Der PigDog's PigBlog

I'm ready to start playtesting my newest game, Gathering of the Tunnelmasters, or GotTM, pronounced "got 'em!". (I say "start"; I've been playing through aspects of it for 3 years or more. This is the first time I've assembled every aspect of the game.) Like any functional role-playing game, it does not provide an experience in a box. It is an instrument with which a group of skilled players, black metal samurai, can make their music.  Games as instruments  You can sell somebody an instrument, but you can't sell them its music. They do that on their own.  Some instruments are easier to learn and use than others. Some instruments are very obviously difficult to use. Some instruments have a limited range of expression. Some instruments have a vast range of expression. Zombie Cinema is a gem of a game, which is fantastically easy to learn and use, and will nearly always make something decent, but which respects the players' skill and allow...

The following is experimental! I came up with these rules after reading lumpley's  Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven's Ars Magica: A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore  and mulling over the purpose of a dedicated GM in my own gaming . I haven't played with them yet. At any time, make a common move. When you don't have a main character in a scene, and everybody is silent, make an MC move. When you don't have a main character in a scene, and someone rolls a miss, make an MC move. If everybody has a main character in a scene, anybody can make MC moves, but not moves targeting their own character. One person shouldn't make an MC move immediately followed by a character move, nor a character move immediately followed by an MC move. Remember, the game is not a series of moves. It is a conversation about fictional events in which moves are triggered. Common moves Start a scene from scratch. Turn to another player and ask where their character is, what they are...

"You've ruined everything. I will hate you forever." A game for three players, A, B, and C, shifting roles. Brief definition of a human being for play purposes "Human being" is a keyword I've found useful in playing several narrativist games. When I say so-and-so is a human being, I mean that they are not a structural literary type (pro- or antagonist), a cardboard cutout, a stereotype, a pawn, a monster, a simple player stand-in, or a political or moral idea given fictional flesh. Most human beings have all of the following  Name Age Ethnicity Social class Income (or none!) Hometown Current city A job, and previous work experience (or none!) Sexual and romantic relationships (or none!) Friends (or none!) Family (or none!) Hobbies and interests Material resources  It isn't necessary to fill out every detail, just enough for our current play. You can always add more later. Scenario creation I Player A creates the main girl, a human being between the ages ...

This post gives new magic rules inspired by Ars Magica. It's written for my own fantasy heartbreaker, but it should be compatible with most or all OSR games. Try using this in place of your Magic-User's normal magic rules, or add these as variant casting and spell-learning rules for a different casting class. These rules offer supreme flexibility and extensibility for a sort of magic grounded in magical traditions. I provide links to the traditions at the bottom of the post. These rules also model spell research, including the creation of brand new spells, better than any I have seen in any OSR game. What a spell is A spell is a combination of a noun and verb, spoken out loud, plus some gestures and effort. Your specific magical tradition is going to give you the specific list of nouns and verbs that can combine to form a spell. The same noun-verb combination can be used to cast a bunch of different spells; the noun and the verb just give the basic family of effects. For instan...

The magic rules in D&D are deficient from a literary perspective, and played out from a wargaming perspective. (To be clear, I think Vance is great, but D&D's "Vancian" magic is not particularly Vancian.) So I'm looking for replacements for my fantasy heartbreaker. Most likely I'll try to assemble lots of different rules for magic. We'll choose whatever combination of rules fits the setting for an individual game. I'll make no attempt to harmonize or balance them; we'll simply see how they interact. A set of magic rules that come highly recommended I skimmed Ars Magica once. The magic rules seem really cool, though I have little interest in the game itself. So let's try reconstructing it for the heartbreaker. Here are some salient facts about magic in Ars Magica: Spells have levels/magnitudes. There are guidelines in the book on making new spells at a given magnitude, or finding the magnitude of a given spell. Must review these. The magnitu...

In this post, I give a unified procedure for resolving tasks in games. This procedure has a low handling time, but it is extensible and flexible enough to model tasks at many different scales of abstraction. It has been extensively play-tested, by myself and others, used without much difficulty in over 200 sessions. Basic procedure Use the following procedure to model a simple, isolated task, with a binary outcome. Define the task. Assign the task a base difficulty as a score TN/D . " D " is the die size you're going to use (for instance, 6, 10, 20), and " TN " is the target number; you want to roll TN or lower on the die. Also assign the task a period, the time required to complete it. Adjust for situational factors. Count up situational advantages and disadvantages. Cancel one advantage for one disadvantage until only one type remains or neither applies. Assign bonus dice for remaining advantages and penalty dice for remaining disadvantages, 1 die each. Ro...

I don't like looking things up in play. I also don't like asinine detail or unprincipled differences. The AD&D monster manual statblock is basically my worst nightmare. You're telling me a wolverine is a 3 HD monster with claw/claw/bite? A wolverine can defeat three trained level 1 human combatants in armor? (They also have an extra +4 to hit, for a total of +7. Plate armor is meaningless to these beasts.) I don't want to have to look up how much damage a creature does, and I don't want the answer to be some ridiculous bullshit. I want clear guidelines for monster damage, guidelines which I can apply consistently and on the fly , without consulting any books. Principles In my heartbreaker, I distinguish between HP (hero points) and IP (injury points). HP is protagonism, plot armor. Only people and monsters with levels have HP. (Nameless humans don't get HP.) You can lose HP all you want and still stay effective, as long as you've got at least 1 left. IP ...

