tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post4627337017193789496..comments2024-03-28T21:13:53.845+00:00Comments on Fabled Lands: Adventuring on a shoestringDave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-46462341731473702112021-02-01T08:35:06.153+00:002021-02-01T08:35:06.153+00:00But then you get comments like this: "Why did...But then you get comments like this: "Why did they decide to release a whole RPG in a series of six books when they could have just released it as one? Perhaps it was to do with how many they would sell." Well, duh.<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcrFcQ7jJE&t=640sDave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-11560782811130527262021-01-17T15:44:37.373+00:002021-01-17T15:44:37.373+00:00Yes, historically it wouldn’t be until we had agri...Yes, historically it wouldn’t be until we had agriculture and the surplus that goes with it that we’d really see a lot of specialization. And any specialization we see in hunter-gatherer groups is more steered by circumstance than inclination: women weave and cook because they are not as strong and agile as men, old people (as old as they get in such societies) get the reputation of wisdom and planning, and so on. Yet I’m curious about how much of our specializations descend in a hierarchy from innate proclivities. Would we be able to see an echo of the Two Cultures in the attitudes of Stone Age tribespeople? Would we identify some as introverts and some as extraverts? Or is all that socially conditioned?<br /><br />Funnily enough I used to do Tarot readings in the JCR for anyone who bought me afternoon tea. Naturally they’d all say, “But you’re an arch-rationalist, surely you don’t believe in this stuff?” And I’d assure them there was absolutely nothing supernatural about it. I’d present them with the cards, make a few suggestions, they would supply everything themselves – and they’d go away saying, “That’s uncanny!” Yet it wasn’t even at the level of a magician’s cold reading. I’d just be nudging them to realize what was already in their subconscious – or perhaps I should say, the decisions they’d already taken that their conscious mind hadn’t yet been told about.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-31803322201059419032021-01-17T15:43:58.001+00:002021-01-17T15:43:58.001+00:00Roger replies:
“I think one could make an argumen...Roger replies:<br /><br />“I think one could make an argument for specialisation as a measure of civilisation. In the hunter-gatherer band everyone does the same thing because they have to spend most of their waking hours doing that thing to stay alive. Once you get agriculture you can start to get people who aren't agriculting all day.<br /><br />“I had hopes of MBTI as a shorthand for NPCs, but I never managed to get anywhere with it. I'm currently bashing at some notes on doing Tarot spreads to get inspiration about their personalities (trying not to make it too much like one of those ‘here's how to read the Tarot’ books even though there's clearly a lot of overlap).”Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-79042931670761589862021-01-14T08:56:12.547+00:002021-01-14T08:56:12.547+00:00I just found the perfect summary of the bookstore ...I just found the perfect summary of the bookstore part of the equation:<br /><br />"In my local bookstore, the D&D section is in the oversized books aisle, under the manga and graphic novels. The fantasy novels are in the paperback fiction section, several aisles away and never the twain shall meet. Over by the D&D shelf you’ll see the D&D geeks. In the fantasy aisle there’s the students, goth chics, housewives, businessmen and, well, everyone else – all potential role-playing gamers if only the role-playing games were there!!!! In 1985, they were, and it was called Dragon Warriors."<br /><br />https://greywulf.cf/2008/08/16/dragon-warriors-day-two/Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-33233089403807195612021-01-13T18:29:26.085+00:002021-01-13T18:29:26.085+00:00And that career-change test link, for anyone who w...And that career-change test link, for anyone who wants to try it:<br /><br />https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/skills-assessmentDave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-67954238789071675742021-01-13T18:28:32.340+00:002021-01-13T18:28:32.340+00:00You piqued my curiosity, Roger, so I just tried th...You piqued my curiosity, Roger, so I just tried that test. Discounting “sports & leisure” careers (what on earth gave them that idea?) I got “actor”, “chief inspector”, and “technical architect”. I can see a way to combine them, but I’d need a Batcave.<br /><br />I did wonder what the Stone Age equivalent of the Microsoft questionnaire would be like, simply because a Palaeolithic tribe presumably actually had fewer distinct roles than Microsoft does. I suspect I’d be the guy who comes up with new ideas for traps but isn’t interested in actually building them. Shaman, that would do – the 30,000 BC equivalent of being an academic. <br /><br />I think my Myers-Briggs category was INTJ, but my reaction (as to most such tests) was: “Well, yes, maybe, sort of, and yet...” Belbin gave me “shaper” and “plant”. (The latter is better than it sounds, thankfully!)Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-16434944209008914252021-01-12T15:06:06.910+00:002021-01-12T15:06:06.910+00:00Roger replies:
