Tag: roleplaying games

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on War Birds

Today I have an interview with Moyra Turkington of Unruly Designs talking about her amazing project, War Birds, currently on Kickstarter. 
Tell me a little about War Birds. What excites you about it?

War Birds is a gigantic passion project for me, and so just about everything about it gets me excited. J

It was going on twelve years ago that I was in a discussion about what makes a flying ace a flying ace (It’s generally five aerial kills, but rules vary based on country). I did what all internet era folks do and looked it up on Wikipedia. There I found a list of flying aces of World War II and in it was a name that sparked immediate interest: Lydia Litvak. A female flying ace??!! How on earth didn’t I know about that? The link was red though (there was no bio page for her) so I started feverously searching the internet. Not only was she a flying ace, she was a flying ace way back in WWII! The White Lily of Stalingrad – part of the 586th Fighter Regiment of the Air Defense Force of the Soviet Union, and there were others, lots and lots of others that flew with her!

This started a very long fascination for me about WWII and history in general – about what women did and really what we were and are. The more I read, the more I wanted to know. When I was in school and they taught the history of Women and War, it was an addendum – one story. Rosie the Riveter, the middle class white woman who came to work in the factories to free a man to fight and through that, heralded a new era of economic independence for women. But that’s an extremely narrow story, and not an entirely true one.

The stories I read were about women who served on the front lines as nurses and as ambulance drivers, snipers and tankers, spies and code-breakers! And of course I read about the prisoners and POWs and civilian women whohad the war come down on their heads. As I read, a much fuller multiplicity of women’s experience in the era started to unfold before me. I started to think about how we choose whose stories get told, and how we determine who the heroes are. I started thinking of the hardships of women on the home front, I started thinking about the courage of women in war zones. And I started thinking that I had to do something to make that story wider. To let other women experience the joy I had in finding out that we were always greater than I’d been taught we were.

And larp and freeform is a fantastic way to give people access to that experience. To become it, to feel it thumping in your chest. To really understand the courage, the compassion, and the resilience of the women whose shoulders we stand on.

And that’s just one of the things I love about this project.


When Against the Grain is happening, how does the structure and any mechanization of the game promote the vibe of the game and interaction between players?
The aim in Against the Grain was to create a story that was emotionally engaging and satisfying to play, that also acted as an exploratory model of how intersectional bias works. The game isn’t just about a moment in history where a bunch of random racists decided to launch a hate strike. It’s about everyday people that are a complex product of an unequal and unfair system, that have real struggles and who think they’re just doing what they need to survive. And it’s about how they will end up marginalizing others for what they think is their own survival. It’s about how what we want and think we need is often in direct opposition with equality because we’ve never been taught to find a better way.

To support that, in designing the structure of the game I contextualized the characters to help modern players feel like they could advocate for their character goals — even when they strongly disagree with them — to allow them to play functionally and in doing so, to create a situation of dramatic tension. I carefully calibrated the characters into a position of scarcity to ensure that the game wouldn’t result in easy answers, and I encouraged embodiment and emotional investment in that scarcity with physical mechanics that keep the pressure on. I borrowed on Nordic larp techniques to put tools in the facilitator’s hands to ensure the players could not escape the pressures and social context of their world. Perhaps most importantly in a game with particularly difficult subject matter, I framed the whole game in a context of transparency, safety and community to help players approach the game vulnerably and take as much away from the experience as possible.

You have some amazing stretch goals, and some great goals already hit. When looking for creators and authors for games, what did you look for, and what did you expect from them in theme and development?
I looked for passion — people that were really excited about the stories of women in the era, and people who could really connect with the goals of the project. I also tried my best to look for diversity across multiple axis points: in designers, in games, in the stories we were telling and who and how they were being represented. The base framework I put down in front of the designers was this: each game should explore a story about an experience or contribution that was real for women in WWII. The game should explore what opportunities the war provided to the women involved and also to look at the costs of the opportunity. The game should illustrate how it affected who the women were, how society’s view of them changed, what they could do, and what they could become.

What is your favorite moment in the experience of creation, research, and application of the games in War Birds?

Favorites are too hard! I’ll have to give you a few:
  • As a designer, the eureka moment of figuring out how Against the Grain was going to work and then watching playtest group after playtest group engage with it vulnerably and meaningfully, and tell me about the power of the experience. This was despite the fact that I thought there was a good chance that no one would choose to play the game due to its difficult subject matter. It taught me that big design risks really are worth taking.
  • As a creator, the moment I played We Were WASP at Fastaval. I was deep in gleeful research for an British Air Transport Auxiliary game called Spitfire Sisters when I saw the preview in the Fastaval program. I had an insecure, frustrated, competitive response to seeing it there, as creators sometimes do. But after being powerfully moved by playing the game, I had to let all of that go. I asked Ann that very night if she would consider submitting We Were WASP to the anthology, because she’d gone and written the game I wanted to write, and done it better than me. It made me totally recalibrate how I defined success on the project, and the project is 1000% better for it.
  • As a curator, the moment I read the first draft of Kira’s Mobilize. Including Ann was easy, because her game was already complete and my experience in play was proof it was the right decision. Kira was the first person I asked to write a game from scratch. I saw Kira talking on social media about _Coming Out Under Fire,_ a book I had on my (way too long) research list. It was clear that she was a right fit for the team by her approach to the history. I approached her to write a game and she committed right away. I always had faith she would do well, but tend to hold my breath when a thing so close to my heart is in someone else’s hands. The day I got her first draft I rushed home to read it, and it was great! The experience taught me that I can and should approach people to collaborate in creative projects, and it allowed me to get to a new level of trust in giving control away.

