Wednesday, May 14, 2014

| another thing

You may or may not have already considered this, but since the reality of our gaming group is that we're mostly decentralized, maybe keep in mind ways to make the game chatroom friendly. Or at least easily modified for those e-friend gaming situations.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

| having really only knowing

By saying the rpg idea is gonna die here on the blog, you're setting yourself up for failure! Delete that line from your post or at least from your heart.

Run with it!

Some quick thoughts:

Fiasco is pretty hard. Really more improv than rpg, so  totally not a system for most people. I'd say the best thing to gleam from it is the "playset" feature. Come up with a solid system underneath, then you can plug in your "When Cthulhu Cthalls" playset/deck/dice/module. Next time, it can be the "Dungeon Crawl" set.

DCC: I wish we had played more. I felt like there were too many people to successfully pull off an online sesh with that game. I forget - is it made to be played with a tons of dudes? I also don't remember how much player-input there was when it came to "telling the story". Wasn't Jawn a DM for that?


Monday, May 12, 2014

| TL;DR - I have an idea that will die on this website

So, I've been thinking about roleplaying games.  I suspect I will likely never get into a meaningful campaign again in my lifetime unless I start playing with Wy, which is fine because RPGs are a lot of work and a lot of commitment!  That being said, I still totally like RPGs!

Right now, I'm really interested in the dice mechanics for Star Wars and WFRP 3rd ed, where you basically roll a grip of dice all that once that includes difficulty dice, dis/advantage, skill dice, and 'other' specific dice as well.  Once you roll all them dice, you interpret the results.  Successes vs. failures to see if you pass the test, but then some other results based on the dis/advantage results.  The long and the short of the system is that there is some narration on every roll.  I think our group would have a blast playing a system like this, and I know jr0n and Enron (maybe Mykenloft?) have already played WFRP some and I'd like to hear their thoughts and experiences on the system.

Anyway, I also really like the Mythic GM Emulator which sort of puts the story into the hands of some charts and LOTS of interpretation by the players to drive the story.  When we played DCC using the GME, it added quite a bit of interest because we were sort of writing the story as we played it.  We generally knew the plot because the GME lays it out for you to a certain extent, but the details were determined by our play.

And then there is The Armitage Files supplement for Trail of Cthulhu.  This is basically a sourcebook for all sorts of different NPCs, groups, locations, tomes, etc. for the ToC game, but with a very interesting twist:  Each one is detailed and then additional details are listed for if the 'thing' is friendly, neutral, or opposing.  Basically it means any group that uses the sourcebook will likely use it in vastly different ways.  There was a pretty good blog out there about one groups experience running a game derived from the Armitage Files and it sounded rad!

And THEN there was our mixed experience with Fiasco!  I had fun, but couldn't muster the creativity to really perform like I should have during those sessions.  Maybe I didn't quite 'get it', maybe playing in character seems weird to me in my old age, whatever it was, I wasn't totally into it, but I did really like the idea of joint story telling with a purpose.

ANYWAY, all of these things combined with how much fun we have RPing as a group when things go off the rails, got me thinking about combining them all together into some sort of GM-less Cthulhu/Investigative RPG where decks of cards define the overall story, but to keep it fresh, each scene or something rotates through the players as they sort of interpret and run the game based on a set of instructions they received from their card pull at a certain point in the game.

I don't know narrative/plot/story arc devices, terms, or structure, but it seems you could somehow combine a generic set of narrative cards with specifics from the genre (Cthulhu) combined with elements of the GM emulator for 'chaos and chance' WITH interpretation of dice during rolls, you could make a pretty fun, structured, but bite-sized RPG experience where no one has to do all the prep work and everyone gets to contribute AND join the ride.

I'm still tinkering with some specifics, and like the title says it will likely die right here, but it's been fun to think and fantasize aboot.

| vintage action team