“Presumably all the options were t...Roger replies:<br /><br />“Presumably all the options were things you could do within Microsoft? So that's a relatively small subset of everything. But yes, I agree, it's a very tempting sort of idea.<br /><br />“In a game system with enough attributes, ideally you'd make each attribute a separate axis, and even more ideally have them all uncorrelated with each other. For utter counsels of perfection, have some skills that benefit from a moderate attribute more than a high one -- for example you don't set very smart people as sentries, because they get bored too fast.<br /><br />“Some time last year I tried the government short questionnaire about changes of career. The top recommendation for me was ‘actor’, which, well, at least it gave Mike a good laugh.<br /><br />“I did some of the short MBTI quizzes for a few years (I'm told by people selling the long-form that the short-form is completely worthless) and found I was circling ever close to the centre of the chart. But really, anything that puts me as even slightly extroverted has got the wrong idea.”Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-35423566028924293652021-01-11T08:18:26.058+00:002021-01-11T08:18:26.058+00:00That's certainly not a familiar look around ou...That's certainly not a familiar look around our table. Even when players come straight from the office [note to younger readers: office = a place of work before the 2020 pandemic] they get changed before we start playing.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-87289713806709049162021-01-11T05:55:21.502+00:002021-01-11T05:55:21.502+00:00On this Dutch site, they've just unearth that ...On this Dutch site, they've just unearth that old add... I must say I haven't ever seen a RpG player wearing a tie... : https://www.hetoogdesmeesters.com/2021/01/een-spel-voor-deze-tijd/mundialecterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10204293820750293401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-57016632407234296202021-01-10T15:06:59.503+00:002021-01-10T15:06:59.503+00:00It was one of the best rpg campaigns I've play...It was one of the best rpg campaigns I've played in. Yes at some point this year I do plan on running a DW campaign myself. I'm starting to play in a dark age vampire campaign from next Saturday night that's going to be run by one of the other players from Grims DW campaign. The chap who played the assassin.Ian Boothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02656725340009092413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-16493834729884597842021-01-10T14:24:00.307+00:002021-01-10T14:24:00.307+00:00Drifting a little off-topic here, but it occurs to...Drifting a little off-topic here, but it occurs to me there may already be an N-dimensional map of aptitudes floating around. When the game developer where I worked was about to sign a contract with Microsoft, they insisted all the leads take a long psychometric test. You know the kind of thing with hundreds of questions – there are always a few borderline answers.<br /><br />Anyway, I took the test and got the result “game designer/architect” as my ideal career. That was lucky. But then I thought about those questions where I could have gone either way. Nudging those to the other side of the wire gave me “writer/editor”. Then when I tried a third time, being bolder with some of borderline answers, I got “engineer”.<br /><br />As those all make a certain amount of sense, it gave me some faith in a test that I had assumed was complete woo. But also it made me imagine the space in which writer, game designer and engineer are all regions with a shared boundary at one point. And whether the underlying theory could be generalized to cover all possible human activities.<br /><br />Of course, the test was only measuring my *inclination* to work in those careers, not whether I’d actually be any good at them, so it’s odd that Microsoft bothered to look at the results. (I’m reminded of a friend who took the rather less scientifically rigorous Myers-Briggs questionnaire and then told me it revealed she had strong intuition. I had to explain that it only indicated that she relied more on intuition than evidence, but that ironically she was demonstrating exactly that trait in her misinterpretation of the results!)Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-54770221124383288052021-01-09T16:05:19.127+00:002021-01-09T16:05:19.127+00:00Roger by email again:
“How _do_ you run a passive...Roger by email again:<br /><br />“How _do_ you run a passive ability like Danger Sense, though? I mean, if this is something that works in the broad sense of giving the PC information before normal people would be aware of it, at least one of the player, the GM, or the prewritten adventure has to remember that this ability exists. (Similarly if the PC is distractingly irresistible to the appropriate sex.)<br /><br />“One approach I can think of would be to eliminate the special-purpose abilities and replace them with situational perception bonuses. So you don't have Danger Sense, you have +X to Perception for noticing an ambush. (AGE would call this an ability focus.) Someone still has to remember stuff, which is probably inevitable, but at least it all fits into a single framework.<br /><br />“Genesys splits out Perception (‘I'm looking for a thing’) from Vigilance (‘I notice a thing’), which is fun but I'm not sure how useful it is.<br /><br />“No way the kind of GURPS 5e you describe would happen. (a) if the powers that be wanted a major new ruleset they'd get someone other than me (probably Sean Punch, the only GURPS full-timer and without doubt the person who knows GURPS4 best); (b) they probably don't want to fragment the player base on rules as well as on settings, since as a generic system GURPS already suffers from not being able to sell settings or adventures to more than a small fraction of its players; (c) there's already GURPS Ultra-Lite, a single-page tiny free GURPS-like ruleset, which approximately nobody uses.<br /><br />“A while back I did propose a version of GURPS Lite for 4e (which I gather is much less popular as a stand-alone ruleset than Lite for 3e was) to make a lightweight single-purpose game, e.g. for dungeon bashing, but that never came to anything.<br /><br />“(Standard background thing, which I may have misremembered in detail but it's close to this: something like 90% of RPG sales is D&D. 90% of what's left is other dungeon-bashing games. If you try to sell something other than dungeon-bashing, you're already being fairly quixotic.)<br /><br />“One day I will probably write a set of rules that will be blatantly inspired by GURPS, and by some other things; at the moment I'm trying out other people's and seeing what works for me.<br /><br />“You’re proposing an N-dimensional taxonomy of all abilities, with Pythagorean proximity determining interactions? Yes, I can see this as a practical and achievable project – oh no not the tentacles again…<br /><br />“(Actually I wrote code for something similar a while ago, fitting people to job vacancies. The maths isn't hard. Picking the scales and rating things on them is.)”Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-40844122613716811872021-01-09T08:56:12.799+00:002021-01-09T08:56:12.799+00:00Ah, "die Tochter des Kalifen" where you ...Ah, "die Tochter des Kalifen" where you must solve a riddle about the Smurfs and can watch a near-nude dance of the seven veils (the final picture was removed from the French version....)mundialecterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10204293820750293401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-81926432672917009522021-01-08T22:22:23.496+00:002021-01-08T22:22:23.496+00:00I must have read the English translation at Transw...I must have read the English translation at Transworld's offices -- Oliver worked there and asked my opinion on it. But I don't remember anything about the system or background. The mix of childish and adult themes sounds intriguing.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-58205260398064552252021-01-08T22:20:38.460+00:002021-01-08T22:20:38.460+00:00That looked like a fantastic campaign, largely tha...That looked like a fantastic campaign, largely thanks to Grim's GMing and a great group of players. And maybe DW helped a bit :-)Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-62375289033967810752021-01-08T19:12:04.312+00:002021-01-08T19:12:04.312+00:00And I think you're planning a campaign this ye...And I think you're planning a campaign this year, Ian?Simon Barnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721105717593935991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-15307526730607735622021-01-08T18:33:36.373+00:002021-01-08T18:33:36.373+00:00I got into rpgs through the board game Heroquest a...I got into rpgs through the board game Heroquest and Fighting Fantasy books as well as