About Michael Wolf

http://www.stargazersworld.com

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and is part of its editorial team.

In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games.

Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

Follow him on Twitter.

Posts by Michael Wolf:

Oct 15 2008

Every GM needs this!

Every GM should play this when he leaves the game table to go to the bathroom or get some more soft-drinks and snacks from the fridge:

You can get the original mp3 from the Geek Heretic blog.

UPDATE: The ZIP linked in the post is corrupted. But here’s a direct link to the mp3 file that works!

By • RPG, RPG tools • 6

Oct 13 2008

Can Mutants & Masterminds replace d20 Modern?

In an earlier post I’ve written about the dead or undead status of d20 Modern. And so I was looking for an alternative. And at once Mutants & Masterminds comes to mind. But isn’t it a superhero game? Yes, it is, but it’s far more versatile than that.

If you plan to run a modern day campaign with no magic, superpowers, whatever, just reduce the power level to suit your campaign style and disallow all powers that would not fit into your setting. A character like the costumed adventurer archetype would probably fit into any spy campaign, when you replace the silly bat costume with some special ops clothing. A martial artist is the easist to fit into the game and even a gadgeteer may be shoehorned into your campaign world (especially if you play in the near future or the campaign features gadgets like from a James Bond movie). 

When you add some magic or psionics to the mix (like in the original Agents of PSI or Urban Arcana settings from the d20 Modern corebook), you can easily bring more M&M archetypes into the mix without even change that much.

The implied setting of M&M is a modern world (as the one we live in) with superheroes being a reality. The rule book also provides you with stats for modern and archaic weapons, armor and even vehicles. So that’s another issue you don’t have to worry about.

So, if you’re looking for a great roleplaying game for your modern campaign, check out Mutants & Masterminds.

By • Mutants & Masterminds, RPG • 4

Oct 12 2008

Niente mantelli!!!

Danilo Moretti, a fellow RPG blogger from Italy has asked my permission to translate some of my posts into Italian and post them onto his blogs. I accepted his request, of course, and you can now read the italian translation of my “No capes!” post at his blog bash-gdr.com, a blog dedicated to the italian version of the BASH! superheroes RPG.

His other blog, justplaywith.it is a blog discussing pen and paper RPG game design (dissertations, reviews of indie games etc.) and is focussed on an RPG (Fenomena) that he’ll tentatively publish via Inspired Device in 2009.

So, if you speak Italian (or are not afraid of using Google translation), please check his blogs out.

By • News & Reviews, RPG • 0

Oct 9 2008

Fluff and crunch

A lot of posts on the network are about fluff vs. crunch or at least use those words a lot. Even I have used both fluff and crunch several times in this blog. There are people out there who think fluff is less important than crunch and when they buy a book that contains way more fluff than crunch they feel ripped off.

So, what are fluff and crunch anyway?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictonary, fluff is one of the following:

  1. down (soft feathers)
  2. something fluffy
  3. something inconsequential
  4. blunder; especially: an actor’s lapse of memory
So, what does has the dictonary to say about crunch?
  1. an act of crunching
  2. a sound made by crunching
  3. a tight or critical situation: as a: a critical point in the buildup of pressure between opposing elements : showdown b: a severe economic squeeze (as on credit) c: shortage <an energy crunch>
  4. a conditioning exercise performed from a supine position by raising and lowering the upper torso without reaching a sitting position
Ok, that doesn’t really help us how both words are used in the roleplaying games context. Fluff usually means, the background, setting, flavor texts. Crunch are the rules, tables, that stuff. And usually people tend to think that fluff is just something you can more easily live without. Sorry, but I have to tell you that these people are wrong.
 
