Card Maze.

Just a quick idea.

Card Based Maze - Savage Worlds.

Take a 54 card pack, take out the Black joker and give it to the GM. Give 4 cards to the players as their starting Hand. Set the remaining 49 cards face down in a 7x7 square. Take your player/s tokens and set them on a card where they start, turn that card face up.

Alternate player action, GM action etc.

Player Actions:
Move to a new face down card and explore. If you have more than 5 cards in your Hand you must play one of them into a vacant spot face down.
Move all players to one adjacent faceup card.
Group spread out - players may all move to any adjacent face down card or remain where they are. Turn over all cards at once and conduct one round. At the start of each new round any players not in combat may make a Notice roll to move one card.
Take up the card your are on into your Hand.

GM Actions:
Swap any two face down adjacent cards (you cant look).
Swap a card in your Hand to a face down card on the table.
If more than 5 cards are face up, turn one of them face down as long as it isnt adjacent to a player.

Card Results:

Numbered Spade - trap
Numbered Club - Trait test or suffer a Wound or Fatigue point.
Picture Card - Monster encounter.
Black Joker - The Minotaur (if the players win GM takes the card up and can replay it).
Red Joker - Take up and give to GM to allow everyone to make a VG roll to cure Wounds or Fatigue, not both, OR take into your Hand as a wildcard.

To win the players have to make a Hand of 4 of a Kind or a Straight Flush.

I'm on leave currently and I had actually done up a list of things to do, as I have nothing in particular in mind for this leave. There were 7 things on my list:

1. Complete extras decks for Swift Swords Underworld.
2. Create more shelf space for my games in the games room
3. Do up a very literal fun dungeon
4. Do Gobbos cards
5. Print my collection of geomorph tiles
6. Rewrite SSU rules
7. Swap my painting table around for the computer table. 

So far I have actually done a few of them. I did 6, a rewrite of the SS Underworld rules book, and its a lot better now. I also did 1, but in the process redeveloped the whole game.  Instead of having a fairly big initial game package I stripped out all but the basic decks and made the others into expansions.  It seems a much better method to me.  I got so into it that I created two whole new decks as expansions - Potions and Enchantments.  You can find them as at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse.php?manufacturers_id=3986 if you are into PnP files.  I made the base game free, and the expansions Pay What You Like, will be interesting to see what happens.

As part of the process of updating the whole thing I also got to send emails to everyone who had looked at the old game, to tell them it had been updated. That seems to be working pretty good too as I am getting a lot of people re-downloading.

I need to redo the Gamecrafter files (physical product), but that will take longer as you have to proof every card. It did mean that the price dropped a little, from $70 to $60. Thats still too high but nothing much I can do about it. Be interesting to see what the expansion decks come out price wise.

Thats all I have done from the list however... but I still have some time left to go.

Sudden creative urges.

Time flies since my last post.

A month ago I got a sudden urge to be creative, writing and proto-type wise. So initially I started work on my Savage Worlds campaign/rule set - Aegyptvs.  Obviously set in ancient Egypt, but with a lot added in.  I ran the campaign that goes with the rules set a number of years ago and it was probably the best one I have done, even my players said so.  Anyway work progresses on that.

Then I got a sudden urge to do a boardgame, and the best materials I had lying around was a map from one of my old Play-by-Mail games - El Mythico. In its day it was a very good game, but PBM was mostly killed off by the internet... so enter a completely different creature:

El Mythico the Boardgame.

I put a lot of thought and effort into this one, and I am pretty happy with it. We had a playtest last weekend with 3 friends, of various skill levels in boardgaming, and this was pretty good. The mechanics worked well, which is a good start. So I am encouraged enough to move forward with it.