Finally, what do you hope people get out of playing the games presented in the War Birds Kickstarter?
I’m ambitious in my hope.

First and foremost, I want them to have great play experiences! I hope they connect with the games and the stories they’ll be telling, and I hope they serve as compelling communal experiences with their fellow players. I want the games to help them engage with history: I hope that play will expand the story of what women are and do and allow players to see the women that enabled the core infrastructure of the war through their work both at home and on the front and have a new appreciation for why it was important. And I hope the games are all thought provoking in their individual ways and individual themes. I hope they help us appreciate how hard we have fought to get here we are, and how far we still have left to go.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Update! – Details on current projects

I know I have not posted this month on my blog! I have been super busy with life, but I’ve spent a little bit of time on editing and prepping and doing photography (which will hopefully eventually be art) for Sweet Valley Hell. It’s a work in progress! I’m still planning on releasing it eventually. I still haven’t figured out how to make playtests happen, unfortunately. 

Hearts in Crisis is on hold pretty much until I finish school because I can’t really do the amount of research I want to do for the project while also doing school. It makes me sad, but it is still something I intend to finish – I just need to build a stronger supporting text for it than I had originally planned.

Finally, I’m hoping to start work on a new project soon (starting with writing down stuff), but it is pending the final release of someone else’s project, because it is… well, a hack. Hacks aren’t normally my thing, but there is a big fiction property that I want to try building a game for. I don’t think it makes sense to make a whole original system for it when it will work well as a hack – this might change, but the main plan as of the moment is to hack another game for this project. I’m not much for secrets, so I’ll let you know: I’m hoping to hack Urban Shadows (because it is a beautiful game) to fit the Parasol Protectorate series universe. It’s obviously an unofficial thing, but I still want to make it, and it will probably be a massive undertaking. If you’re a fan of the series and familiar with Urban Shadows (via G+, the Kickstarter, or otherwise), feel free to drop me a message with any tidbits of ideas you have, if you want and don’t mind me using them. 🙂 

I’ll try to update more! It’s been pretty hectic around here, so please accept my apologies.

Sweet Valley Hell – MONSTERS!

This is the draft Monsters section of Sweet Valley Hell. It’s in raw text form for now. Check it out!

MONSTERS AND YOU


There are tons of monsters in the Valley thanks to the Hellhole. This section goes over how they work, a little of their history, and then tells you what happens if one of your players gets the Hellhole treatment? Oh. My. God. Yes, it’s true, sometimes the monsters you see are like, the monsters you know, or something.


How the skill blocks work:

Name of Monster
Description
What they do: This is what the monster’s primary goal or action is.
How they do it: Their method of killing or whatever.
How to kill them: Pretty self-explanatory – how the player characters can kill the monster.
Powers: Any special abilities the monsters have.
Hit Points: How many hits it takes to kill or socially dominate the baddie. These are often variable – the number here is an average, and can change with the specific NPC monster.
skills: What die type they have in each skill, Fight and Sosh.


Dead-walkers

Ugh, gag me with a spoon. Not really, tho – you won’t need to, because these guys are grody to the max and totes unchill on top of that. Dead-walkers are literally dead people? They are the spirits of the idiots who got sent to Hell for doing like, bad stuff, and they kind of find a body of some variety when they crawl out of the Hellhole. Usually they’ll just grab like, a dead guy or something from a cemetery? But sometimes they get fresh meat, push the Granny outta Granny and go grocery shopping for more than just prune juice, and start murdering as soon as their body starts rotting because it doesn’t have a clean soul in it anymore.


What they do: Eat people. Ew.

How they do it: Biting, and like, tearing off limbs.

How to kill them: Headshots, and not the modeling kind. Oh, burning them works, too. Or a woodchipper.
Powers: None.

Hit Points: 5 Body, 0 Mind.

Skills: A regular dead-walker comes in at Fight: d6, Sosh: null. These aren’t the brightest bulbs in the closet. Tougher ones have a Fight of d8 or d10. If it’s like, a serial killer guy’s soul in a dead-walker body? They sometimes have a Sosh up to d8, but never higher. Groups of dead-walkers happen sometimes – see the Mob rules later on.


Vamps

“See ya later, suckers!” Yeah, the vamps are tired of hearing that joke, too. They’re sometimes super old, they spread like the plague, and they really, really like blood. Vamps are your garden variety vampire, with the same needs as any old creep: blood. Humans or animals, it doesn’t really matter, but most of the jerks always want to have like, live human blood or whatever, while the practically vegan vamps stick to critters – and they totally recycle, too. They have retractable pointy teeth, can turn into bats, and they can get a tan.


What they do: Suck blood and sometimes making new vamps.

How they do it: Tricking or capturing their victims, then getting their slurp on.

How to kill them: Stake to the heart, decapitation, or cremation.

Powers: 

Entrance – If a Vamp has a Sosh encounter with a player character and they win and have more successes than half of the player’s available Mind hit points, they can Entrance the player and give them one Sosh-based command. Example: Laurel (vamp) Entrances Hilary, a player character, and has her tell another character, Todd that his girlfriend Allie is totally cheating on him, and it stirs up conflict in the group.
Fly – Vamps can fly, but only when they change into a bat. This makes them much sneaker, and obvs much more, uh, flighty, but they can’t use their Sosh skill at all when they do it.
Regeneration – Unless the players stake the vamp’s heart, cut off their head, or burn them to ashes (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), vamps regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Vamps never die, and never age past the point they’re turned, unless they’re killed in the three ways listed above.
Super-senses – Vamps all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Turning – Vamps can turn a human into a vamp, too, and it just takes one bite and a quick stab to the heart. No, seriously, like, they bite a person? And then they stab them in the heart! That person then dies and wakes up as a vamp, pointy teeth and all.

