Category Archives: Roleplaying

January 17, 2018 · 11:11 am

Current Projects

I’ve been a bit distracted from writing tasks lately. I bought into the second Kingdom Death: Monster Kickstarter and received my copy of the core game a while back. It’s really quite a fun game, and given how high-quality the miniatures are I kind of wanted to paint them up nicely after I assembled them. I was pretty happy with the results of my first couple, so then I decided I wanted to give them fancy bases, instead of just flat black ones.

My KD:M miniatures are still a work in progress, but by then I’d accumulated a fair few bits and pieces and I’d seen online that some people had crafted proper versions of the game terrain that gets set up on the board. I thought that looked really cool, and kind of really wanted to enhance my own game with some. There are even some really cool 3D printed pieces. So I started expanding a bit in preparation for that.

Of course, getting into the KD:M terrain meant that I saw a lot of other miniature terrain. I’m an avid tabletop gamer and I’ve always thought miniature terrain and stuff like dungeon tiles are really cool, but I’d been away from games that would use them for so long that I’ve always thought it was a waste of time for me to do anything with it.

However, I’ve recently also gotten back into Dungeons & Dragons, and am currently running a 5th Edition game that I’m really enjoying. I have some more game ideas I’d like to get into in the future, too, so I ended up spending way too much money on tools and bits and now I’m working on buy and crafting pieces of terrain for future D&Ding.

So, yeah. I’ve been busy, just not with the sort of thing I really should be busy with.

…

ANYWAY!

…

I’m pretty happy with how Blackened Hearts turned out, and given the surprising amount of success and feedback it’s gotten I’ve been thinking that I might want to follow it up with another LARP scenario. I’ve got a mess of notes now for potential scenarios I could write, but I’m not completely sure what I want to actually commit the time to working on just yet. While I have a bunch of different ideas, at the moment I think I’m narrowing in on two in particular:

Ghost Hunterz

A kitschy, low-budget cable TV show crew go on-location to a building where a series of horrific murders were committed years ago. The place is rumoured to be extremely haunted, so the crew, including a supposedly psychic medium, is hoping to communicate with the spirits and film some supernatural phenomena. After little success early on, once the clock strikes midnight the doors of the building lock and the world outside the windows is enveloped in darkness, trapping them inside. The producer assumes that their ‘psychic’ is running some smoke and mirrors deal, but is all for it if it gets them some good footage. Of course, the ghosts are all-too real… and one of them is a killer.

This one has what I think is a pretty interesting central mechanic/conceit—half of the cast are unable to interact with or perceive the other half directly (because they’re ghosts). Communication between the two distinct groups is done indirectly through the use of ghostly powers. The ghost characters can wander around, interact with each other, and eavesdrop on the living freely, while living characters strictly instructed to completely ignore the ghost players’ presence, unless ghostly powers are used. An Ouija board is the primary medium, but there is also interference with recording equipment, poltergeist activity, and even possession. I’m also considering a mechanic for the ghost killer to be able to start murdering the living people (and for them to subsequently become ghost characters) but I’m not quite sure how to pace it out yet.

Glory to the Crown

A bored, low-tier noble of a magical steampunk empire has come to a mining facility, along with representatives from the powerful Church and Academy, to tour it and make a decision on whether it will be shut down now that its richest veins have all been exhausted. The tour is interrupted when workers suddenly break into an ancient sealed chamber, filled with amazing discoveries. Dangerous readings cause the resident radiologist send the whole facility into a quarantine lockdown, trapping everyone inside until help arrives.

The central mechanic/conceit of this one is that there are a number of potentially very valuable, very important objects that have been discovered, but no one has complete direct access to study them until after the quarantine is lifted. Each object has a number of properties, and each property affects the value of the item differently. The idea is that the academy and church players will try to find out what information they can, and make deals with the noble to try to obtain what they think are the most valuable items, without over-committing their resources.

The facilities’ workers have a bit more access to the discoveries, but have their own motivations and desires and may try to strike deals of their own with the church/academy. There are also secondary major plots involving an undercover agent of the rebellion who can turn the whole thing on its head if they get enough other characters to support them, and the pending decision on whether or not the facility will be closed (threatening the workers’ livelihoods).

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Filed under Future Projects, Personal life, Roleplaying

November 17, 2017 · 7:29 am

Blackened Hearts released!

The pirate live-action roleplaying scenario I’ve been working is finally complete and published. I’m actually quite surprised at how long it took me to get it all put together, worked, reworked, playtested, torn down, written back up, polished, and finished — part of that was simply me being unmotivated and easily distracted, but a lot of man-hours still went into the production.

