Stargazer's World

Over The Edge RPG rules now available under the OGL

Stargazer — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:17:35 +0000

When I heard about Atlas Games releasing the rules under the OGL I was mildly interested. I have never read nor played Over The Edge and I didn’t even have a clue what the game was about. The name ringed a bell, but that was about it.

But a lot of people were excited about the news. So I checked the rules out and was surprised to read a game system that is about 20 years old but feels like something released only recently. The rules system, which is now available as the Wanton Role-Playing (WaRP) System, reminded me a lot of other indie systems I have read recently.

If you haven’t done so, you should check it out at once. Yes, it’s that good!

New Fire Interview

Stargazer — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago I first heard about New Fire, a pen & paper RPG project on Kickstarter. That in itself is nothing special, because raising money on Kickstarter to fund your RPG has become quite common lately. What sets New Fire apart is its unique setting.

Jason Carminsky has created a fantasy RPG inspired by the history and mythology of the great Mesoamerican civilizations. The game is actually done and will be about 300 pages long. But one vital component is still missing: artwork. The goal of the Kickstarter projectis to raise enough money for artwork for New Fire. Luckily the goal of $3000 has been reached already and now the stretch goal is set at $6000 which are needed to commission color artwork.

I asked Jason if he was interested in answering a couple of questions for us and he was more than happy to do so.

Stargazer: Thanks again for taking your time time answer a few questions for us, Jason. Before we focus on New Fire can you tell us a bit about yourself? How did you get introduced to roleplaying games and what was the first game you have played?

Jason: The first RPG I ever played was Dragonstrike, an old stripped down version of Dungeons & Dragons designed for kids, skeptics, and the mathematically challenged. My best friend’s father ran it for a group of us kids back in the roaring ’90s. I can still remember the adventure: our party was supposed to escort an armored wagon carrying the evil sorcerer Teraptus through what was apparently a very rough part of town, seeing as how there were goblins and wolves prowling the streets and attacking us every other moment. Our goal was to bring Teraptus to the prison on the other side of the board within a certain amount of time, or else a red dragon would show up and kill us all.

We only vaguely knew what we were doing, however, so as soon as the first group of goblins attacked, one of the other players cast a web spell, which got everywhere and glued us all to the street. While we were struggling to get loose, the goblins killed the driver and crashed the wagon into a building. Teraptus got out and we spent the rest of the session trying to avoid him.

It wasn’t really until college that I started playing “seriously.” I fell in with a group that played DnD 3rd Edition in the dorms, and something about it just really resonated with me. It reminded me of playing as a kid, taking toys and sticks and whatnot and narrating my own stories, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. I’ve been playing continuously ever since.

Stargazer: Usually fantasy games are focused on settings inspired by medieval Europe or Asia. How did you come up with the idea of a setting based on Mesoamerican myths and history?

Jason: Honestly, I was just plain sick of fantasy Europe! I had been playing Europe-inspired fantasy for 6 or 7 years, and I was sick of swords and axes and wizards and clerics and undead and dragons. I was sick of thinly-veiled Judeo-Christian morality. I was sick of mounted vs unmounted combat mechanics, and of trying to come up with ways to represent leather, chainmail, and platemail armor. These things felt really stale to me, and I couldn’t find anything new to do or say with them.

However, around this time I began playing the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, which to this day is still my favorite RPG. I was very impressed by the interaction between history, myth, and fantasy in that game. It was inspired and well-researched, yet also highly original and personal. I was also amazed by its focus. Rather than haphazardly mixing a whole bunch of unrelated cultures and mythologies, L5R delved deeply into a relatively narrow group of cultures and considered them on their own terms, both mechanically and thematically.

That was really interesting to me. Every other game I had played had been designed such that Europe was the “norm.” Lots of games have included samurai classes and ‘foreign’ martial arts, and ‘exotic lands to the east.’ But these things are almost always compared to a European standard, and defined by how they differ from it.

L5R had its own self-defined normality. The setting and mechanics were designed around a completely different worldview, where concepts like samurai, bushido, and seppuku were not ‘weird’ or ‘exotic,’ but rather were accepted parts of the world, with a well-defined place in society and internally consistent meaning. The concepts were new to me, and that is why I found them so fascinating. But what was truly compelling was that they were not presented as being “new.” They were presented as normal. This challenged me, the Player, to adapt to the new normality, rather than simply catering to my existing biases and prejudices.

To make a long story short (too late!), I began to realize just how much we were all missing out on by focusing so exclusively on Europe-inspired fantasy. We were literally cutting ourselves off from not just a lot, but the vast majority of stories and storytelling traditions on Earth! That is the tricky thing about prejudice: it is so often completely unconscious. I wasn’t deliberately shutting out these other possibilities–they simply hadn’t ever occurred to me.

So one day, I decided to make a fantasy game inspired by Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. I was browsing through images on Google, and came across some panels of the Aztec codices. I thought they were beautiful, and I was curious about what they meant. There’s really not much more to it than that. I was in a receptive frame of mind, I wanted to learn something new, to change and adapt, and I wanted to express it in game form. It was almost like boarding a plane to a random destination. In choosing Mesoamerica, I am tremendously happy with where I ended up!

Stargazer: How much research went into the creation of the setting? I understand that the setting is basically fantasy, but could it be used to learn more about ancient Mesoamerican cultures or at least get more people interested in them?

I have done a lot of research. I started about 2½ to 3 years ago, and am still learning new things to this day. I have read, watched, and listened to everything I could find about Mesoamerica. I have attended lectures by Professors and people of indigenous Mesoamerican descent, read stories and poetry, listened to music, worked in an archaeology lab, practiced flint knapping, and learned how to use an atlatl. I have tried my absolute best to educate myself, and to let the things I learned guide my imagination and inspire my ideas.

BUT

That does not make me any kind of authority on Mesoamerica, nor does it make New Fire a reliable source of real world information. I have done more research than many game designers end up doing on their games, but at most I have 2-3 years of study under my belt–not even enough for a Bachelor’s Degree.

Would you trust a person who has lived in your country for 3 years to speak with authority about your country? Probably not. How about somebody who has only researched your country for 3 years? Or how about somebody who has only researched the continent your country happens to be located on?

The only thing I truly know is that I have a lot more to learn.

I am extremely interested in Mesoamerica. I have found a lot of inspiration and wisdom researching it for New Fire, and I can honestly say that it has touched me and will influence the course of my life. But Mesoamerica has not been touched by me. I am not part of it. I was not born there and I have not lived there. I am an outsider, and you should not take anything you read in the New Fire book as fact.

New Fire is my interpretation of the information I have collected over these three years. It is a game about what I found, not a complete listing of what is there. I tried my best to do a good job, and I definitely hope my work inspires people to learn about and appreciate Mesoamerica. But New Fire is a fantasy game, not a teaching tool! It may awaken your interest, but it will not give you facts.

Stargazer: Can you give us an overview of the rules the game is using?

Jason: New Fire uses a unique set of rules I developed called the Sunstone system. Unlike many rulesets, there are almost no mandated rolls with Sunstone - so long as everybody is happy with how things are going, play progresses organically through roleplay and simple narration. You only need dice when there is a difference of opinion about where the story should go, when you have two or more people who want to narrate different outcomes to a situation. This is called a Challenge.

