While working on the Fudge One Month Adventure Challenge (I’m not going to finish it in time, but that’s not really the point), I had an idea for a RPG magic system. I was thinking about how to put the entire system on a single page for the adventure I’m writing, including a magic system and I wanted to keep it simple to understand. A brief discussion on the mailing list and it got me thinking about what magic should be in a roleplaying game.

I know, this is a big can of worms and everyone but everyone has an opinion about what should a magic system be or how it should feel etc.  But this is about what I think magic should be like in a game, not anyone elses and my feeling is that magic should be strange, weird and mysterious. Of course this is completely at odd with the mechanical/systematic nature of roleplaying systems and settings. You need magic to be some what systematic otherwise it is nothing more than random rolls on a table. I also think magic users should be different to everyone else, they should see and react to the world different. They live in a world-view that’s is alien to the average joe, that’s what makes them magic users. Be that world-view spirits and demons or UFOs and aliens.

World of Darkness’ Mage does this by using “paradox”. When you use magic that breaks reality, you’re character gains paradox points, which build up until they explode in some weird (and fun) way. Paradox backlashes (as they were called) were often the most fun part of playing Mage, basically when magic goes wrong. Ars Magica magic does something similar with Twilight, where a magic user can botch and enter a state of madness and come back, sometimes with a flaw or sometimes with a great insight to an element of magic.

My idea is rather simple and I think you can slap it on top of nearly any systematic magic system. I’d like to hear if people think they like it or not. As a magic user gets better at magic, they also move further from reality or the rest of the world’s understanding of reality. At each pivotal increase in understanding (i.e. each increase in magical ability beyond the first), they gain a “rule”. This rule can be determined randomly using tables, the GM may decide it in secret and the player has to figure it out in game or the player and the GM can design something together.

The first rule affects the way they do magic It could be that when they perform magic, all the plants nearby die, windows show distracting what-if visions to the magic-user, etc. But they also gain some special advantage, such as being able to generate fire without a source, have a much looser restriction on magic casting times, etc.

The bigger the increase in magic, the bigger the effect or scope of the rule and it’s consequential advantage. At the highest levels, it just goes off all the time, the magic user can’t never pass through a doorway, because they’ll end up somewhere else or they cover up statues because if the magic user sees the eye of a statue, it comes to life.

If they choose to stop using magic, and stop practicing it, the rules will fade away over time, but if they ever try to use their magic again, all the rules will come back.

But to offset it a bit and offer players some control, the player should be able to spend their XP to add conditions to any of these rules, to lessen their effects. They can’t buy out the rule but they can restrict it’s scope. They could add a condition such as “never on Tuesdays”, “not when I’m wearing blue”, etc.

With this sort of system, magic characters become strange and mysterious. No two will be alike and they’ll act strangely to average joes. But they’ll also be fun. I’m very tempted to flesh it out into a full system and add to my lost heroes rpg. What do you think? Would this add an element of mystery and fun to a plain vanilla magic user character?

There is an interesting discussion going on right now over on the igaming mailing list (and cross-posted to LiveJournal), but one I’ve consciously chosen not to comment on. The people involved have much bigger stakes in it than I ever have and I’ve had my share of being on the virtual battleground but I have little to add on this.

So I guess I’m doing it here. If you take the time, read the original post. It’s roughly about now in the year that some argument occurs (though the last few years have been quiet). The discussion is about how scenarios, or rather TableTop RPGs, are run at Irish Conventions. Apparently we do it differently to everyone else and one of the “old hands” in the scene has strongly suggested that cons change the way they do things.

Unlike most of the people involved in the discussion, I’ve only GMed at a few conventions, submitted only two (may be three, I can’t exactly remember) scenarios, attend conventions every few years and I’m not really part of the “scene” though I know a lot of the oldies and some of the younger ones by face or name. We’re a small enough country you know.

I’ve GMed at conventions but only in my younger teenage years (15+ years ago, maybe even more), when the offer of free entry and T-shirt were a big thing for me. I ran only systems I knew but I barely remember the experience. I do remember being called up a few days before one Gaelcon and being asked if I’d GM some game because I did it the year before, I could hardly refuse. I remember as youngster it was the systems I knew that I want to play.

As I entered collage, I wasn’t really involved at that level again. The only scenarios I submitted were because friends asked me to, no other reason. I put a lot of effort into them at time, getting them in on time, trying to layout them out to support GMs, etc. But I found as a newbie scenario writer, I was given the short stick for a lot of it. My second scenario was ran on the dreaded Sunday morning slots where one of the players arrived and promptly fell asleep, because, like everyone else, he had been out drinking at the pub quiz the night before.

The complaint in this discussion is that numbers are dwindling and the organisation behind scenario submissions and finding GMs is breaking down. Writers submit their scenarios late, GMs don’t get them until five minutes before the session starts, everything is a mess and with dwindling numbers, it’s just badness. The solution, proposed, is that the writer is the GM and there is only one table per scenario (ran by the writer). So no bad GMs to run that scenario, but then you have lack of tables, people don’t get to play the games they want, and so on.

I have to agree, at the few conventions I’ve been at, I’ve been lumbered with GMs who didn’t know the system but knew thew world (we still had a good game), with GMs who only got the scenario as we sat down (that game sucked) and games that didn’t run because there wasn’t enough players. Hell, in one case, I heard about game that was going to be scheduled and offered to be a GM, but that fell apart because of not enough players.

From my writer perspective though, it was always a one writer-table experience. Unless you’re one of the “superstars” of the scene or writing one of the stable games (like D&D or in the olden days Vampire), you only ever got one table. Most of the games I’d like to play are not the big name games (and this was before the big “indie revolution”), I play those with my regular troupe, it’s the unusual or less popular ones that I grab my interest. They regularly only have one or maybe two tables. To me it seems like we have the two systems already in place, but then I don’t have the vast amount of con-experience to validate that assessment.