The final product is 62 pages long (A4 format) and weighs in at almost 30,000 words, which is basically half a novel. I’d say it took me just as long from start to finish as it does for me to write and publish an actual book.

The whole thing was basically a new experience for me. I don’t normally write roleplaying material for public release, though I’ve been running various different games for sixteen years and have written a lot of stuff for personal use in that time. On top of that I’ve only really played in a handful of LARPs. I’m more of a tabletop roleplayer, though I really enjoyed all of the LARP scenarios I’ve played in.

The first LARP I ever played in was the playtest of an excellent Warhammer Fantasy scenario called Sunset Claws (available here), written by my friend the inestimable Steve D. Steve is a great local game designer and player that was really welcoming to me when I first started making forays outside of my own little roleplaying group and into the wider Australian RPG community.

I knew literally no-one else at the playtest and have always suffered from a great amount of social anxiety, so the whole experience was a bit nerve-wracking… At one point I had gotten so far from achieving my character’s goals and was so lost at what to do next in this sea of people I didn’t know, that when the next person pulled me into a private conversation I just laid all of my cards on the table and begged them for help, actually on the verge of tears. This other player wrapped me into their plans and we ended up together on basically what was a “winning” side of the evening, having accomplished all our goals and gotten away with it.

Despite my near-breakdown and social anxiety, I ended up having an enormous amount of fun. Once Sunset Claws was released properly I ran it again myself, as a birthday event, and when Steve D wrote a sequel of sorts I participated in the playtest of that as well.

Afterwards, I tinkered with the basic format of Sunset Claws to create a similar “Very Special LARP Episode” for my own gaming group, a live-action session of the tabletop game I was running at the time. It was loads of fun. One of my players wrote another LARP, a steampunk one, again based on the same basic framework.

I’ve played in and ran a couple of other scenarios over the years as well, but I kept coming back to the simple rules I’d first encountered in Sunset Claws as pretty much my ideal.

Sunset Claws is where I started when I began writing Blackened Hearts, and I feel like I did a good job of replacing and updating the mechanics, customising them for the type of game I wanted to write, and just generally making the rules better than they were when I found them. I’m especially happy with the Crease/Tear mechanic I devised for pacing use of characters’ abilities throughout the scenario.

When I was writing, I gave a lot of thought to how complex it should be, plot-wise. You want enough complexity that everyone has plenty to do, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming and players don’t have time to do what they need to do.

The basis of the scenario is two major plots, each of which everyone can get involved with as they affect everyone on the crew: one is a bit of political intrigue around the captaincy and the other is the potential existence of a supernatural threat. If the cast is just the “core” eight characters, there is also a single side plot that characters get involved in. With that few players, the intrigue and action focuses very heavily on the two major plots.

If the full fifteen characters are used, however, I felt that there simply wasn’t enough material to keep everyone busy. To address this, each character beyond the core eight either adds a significant additional complication to an existing plot, or introduces an entirely new small side plot. This makes things increasing more chaotic as more people are added and I’d say that if you want the scenario to really shine you should definitely pull together a full cast of fifteen than going with just the core.

I think I ended up striking a good balance and the feedback from the live playtest seems to bear that out. I received a lot of great feedback from the playtest and made significant changes not only to the characters but the underlying mechanics of the game based on it. You can’t see exactly how well a game will work while you’re writing it — you need to chuck it at actual people, see how it survives contact with real players, before you can get a proper understanding of how well it’s put together.

A note on gender: “Are you a girl or a boy?” “I’m a pirate!” “Well yes, but what’s in your pants?” “Spanish doubloons!” All characters have been written as gender-neutral, so players are free to pick whichever gender they feel most comfortable roleplaying as when choosing a character (or to leave it ambiguous).

This is something that a few people have responded positively to, so I feel it’s worthwhile taking a second to talk about it.

In previous parlour-style LARPs I’ve played in, pretty much every character was written to be a specific gender. Normally, a small handful of characters would note that they could be easily genderflipped and would provide an alternate name to be used in that case. I’m not sure if this is consistent acrossmost LARP scenarios, it was just something common to every one that I’ve personally played in.

I had noticed, from past experience, that doing it that way could result in some minor issues and confusion when it came to picking roles and remembering who is playing who. For example, some people just aren’t comfortable playing a character of the opposite gender in a LARP so it throws up a barrier to picking certain characters for them. For genderflipped characters, it can be tricky (especially if playing with strangers) for everyone to remember that a particular character, who is referred to as male with a male name in your role descriptions, is being played as a female character with a different name.