Below is the current incarnation of the game map:

It actually looks pretty good if I do say so myself. We got a professional artist to paint the original map (back before digital), and then had a bunch of maps printed. I got the maps scanned and spent a lot of time playing around with Paintshop getting a nice colour and feel.  I then used MS Image Composer (my god this is a useful tool, why on earth did MS drop it?) to put all the components (area boxes) onto the original map.  The original map had a hex grid, which is visible still, although I have de-emphasised it. I like the hex grid, it reminds me of serious wargames. ELM-TBG however uses an area based system.

ELM-TBG

RPG Games I am reading and like.

Interface Zero 2.

Got a pdf copy of the last draft of the rules and it is a big relief.  From some of the bits that had been leaking out, or released officially, I was growing concerned that the writer was going places I didnt like. Well he got back on track and the game looks very good.

The areas I was concerned with mostly were the Hacking rules and the Cyberware rules.

The hacking rules he finally decided to keep it simple, which I think was the right choice. So hacking in IZ2 occurs at normal speeds (not accelerated like in SR). There are 3 skills - Hacking, Know(Programming) and CyberCombat - that do most of the work. He has AI and Sprite rules that could be very interesting.

Cyberware may have actually been made too simple. The only restriction is cybertrauma, based on how much cyberware you have installed, essentially a Vigour roll that grows more difficult. But you have a free range upto your current Vigour score, it only becomes an issue if you exceed it.  What this means is that chrome will be pretty common in nearly all characters. The main limitation is actually money, good cyberware is expensive.  There are no rules for damaging cyberware at this time, but there may be some in the future.  I will probably use a roll vs total cyber stress levels, but not sure yet what the roll will be based on. Using Vigour again seems self defeating, so it may simply be a d6 roll, plus wild dice.  Maybe put in an edge to increase that roll? Maybe use Agility?

Other games that I have a liking for at present and would recommend you get.

Squawk: by Seth Galbraith and Benjamin Galbraith. 2010
I dont know how I found this game but it is very good - intelligent dinosaurs in space. Players play dinosaurs with technology, from small dinosaurs to really big ones (for pcs at least). There may be a new edition coming but not sure.  Great background story and concept.

Cog Wars by Amagi Games 2006.
You play young kids, old geezers or intelligent robots (cogs) in a huge metropolis that is plagued by Masterminds (the bad guys). The city is so big that many Masterminds can exist at once, each plotting to oppress everyone. Its NOT a kids game, even thou you can play a kid, this is a serious rpg. It is about overcoming oppression, and having hope.

Sixth World Digest Edition, based on Dungeon World engine (which is Apocalypse World engine).
A translation of Shadowrun into Dungeon World.  I really like the feel of Dungeon World and I like the feel of this game. I have always liked SR but found it a cumbersome game to play.

Technoir by Jeremy Keller
Another cybertech game, but with a unique mechanic. You needs lots of dice (ala SR) so that is a positive for me. Looks very promising.

Lonely World by Taylor White (based on Apocalypse World engine).
I both love and loath this book. Its really potentially "dark", as its a survivor after the apocalypse game, but it has an awesomely good tag - something (the enemy) destroyed the world and now doesnt care about the few survivors - unless you cause trouble.  And the enemy can be anyone you fancy, from Lucifer and his demons, to space aliens, to a virus or an AI computer. There is an option for an ending - happy or not.

Pandemonio by Rafael Chandler (new version of Dread and Spite).
I just loved Dread and Spite, brilliant concepts for a game, but suffered from differences between the two books. Pandemonio joins all the old books and gives you a solid system. Its very big 500+ pages, but one of the best concepts I have read for an rpg. Buy it just to have it.

I'm overwhelmed and undertimed.

I have several rpg's I really like the look of, but really I don't have the time to play them all, let alone read them all. Lately it seems like I am buy/downloading/printing new games faster than I can read them.

Someone helped things along in G+ by posting their 100 indie games list, of which I had only seen about 15, so off I go looking at whole new game systems that might be interesting - Technoir and Donjon so far.

