Category Archives: Roleplaying Games

Reaching Tartarus

Posted on by
1

As summer draws close our gaming group tends to wander of to different oneshots, random gaming and cabins. As this is inevitable I have decided to wrap up our Wayward Sons game to a satisfying end (or at least that is my plan). As I am constantly trying to create something (might be just because I need to prove myself something) I now have a plan for the possible future.

I think I’ll be running a scifi campaign with a set goal.

The games and campaign I have been running for the past few years have all been linked together. There might have been a background story to begin with but now it has eroded away. Now I’m only taking what I get from the players and evolving their ideas and random thoughts into something I would like to run.

This next phase is a science fiction game. It might even be space opera. But it will still be tied into what we have done. It might not even be that apparent even to my players but I believe they will see the cause and effect of their actions.

REACHING TARTARUS

Reaching Tartarus will be a game about likeminded individual trying to escape the god-like A.I. Omnipresence from the inhabited worlds of our Solar System to the one place their ancestors abandoned a long time ago – Earth.

Continue reading →

Wayward Sons: Mansion of Madness

Posted on by
Reply

gamers

The last time that I blogged about our ongoing campaign one of the characters was possessed by a demon and left to rot in the basement of a cabin. We followed up at the next time with the introduction of his player’s new character The Professor.

This time the introduction was successful. Introducing new characters might be a little problematic at sometimes (later on that matter) but this worked. I asked the players questions to tie the professor into their group and help to explain why they would trust in him. The players redistributed the Trust they had to his predecessor and some even gave the new guy some Trust.

During this session I was kind of hoping we would get closer to the goal of the campaign – finding the lost (and cursed) gold treasure of the characters’ ancestors. I was however prepared for a bit of side-roading as I knew there was an old manor between them and their goal.

Continue reading →

Flavor of Magic

Posted on by
3

Back at University a teacher of mine used to call UNIX scripts spells. I guess that’s pretty much right. A series of unpronouncable words and strange symbols, which actually do something, but often its hard to see what actually happened and the results can be as incomprehensible for the layman than the commands themselves. Sounds like magic to me.

(I’m not even bringing up Clarke’s third law. Except this much.)

Continue reading →

Self-Criticism

Posted on by
Reply

The Boondock Saints used to be one of my favorite movies. Then I saw the sequel, which was kind of mediocre, but what really ruined the first movie for me, was the attitude of the director on the commentary track. He would critisize other sequels for their lack of understanding of how to do a sequel and he would then go on and do the exact same things in his own movie.

Continue reading →

Strange Holidays in RPGs

Posted on by
Reply

Like everyone knows, Valentine’s Day is very much a manufactured celebration. There’s a historical background, but the modern way is just an attempt to sell more crap. Once again. The thing is, this is actually anything new. All holidays and celebrations are manufactured. They didn’t come from nothing. Certainly, some days, like various independence days all over the world, are better motivated then various random others, but it still wasn’t written in the stars and we know that religious celebrations are very arbitrary, like the traditional hijacking of pagan holidays by the Christians.

The question here is, how do you use them in your RPGs.

Continue reading →

Importance of a Name

Posted on by
1

Back in the 50s, there was a workshop to decide what the field now known as artificial intelligence should be known as. For a long time, computational rationality was the forerunner, but in the end, we have what we have now.

Of course, I can’t really say that this decision affected much, but how much more does something like “artificial intelligence” spark the imagination then “computational rationality”. Would we have 2001: A Space Odyssey? Terminators? Asimov’s robot series? Deep Thought?

Continue reading →

Wayward Sons: Love letters & Demonic possession

Posted on by
Reply

WaywardSons13022013

Disclaimer: This post includes bad language and attitudes that really aren’t a representation of what we actually think. It only goes to show out we have bad taste.

As we grow more and more accustomed to this hack and how it works we manage to extend the game and bring in more interesting elements to the game.

This week I send two of my players a love letter. Now I am not sure I actually used them the right way but since this is after all our game I think the point was that they were successful. Or at least one was.

Due the first letter and the roll that followed one of the PCs got a prison tattoo. That was not too interesting. That taught me to be more considering when making the letters. Dull outcomes bring a little to the game.

The second letter was much more interesting. It bring out demonic possession and end up nearly killing the whole group.

Continue reading →

Wayward Sons: Moving from tier 1 to tier 2

Posted on by
Reply

This post is a direct followup on Aki’s post from yesterday. It started out as a comment but quickly lengthened in a way to seemed like it should have its own post.

Advancement in this kind of a game is problematic. On the one hand many players want to see their characters gaining more skills and progressing towards something like a demigod status. You may advance your character according to the “spend experience” chart found in each playbook. It all changes when you advance to “tier 2”.

This is the threshold of problem. How to keep the character in the same mould but allow him to grow?

I think that something like the advancement of John McClane has always been my ideal of character development. They might get more and more things done but they loose a bit of themselves on the process.

One thing that occurred to me just while I read this post is adding a simple and elegant system for advancement.

“But”

In simplest for this might work out when you change your playbook. You develop from a dealer to the Avenger BUT. This might even be a Move. When “when you advance your character, choose 1” and then a list of shit that might hit the fan.

This idea is presented in some ways in various hacks and I just discussed about something similar with one of the players from the same group as Aki and myself. It should not be simple to do something or if it is there should be a cost for it. You could look it the way Aki said. McClane survives (ie. develops) BUT loses his wife.

The trick here is to build the conditionals in a way that would make sense for the narrative and for the character.

Character Development vs. Advancement

Posted on by
Reply

Lauri has been bugging me to write my own seasoned playbook for his AW hack, Wayward Sons (see Resources above, and the Wayward Sons -tag on the right). Just haven’t gotten around to it. Also, I don’t really have inspiration right now… which is a bit of a problem.

One thing I’ve been thinking about though: One of the characters has been becoming more and more sociopathic in his paranoia, while two other characters (mine included) have been becoming more and more relient on alcohol to get through their “adventures”.

Continue reading →