When I first started coming up with the character list, I decided to try and head off these problems by writing a handful of characters as gender neutral. I starting trying to work out what the split would be — what would be more convenient for most groups? 5 male, 5 female, 5 neutral? I wasn’t too sure. I was fiddling around when I realised that I couldn’t think of a decent reason why I couldn’t write all of the characters as gender neutral and just let each person sort it out for themselves.

Overall, I think it works well. If and when I write another LARP scenario, I’ll probably handle characters the same way.

I’ve actually already got a few short notes on things I think probably could be done better, but seemed like they would create a lot more work for fairly small payoffs. If and when I get more play data and feedback, I’ll definitely consider taking the time to revise the scenario and release an updated version. Until then, I’ll leave it as-is and other people can have a bit of fun with it and let me know what they think.

Blackened Hearts is available as a Pay-What-You-Want download from DriveThruRPG — please head over and grab a copy!

The story so far…

It is a fine day for larceny upon the high seas indeed! The Devil hisself must have blest the crew of the Black Kraken with his own luck—how else could it be that you would happen upon the fat Spanish treasure galleon the Urca de Lima, separated from her escort and crippled by one of the worst storms that ever scoured the ocean? Then again, even in these most favourable circumstances, the Spaniards fought long and hard before you finally took her. The Urca de Lima now trails behind you, a small prize crew doing what they can to keep her limping along just long enough to get to the port of Tortuga.

It’s been clear sailing all week all the way back to Tortuga—almost suspiciously easy-going and peaceful, in fact—and without much to do the crew’s been going stir-crazy thinking about how they’ll spend their ill-gotten rewards. In fact, the Captain’s arranged for an early share of the loot to be divided amongst the crew. Those who aren’t needed to sail the ship are able to enjoy the rest of the evening with a little bit of early gambling and drinking, so everyone is in high spirits. All that’s left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening as you coast into port, and maybe swindle some of your fellows out of their share.

Wait, what’s all this about a curse?

Blackened Hearts is a live action roleplaying (LARP) scenario for 8 to 15 players plus a Game Master (GM) that runs for approximately two and a half hours, not including set up and tidying afterward.

In a LARP, you take on the role of a character and physically act out that character’s actions, pursuing their goals and interacting with other players while remaining ‘in character’. More specifically, this scenario is a parlour-style LARP, meaning that the area of play is confined to a relatively small area and the focus is on roleplay and intrigue rather than combat.

Blackened Hearts uses a very simple set of mechanics to govern what a character is able to do in the context of the scenario. It is designed to be played with the assistance of a GM who will facilitate the game.

The download package includes a main document that outlines everything you need to know to play and printable PDF versions of all material that need to be printed prior to the LARP.

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Filed under Freebies, Published Books, Roleplaying

October 24, 2017 · 4:21 am

Eidolon: I Actually Did A Thing

My time off from my full-time employment is rushing toward a close. I have less than six weeks remaining before I head back, and I feel like I don’t have a lot to show for it. My intention was to write my next two books in the ten months I had off. Instead, I’ve got two partially-written first drafts, neither of which is close to being finished. I don’t know if I’ll make significant progress on either of them before I have to rejoin the daily grind.

At the beginning, I was working extremely well. The first couple of months were easily my most productive — maybe even more productive than the entire period after them. Then I had some recurring issues with my chronic depression playing up quite badly, which threw me off and it’s been an extreme struggle to try to get back into basically anything at all. On top of that, I had to move house in the middle of things so there were other things that delayed and stressed me and just sort of made everything a lot harder.

I did manage to write five short stories, all of which are available for free on this site and others. Some of them I’m honestly not overly fond of, and some of them I actually think are reasonably good. Even so, they’re fairly small things and I don’t really consider them significant accomplishments.

Just today, though, I stopped working on an actual Thing that is now basically finished.

A while ago, I’d been talking to my sister (an actress who graduated from the New York Film Academy a little while back) who mentioned that there aren’t a lot of scripts around for small, local directors who are looking to produce things, and suggested that if I wrote a script, she would be able to pass it around her contacts and we could all maybe do a thing together. I had a bit of a think about it and set down some base guidelines that I thought would be important if what I wrote was ever going to get filmed — I’d need to write something that would be cheap to produce, used minimal sets and actors, etc. An idea sparked right away, but it took a while for me to actually do some serious work on it.

