Fun Tools for Lazy Illustrations

HERE is a pretty cool tool to make illustrations for use in custom character sheet design, or handouts that brings stylistic unity to all of it.

You find an image that is the stylistic template that you want, and then upload the illustration that you want in that style, and the computer composites them.

So for example, I have made some custom character sheets that are for use with killershrike's Pathfinder hack for Fate.

I want an illustration for the character.  The player has supplied me with an image of a viking that he likes, so that is the base image.  I have decided that I want a style that looks like pen and ink on parchment, but I want it a little more modern in technique than medieval, so I will take something from a 19th century illustration.  Thus we have these two images, the character picture, and the style reference.

While I like the painting style of the character image, I am wanting to unify the character portraits for all the players sheets, so the style image gives a good, antiquated look but is still clear.

When we run it through the handy deepart.io processor, we get this outcome...

Looks alright.

Just for fun, let's see how well it handles the images for three other player characters...

So here are the originals images.  We want to make them stylistically the same, so we will upload this set with the style template.

And here it is done.

Just for fun, I want to see what it looks like if we use a couple of old styles, first Byzantine, and then actual medieval.

And just to top it off, here is one based off of a Norse woodcut...

Fun toy!

Story Before vs. Story Now

HERE is a (now long in the tooth) essay by Ron Edwards that came from much discussion from active days of The Forge.

Alas... those years of my life were days when I really didn't have time for gaming, and so missed the exciting ferment that led to the indie renaissance.  *sigh*.  It is not fun being behind the curve as a wanna-be designer.

Short version: "Story Before" is plot first and then roll in characters that fit the plot.  "Story Now" is the characters acting as protagonists create the plot. 

Hacks to The Quiet Year

After playing The Quiet Year a little more, I have a couple observations that the table made for those games.

1) The contempt tokens, as written, were mechanically irrelevant.  They only slightly mattered to the fiction.

2) Scarce and abundant resources are likewise mechanically irrelevant.  They too only slightly mattered to the fiction.

These are the house rules to The Quiet Year that my table now uses.

1) Contempt Tokens

These are an interesting idea, and as written, they are meant to introduce interpersonal / political conflict into the narrative of the community.  I think this is a good idea, but the problem, is that in every case, used as written, my table has found them lacking in punch.  You drop contempt on a project on the map?  Good for you.  Have a cookie and we will just go on with what we were doing.

Our Hack

We decided that when a Contempt token is placed on any project on the map, that project pauses and cannot continue to completion until the Contempt is resolved in the fiction.  What we found this does, is escalate the conflict and demand stronger factional commitment.  A resolution must be made, and the factions fight harder for what they want.  This can be by violence, or by bargaining with another project, but it does accelerate the story.

2) Resources

This is also a game about scarcity in the wake of a war.  The problem, is that after initially stating the scarcity or abundance of these things, they cease to matter.  Clean drinking water has been declared scarce?  The first round of play may introduce a distilling project, but after that, it might well be forgotten, or even if it somehow does not get completed, or gets destroyed, there seems to be no real impact on the subsequent events if it is not addressed again later in the game.

Our Hack

At the beginning of each player's turn, a cost or complication must be addressed related to one scarce resource.  A cost might add one to the count down dice for a project as it is slowed down, or a complication might be the loss of a character or thing in the fiction due to the scarcity of the resource. If, for instance, drinking water is scarce, if a well is not dug to get it, building a new wall around the village will take longer as everyone struggles with thirst.  By making this a rule at the start of each player's turn, it forces the community to have to confront it more aggressively, and put those scarcity problems more fully into play from the outset.

Different Ways to use Dice Mechanics to Support Story

HERE is an interesting article about Jason Morningstar's evolution of dice mechanics in support of different games.

1) conflict resolution
2) uncertainty resolution
3) scene resolution (positive or negative)
4) provoke new events
5) track scenes/limit time
6) reinforce game's themes (by die type) with mechanical benefit
7) incorporate character elements (by die type) with mechanical benefit
8) limit choices
9) guide story ends
10) track change in character
11) make change in character

More Thoughts on Pagan Religion in Games

One of the things that becomes very clear reading accounts of actual pagan religion, is the fuzzy distinction, if not lack of distinction between pagan gods and the idols that represent them.  In traditional OSR games informed by Gygax's aesthetic, clerics and paladins might on paper be worshipers of any number of pagan deities, usually in some henotheistic fashion that still was virtually indistinguishable from Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox structure, hierarchy, and praxis (with little regard for theology).  Given that it was rooted in war gaming, and the role of cleric or paladin mechanically was to provide a different way to win at murder hoboing, this is understandable.