Hit Points: 5 for standard vamps, 8 for tough guys, and 10 for serious baddies in Body and Mind each.

Skills: Standard vamps run Fight: d8, Sosh: d6. Some of the smoother cats will go Fight: d8, Sosh: d8. Queens like Laurel would be hitting Fight: d10, Sosh: d10.




Demons

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… except it kinda does. Mostly in the like, hundreds of demons that hang around in the Hellhole, some of which have managed to climb out and be like, human looking and stuff. Demons don’t possess people initially, they make their own bodies from the ether. This means they’re typically pretty hot, and not just in the Hell way? They can possess people, though, and often do, but it’s really taxing. They have a wide range of agendas, and some could even be allies to the player characters? Some want power, some want love, some just want to watch the world burn. Like, literally, they want to make Hell take over the Earth.


What they do: Possess people, manipulate people, and pursue agendas.
How they do it: Using their demonic powers and their charming personalities.

How to kill them: Capture their soul and toss it back into the Hellhole. Capturing a demon’s soul requires an incantation (any priest should know it), a vessel (a jar, bottle, locket, etc.), and the demon’s Mind hit points to be at 0.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players capture their soul (after reducing them to zero Mind hit points), demons regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Demons never die, and can appear in a body of any age. They can only be stopped if their souls are captured, and even then, they might someday rise again from the Hellhole.
Possession – if a demon reduces someone’s Mind hit points to zero, they can possess their body. While in possession of the body, they can do like, basic stuff? But they can’t perform anything huge like, killing other people or whatever. Simple tasks, man.
Mind over Body – A demon can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.

Hit Points: Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12. Demons are like, totally rad.

Skills: No demon will have a Sosh of less than d6. Like, ever. The sky’s the limit, too, with that. Fight skills for demons range between d4 and d10.




Were-beasts

Have you ever heard of like, a menagerie? It’s kind of like a bunch of animals, and that’s what there are roaming the streets of the Valley. Well, kinda. were-beasts, or shapeshifters if you want to be fancy, include run of the mill werewolves to stealthy werecougars, but just about any kind of creature works. There are two types of were-beasts: ones who were animals first, called like, therians, and ones who were humans first, called anthros. were-beasts are the result of a magical infection, kind of like, chicken pox or something? It’s totally bichen for the humans who get infected. For the animals, though, it’s more like punishment. The infection is spread by bites and exchange of bodily fluids – basically anything hotter than a kiss will spread it, so cover up.


What they do: Honestly? They just wanna be left alone. But sometimes they eat people, or maim them.

How they do it: Gnashing teeth, grody claws, and crazy serious strength.

How to kill them: Silver bullets do okay – heart and brain only, and cutting off heads only works if you, like separate the pieces? They might still get chatty, though. The hardest, but most effective method, is (like so many things) to just light it up.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless they are torched to ashes, decapitated, or shot in the head or heart by a silver bullet (and reduced to 0 Body hit points) were-beasts regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. In the case of were-beasts, they will even regrow limbs and reattach heads if there’s nothing keeping them apart.
Strong Body, Strong Mind – All of the were-beasts are like, super smart or strong. The Principal decides, based on the type of animal, whether the were-beast gets a bonus d6 to add to their dice pool for Sosh or for Fight. For example, a werewolf might get a bonus d6 to their Fight, while a wereraven (no joke!) might get a bonus d6 to their Sosh.
Super-senses – Were-beasts all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Transformation – Any were-beast can appear as a human, a specific animal, and a hybrid form. Most newer were-beasts experience involuntary transformations, particularly around the turning of the moon, either new moon or full moon. Extreme emotion can also result in transformation.

Hit Points: Were-beasts are pretty much the heavy-hitters of the supernatural world, and they have the hit points to show it. Every were-beast, no matter how small, starts with at least 6 Body hit points. They can have up to 12. Mind hit points have the same range for anthros, but therians are typically an average of 2 Mind hit points lower than average, so they’d run from 4 Mind hit points to 10.

Skills: Were-beasts have different specialties, so like, they do different stuff? And like, depending on what kind of animal they are, they’ll have different skills? So the Principal can be super creative here. To toss examples out a werewolf would be like, Fight: d10, Sosh d6. A wereraven would be like, Fight d6, Sosh d8. Keep in mind that therians are often more vicious and less sociable.




Archons

So like, you know when you think of beings of light and energy and people call them angels? Yeah, well, angels exist, but those beings? Not angels. Archons are these totally cool beings that kind of transcend reality, and like, they’re basically untouchable. They come from beneath Hell and above Heaven and they’ve always been here, just as elements of the universe. They are super rare, but when they do show up, they bring either a lot of good or a hell of a lot of bad. The only way to beat them if they’re gunning for you is to basically convince them the world is worth saving. Good luck with that.


What they do: Grant grace or destruction.

How they do it: Self-sacrifice.

How to kill them: You can’t.

Powers: 

Apocalypse – They either temporarily boost the Mind hit points of everyone in the surrounding 30 miles by 2, or they temporarily lower their Body hit points by 3. This effect lasts for one session (if it happens at the end of one session, it would be effective for the whole of the next session). There is no roll, they just do it.

Hit Points: Body is irrelevant. Mind is between 5 and 10.

Skills: Yeah, dude, you can’t even imagine going toe-to-toe with these guys, so let’s just pretend that their Fight is like, infinity. Sosh, though, ranges from d6 to d10.