Why can’t we do away with fluff?
Because fluff is what makes the game. Roleplaying games are games of storytelling and make-believe. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need any rules, our imagination alone would be sufficient. BUT there need to be some rules to make the game more interesting and reduce arguments to the minimum. When children play “indians and cowboys” or something like that they run around shooting each other with their toy guns or their fingers and you often can listen to dialogs like that:
Kid #1: “Bam! Bam! You’re dead! I shot you!”
Kid #2: “No, I am not, you missed me”
Kid #1: “No, I shot you, so you have to lie down and stop moving!”
Kid #2: “I won’t!”
Kid #1: “You will!”
This can go on for a long time and usually it ends in a more physical confrontation that leads to crying and an abrupt end of the game. Ok, I never have witnessed DM and players starting a fist fight over a situation in a gaming session, but given that example you probably know what rules are for. It limits the players and the DM but helps to run the game and dice rolls for example add additional suspense. You never know if you succeed in your actions. But is this why rules (aka crunch) are more important? No, they are necessary but without the fluff it’s all meaningless.
Without the fluff all that remains are the rules. And the rules are in most games 80% combat-related. So you turn roleplaying into wargaming. In my opinion fluff is what makes the game interesting.  

For a long time I couldn’t think of anything that could make someone think fluff is a waste of paper. But if you made your first steps into roleplaying from wargaming or you started with older edition of D&D this probably makes some sense. D&D core books are usually almost fully devoid of fluff and the rules were cleary evolved from wargaming. Early players and DMs were probably to create the fluffy part of gaming themselves.

More modern roleplaying games tend to be more light on the rules (less crunch) and there’s a lot of background and flavor texts (aka fluff). Just look at the White Wolf games. So it’s probably more a question of how you were introduced into the hobby when the like or dislike of fluff is concerned. What do you guys think? Am I completely off track? Is fluff something inconsequential after all? Please leave your comments below.

By • Just my two cents, RPG • 2

Oct 8 2008

No capes!

Capes, costumes, secret identities are the common tropes of the superhero genre. But there are people who think that adult men and women clad in skintight spandex suits with masks and fancy capes just look silly. Recent superhero movies have done away with skintight suits in most cases (and replaced them with leather suits for example) and the superhero cartoon “The Incredibles” gave us a lot of arguments why capes are just evil!

So, can you pull of a superhero campaign without some of the most common superhero tropes? Sure. Look at the superheroes TV show “Heroes“. There you have people with incredible powers but no capes, no costumes, no secret identities, no silly names. In my opinion the premise of “Heroes” could make a great base for a superhero campaign.

  • Origins
    Most (if not all) characters have the same origin. Let’s just go the X-Men/Heroes route and they all have some genetic mutations that give them super powers. Call them mutants or homo superior, whatever tickles your fancy. Another possible origin could be super powers that are caused by nano bots in the supers’ bloodstream (like in the computer game “Deus Ex”). Whatever it is it should be grounded in natural science. No magic, no aliens, no gods!
  • Secrecy
    Superpowers are real, there are heroes and villains, but the majority of the world has not taken notice of them. Most supers keep their powers secret in fear of being repressed by normals or not to become a guinea pig for ruthless scientists who want to find out the secret of their powers.
  • It’s the world as we know it
    You don’t need to make changes to the world as we know it. Everything is pretty much the same, there are just a few people starting to dicover their emerging powers. Perhaps add in a secret organization that controls supers (like the Company in “Heroes”)
  • Start small
    If I would start a Heroes-inspired campaign I would probably use Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition. A good starting power level would be around 5 or 6. During the campaign you of course can rise that level as it suits the story.
  • Grey is better than white
    As we’ve seen in Heroes, most “heroes” have their bad sides. No one is 100% perfect like most Golden Age heroes. The player characters should have some flaws too. Let even the villains have some redeeming qualities.
  • Not everyone is super
    A PL 5 or 6 campaign should allow you to add people without any super powers to the team. It could be someone like Hiro’s friend Ando or Dr. Suresh, the scientist, who is trying to find and help these special individuals.  
It could also be interesting to let the players create their characters without any powers first. So they start like normal humans and the GM grants them some powers during the first adventure. So the players have to find out what their powers are first.         

The character concept should always be viable without the powers. Nathan Petrelli from Heroes for example was (and still is)  a politician first before he even knew about his flying ability, Sylar was a watchmaker, Hiro a corporate employee, Clair Bennett is still going to school. Keep that in mind when you create characters. A superhero that is focused on his super powers alone without any other skills is not recommended for that kind of campaign.