Be that as it may, looking at the way actual pagans treated their idea of gods was different.  The idea of a god that actually inhabits a sacred grove, or spring, or tree feeds into the idea that an idol set in a temple can also be the literal inhabited body of the god.  This has a few interesting implications for gaming priests.

1) The god is present where their idol is.  Unlike the Judeo-Christian understanding of God who is spirit and to whom idols are anathema, pagans would carry their shrines and idols with them where they traveled, be these the deified ancestor shrines, or the more general national god shrines.  A properly kitted out pagan priest should likely have variable levels of luggage with commensurate degrees of value to performing ritual petitions; a pocket idol for day travel and small petitions, a coffer sized shrine for short journeys for moderate petitions, and a cart sized shrine useful for longer journeys or semi-permanent establishment and more serious petitions.

Mechanically, this should probably be reflected in the power or scope of miracles available to be petitioned by the pagan priest, with larger shrines making for either easier petition, or greater powered miracles, or both.

2) Defeating your enemies in battle makes taking their gods (the idols in their shrines) as booty a particularly prestigious trophy.  The logic is that if the enemy lost, then their gods were less powerful than your gods, and thus just as the enemy can be captured (if not killed) their gods too can be enslaved.  For instance, in Samuel I and II, and Kings I and II, there are many examples of pagan peoples carrying away the gods of those whom they had vanquished in order to display them as servants at the feet of their larger and more prestigious home idols.

Mechanically, this should probably mean that captured gods (idols) reduce the power or likelihood of petitioned miracles.  That is exactly why the cleric has reason to adventure with the thief; somebody has to go rescue those idols.  The ramifications of this alone are grist for many possible side adventures if not main adventures.

3) Establishing shrines as nodes of power, and colonizing an area with more of your idols makes a region more potent for your god or gods.  It may very well be that pagan priests could develop a sensitivity to the piety of a region, and the power level or the likelihood of petitions being granted, and this would provide a strategic value to the cleric in decision making that did not exist before.  This could get especially thorny if the adventurers were in a land of foreign gods and their priests have the edge.  The very real value in planning ways to corrupt their priests and desecrate their temples in order to tip the scales is a fantastic way to change the pacing and layers of story in a mission.  Again, it makes a really compelling context for the priest to adventure in the company of the rogue who can grift the foreign priest into defiling themselves with drink, forbidden food, or other carnal infractions in order to block their access to the power of the idols, which in turn allows an opening to break the power of their temple.     

An Idea for Refresh with Flashbacks in Fate

I was thinking about a way to make mechanics support fiction with Refresh in Fate.  The default position is that refresh is filled at the beginning of a session.  I also want to make it a reward to the players to actively include flashbacks and backstory snippets that explain their histories and the world they have bumped up against.

Rather than giving refresh in the default fashion, I propose that when a player calls for a flashback, or has a backstory moment that explains one of their abilities, they get a fate point refresh.  This can happen at any time in play, but is limited to the level of the character's refresh for that session.

A flashback should be about a learning experience involving the skill, stunt, or aspect the player wishes to use, but can be either an account of success or failure.  Though not required, if it includes a shared experience with another PC, that PC also gets a point of refresh.  If another PC is brought into the scene, they should give some input as to their part in the experience.  The player of the flashback character should suggest something about the scene, the reason the other character was there, and something about a conflict or challenge presented either to them both, or between them.  It is the job of the second player to use the "yes, and..." principle to add to the vignette.  This is a good time to include things that the two characters can banter or bicker about.

Furthermore, the flashback need not be (should not be) long, but a vignette, and need not give a whole or complete resolution, so long as it shows a point that was pivotal or meaningful to the character.

So, for example in play, suppose a character is lining up a tough long range shot at an enemy, and the player needs a fate point.  They may call for a flashback at that moment.  In the flashback, they describe how they were out hunting with their friend (another PC) before their adventuring days.  The deer is in the sights, but it is a hard shot, and the character mentions how they were both very tired, hungry, and annoyed with each other by that time.  The other player, following the "yes, and..." principle, keys in on the annoyed bit and says in the flashback, "you'll never make the shot."  The first player describes how they squeezed on the trigger, breathing out "damned if I don't...".  The flashback ends.  The GM passes over a fate point to each player.

This is good, since it allows an ambiguous ending to the flashback that gives both players something to work with.  The second player can decide that the shot missed, using that moment for their character to say "it's too far.  We can't afford for you to miss this one", which invites a response, tense, cocky, or otherwise.  Or they may choose the generous route, and offer "good thing you finally learned how to shoot" which still invites a response, whether banter or bickering, such as "yeah... too bad you still haven't".  Roll.  Spend fate point.  Be awesome.

