See, I’ve had a couple of rough weeks and we had to cancel our weekly game twice (sacrilege I know!), so we planned this as a way to catch up, see each other and spend some quality time together. Needless to say at dinner with gamers I had to bring up the topic everyone’s been talking about in recent days D&D Next/5th edition…

I wanted to get their take on the news of the development of a fresh version of Dungeons & Dragons. Here in the blog we recently posted our thoughts, but we are bloggers, keep abreast of news and interact with a different community of gamers than some of the gamers I was sitting with. The reaction was interesting, mostly predictable if you know the group, but telling considering this quote from Monte Cook:

“I’m the lead designer of a project that will likely evolve into a new iteration of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. It’s meant to be a set of rules that unites all the previous editions, and the players of those editions.  It’s a big project, and we plan on involving all comers to playtest and voice their opinions, because really, what’s the point of designing a game no one wants to play? And who knows better what D&D players want than, well, D&D players.”

(Thanks to EN World for collecting this and other quotes and information on the development in their D&D 5^th edition info page!)

What did they say? Read on…

This is a varied group, running the gamut from their mid-twenties to forties, all longtime role-players and as a whole we’ve all played D&D, some of us more than others, but we all cut our teeth on the game. Some of them have played at my table for nineteen years, and for the longest time all I ran was D&D. Many where there when we switched from AD&D 2^nd edition to 3^rd edition, and later when I dragged them (some kicking and screaming) to D&D 4^th edition, some even ran the game, so we’ve all experienced edition change.

In the midst of a conversation about movies, critical hits and the selection in the buffet I dropped the bomb, “So what do you think about the fact they are developing a new edition of D&D?” My favorite response was, “What?” There was actually someone at the table who had no idea. It’s been days since the announcement, this is not a person who lives under a rock, he uses the internet, but obviously despite WotC’s attempts and all the media coverage this was the first he had heard of it.

The general consensus seemed to be disinterest. One of the most vocal haters of D&D 4^th edition in my group actually threatened to hit me with the book if I “wasted” (that’s what he called it) my money on a new edition. More moderate voices insisted they were happy with the fantasy RPG they have, Pathfinder, and that it would have to be a pretty amazing system to get them to go back to D&D.

When someone pointed out that planning for sessions is an intense experience for a Game Master, I made the faux pas of actually defending 4^th edition and singing its praises, such as ease of prep time for Game Masters, and the GMs around the table insisted they have the same ease of prep with Pathfinder. And while I agree Pathfinder made many strides in these regards, and making it easy when creating NPCs, specifically by providing short cuts and samples of them, I believe there are still some issues with high-level play, but nothing that bothers me. I can navigate this hurdles and I think the other GMs at the table have mastered the system and thus feel very comfortable with the game.

I think this may be the biggest obstacle Wizards of the Coast faces when they try to attract lapse players back to the fold, they feel that when WotC published 4^th edition they were left behind (no pun intended!) and that they have moved on, they have found other games that fit their style. Another of my players never played 4^th edition and did not understand the vitriolic reaction against D&D 4^th edition, but also felt Pathfinder fulfilled her needs for fantasy gaming and has no desire to change systems.

The most surprising reaction came from one of my oldest friends, he works at a FLGS and is the only player at my table who still actively plays D&D 4^th edition (albeit not with us). He said he has NO interest in a new game, that he would continue playing D&D 4^th edition and Pathfinder. He distrusts (I don’t recall his word choice exactly, but this was the impression I got) WotC’s corporate policies and had little hope on what they plan to do, he was also underwhelmed by the design team. He admitted he was excited about 4^th edition, not so this time around.

I remain positively optimistic. I want to see where this goes, look forward to the open play test, which I believe is a step in the right direction, and think the stated design goals are laudable. From this conversation I know there is NO interest among my players to playtest the game. Since writing the last post on the subject I’ve decided I DO want to play the game as part of the playtest and know people who are interested, so I hope I can cajole some members of Puerto Rico Role Players to try this out.

All this is anecdotal; still I wonder how much of this type of attitude is out there… Is it too late? Has the ship sailed? I certainly hope not. I want to see what the next version of D&D is all about, I want the granddaddy of games to thrive, whether I end up playing it or not. So I invite you dear reader to keep an open mind, I really think it’s too early to say what the game will be like. Don’t write it off, if it ends up not being what you want to play, other will. Let’s all be more tolerant of what other people want to play, we are all gamers, no matter under which system we roll our dice! It’s those diceless heathens we need to worry about! I’m joking, no hate mail please…

I apologize in advance if I misinterpreted or misquoted anyone on this post, know that these are my interpretations of the opinions I heard. Thanks Enith, José F, Luis A, Fernan, Luis L, Pierre, Sara, José D and Nilda for a wonderful evening!

PS- Yes, we are going back to out regularly scheduled Tuesday game this week, there is nothing to fear!

Related posts:

1. Dungeonslayers review @ “Here Be Gamers”
2. Ask The Readers: Web comics for gamers?
3. Gamers Help Haiti Product Bundle @ DriveThruRPG

I also promised you a first look on what I’ve done so far. So here’s an excerpt from my manuscript:

Core Mechanic

Astronauts uses a simple dice pool mechanic to determine if actions attempted by characters are successful or not. Astronauts uses two kinds of six-sided dice: Skill dice (blue) and Complication dice (black). The blue dice represent the character’s skills and any favorable conditions that may help the character. Black dice represent anything that hinders success. Whenever it’s unsure whether a task at hand may fail or not, the dice pool is assembled. The pool starts with one Skill die. For each character trait helping in that situation another Skill die is added. The GM then may add additional Skill dice if there are favorable conditions making the task even easier. Then the Complication dice are added. Stress, unfavorable conditions, sometimes even trust issues between the characters can account for that.

The dice pool is then rolled. Each die that comes up 5 or 6 is counted as a success. Successes on black dice negate successes on blue dice. If no successes on Skill dice remain, the check failed. If only one success on a blue die remains, the check was partially successful. The task succeeded but just by a very small margin. At least two remaining successes on Skill dice are needed for a full success. Further successes imply that the task at hand was performed with superior skill or in less time than initially thought.

This core mechanic is actually pretty close to which I came up for another unfinished project, but I like it a lot, that’s why it makes a reappearance here. To put the mechanics into a bit more perspective, let me share another excerpt:

Characters

Each player in Astronauts plays one member of a team of astronauts on a mission of human space exploration. The scope of said mission is up to the players and the GM. But we’ll talk about Missions later.

Traits

Characters in Astronauts are described by Traits. Each trait is a word or a short sentence that describes different aspects of a character, what makes the character stand out. Player characters use the following Traits:

Physique
The Physique trait describes the physical aspects of a character.
Examples: Nimble, Tough, Ambidextrous, Quick, Strong Stomach, Fleet-footed, Athletic, Strong.
Intellect
The intellect trait describes the mental (intellectual and emotional) aspects of a character.
Examples: Quick-Thinker, Knowledgeable, Observant, Math Genius, Eidetic Memory, Charming, Stoic.
Technical Skill
The Technical Skill trait describes what technical skill the character is trained in. Please note that all characters have undergone an extended astronaut training and are capable of doing repairs on equipment, handling scientific and technical equipment and are familiar with various space craft and space suits. The skills listed under this trait is the one where the characters stand out among their peers.
Examples: Shuttle Pilot, Paramedic, Electrical Engineering, EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity), Hydroponic Farming, Space Ship Systems.
Scientific Skill
The Scientific Skill describes the field of science the character has specialized in.
Examples: Physics, Astronomy, Medicine, Planetology, Geology, Biology.
Social Skill
The Social skill trait describes the characters’ interpersonal skills that help to make the isolation far away from the rest of humanity bearable.
Examples: Empathy, Leadership, Conflict Management, Self-Discipline, Psychology, Diplomacy.

I have a few more things to share with you, but this should suffice at the moment. Please let me know what you think. Your feedback is highly appreciated!

