do in real life.

Unlike the previous articles in series, I've seen a number of game designs attempt this. At one point even D&D had charts for these matters. It has however dropped out of sight in more modern designs, and they never had the other needed elements in their systems to really support Generational Campaigns in any case. That last point is likely why we don't see such mechanics much today- at the end of the day they didn't serve any purpose in those games.

Previously in the comments for the first article in this series, it was mentioned that one also needed rules for marriage, sex, childbirth, etc.

I disagree.

I think that such things can be handled fine at the meta-game level ("I think Farren wants two children, but let's make it interesting and say he had a unexpected third later in life..."). Given how complex rules for things like this can quickly get, I don't think it's possible to actually manage it mechanically in a way that would cover all the bases. Besides individual characters are too small of a simple to reflect the wider setting- and thus realism or faith to the setting would hardly be damaged by such an meta-game or role-played approach.

Thus I consider details at this level to be more a matter of taste than requirement. In my own system I do have a table for family size (as well as determining the sex of one's siblings), but little more. And I tend to forgo its use for PC families leaving it up to the player's choice.

Designing for Generational Campaigns: Part III Advancement

Previously I've talked about the concept of Generational Campaigns and how a game's combat system relates to those goals. Another important sub-system is character advancement, and here we see yet another area of difficulty if one was using the common published systems.

In short, the advancement system must be able to handle the full life cycle of a character that might be played over a decade or more of real time and their entire life in-game. frankly most systems are not designed to do this. WotC noted at one point that most campaigns last six months, and then are closed. Thus there is little reason for system designers to deal with questions of longer campaigns.

Point Buy systems such as GURPs and HERO System are very open ended allowing one to tailor campaigns and worlds to specific tastes, this is especially true of HERO System when one can not only build the characters- but effectively the entire world.

The problem with this is the amount of attention required by a GM who desires a consistent and 'real' world. With that goal one just can't let players buy without limit or constraint, the result is a broken and inconsistent world. The amount of effort required is more than many can handle or have time for. Additionally, the constant gaining of points together with the use of 'caps' on various abilities can result in all character blurring together and losing their niche- becoming interchangable and nearly faceless game pieces.

Class/Level systems avoid this fault by constraining advancement such that character remain in concept. But typically still share a serious failing for this type of campaign- i.e. the upper of characters are so vastly powerful compared to the lower end that they are not able to adventure together. But new and old character adventuring together is a core requirement of the genre such campaigns are based on.

Generational Campaigns thus require three things in their advancement system.:

1. Constraints to protect niche and character differences
2. A slowing of advancement as one progresses to such a degree that decades of play is possible while still keeping the characters 'human' and able to adventure with new characters.
3. The ability to cover the entire possible lifespan of characters, from the greenest starting characters to the most experienced and powerful beings allowed to players.