The basic idea is that, when someone’s narrative is challenged, they roll a pool of dice against a Target Number (TN). The results of these rolls are added together and compared to the TN The fewer dice it takes you to equal or exceed the TN, the greater your narrative control. If you hit the TN on a single die, you get complete narrative control – you can narrate anything you want, so long as everyone else in the group agrees that your narration is plausible and interesting (I refer to this as the ‘is it cool?’ test).

If it takes you 2 dice to hit the TN, you get narrative control but the challenger gets to specify a Condition that you must incorporate into your narration – for example, if you are attacking an enemy and the challenger sets the Condition ‘you cannot kill him,’ you must narrate a plausible outcome that does not result in the enemy being killed. Otherwise, it’s up to you – the enemy might be injured, or scared away, or even convinced to join your side, so long as he is not killed and so long as everybody agrees that it is plausible and interesting.

If it takes you 3 dice to hit the TN, the challenger gets to narrate, but you may specify a Condition. And if you cannot hit the TN even on 3 dice, the challenger gets complete narrative control.

Regardless of narrative control, however, you may not narrate the death of someone else’s character, nor can they narrate the death of your character. Only you can decide how and when your character dies.

The dice system works slightly differently in different situations (multiple challengers vs single challengers, for instance), and there are several other mechanics as well–Themes, Omens, Profession-specific Powers, Magic, etc – but this narrative dice mechanic is the foundation of New Fire’s rules, and probably covers 70% or more of the game.

Stargazer: On the Kickstarter page I read that in New Fire avoiding death is not the character’s ultimately goal, but dying in a meaningful and glorious way is. How exactly is this working in the game? What happens when one player’s character achieved their goal, but the other character’s haven’t?

Jason: One of the big ideas in New Fire is that the game world is sustained by death. In order for new life to grow, old life must die. This is where the practice of human sacrifice comes from – in order to keep the Sun rising, the rain falling, and the winds blowing, humans must die and release their life energy to the gods. If people stop offering these sacrifices, the cycles of nature will stop and the world will end.

This idea is reflected mechanically by something called the Bleeding Sun. At the beginning of a New Fire game Cycle, the Gamemaster will roll up a number of points of Day Energy. This total is kept secret from the players, but each session a number of these points will drain away. The Players may capture these points by fulfilling certain character goals and use them to improve their characters, but regardless, the Day Energy bleeds away each session. Eventually, there will be none left.

At this point, the Players must either sacrifice an NPC, or one of them must narrate the death of their character in order to restore the pool of Day Energy. Once this happens, the Game Cycle ends, and a new one begins. The Player whose character died creates a new character, and as a reward gets to choose the first Omen of the next Game Cycle (Omens are story guides for the Gamemaster — another mechanic that I probably don’t have time to get into here!).

Essentially, the story is driven by character deaths, which is kind of the opposite of most rpgs, where character deaths often completely end the story! Characters do not come to the world to stay — they are merely passing through. The important part is what they do while they are there, and how they choose to leave. And because only the Player can narrate the death of his or her character, it encourages/requires them to consider what their character’s life (and by extension their own life) really means.

In many ways, the story IS the world. Each group will tell its own stories and interpret the written world in its own way, much like multiple families living in the same house–though it is the same building, each family’s home and home life will be very different, filled with different experiences, different furniture, and different triumphs and tragedies. The story/world in New Fire is created by the group and kept alive by their efforts. They all contribute to it, and they all work to sustain it.

And when the Players are no longer interested in sacrificing their characters to keep the story going, it, and the world, end.

Stargazer: What do you plan for the future of New Fire? Do you have already a couple of supplements, adventures etc. planned?

Jason: I am pretty focused on this first release at the moment, and it is keeping me plenty busy! But assuming it goes well, I definitely have many more ideas for New Fire. One idea that has been getting a lot of attention so far is a supplement called Journey of the Dead, which will contain rules for games that take place not in the main New Fire world, but in the Underworld.

When a person dies in New Fire, they embark on a long, difficult journey through the dark and frightening Land of the Fleshless beneath the Earth. This journey is full of dramatic struggle and complex symbolism — in many ways the dead are experiencing the reverse of birth, traveling back into the Earth-womb and becoming un-made. Normal New Fire focuses on the land of the living, but Journey of the Dead would contain rules for how to follow the characters beyond that.

I haven’t yet decided whether Journey of the Dead will take place entirely in the Underworld, or if it will include rules for “split parties,” where some characters are living and some are dead, but I think there are a lot of interesting possibilities with this, and am excited to get to work on it!

I discuss a few other ideas on the New Fire Kickstarter page, and encourage people to check them out and let me know what they think! But I don’t want to get too ahead of myself before this first book is released, so why don’t we leave it at that for now!

Stargazer: Thanks again for giving us this interesting insight into your upcoming game New Fire!

If you want to learn more about New Fire, feel free to post your questions below. I’m sure Jason would be more than happy to answer them for you. And if you want to get more details on the Kickstarter project check out the project site here.

Please note that the artwork illustrating this post has been created for the New Fire RPG and was used with Jason’s permission.

Blood of Morpheus

Stargazer — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:34:18 +0000

My good friend and former contributor to this blog, Michael Garcia of Occult Moon, has some serious medical issues and at this moment the medical bills are becoming a real problem.

In order to help to pay for medical expenses he created a small supplement for d20 or OSR games that give you rules for opiates use an abuse and several dreamscapes to throw at your players.

The PDF for “Blood of Morpheus” is just $3 and every purchase helps him pay the bills. If you’re more generous you can also donate a few buck using ChipIn. Thanks.

For more details check out the official “Blood of Morpheus” site!

“Getting Ready For College” Sale at Reality Blurs

Stargazer — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:25:36 +0000

The daughter of my good friend Sean Preston of Reality Blurs is graduating from high school next week. To celebrate the event and raise some funds to help pay for college after summer, Sean came up with a great sale.

The deal is the following: You buy ANY print book from the Reality Blurs shop and you can get a physical copy of Runepunk for just $5 more. If that isn’t a great deal I don’t know what is. And remember it’s for a good cause!

RPC Germany 2012

Stargazer — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:28:24 +0000

Yesterday I attended the Role Play Convention 2012 in Cologne. I actually didn’t intend to go there at all but then I had the opportunity to join Marcus Burggraf (aka ChaoticGM) and his friend Thomas, which made the whole trip much more enjoyable than going there alone.

The RPC is not a convention exclusive for pen & paper RPGs but also for other facets of the hobby including LARP and computer games. Although I am an avid computer gamer I was not really interested in what that part of the convention. And in addition to that I felt that the section of the fair hall was way too loud anyway.

It was my impression that the number of attending pen & paper roleplaying game publishers and vendors was a bit higher than at SPIEL in Essen. Alas aside from from a few exceptions (Q-Workshop, Chessex and Profantasy Software) I didn’t notice any major non-German exhibitors, so even though RPC is supposedly the largest gaming convention in Europe, it feels terribly local.

There were also a couple of workshops you could attend at RPC, but alas the rooms set aside for that purpose are in the fair halls themselves and even with microphone and loudspeakers it was sometimes hard to understand what people were saying. The organizers of the convention obviously don’t think this is an important part of a convention that size.