I went through a couple of drafts, sent it through to my normal set of beta readers, did some reworking, and a week or so ago I sat down with a few people and we did a proper table read of the script. I made more edits based on feedback received from my ‘actors’ on the day, as well as going through the recording of the table read several times and making even more changes based on that. Now I think I’m basically done with it. I’ve sent it off to my editor for another read, just to catch any typos or other small mistakes that may have slipped through, but once he gives it the all clear I’ll be passing it along to my sister, who has some directors she’s planning on approaching with it.

I don’t want to share too much of the contents, except to say it’s a horror script that should turn out a film about 15-17 minutes long. I wrote a very short blurb because I am in the habit of doing that with anything that I write these days, thanks to the short story competitions I’ve been entering, which I’ll also share:

No-one believed Allison was innocent. Her fanciful story about her parents being murdered by a monster from her childhood imaginings was a delusion at best; or a poorly thought-out lie at worst. That’s what the jury decided. They were wrong.

I don’t think it’s a great blurb, but it gets across the gist.

So yeah. I did a thing.

I have no illusions about the likelihood of it actually being picked up by a director, but it is a Finished Thing I can add to my list of other Finished Things and feel a bit better about myself. On top of that, writing a script was very different to writing a novel or a short story. Dialog works differently and you have to take a much more visual approach but also cut everything right back and not have any more description than is necessary. I’m glad I spent the time writing it, and feel like I learned some stuff along the way.

I’ve got one other side project that I have a fairly firm intention to complete before returning to work. I’ve talked about it on here before: Blackened Hearts.

We had the original first playtest way back in June, which I was exceedingly happy with. There were a lot of changes that I wanted to make, most of which I’ve now made, and I wanted to package it up in a professional-ish quality set of documents — again, most of which I’ve written and done. There is one major part I need to do still that will probably be quite a lot of work, but the bulk of the project is actually done. If I worked on it with any sort of real regularly, I would have been done by now.

As it stands, I need to (1) finish reviewing the character role descriptions and re-organising the item and power cards, (2) write some short, basic examples in the GM section for the end-of-game denouements, and (3) come up with new powers for more than half of the characters [this is the big one].

Once I’ve done that and put together everything in a convincing-looking package, it’ll go to my editor for checking. After that, I’ll be looking for someone else to run a playtest of it. Honestly, I might even just release it then if I’m happy enough with it, and once I manage to organise someone to run a second playtest I can always update/reupload the PDFs later if there are more changes/tweaks I want to make.

I’m not ever going to be super happy with how much work I’ve gotten done this year, but having at least a couple of big Finished Things under my belt at the end of it (and the short stories as well, I guess) will at least go a long way to making me feel like it hasn’t been a complete wash.

This afternoon I’m at least going to make an effort to get some more Blackened Hearts work done. We’ll see how I go.

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June 13, 2017 · 5:24 am

LARP Playtest Successful

A couple of days ago I ran the initial playtest for Blackened Hearts, the parlour-style LARP scenario I’ve been working on. While there were a few hiccups here and there, overall the night was a pretty definitive success. The players all enjoyed themselves and I got a lot of positive responses (it feels good when people like/enjoy a thing you did!). As the GM and writer, I noted several things throughout the night that I wanted to add or fix in a revised version, and I got some valuable notes on individual characters by distributing a short feedback survey after the game.

A fair few characters need very little work except for polishing. The ones that had the most potential issues flagged in the feedback survey were ones I already had my eye on in my pre-playtest notes, so it was nice to have some of my own suspicions confirmed. There are one or two things that I’m not sure a single playtest can adequately inform — one character is a cursed spirit possessing a member of the crew and their player said they found it almost too easy to create havoc and spread their curse without any suspicion falling on them, but that might have just been a lucky break for them with other players just not picking up on hints or sharing information. I’m probably going to leave that plot completely as-is for now and see how follow-up playtests go to see if its an actual recurring issue or a one-time thing.

A big thing that I’m still not fully decided on is a replacement for the REFRESH mechanic. One thing that sort of bugged me in Sunset Claws and its sequel was the way the single-use powers are hoarded until later in the game — barely anyone will use a power in the first hour because what if you need it later? My solution in the first draft of Blackened Hearts was to mark most “single-use” powers with REFRESH. When you use a power card, you fold it in half and crease it to show it had been used. If it was marked with REFRESH, for 15 minutes after the GM calls the half-way point you can turn it in to the GM to get a new one. This encourages players to use these powers during the first half of the game, without them missing out on having them in the second half.