I am still trying to convince my gaming group that we should do a superhero campaign. Perhaps if we go the “Heroes” way, I can win them over. :)
 
Note: The ChattyDM is hosting this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. The topic is “Super Heroes in RPGs” and this post is my contribution.

By • Fluff/Inspiration, Mutants & Masterminds, RPG • 1

Oct 8 2008

Feed the Reader

No, this post is not about RPGs, but about blogs, the RPG Bloggers Network and feed readers. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of my readers are referred to my blog by our network’s main site. And only a few have subscribed to my RSS feed. So, why should you subscribe?

  • You won’t miss any articles
    When you check out rpgbloggers.com irregularly you probably miss most of the articles. When I go to our network’s main site I usually skim through the topmost articles and check out if there are any new posts in the “featured” category. If it’s a very active day in the network a lot of interesting posts have probably been pushed to the second page already. 
  • But I’ve already subscribed to the RPG Bloggers Network Feed! Why should I add yours too?
    Reading the rpgbloggers.com feed is like drinking from the firehose. When you subscribe to my feed and the feeds of other RPG blogs you like, you not only get the full posts in most cases, you also get to read posts that are NOT related to roleplaying games. Some of the network’s members write about a lot of other interesting things that you’ll miss, when you just read the rpgbloggers.com feed.
  • But don’t I need an expensive feed reader software?
    No, of course not. Although they are quite a few commercial feed readers there are a lot of free alternatives. There are several web-based feed-readers available. You can for example use Google Reader or Bloglines. Or you can add a feed to you personalized Google page or to your NetVibes page. If you prefer a desktop application, use FeedReader3 or search on your favorite search engine for “Free feedreader”. Or, if you use the Opera browser, you can use the excellent built-in feed reader!
 
I hope I have you convinced by now. So, what’s the next step? Subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed using the method of your choice! If you need the feed’s adress it’s 

 

http://www.stargazersworld.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2
 

If you have any more questions to this topic, feel free to ask! Post your thoughts in the comment section below!

By • Blogging, Just my two cents, RPG • 6

Oct 7 2008

Iron Kingdoms

The people who followed my Dungeoncraft articles may already have guessed that the Iron Kingdoms setting by Privateer Press was one of the major inspiration for Asecia. In the beginning IK started as a trilogy of adventures that later even spawned the miniature games WARMACHINE and HORDE. IK consisted of the beforementioned trilogy (the “Witchfire” trilogy), the IK: Character guide, the IK: World guide, two Monsternomicons and several smaller sourcebooks. IK was using the d20 System License, so you probably won’t find many copies in stores nowadays.

But alas there hasn’t been any new releases for the IK campaign setting for quite some time now and Privateer Press recently announced on their forums that they will not release an updated version with D&D 4th Edition rules. But they can’t sell their existing material because the d20 System license is no more. The only way to reprint the books would be to make them compliant with the OGL, which in my opinion would be no impossible task.

But if you ask me, I am sure that Privateer Press is focussing on new projects and the IK campaign setting is more or less dead. With WARMACHINE, HORDE and the new Monsterpocalypse they have three miniature game lines. And I don’t believe they have the manpower or will to reinvigorate their roleplaying game line.
And although I own lot of the IK books I haven’t run more than the first part of the Witchfire trilogy. When I’ve concluded our current Pirates of the Spanish Main campaign returning to the Iron Kingdoms could be one of my possibilities. BUT shall I run it as it was intended (using D&D 3.5), shall I try to convert it to D&D 4th Edition (my group really likes the new system) or is converting the setting to a completly different system like Savage World, True20, GURPS, whatever the way to go?

Deep in my heart I still hope that Privateer Press will surprise us with their brand-new IK roleplaying game that perhaps even is compatible to their miniatures line in the future. But I doubt this day will come. So what would you do, if you were in my shoes?

By • Just my two cents, RPG • 4

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