Several exhibitors offered the opportunity to try their games and we took the chance to play Dust Tactics. That is Marcus and Thomas played while I watched and munched my cheese and cucumber sandwiches. I was terribly tempted to pick up a copy of that game, but alas I didn’t have enough money with me and I don’t know enough people who would play it with me anyway.

From what I’ve written so far you might have gotten the impression I didn’t enjoy myself. But that’s definitely not true. I had some great conversations with a couple of people from the German RPG scene including Patric Götz (Uhrwerk Verlag), Robert Hamberger (the author of the new RPG Contact), Rouven Weinbach (who is an old friend now writing for 13Mann) and others. At the end of the day I actually almost lost my voice and even today my throat feels as if I have gargled with razors. Yikes!

I picked up two games at RPC this year: Contact, a UFO conspiracy RPG with a lot of tactical combat options that was obviously inspired by the XCOM computer games series, and Aborea a RPG actually meant for beginners that comes in a nice cardboard box including the biggest and most good-looking map I’ve seen included in an RPG for a long time.

Both games are in German language, but at least in the case of Contact the English version is already done and the author is currently looking for a publisher. As soon as I have read both games I’ll post short reviews here on the blog.

Ask The Readers: Fancy dice? Yay or nay?

Stargazer — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:20:04 +0000

A lot of players shy away from certain games because they use “fancy” dice like Fudge dice, non-standard polyhedral dice, dice with funny symbols instead of regular numbers or something like that.

In a way, I can understand that. Usually roleplaying game players just need a set of the most common polyhedral dice and they can play almost everything. It’s like a basic tool you can use all your life. But then there are these games that need you to buy these fancy dice, or even worse, only one set came with the game itself and you have to share these dice with your GM and the other players! Yuck! Nobody touches my dice!

Roleplaying games that use fancy dice exclusively or even utilize cards for task resolution are usually hard to sell to the average gamer. Or is this just a common misconception? That’s why I am asking my readers today: do you like fancy dice or do you hate them? And why?

I am curious because I have pondered using fancy dice for my own game designs from time to time. I totally love Fudge dice and recently I picked up a set of dice with six-sided dice numbered from 0 to 5 as seen in the image above. Rolling 4 of those and adding the results together generates a number between 0 and 20 in a nice bell curve. My friend Andrew called them z5 (analogous to d6). The results are basically the same as if you rolled 4d6 and subtracted 4, but rolling 4z5 is just easier and nicer.

So, what do you think about fancy dice? Yay or nay? Please post your comments below.

Review: Doctor Who – Aliens and Creatures

Stargazer — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Back in January I wrote a review of the excellent Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game. Today I am having a look at the Aliens and Creatures supplement. Like DWAITAS Aliens & Creatures is a boxed set containing not only a 134-paged full-color softcover rulebook containing many of the creatures and aliens featured in the Doctor Who series, but also two complete new adventures, new gadget cards, additional Story Point counters and a whole lot of Creature Cards.

What I like a lot about Cubicle 7’s DWAITAS boxed sets is that they always contain a lot of stuff. And this is especially true for the Aliens and Creatures box.

I totally love the Creature Cards which make about 50% of the box’s weight. Each Creature Card has a photo of the creature on its front and the game statistics on the back. This way the GM can easily show the players’ what they are facing and this can be very handy especially with new players who are not that familiar with the show.

The box contains almost every creature and alien encountered by the 9th and 10th incarnation of the Doctor and all of them are described in detail in the rulebook. It’s nice that they managed to include that many creatures in the box, but in several cases I fear that the actual usability is quite limited. But since we are dealing with Doctor Who and time travel, everything is possible. There’s a special emphasis on the Daleks and the Cybermen, but this is hardly surprising, because they can be considered as the Doctor’s most (in)famous enemies.

The rulebook also contains some rules that should help any GM to create their own creatures. Although rules is probably the wrong terms, they are more tips and loose guidelines than hard rules. This chapter of the book also contains rules on how to create alien player characters. The included race packages are Hath, Catkind, Human Dalek, Judoon, Forest of Cheem, Malmooth, Ood, Tritovore, Plasmavore, Sontaran and Werewolf. Using the guidelines described in the book the GM can easily come up with alien races of his own design.

The appendix of the rulebook contains the “New Worlds Generator” which consists of a couple tables that allow the GM to randomly generate new worlds for their campaign. The generator is of course not as detailed as the one from Traveller or GURPS Space but should be more than sufficient for a Doctor Who game. Last but not least three example worlds including appropriate adventure hooks are given at the end of the rulebook.

The adventure book contains two new ready-to-play adventures and a couple of new adventure hooks. Together with the adventures from the “core” boxed set you should easily have enough adventures to entertain your players for quite some while.

In my opinion the Aliens and Creatures boxed set is a “must-have” for everyone who already owns the core boxed set, because a) you can never have enough monsters and b) especially the included Creature Cards are extremely useful.

Aside from the boxed set, which is available directly from the Cubicle 7 store as box+PDF bundle for $39.99, you can get the PDF-only version from DriveThruRPG for $24.99. This review was based on the boxed set which has been kindly provided by the publisher.

How your past influences your craft

Vince Kingston — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:24:00 +0000

Greetings everyone!

Many of you probably don’t know me. So first off, I guess some introductions are in order. My name is Vince Kingston, and I’ve been hanging on the fringes here at Stargazer’s for a while now. Michael and I have been chatting quite a lot over the last little while, and I decided I wanted to try my hand at these so called guest posts.

I’m a gamer of some number of years (I’ll just say it’s been since elementary school, and leave it at that). I’m a husband to a wonderful Danish lady, and live in Denmark with her. I’m a father to a wonderful little (or not so little) soon to be 12 year old who lives back in Canada. I am Canadian (though I hope none of you will hold that against me).

I’m an author with his first published work finally out in the world. I work as an accountant by day for a European company, dealing with the accounting for five branches.

And I was bullied as a child.

When I first approached Michael about doing a post here, I was originally going to do a piece about my perceptions about the differences between gaming here in Denmark and back home in Canada (I may still do that, but that’s not what this post is going to be about). Instead, as I worked through the drafts of my novella, and now the draft of my novel, I got to thinking some about how I grew up, and how that has in turn influenced my writing.

I know I’m not alone in having survived bullying (I’ve seen reports now that state something like 1 in 4 teens are bullied in school). Hell, if you’re reading this post, chances are pretty good that you yourself were a victim of bullying at some point in your life.

As I was working through my novel the other day, I got to thinking just how much the two main characters are like me. In the novella, I explicitly stated that the main character (Brandon) was the victim of bullying in school. Now unlike Brandon though, I never gained the ability to do cool things just by thinking about it.

Instead, most of my junior high years (so between the ages of 12 and 16) were spent with a combination of being beaten up on the football pitch, apples crushed into my hair, white out correcting fluid all over my clothes. This was a tough period in my life, and ended up influencing how I would deal with things all the way into my adult life. I have very little self-confidence, and constantly second guess myself. I think that if it weren’t for the love and support of my parents, I’d not have made it through at all.

What I’ve noticed has been that everything in my creative outlets, whether it’s my writing, or my RPG campaigns, have been influenced by all this bad stuff which has happened to me over the years. My protagonists are almost always underdogs in some fashion. The antagonists they face are frequently some kind of ‘bully’. I never realized it until I started the various written projects I have on the go.

