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2007-12-13 : Mechaton rules questions?
Hey, if you're stopping by looking for answers about Mechaton's rules, welcome, and I'm at your service.

2007-08-24 : Poison'd errata and Q&A
1. The cruel fortune accursing is all wrong. All wrong!
2. Ask the player if her pirate is enduring duress.

Click in for the rest.

2008-01-11 : In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles
In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles.

Also check out the Oracles page at Abulafia. Dave's got the Four Oracles and the original AG&G Oracle, plus space for new "unofficial" oracles. I believe I'll be submitting some new unofficial oracles myself, come a day.

In a Wicked Age
sword & sorcery roleplaying

2010-03-09 : Show of hands
Hey, quick show of hands. I'm curious, you who are here reading this:

1. Have you designed a roleplaying game? If so, have you published it?

2. Are you designing a roleplaying game now?

2010-03-02 : Poison'd Audio
Hey Poison'd people! Two podcasts:

Ninja Vs Pirates: Poison'd with Vincent Baker
This interview reminded me how much I like the game. It's a nice, technical interview about the game's inspirations and design.

The Walking Eye: Poison'd Actual Play Session 1
The good people of the Walking Eye are recording their Poison'd game; this is character creation and a bit of kick off. Dan has a cackle that I recognize from my own Poison'd GMing.

Edit: Oh and come to recall (because Ry reminded me):
Canon Puncture: Game Advocates - In a Wicked Age
Ry talks serious goodness about In a Wicked Age. He reminds me what I do love about the game, which I sometimes forget!

Check 'em out.

2010-03-01 : Reliable vs Unreliable Currency
Here's a resource->effectiveness rule:
Spend a point of Tactical Mastery and say what feature of your character's immediate circumstances helps your character out. You get +2 to your attack roll.

Here's a circumstance->effectiveness rule:
If your character has the higher position, you get +2 to your attack roll.

Here's your character:



Which rule is better for your character? Which rule do you hope is in play?

Over the course of the battle, how many +2s to your attack rolls will the first rule be worth? How many will the second rule be worth?

(Ans: 1. as many as you buy; 2. who knows?)

Here's your character instead:



Now which rule is better for your character? How many +2s will each be worth?

With the first rule, you always know how much tactical advantage you've got: it appears on your character sheet, for you to spend away at a rate of 1 per +2. It's reliable currency, you get what you pay for.

With the second rule, your tactical advantage depends upon details of your character's immediate circumstances. You may know what it is right now, but you can't be sure what it'll be over the course of the fight. It's unreliable currency, an uncertain investment.

The second rule also depends upon that crucial moment of judgment, which is one of the key contributors to a visceral experience of play.

Reliable currency (you get what you pay for or you get what you win), being fair and equalizing, and allowing oversight, has dominated rpg designs after the Forge fashion. Indie rpg designers, especially Story Now designers, tend to eschew unreliable currency. I propose that:

1. A rule that relies upon that moment of judgment to go forward, instead of commodotization, creates unreliable currency. Maybe inherently and inescapably, but maybe just overwhelmingly, I don't know. Anyway, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

So:

2. Designing rules that treat fictional causes seriously means, at a pretty significant level, abandoning fairness and equalization, and thus embracing both mechanical risk and social-aesthetic risk. Your character can get unfairly hosed, through no misstep of yours, and your friends can make systemically-binding judgment calls that you don't like.

Designing a game that cares about characters' immediate circumstances means bringing the gamble back into your design. Not just at the level of characters' effectiveness, but all the way down into your game's underlying structure.

2010-02-25 : Revised Apocalypse World Playbooks
Hey, any Apocalypse World players who aren't closely following the ecretsay ogblay, there's a new post there you might want to check out. I've uploaded a new full revision of the character playbooks.

2010-02-23 : Can your brains just do it?
I was all like "circumstance-responsive vs circumstance-analytic," but friend, whatever. This is what I mean.

Take a look again at the resolution rules for Rock of Tahamaat, Space Tyrant. Particularly, identify the place where the weapon a character has in her hands, if any matters. Yeah?

RESOLUTION

Characters' Actions, not Rock of Tahamaat's
Recall that you're here because somebody said that her character takes an action that would bring her into conflict or expose her to bodily danger, and you interrupted her before it became so.