Man Against Nature in Fate

In an interesting discussion on G+ Fate Core page, the question of how to "fight the environment" came up.  The setting in question is a zombie apocalypse world, and after some discussion, here is my take on a man vs. nature (or un-nature) challenge.

I'm a fan of Zombie fiction like Dawn of the Dead, World War Z (book not movie_) or The Walking Dead not because the zombies are the villain (they are pretty boring for that) but because a zombie apocalypse strips us naked and forces us to confront inexorable death with grace and humanity, or with savagery and terror... 

Of course the zombies of the apocalypse are part of the environment, as often as they are directly an opponent, properly done. 

Consequences are a mechanic that supports us understanding what the cost of our choices successful or not, is in the fiction.  As such, I would argue that the zombies themselves, as a practically endless horde, make consequences a moot issue.  

Stress is about the near misses or the things that could have cost us but didn't.  It's alternatively a way to pace conflicts, but as a pacing mechanism without consequences or the ability to take out the opposition, is no different than scoring successes in a challenge or a contest.  So mechanically, again I would say stress for the zombie horde itself is a moot issue.

It makes more sense to address the horde part of the apocalyptic environment as an obstacle to be overcome, and that you can create advantages on.  An advantage you create mechanically may be "Hacking the Horde to Bits" with your chainsaw in the fiction; your Zombies! approach vs. the player's Fight skill.  Likewise, PCs can create an advantage like "rickety barricades" with the Twinkie shelf and the ice cream freezer mechanically, which in the fiction prevents you from using your Zombies! approach till you have overcome their barricade.  That all works out neatly mechanically with little fuss, and reflects the fiction perfectly.  The Brick can still do all the fighty stuff while the Brainiac does the crafty stuff, and it would just be as created advantages mechanically even though in the fiction it would be hacking the zombies to bits with garden tools while the other is fixing the car.

MURRAY'S FULL SERVICE AUTO STATION

Aspects:

Decrepit Zombie-Infested Gas Station

Broken Glass And Debris

Collapsing Veranda Roof

Scene Goal/Murray's: Hinder and Devour the Living

Scene Goal/PCs (Pick One):

Scavenge fuel (3 victories) - Applicable Skills: Notice, Investigate, Survival, Crafts, Drive.  Tasks: Find gas can and siphon; find a vehicle with fuel, siphon fuel.

Scavenge a working vehicle (5 victories) - Applicable Skills: Notice, Investigate, Survival, Drive.  Tasks: Find vehicle keys; Find matching vehicle; Scavenge Fuel (as above).

Scavenge a part to fix a vehicle (7 victories) - Notice, Investigate, Survival, Crafts, Drive.  Tasks: Find needed part; remove broken part; replace part; scavenge fuel (as above).

Zones: Behind the Service Station; In the Service Bays; In the Convenience Store; In Front of The Service Station

Skills/Approaches:

- Zombies! (+4): Can Overcome, Create advantages, Attack, and Defend.  The behave like Romero Zombies, slow, mindless, tireless, hungry.  

 - Hazards (+3): can attack and defend.  This is strictly reactive, and cannot create advantages or overcome, but can harm or hinder direct actions by characters who move through, or interact with the environment (other than zombies).

- Notice (+2): Can overcome, discover (CAA), or defend.  This assumes the area has active agents to notice things - e.g. the endless hordes of Zombies.  You use this to make active agents (zombies) become aware of characters.

- Scarcity (+2): Can create advantages, and overcome.  This represents the lack of, or requirement to have to improvise for characters to find the resources they need.  You use this defend against character's attempts to find things they need.

Stunts:

- No Straight Paths:  Murray's gains a +2 to Defend with Hazards when Heroes move from one Zone to another to Attack.

- Wake The Dead:  adds +1 to Zombie! for one scene on a successful create an advantage roll with Notice when and if loud noise, bright lights, or recklessly obvious movement draws attention in Murray's.  Yes it starts small, but is open ended as a zombie horde grows.  Reckless parties could find themselves in a sea of hungry dead...  

- That's Not The Item You're Looking For:  Murray's has a +2 to Scarcity when creating the advantage That's Not The Item You're Looking For after the Heroes think they have found the item they were searching for.

October Challenge... Harder Than I Thought

SO, I set a challenge for myself on the 1st to write a game a day just as a brute force method of priming the creative pump.

It used to be so easy... alas!

But as I look at it, I have had the second thought that there are 24 hour RPG challenges (like THIS for instance) that are described as a designer's triathlon meant to push the limits of creativity in design, fiction, and layout, and these only happen once a year.