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1. My NaGa DeMon diary #2
2. My NaGa DeMon diary #1
3. NaGa DeMon, NaNoWriMo and Scrivener

Astronauts will use a simple dice pool mechanic. For each task resolution the player rolls a number of six-sided dice. The number of dice rolled is determined by his character’s traits and possibly favorable conditions. If there are any factors hindering said action, dice of a different color are added (black or red for example). Each die that comes up with 5 or 6 is considered a success. Successes on the black dice negate regular successes. At least one regular success is needed for a partial success. Two successes are needed for a full success and so on.

Since I want to keep things simple, each character is basically made up by a list of traits and goals. Traits are either one word or a short sentence describing a character’s physical or mental abilities, or his or her skills. These traits basically describe a character with very broad strokes. But no character would be complete without goals. And that’s where it really gets interesting! All characters share a common mission goal (like establishing a base on Mars), but their personal and their nations’ goals may be quite different. One character may actually be secretly working against the others to further his own interests.

The goals are actually at the core of the trust mechanic in Astronauts. If you work millions of kilometers away from Earth, you need to trust your colleagues completely. Trust is a valuable asset in such a situation. In the game the team shares a pool of Trust dice that can be used to improve the chances in tricky situations. This common resource is affected by the level of trust within the team and when open conflict arises within the team the lack of trust may actually cause additional complications that hinder the success of the whole mission.

I am also considering using more structured gameplay than in my other games. Usually I am not that comfortable with the concept, but in Astronauts it might make sense. Each mission starts with the players defining a goal for the next mission. Then each player may pick a kind of scene he or she wants to play. There may be mission scenes where the players try to take the necessary steps to get closer to the mission goal, trust scenes where the players try to rebuild lost trust and personal scenes where the player tries to further his or her own interests. During each scene the character of the player who picked it should be in the spotlight and the other player characters may or may not participate in the scene. The GM may throw in complications like a broken CO2 filter or a meteor shower. Now that I think about it, these events may actually be a special kind of scenes the GM is allowed to pick.

What is making Astronauts much harder to design than a “normal” SF game is that a lot of the common SF and roleplaying game tropes are missing: there will probably no combat, no aliens, no faster-than-light space travel, no treasures for the players to amass. But I hope that the story-based approach, the trust mechanic and the scene structure may help to make Astronauts an enjoyable experience.

Related posts:

1. My NaGa DeMon diary #1
2. NaGa DeMon: I surrender!
3. NaGa DeMon, NaNoWriMo and Scrivener

One major problem is that the way I imagined the game in the first place it’s extremely hard to actually run it. While being in space, exploring the surface the Mars etc. is extremely exciting a lot of the things astronauts do during those missions is terribly boring when played in a roleplaying game. As HyenaSpotz pointed out in a comment to my announcement post:

What sorts of conflicts would this game have? If there are no aliens, most of the immediate threat is environmental, the sweeping threats are politics back on Earth, and there’s always the “Why did you bring a gun into space?” scenario among the team…

I have been thinking about this over the weekend and I also checked out Paul Elliott’s game Mars which commenter rainswept recommended. And I realized that I can circumvent a lot of the major problems by moving the game from “First Mission to Mars” to the “First Colony on Mars” without having to abandon all of my initial ideas.

I already started working on a future history which spans from the early to mid 21st century. In my version of the future a new space race starts in the 2020s with a international mission to Mars led by the USA against a Chinese Mars project. The game will probably be set into the 2050s or later when a permanent research colony on Mars has been established and when private companies start looking into exploiting the natural resources of Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies.

When it comes to game rules I am currently torn between a dice pool mechanic and a 3d6-roll-under mechanic. But in either case I intend to use a system light on rules. The focus of the game should be the story, the characters and not the rules. Since I am still in an early design phase I am of still open to your ideas. What are your thoughts on the whole project? Please share your thoughts below.

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2. NaGa DeMon, NaNoWriMo and Scrivener
3. NaGa DeMon: I surrender!

I hope you like it!

If everything goes as planned I will post semi-regular updates on my progress. As with all my other games it will probably be freely available under a Creative Commons license. If you have any more questions about this game, feel free to post in the comments below.

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1. My NaGa DeMon diary #2
2. My NaGa DeMon diary #1
3. Would a near-future science-based space exploration roleplaying game work?

Of course there are a few rules (it wouldn’t be fun without those!):

• Create the game in November
• Finish the game in November
• Play the game in November
• Talk about your experience

By the way, the NaGa DeMon is not just about pen & paper RPGs. If you want to create a boardgame, wargame, cardgame or even a computer game, you can do so and it’s still part of the official NaGa DeMon! I am basically working on some game design project all the time, but perhaps I will use this event to see a project through next month!

And there’s one more thing. For a while I have followed the development of the Windows version of Scrivener. Scrivener is software that was initially developed for Mac only that was meant as a tool for writers. I think explaining all the features of this software would definitely be beyond the scope of this post, so it’s perhaps best you check out the official website for more details. What I have been wondering for a while now was if you could use Scrivener to help you in game design, too. And November may actually be my chance to do so!

You can get a special NaNoWriMo Trial Edition of Scrivener for free that you can use until December 7th. And if you are among the NaNoWriMo winners you’ll get a 50% discount on the full version of Scrivener. And even if you don’t manage to churn out a novel of 50,000 words next month, you still get a 20% discount  by entering “NANOWRIMO” as coupon code at the purchase!

But there’s more. I actually found a very interesting blog post on “Population: One” today, that shows how you can use Scrivener for RPG Writing. If you are interested in using Scrivener for NaGa DeMon, you definitely should check the article out.

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1. My Plans for NaGa DeMon
2. NaGa DeMon: I surrender!
3. My NaGa DeMon diary #1

My archenemy is surely what I call “game designer attention deficit disorder”. It usually sets in after I’ve started on a new project. And suddenly something else attracts my attention. “What’s this? A new game? An interesting new concept to borrow? How could I make this work with my system? Ohhh, shiny…” Usually my project comes to a sudden halt at that moment. I stumble upon a game that I like and at once my brain starts to salvage that game for ideas. The attempt to incorporate these ideas into what I am working on right now usually fails and I get frustrated. This frustration often makes me abandon the project and move on. Until I find the next distraction. Rinse and repeat.

There have been some cases when I was able to avoid this. In the case of WR&M a few good friends helped me to get through with it. Without them this game would probably never have seen the light of day. Another way to avoid this is to compress the whole design process into 24 hours or less. Then I just don’t have any time to digress. My first draft of WR&M and Arcane Heroes are great examples for this. But I have to be in the right state of mind to pull something like this off.

A problem closely related to the game designer ADD is that recently my designs tend to look like clones of existing games. This doesn’t happen on purpose but it’s probably a side effect of me reading a lot of roleplaying game rulebooks for reviews. Some time back I discovered the excellent FU RPG and without noticing the game rules I was working on at the time slowly started resembling FU. A more recent example was the Mistborn Adventure Game Primer. I read the rules and was blown away. It already shared a few concepts with a game I am working on and I really had to fight the urge to borrow too much from what I’ve read in said primer.

I am no professional game designer. Writing games is a hobby for me, not something that pays my bills, so it’s not something that puts me in real peril, but the fact that I always face the same problems when working on a game design is driving me up the walls. I have a lot of ideas what I would love to do but I also think I put too much stress on myself. Which is pretty silly because I doubt anyone expects me to churn out great game designs every other month or so. What I really would like to know how other people handle these issues. Perhaps some of you want to share your thoughts on that matter. As always any comment is highly appreciated!

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3. My homework for you today: try out a new game

Sometimes I think about what would I have done if I was in charge of the development of D&D. Luckily I am not in that position so I can freely think about what I would like to design and play instead of worrying about what the fans would like to see. Because – you can trust me on this – I love to slaughter sacred cows.

