Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Below is a reprint of the very rough and ready rules I posted in our Rules Cyclopedia D&D game. Placed here for posterity and possible expansion someday. Thieves Guild:  A loose guide to running a new thieves guild.  House rules for the Aleria game the basic functions of the guild: 1. Rumors: The guild will gather rumors about what's going on around Aleria, some true some false  2. Research: Rumors can be researched to get more information and to determine their viability  3. Intimidation: Strength in numbers, sometimes people will give you money just to leave them alone… this is extortion, it’s also business. The more intimidating the less likely another guild is to challenge our territory.  4 . Finding Jobs: Thieves find marks and targets all the time. Picking good jobs is the hard part, that’s why you need a guild master.   Executing Jobs. The Gm will assign jobs a difficulty (1 to 10).  The thieves doing a job will be taken into acco...

 There is a thing I do in my RPG campaigns. I give players arcs.  Sure, I also try to give each character a bit of spotlight each game. I like to keep everyone involved and occupied. I think I manage it game to game with varying degrees of success. But that's not exactly what I'm talking about. I like to try and give each character something going on in the larger world that either directly touches them or which they will want to be involved in. Further I will often pursue one player's arc from quite a while. If player interest drifts, I'll switch focus but generally I'll ride an arc until it concludes. Much of this is unspoken. It just kind of happens.  It helps I have a small, long time player group. If was running at a local brick and mortar shop with 8 people who changed all the time, I would have a hard time maintaining arcs that are specific to each character. The last set of adventures were very clearly the "Master's arc."  He was a druid, reest...

Below is a game that takes up one page in Libre Office using a 10 point font. Don't want to play D&D anymore ? play this. Guaranteed to have absolutely no roots in anything. Charater Attributes: Roll 1d6 for each attribute to determine the number of dice the character has in that area. (Rolls: 1-3 = 3 dice, 4-5 = 4 dice, roll of 6 = 5 dice) Physical (phisical actions, jumping, fights) Mental (Thinking, figuring, casting, searching) Emotional (empathy, Morale, courage, self controll, concentration) Social (Bargain, arguing, deceit, initial reactions) Actions: During the story when a character wants to perform an action the player rolls 1d10. Results use the chart below. 1 or 2: A failure and a new complication that reduces the atribute pool being used by 1. (You fail to jump the pit fallign to the bottom and hurtting yout leg -1 Phisical) 3 to 4:   A failure but the enviroment gains a complication. (you fail to jump the pit and slide down the inter wall catching a ledge halway ...

AD&D Player Options: “Skills and Powers” I have gotten the feeling over the years that this was not the most well thought of book from the 2 nd edition library. I have read that it over complicates character creation, That it's simply ripe for min-maxing and exploitation. These things may well be true.  Strangely I feel it’s kind of been forgotten. More to the point passed over. People still playing 2 nd ed play it strait, rules as written. “2154 Skills and powers”, “2149 Combat and Tactics,” and “2163 Spells and Magic” are three books that have been deemed either harmful to the games purity or worse simply unnecessary. Back in 1995 I bought “Skills and Powers.” At the time it was a revelation. Here in this book I had a way to ‘Build Characters” with out having to dive into GURPS which was pumping out 3 rd edition books at a breakneck pace, or Hero which was already on it’s 4 th edition by then. It changed the game in some very real ways. In fact I can say that I don’t th...

(Wait you never asked for random birds? .... shit..) Do you need a random Bird? Of course you do……… Does the party ranger need a new companion? Yes, her normal, boring ass Wolf companion got killed by a manitcore last game. Whoa daddy, I got the charts form you. See below the magical mystical random bird generator! (Much of the info below comes from the CornellLab ornithology website.) There are no system specific stats below. I figure if the reader is in deep enough to be rolling up random bird companions, statting them out for whatever game the reader may play should be a breaze. Step one: Bird body type (Roll 2d12) Auk type (like a loon) Black Bird (tall thin fan tail) Chickadee style (Plump) Crow or Jay style Dove like Duck like Finch Flycatcher (small very aerodynamic) Pheasant like Sea gull shaped Hawk, Eagle, or Falcon Like (Bird of prey) Heron Humming bird King fisher Nuthatch Owl (night time bird of prey) Sea bird (often large like an albatross) Shore bird Sparrow S...