Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Welcome to Part two of our AAIE V-Log actual play series. Character gen is done and now the characters are out in the wilds. We have  A halfling wizard Dean Played by Chris p Rolo Baggins the  Halfling priest of Thodin. Played by Neal T. and  Gruff The Dwarf Priest Known as the silent hand of the church , dues to his stealth abilities.  Gruff is Played by Jay M. These are the characters created in episode Character gen, so if you partook in that V-pod cast now you can hear them in action. If you didn't and are wondering how these characters came to be check it out here: Episode 1: This Second episode is more of  a straight forward actual play with four guys just sitting around playing the game. I have included some  rules explanations as the  game goes along but not to many. Admittedly this was a very straight forward game, We tried t keep things pretty basic for this production, but all in all I think it shows the game mechanics in a decent light.  Here is a YouTube link for teh s

So a new day has dawned here at the Dust Pan Games Blog. Today I will present the first of a series of VLOG / Podcast / Mud-shark type affairs. These Hybrid Podcasts will feature actual plays from an actual table with live humans in the other chairs. If everything goes well I will get one out a week, the first three episodes will be featuring our home game “Amazing Adventurers and Incredible Exploits or AAIE.” Episode 1: Character creation, the episode will go step by step through the random generation of three characters, will all game options being used, It runs about 40 minutes. Episode 2: will be “Into the Woods, Unwanted Discoveries” Episode 3 will be “Exploring The furnace Ape Crypt.” After that we may switch up game systems being recorded, or Switch up characters, I’m not sure, I want to see how well received this is first. By way of introduction, AAIE is a fantasy RPG, about normal folk who don’t see any way to get ahead doing their normal mundane jobs so they make the ill adv

You have traveled far, the village is a welcome rest, they welcome you and your party with good spirits. In the village at the foot of the high mountains the  locals tell stories around open pits of coals over which  heavily spiced meats an root vegetables are roasted on crooked sticks older than you are, blackened and slick with  many nights worth of  flame. On these nights the  stories are about the stars, long revered as ancestral spirits, and bout the  history of the village , the families that live there. One story catches your ear, a long tale that tells of a deep, narrow and nearly inaccessible valley some miles into the high mountains. The village elder peers through the  herbal cloud rising from his  ivory pipe, with dark eyes and broken teeth he tells of the valley, he tells of.... A vast necropolis where a long forgotten tribe built complex shrines for their dead. It is said the spirits still roam the cliffs that ring the valley keeping out intruders and protecting the shrin

How to arbitrate a critical failure out side of Combat and Spell casting In AAIE: In AAIE if a character takes and action the Gm does some figuring (and only the GM)  the player rolls 3D20 and compares a die value to the difficulty number the GM has assigned. If the  players roll is equal to or lower than the difficulty number the player succeeds if not they fail. Simple enough. Where things get interesting is in that one of those three dice thrown is designated a "Result Die" which determines how successful the characters action is. If a character fails and that result die is also a 1 then the character has committed a fumble and those can be astoundingly bad. (statistically critical fumbles and critical successes happen somewhere in the  neighborhood of .075 percent of the time and are unaffected by level or character ability. In effect  extreme failure or extreme success are plain cosmic luck of the dice.) There is a chart of 100 combat fumbles, and a chart of 100 spell ca

World building, A person could write a book about world building and in fact over the years some talented people people have .  People have also written books on a myriad of subjects that describe how to do things that are better left to learning though experience . World building  for RPG’s is not a science, the  needs of each group and the desires of the person running the game have as much effect on how a setting gets put together as any set of best practices ever would. Some Gm’s have a desire for hex maps with each hex deeply detailed containing personality, historical, physical, and socioeconomic information pertaining to that hex area.  A Gm looking for or creating this kind of map will use that information to craft their adventures, mining down each hex finding adventure hooks for their players to explore.  It’s a great way to run a game, but the overhead is not for everyone. Not liking this style is not a matter of being intellectually lazy, it’s simply that not everyone sees