Let me start by a disclaimer: I haven’t been a fan of D&D before third edition and while OD&D in form of the retro clones has a certain charm for me, there are many other games I prefer.

So while I would probably base my “Stargazer Edition” of D&D on OD&D, I would include a lot of the changes from D&D 3rd Edition. Or let me rephrase that. I think I would take D&D 3rd Edition and remove all the meat from the bones so that something as light as OD&D or perhaps Microlite20 remains.

At first I would remove the feats and streamline the skill list. The D&D 3.5 skill list was already a great improvement about the one in it’s predecessor. When I think about it, the way the skill system works in D&D 4th Edition is not so bad. Your skill rank is always half your level plus 5 if it’s one of your “trained” skills.

As the next step I would get rid of attributes but keep the attribute bonuses. In my opinion the attributes in D&D 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 have just been kept for nostalgia’s sake. It worked great in games like Mutants & Masterminds and True20, so why not in my “Stargazer Edition”.

The three Saves and the Base Attack bonuses actually worked well enough, so I’ll keep them around. See, it wasn’t so bad, it almost didn’t hurt.

Ok, let’s start slaughtering some sacred cows now, let’s change the way armor works. I always didn’t like the idea that armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing the damage your character takes. So let’s fix that. This is actually done quite easily. Each character gets a Defense value which is 10 plus your Dexterity (remember, we replaced the attributes by their bonuses). This is what your opponent needs to roll to actually hit you. Armor worn reduces damage and heavy armor may even reduce your Defense making you easier to hit.

The next sacred cow to be killed are classes. Instead of classes I would prefer the players to be able to pick and choose from various background options. These can grant you access to certain abilities, magic etc. – they are basically your build-your-own-class toolbox. This allows for much more organic characters.

Magic is another touchy subject. I never was a friend of Vancian magic and I didn’t like the way D&D 4th Edition made use of Powers either. I would probably try to design a spell-point based system or follow an even more radical approach.

Back when I was still in school I read many of the Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In these novels casting magic always drained sometimes even hurt the caster. So why not design a system in which spellcasters use their hitpoints to power spells? Of course this limits the power of magic and might feel out of place in high fantasy settings but I like the idea a lot.

My edition of D&D would probably use feet and yards instead of squares and move away from tactical miniature combat. And instead of including rules for every situation I would prefer to keep things light and encourage GMs to come up with their own solutions.

Last but not least I am actually not sure if levels are even needed. But I might actually keep them around just for nostalgia sake. Yes, even I can be nostalgic.

The result of this thought experiment, the so-called Stargazer Edition of D&D would probably almost be unrecognizable for some, but I believe it would still retain a lot from D&D. I haven’t actually started working on something like that, but it’s one of those ideas that crop up from time to time again.

So what do you think about my ideas. Am I sacrificing too many sacred cows? Am I totally nuts or do you believe I am on the right track?

Disclaimer: No cows (sacred or otherwise) have been harmed during the production of this post.

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2. D&D 4th Edition – is it D&D?
3. And I thought D&D 4th Edition cosmology was less complicated than this…

1. Tomb of the Overfiend
   Weird West is definitely one of coolest old-school games ever conceived. It’s extremely rules-light, but contains a lot of weird west goodness. Recently Stuart Robertson, creator of that fine game, released a free one-page adventure based on an excellent map by Matt Jackson. And even if you’re not into Weird West you can easily use it for other old-school games as well.
2. Ashen Stars Theme Music
   James Semple who has done several soundtracks for Gumshoe games in the past, has composed a theme music for Robin D. Laws latest game, Ashen Stars. I really hope this is the first sign of a full Ashen Stars soundtrack to come. You can listen to the rather short theme tune here.
3. Barbarians of the Future
   You probably might already have heard about Barbarians of Lemuria, Simon Washbourne’s Sword & Sorcery RPG. While I haven’t tried the game yet, it’s among the games I have to give a try at least once. Some people actually call it one of the best RPGs of the genre. Obviously the system used in BoL can also be easily be used in other genres. There’s Jabberwocky Productions’ post-apocalyptic setting-expansion Barbarians of the Aftermath for example.
   A while back rpg.net forum member Maxwell Luther created a free PDF supplement for BoA that allows players and the GM to experience adventures in the grim-dark future of the Warhammer 40,000 universe (with the serial numbers filed off). If you are interested in both BoA and the WH40K universe, you should definitely give it a look. You can download the 42-paged PDF here.
4. Expedition RPG
   Fellow RPG blogger Dennis N. Santana has recently released an early playtest edition of his Expedition RPG. I haven’t had time to give it a closer look, but according to Shaun Welch’s playtest reports (part one & part two), he and his players not only had fun with the fast character creation system that allows truly unique character concepts, but also very much enjoyed the combat rules. From what I’ve seen Expedition contains a lot of interesting ideas that set the game apart from the majority of fantasy games. If you’re looking for something new, why don’t you give it a try. It’s free and obviously pretty polished for a game still in its alpha stage.

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1. Weird West Roleplaying Game
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3. History of West End Games

Tech is actually pretty easy. In most cases no special skills or stunts are needed. Starblazer’s Science and Engineering skills and their respective stunts pretty much cover everyting needed. The Omni-Tool from Mass Effect basically combines the Med Kit, the Multi-Tool and a PDA in one single item. In addition to that usage of the Omni-Tool shall allow the user to administer medical treatment with either their Engineering or Science skill whatever is higher.

With the help of Legends of Anglerre I was able to create a couple stunts for the new Biotics skill. In order to pick that skill the character needs at least one fitting Aspect. The stunts then give access to the powers you might know from Mass Effect 1.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

These stunts should work well enough in most cases. If additional detail is needed, I might add more stunts later that represent the various Biotic amplifiers, the biotic affinity of the Asari species or improved omni-tools. But for now I think it’s a good start.

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
2. Starblazer Adventures meets the Mass Effect Universe
3. Starblazer Adventures: First session

Mere words are not enough to describe the full extent of what BADASS is, so let me show you a few pages from this upcoming game:

Jay and I are currently working hard to get the game released. Although we are pretty badass ourselves, we still need a few days to get everything done. So stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Ready to become the BADASS you always dreamed to be?
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3. Stargazer Games

For just 1$ (at DriveThruRPG) you get the game in two PDF versions: one for viewing on your PC, tablet PC or smartphone and a special PocketMod version for printing.

The rules are extremely streamlined but that’s not a bad thing. Of course you don’t get longwinded introductions into roleplaying or an elaborate background, but the rules themselves contain enough fluff elements to get a campaign started in no time. My favorite is the magic and weird abilities section which contains everything from “Electromancy” over “Fastest Gun in the West” to “Shaolin Monk”.

If you are a fan of weird western world you definitely should give this game a try. I hope that Stuart has plans for Weird West supplement and perhaps other games in that format.

And this game made me wondering if a pocketmod version of WR&M might work. Of course the rules would need to be streamlined a bit more to make this work, but this could be a fun project.

Related posts:

1. From Weird West to Barbarians of the Future
2. “You are all travelling in a Stagecoach…” Weird West pre-gens
3. Preview: “Open Game Table, The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs”

If you drop by make sure you tell him I sent you! I had told him I was going to write this and I have taken my sweet time… Sorry for that my friend.

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Dennis has recently released a 24-paged playtest version of the game that you can download from his blog. If you are interested in trying something new, you should definitely have a look at High Score. And don’t forget to send your feedback to Dennis. His email address is given in the playtest document.

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1. Warrior, Rogue & Mage: Playtest
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P.1 – Addiction and Acceptance

This articles discusses the addiction that many of us GM’s face in gaming, the addiction that is world building.  Many of us get hooked on world building.  This article approaches that subject and introduces this series.

P.2 – First Things First

This article talks about never forgetting to build at least a little Old School; even though we might have tons of web based programs and sites which can help us build our campaign settings, never forget to pick yourself a good old fashioned notebook.