There’s an obvious problem with this re: GM access, but in actual play it wasn’t as difficult to manage as I’d worried. The biggest issue is a queue forming as people line up to get their cards switched — even though when I made the half-way announcement I asked that people not queue up, a couple of people still did. I had a discussion after the game with a few of the players who pointed out the issues with it, and I tend to agree. It only took a minute or two to sort everyone out, but it was an undesirable interruption in the action.

Then again, the only alternative that I can see actually working properly during play is to have time-specific power cards — i.e. have duplicate power cards that specifically can only be used in the first or second half of the game. However, the problem I see with this is (combined with the pretty consistent feedback that most characters need an extra power card) … I’m worried that each player having four or five power cards instead of two or three will be a bit of a card overload, and there is a potential issues around mixing up which card you can currently use.

At this stage, I really want to go to Steve D, who wrote the mechanics that I based mine on, and see what his opinion on the whole thing is. I’m just not quite sure what to do at this stage, but I don’t want to abandon it entirely as I think pacing the use of powers throughout the LARP is a desirable outcome.

—

I’ve still got a long way to go on it, but my road map going forward looks like:

finish making a full list of all of the changes and additions I want to make;
write a proper introduction, a guide to pre-game preparation, and GM notes on how to run the game;
construct an actual vaguely professional-looking draft document to import the original stuff into;
work on actually revising and adding to the bits I’ve already written;
do a quick once-over to make sure I haven’t missed anything and to catch any minor errors; and
submit it through to my editor for a proper review, then make any changes based on his feedback.

Once all that is done, I’d like to run a second and third playtest — we had an almost full group for the initial playtest (14 players), so I’d like to stress-test it with the minimum (8) to make sure its still fun with fewer people. Then I’d want to do a final playtest, again with as many roles filled as practical. I’d want few (if any) of the original playtesters in these subsequent tests, so maybe if an upcoming convention coincides for when I want to run it that would be a good option. Otherwise, I’ll have to do some networking and see who I can find who’s interested. Ideally, I’d like to be able to hand off the draft revised version to another GM and get feedback on my GM sections from someone running it, but I don’t know if that’ll be able to happen… maybe I can ask around on RPGnet.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with Blackened Hearts so far and I think it’s already comparable in quality to the scenarios that inspired it. I really want to take it that extra step forward and make it into something I can really be proud of.

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May 9, 2017 · 11:06 pm

Upcoming Deadlines

I’m reorganizing myself a little and trying to focus on a couple of deadlines that are looming large on the horizon. I’m still working on game development stuff in Unity and struggling to make headway on my next novel, but the below are additional projects with real world deadlines that will impact me negatively if I miss them.

Blackened Hearts (10 June 2017)
I’ve organised an initial play test of Blackened Hearts, the pirate LARP I’ve been writing, to occur on 10 June. I don’t want to be writing the damn thing right up until the day of the event, so my deadline to entirely finish the play test documents is a week prior. Currently:

10 out of the 15 character roles have been written up and had an initial editing pass, so they’re pretty much play test ready, and the other 5 are still in varying stages of completion;
the rules document that is to accompany them is about 66-ish% done — I did the initial write-up ages ago and have edited it since then, but there is now some extra stuff I need to add to it and I want to include a section on pirate gambling games that people can play during the LARP;
the item cards are 90% done and ready to print, there’s just a few last-minute additions I need to make to finalise the document;
the power cards are woefully underdone… I’ve got basic one-line descriptions written for about 75% of what I intend to include, with no actual cards finished yet.

Immediate goals: Today I intend to finalise the item cards and finish up at least one character role. Then, I’ll be angling to finalise another two character roles by the end of Friday and make a start on the power cards, with a view to completely finishing the LARP by the end of next week.

The Big Issue Fiction Edition (5 June 2017)
The Big Issue is accepting public submissions of short stories of up to 3,000 words for their next Fiction Edition — this is a paid gig if you’re accepted, so I’d really like to make it in. Submitted stories need to be previously unpublished, which means I can’t just use one of the ones I’ve already written and posted here. I need to work out what I want to write about and write the full thing. They only accept submissions by post, not email, so I don’t want to be writing right up to the deadline. Even if I don’t get accepted, it’ll at least give me another story I can post up here.

Immediate goals: Today I am going to read last year’s Fiction Edition, so I can see what sort of things they tend to accept. I’ll try to have a full concept and outline hammered out by the end of next week. Then I’ll try to finish it the week following.

