Der PigDog's PigBlog

Regular readers will remember that in my work-in-progress fantasy heartbreaker Coup Étrange, "HP" stands for "hero points" which are supposed to be spent throughout play. (Actual design is notably lacking on this subject.) Meanwhile real wounds, with game-affecting consequences, belong to a separate subsystem, which is usually only engaged when the character is hit by an attack and they are out of HP. Readers may also recall my suggestions (I don't remember where I put this actually) that some kind of barbarian or berserk warrior could get +1HP/HD killed, keeping the rage machine fueled. So the idea is, you start every scenario with a random amount of HP, in a range fixed by your level and class; say, Xd6+1 for a level X fighting-man. You can increase your current HP past your starting HP, all the way up to, say, 6*X+1 for that same fighting-man. Meanwhile you're also going to be spending it to avoid damage and do cool shit in combat (design work needed here...

 In my play and reading I've identified a few strands that really excite me. If I stick to them they should fill up the next five or fifty years of play, easy. I'll still play other games of course! Old School Naissance I'm very clever with the name. For the past four years I've held that the original sin of the OSR is that it only investigated old-school Dungeons & Dragons. And it was really only interested in D&D as understood by people who played B/X (or, if you're really crusty, some AD&D). That's bullshit. l If you've read  The Elusive Shift  you know that old-school play was tremendously diverse, as were old-school rules. I'm interested in all the forgotten possibilities at the birth of roleplay. I've put together a list of games from the first decade of the hobby (1974 to 1980) with distinctive features that interest me. This turned out to be most games published in that era! Every one had something of interest, based on its wikipe...

Coup de Main, Tuesdays. I'm getting burnt out on big groups. Also, I think I need more visual stimulation while I play; ideally I'll be using video chat for most games in the future. The Bloody-Handed Name of Bronze, take 1  Bloody-Handed Name of Bronze, Codex Edition cover A cool game about bronze-age swords and sorcery heroes; buy it here .  Jay and Simon. Not very good play. A failing of dramatic coordination. We created a situation, in which all the characters were present, but failed to involve them in an interesting way. I had some pretty good takeaways for future games, though. When you're playing, you should always give a name to every single entity that acts in a scene, and you should be expansive about your sense of "acts". Feel free to switch around who plays what entity.  The Lover of Jet and Gold (name of bronze take 2, 2 sessions) TBHNoB started life as three pamphlets: The Lover of Jet and Gold, about Namedealers, Heart of Bronze, about Fated Heroes...

Making a character for  Champions Now  by Ron Edwards. Two statements from Jon H:  Super powers come from outer space or other dimension You can’t choose your family When I make a character in this game I'm supposed to bounce back and forth between three topics: person, powers, and problems. This has gotta be someone likeable, someone I'd actually want to read about in the comics. Drafting  I wrote up the following a month and a half ago: My guy is a robot from space. He was created to be some kind of perfect being by some kind of unstable space scientist/sorcerer. Unfortunately he metaphysically smashed into a SpaceX shuttle and metaphysically fused with an astronaut there. Now he's half human half robot. Not in a creepy cyborg way either -- he shifts back and forth. He has the astronaut's memories (and emotions?) but none of the astronaut's intuitive understanding of earth matters. For powers I'm thinking flight, minor invulnerability (he's made of badass ...

I say "Part 1" because this movie is the first of a planned trilogy. The movie doesn't announce that anywhere explicitly -- I had to read about it on Wikipedia -- and if you don't know this, you'll be confused and annoyed by its final minutes. I give this movie a strong 3 or weak 4 out of 5. If you like this sort of movie, you'll enjoy this one, and you may enjoy it even if you don't normally like this sort of movie. Thematic summary This guy is desperately trying to find healthy masculinity I don't remember anybody's names, so I'm going to call them the kid, the mom, the dad, the grandad, the alpha, the Swedish soldier, the doctor, and Jimmy. The kid is presented with several conflicting archetypes of masculinity, all of which prove unsatisfactory. He rejects them and leaves society to establish his own values. In more detail: the kid goes on a rite of passage hunting trip with the (his) dad. He thinks he has failed to act properly and feels...

I played Melee with Vivit yesterday and have some thoughts on charop. Box art of the most recent edition of Melee Why melee? A history of the game Melee is an early game by Steve Jackson, published by Metagaming in 1977. (I'm playing the 2019 3rd edition, published by Steve Jackson Games.) He intended it to work as a standalone combat board game, or to function as a drop-in replacement for D&D combat. It is the first combat ruleset to work on a small timescale, to bring the regimented action ordering from wargaming into roleplaying, and to require actual combat tactics. (D&D on the other hand focuses on operational matters.) It also introduced the conceit of point-buy character creation. Moreover, Jackson kept developing the game, making a sequel, Wizard , the next year, and a full-fledged RPG, The Fantasy Trip , in 1980. Later that year Jackson left Metagaming and founded Steve Jackson Games. He couldn't afford the rights to The Fantasy Trip. Thus in 1985 he publishe...

Clickbait opener  The D&D killer has finally dropped: Tunnels & Trolls, by Ken St Andre, with illustrations by Liz Danforth, published 1975. Interior illustration from T&T 5e by Liz Danforth More seriously  I've been playing a lot of Tunnels & Trolls at the Table-Time server lately. It's fantastic. (No, it's not a "D&D killer", there's no such thing, it is not even desirable, just play the games you enjoy. I'm still playing D&D.) I haven't interacted with the T&T community, if there still is one, so I have no way of knowing if what I describe bears any resemblance to T&T as others have played it. Here I will explain the game as it strikes me, and what's so good about it. Player-side fun Tunnels & Trolls is designed for 3 to 5 players, including a GM. I find old-school D&D's insistence on a big play group stifling, not to mention impractical, so this is a nice change. The game is intimate.  Players are ex...