P.3 – Getting Started with World Tone

This article takes a look at world tone.  Some worlds are going to be humorous and funky, some need to be spooky scary (as opposed to gory scary).  Deciding on the tone you want for the world at large when you start building your world is probably a very good idea.

P.4 – Campaign Setting Genre

The Genre of your setting is second only to tone (maybe its more important, but that is really up to you).  It is a good idea to decide early on whether or not your world is going to be high fantasy, super fantasy, or steampunk; it can be pretty hard to change setting genre mid-stream.

P.5 – Macro Meets Micro

There are two pretty well accepted world building techniques – top down, and bottom up (macro and micro).  But, do they really have to be kept apart?  This article focuses on combining these two techniques to keep yourself motivated and your campaign setting construction process moving.

P.6 – Get Smart, Get Sneaky

You should steal as much stuff for your setting as you are comfortable with.  Just don’t get caught doing it. JK.  Every good GM will look around the real world and take from it inspiration and ideas and use those to help build up their world.  You should probably do the same.  This post also focuses on some of the places to “research” for you setting.

P.7 – Inside Your NPC’s Heads

Have you ever had a conversation with one of the NPC’s in your world?  You should think about trying it.  Having a convo with an NPC is a good way to see how your world is developing and make sure that everything is working the way you want it to.

P.8 – Kicking off you Homebrew Setting Campaign

Here, I discuss ways that you can kick off your campaign and get things rolling when you actually want to play with it (remember that is why you’re building a campaign setting after all).  In this article, you will find some useful information regarding the different types of ways you can start your campaign.  I take a look at the elevator speech and writing campaign setting primers among other things.

P.9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.  Ok, that might be a bit harsh.  Your setting may in fact be very special and actually, it is a very unique snowflake, but your world is one among many and it is very, very hard to sell your setting to a group of players.  This article focuses on selling your setting to your players and getting them immersed in your world.

P.10 – The End of the World as We Know It?

The last in my 10 part series on world building.  Is the world going to come to an end? Only if you want it to, and even then it will always live on in your head.  As long as you are passionate about your setting and want to keep working on it, your setting will live on.  If you can get people excited about your setting too, than your setting will even live on without you.

Link Round-up

Before I close things out completely, I wanted to mention some of the sites that I use for building my settings which I think you might find useful.  First off, I wanted to bring up Obsidian Portal This site offers you the ability to put together a campaign wiki which you can use for whatever purpose you might desire.  I use it to actually put together a campaign setting bible that uses hyperlinks between pages; I also use this site for actually tracking one of my ongoing games, a Play by Post Shadowrun game.  The site supports just about any system you could possibly desire.  I don’t have a paid membership yet, but I will be upgrading soon.  With the free membership you get up to 2 campaigns for your account and you have access to all of the basic features – but, with the upgraded, paid account (which is pretty cheap actually) gets you unlimited campaigns and also allows you to store significantly more date.  It also gives you some other cool features like the ability to send out e-mails to all of the players in your group whenever you update your campaign wiki.

I also use Artweaver, a German freeware image editing program.  It works a lot like GIMP, but is a little bit less powerful, but what it does offer is speed and size.  The program doesn’t require nearly as much processing power to use as other photo editing programs around the net, which means that if you are running a netbook, like I am, you won’t be burning out your RAM, but you still get all of the power you need.  I use this program for doing banners and art, but mainly, I use it for doing maps.

Speaking of Map Making, I am a member of the Cartographer’s Guild Forums This is a really good spot to find tips on map making as well as some really amazing maps that users have generated.  I troll these forums and pick up tips more than anything, but I’ve posted one of my campaign maps up their for critique.

Though I like to make my maps in Artweaver, I am also very aware of the power that hex maps have and I do like Hexographer.  I don’t use this program very often, but it does offer a lot of powerful mapping capability, especially the ability to add little markings to your map.  Very good stuff. This article may come out too late for most people, but Hexographer PRO is actually on sale right now for the GM’s Day sale, you can get it for $15.98; the free version of this software is only usable online, but the pro version works offline as well.

Finally, get on some forums around the net.  That is just good advice.  There are tons of forums out there.  You can find one you like easy enough.  Those are the areas where you are going to get the most feedback regarding your setting.  Blogs might be good for writing stuff on your setting down, but actually, forums are still probably the best medium for getting quick feedback regarding your setting.  Unless you have a very popular blog, it is going to be pretty hard to bring people to you in order to get feedback on your campaign world – you are probably better off taking your setting to the people.

Ok everyone.  Thanks so much for reading this series.  I really appreciate everyone that commented or mentioned these articles to me around the web.  If you have any feedback that you want to share about this series – even if you just want to e-mail me to tell me how much I suck, fee free.  I always love getting criticism on my articles.  Good Night! Good Luck!!

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
2. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion
3. World Building Part 10 – The End of the World as We Know It?

Although most of the time game worlds that we explore, play in, or build are just a little something designed for a particular campaign or adventure, sometimes the worlds we create are meant to be so much more.  Many of us embark on these massive projects and try to produce something huge.  For the last 10 weeks or so I have written about these kind of worlds and the kind of effort it takes to build them.  But truly, when does the world building process stop?  At what point can you put your pen or keyboard away and declare that you are finished?

Well, I think it really depends what you’re looking for.  If you’re making something small and specific, the world building process might end at a very specific point.  Once you have reached the point where you have designed everything that the adventure or campaign requires, you’re pretty much done.  You can step away from what you have produced and know that you have accomplished all you need to do.

But, what about those larger projects?  What about those works of world building passion that each of us GM’s holds dear to us?  How do these worlds end?  From what I have seen, most of these worlds go the sad way of burning and dying out.  I have had at least two worlds-in-progress which simply fade away out of my mind.  I simply lost interest in what I was trying to create – perhaps because what I thought was interesting changed, or because my gaming groups went away.  Regardless of the reason, many game worlds never get completed.  Poor game worlds.

But, there are some worlds that go far beyond getting finished.  There are some campaign settings which defy that finish line.  For these worlds, there really is no end, unless that end comes in a cataclysmic apocalypse which is more a part of the world’s narrative than it is any end for the actual production and writing of the setting.  These worlds live on there own and never get forgotten.
So, when do you know that you’re done in these cases?  That question really has to be answered individually by every setting builder out there.  It all really depends on passion.  If you have the drive to keep your world going, keep it going forever.  A lot of very famous settings live on after years upon years of play and exploration by countless gamers around the world.  The Forgotten Realms has been going strong for decades now.  That game world has managed to suffer through several edition changes and live to tell about it.  Does is it have an end in sight?  Nope.  The designers that have put their time and effort into that setting won’t be letting it end any time soon.

Your personal game world exists just like the world around us does.  Unless you want it to end, it will keep living on in your imagination.  Year after year, you can come back and breathe new life into it.  That’s part of the reason that building worlds like this can be so much fun.

So, in parting, keep your worlds alive.  They like it that way best.  Good luck.  Happy world building.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
2. World Building Part 2 – First Things First
3. World Building Part 5 – Macro meets Micro

But one question bothered me for quite a while: do we really need them? In a lot of games they don’t play any major role. In most cases they provide a small bonus to relevant skills or act as a kind of fallback when there’s no fitting skill available. So, do we really need attributes or are there ways to replace them? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the concept of attributes per se, but I am interested if a game ditching them could work, and if so, what is needed to make it work.

There are already a couple of games that don’t make use of attributes in the classical sense. There are two more prominent examples I want to discuss here. The first is FATE, which has become more and more popular lately. FATE replaces attributes with aspects. Aspects don’t describe the physical attributes of a character but rather who he is, what his motivations are, et cetera. FATE shows it’s more narrative approach here, because the focus lies on who you are, not what you can do.