First have the player roll dice for "I'm craven." That many 6-sided dice, take the highest.

If the highest die is 1, 2 or 3, the character can't bring herself to take that action after all. Instead she must (player's choice, but choose one that applies) cower, flee, hide, back away, back off, back down, humble herself, give in, keep walking, hold still, or submit. Return to free play.

If the highest die is 4, 5 or 6, the player keeps it and discards the others, and the character does actually take action, as the player said.

Now GM, you have to judge. You can ask the player for more information about her character's action if it helps.

1. Is the character now making an attack upon someone? Either a direct attach upon their person or an indirect (but concrete) attack upon their life or livelihood otherwise? Then call for the player to roll for "I'm vicious."

2. Is the character now blocking someone, preventing them from doing what they otherwise would do? Then call for the player to roll for "I'm desperate."

3. Is the character now exposing herself to danger intent upon her, personally? Then call for the player to roll for "I'm desperate."

4. Is the character now exposing herself to insensate or indiscriminate danger? Then call for the player to roll for "I'm unlucky."

5. Otherwise, call for the player to roll for "I'm unlucky."

Start at the top, and stop when you get to one that's true! If others are also true further down the list, that's fine, ignore them.

Anyway, the player rolls that many dice, takes the highest, and adds it to her high die already standing. Now she has a sum from 5 to 12.

If her sum is 5, 6 or 7, something interrupts the character mid-action. Instead, she gets (your choice, but choose one that applies) thrown aside, pinned down, diverted, blocked, turned around, misled, caught out, parried, overthrown, pushed past, overruled, overwhelmed, undercut, brought up short, knocked down, put off-balance, or held off. Return to free play.

If the character's opponent was another player's character, have that player choose the interruption, and give that player's character the initiative when you return to free play, to follow through or respond with an action of her own.

If her sum is 8 or more, though, her character follows through, completing to concrete effect the action that started all this.

Time to make another judgment, GM. Look at the list below and choose 3 different effects that the character's successful action might have. Choose the worst possible effect, a good effect, and the best possible effect (all from the character's point of view). Again, you can ask the player for more information as you need.

It's fine to create standard sets of outcomes. Every time a character's in a rock slide, for instance, maybe she - jumps clear - manages to drag free - barely survives.

Now, looking at all three possible effects, what is the worst human harm that the character's successful action might inflict upon someone else?

1. If it might kill them, call for the player to roll for "I'm vicious."

2. If it might, at worst, cripple, maim, break, terrorize or shatter them, call for the player to roll for "I'm desperate."

3. Otherwise, call for the player to roll for "I'm craven." (If the character has no opponent, it'll always be "I'm craven.")

The player rolls that many dice, takes the highest, and adds it to her standing 2-die sum. Now she has a sum from 9 to 18.

If her sum is 9-13, the worst possible effect happens.
If her sum is 14-16, the good effect happens.
If her sum is 17-18, the best possible effect happens.

Return to free play.

possible effects: the acting character
She:
jumps clear
gets away
holds onto it
gets rid of it
finds out
keeps it secret
avoids notice
gets away with it
arouses suspicion, but goes unchallenged
wins free
bears it without breaking
barely survives
protects it
sails through
slips out
makes it
powers through
manages to drag free
she gets [specify] from the next list

Possible effects: the character's opponent
They're:
inconvenienced
put off course
humiliated
caught out
hurt
dismayed
bruised and battered
stripped
beaten
overawed
left culpable
forced to flee
stuck
captured
robbed of goods
impoverished
branded
abandoned
disfigured
blinded
crippled
maimed
dismembered
terrorized
shattered
left for dead
killed
they [specify] from the previous list

(It's possible for a player's character to die this way.)

Quick and Dirty Resolution Rules for Guns and Stuff
When you use a gun or stuff:
- If you're using it for what it's ideal for, roll 3d6 and sum them;
- If you're using it for what it's good for, roll 2d6 and sum them;
- If you're using it for what it's lousy for, roll 1d6.

On a 10+, it goes perfectly and you get what you hoped for.

On a 6-9, the GM will offer you a couple of choices, none of which will be everything you hoped for. Choose.