100 things that are lying around in the corners of your dungeon. (A List to be used just for general strange things lying around.) I suppose some of these could spawn minor encounters or be small adventure hooks in their own right, though how far a player or GM woudl want to run with that is naturally up to them. The player says, “I search the room.” The Gm says…. 1. A ball of hair containing 1. A human tooth 2. A gold coin 3. Melted wax 4. A desiccated mouse 5 a shred of silk 6. A broken piece of chalk. 2. A broken clay mask 3. A humanoid femur carved into a flute. 4. 1d4 gold coins 5. A melted candle 6. A rotten apple covered in aggressive maggots. (Stat out as a small swarm.) 7. A moldy flyer advertising a long past show called “The stories of Johann.” 8. A smashed potion bottle with one quarter dose from a random potion still salvageable. (Pick a random effect and make it one quarter as effective.) 9. A turnip carved to represent the head of a wolf. 10. A scrap of tattered 1.flag 2

So I 'm in a not great mood It leads to this. Role playing games are about doing things in your imagination that you can not do in real life. If a bar tender gives me a hard time in real life, I go to another bar. In a role playing game I punch his teeth down his throat, steal his stuff, and light the place afire. See? Cathartic. We spend a lot of time working on ways to package this catharsis, but at the end of the day, I just want to kick a door down kill the bad guy and take his stuff. Thank you for reading and listening, comments and other such things? Leave it in the comments section below.  (While I'm on  this  one more thing, to spite what you see on television you would think that being quiet woudl be a better way to find big foot then running around screeching in the woods like a lunatic.. but WTF do I know.)

The Pins of Skull Crushing: Description: This item is a two inch long golden hat pin, the head of the pin is a tiny but detailed ivory skull wearing a thorny crown and processing eyes set with small ruby flakes. If held up to candle light the shaft of the pins will reflect not only golden light but a dark crimson hue as well. Story: While it is no longer known who created the Pins what is known is that they are assassin’s relics, created for the sole purpose of eliminating a single target in the most shocking way possible. It is said that originally a set of six pins were created however over time most of the pins were lost or expended. The pin must be forcefully placed into the back of a targets head, i.e. jabbed in during an attack. The pin on its own does no damage however (see mechanics below) if the pin is well placed the targets head will violently implode on the next turn, killing the victim and sending a shower of gore in all direction. The shaft of the pin is consumed the tiny

Finishing touches: Feeling admittedly a bit maudlin today , hang with me. I’m planning on slowly reading though the main document of our game AAIE  (Amazing Adventurers and Exciting Exploits,) starting today. I posted an actual play here a week or so ago. I’m going to go though slowly and look for mistakes, and omissions, and rework anything I think is grossly unclear. I would not use the term “edit” though the game sorely needs an editor, as anyone who has followed this blog can attest I am no writer.  I’m simply not willing or able to put up the cash a real editor woudl require.   Once this final step of the project is finished I’ll be releasing it into the wild. I would love to use this blog a as hub where people share their experiences with the game, actual plays ideas, funny characters that got spit out and them killed, and all that good sauce. I do know however that the idea that even a minor community of players based off this game is a is a real stretch. That leaves me with the

Gm’s and magic items. I think GM’s who were brought up on AD&D and its ilk get a bit too caught up in what magic items “do” rather than what they “are.” That ring of protection + 1 that was just found in some dank corner of a dungeon can be easily swept aside in a game by simply focusing on mechanics. This ring when worn gives the wearer a bonus of 1 to their armor class.  Fancy that, and useful to boot. However even the most run of the mill magic items still represent a creation of some effort by some craftsman with both the  jewelers skill to produce the ring and an enchanters skill in  granting a constant magical effect. Simple wood ring, or the Hirophant Druids ring of spell Turning? Not exactly something that would be given out lightly or treated roughly. For a common person a simple ring of AC plus one is an heirloom. How would that common person  with less experience dealing with magical  effects view that golden ring that uncle Garaius passed down? Is it their lucky ring in

This might rock some cradles I don't know. I guess that would depend on the audience. If a developer came out and said, our next effort on video game consoles is going to be an RPG. Our RPG is / Has / involves / Is:  combat heavy, the player will be engaged in  simulations of  combat in a fantasy world loosely based on  mid evil times and the works of Tolkien. Enemies scale with the characters so they are always challenged. Areas rarely scale, if a character wanders into the wrong area they might get in over their head.  It will involve resource management, yes you will get to track your health, your spells, your rations, and even your torches. Social interactions can be effected by reaction rolls, based on character attributes, appearance and other factors, or an NPC might just be grumpy because the player failed to provide pizza or beer and  refuse to give up any information at all (ok that's a stretch) There will be nearly unlimited hours of game play, with multiple story li