the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rpg books which I did own all of at one point! I got the first 3 DW books in a 2nd hand book shop while on holiday in Scotland in my teens. I then picked up the hardback edition some years ago f4om a gaming shop in Leeds. Last year I finally got to play in a Dragon Warrior campaign (Grims one he streamed online, I player the monk Brother Abbas) last year and had fine of fun. I like it because it's different to other rpgs and the background is richer and has a more mythological feel to it to me Ian Boothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02656725340009092413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-52000934454133853262021-01-08T16:17:28.693+00:002021-01-08T16:17:28.693+00:00I don't remember if I already mentionned it on...I don't remember if I already mentionned it on that blog, but Fanpro (the present copyrightholder of DSA) released some time ago a very long video series on the game; since I am partly fluent in German, I had already watched the first épisodes with interviews of Werner Füchs, the sole surviving "founding father" (behind his late brother-in-law Ulrich Kiesow; I just see they've made a version with French subtitles : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5I_zIYVGm4&vl=fr )<br />In Germany, they were supported by Schmidt Spiele who could afford a huge advertizing campaign, and that's why they could outnumber by far D&D in their country; however, they were submitted to huge time constraints and that's why their products were of such... variable quality. <br />The French version was the first Rpg I ever played, and while Dragon Warriors is more "consistent" and "even", the Dark Eye (I mean its first version, for it has changed a lot now....) has both huge attractive aspects (its vivid atmosphere with a mix of both childish and adult themes) and drawbacks (oh, these rules....)<br />I think the French edition took back the German format : rulebooks sold separately in cartoon boxes with dice and paper stand-ups, GM-screen... Economically riskier...mundialecterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10204293820750293401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-78043946877734386692021-01-08T10:04:29.250+00:002021-01-08T10:04:29.250+00:00To be fair, that is one of the maddest coincidence...To be fair, that is one of the maddest coincidences in history. Two Steve Jacksons, both mavens of game design, both running games companies, both writing solo gamebooks... It's a clear glitch in the Matrix!Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-88211217795909850842021-01-08T10:02:30.586+00:002021-01-08T10:02:30.586+00:00Hah, after 20+ years of GURPS my players ought to ...Hah, after 20+ years of GURPS my players ought to be better at remembering their disadvantages, but somehow they tend to forget about them when it matters. I can only assume they haven’t twigged that the disadvantages are, as you say, opportunities to grab screen time rather than outright liabilities.<br /><br />Still, I can’t blame the players when it comes to traits like Danger Sense, Sex Appeal, Detect Lies, etc, which sometimes should kick in without them having to tell me. I have them all listed on a spreadsheet, but it’s one more thing to check through in every new situation. As I get older, more of those things slip through the attention net.<br /><br />Your description of a hypothetical 5e is exactly what I’m looking for. And it occurs to me, since you have a foot in the door there at SJG, how about pitching it to them? Probably they wouldn’t want to call it 5e, with the implications of obsolescence that go with that, but as a complete-in-one-book streamlined alternative to GURPS I think there’d be plenty of takers. It’d be the new and more usable GURPS Lite, in effect. I’d certainly buy it!<br /><br />In my own RPG designs I always have to struggle with the taxonomy of skills. This goes back to my time as head librarian at school, where I chafed at the single root to any point on the shelves. Even now… do I put Maya myth books under mythology, or history, or Mesoamerican geography? Not enough dimensions! I admire the steely determination it takes to say, ‘sword skill purely derives from DX’ while in some of my own game systems (Tirikelu for example) there’s a formula involving dexterity, cleverness, strength, size… ‘K.I.S.S.!’ my conscious mind keeps shouting, but the rest of the brain has its own way of doing things and is often an unruly servant to the ego.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-7944853554835928432021-01-08T10:01:33.669+00:002021-01-08T10:01:33.669+00:00I keep coming back to the idea of a Heart of Ice R...I keep coming back to the idea of a Heart of Ice RPG, Nigel -- but how often can you destroy the world? And I do have Jewelspider, Abraxas and Tetsubo to finish first.