Even now as I work through the second novella, and near the end of the novel, I can see these influences quite clearly. The novel should prove to be very interesting I think, as it delves quite clearly into those feelings of helplessness and fear that those who are bullied experience.

Overall I have found the writing has been a very therapeutic experience, and has allowed me to get out all my fears and frustrations. I also hope that my writing can give hope to those kids out there that are going through what I went through.

So followers of the great Stargazer – how has your past influenced how you approach your games/creative projects?

A Trek to the Stars but no Star Trek

Stargazer — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:26:47 +0000

A while ago I have mused about the issues you have with SF campaigns in general and campaigns focusing on space exploration in particular. I have thrown some ideas around and watched several SF movies and episodes from various SF TV series for inspiration.

It was during one episode of the classic Star Trek series when I had an idea. Why not use the premise of the series but get rid of basically everything else. One thing that always kept me from running a Star Trek game was the canon which always felt like a corset instead of inspiration. While I love the premise of a starship and its crew travelling through space, responding to emergencies, dealing with first contact situations and sometimes even fighting enemies, I don’t really want to have to cope with all the “baggage” that comes with it.

Of course I can tell my players that I will ignore some of the canon and stay clear of any metaplot, but then why bother use the Star Trek universe at all? I also like to have a bit more science in my science fiction than Star Trek has. I also prefer my games a bit more grim and gritty. Even though I like to watch Star Trek, I still cringe whenever crew extras are thrown through the bridge set because there are no seat belts.

So what I am currently planning is to get back at writing a SF campaign setting that takes the Star Trek premise BUT is not set into the Star Trek universe. Another SF setting I find highly inspirational is the Mass Effect universe. While I found it a bit hard to run non-military campaigns in that universe, I still love a lot about it.

When it comes to what system to use I am still torn between Stars without Number and MiniSix. SWN would probably provide me with more material to rely on, but also makes some assumptions about the setting. MiniSix is more rules-light than SWN and probably needs me to put some more work into setting-specific stuff.

If I come up with anything concrete (which is not guaranteed) I’ll post it here on the blog. But at the moment I am basically throwing some ideas around and hope for some feedback by my readers.

We need a RPGNow for Free RPGs!

Stargazer — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:19:47 +0000

I am pretty sure you all know RPGNow (or one of the other OneBookShelf shops). It’s a great marketplace for RPG products in digital format as well as POD.

For the customer it’s easy to browse and search for products, buying and downloading products works flawlessly and you can rate and review every product you bought. For the publisher uploading their products, setting up product descriptions and cover images and running promotions is easy as pie. In addition to that you get extensive statistics on how often your products have been sold.

There is of course free stuff on RPGNow, too, but it’s first and foremost a shop that wants to sell products and make money. But wouldn’t it be great if there were a site that offers at least some of the features that RPGNow does, but for free RPGs?

Imagine a site, where creators of free RPGs can sign up and upload their free PDFs, enter product descriptions and add a cover image. Having some kind of way to track the number of downloads would be handy, but not that important.

The “customers” of the site can download any free RPG/supplement for free and without the need of being registered at the site, but being registered might have some benefits like being able to post reviews and rate the stuff you downloaded.

This site could be THE place where people go first when they look for free roleplaying games and it could help support many indie game designers out there, who like to give away their games for free.
What do you think about my idea? Is this a project worth pursuing?

Mecha Combiners

Stargazer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0000

In September 2010 I reviewed Chris Perrin’s roleplaying game MECHA and also did an interview with him. In that interview he already mentioned that he was working on some Mecha Combiner rules.

If you’ve been waiting for this supplement all this time, I have good news: Chris just started a Kickstarter project to raise funds for a full color version of MECHA Combiners!

Check out the video below for details or check out the project page!

If you enjoyed Chris’ Mecha RPG you should definitely check out the Kickstarter and give it some support! And before I forget it, he also recently released a Mecha supplement for FREE: It’s called Mekayana and it combines Mecha action with Bollywood dance numbers. Yeah, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true! I have to admit, it might be a bit too weird for my tastes, but I’ll definitely give it a look.

Crafting at the Tabletop

Stargazer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0000

A lot of computer roleplaying games and especially MMOs often feature crafting. In games like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim or World of Warcraft players can craft a plethora of items from raw materials. Yesterday I was playing Skyrim again and I noticed that I basically spent all day disenchanting magic items, mining ore and crafting armor pieces and weapons, which I then enchanted with the effects I wanted.

Curiously not many tabletop RPGs feature player-created items. One of these few games is D&D. Especially when the Eberron campaign setting came out I hoped someone would run an Eberron campaign for me so that I could play an Artificer. Artificers are a special kind of magic users that instead of throwing fancy spells around, they create wands, scrolls, rings, etc. or put enchantments on items. Usually characters had to pay item creation with experience points and was not that popular because of that, but the Artificer actually got a certain pool of points every level that he could use to create items without having to pay from his experience points directly. I thought this could be a fun character class and I definitely wanted to play one.

I also faintly remember that my first Earthdawn character I ever played was a Weaponsmith. And when I am not mistaken, every discipline (Earthdawn’s classes) had various crafting abilities from creating runes to forging armor. For some reason I can’t remember anymore I played this character only for a few sessions before switching to a Scout, but I still think that a travelling craftsman could be an interesting alternative to the usual adventurers.

My game Warrior, Rogue & Mage actually features crafting skills as well, like Alchemy, that allows the creation of potions, but I never actually wrote down rules on how this is supposed to work. Yesterday while creating Iron Daggers in Skyrim to improve my Smithing skill, I pondered why player-crafted items usually don’t play a big role at the tabletop. Even in the computer games it feels a lot like work, but still we do it to get exactly the items we need. Or creating and selling player-created items is a good way to pay the bills. But I can’t remember the last time one of my players wanted to forge his own sword.

I think one reason why crafting items is not common at the game table is that it’s not what adventurers usually worry about. In most cases – especially in fantasy games – the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, not standing for hours in the smithy. In a lot of campaign settings magical shops are quite common and you get magical swords at every street corner. So why bother creating your own sword, when you can easily buy one? And what killed the idea for me in the D&D games I participated in was the fact that I had to pay magic item creation with experience points.

But I still like the idea of allowing players to craft their own equipment if they wish to do so. And perhaps there are already a few games out there that support this kind of gameplay. I ‘m actually almost certain that I own a couple of these games but I never actually paid too much attention on this aspect before.

What are your thoughts on that topic? Player-created items in your tabletop RPG? Yay or nay? Please share your comments below!

On a more personal note

Stargazer — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:54:14 +0000

A couple of days ago I posted about my plans to change the pace on the blog and hinted at the reasons. Today I thought some of you might be interested in an update.

One of the reasons why I haven’t posted that often recently is that I have a lot of stress-related issues like sleep disturbances, panic attacks and depressive episodes. Since then I have had an appointment with my GP. She signed me off work for the next two weeks and I am now on a mild antidepressant that should help me sleep and get rid off the panic attacks.

I am still not totally symptom free and my attempts to get an appointment with a psychotherapists have been futile so far. But I’ve started to deal with my health issues and I am pretty sure things will improve from now on.

I want to thank all of you for your continued support. And don’t worry, I won’t shut down this blog anytime soon. In fact I’ve written another RPG-related post that will go live tomorrow!

Please vote for us in the Stuffer Shack SOTY contest!