Currently I have a pile of books sitting around my bed that consists of the following:

Savage Suzerain: a multi-genre system of savage words that loads up the top end of the system (100+ xp) with new ways to continue playing - as demi-gods who can move between genres and times and worlds and realities.  With the base book I have the Dogs of Hades expansion and the Millensium Knights.  I will be getting the Noir expansion shortly.

Gumshoe: those bastids at humble bundle had a sale, so now I have Ashen Stars and Mutant City to read, and Ashen Stars is a big book.  I like the Gumshow system in theory, just not sure I am completely gestalting it.  I'm playing a Nights Black Agents game and its possible the GM for that may not be totally getting the point either, plus the game seems inherently frustrating as the vampires are so very powerful.

Fate (Core):  the Freeport Companion and the Ragnarok are out and I must say I really like the look of the Freeport adaption, other than the fact that they kept actual spell lists and didnt just do magic as an on the fly 'lets do magic' style.  As a conversion of D&D it stays a little too close to the structural limits of that game, which I dont want if I am playing Fate.  But the inspired idea of using the 6 traits as skills is awesome!

Streets of Bedlam Savage Worlds: wow~! This is an inspired rule set and use of the SW system.  I've quickly read it once but need to go back in and read it again.

Interface Zero and some Shadowrun books: I have started an IZ game, we have had our first session and it went pretty good. We are ironing out some house rules at present that I have thrown into the package. But we all liked the SR world better, so I decided to stay with that and convert it. The advantage of that is I can use the MASSIVE pile of SR books I have - including the two Renraku Arcology scenarios.  Why IZ? Because their Hacking rules work at the same time frame as the real world - problem solved.  Plus removing the mind bending illogicness (?) of the magic system and the astral plane frees my brain up a bit more.

Weird War Rome Savage Worlds: actually as little dissappointed with this book, I thought it would be more comprehensive, more of a Deadlands style book. However it has inspired me and my love of history to start work on an epic campaign using the Vesuvius explosion in 79AD as a starting point.

SR5 vs IZ2, Rules v Backgrounds.

I recently decided to try to re-start my roleplaying night, so I thought about what game would attract people. Shadowrun5 had just come out and I know one of my people adores that, so off went the offers. I posted to about a dozen people and got 4.5 bites, which is a pretty good result. So a date has been set and we are off.

In the next coupla weeks I picked up another player but lost the 0.5. At the same time I got back a 0.5 as a wife of one of the players has a little interest, but probably not everytime.

Then I actually thought about, and started reading the new ST5 rules... err thats a lot of reading and there's no way my people are going to read all that. So what normally happens is that I spend 2-3 sessions just explaining all the rules to sufficient level that we can play. Nahhh! Some of us are getting just a little too old, some of us have new kids, some of us can't be bothered.  The more I thought about it the more discouraged I became.

But, as fate (not Fate), would have it, Interface Zero 2.0 KSer came along using the Savage World rules, which all my players know. So because I had already used SR as a lure I compromised and announce that we will use the IZ2.0 rules (due out soon), but I would run it in Seattle using as much of the SR world as possible.  Everyone seemed ok with that, and a couple even said it was a great idea.

We won't be using Magic, we will use the psionics/zeeks rules instead and cut out all the complicated astral/spirit stuff. But where-ever possible we will retain the look and feel of the SR world, which is a really good background.

So what we will end up with is a "FFF" rule set that everyone knows (Savage) and a world background that everyone knows.  It actually sort of suggests to designers that it might be a good idea to break your background out of your game system as much as possible. Good backgrounds appeal to me regardless of the rule set they come with.

Fate of the Norns Kickstarter rulebook

My Fate of the Norns (Kickstarter) rulebook arrived yesterday and I must say the book is BEAUTIFUL!

The colours and consistent art are brilliant, the pages are glossy and the cover awesome.

This book is sensuous (ok so I am a bit of a bookaphile).

No idea if the game is any good.