Diary of a Failed Game Designer

A while ago I ran a short DC Heroes game. The supers were low powered, worked for the government, and were hunting mysterious aliens. I included a handout while the team searched some old moldy gov files. Or perhaps it was mailed to them anonymously? I don't remember. What I do remember is that I provided absolutely no context for the picture. It was a Vietnam era soldier torching a hut that appeared to contain some kind of shadowy creature. Up to this point the  team had no idea what they might be dealing with and after this picture they still had very little idea. Here is where things get interesting. As a GM I just laid back on that image and listened to player reactions and speculations. Some of those player ideas most definitely made it into the games story arc. The concept of  using player input to build a story is I imagine as old as RPG's. I'm sure DM's very early on heard players say things like, "I bet the duke is the killer!" And then thought "...

Phase is a game I wrote a few years ago. Born into the world back when 4th edition was announced. Jay and I said  "We don't want to pay for another D&D" With that our group set out on making our own system. I have written the story of Phase on this blog more than once. I have also called it "The best game no one has ever played." To further the point I have called it "My favorite out of the games I have written." I stand by those statements. The PDF as written has a couple mistakes in it (I'll fix them.) Some of the design choices may seem a bit contrived now that a few years have passed, but at least I know it works because our group has played an awful lot of it. Phase Abandon is available at drive through RPG for the low price of $0.00 USD. Phase abandon is  at it's heart a DM'less game. It was designed so I could play a character as well as share the G.M. duties. At the time Phase was written I was doing most of the game mastering ...

My applogies for the reduced posting frequency . It will likely pick up again after the  US holidays. Rather this is about the idea of Murder in D&D. Murder most foul. The players in our group kill all the time. I mean it's kind of their thing. Still it has been a rare occurrence when they outright murder someone. in one of our recent games Limura a ranger dropped two sailors in broad daylight. Mind you the sailors were working for "the bad guys" and Limura was covering the back of a fellow party member .. still. Murder in the streets. Naturally people screamed women fainted, guards were called. In the end the party had to flee the city as attempts to arrest them intensified. Having a boat that flies helped them greatly in that escape. On the other side of that messengers will have been sent out letting it be known that the persons involved are wanted in the city of Torin, for Murder.  That's an albatross hanging around their necks that will be difficult to cut lo...

I wrote a game called AAIE. It was recently run at a Con by one of my friends and one piece of feedback he received was, "I think it should be more like D&D." I Believe in all feedback is good feedback, but that was just a bit errr .... vague. In the name of transparency and good faith I give you, this post. Things in AAIE that are not like D&D which I don't plan to fix. (Everything else is totally up for debate.) OR... (If ever asked "how is AAIE different from D&D?"  ROLL D12 on the chart below) If D&D lets you play Erol Flynn in "The adventures of Robin Hood" then AAIE lets you play Lou Costello from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." The Magic system in AAIE is not based on pre written spells as it is in D&D. There is also a chance your character will grow a third useless arm out of his or her back or go insane if they cast too much. So there's that. Most times you expect your character in D&D to survive ...

Sorry for not posting all that much this month. It has been a busy  period for me outside the confines of gaming. This might be of use to someone. It might not. What will follow is just a raw list of  things I do  and don't when running games. The list will be in no particular order I'll just list things as I think of them.  This post in no way represents what I think the reader should be doing. This is a collection of things that work for me. there are no miracle "tips or tricks" in the post below, just seeds for thought or discussion. I try to avoid the cliches as much as possible, while still skirting them.  If I do drift into the  land of cliches I try to always use "this ..and" to make things more interesting.  The person the party just rescued turning out to be a prince is a cliche. That same person being a prince and also the master of thieves guild, is more interesting. (If still a bit cliche.) Live at the table I don't use a GM's screen. I l...

This  might  tangentially  tie into The Disorientated Ranger's latest post found here: There has been a trend for a while no within the group I game with. Some of our characters come with endings. Even if the  end game is known it doesn't mean we know how the game will end. The wilhelm example: In our last game Wilhelm the  Dwarf, finally tracked down the band of thieves who "ruined his  life. * " The party gained entrance to their hideout, talked to a massive snake, avoided some traps, stole a large nutria, bashed some heads and cornered the thief guild's leader. After some talking, the thief leader offered to  restore the connection between wilhelm's wrist and his hand. The thief leader also offered to bring Wilhelm into the guild. They could work together and make some money on Wilhelm's triumphant return. I'm going to be honest here. I really thought Wilhelm was going to growl something dwarfy and hit the weasel thief in the face with his ham...

Players fall quite often, because heroes are constantly leaping off things. TLDR Version: Here is how I do it. I give heroes the first 10 feet for free.. Nice of me right? I figure Urkuk the 12th level fighter has learned how to tuck and roll.  After 10 Feet, Every additional 10 feet causes 1d12 damage up to 8d12 at 90 feet.  After 90 feet each additional 10 feet of falling simply adds 10 points of damage. (100 feet is 8d12 +10 for example) After 90 feet the character still takes the damage and also has to save vs Death, or make a Constitution save ( adapt this to whatever edition of D&D floats your boat.) Modify the save with +1 difficulty for every 10 feet of fall beyond 90 feet. ( again  adapt this to whatever edition of D&D you are using.) If they fail the save they straight up die. You fall 500 feet in one 6 second round. The first 90 feet as described above assumes falling onto a hard surface, and the character not landing on their head. The DM can modify da...