Stargazer — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:00:49 +0000

Like last year Stargazer’s World is participating in Stuffer Shack’s RPG Site of the Year contest and we are honored to be among all the great sites that have been nominated.

The nominated sites have been put into one of five groups for voting and today (and only today) you may pick your personal favorite from the group we’re in. So if you enjoyed our site for the last three years it would be great if you could give us your vote and please share this news with your friends over your favorite social network.

After the General Voting the judging panel will evaluate the semi-finalists and determine the overall winner.

The team of Stargazer’s World wishes all participating sites the best of luck. May the best one win!

P.S.: Due to the difference in timezones it may be that the voting site is not up when this post goes live. So if you want to vote and the above link doesn’t work yet, please check back later.

Tactical combat in WR&M (or any other Wyrm System game)

Stargazer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:00:49 +0000

Earlier today Christopher Brind contacted me today and let me know about a cool ruleset for tactical games he has designed for WR&M. It’s modeled loosely after the system from the classic Games Workshop game Space Hulk and you may also know similar systems from turn-based computer games like Jagged Alliance or Ufo: Enemy Unknown.

If you are interested in a more tactical combat in WR&M and any other Wyrm System game, check out Christopher’s blog post on the subject. He is currently planning to do some playtesting. If you like the idea, why not head to his site and leave some feedback?

Savage Worlds Deluxe: Explorer’s Edition now available for preorders

Stargazer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:45:47 +0000

Recently I checked Pinnacle Entertainment’s new website and was surprised to see that the Explorer’s Edition of Savage Worlds Deluxe is already available for preorder. In my opinion Savage Worlds Deluxe was great but I missed the more handy digest format of the Explorer’s Edition. And because the Deluxe Edition was hardcover it was much more expensive.

The PDF version of the new Explorer’s Edition is already available from Studio2Publishing right now (I hope they put it up on RPGNow, too) and the print edition and a print + PDF bundle are available for preorder. The PDF or print edition set you back $9.99 and the bundle is $14.99. I would have preferred if the PDF was free if you buy the print edition, but the bundle price is still great.

So, if you haven’t picked up Savage Worlds yet, make sure you get the new Explorer’s Edition. I am pretty sure it will be the best edition of Savage Worlds to date.

The MARS Project: Zombies part deux!

Sunglar — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:48:46 +0000

Because no one demanded it, here is more information about the latest adventure I’ll be running, the MARS Project, a zombiepocalypse game. I wrote about it last week (and tweaked the text a little bit, nothing major but you can click on the link to read it!) and after that we sat down to create characters and play our first session. Alas we never got to it. Since we are learning a new system we took out time making characters, I answered questions and gave them a rundown of the system and the setting.

The players also shared their character concepts. I had told them, as an incentive, that I would be giving them some extra experience points for pictures and character backgrounds. Not everybody was set on their concept, so not everybody had a picture or a backstory. I also shared with them some more detailed descriptions of the NPCs inside the MARS Project facility.

So I’ve decided to share some more of the preparations and the backgrounds my players created. We are ready to start playing, next session we are jumping in into the action.

Before I get on with the post, one last thing… I have a great set of players and I really want to thank them for their contributions to this and every game I play. This time around it’s Pierre, Luis, Fernan, Carlos, José and our visiting player Enith. Watch out for the undead!

The members of the MARS Project (NPCs List)

Doctor Martin Hueller, MARS Project Mission Leader, head of the sociological research team. Renowned psychiatrist and researcher. His sociological experiments have been controversial but he remains an authority in his field. Openly opposed to the recruitment of Roberto Rodríguez, aka DJ Master Justice, ad a member of the team. Arrogant and aloof, has a preference for classical music and dislikes modern music, particularly gangster rap and hip hop. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Frida Adalheir, head of the genetics and biological research team. The German born Harvard Professor possesses a PhD in Genetics and is an authority in botanical research and genetic manipulation. Speaks loudly and is seldom still, treats almost everyone like a student or lab assistant. She has had some arguments with Dr. Zimmerman about the ethics of genetic manipulation. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Amala Chaudhari, head of the Project MARS documentation initiative, an attempt to record the experience of living inside the facility. Best-selling writer and Pulitzer winning journalist, born in India, she became a naturalized American Citizen in her twenties. Warm and friendly, she smiles a lot and talks to everyone, listening to them intently, often asking to record the conversations. She has stated in no uncertain terms that she believes Ludwing Brom’s project to film a documentary inside the facility is a limited endeavor as images can never capture the true complexity of the human condition. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Banjit Marshall, head of the chemistry and earth sciences team. Often called the Renaissance-Man of the 21^st Century, with a PhD in Chemist and another in Philosopher and extensive studies in many other fields, a Mensa certified genius. Of mixed British and African Heritage he was adopted by a British couple who raised him. Has taken a Sabbatical from Oxford to participate in the project. When involved in a project he can lose himself in what he is doing and becomes unaware of his surroundings. As an avowed pacifist he often engages Natalia Romanech about her former military service, in his philosophical musings he has often been hurtful or dismissive of her, even if he doesn’t realize it. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Anthony George Willard, head of MARS Project systems and maintenance team, thus supervisor of the work shifts. Engineer and Architecture wunderkind, as a young man he impacted British architecture as no one had done at such a young age. His success made him famous and rich and he became infamous for his drinking, partying and womanizing. Having lost most of his fortune and living under the shadow of his former glories, this recovering alcoholic resents the skill and prowess of Doers Jack and Joseph Brooks; he often assigns them extra work in their shifts. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Ishmael “Billy” Farrakhan, formerly William Washington, foreman of the Doer team, in charge of agriculture and animal husbandry. He grew up in the inner city but after a stint in the Marines he brought some land and became a successful dairy farmer. He converted to Islam after his sons died in an accident. MARS Project Classification – DOER
Felix Matasantos, in charge of electrical repairs and IT support. Mexican born, he entered the US illegally, but after becoming a citizen was a vocal advocate for immigrants’ rights. He lost his business during the technology crash and out of necessity joined the project in an attempt to rebuild his business. Despite his intelligence and business savvy he often plays the role of ignorant laborer around authority figures, allowing him to often remain unnoticed. MARS Project Classification – DOER
Holly Thomas, in charge of supplies and food preparation. Culinary school drop-out, she became a line cook in various restaurants in the south, even serving as a sous-chef but never managing to hold a position long enough to make a name for herself. The only team member that was not recruited, she had to compete for the position with many others. Before the mission was underway there were rumors that she achieved the position not solely by cooking. She is an expert cook and her skills have dispelled any question about her qualification. She is friendly, warm, laughs a lot, but can be somewhat nosy. MARS Project Classification – DOER

OUTSIDE the MARS Project

Jonathan Bixby, Technical Services Director and supervisor of the support and transmission crew living on site, but separate from the participants of the MARS Project. He is a former television producer and studio executive. Selected because of his experience in handling large crews involved in large reality television projects and his ability to keep to the budget. He is loud, friendly and larger than live, but focused when necessary. An acquaintance of Ludwig Brom, he had several clashes with Dr. Hueller before the project got underway.