The GUMSHOE system entirely focuses on a character’s skills. As the name of the system suggests we are dealing with a system for investigative games here. In the GUMSHOE system investigative skills always work (you don’t need to roll). In GUMSHOE it’s not about whether the characters find the clues but what they make out of it. Usually basic physical or mental attributes don’t play that big a role in these kind of scenarios, so classic attributes aren’t needed.

As you probably know I am always throwing some ideas for roleplaying game systems around. Sometimes these ideas turn into fully-fledged games, sometimes they end up in some desk drawer never to be unearthed again. For the last few days I worked on a rules-light game system that used broad skills instead of attributes. The hard part was to come up with a list of skills that covered perhaps not all but the majority of possible character actions.

During my research on the internet I found out that several people have tried to do the same already. One of those people was Erin Smale, author of the Chimera RPG. I have written about his game a couple of times before and I have to admit I like it very much. I actually noticed that he released a new version recently which is available for free as Chimera Basic, but what I missed what that he had actually done what I was thinking about. He has ditched classic attributes and turned Chimera’s skills into 18 broad abilities covering all possible character actions.

I haven’t played Chimera Basic, yet, but I am sure it will work just fine. The interesting part is that Chimera started out as a system not that dissimilar from D&D and it still works even without the use of attributes. Aside from that there’s a lot to like about that game. It has a really cool modular class system that allows you to build the character you want and a consistent framework for all kinds of supernatural powers from magic spells to psionics.

The realization that Chimera accomplishes a lot of what I wanted out of my own game brought my work to a dead stop for now. One reason is that I like Chimera so much that I am tempted to “borrow” a couple of ideas from it. And in that case it might be easier to actually run Chimera itself instead of reinventing the wheel.

Related posts:

1. Chimera Basic is out! Get it now for free!
2. Chimera 2.0 – worth a look? (Updated)
3. Chimera RPG Price Reduction

So, let’s assume that you have some of your world done, maybe not all of it, and you also have a pretty good idea of the overriding theme and genre that the world is set in.  Now, I assume you have picked up a game system that you feel represents the setting well (you wouldn’t really want to play something like the Smallville RPG in a classic fantasy setting… duh), and have even managed to kidnap some gamers from your local FLGS, tied them to chairs, and forced them to game in your world (please don’t do that; rope can chafe, use duct tape instead its stronger and cheaper).

There are several ways that you can kick off a game set in your homebrew setting and I want to go over a few of those today.  Over at the RPG Table Talk forums, Wyatt Salazar recently made a post about developing a “primer” for his campaign world which he would give to players in order to explain in brief (5-8 pages) the gist of his world to his players.  If you haven’t had a chance to read a little bit about Spirits of Eden, you should go out and do that (I’ll wait…ok, you’re back).  I think it is a really good example of how you can develop your own homebrew world and share it with others.  I think the primer idea is a pretty good way to give your players a general idea of how the setting works and allow them something to hold on to and reference.  I remember playing a few convention games where, at registration for a particular event, they handed us a little stapled pamphlet explaining a few facts about the world and what you need to know before you start rocking out in it.  What you want to include in a primer like this can be a bit tricky though.  Try to keep things broad in scope and general in nature.  The really important thing to do here is to write down what your players need to know and what you think you, or your players, might forget to mention or remember when the time comes to actually play.  Also, with primers, you probably want to hand them out before character generation and preferably even before the first session gathering (which is usually to make character unless you do that at home before your game).  I know that I have been disappointed to come to a game with a character in hand only to find out that in that particular setting, things don’t work like I wish they would.  That can be pretty lame, especially when many hours were spent developing said character.  Sending the primer in an e-mail to your players in advance is a good way to make friends.

Another, very different way of kicking off a campaign set in your homebrew world is the dive-in method.  Instead of giving your players a lot of info about your setting up front, you just have them make their characters, do their own thing, and then throw those characters into your setting.  This method can work pretty well for vanilla settings where there isn’t a lot of extraordinarily odd or out of the ordinary things going on.  In my head, you wouldn’t want to try this method when your players might end up being crushed by the limitations that get thrown at them.  For example, you wouldn’t want one of your players having a Vampire in a world where the sun never goes down.  But, if all your players roll up generic fantasy characters and you are in a generic fantasy setting, they don’t really need to know all about your setting before they get started – in fact, a lot of the fun behind the dive-in method comes through Vanilla settings.  Instead of front-loading the game with lots of history and interesting campaign facts, you let your players explore the world and find out everything about it through play and role-play.  I could see introducing players who are familiar with D&D, but not with its settings, to places like the Forgotten Realms through this method.  FR, and maybe even Eberron, are close enough to the norm that you don’t need to do much, or any, explanation before starting your game (I might give a little info on Eberron, but not too much).

The other method, which tends to be what I do when I run my settings (since I’m really just too lazy to make a primer and my settings are usually kitchen-sink-level-RIFTS-esq.-insanity) is the Elevator Speech combined with a discussion.  Essentially, the Elevator Speech is less than a one minute intro speech in which you tell your players about your setting.  Jot down a bunch of notes and just read them off, telling your players the summed up general version of what you are working on.  If I had to write an Elevator speech for my current setting it would go something like this:

“This world is eastern in flavor, but not based around ancient Japan – think Meji Revolution meets Victorian Steampunk, but that’s not all.  The world is literally falling apart; massive storms ravage the planet while aliens from the void are subverting the powers that have been in control for the last 10,000 years – a point in history which will forever be remember because of the massive comet that destroying the cradle of civilization.  Oh… there are also giant robots, a litany of anthropomorphic bestial races, and a magical, psychic version of the internet.”

That speech would take me less than a minute to get through and would really give my players everything they need to know about the setting.  Use current examples to instantly make a connection and help your players understand exactly what you are trying to accomplish and get across with your setting (which is something I shy away from when writing primers).  The Elevator Speech also needs to give them a lot of interesting hooks to work with when they make their characters.  Like in business, the Elevator speech is all about selling the setting to your players; now, that might not work all the time (some of my setting proposals have been shot down by every group I propose them too… lots of them are just too far out there… ).  But, if your elevator speech is successful (which it probably will be since you have all your players duct taped to chairs around the table right now and nobody want to turn down a crazed DM who wields d20’s in one hand and a red-hot-white-erase-marker in the other) then you can move on to the discussion.  Let your players ask you questions and tell them freely whatever they want to know.  If they ask you something that is a secret, you might not want to give that away here, but then again, you might want to in order for your players to understand the world and make characters that better fit into that world’s theme.  Let them find enough info that they can make their characters interesting and fit in with your setting, but don’t give them so much that they would be overwhelmed.  You’ll probably end up at the discussion phase if you develop a primer as well, which is why I tend to skip the primers and just do an elevator pitch (but, for con games, or one-shots at a game store, the primer might actually be a nice little bit of advertising for your game setting, especially if you can get an artistic buddy of yours to throw some art into it, or if you can throw in a copy of the world map on the back).

Once you get your players immersed on the setting and you start playing.  Use them.  Get their help in developing the setting further through cooperative world building.  There are a lot of greats blog posts about this all over the net, so I won’t go into that here.  I’ll just say that using your players to develop your world is a really good idea and you shouldn’t try to tackle this all on your own (unless your players are too afraid of you to contribute effectively since you still have them duct taped to your dining room set… might want to let them have at least one arm free or they won’t be able to roll the dice).

As always, you can check out my blog – The Dump Stat or e-mail me at thedumpstat@yahoo.com.  I’m also on a bunch of different forums, twitter (@Shinobicow776), and MTG Online, so you will probably find me around the net if you look hard enough.  See you next week.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 4 – Campaign Setting Genre
2. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
3. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion

One of the ways to flesh out and develop your world is to look at it through the eyes of the people living there.  If you are playing your world as you build it, then you can easily develop that world by going into the heads of the PC’s in your game group and try to see what they see.  Get into their heads and imagine how they think about the world and how they would be impacted by whatever themes that are present in your world, but if you don’t have these PC’s to work with, you might have to work a little harder, but this experience can be just as rewarding.