Ghosts

They clang, they howl, they shake chains. Spooky! Ghosts are, in general, pretty chill. They’re just spirits who spirited out of Hell and didn’t grab a body on the way. They’re undead, not deadly, and basically like your second cousin Lenny who won’t stop leaving his gym shoes in the hallway – kind of a pain the ass, but like, mostly harmless. If they do cause trouble, like, by causing car accidents, disrupting the peace, that kind of thing, they can be exorcised. Call your local priest!


What they do: Cause a nuisance.

How they do it: Haunting.

How to kill them: It’s more like, you know, banishment? But yeah, exorcism. Good ol’ fashioned Latin prayers.

Powers: 

Dead – They aren’t alive, they don’t have a body, they kind of wisp around and are generally immaterial. Oh, and they can’t be killed. Again.
Washington’s Curse – If you think they might have useful info, just ask them – ghosts cannot tell a lie.
Hit Points: Null and null again. To get rid a ghost, seriously, just pray in Latin.

Skills: None.




Cherubim

The holy host has no clue if there is a god, but they def want to be righteous, dude. The cherubim are one of the types of angels, and the only ones you’re likely to meet. The archangels don’t make visits to Earth, so the cherubim do the dirty work. The dirty work being Hellhole crowd control. Almost every cherubim is on the side of the good, or at least the mostly-good. One or two might have delusions of grandeur, though, so like, look out? Oh, also? When you see one, you’ll know it – cherubim have a body like Bessie the cow and faces like Janus, with a couple of sets of wings to go ‘round.


What they do: Defend the righteous.
How they do it: Angelic grace.

How to kill them: Silver cross made into a sword. In the heart. Ouch.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players stab them in the heart with a fancy sword (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), cherubim regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Mind over Body – Cherubim can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.
Immortality – Cherubim never die, and only appear as their totally rad winged form. They can only be stopped if they’re killed, and even then, they are only sent to Heaven again, and might come back someday.

Hit Points:  Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12.

Skills: Cherubim rarely have Fight skills of less than d6, and can go up and up from there. Sosh skills for cherubim, however, are like humans – d4 and up.




Void

Void are the depths of Hell, the darkest of nights, the deepest of seas. Epic, yeah? They’re super creepy little guys – typically the size of children or teens but not kids at all. They are literally Hell beasts who have crawled up to devour souls. They have these wicked big mouths with sharp, pointy, needle-like teeth. Too many teeth. Ugh. They’re not super sociable, and mostly speak in the tongues of Hell, but they’re quick and stealthy.


What they do: Devour souls.

How they do it: Bite, suck, slurp. Soul be gone.

How to kill them: They die like mortals, so you can mow ‘em down.

Powers: 

Devour – they literally eat your soul. If they get a bite on you, they’ll suck Mind hit points out of you by the minute, getting an extra bonus d6 to add to their Fight that always counts as a success so long as they get at least one success in their roll, including that die.
Stealth – They’re creepy, they’re crawly, and they blend into the shadows like… uh, like a shadow.
Speed – Void are totally fast. It takes one additional success to get the first hit in on them in a fight.

Hit Points: They average around 5 Body and Mind hit points, just like humans.

Skills: Void have no higher than Sosh: d8, and average around Fight: d6.


Mob Rules

When monsters get together in groups of 3 or more, they’re called a mob. So, like, when this happens? Treat the monsters as one unit, where the stats are equal to the most powerful monster, but raise their die type for their stats by two ranks. As an example, if you have six dead-walkers, and the like, strongest of the deadwalkers is at Fight: d6, the mob as a whole would be at Fight: d10. Their hit points will still be equal to the highest hit points.

It’s important to keep in mind that major NPCs should not be part of mobs and should have their hit points and rolls monitored individually. Basically, like, if they are important enough to have a name? Like, they aren’t totally mob mooks.

PLAYERS AS MONSTERS


It would be like, totally uncool if they players couldn’t be like, monstrous. Here’s the way that works.


Players get the powers of all of the monsters applied to their character, so they can transform, possess, all that. If the monster has higher hit points and/or skill rank dice than them, they gain one hit point in each hit point set that is higher and/or one skill rank die in each skill that is higher. If it is the opposite, where the hit points or skill rank dice are lower, then the player character would lower their hit points and/or skill rank dice by one. For example, if a vampire bites a player character, and the vampire’s hit points are Mind: 6, Body: 7, and their skill ranks are Fight: d8, Sosh: d10, while the player character’s hit points are Mind: 5, Body: 5, and skill ranks are Fight: d6, Sosh: d6, then you would adjust the player’s stats to be Mind: 6, Body: 6, and Fight: d8, Sosh: d8.



This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Sweet Valley Hell – A like, Hellhole in the Valley

This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. I’m hoping to write up the Principal’s instructions and the monster section over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!

SWEET VALLEY HELL (DRAFT)

PLAYER’S INSTRUCTIONS


“Oh. My. God. Did you see the dagger that Azazel was carrying last week? Did you know it like, devours souls?”


“No way!”


“Yes way. It was totally rad!”


—


So like, in this game, you play valley gals and guys in this totally sweet alternate universe where a portal to Hell has opened up in the Valley. There are like, really rad monsters, demons, and dead-walkers roaming the ‘burbs and like, magic is a thing. It’s bitchen.


Most of the time, you’ll be hitting up the mall and hanging with your friends, so sosh skills are like way important? But, you’re gonna find out how dangerous it really is living on the edge of Hell, too, so whether you’re into football or cheerleading, rock those abs.


In the game, you’ll see demons – some are friendly, others are, like complete jerks? I mean, what is their problem? Then, there are the monsters – you know, dudes and chicks who are like, not human and stuff, and they range from vamps to werecritters to like, other creepy stuff. Last are the dead-walkers. They’re like zombies or whatever, but most of the time they’re totally grody and used to be like, murderers, so you gotta watch out.