Not Actual Deadlines

On top of those, there’s a couple of other things I’d really like to do in the upcoming weeks:

An as-yet-unnamed script for a short horror film I’ve bee working on (about a third of the way done) that I’d really like to finish off before my birthday (18 June); and
I want to commission some cover art for the short stories I’ve published on here so that I can package them as freebies on Amazon’s Kindle store as well. As they’re just going to be free, I’m not looking to spend a lot of cash on the art — I’m thinking minimalist, simple covers (Google minimalist book covers if you want to see the sort of thing I mean). I’ve got professional artist friends, but I don’t think what I’m looking for is worth their time or rates so I might just grab an artist off Fiverr. Again, I’d really like to do this before my birthday.

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Filed under Future Projects, Roleplaying, Writing Progress

February 8, 2017 · 12:32 am

Alternate projects, pirates and Strowlers, oh my!

As you might have noticed when I posted my daily schedule earlier this week, Wednesday is actually scheduled to be a mid-week break from the daily task of working on draft manuscripts for me to work on something a bit different. I’ve got a few ideas for video games that I’d like to try my hand at making and a whole bunch of tutorials to support me in that, so I’d like to spend some time exploring that as a possibility. I’ve mentioned before on there that I’ve got a few tabletop RPG projects that I’d really like to try to get off the ground, and there’s a few other odds and ends that I’m planning on spending my time exploring.

I’m especially keen on trying my hand at screenwriting. My sister is an up-and-coming actress and I’ve been told that the local indie film industry is a bit script-starved, so it’d be silly of me not to make the most of both of these facts and try to get something written and filmed. Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love with screenwriting and write a whole bunch of things? It’s a very different skillset to my normal writing, so it’ll be an interesting challenge and learning experience at the very least.

Today, though, I’m spending my time on Blackened Hearts, the pirate LARP that I’ve been working on. It occurs to me that some of you might not know what a a LARP is, so… a LARP (Live Action RolePlay) is a kind of roleplaying game where, instead of sitting around a table like you do while playing something like Dungeons & Dragons, players physically act out the scenarios, typically using costumes and props. Blackened Hearts is specifically a parlour-style LARP, designed to be accessible, require little preparation, only last for a few hours, and be played indoors with a relatively restricted amount of space (usually 1-3 rooms). If you’ve ever played one of those Murder Mystery Dinners, it’s like that but better. Basically, everyone gets their own character with a personality and motivations, there’s a scenario that you’re placed in, and you act as your character would and try to accomplish their goals. There’s a lot of social interaction, deception and intrigue.

The other week, I posted up the descriptions for the character roles in the game, and since then I’ve been slowly but surely making my way through the actual information folios for each role and such. It’s a lot of work… fifteen different characters, each needing their own complicated network of plots, relationships, and goals, each needing to be interesting and fun to play as. It’s a very different kind of writing challenge, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out. I’ve got a clear vision in my head of what I’m making, so hopefully it’ll live up to that goal.

The draft version needs to be finalised by June this year, as that’s why I’m planning on giving it a bit of a beta test. The plan is to put it through it’s paces, fix any problems that are identified during the test run, then polish it up, and package it up as a freebie/pay-what-you-want download here on my site and through DriveThruRPG.

Speaking of other projects… Strowlers.

Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (ZOE for short) are a great crew that I’ve been following and supporting for quite some time now. I was led to them by Dead Gentlemen Productions, who I fell in love with after watching The Gamers: Dorkness Rising back in 2008. I’ve backed four of ZOE’s previous Kickstarter campaigns, and I’m pretty excited about Strowlers, their latest project. It’s a magical modern setting that, to quote their Kickstarter: “… tells the story of the dreamers, outcasts, artists, and activists who exist on the magical fringes of society.” This sort of thing is right up my alley, so I’m definitely going to be supporting the project.

One thing that caught me by surprise is that the Strowlers IP is going to be released under a flexible license, meaning that basically anyone will be able to make and distribute their own works based in the Strowlerverse. There’s some extra hoops to jump through if you want something you make to be ‘official canon’, but in general it feels like their aiming for something along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos, where he encouraged other writers to use elements from the mythology he was building in their own works, resulting in a large body of interrelated works that are pretty popular even today. It’s a clever idea, given how popular ‘cinematic universes’ like Marvel’s are these days. I’ve always been a sucker for tie-in stories and crossovers and all that good stuff, so Strowlers seems like something I’m going to really get into.