Sunglar had a great post this week about making your NPC’s come alive.  One of the other things though that great NPC’s can do for your game is help actually build your setting.  I like to periodically draw up some random characters and NPC’s and see how they would interact and respond to the various themes I have developing in my current campaign setting.  It has worked pretty well for me.  I don’t get to play my game world as much as I would like, so input on how the world is developing from my players is little to none, but input from my NPC’s just keeps on coming in (yes, me and my NPC’s carry on conversations… they are all such drama queens). 

Seriously though.  Try having a conversation with your NPC’s about the world.  Make up an NPC and flush out a bit of their background.  Try to develop them from their birth and try not to get too setting specific with their backgrounds.  Then… try to imagine how the world would have affected them, try to see how they would affect the world, then try and find where the discrepancies lie.

For example, one of the elements that I am working with now is the Outsider element in my world.  These outsiders, who are essentially Romans from Space (awesome right?) have come to the world trying to understand the various forces at work there.  I have been trying to get into the mind of one of these particular outsiders and see how he would react to things like Magic, and Divinity.  I want to understand how these forces relate to each other in the world and also to where things get really complicated.

Another example that I would give is of an NPC that I made for my current game.  You might recognize him since he placed pretty highly in the Steal This NPC Contest over at The Stuffer Shack.  This NPC, a Goliath Monk/Barbarian came from a tribe of raiders in badlands, but then, as part of a caravan attack, gets captured and finds himself as a captive of a bunch of nasty elves.  Through a course of luck and penance, he ends up working on the Steam Train railways and finally becomes a perfectly civilized individual and a Master of a Train Station.

You can use NPC creation like this to flush out how you want the world to develop.  Making this character, I started in a similar way to how I developed my Outsider.  He was in a secluded enough part of the world that you might be able to think of him as fairly untouched by the setting (start the NPC as vanilla), but then, through various experiences in his life, the setting itself starts to weigh in on the NPC.  You might be able to think about this type of setting building as building around your character.  Take that NPC and build the world up around him.  In this example, I built up the Elf nation because I needed to have an antagonist that would capture him and try to civilize him.  Then, the area around where he works gets flushed out because he needs somewhere to make a living.

After you build up a bit of the world around your NPC, go back and take a look at what you made.  In their mind, would it make sense?  What do they think about their life?  What do they think about current events?  What are their desires?  Do these desires have anything to do with the stuff you want to represent in the world you are building?  These are some pretty easy places to start when you try and get inside your character’s head.  Use those thoughts reflectively as a critique of the setting.  You might be surprised about what your NPC’s tell you.  For example, this NPC told me that I wasn’t bringing in enough of the element which I wanted to feature in this setting – the internet (well, a fantasy version at least) and so, I had to go back and try and figure out where that strange magical internet would most likely have impacted him in his life and how he has to deal with it now.

So, take yourself for a mind trip, build some NPC’s and have a conversation about your setting.  The worst thing that will happen is that people might think you talk with invisible friends, which would be bad, but at least you will have some cool NPC’s for your games when you do finally get a chance to play.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
2. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion
3. World Building Part 4 – Campaign Setting Genre

Without further ado, here are the questions and answers:

Stargazer’s World:
Thanks again for answering a couple of questions for us. Although I think most of our readers already know you and some of your products, but perhaps you could start by telling a bit about yourself. What do you do when you don’t design worlds? How long have you been working in the RPG industry?

Wolfgang Baur:
I spend my RPG time working at a game company on video games. I worked full-time in the RPG industry from 1991 to 1998; since then, I’ve been a freelancer and a publisher.

Stargazer’s World:
What was the first RPG you ever played?

Wolfgang Baur:
The first RPG I ever played was Dungeons & Dragons. I have played a lot of Call of Cthulhu, Alternity, and a bit of Pendragon since then, but mostly I prefer straight-up fantasy.

Stargazer’s World:
Recently you started Midgard as an Open Design patronage project. Can you please explain what’s Open Design and how patronage works?

Wolfgang Baur:
Sure, Open Design is my publishing company, and it publishes Kobold Quarterly magazine plus adventures and sourcebooks. It was founded in 2006 and re-instituted the patronage system, which was popular in earlier times, before the rise of joint stock companies and the like.

Patronage is a way for gamers to participate in designing adventures and supplements, by both funding the work and by critiquing, brainstorming, and improving the design as it goes along. It’s collaborative design, guided by an experienced designer who has the professional chops to keep the project on course. In the case of the Midgard campaign setting, those professionals are me, Jeff Grubb of Dragonlance, Guild Wars, and Forgotten Realms fame, and rising RPG star Brandon Hodge.

Stargazer’s World:
How much influence into the design process do the patrons have?

Wolfgang Baur:
The degree of influence patrons have depends on interest and ability as much as anything.

Patrons who comment, test, and contribute can wind up writing a section of a book, and they are paid and credited as designers for the projects. Others patrons playtest, or throw out ideas for others to develop.

It’s really up to the particular gamer; some lurk and are just happy to see the quality of the resulting books. Others are deeply involved in pitching adventures, monsters, and sections of a book.

Stargazer’s World:
Using the patron model forces you to write the material for the system voted for by the patrons. What system do you prefer to use when you GM or play in a game, since this was your home setting to begin with?

Wolfgang Baur:
I have run the Midgard campaign setting using 3E D&D, 4E D&D, Pathfinder RPG, and Dragon Age RPG. They all have their advantages, frankly, and I’m not a believer in the One True System for RPGs. I’ve probably run Midgard for 4E more often than other systems, but that’s likely to change.

The question sort of misses the point of a multi-system setting, though. The Midgard campaign setting focuses on player action and changing the world, with options for conflict and adventure in any system. So far, mechanics have been secondary to world development. I’m pleased that the setting doesn’t require a particular rule set, though of course the play experience is slightly different with each system.

Or put another way, I’ve run Forgotten Realms in 4 editions. I’m sure Midgard will work in just as many.

Stargazer’s World:
Can you give us a short introduction into the world of Midgard? What sets Midgard apart from other fantasy settings? What players will it appeal to?

Wolfgang Baur:
It’s built on Germanic and Slavic foundations, rather than the usual pseudo-Celtic and British mythology, so it’s perhaps a little darker than some.

Midgard’s pseudo-medieval societies are definitely warped by magic and non-human races—it will appeal to anyone who thinks that a Sultan of the Dragon Empire is a fine villain,  anyone who wants to sail with the minotaur corsairs or fight against gnomes who serve the Dukes of Hell. Baba Yaga plots and schemes, vampiric princes rule sections of the world, and steppe centaurs serve tsars and slaver despots. It’s a nasty place, a lot of the time, with large stretches of wilderness, forests where no one rules, land no one claims.

At the same time, players who enjoy history will see echoes of that: a ruling house with a lot of scattered holdings, an electoral kingdom of hussars and nobles, an oracle who has grown enormously wealthy. But these elements are all done with a twist, just as Planescape was done with a twist: Midgard sea-reavers are dwarves, Midgard’s tsars are pawns of greater evils, Midgard’s rivers really are haunted by the lorelei. Players have a ton of places to explore and treasures to recover.

Midgard appeals to traditional fantasy gamers who don’t want another kitchen sink campaign, and who enjoy a little more depth in their setting. The design goal is to focus on what players do in the here and now, not long-winded backstory!

Stargazer’s World:
What role will each of the three designers fill during the design phases of Midgard?

Wolfgang Baur:
The project is divided by regions. Jeff Grubb will be leading on one of the 7 regions, Brandon one or two more, I’ll take two—and the remainder are for patrons to design together with a lead designer, if they so choose. Which region will we do first? That’s up to the patrons!

The choices include the Dragon Empire, the Domains of the Princes, a wilderness region with Mythos influences, the Zobeck Crossroads, the Steppes, Trollheim, and the warring states of the Seven Cities region.