The members of the MARS Project (PC list)

Ludwig Brom (José) – Producer inside the facility tasked with creating a documentary of the experience as part of the MARS Project documentation initiative. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
Natalia Romanech (Enith) –National Guard reservist, investigator and wife to Ludwig. MARS Project Classification – DOER
Joseph Brooks (Fernan) – Firefighter. MARS Project Classification DOER
Norman Zimmerman (Lao) – Surgeon and Nobel Peace Prize winner. MARS Project Classification THINKER
Jack (Pierre) – He can fix almost anything he touches. MARS Project Classification DOER
Roberto Rodríguez aka DJ Master Justice (Carlos) – Former baseball player and gangster rap singer. MARS Project Classification DOER

For this last character my friend Carlos surprised me with a terrific written character introduction. I’m sharing it here with you after getting his approval to do so. This next part was written by Carlos Matos, good friend and player…

DJ Master Justice Interview

Master Justice: MJ

Reporter- Lisa Draper: R

R: Hi! And welcome to “Red Hot”. We have a great show. Tonight’s guest is the controversial, sometimes misunderstood, but always “Hot” DJ Master Justice. Welcome to the program.
MJ: Lovely to finally meet you. Let me tell you that you are more beautiful in person than what I expected.
R: Oh! Thank you. Ahem! There is a rumor that you are about to embark on a new project, but let’s start how you end up been a rap artist. You started in sports, specifically in Baseball. Is that right?
MJ: That’s right, baby! I started playing since I was a boy. My father was a fan of baseball and he used to take me to the Tiger’s games.
R: So you are from Detroit?
MJ: Hell Yeah! Born and raised in south Detroit.
R: Someone told me that your father named you after a baseball player.
MJ: Yes! After the great Roberto Clemente, I wanna give a holla to the Boricuas in tha house. Whoop whoop!
R: So it is true that your real name is Roberto Rodriguez and that you are from a Latin descent?
MJ: Yes. My father was Puerto Rican and my mother from Detroit.
R: You grew in Detroit, but you didn’t study there.
MJ: No, I went to the U.
R: You went to the University of Miami on a full scholarship, where you broke four of their records.
MJ: Five, and I still hold them.
R: You had some problems there. Tell me what happened?
MJ: They were making money selling my jersey, using my image and number in commercials for Nike and Gatorade, while I was eating Chef Boyardee. So I decided to go Pro.
R: You were a Boston Red Sox for three years.
MJ: That’s right; I was part of the 2004 championship team. Here look, this is the championship ring.
R: Why didn’t you keep playing? Was it because you were up in jail for having a problem with the law?
MJ: NO, the next year we won, I had an ALC tear that took me out of the game for a whole year.
R: That’s when you had your incident in the discotheque club?
MJ: I was having some fun with friends when this guy started insulting me telling me that I was robbing the team organization for the millions they were paying me without playing.
R: Accordingly you shot him?
MJ: Hey! I was declared innocent.
R: How did you end up with drug problems?
MJ: I was with the wrong group of people at the wrong time.
R: You were out of jail within the year for good conduct. Why didn’t you continue to play in the Major Leagues?
MJ: They said I was a bad influence, so there were only a couple of teams interested in me, but they wanted to send me to the Minors. Ha! Me to the Minors! So I told them to…beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
R: Subsequently, you came out of jail with new tattoos and a new attitude. How was it that you started in music?
MJ: MY cell mate was D. Trigga. He saw me writing some lyrics, said that I had talent, and when I came out, I had a record deal waiting for me.
R: Consequently, you two became partners.
MJ: Yes.
R: Therefore you became the owner when he was shot to death coming out of a concert.
MJ: What are you trying to say? He was my brother from another mother.
R: Changing the subject, the MARS Project, what’s that?
MJ: Well it stands for Miniature Arcology Research Simulacrum. Some of the companies involved in this are of course Tombstone records, MTV, Coors and VID. Yo! People you better check it out, it starts this month on NBC every Tuesday night at 8pm.
R: You heard him. This is the show for tonight; see you next week in “Red Hot” Goodnight.

I really enjoyed that, thanks for Carlos for that. If you are interested I can share some of the other player backgrounds and keep you updated about how this experiment with Savage Worlds is going. If anybody is interested, just let me know if you are interested in the comments. Thanks for readying.

Lazy Wednesday Video Post: Legend of Grimrock

Stargazer — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:20:44 +0000

I am currently enjoying my week off, spending most of the time playing video games, watching movies and trying to wind down a bit. One video I stumbled upon today is a first look at “Legend of Grimlock”, an old-school dungeon crawler to be released on April 11th. I admit it’s not really pen & paper RPG related but I know that a lot of us played games like these a lot back in the day.

WTF Is… Legend of Grimrock

I am very pleased that there are still developers willing to develop such an old-school game. And from the looks of it, it’s marvelously executed. I can’t wait to actually play it!

MARS Project, a zombiepocalypse game

Sunglar — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:38:14 +0000

Hello readers! Sorry for my prolonged absence. As Michael posted I’ve had my plate full. I’ve mentioned some of it before, but to recapitulate, I’ve been at a new job since late last year, and on top of that I’ve decided to go back to college to do another master’s degree. That in particular has become a terrible time drain. I am thrilled to be studying again, but as part of the accelerated study program I spend most nights working on class work instead of musing about RPGs. I got my priorities all mixed up I know!

I am on a break between classes, a full week, so I thought I’d catch up on my posting for a few days. I’m working in a couple of other things, but I really don’t want to discuss it as not to jinx it. This post came about as a quick fiction piece for my regular gaming night (Tuesdays, for those of you that are wondering!). One of the regular players is out of the country and another one is getting surgery (I wish them both good luck) so we decided to put the supers game in temporary hiatus, four weeks, and play something else instead.

After discussing the options over with the players we settled on a zombie game using Savage Worlds. We also discussed possible settings and the players came to a consensus so I created a Facebook group for the adventure and began posting tidbits of information, some images, and today I posted the accompanying text. This is meant to set the stage for the game. I wanted to get characters ready before the game but real life conspires against us so it’s looking more and more likely we’ll be creating characters tomorrow. Thankfully that process is painless with the system. I’m looking forward to this. I’ll keep you posted about how it turns out. Now without further ado, 2012, the Zombiepocalypse is upon us!

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

The Garden of Proserpine, Charles Algernon Swinburne

The MARS (Miniature Arcology Research Simulacrum) Project was the initiative of The Viduus Conglomerate (Ticker Symbol VID), a publicly traded transportation and communication conglomerate. Founded in Italy, it had its humble beginnings as printing company, but Viduss soon became a global player first in publishing and media and then investing heavily in transportation. The son of the company’s founder and current CEO, Marcello Vidussiari, expressed his desire to collaborate in the drive to reach the planet Mars within the next twenty five years, an initiative spearheaded by various private companies including Virgin Group Limited, Lockheed Martin and IBM, among others.

The MARS project followed on the heels of projects such as BIOS-3 and Biosphere 2 and proposed the creation of a contained self-sufficient environment where the feasibility of survival during long term space flight could be explored. Viduss USA, the conglomerate’s branch in the United States, constructed the MARS facility in Mohave County, Arizona, near the small town of Oatman. The structure was based on the design of Biosphere 2 and Oatman residents experienced an economic boom due to the construction, many being hired to work on site after the facility was completed.