And I blithely thought I would do 31 in a row.

SO I have decided to be a bit more modest in my plans, as one of the designs I spent some hours with this weekend past kept bogging me down with the perfection monster.  As such, I will strive not to be concerned if there is a complete game per se every day, so much as a vignette of a game.  I suppose that much of what I will expect would count as a subsystem of a game.

But, there it is...  Art and Fear... quality comes out of quantity. 

Action Pacing In Play

I really find long action scenes in play, to be tedious.  By which I mean, against a real clock by a real table in real life, and where a play session may only allow as much time playing as the time to watch a movie or two or a few binge episodes of some TV show... I don't want action to take more than the same five or ten minutes (at most) of those action scenes.

OK, so give a little extra room for verbal description, but really, the days in which a set-piece action scene takes two hours is just too long.

Gen Y and Millenials do a lot more gaming online in whatever, and lots of indie gamers do youtube play sessions to which they refer in discussion posts.  I really have only watched Wil Wheaton's Table Top episodes before, and they are genuinely entertaining, largely because of the magic of editing.  I decided to look at a youtube play session by one of the big names associated with Fate the other day.  I really like this guy's thoughtful essays on game play and game design, but I couldn't get through more than 10 minutes of his action scene, due to the pacing.

Now much like golf or tennis, playing is more interesting than watching.  But from that, I have several thoughts.

One of the attractive things is the open, free-form narrative nature of action.  I love that.  Codified formally as overcome or create advantage actions (and attack and defend), you can do everything that is otherwise made in really crunchy lists in, for instance, traditional D&D.  But I don't want to have to memorize lists, I just want to do whatever I can think of in context of the moment, and then want to forget it mechanically.  My favorite action scene in a game ever, was a fight in which I was mechanically outclassed by two opponents, and alone.  I had to think of creative ways to use my environment to tip the scales in my favor, which the rules did not explicitly address, but the GM was flexible and we made a great Jackie Chan kind of action scene.  Fate, with create advantage actions and aspects has this baked into the mechanics.

The problem arises when the rules are stated naked on top of the narrative.  Looking at the video play session, I see the thing that I want to avoid.  I think that he was doing this partly to demo and explain the mechanics, but I want a more seamless way to get past having to state "that sounds like you are being Forceful", or "that sounds like a a create an advantage".  Furthermore, it occurs to me that one thing that seems to be done in Fate games, is overtly making a logistical issue of writing out the aspects on a card, when in more traditional games such things are stated and otherwise just tracked and forgotten as required.  This is related to the same problem I have with the whole multiple die rolling resolution in whatever game, which is to say that it breaks rhythm and thus drags out pacing.  

I don't know how any of the core designers of Fate play at their tables, but other designers have put forward other alternatives like Jadepunk's quick duels method which is essentially a contest rather than a conflict mechanic.  However, Lenny Balsera did make this observation on the Fate G+ forum:

The most important of those is, having the GM roll dice actively increases the swinginess of a conflict scene, which a lot of people perceive as a feature. Having your opponent always present a static difficulty reduces a lot of the variability from round to round, makes outcomes and fate point spending more predictable, etc. So that's basically the trade you make there, added chaos and added handling time vs. less chaos and less handling time. My preference is, if we're gonna agree to engage a system specific to having conflicts, to push in the direction of more chaos.

Also, having the GM roll actively engages the GM in the same kind of economy management stuff as the players, and forces some of the same prioritization, and I think that tension is an important one in Fate play. There's more of a sense of being an equal participant—as the GM, you also have a limited number of FPs, and depending on how your rolls go, you're gonna have to make some decisions. How important is that opponent, really? Should I concede now and take my licks to build resources for the next scene? Etc.  

Which is interesting.  The important elements are 1) the swingy uncertainty of contested die rolls vs. a less swingy single roll bell curve; 2) the chaos of more rolls and thus more chances for a missed success; 3) the more active competition of the fate point economy on both the GM and player side. The cost of doing business this way, is more time on the play session clock.

So this equation is essentially: Uncertainty + Chaos + Balanced Competition = Fun (vis a vis Fate conflicts).

It seems to me that perhaps if the thrill of uncertainty, and the illusion of chaos (or a different kind of chaos), and the balanced competitive element can be mixed, perhaps by reducing the second, time on the clock can be reduced by simplifying mechanics.

...hmmm... how then to change the chaos, and yet reduce the mechanics?...

More precisely, how to shift the mechanics to some kind that does not actually require stopping in real time to manage the mechanical transaction in order to preserve the conversational narrative pace?

How can you get the chaos and pacing of say, the card game War, or Pit, or at very least Mau?