Some of those are almost entirely blank slates for patrons and designers to create. Others (like Zobeck) have a lot of lore and prior adventure for us to streamline into a campaign setting summary.

Stargazer’s World:
How do you plan on incorporating, or not incorporting, material like Courts of the Shadowfey, Sunken Empires, etc. into the lore and presentation of the world of Midgard in the campaign setting itself?

Wolfgang Baur:
Courts and Sunken Empires and the other adventures and supplements are all part of the setting. I’d go so far as to say they’re the reason I’m doing the setting; gamers have asked for the setting to be knit together from the many hints and setting elements found in the books so far.

Stargazer’s World:
Midgard is your largest Open Design Project so far. Will you be working on smaller projects until its release, too, or will you focus exclusively on Midgard?

Wolfgang Baur:
I won’t be working on anything but this. Other experienced designers are working on other Open Design projects, and some of those will ship in spring and summer of this year: Logan Bonner’s Lost City for 4th Edition D&D, Ben McFarland’s Streets of Zobeck noir adventures for Pathfinder RPG, and the Northlands sourcebook by Dan Voyce, to name just three.

Stargazer’s World:
Do you plan to support Midgard with adventures, regional sourcebooks, etc. after its release?

Wolfgang Baur:
Absolutely! The patrons have already made two suggestions that seem like good expansions of the core setting: an intro adventure and an adventure collection are a certainty. The first of those may be announced this summer. We’ll also release the first completed region of Midgard this summer!

Stargazer’s World:
Thanks again for taking your time for this interview. The team of Stargazer’s World wish you good luck with Midgard and all your other projects! And please send our best wishes to Jeff and Brandon!

By the way, if you got interested in becoming a patron of the Midgard Campaign Setting, check out this Kobold Quarterly store page for details.

Related posts:

1. The Kobolds launched a new patronage project: Dark Roads and Golden Hells
2. Midgard
3. Interview with Wolfgang Baur

OK, so, if you are reading this, you have undoubtedly heard this advice before.  You probably read in one of the D&D DMG’s that you should feel free to loot monsters, adventures, etc. for ideas and use them in your own way.  Great.  Lots of people give that advice.  It is good advice.  But what a lot of people don’t do is tell you how and where to steal effectively.  Let’s talk about being an effective idea thief.

RPG books are a great place to start with.  Don’t limit yourself to a single system or setting when you try and do this.  There is great stuff out there, you just have to find it.  It might not be the game system you are running.  It might not even be a game system you have ever heard of, but if something about that item, in an review, or even just a skim through piques your interest, it might be something worth picking up as inspiration text.

I recently picked up some 40K novels and the Rogue Trader Core rule book.  I will probably end up reviewing the book, but I don’t honestly know if I will ever get a chance to run that as a game.  I bought it because I like the idea of the 40K universe and I would love to incorporate some of those ideas in my game.  Chances are, if you have been a gamer for a long time, you have a whole collection of roleplaying books sitting on your shelf, just waiting to be pillaged.  Go back.  Read them again.

Once you get done doing that, go through all the other sorts of media.  Books, movies, video games.  Chances are, something there might be useful to you in some way.  I sometimes even steal stuff from CD album covers.  Those masked dudes from Slipknot might make for some very interesting villains…

Now, you might not have many of these anymore, but a great place to steal stuff from is your old textbooks.  I have, on more than one occasion, stole stuff from my various high school and university texts and used those elements in my game.  What is really great is that this information is almost already sorted out for you.  Want to know something about government?  Done.  Want to know something about economics? Done.  Want to know something about world cultures?  Check out your Geography text book.  Done.  History texts are the easiest.  Sociology texts also are.  Math textbooks give great advice on how to make puzzles.  Change some of the names for things in a basic math text and you have yourself a puzzle for the night.  Computer Science might be harder to use… but there are always Cyberpunk games for that as well.

Once you get finished looting all the accessible stuff that you can come by, the next easiest source of information is through blogs and forums.  I use a feed reader, to import all recent news form the RPG Bloggers Network into my iGoogle account.  I check that every morning.  I think a lot of people don’t read campaign specific or fluff related stuff.  I do.  I love those posts and tend to bookmark them, and throw that bookmark into a folder called “Setting Inspiration;” that way, I can come back to those posts whenever I want.  Forums are also great.  I usually bookmark good threads about fluff, backgrounds, places, gods, or whatever, and keep those in the same bookmark folder.  Also, forums can be really nice because you can actually message posters to find out what they were thinking about when they came up with a certain idea – there is a great amount of flexibility and connectivity there which is hard to come by elsewhere.

Another great place, where you might want to steal stuff from is from other people’s campaigns.  I know, dirty right.  I use Obsidian Portal to manage my campaign settings online.  I regularly travel around those forums checking out people’s campaign and look for things that they have done, which I think I might want to do similarly.  I don’t usually look for mechanical stuff, but fluff and descriptions are always nice.

Another great thing to steal is advice.  If you are reading this post, you are already doing that.  Take people’s advice.  They are giving it to you.  You can get great advice on world building all over the web, especially through podcasts and blogs.  I listen to a whole bunch of gaming podcasts now and I will usually take stuff from those podcasts for my game.  Check out RPG Circus, or the Tome show, or the Power Source.  Even going back to old podcasts which don’t run anymore is a good idea.  I think I have found a couple of those and they turned out to be a great place to get game inspiration.

Also, the last thing that you definitely want to steal is the input and knowledge of your players and friends.  They will point you to interesting directions that you never thought you would go.  It might not even be related to gaming; someone might mention a book or a movie to you that you had never heard of.  Go watch it.  They are recommending it to you because they think you might like it.  If they think that, chances are you might actually like it.  There might be something there that you never thought you would ever think about in the context of a campaign setting or game world.  I was watching House the other day and I think a few ideas from that show developed into nuggets that will make it into my game world at some point.

The thing with piracy though is you want to be careful.  Don’t actually steal anything physical.  Don’t break laws.  But also don’t get caught stealing ideas blatantly that your players are going to think is clichéd and dumb.  It is true, there is nothing new under the sun.  What you need to do is take what is out there and twist it just enough that people don’t recognize where you got it from.  Remember that skill.  You learned it in 10^th grade when you had to write a report you knew nothing about.  That was a bad thing to do.  This is a good one.  Good luck.  Happy Hunting.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
2. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion
3. World Building Part 2 – First Things First

Sandbox campaigns are quite popular when running old-school games and in my opinion they are a good fit for a Star Trek game. Although the Captain of the USS Daedalus will have been given a mission by Starfleet Command, he or she is pretty much acting on their own for the most part. Subspace communication does not always work that great, so space ship captains have to make decisions without getting specific orders from Starfleet. And I thought it would be best to provide my players with the same freedom.

Although exploration should be one of the themes of the campaign, I think the players should have a basic idea of what kind of systems they will encounter on their travels. That’s why I probably start by creating a map of the sector of space the USS Daedalus will operate in. Of course it will not be 100% accurate and there might be enough room of improvisation if needed. Perhaps the map the players will be provided with is an old Vulcan star chart. Since they never bothered to closely examine every single system, there’s still a lot to explore.

Whenever the players are unsure what to do next, I can easily throw in a premade mission. But the rest of the time I’ll try not to railroad the players in any way. The space sector they are exploring should be like a living and breathing world (or rather worlds) where events happen even when the players are not looking.

That said I have never actually run a real sandbox game before. So while the idea of a “sandbox in space” sounds like a fun thing to do, it may utterly fail when I try to run it. If you have any tips on running a sandbox game in the SF genre, feel free to post your advice below.

Related posts:

1. Sandbox games: A collection of links
2. Pirates are playing in the sandbox
3. Ask The Readers:Dark Space

Just so that we are on the same page, micro world building refers to starting small, and working up.  You start with some city, or dungeon, go from there.  Macro world building refers to the idea of starting with the big general concepts that make up your world.  You start with how the world was created, large scale maps, and big over-riding concepts that you want to dominate your world.