The MARS Project was conceived as a three year mission designed to prepare humans for a colonization trip to Mars, and contained a series of ecosystems, research facilities and living quarters with water recycling system, power supplied by a self-sufficient gas generator and no contact with the outside world! Participants were selected to represent a wide range of skills, and since Viduss is also a communications company the MARS Project three acre facility was equipped with cameras to broadcast the experiment to the outside world.

Harshly criticized at first for what one detractor called, “turning a high-minded scientific endeavor into cheap reality TV entertainment”; Viduss addressed critics and explained that the main purpose of sharing the esperiment with the world was to create awareness, motivate innovation and inspire others to join the project to colonize Mars. A website was set up for continuous transmissions from the inside and a series of quarterly TV specials developed. The selection of some controversial entertainment figures as project participants, as well as the fact that those living inside the MARS Project had an economic incentive to remain inside for the duration of the experiment did little to silence its harshest critics.

As per mission protocol, the participants inside the MARS facility had no contact with the outside world. All light inside the facility was artificially created, including in the biomes and the facility was provided with an extensive digital research library participants could consult if they needed to research anything. The mission’s leader, Doctor Martin Hueller, established a protocol as part of the sociological experiments being conducted inside the facility that divided all participants into two categories, Thinkers, composed mostly of technical professions, scientists and what could be described as “white-collar” workers; and Doers, encompassing the participants with more physical labors inside the station’s work schedule, typically considered “blue-collar” workers.

No firearms were allowed inside the MARS Project and in case of emergency there were two options for exiting the facility prematurely. One, if the support and transmission crew living on site, but separate from the participants detected any danger the Technical Services Director could call for an immediate evacuation. Secondly, the participants were given the option to abort the experiment prematurely. To do so one member of each group, one Doer and one Thinker had to come together to enter their individual emergency evacuation code and submit to biometric readings. This process would have to be finalized by a third code/biometric reading combination, that of Mission Leader Dr. Hueller.

The experiment began in October 31^st, 2011 when all participants entered the facility at midnight and live transmission began soon after. At first the two sides in the facility were housed in separate areas, but soon where allowed to mingle and relocate inside the housing area, creating interesting interactions. During the first seven months participants showed a mark reduction in, which began to normalize once the first planting was harvested. Some of the projects animals died initially but the remaining were tended and continued to reproduce. The most contentions practice in the house became the weekly diary sessions where participants had to reflect on their experiences so far and record the session. Despite initial reluctance from some members all participants eventually began to fulfill what was since the beginning a contractual duty.

The next six months saw hardships return to the MARS Project, livestock began to dwindle again, vermin, specifically ants and cockroaches became a problem and most beneficial insects died. Some participants reported tiredness, aches and pains and the resident Doctor saw an increase in patient visits. Some strange sounds, heard outside the facility despite the noise dampening, worried the participants but since there has been no evacuation order the experiments and activities inside the arcology continue apace. Despite all this the project continues; the participants prepare to celebrate their second Christmas inside the MARS Project facility. Everything is quiet and calm, perhaps too quiet…

Some of the participants in the MARS Project:

Doctor Martin Hueller, MARS Project Mission Leader, Psychiatrist

Jonathan Bixby, Technical Services Director for the MARS Project. He and his team are supervising the facility outside and have no contact with the members of the team inside the facility.

Professor Frida Adalheir, PhD in Genetics and the leader of the Botanical Team

Review: Mindjammer

Stargazer — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:36:09 +0000

A while ago Sarah Newton contacted me and asked me if I was interested in reviewing her debut novel “Mindjammer”. I have to admit I was hesitant at first, because I usually don’t do novel reviews, but then I agreed because I love her previous work.

Mindjammer is set into the Starblazer Adventures campaign setting of the same name. The humanity has reached the stars millenia ago and the New Commonality of Worlds has united almost all humans. Ultra-advanced technology is commonplace. Intelligent spaceship called Mindjammers roam the stars, humanity is connected by some kind of “thought internet” called the Mindspace.

Sending thoughts to another persons is as easy – even easier – as sending an email today. Thanograms, the sum of the skills, knowledge and memories of a dead person, cast into the Mindscape at the moment of death, can be used as the controlling intelligence of synthetic beings called eidolons, spaceships and even personal equipment. But that doesn’t mean that immortality can be achieved. The belief that an eidolon is actually the dead person is called Transmigration Heresy and is often encountered in colonies that have recently been reintegrated into the Commonality.

The novel starts in medias res on the main planet of the so-called Solenine Cluster, a sector of space that has just recently been rediscovered by the Commonality. In Mindjammer FTL travel is a pretty new technology but mankind has sent out slower-than-light colony ships for ages. The Solenine Cluster is controlled by the Solenine Corporacy which had almost achieved Old Earth’s level of technology when it was rediscovered.

The story focuses on Thaddeus Clay, Jackson Stark, Max Proffitt and Lyra Da Luz, agents of SCI Force, who are investigating rumors of Transmigration Heresy on Solenine. But soon they realize that much more is involved than a few eidolons who believe they are the persons whose memories they carry. In the end the existence of the whole Commonality is in peril.

When I began reading is was more than once pretty much overwhelmed. The Commonality era is very different from our world and a lot of terms used are not explained immediately. I also found that some of the characters are not as detailed as I would have liked. But these are only minor quibbles and after a while you feel right at home in the Commonality era. The action scenes in the book are very well written and are almost cinematic. There was never a dull moment in the book and after a couple of pages I was totally hooked.

What I also enjoyed tremendously was that Mindjammer is a science fiction story that really deserves the name. The technology described sounds plausible and the Commonality era feels “real”. And even though Mindjammer is highly entertaining it also makes the reader ponder a couple of philosophical questions like what makes us human and is there a way to cheat death? In my opinion good SF should not only entertain but make us ask questions. Mindjammer does that all the time.

So who would I recommend Mindjammer to? I would recommend it to everyone who likes science fiction especially if you are into the Transhumanism subgenre. The novel is also a great introduction to the Mindjammer campaign setting. If you plan to run or play a game in this setting, you definitely should read this novel. Mindjammer is a very exiting and intelligently-written novel that should be on the reading list of every SF fan!

Mindjammer is available in print directly from Cubicle 7 or digitally from RPGNow or the Amazon Kindle store. This review was based on the ePub version available on RPGNow and was kindly provided by the author. Thanks again, Sarah!

The Tale of Lancaster’s Folly

Stargazer — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:06:10 +0000

I usually don’t write about non-RPG stuff on my blog, but this is special, so I make an exception. “The Tale of Lancaster’s Folly” is a story written by my good friend Vince Kingston. Today he finally released the novella on DriveThruFiction and – when Amazon approves – it will also appear in the Kindle store.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure to read a draft of this short story and I totally loved it. If you are into modern fantasy like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels, you definitely should give Vince’s short story a chance.

So what does an eighteen year old do for fun?

Apparently he gets sent to England to deal with a rampaging minotaur!

Most kids his age only have to deal with acne, choosing the right college, or having a few drinks with their friends. Brandon Taylor isn’t most kids though. He’s spent most of his school life being picked on, bullied, and just trying to survive the hell that’s high school.

He’s also a Bard, a teller of stories. Though his stories have a way of taking on a life of their own.

The Tale of Lancaster’s Folly is Brandon’s first adventure. Having been assigned the task by his mentor, Brandon journeys to England for what would become the biggest adventure of his young life.