Of course, that makes me wonder if it might be worthwhile having a bit of a poke at their shared universe. I’ve been planning on using some of my spare time this year writing a script or two for a short film and leveraging my sister’s network of film academy contacts to try to get some stuff actually shot, and it could be very cool to get in on the Strowlersverse early. No firm decision yet, of course — I’ll be waiting to actually see the first Strowlers films and read over the World Bible. Still, it’s a cool idea and something I’m definitely going to keep in mind while going forward.

Everyone should totally check out the Strowlers Kickstarter and support it if it’s something you’re interested in.

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Filed under Future Projects, Kickstarter, Roleplaying

January 16, 2017 · 7:50 am

Blackened Hearts: A Pirate LARP

I’m not a huge LARPer, but I do enjoy the occasional parlour-style game. One of my friends, the inestimable Steve D, designed an excellent Warhammer LARP a number of years ago called Sunset Claws (download here), which I really loved. I played it twice, in fact — once as part of a playtest, and I ran the final version for my birthday back in 2011.

Afterwards, I tinkered with the basic format of Sunset Claws to create a similar LARP for my own gaming group. It was basically a live-action session of Baker Street, the tabletop game I was running at the time (in 2012). Nathan, my editor and a regular gaming attendee who’d only played a handful of LARPs, then wrote and hosted one of his one in 2014 based on the same format, a steampunk murder mystery set aboard an airship. Nathan has been polishing this up a bit for eventual publication (if you’re reading — hurry up! 😀 ).

I’ve played in and ran a couple of other LARPs over the years as well, but I keep coming back to the simple rules and format of Sunset Claws as pretty much my ideal style of LARP.

This year, I’ve decided to write and run a new Sunset Claws-style LARP I’ve titled Blackened Hearts. My intention is to run it around June this year, polish it up, and package it up as a freebie/pay-what-you-want download. I’ve been working hard on the basics, and while I’ve still got quite a bit of work to do on it I have a blurb and a more-or-less final draft of the character list. I thought I’d share:

It be a fine day for larceny upon the high seas indeed! The Devil hisself must have blest the crew of the Black Kraken with his own luck—how else could it be that you would happen upon the fat Spanish treasure galleon the Urca de Lima, separated from her escort and crippled by one of the worst storms that ever scoured the ocean? Then again, even in these most favourable circumstances, the Spaniards fought long and hard before you finally took her. The Urca de Lima now trails behind you, a small prize crew doing what they can to keep her limping along just long enough to get to the port of Tortuga.

It’s been clear sailing all week all the way back to port—almost suspiciously easy-going and peaceful, in fact—and without much to do the crew’s been going stir-crazy thinking about how they’ll spend their ill-gotten rewards. In fact, the Captain’s arranged for an early share of the loot to be divided amongst the crew. Those who aren’t needed to sail the ship are able to enjoy the rest of the evening with a little bit of early gambling and drinking, so everyone is in high spirits. All that’s left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening as you coast into Tortuga, and maybe swindle some of your fellows out of their share. Wait, what’s this about a curse?

Link: List of characters

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Filed under Personal life, Roleplaying, Writing Progress

June 3, 2016 · 9:05 am

My First Dungeons & Dragons Game

I’ve been an avid roleplayer since I was first joined the hobby fourteen years ago.

I’ll never forget my first game. Three of us had decided that we were kind of interested in this whole Dungeons & Dragons thing, but didn’t want to fork out the money for the books just yet (we were 15 and not from especially affluent families, so the $50 rulebooks were daunting purchases). Instead, we had learned that there was such a thing as the Systems Reference Document, which listed a lot of the rules and was freely available. In addition, there was a crude piece of character creation software for PC called Redblade. A quick Google tells me it’s still around, last updated in 2006.

So, we made up some characters and tottered off with a woefully incomplete understanding of the rules. I was DM. One player rolled up a gnome sorcerer with an 8 Constitution and 2 hp. I don’t remember what the other used. We had some sort of short lead up to the adventure proper, including a bit where they had to climb a cliff and the gnome had to be carried up over the other character’s shoulder because his Strength was terrible as well.

Then, we had our first combat encounter. A group of three orcs (CR 1/2, according to the SRD — a nice little challenge, to my completely inexperienced eye). They sighted the party and the party sighted them and, with a clatter of dice, battle began. Sort of. Initiative was rolled, and an orc went first. It unshouldered a javelin and took aim, hurling it at a randomly chosen hero.