On a 1-5, the GM will make something terrible happen. Smooth move.

2010-02-19 : Shared Positioning at the Micro
So we've got this:



Now let's throw in this:



This:



And some of this:



(Not shown: at least one dead body already, a boxful of cash.)

Each of these characters has evident qualities that they can bring to bear in action (effectiveness); reserves that they can draw upon or use up (resource); and qualities that locate and anchor them into their world, physically, emotionally, morally and so on (positioning). But today I want to zoom in on another thing: their immediate, shifting, short-term and micro-level positions with regard to one another. How far apart they are, what's between them, who can see whom, who's in motion toward whom and away from whom, who knows about whom, all that kind of stuff, right? Their immediate circumstances.

Now first: It should be obvious, if it hasn't been all along, that currency is in play both within any given character, and between the characters. My character opens fire on yours, I roll to hit and you mark wound boxes: it's your resource on your character sheet that my effectiveness changes.

And second: if you've ever seen a movie, you know that with a setup like this one, tiny changes in immediate circumstance can have dramatic cascading effects. Gun guy opens the door and bam, everybody's whole range of possible effective action changes dramatically. Somebody moves across the wrong window, somebody sees somebody's foot poking out around a corner, somebody crosses in front of the shadow where somebody else is waiting without first shining her flashlight into it - movements at this micro scale can transform a character at EVERY scale. "I have a gun" becomes "I have a concussion and no gun," "I've never killed" becomes "I've killed," "I'm fine" becomes "I'm experiencing precipitous blood loss and now I have seconds left to live."

This is currency! How do changes here become changes there? Answer: your game's currency rules.

I'm still working toward reliable vs unreliable currency, but next stop: circumstance-responsive vs circumstance-analytic rules.

2010-02-18 : Currency - Spanning Divide and Range
Before we get to reliable vs unreliable currency, there are a couple of key things to note. Both of them happened to appear in the gun-guy thread so I'll just pull them out.

The first is here, tucked into these 2 example currency rules:

- When an attacker lands a hit on your character, mark off wound boxes according to the attacker's weapon's damage.

- When you go up from warrior level 2 to warrior level 3, you get 2d6 HP and +1 to your Brawn, and if your character serves a king, the king will grant you land.

If I draw a distinction between systemic and mechanical, you get what I mean, right? System is what the players are actually doing to play the game, which may or may not be written down, and may or may not include mechanics, but it still exists, right? So freeform games have systemic currency, not mechanical currency - I have no qualms about that whatsoever.

...Characters take effective actions that (a) deplete, restore, build, or otherwise change their resources, and (b) change their circumstances, sometimes only immediately, sometimes profoundly. Characters' resources (a) provide breadth and depth to their ranges of effective actions, and (b) can also change their circumstances, immediately and/or profoundly. Characters' circumstances, of course, (a) constrain and provoke their effective actions, and (b) can change their resources.

A warrior kills his enemies, gaining experience and looting their wealth, but suffering exhaustion and wounds. For a while he's able to stay ahead of the curve - his experience does him more benefit than his wounds hamper him - but that time comes to an end. He uses his accumulated wealth to buy a wife and a home, and he turns his battle-cultivated experience to politics, to good effect. Now he's mayor.

Cycles of effectiveness, resource, and positioning, all trading off one into the next. That's currency. (So however it happens in play, that's your game's systemic currency, whether you have character sheets or dice or whatever or none.)

2010-02-16 : Things on Character Sheets (2)
So here's a fictional character:



He's got some immediate evident qualities: his gun, his attention to his surroundings, his energy/adrenaline/capacity for violence/will to action, and it looks like maybe he's done this thing more than once before. On his character sheet, this stuff might be stats, rolls to hit and damage rolls, skill checks, armor class, weapon listings. In Ron Edwards' terms, effectiveness.

He's also got some reserves he can draw on or use up: he might fatigue himself, he might get scared or rattled, he might oh I dunno start suddenly to precipitously lose blood. On his character sheet these might be hit points, wound boxes, fatigue levels, maybe endurance checks or saves vs poison. In Ron's terms, resource.