It’s available for just $1.49 on DriveThruFiction in ePub or Kindle (MOBI) format.

UPDATE: Vince just let me know that both versions will be only $0.99 for a limited time (until April 15). So you might want to act fast!

Starflight

Stargazer — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:29:43 +0000

Yesterday I mused about roleplaying in the SF genre and in the evening I remembered some of the computer games I enjoyed tremendously in my youth: the Starflight series and Star Control 2. Both game series featured space exploration, mining, tongue-in-cheek humor, space combat and a huge galaxy to explore. Starflight 1 for example had about 250 stars with over 800 planets. And aside from high-G planets or gas giants you could explore all of these planets, mine raw materials and explore ruins left by the Old Empire and the Ancients.

In both game series you commanded a modular spaceship that you could customize and upgrade to a certain extent and Starflight had a few classic roleplaying elements when it comes to creating your crew. Each ship officer had several skills like Navigation, Science and Engineering and could be from one of the races living on Arth, your homeplanet.

The question is now: how can we take both games as an inspiration for a pen & paper RPG campaign? What I like a lot is the focus of exploration in both series. There’s a vast galaxy out there and the players are boldly going where noone has gone before. Because there is no FTL communication, a starship is mostly on it’s own. There’s probably an overall mission but what the players do is mostly there own decision, there are no Admirals holding their hands all the time. So in a way the crew of such a spaceship is a lot like the classic adventuring party.

A campaign inspired by Starflight/StarControl is probably best run like a slightly modified sandbox game. The players decide what route they want to take, but everything is given some direction by an overall mission. This may be finding a new home for humanity, fighting against a terrible foe, learning more about a now extinct precursor race, or whatever else might motivate your players.

The next step will be coming up with a setting that works a basis for such a campaign. I already have a couple of ideas that I might share with you in the upcoming weeks, but if you have any ideas of your own, feel free to share them in the comments below!

Some thoughts on roleplaying in the SF genre

Stargazer — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:40:37 +0000

While I am currently a fantasy campaign I am already thinking about what I could run next. And as so often before the idea to run a SF game crops up again. I actually decided on a system I want to use and now I am collecting ideas for a campaign. Of course I could run an preexisting campaign or use a background my players are already familiar with, but in my opinion creating a whole new universe is half the fun.

When I started thinking about what elements I want in my SF game I immediately noticed some of the problems with running games in that particular genre. Especially when you want to have at least some semblance of science in your science fiction things get complicated pretty quickly. Fantasy is easy. We all know what a sword is, we have a pretty good idea what an orc is and magic … just works. When creating a SF universe you have to put a lot of thought into almost any aspect. Of course you can just call it Space Opera and treat technology like magic. How does the hyperdrive work? Just fine, thank you.

But that’s not what I want out of a SF game. I am looking for a setting that is at least scientifically plausible. One thing that usually causes me headaches is whether to include something like psionics. Telepathy, ESP etc. are all common tropes of some subgenres of SF but are scientifically implausible. And then it depends a lot on how you explain the existence of such powers in the game universe. I actually think that Mass Effect did that pretty well with Biotics.

Another problem I often have is visualization. When watching a SF TV series or movie you can see all the cool technical gadgets, space ships and aliens. It’s the same with modern computer games. You don’t have to explain everything to the player/viewer, you just show it to them. In roleplaying games (especially when creating your own setting) you don’t have that luxury. You have to explain everything. And listening to an explanation of that super-cool, holographic, touch-sensitive, force field input thingamajig is usually way less cool than actually seeing it.

At the moment I am not sure what subgenre of SF I want to use for my game, but I think a galaxy-spanning space-faring campaign may be fun.

So what are your thoughts on roleplaying in the SF genre? How do you avoid the common problems? As always your comments are highly appreciated.

A change of pace

Stargazer — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 06:05:44 +0000

You may have noticed that recently we didn’t post as often as we used to. That has various reasons. Usually I tried to post at least once per workday and when I ran out of ideas or time to write a post one of the other team members and guest posters filled in.

But there are times when everyone deals with more important things and here at Stargazer’s World personal matters of the team members are always more important than blogging. A while ago Roberto has hinted at some of the reasons why he can’t post as often as he likes. Some of you might also know that Youseph is currently writing his second novel.

Yesterday I had actually finished a post where I explained in detail the reasons why I currently see myself unable to post as often as I like and why a lot of my game design projects are not going anywhere. Alas the stupid iPhone blog tool I used decided to crash and so this post got lost. Perhaps it was for the better. Boring my readers with a long personal post is probably not the best of ideas after all.

Perhaps it’s sufficient to say that I am dealing with some severe stress issues at the time. And some part of that stress is self-induced and related to deep-seated fears I’ve been struggling for a long time. I actually realized that there is a problem just recently and now I have decided to get some therapy to deal with it.

So what does this mean for the blog? I hope not too much. This week I dealt with a lot of stuff that kept me pretty occupied. In the near future I will try to return to a more regular posting schedule, but I am not sure if I can keep up the current pace. I believe three posts per week or in the least two posts per week should be doable. So things might be a bit slower over here, but don’t worry, I won’t stop posting completely. You don’t get rid of me that easily.

The D6 System needs your love

Stargazer — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:07:34 +0000

Another roleplaying game system that should get more attention by gamers is the D6 System by now defunct games publisher West End Games. A precursor of the system that should later become the D6 System appeared in WEG’s Ghostbusters RPG back in 1986. The first true iteration of the D6 System was released just a year later in the form of the widely popular Star Wars: The Roleplaying game.

WEG also released a couple of other games based on popular licenses like Indiana Jones, Men in Black and the Hercules & Xena TV series. The Hercules and Xena game actually used a simplified version dubbed the Legend system. But even these popular licenses couldn’t save WEG from bankruptcy.

Over the following years WEG and its properties including the D6 System changed hands several times. Eventually three semi-generic D6 System rule books were released: D6 Adventure, D6 Fantasy, and D6 Space.

But the D6 System never got widely popular again and in the end we – the fans – are lucky that the last owner of the D6 System decided to release the games under the Open Game License. The D6 Systems core books are all available for free on DriveThruRPG and even Bill Coffin’s Septimus, the first game released under the new OpenD6 label was eventually made free by its creator.

I am still thankful to Eric Gibson, owner of WEG, that he decided to give the D6 System to the fans, even though I didn’t agree with him most of the time. I still remember a few quite heated discussions with him on the WEG Fan Forums back in the day.

So why should gamers care about the D6 System? There are multiple reasons: First and foremost the system is very easy to learn and to use. It’s perfect for new players. It just uses regular six-sided dice, the core mechanic is easy to understand. The fact that it’s now available for free means that you don’t have to pay a lot of money to get the rules.

While pondering what games I could run in the future, I eventually gave the D6 system a second look and realized that I can use it to easily run games in most settings and genres with just minor adjustment. Each D6 genre book comes with it’s own supernatural effect systems. D6 Space has Metaphysics, which reminds me a lot of the Force from the old Star Wars RPG, D6 Adventure has Psionics and D6 Fantasy has spell-based Magic. But nothing keeps you from using Magic in your Space games.

The D6 System is easy to learn and to run, versatile and available for free. And even today it deserves our attention. But it’s my impression that aside from a few die-hard fans the majority of gamers have forgotten the D6 System. Which is a shame.