As a Gm/Dm I feel D&D and any other traditional Role playing game are a two sided coin. One side is the Player centric side. I feel a great desire to listen to my players and try to tease out ideas that they might be interested in. If a player creates a proselytizing cleric, I will drop in people to preach to. Perhaps a town that needs some spiritual guidance.  For example my current party in the  long languishing Aleria campaign contains just such a priest. The town they are settling in  has a church, but it is a bit of a derelict building  left over from more  proserious times. The  player might want to set up shop there preaching his religion, I don't know if he will, but it's there. The other side of the coin: The world focused game is imagined before the players arrive and  everything is in place. The players will make their opportunities in the world as they adventure. Naturally a GM has to adjust a bit with the world reacting to what the pla...

I have a senario I have run a few times since I was in high school, usually for new players. It's  ostensibly called the  Dirt Monster adventure. Some of my players might remember running it though to be honest it has been a long time. The game is set up for low level Players. A very simple, cliche set up. Players are in a town , hear a rumour of a local who is having trouble with what little live stock he  keeps. Livestock mostly pigs are showing up dead but uneaten, stocks of  bagged up  walnuts ransacked. So here is the  backstory.  These things can be found out by talking to the farmer. The  farmer a year ago expanded his far to include new grazing lands. In doing so he cleared out some of his old and overgrown  walnut trees. The trees have always been there but are not as productive or as profitable as pigs, so down they came. What nutts he could harvest were bagged and put in the barns basement (which has a floor made of large flagstone...

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. One of my secret loves in life is pro wrestling. I'm admittedly not a "fan" like I was when I was a kid. I mean I don't watch as much as I used to. My watching had degenerated into that kind of smarky thing where I search out "good matches" on the internet, and bitch about the WWE. Recently however, playing The World Wide Wrestling  RPG lead to an uptick in my wrestling watching, because of that I have started thinking about it again. I see similarities between  Wrestling and RPGs. In fact I think of Wrestling  in terms of a giant on going LARP. Any how, this being a quick post I should get to the damn point. The stories in wrestling work best when they are honest and  have some degree of  logical consistency. Bad guys and  good guys should have realistic goals, and motivations. For example: In wrestling there is alway  a championship, and  if the  main players are all competing for the ...

Are we there yet? I am very bad at some aspects of Game mastering. I am horrible at horror. I don't like horror movies and the like to begin with. I think because I have not exposed myself to horror the methods and subject matter I would need to master to instill a sense of dread in players are pretty foreign to me. That's just one example. There is something I find even harder to instill in players. Awe. How do you describe it when a group of players round a bend and the  great salt tower, gleaming, crystalline,  massive, and,  solitary in the center of a now dry lake bed? This is one of the wonders of your  world, There is quite literally nothing else like it. A spire of carved salt that rises into the clouds. People go on pilgrimages to see it , and stories are told about it around camp fires all over the known world.  So the players write it down and decide their next move.  Describing awe is one thing, you can say  "You are all overwhelmed by the ...

I'm just going to throw a whole bunch of stuff against the internet wall. Just ideas of  games I would like to run, but am never going to be able to find the  time for. Perhaps one of the folks I game with will see one and say, "YASSS ... WE HAVE TO DO THAT!" Or another reader will see something and think. "Hey that's not bad. I can take that and run with it." Here is a list in no  order. Physical Intervention: Fighting game characters exist in the  real world, AKA somewhere there is a guy like Ryu who can fight and shoot Hadouken spirit balls at mutant dudes like blanka. Somewhere there is a huge pro wrestler like Wolf Hawkfield who can toss people around like sacks of potatoes. The players are  a group of these kind of super humans. they  enter tournaments and  such to investigate the bad guys of the world. Kind of like a low level super power, spy, kungfu mash up. SYSTEM: Phase Abandon, or perhaps I would buy the game FIGHT , if I Really wanted to g...

This may be a series about  books that I have found off label RPG uses for over the  years. Or it may be the only time I bring it up ... Time will tell. Enter the Toolbox: I may have mentioned this before.. I hope I did .. Eventually players get to such a level that they want stuff. Stuff for the keep, stuff for the temple, stuff for the waggons. "Those retainers need a place to live" and so on. At the time I had a hard time pricing things. If a player said "I want a great big desk for my wizard's study," I had  no idea what to charge them. Worse yet I had a hard time pricing things relative to each other.. What was the price difference between a plain set of woodworking tools and an expensive one? Then one day while perusing the bargain table at Barnes and Noble (I used to indulge my fetish for  referance books far more often than I do now,) I found this: http://www.amazon.com/1897-Sears-Roebuck-Co-Catalogue/dp/1602390630 It's as it says on the tin a reprin...