I have run one (1) session of rules-as-written Coup 'Étrange (meaning a session with a custom scenario written to include the PCs) and it was just ok . (Would have been a lot better if I had clearly explained that PvP was on the table from the beginning, and we hadn't had a player drop out last minute -- the missing character was a key part of the scenario.) Nevertheless I feel qualified to write up my guidelines on creating a scenario. (Actually this is a draft. I'm going to put it into practice and revise if necessary.) First, decide if you're playing a dungeon game, a wilderness game, a town game, or a mix of two or three. If you have a published module in mind, that's fine too. For the sake of example, let's say you're doing a dungeon game. Make or read through the dungeon. Make a list of principal agents in the scenario, not counting the PCs. A principal agent is somebody with a motivation related to the scenario who is active within it. If you can, add...

This is mostly a summary of the Coup procedure, so credit where it's due there. I've added the bit about different action speeds as it's come up in games a fair deal. Maneuvering Combat is divided into 1 minute maneuver phases. Declare what you are doing at the start of the phase. Everybody declares at once, no particular order. Actions in the maneuver phase are immediate, fast, or normal. Every action in a speed category takes place simultaneously. Fully resolve all actions in one speed category before you move on to the next. Conceivably, your action could take some sort of penalty if you are disrupted by an action from an earlier category. Immediate actions: shooting an arrow, throwing a spear, tossing a rock, readying a spear, giving a brief command, charging into melee (maybe? this is separate from the ordinary walking-speed "closing into melee" and requires a martial arts technique to get a whole group to do it at once) Fast actions: closing into melee Norma...

Dice tech basics When you make a check of TN/D difficulty, you want to roll TN or lower on a D-sided die. Call that a hit, otherwise, the die is a miss. Sometimes you'll modify the roll by adding bonus dice (roll an extra die of the same size and take the better result), penalty dice (roll an extra die of the same size and take the worse result), or changing the target number (TN). If you would increase TN to the point where the task is a sure thing (in other words, TN = die size), bump up the die size instead and increase the TN accordingly. (So a task gets easier as 4/6, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10, 11/12, 19/20...) Similarly, if you would ever decrease TN to the point where the task is impossible (in other words, TN = 0 or less), keep TN the same and increase the die size. (So a task gets harder as 2/6, 1/6, 1/8, 1/10, 1/12, 1/20...) If you have both bonus and penalty dice, cancel out one of each until you have only bonus dice, only penalty dice, or neither. Now, roll the dice. If you have a...

First official playtest of my fantasy heartbreaker, tentatively named Coup Étrange. I ran the game for Patrick and Tschesae, playing a magician and a commoner respectively. Before they made their characters, I gave them the prompts: As the huge red sun gutters in the sky, fabulous, trivial men scheme and cavort in the monuments of dead civilizations Magic is misunderstood and forgotten technology Patrick's character, Marigold, before the start of play Tschesae's character, Karl, after the end of session I had prepared for a third player, Adam, but his internet went out so he couldn't attend. My session prep consisted of a relationship map, a list of forces for two groups of gangsters, and the layout of an extremely barebones dungeon, actually just a house with some treasure, a trap, and clues. Most of this wound up being unimportant for the scenario. The relationship map was composed almost entirely out of characters from the three players' contacts, with two additions,...

These are the player-facing rules for a game about exploring a spooky haunted house. One player is the House. Everybody else is on a team trying to investigate the house. The House will tell you its exoteric history. As a group, figure out why you guys are exploring the house and plumbing its mysteries. Then, individually: Choose if you are hot or cold in your dealings with other people Choose if you are open or closed to psychic phenomena Say your role in the group Come up with a dark secret for yourself, and tell the House Come up with a secret you know about somebody else. Tell them and the House Figure out what you personally want out of your dealings with the House Then you'll work with the team to figure out your method of approach. Depending on how much you know about the place, you might get a blueprint from the House. (It might not be fully accurate!) You have a couple of "moves" you can do whenever. Roll 2d6. If you have a stat matching the move, add +2 to your ...

I'm not a historian. If you want real knowledge, go to a historian. If you want something gameable, read on. The market in medieval times was not the supermarket of today. Obviously! People brought goods to market in market towns, about twice a week. On such days you can buy any common good, straight off, from a stall. If it's not a market day, you can still buy food, but you'll have to order other items from workshops. (Small towns have markets every week or every two weeks.) Prices are generally static throughout the medieval period, for a few reasons -- constant deflation from the trade balance with Asia, relative stagnation in the productivity of labor, and, most importantly, laws setting price ceilings on common goods, and trade unions setting prices for everything else. So you don't need to worry about modelling dynamic prices for goods. You do have to worry about the availability of goods, and the time it takes to produce them. Basic price list So if the gang wa...