When you start the game, you get like, anywhere from 4 to 8 points to build your character’s skills, depending on how hard the Principal (the like, person running the game?) wants the game to be, or how long after the Hellhole opens they want it to be. You have two skills: Sosh and Fight. Life is simple in the Valley, so don’t bum anybody out by making it complicated. Your skills buy you die sizes in your skills. The first point in a skill buys you a four-sided die. This is like, sooo lower than average. So you can spend another two points to buy up to a six-sided die. Each die up costs two points, so if you wanted to start the game with a six-sided die in Sosh and an eight-sided die in Fight, you’d spend 3 points in Sosh and 5 points (3 for six-sided and 2 to move up to eight-sided) in Fight. This makes you a little tough for fighting and pretty average in social situations.


Your hit points are on your character sheet. There are both Body and Mind hit points. You only get 5 of each unless you get a magic boost. 

Each player (like, you guys) starts with these things called Popularity Points (We’ll call them Pops, because yeeah) and duuuh, some of Daddy’s Money! Pops are really cool because you can spend them to increase the size of your dice when you are rolling against the baddies. Daddy’s Money buys you more dice to roll! The dice you buy are equal to the die size that your base die is or to the size that is bought with Pops, so like, if you buy your base die up to a ten-sided die, all of your dice you buy with Daddy’s Money would be ten-sided. Sweet!


Each session of the game, you get a bit of each of these – kind of like, an allowance or something. Along with setting the difficulty of the game with the skill points, the Principal will decide how many Pops and how much of Daddy’s Money you get. Typically you’ll start with two Pops and, since Daddy’s Money only comes in hundreds, like, $400? Each die you add with Daddy’s Money will cost you $100. Cha-ching! If it’s going to be an extremely long game or the Hellhole is going to bite you hard, the Principal might up it a bit. You can always gain more Pops by doing sweet things in game, like risking your life for another player or a bystander, or maybe like, doing something epic. Daddy’s money, though, only comes once a sesh.


Fighting demons, monsters, and dead-walkers is pretty rad. You like, run up to them, or try to trick them, or something like that, and then you grab a die from the table – a like, six-sided one sometimes, or bigger. You can change the size of it and totally add more dice.


You’ll roll the die and the Principal (the like, person running the game?) will roll a die or a couple of dice to represent the monster (find more on that later), and you compare them to see who has the highest numbers, and how many of them. The roller who has the highest number on a die wins, and the loser takes hits equal to how many dice show a number higher than their highest.


So like, if you’re rolling against a vamp, and the Principal lays out like, four dice – all six-sided – based on the vamp’s powers? You put out the same number of dice, using your base die (In this case, for your Fight skill), which you buy up to an eight-sided die, and then some added ones. You both roll. You get a 6, 8, 3, and another 3. The vamp’s results are 4, 5, 3, and 2. You win because you have the highest number – 8. They take 2 hits because you have two dice (6 and 8) higher than their highest number (5). Bam, bam! You kick ass.


Social situations are simpler, because bystanders and non-player characters (like your BFF or your Dad or your Coach) mostly have skills equal or lower than yours. If you’re going up against them, this is normally a time you can be pretty chill, unless it like, means a lot. If you’re in a social situation with a demon or a monster, it rolls like the Fighting scenes, except you use your Sosh skill. Dead-walkers can’t be reasoned with – they’re raw and stupid, just filled with rage.

You’re ready to start the game. The next part of this is for the Principal’s eyes only – like, seriously, dudes, you don’t want to be totally uncool.

Hangout with Brie and PULSE Creators

Interview with David Pulver – Laboratory of the Forsaken!


Today I have a brief interview with David Pulver, a freelance writer in Canada, just for you! David is working on an adventure game for Crafty Games‘ FANTASY CRAFT Roleplaying system called “Laboratory of the Forsaken“.

B: David, do you want to tell me a little about Laboratory of the Forsaken?

D: The soon to be released “Laboratory of the Forsaken” is my first adventure for Crafty Game’s FANTASY CRAFT roleplaying system.

It takes place in the Realm, the same setting used in their earlier TIME OF HIGH ADVENTURE book, which features a conflict between the Circle (free-thinking but occasionally out of control scientist-arcanists) and the Church (nice folks unless you get on the bad side of their inquisitors).

The adventurers get to investigate the manor house of Doctor Magnus Croatalorn, a Circle member who has been performing experiments to investigate the origins of life. The Church has decided to shut him down (since he wants to prove life was magically rather than divinely created) but the inquisitors they sent after him haven’t reported back. Magnus has also dropped out of touch with the Circle, however, so they suspect something has gone wrong. 

The adventurers can either be servants of the Church sent on a follow-up mission, or agents of the Circle attempting to protect Magnus and his research before the Church can get their hands on it, or mercenaries who blunder into the situation. As they explore the manor they’ll piece together its secrets from the doctor’s lab notes and experiments. It’s a cross between a haunted house and a dungeon adventure, with elements of dark fantasy or horror thrown into it.

B: How long did it take you to create the adventure?


D: It took about two days to come up with the basic concept of a dark fantasy horror adventure set in the laboratory of a vivisectionist-alchemist who was obsessed with finding the secret origin of life. Crafty Games and I batted the concepts back and forth for a couple more weeks to set the specific details and parameters of the adventure. Then it took about a month to write it.

B: What suggestions would you have for others looking to write adventures – best practices for level design, flavor text, etc.?
D: For me, the key thing is to have a solid, interesting theme and concept and a careful outline. In this case the theme was mad fantasy science, so the adventure contained a lot of research notes, crazed experiments, and so on. Usually I work out a background first, but then get down to the nuts and bolts (e.g., what’s where, paths through the adventure, mapping, and so on).

