#RPGADAY2020 29. Ride

#Ride

I play a mash up of BX and AD&D. Both systems introduced the idea of skills, but other than a vague mention, did not elaborate. In BX and AD&D there was the idea that characters sometimes came from a different background and would have some of the abilities a professional, skilled laborer. Exactly how that worked was unclear. AD&D did have a list of professional hirelings, but didn't give any statistics. Unearthed Arcana brought in a fleshed out version of weapon proficiency and mastery, but didn't spell that out. 

In order to correct that for my campaigns, I wrote a book called "Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners" which provides over 50 different professional "classes" you can use with characters. 

Obviously, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what characters can and can't do. However, I never meant to create or even utilize campaign specific skills. For example, ride or swim. 

A campaign takes place with in a particular setting and that setting needs to have some default skills. Like ride. All characters know how to do it, just like swimming. Skills should be an enhancement, not a detriment. An ability to do more, not less. Now, if my setting was in space, perhaps characters would not know how to swim or ride ride a horse. That makes sense, but then again, I wouldn't expose the party to a horse ride by a lake because they're astronauts.

But if they are crew of the Firefly, obviously they know how to ride a horse through water while wearing a space suit. Skills like ride should always be an enhancement, something creative and interesting that makes the session "different", while not posing a barrier to play. 

I think where this gets gummed up is when a skill is presented as a "get out of puzzle" event. Yes, skills solve problems but shouldn't ever provide a dice roll to get out of a particular situation. That is "gotcha gaming" and I dislike that style of play. (Click here to listen to my rant against Tomb of Horrors, the ultimate gotcha gaming experience.) 

World building is hard, sometimes you have to give the players a free ride, as dictated by the setting. It only makes sense. 

#RPGADAY2020 27. Favour

#Favour

I love mystery and exploration. It appears in all of my games, no matter the genre. It probably goes back to being a kid and raiding my parent's LP collection. 

I would pour over records and try to guess if it was Mom's or Dad's. If it was show tunes or sound tracks or classic, it was my Dad's. If it was Iron Butterfly or Jefferson Airplane, it was Mom's. 

But one record threw me for a loop. "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" by the Moody Blues. Was it Mom's or Dad's? Why did with have two copies?

It didn't trouble me too much as my parents let me listen to it over and over again. They had a lot of great music which rubbed off on me. 

The song, Procession was a clue, but one I could not decipher until 2001, 30 years after it was released. In August, 2001, my wife and I got married and finally moved into together. Anyway, we moved into a tiny apartment and didn't really didn't step foot outside until January of 2002. 

9-11 happened. I was working non-stop at Mattel, Kitty worked nights at the hospital. A December snow storm shut us up for weeks.  

Dec 2001. This picture was taken from our upstairs apartment. It doesn't look too bad
but the weight of the snow collapsed the porch roof and metal awings trapping us inside. 

My wife and I really got to know each other on a couple of different levels. One of those was through music. 

We both love music and our combined CD collection was over 1,000 discs. There was only one duplicate: Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell". 

This answered the question of who owned "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour". Both Mom and Dad. That was their duplicate CD, in vinyl form. 

While this is supposed to a post about games, I find there is an incredible parallel between "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" and "The Division Bell". A lot of the same ideas run through both of them. Communication, destruction, feedback, discourse, discovery, creation, sharing. 

I've never played both albums back to back, but each favours these ideals. And they mirror my main themes and goals of game play. 

#RPGADAY2020 26. Strange

#Strange

I love the unexpected, so strange is hard coded into to my game play. 

I like to introduce mini-games and new concepts into my campaigns. I have missile fire procedures which are stolen right from Car Wars. I have a system of rules to set up weaponless chases, a la Indiana Jones. And silver is always magical. 

Do you have any strange things going on in your games? Let me know in the comments. 

#RPGADAY2020 25. Lever

#Lever

Not sure where to go with lever, except to give a session update. My kids are playing B2 = Keep on the Borderlands with me. All three of my kids are of the age where they make adult choices for themselves.

This tendency is playing out in the game. They took down the ogre in area E, moved into his cave and started playing house. Other than fix up the cave and spy on the other residents, they didn't want to do anything else.  

The characters are aware of the orcs and kobolds, but haven't discovered that there are two orc lairs. They know about the goblins, but don't know where they are coming from. They can hear their voices from the east and sometimes see them out and about but don't know their cave is connected to the goblin's home. 

Time for a lever. 

I had the orcs from area B attack the goblins. The goblins were overwhelmed and ran to the secret door yelling: " BREE-YARK!" The party was surprised when the door opened and bag of gold was thrown at them. After a moment or two, the party found how to open the secret door and unloaded a bunch of arrows into the orc's backs. The orcs charged them, but the party hid using the secret door and water barrel. When the orcs ran down the long hall, the party hit them again. 

The party retreated back through the secret door, leaving the goblins mystified. They have no idea the party is there and believe the ogre got his hands on a bow. 

The orcs lost 8 of 12 attackers and are thinking of pack it in and joining the second orc group. The characters were able to track them back to Area B and are thinking of attacking them. However, they are a little nervous with the goblins so close at hand. 

That was a nice lever for inaction. 

The Simple Things - Printing

I love books, but the oldest and the newest stuff is hard to get in print. Invariably, I wander DriveThruRPG ordering stuff left and right. It never ends. Once I read through something, it goes in one two places: into a hard copy or stays in my "Library of (Digital) RPG Titles" on my Kindle. 

Qualitatively, they are different places. One I expect to read again, while the other is something I might want to read by candlelight after the Nuclear Apocalypse. 

Anyway, reading preferences aside, printing books yourself is really dependent on your printer. I have an HP all in one inkjet printer. It's good for most things, most of the time.

In the picture on the left, look how sharp the text is. It's really nice. Perfectly acceptable for reading by nuclear candlelight. Inkjet are very good on plain paper for text. You can see a little blow through because I printed two sided, but it's still very legible. 

What inkjets are not good at are large, color images on plain paper. Things could not be worse. And since I print a lot of my own stuff on plain paper, the result is less than satisfactory. 

Here is a photo of Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch for Basic Era Games by Timothy S. Brannan. I just love the covers of his books and this one is my favorite. 

And with inkjet on plain paper, it just sucks. Can you say mud? How did it go so wrong? 

It's the paper. 

Check out this next image. It's the same printer and settings, except I used photo paper.  

I'm very happy with this one, the colors are much brighter in real life, but I didn't want to alter the image with different settings to accentuate the colors. Where I went wrong is selecting my favorite cover rather than one that would highlight how good good can be. 

Take a look at this next image from Mr. Brannan's The Basic Witch: The Pumpkin Spice Witch Tradition. 

That 100 times better. We have blues and reds, and stuff in between. I can totally see the how this is different than how it appears on screen, but even using my cheap inkjet printer, the photo paper gives it far more color than plain paper. It's far more satisfying. 

Ah, the simple things.