Now that we are all fresh on these terms, I want to advise going against both of these tips and actually combine both of these techniques into a happy middle ground.  My experience with world building has been that both of these methods can result in some unhappy results if you aren’t careful.

One of the big problems that a lot of world builders face is the issue of what I like to call genesis block.  There comes a point where you just get stalled in the process of building your campaign setting.  If you are aiming to get your campaign setting written, that can be devastating.  However, one of the best ways to avoid this form of writer’s block is to jump around and keep your creation process varied and open.

In my very recent experience with building my campaign world, I started with some very macro concepts, but quickly hit a giant brick wall when it came to dealing with some world-spanning issues; primarily these issues dealt with where technological power comes from in my Steampunk/Cyberpunk inspired setting.  But, instead of staying focused on those macro issues and how I was going to resolve and make sense of them, I switched to the more micro side of things, developing equipment, spells, new rules, and a small city.  After a while, these micro elements in my setting ended up providing me with some interesting revelations about how I wanted to continue with the macro issues that had blocked me before.

You might expect that this method wouldn’t work very well if you are actively playing an actual campaign in your growing sandbox.  I would actually argue that this method works the best when you are playing in your world as you make it, as long as your players are a bit open to editing.  I had to deal with this quite a bit in my adventure that took place earlier this year.  I met with my players and broke the news that the upcoming campaign would be taking place in my developing campaign world.  The players all agreed that the game sounded fun and character generation went from there, but it quickly came to my attention that as I developed the world and changed some of the macro things about it, players were going to need to shift their character backgrounds in order to adjust.  Make sure your players are OK with that kind of editing.  I ended up using player feedback and advice for changing the world, so some of this editing turned out to be very productive, but some of the changes that came from me were not so well accepted.

As an example of this, I preface my campaign setting by having a dwarf empire long in ruins and the gods declaring war on the plane itself.  One of my players, wielding a deva cleric, knew what she was getting into at the beginning, but as we played, the god war element began to tone down considerably in order to accommodate her character better (being the object of total hostility in the world can be a bit challenging for a new player… reminds me of a certain dark elf of note).  However, the dwarf player in my campaign was constantly getting hammered as I slowly gave him more information about how his background was changing given my recent campaign setting updates.

While this is going on, I should mention, I was constantly building new gear for my players, and developing very tiny chunks of the world for them to explore.  Building this way with your players can work, even when you are playing, just be sure that you don’t step on anybody’s hard written backgrounds without their permission.  But, building at the micro level for the players and then using their input in order to flesh out more of the macro level world themes can be very educating as you quickly learn what works and what doesn’t.  The dwarf player in the example above actually ended up helping a lot with the campaign setting after we came to an agreement regarding boundaries and creative opinions.

So, don’t worry about where you are going to start building your world.  Start micro, start macro, it doesn’t matter.  It takes a lot of time and effort to build a campaign setting, so don’t forget to jump back and forth between these two methods in order to really understand your own mindset and where you want that world should realistically go.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
2. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion
3. World Building Part 4 – Campaign Setting Genre

In the last post in this series, we talked about the importance of deciding the tone you want for your world. While world tone is the first thing you want to think about, genre definitely comes in a close second; it is extremely important to understand your genre or genres before you go full steam ahead.

There are many genres that you can choose from when you start building a campaign setting. It really comes down to YOUR personal preference when you choose the genre for your setting. A lot of people advise you to work with your players when building a setting for your game, but in all honesty, there are some things that you should decide for yourself and world genre is definitely one of those things. In the end, the setting is going to be your baby, you may have people help you raise that baby, but you are going to be the one taking care of it on a daily basis, so making sure that baby has the right footing is up to you.

I don’t want to go into a discussion of all the possible genres that are out there in this post because frankly, there are simply too many out there to properly define. Genre is a really big, and also very vague term. For our purposes here, we are referring to the category of game that your setting fits into, whether that be steampunk, high fantasy, or science fiction. There are other ways to look at genre, especially when you talk about video game genre, or musical genre, but that is an entirely different type of discussion.

In all likelihood the genre of game that you are most used to playing, or currently have players for, will become the deciding factor in the genre of the world you want to build. However, maybe that isn’t the case. I actually suggest you let the game genre you want to play in dictate the choice of game system that you want to play. It may very well be that you want to build a Cyber Punk Style world, in which case, you may not want to use 4e D&D for your game. There are lots of game systems out there; don’t let yourself be tied down completely to a single game system. Look around. Chances are, you may even have a couple of these games around.

At the onset, my current world building project was geared for 4e D&D, but lately, I have been thinking about changing the system that I am using for my setting. Basically, to summarize my humble opinion about all of this, I value setting over system. Pick a genre you want to write in and build in and then figure out the game system when you start worrying about mechanics… that is a long time down the road.

That is all for this week. As always, you can see where I lay my coat at http://thedumpstat.blogspot.com. You can also contact me at thedumpstat(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 8 – Kicking Off Your Homebrew Setting Campaign
2. World Building Part 3 – Getting Started with World Tone
3. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion

Maybe, you have already started working on your world, but maybe you haven’t. Let’s assume for a second that you haven’t really given too much thought yet to what your world’s content is going to be about. You just know that you want to make something, something to call your own. Ok. So, where do you start?

In my opinion, one of the first things that you need to think about when you start building your world is the Tone. A lot of RPG gamers often equate Tone to Genre, but I really think that Tone is something more, though the world’s Genre may of course be an important component in directing how your world’s tone is conveyed to the players and the people reading about your world. Tone refers to the overall feel of the world that you are building. Think about adjectives – scary, funny, dark, light, horrific, enlightened, etc.; adjectives, the simple ones, are a good place to start when thinking about the tone of the game world that you want to build. Genre, is a big part of the world’s tone. Many Genres carry a very specific Tone with them; for example, you would imagine that a horror game would have a scary, or unsettling, tone which is common across the world.

In all honesty, before you think about Genre, the Tone of the world should be the first thing that you think about. Do you want your world to be extremely dark and serious or do you want it to be more of a light and humorous setting? There are numerous ways that you can take the tone of your setting. And, you don’t necessarily have to narrow the tone to a single category.

When determining the Tone you want your setting to take, there is an important question that you need to ask yourself. What is the Tone of game that I enjoy playing? In all honesty, your setting is going to be yours alone; in fact, you and your players may be the only ones who ever look at it. You are going to want to select a Tone for your world that you not only like, but also understand. If you are planning to write a big, huge sandbox world, it is going to take a lot of time, and if you start to dislike the tone of your game world half way through, it may be very difficult to change (though, it may not depending on the tone of game you select). It is better to select a tone that you understand and enjoy rather than pick a tone for your world that you are interested in, but don’t really know how to right.

For example, I have always wanted to play a horror based kind of game. I had, at one point, toyed around with trying to build a horror world, but that project ended very quickly when I realized that I knew almost nothing about writing in a horror style setting. Maintaining that kind of Tone for the world would be nearly impossible for me. Currently, the game setting that I am currently working on has a much different atmosphere. I am working on something that is a bit more whimsical, that is much more towards the Super Fantasy end of the Fantasy spectrum, than typical fantasy worlds. The tone, or spirit, of this world is something that I am much more familiar with, thus, writing about it comes a lot easier and is much more enjoyable.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the Tone of your world if you want to try something new, just be prepared that you may get tired of it more quickly than if you had selected a tone that you are more adjusted to. Next time, we will talk about world Genres and understanding the Genre of your world. Again, if you want to see my current world in progress, you can check it out at http://thedumpstat.blogspot.com. If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to comment here, or e-mail me at thedumpstat[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Related posts:

1. World Building Part 4 – Campaign Setting Genre
2. World Building Part 5 – Macro meets Micro
3. World Building Part 9 – The Don Draper School of World Immersion