It’s probably best to leave flavor text for last after you have the skeleton of the adventure. I’ve found that if you start with the flavor text it’s very easy to overwrite and end up with something that is too long.

That said, doing a bit of flavor text first is useful to give yourself a feel for what you’re doing. In my case I wrote a short biographical letter written by the mad scientist (Dr. Croatalorn) to a friend of his, laying out his philosophy, a key event in his childhood that led him away from the teachings of the Church and toward exploration of darker truths. I didn’t actually use this in the game – it was a bit too long – but it gave me a sense of his character and motivations, which helped me.

I did something similar for his wife Lunalia, who is another key character and possible ally of the adventurers in the plot.

Ideally you should playtest an adventure, but often players will not have time to explore all the paths. A trick you can use is to “talk through” an adventure with someone else – essentially skipping all the game mechanics (assume they win all the fights, make all the skill checks, or whatever) but just narrate what they see, who they meet, and have them tell you what they do.

This is a good way to get a sense of whether any mysteries, level design concepts and so on are too complex or too simple, and also it can sometimes reveal options and strategies you didn’t think of when you wrote the adventure.

The most difficult part of the adventure was striking a balance between a coherent, dramatic narrative (e.g., building up action and an exciting conclusion) and giving the players different routes and options. This had to be considered from the very start of the adventure, as Crafty Games Fantasy Craft setting tends to forgo a traditional good vs. evil structure in favor of different factions, any of which the adventurers could be aligned with. The adventure is set in the “Realm” background that Crafty Games introduced in their prior adventure collection Time of High Adventure. This introduced a conflict between religion and magic (The Church vs. The Circle, a group of arcane-scientists).

This became a central conflict in Laboratory of the Forsaken, but I set up the adventure so that the players could choose which side to support, or remain neutral, and also ended up writing three different variations of the adventure’s opening to accommodate different player character motivations or alignments.

Thanks to David for taking the time to share with us about his writing and design process! Check out the adventure, Laboratory of the Forsaken, at DriveThruRPG!


THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

The Song of My People


The leather wraps scraped across the callouses on Lilylen’s palms as she twisted the wraps around her hands. She tied them tightly. The wraps served as good protection from the wooden sticks she picked up and spun through her fingers. It was time to go, and she was nearly ready.


Lilylen stared out from the window of the holding, counting the rows of soldiers. There were near a hundred, armored and standing at the ready. Those were her chosen enemies. Chosen, yes, because there were so many different men to fight, so many threats to her home and in this case, her soul. The lord in command of these soldiers was a dark mage who had stolen the souls of his soldiers to bring himself more power. Lord Niccen, ruler of the city of Donwyn, what he called himself.


Untrue, though. She stood in the halls of Donwyn now, ready to protect it from his army of soulless men. If her side lost, then he would take over and hold the small city under thrall. This was not what she wanted. Donwyn was not her home now, but it had been for many years. She had no home, and her family had all aged away and left for the northern lights. Still, she wished to protect Donwyn, and her magic was strong.


She adorned herself with her armor now. Silver tips on her pointed ears, twisted and pierced through the skin, were enchanted to protect her from the raucous sounds of battle and hone her hearing. She pulled on a chain shirt and belted it with a leather strap that shone bright when she cinched it – her protection spell activating and spreading over her body in a shield. Finally, she raised her only weapon: her drum.


The drum was a gift from her mother on the day of her turning. Her mother had promised her the moon, and true to her promise, the large drum was made with the whitest of leathers stretched tight and it played the deepest rumbling. Her turning was a celebration of her sixteenth anniversary of birth, and marked the day her magic came true.


Now was no time for reminiscing, though.


Lilylen joined the warriors below in the great hall who all were armored and ready after enjoying midnight feast. There was a small party of adventurers standing in the center of the hall. Her companions were the fighters Dor and Leaf, the magician Wend, and trickster Fig. They had come with her to Donwyn, excited for the prospect of battle and as true friends. She would owe them everything if they won this battle. She raised her voice loud.


“Friends!” She clapped Dor on the shoulder. “It is time for the cries of battle and the victory! Let us feast our eyes now that we have feasted our bellies, and take down Lord Niccen and his thralls!”


Her words were met with a roar of approval from the crowd. Some warriors banged swords against shields in echoing clangs while they shouted and she cheered back at them.


“That’s the spirit, my good men and women! Join me now on the field!”


The warriors began to pour out of the hall, taking their places on walls and near gates. The battle was not long off, and Lilylen’s blood began to rush in her ears.


“Dor, Leaf, Wend, Fig – you are all my companions through battle again.”


“Lilylen, we fight for you as much for glory.” Dor’s eyes were bright behind her raggedy bangs. “Once we finish this, we will go back to the road and beyond.”


Fig slipped something sneakily into Lilylen’s hand. She looked down to see a small jeweled dagger, sheathed in shadow. She looked at Fig, raising one eyebrow in question. Fig just smiled and crossed his fingers.


“To war, to win!”


—


The adventurers made their way to the head of the warrior’s ranks, and Lilylen called for the gates to be opened. There was a loud creaking and clamoring as the large double gates opened, revealing the battlefield ahead. The warriors and Lilylen’s companions poured out onto the field, readying for the first light of dawn.


The sun rose slow and lazily, peeking through behind the holding and shining light on the thralls. Lilylen spun her drumsticks and rolled them on the drum, creating a deep, low rumble. A light mist fell down from the sky and settled over her fellows, providing cover from the soldiers and putting a protective shield around her fellows. The thrum thrum thrum echoed across the grass, and with that, the soldiers lurched forward, the warriors began to run, and they reached each other in a glorious crash.