This was our very first game of D&D. It was the very first combat. It was the very first action of the very first round. The gnome sorcerer took a javelin to the face and immediately went down. The game didn’t last much longer.

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May 31, 2016 · 8:30 am

Ihrem

Speaking of roleplaying projects, one thing I’ve been working on on and off for the past month or so is a roleplaying game inspired by the Dark Souls series and a few other things like Darkest Dungeon. Ihrem is the vast, underground ruin of an ancient city-state, and characters are a small group of humans that find themselves trapped within it. The setting is dark and claustrophobic, and the game focuses on exploration and tactical combat. Characters scout and explore the ruins, fight off dangerous monsters, build up a home base, craft weapons and armour from the bodies of fallen enemies, and rediscover and exploit ancient magics.

We are not alone. Some are almost like us; were they men once, too? We cannot tell. Others are not like us at all—fearsome beasts wrought of fang and sinew and bone and blood. They seek to kill, to maim and consume and despoil. We have little to fight them with, but we are learning. Some weapons we find, artefacts of long-dead Ihrem. Other weapons we create, forged from the claws and teeth of fallen beasts. Slowly, we gain strength. Slowly, we push deeper into the caverns. If there are other people here, we will find them. We will endure Ihrem.

One of the big things about Ihrem is that the dungeons and chambers that make up the ruins and the monsters that inhabit them are randomly/procedurally generated, so that the Ihrem of one game will be very different to the Ihrem of another.

Tactical combat will play a large role, with a lot of focus on scouting out enemies before engaging them, skirmishes to gather information with tactical retreats, and picking the right equipment to tackle challenges. Killed characters can be relatively easily resurrected if at least one character escapes, but unspent XP is lost if you’re killed. Characters spend XP to gain ranks in roles, which function similarly to skills from other games: Scout, Predator, Guardian, Architect, Crucible, Scrivener, Gleaner, Butcher, and Scavenger. Your main combat attribute, Expertise, is equal to to rank of your highest role, so every character is, at a base, equally competent at fighting — Expertise is also basically your ‘level’.

Teeth and claws and sinew and bone—these are the butcher’s grisly trade. In Ihrem, resources are scarce, so even the bodies of slain beasts become a commodity to be exploited. Through this, the butcher learns the secrets of flesh and blood. She learns how to stitch flesh back together and set bones so they heal faster.

If a scavenger is canny, she may learn the secret patterns of ancient Ihrem, gaining a sense for its byzantine tunnels and chambers. In doing so, the scavenger can avoid its traps and pitfalls and uncover that which is hidden. She learns how to split the stone walls just so, and extract the precious ores within.

Knowledge is survival in Ihrem. Without knowing what one will confront, it is impossible to properly prepare for what may lay in wait. The scout learns to observe and gather information on the challenges and beasts of Ihrem. To pick up on weaknesses and possible advantages to be exploited.

I’ve actually very recently shared my notes about Ihrem with Nathan, my editor, and he seems pretty keen on collaborating on it. I’ll keep you updated as we make progress.

—

500 words done on Porton today. Staying on target. Okay, yes, I’m working on too many projects at once. And I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 again. On the other hand… look over there! *runs away*

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Filed under Ihrem, Roleplaying

May 30, 2016 · 8:23 am

Sundered Roleplaying

I’ve been very vaguely thinking about producing a roleplaying game/setting based on my Tales of the Sundered Land series. (There’s only one book out at the moment, but it will be a series of at least four more books. Promise.)

I’m thinking a Fate Core game under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence, in a similar sort of style to Evil Hat’s Fate Worlds and Adventures series of releases. A bit denser on setting details than their releases, of course.

I feel like working on a project like this will benefit the series as a whole — sort of like a ‘setting bible’ that I can then use as a guide to help maintain consistency throughout the books. I’ll probably wait until after I finish up the book I’m currently writing, as I don’t want to overload myself, but if I get a spare minute here and there I might do a little work on it. In an ideal world, I might try to set up a proper Kickstarter once I’ve got a proper draft completed.

I’ve actually got a couple of other roleplaying projects on the backburner as well (one inspired by the Dungeon Keeper series and one inspired by games like Dark Souls and Darkest Dungeon). One day I’d like to sit down properly and do some real work on them all, but time is always at a premium at the moment with my full-time work and my current projects. Too many things I want to do, sigh.

—

Also, I’ve hit my writing goal today, and a little bit more besides.

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Filed under Future Projects, Published Books, Roleplaying, Writing Progress

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