And finally he's got a whole set of qualities that place him and anchor him in his world: who does he answer to, what's his job, whose side is he on? Does he have backup off-camera? If he doesn't make it home tonight, who'll notice? What's his relationship with the people on the other side of that door, and what does he need from them? Is he afraid, greedy, calm, full of righteous anger? On his character sheet, these might be a character class, backstory, training, relationship listings, personality traits, obligations, Beliefs & Instincts, a pool of dice or bonuses the player can spend to say "this guy really cares how this thing turns out, so what he's doing? He's giving it extra." In Ron's terms, positioning.



Now, when you design a game, you're designing three sets of relationships, interactions, dynamics. First, the relationships between the fictional qualities the character has and the stuff on his character sheet:


How do your game's rules reflect the fictional stuff? How much detail, and which details? What do your game's rules quantify, and what do they leave qualitative?

Second, the relationships between the things on the character sheet:


What's the relationship between I'm afraid and Adrenaline [ ][ ][x][x][x]? If I've got Blood Loss, does that affect my Will to Action? How many thugs must I kill before I go up to Enforcer - 5 years?

In Ron's terms, this is your game's currency.

And finally, crucially, the relationships between the game's mechanical currency and the fictional/real world dynamics that must necessarily prevail:


Does your game's currency say what you want it to say?

This is where you take your insight into real human nature - like "it's the person losing the argument who throws the first punch" or "suffering more violence increases a person's capacity for violence" - and give it its expression in your design. This is where you make sure that your game's design supports fiction that is compelling and convincing.

Questions very welcome!

Coming up: currency, reliable (you get what you pay for, you get what you win) vs unreliable (a gamble, an uncertain investment).

2010-02-15 : Apocalypse World publication plans

This month: Character Playbooks

I'll put fully-revised character playbooks online at the end of the month, or sooner if it keeps going like it's been going.

I think you'll really like the new Hx rules.

March: GameStorm Preview Edition

I'll have a preview edition of the Master of Ceremony's Playbook for sale at GameStorm. This'll be a problematic, transitional kind of book, no doubt full of orphans both typographical and conceptual. Consequently I'm going to make like 20 copies and sell them for dinner-out cash, like in the old days, with a coupon for the summer release.

I have no plans to make this edition generally available, although I might make an exception for the game's playtesters (who have been very good to me).

April: Playtesting Wrap-up

By the end of April I need to be writing really-final text, so that's the end of playtesting. March and April should bring any probs with (eg) the new Hx rules to light.

I'll also give the playtesters their prize: a new character playbook not available to the general public. It'll be available first to playtesters, then preorderers, and only occasionally thereafter. We've been playing with it and it's quite, quite hot.

May-June: Making the Book

Final rewrites, editing, proofing, illos, book design. Don't expect to hear much from me in May-June.

July: Premiere

For sale in July. Maybe even a DexCon premiere, we'll see. I wouldn't rule it out.

What's safe to say, though, is the usual: preorders in July, to ship August 1st (with the prize), with a con premiere at GenCon.

TOUCH WOOD NO JINX!

2010-02-08 : Seriously like the blink of an eye
Here's a pretty remarkable thing, to me at least. These are all Forge threads.

Shadows - Sebastian's 5.

The Nighttime Animals Save the World - Sebastian's 6.

Side-scrolling Anthropomorphic Limbo Universalis! - Sebastian's 6, Elliot's 3.

Prydain, the Hobbit, Pendragon ... Fun for Kids! - Sebastian's 7, Elliot's 4.

[The Big Night] Sheckleton's Sacrifice - Sebastian's 8, Elliot's 5.

Monsters! Monsters! - Sebastian's 9, Elliot's 6.

[Galactic] Character creation for Seb's new game! - Sebastian's 10, Elliot's 7.

With combined race and class, choose from 7 unique character types! - Sebastian's 11, Elliot's 7.

[Storming the Wizard's Tower] Times 10! - Sebastian's 12.

We're playing Pokemon Sorcerer - Sebastian's 13, Elliot's 9, Tovey's 4.

(All but the last are archival threads now - please don't post to them!)

These days, Sebastian's also running a bunch of Storming the Wizard's Tower and Mouse Guard for Elliot and his friend Josh.