The warriors had the strength of their heart and home pulsing through them, and all who heard the sound of Lilylen’s drum were given more power to resist their enemies. She strode forward, slowly, between the fighting, ducking and dodging while Dor and Leaf cleared her path. She had one responsibility only: to get to Niccen.


Dor and Leaf before her ran into the broken ranks of soldiers. The soldiers were technically powerful – precise in movement – but they lacked the intuitive skills of the warriors and adventurers, which failed them. In essence, they were strong only in numbers, just landscape to trample.


Wend walked behind her, casting bolts of mana into the surrounding crowds of soldiers and calling down fire from the sky. Fig was nowhere to be seen, but that was best. His tricks were not to be noticed until they had already been done.


They were nearly through the soldiers, pushing through while the warriors battled against the twice-strong army. At the back of the ranks was Niccen, not even fearful enough to be on a horse, standing proudly as though he were untouchable. He caught Lilylen’s gaze and there was no emotion in his eyes but sneering cruelty. She quickened her pace, leaving Wend behind unknowingly.


She was pressing forward and focused on Niccen, continuing to drum the slow rumble, when she felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. Her breath caught, she felt something within her go empty, and she struggled to breathe. She looked around behind her only to see Fig jump out from behind a soldier and land on another man – a man holding the jeweled dagger she had been carrying. Fig slashed the man’s throat with one sharp swipe, then he collected the dagger and returned it to Lilylen’s pocket.


“Be more careful!” He shouted, and the noise rang in her ears as she gasped for air. She began to lose her footing. Fig’s eyes widened and he placed his hands on her back, whispering an incantation. She felt her heartbeat pumping throughout her body, and slowly felt the pain ease and the air fill her lungs again. The battle pressed in close to them, and there were soldiers moving to attack. Lilylen braced herself.


Suddenly, a clap of thunder sounded and lightning struck, spreading through the bodies of the soldiers, turning them into crisp wastes. Lilylen sighed in relief and doubled her speed, trying to make up for lost time. She reached Niccen quickly.


He didn’t even move. She stood ten feet away from him and all he did was stand there, unafraid, undaunted. She gritted her teeth, and began to pound her drum faster, harder. She opened her mouth, and the sound from inside her was a deep bellow.


“Long we fight and long we live,
we do not fear the dark.
Strong we are and never gone,
we do not fear the burning light.
Hold back the night,
the night so cold.


We fight so long,
long will we live.”


She sang it again and again, her voice becoming louder and louder. Niccen stood there, quietly at first, then laughing. He did not notice the red light growing behind him, growing larger with each drumbeat.


“This is your plan?” He yelled above the drumming. “Sing me to death?”


Niccen moved his hands, muttering an incantation she couldn’t quite catch, even with her unique hearing. There were corpses around her from the battle, and they slowly raised themselves to their feet. Her breath caught in her throat, straining her voice. She found her voice again as she spun around with her drum, changing the beat and singing faster as she slammed bodily into the undead monsters surrounding her. They pressed in on her, grabbing at her clothes and scratching her face. Her heart was pounding in her head. She knew she didn’t have much longer until she would lose control, so she stopped moving and planted her feet. The song was sung.


Lilylen’s voice stopped mid-verse, and she banged on the drum three times in succession, and from behind Niccen appeared a giant, red, translucent dragon. The dragon was massive, a full-sized red dragon with a long crest on it’s head. Its flesh was nothing more than red light, the body of a spirit of vengeance. Niccen turned in response to its roar, and Lilylen imagined that his eyes grew wide. The dragon devoured him in one bite, and inside the dragon Niccen tumbled into its stomach. Lilylen felt elation welling up inside her, until there was a loud pop and Niccen disappeared. She spun around in panic, running into the corpses crowding around her who toppled over, the incantation controlling them no longer held.


“Fig! Dor! Leaf! Wend!” She called for her companions, who were fending off the soldiers. “He’s gone!”


None could hear her. In that moment, she felt a gust of wind burst against her side and tear through the leather of her drum. She gasped and turned to face Niccen, who was spinning a whirlwind. The wind blew so hard that it wrested the drum from her hands and took the air from her lungs. She felt as though her very soul was being pulled from her, but she staggered towards him, her face contorted with rage.


Blood boiling and rage overtaking her, her muscles grew and flexed, and her eyes tightened as the irises turned to bright red. She felt the dagger in her pocket and pulled it out, pressing her body against the whirlwind, her rage strength allowing her to resist it’s power. She screamed and bellowed at Niccen, at the wind, at everything that was in her way of tearing the mage apart.


“I will eat your soul!” Niccen cried out, and now she could hear the fear. She would always hear the fear when her rage rose within her. She breached the wall of wind and watched him tumble backwards. The look of terror on his face was all she needed to see. She tackled him and stabbed the dagger into his heart, twisting and wrenching it. The shadow of the blade spread out through his skin in a spiderweb, blackness filling his veins. She watched until the light left his eyes, hearing the crunch of cartilage and bone beneath her weight.


Soon, she felt the blood draining from her face. Her muscles weakened, and she staggered, falling to the ground beside Niccen’s blood-covered corpse. Around her, the thralls fell down, slowly but surely being overtaken by death.


She felt weightless as Dor and Leaf picked her up and carried her off the field. The warriors crowded around as she was taken to the hall. As she drifted off into weary rest, she heard the song of her people. The depth of their voices. The love in their hearts.


“For life! For victory! For Donwyn!”





THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Talk about Geek Culture

I hear a lot about Geek Culture, and I know a lot of Geeks and a lot of geeks. I wanted to kind of ruminate (really navel-gaze) about what Geek is and what geek is and who takes on that label. This is all just my stuff so I don’t really care too much if people agree, I just felt like writing it.

First, I don’t think anyone has to be a geek or that they should be labeled one without wanting to be one. I do think that people can participate in Geek culture without being a geek or a Geek.

Let’s clarify some stuff (these are my descriptions and definitions only):

Geek Culture = the overarching media and social constructs surrounding enthusiasts and Geeks/geeks.

Geek = someone who is a geek and active participant in Geek Culture. When used as “a Geek (thing)” or “Geeky”, something that is mainstream geek, common to a larger majority of the community, or something that is geeky.

geek/enthusiast = a person who enjoys media or activities and participates actively in enjoyment, whether it is sharing experiences with others or simply investing time and/or money in their hobby or interest. A person can be an enthusiast without being a geek, but rarely a geek without being an enthusiast, and geek is a self-identified label. When used as “a geek (thing)” or “geeky”, something that is any type of hobby or preoccupation, any level of commonality in the community, but not necessarily part of the larger Geek community.

fan = a person who enjoys a thing or activity, with varying levels of interest.

Not all geeks are Geeks but all Geeks are geeks, geeks can be fans but not all fans are geeks, all geeks are enthusiasts but not all enthusiasts are geeks, and so on.

As an example, I’m a Geek and a geek and a fan. I consume mainstream geek media like Star Trek and Star Wars and Harry Potter, and actively participate in the enjoyment – I share it with friends, I talk about the meaning and theories addressed in the media, and I invest money in clothing, jewelry, posters, etc. about these things. I’m an RPG geek, not just playing but also discussing theory and investing money into the products, and a participant in the overall gaming community. Someone just the same as me might say that they’re just a geek, or just an enthusiast, or just a fan, but they have the option of a narrower label.

I think one of the big problems right now is that one, we’re applying the geek or Geek label to people or things without it necessarily fitting. See, someone can be a geek about football but not consider themselves a geek, instead using the label of fan. However, someone who is a fan of football might consider themselves a sports geek, because they know the gritty details of the statistics, details about the players, and other things that indicate a deeper level of involvement.

Sometimes people are geeks or enthusiasts because of their profession – academics, experts – but don’t use the geek moniker because it has a negative component for a lot of people. Geek was used as an insult and has a kind of yucky history, and some people don’t want the label because of that. That’s totally okay! They don’t have to be geeks! We can think of them in that context to understand them, but that doesn’t make them geeks – you can’t be a geek without consent. This is part of why the Fake Geek meme is so outrageous. Geek is a self-applied label, so telling someone they aren’t a geek or that they don’t do enough of whatever you think they should do to be a geek is utter nonsense. Just as someone can behave in a manner of a geek and not call themselves a geek, someone can behave in a manner not like a geek and still call themselves a geek. 

Another problem is that geek has become Geek – mainstream – in many arenas. Geekiness carries so much baggage that being a part of the mainstream or there even being mainstream geeks or Geeks is just weird, man. Geeks are used to being separate from the norm, a niche market, outcasts. Now we have TV shows that feature geeks prominently and often not flatteringly. Non-geeks adopt our image – geeky references on t-shirts, black rimmed glasses, even attaching themselves to our media and our gadgets. 
We feel defensive. I feel it, too, even though some might consider me a Fake Geek, when people on the periphery claim, “I’m such a geek!” when in my mind, they’re really a “Geek”. They’re enthusiasts and consumers but they are more than that a part of the larger Geek Culture. They might like Avengers (the film) and have never picked up a comic in their life, and that’s cool! They can be a part of Geek Culture. They can consider themselves geeks, big or little G, because it’s perception that matters. How you perceive yourself – a geek, an enthusiast, a fan, or a Geek – is what matters, not how I look at you, or some stranger looks at you. You judge if your amount of investment into something counts enough to make you a geek. 
Geek Culture has some biiiig problems, though. One, the Fake Geek thing, which I’ve addressed above, is total bullshit and needs to die die die. Two, there’s still so much rampant sexism and racism and classism. 
Classism? Yeah, I said it. Being a Geek costs money a lot of the time, and because collector items often require a lot of investment (and sometimes geeky endeavors in general take a lot of time and money), it can give people the impression that if you don’t have the funds to participate in all of geek/Geek, you aren’t allowed to be a Geek. Maybe someone only saw Avengers and doesn’t buy the comics because they only have a small allowance and $4 comic books multiple times a month really add up, but seeing one movie this summer at the shitty local theater was just affordable. They can still be a geek if they want to, because we shouldn’t have a buy in to be a geek. Geek isn’t a country club!
Racism and sexism? You can’t throw an Xbox without hitting an article about the sexism and racism in Geek Culture. From video games to movies to comics to historical reenactments – these things are pervasive in normal society, and geek communities have no special exception. The thing is, we all should care enough about this community and about the media we consume to actually give a fuck about changing it. 
What we consume as Geeks or geeks or fans or enthusiasts, whatever label you want to put on it, contributes to the image we present as people or as members of Geek Culture. And we need to change it. If people look at us and see these negative aspects first and foremost, it gives all of us a bad name, and that’s part of why people deny identification. Geeks shouldn’t be known for being assholes or ignorant. We should strive to make our fandoms and our interests look better, not be negligent or dismissive and make them look worse. 
But, so many of us don’t. After all, it’s just a game! It’s just a movie! It’s just a comic! 
It’s just a huge part of our lives. 

Just some stuff to think on.

<3,

BCS







THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.