RPG – Page 8 – Aboleth Overlords

Nausicaä FKR Setup & Session 1

Since FKR style play is getting more attention I thought it would be a good time to pitch an open table game using my Primeval 2D6 system over on one of the Discord servers devoted to the style.

I met up with other members and pitched a few games – running a West Marches style game, an investigative horror game, an Ars Magica-alike, as well as a game set in Hayao Miyazaki’s setting where the Nausicaä manga takes place.

Almost everyone immediately expressed interest in Nausicaä being their top pick, so we started discussing the game, potential places to play, character ideas, and we landed on playing somewhere out “off the map” so to speak in our own corner of the world, making it easier for players to drop in and out without knowing the plot, as well as letting us handwave a lot of details.

I should preface this and probably every session that I am notoriously anti-canon. I want to draw on the imagery, themes, and broad-level assumptions of any source I’m using – Nausicaä included. So if something contradicts established lore – that’s the canon of our game. This is by no means to disrespect the source material, the creators, or the fans, but rather to allow our table to celebrate the world in the way that’s the most fun for us.

chargen and session follows

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 10

Summary

The party explores a number of tombs over the Barrowmaze, and take heavy losses.

Player characters

Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
Grick the Half-Orc, played by Modest Mace
Sky the Druid, played by Captain Caveman
Ulrik Ironsworn the Paladin, played by Isaiah
Uriel the Ranger, played by Dante

Hirelings

Arnd the Dwarf
Bran the failed magician
Garbash, Cleric of Crom
Irya the Archer
Manks, Cleric of Hathor

report follows

Less Rules To Do More: Advancement

Advancement rules are another aspect of roleplaying that sees heavy mechanization. Which I totally get – I agree that games are about what they reward. How these rewards are illustrated, handed out, and utilized, however, has a variety of methods they can be handled with – and like everything else in this series I think you can get away having a fully featured and rich set of rewards without explicitly mechanizing them.

Failed Career: Magician

You get

A pointed hat, a set of trick rings.

Why did you quit magic?

Prosecuted: A series of witch hunters swore to have you drowned.
Debt: While performing a routine stage show, a being born from the shadows cast by your candles offered you power for your soul, mistaking it as a potential part of your act you obliged.
Loss: You mastered the ability to make things disappear, but you could never find where they went, eventually every pet you ever had was lost to the ether.
Heckler: One especially insensitive lay-about child always snuck into your shows and would shout just the worst jibes, to the enjoyment of your measly crowd.
Sabotage: Someone snuck into your storage and ruined your saw box, leading to your on-stage dismemberment of an audience participant.
Thievery: The look-alike you used for tricks stole your entire routine and has completely drawn your crowd away from you, painting you as the fraud.

What trick was your specialty?

Mentalism: You have a significant chance of being able to guess a card drawn by another being from a deck in your control.
Escapery: A few classes of knots pose only a moderate threat to your freedom. You can also probably regurgitate a swallowed key or small item with repulsive frequency.
Death Defiance: Surviving being submerged for several minutes was something you routinely practiced, or at least you are able to suppress panicking before losing consciousness .
Levitation: Floating a stationary target weighing no more than 12 stones was a trick you received the least lukewarm applause for.
Iron Jaws: You’ve discovered the correct technique of eating glass and a variety of other traditionally inedible substances.
Spiritualism: With a bit of setup, smoke and mirrors, you have a very minor chance of convincing someone that a partner of yours is their deceased loved one.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland, Knave, and Ten Foot Polemic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 9

Summary

The party attends a Winter Elf play and enters into a living myth to retrieve a magical harp from a paranoid Frost Giant.

Player Characters

Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
Uriel the Ranger, played by Dante

Hirelings

Arnd the Dwarf
Bran the failed magician
Garbash, Cleric of Crom
Irya the Archer
Manks, Cleric of Hathor

report follows

Primeval 2D6 Layout Update

Trying out my hand at learning Affinity Publisher, so I tried to make a two column spread for Primeval 2D6. I also tried to cut through my verbosity and trim it down to one page, hopefully I was successful at making a more usable text.

I am currently working on an example of how I use the game as a framework to play in a world along with an adventure. Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations for a “Play worlds, not rules” sort of product.

Also let me know your thoughts on the changes to the document, as well as any recommendations or tips while I am learning this stuff.

Thank you!

Barrowmaze Open Table Session 8

Summary

The party decides to search the immediate southern portion of the barrows, running into a variety of figures and learning a few details of the tomb.

Cast of characters

Player Characterss

Barkface the Druid, played by EvilTables
Donnie the Bard, played by Malley
Grick the Half-Orc, played by John
Groolgrod the Dwarf, played by Directsun

Hirelings

Arnd Cobblestone, dwarf
Cravos (deceased), thug turned fighter
Garbash, cleric of Crom
Irya, archer and former squire

summary follows

Less Rules to Do More: Wounds

One of the things I have done when running Primeval 2D6 is to get rid of the more abstract notion of hit points, number of hits, etc. in favor of a more descriptive form of injuries.

This has coincided with my attempt to move all of my old school-styled gaming away from discussions of numbers and mechanics, and instead towards a discussion of the fiction as much as possible.

details follow

Less Rules To Do More: Combat Maneuvers

In my previous post I suggest removing mechanics around the important parts of the game to see if a more freeform rulings style of play will give you what you looking for, instead of defaulting to adding new mechanics.

Let’s look at one of the most popular areas to begin to add rules to games: combat maneuvers.

Less Rules To Do More

Hanging out on forums, game design communities, discord servers and the like I come across a lot of people trying to hack games, old school D&D in particular to do more than what it currently does for them.

Some examples include things like:

Differentiating between “kinds” of hit-points, often breaking out concepts of luck, stress, actual physical damage into a variety of classes.
De-abstracting armor class, clearly defining between the kinds of armor that keeps blows from hurting you, and actions you perform to completely avoid these blows (such as dodging and parrying).
Adding concrete actions and reactions to combat – rules for called shots, active parries, specific classes of strikes, etc.
Various implementations and adjustments to the magic system.
Skills in general.
More nuances to the experience systems.

This is all great – hacking is very much in the spirit of D&D and roleplaying and definitely should be done. Some really awesome games have developed out of the tradition of grabbing D&D, removing stuff you don’t like, adding stuff you do, and putting your own mark on it.

What I want to do is make an argument for removing rules to do what you want, before adding them in. This may seem counter-intuitive – how can you establish something as a priority if you don’t have a concrete rule for it?