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-20438962733103625742021-01-08T10:01:05.145+00:002021-01-08T10:01:05.145+00:00Yes, I nearly mentioned the crossover to Orb in Ta...Yes, I nearly mentioned the crossover to Orb in Talisman of Death! It threw me completely. I though it was some kind of bizarre coincidence!<br /><br />Mind you, at that point I thought *all* the FF books were written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston. It didn't help that when I'd looked into the "Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone presents" on my copy of Robot Commando, it clearly stated it was written by Steve Jackson. I hadn't twigged that there was more than one.<br /><br />I was baffled by how Steve Jackson managed to run Games Workshop and Steve Jackson Games at the same time. What can I say? I was very young...Raymond Holthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12841160189667944214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-62889303228688752352021-01-08T09:53:39.220+00:002021-01-08T09:53:39.220+00:00And Talisman of Death is still far and away the be...And Talisman of Death is still far and away the best FF gamebook. You’ll be pleased to hear Dave that my awesome brother gifted me with both your Heart of Ice and Redeemer (the long awaited Book 7 of the Way of the Tiger)... He really will deserve his copy of Jewelspider when it’s done! Nigelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13008412474153353926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-5967759873793717572021-01-08T09:40:14.514+00:002021-01-08T09:40:14.514+00:00Roger adds:
“I think that trying to use everythin...Roger adds:<br /><br />“I think that trying to use everything (even everything in the core GURPS books) would automatically fail. On the SJGames forums we sometimes see D&Ders who are trying GURPS for the first time, asking about particular power combinations, and they get very surprised when the answer is ‘if your particular GM chooses to allow it’ rather than simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’.<br /><br />“I'm fortunate with my main GURPS-playing group that they're old hands who can keep their disadvantages in their heads without my having to poke at them. I've run several short demo scenarios and for those I do have a cheat sheet of PC disadvantages and when they might kick in, in part because I want to show them off.<br /><br />“I would like to use a more streamlined system. 4e did a lot about this (with e.g. standardised self-control rolls) but there are still to my mind too many special cases of traits with their own little rule packets. Some of this was an attempt to maintain broad compatibility with 3e, and I can't say that was a wrong thing to do, but if I were designing GURPS 5e I would be more willing to have a base type plus variations rather than listing each one separately. (For example, ‘Vulnerability’ is ‘a particular sort of attack does extra damage to you’ while ‘Weakness’ is ‘this normally-safe thing does damage to you’...)<br /><br />“The revelation I had a little while ago is that any trait, positive or negative, can be seen as a bid for screen time. ‘I get drunk and gamble away our pay’ is just as much making the game about _me_ as ‘I know all about explosives’. And that, I think, is one reason why GURPS has disadvantage limits.<br /><br />“I've tried a stat/skill hierarchy in a design I worked on some years ago, but I found I soon had to give up any convenient networking rules (e.g. ‘if you're defaulting a skill to a sibling skill, that's at -2’) because the organisational structure isn't ever as neat as one would like. (Also, I've read In The Land Of Invented Languages so I'm aware of the various attempts to build a taxonomy of everything that went on in Newton's time, and I get wary of projects that look like that.) First edition Paranoia has skill trees but they only break down to three levels, four in a few places.” Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2141372262111342844.post-41862253739906937862021-01-08T09:09:45.957+00:002021-01-08T09:09:45.957+00:00Olivier, you've reminded me that Transworld co...Olivier, you've reminded me that Transworld considered publishing a UK edition of The Dark Eye in the mid-'80s. "It outsells D&D in Germany," they said. I countered with: "You already publish Dragon Warriors. How many RPGs do you want?" But that presumably was a single large-format book.<br /><br />Ray, I think Jamie and Mark were the first to share their world across multiple series. The world of Orb was the setting for Talisman of Death (FF #11), Way of the Tiger, and at least one of the Duel Master books.Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com