So on side we have the big popular games or writers with several tables and GMs running the scenarios. This is the given impression of how cons are ran. And on the other side then, lesser popular or well known games and writers often only get one table (possible two).  So it already looks like, to me, we have a hybrid system of multiple GM to one scenario and single-table-writer-GM scenarios. The commonality is how the scenario is submitted to the con as a scenario writer must assume that other GMs may read their scenario and can’t just run with a few notes in their head.

So is the issue really with the scenario submission process? Should it be more flexible, lower the bar to get more in or raise the bar to get only the high level of quality? Or am I missing the fundamental difference in the two styles of organization?

It would seem to me that the clog in the pipe is the scenarios received by a con more than anything else. Cons need to have a better submission process that encourage new writers to contribute but keeps a high level of quality. Not easy I guess when everyone involved is volunteers. The more I think and write about it, the more it seems to me that conventions are like publishers in many ways. They need to be to maintain a high level of quality of submission. Yet unlike publishers there is very little feedback from the cons until the actual day of the convention (i.e. the public launch of the scenario in a live game), (in my experience but if yours differs, that great). If you don’t care about the quality than the model needs to change and give more flexibility to writer/GMs to just run stuff.

If we keep the old way, you need more writers to get involved. I think the first thing to do is reduce the foreseeable “barriers to entry” as much as possible, provide some sort of enticement to get new writers in and then provide good and decent feedback before the convention.

For example, one of the “barriers” people throw about is that people don’t know how to write scenarios and so there should be workshops and guides etc. These are all great but don’t necessarily encourage writers to submit their work to cons. Perhaps cons could start with a “Style Guide” that gives suggestions on format and layout, sections/chapters and notes on readability, much like you’d get from a publisher who may solicit freelance work. Of course they shouldn’t necessarily be about how to design the scenario though as there is “more than one way to skin a cat”, but guides and references are always useful, if well presented. You could use the wiki to “crowd-source” it even.

Also, why not promote the scenarios submitted last year? Make them available from the con website, with snippets of positive quotes from the players. I always find it odd that last year is forgotten, websites deleted and and the scenarios get banked and gather dust. I don’t see an issue with an old scenario being run again if there is demand for it. Also, by using last years scenarios as promotional material you’re also playing to the ego of the writers, encouraging them to come back and write more this year.

And you need to entice writers as early as possible. Awards don’t do it BTW. Not saying awards are bad, they serve their own function, but only one person can win an award, the rest are losers. You don’t want you’re new writers to be losers, you want them to write for the con next year. I know cons aren’t going to pay writers, and while it’s nice to provide them with snacks and give free entry, its not a particular enticement for someone like me. It’s nice, but really not enough. Instead it’s the little bit extra that con might do. As way of example, I write some free software. People  use it and come back to me for support. A small small minority of users will donate a few Euros my way to say thanks. That’s nice. I also provide a wish list of books and that is really really nice when I receive a surprise parcel with one of those books. It’s how I discovered Watchmen. Those little things, are what keep me developing the software and trying to help and support the users. GreyGhost who publish Fudge RPG, for example, will send you free stuff if you run a fudge game at a convention. So to get new writers and keep them, there has to be that little extra something to entice them and keep them. Perhaps a free signed RPG book, a piece of art from a local artist or even getting their scenario illustrated for example. I don’t know whats available to the budget or ingenuity of con RPG organisers, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Con goers know what to expect from the con experience, but it’s that little bit extra that can make it memorable.

There are less physical ways too, such as proper feedback. If you have a hard deadline for scenarios and those that arrive on time should be reviewed and feedback provided back to the author. For a new writer, knowing that someone took the time to actually read the work in its entirety and make a point of providing useful feedback is great. In fact, feeding to the egos of the writers is cheap but just as effective as physical gifts. Send them a copy of the con pamphlet with their name highlight and their scenario listed.

In the end however, we’ve got to recognise that on all levels of these experiences are people who volunteer and provide their creativity and effort for very little return. So I can imagine it’s hard to change the way things are done or to take criticism from people like me who haven’t done their time. So I offer my thoughts as is.

Satyr Colourtest #1

So I’ve been playing with some new techniques and some new equipment. The above image is the first colour image I’ve done in a while and it was coloured very quick. I used a “lightbox” to trace the original pencil sketch (which you can see below), then used a selection of toned coptic markers to give it shadow and depth. And finally, using gimp’s hand-drawn selection and “colorify” I was able to colour it in less than 30 minutes. I’m not sure I’m going to continue the image first, it was more for a test of techniques and equipment but I certainly like it. There are lots of little computer tricks I could have applied and I really didn’t go into depth in my choice of colours.

Satyr (original) in Pencil

Satyr done in Tone with Coptic Markers

I bought a really cheap lightbox, it says it’s A4 but it barely handles a full page. However a big proper one costs 50 euros or more, depending on brand, so I’d rather try a cheap one first to see if I’d use it before investing in a decent one. It’s just a bright light under a white perspex box and it allows me to place the original drawing on top and using the light I can trace it onto another page. I use to scan the image in and then print it out, which was laborious and time-consuming. This method I allows me to play with the original image while I copy it, improving and enhancing it. It also allows me more freedom when I sketch, I don’t have to worry about getting rid of the construction lines (which can be actually helpful for tracing).

Satyr done in Ink/Brush

Satyr done in Ink/Pen

I also bought a new set of watercolour paints and plan to try them next. I did have a set of watercolours, but I haven’t used them in years and they had all dried. When I was much younger, watercolours were my particular favourite type of paint though I never really mastered them. I also played with pens versus brushes. You can see the pen work versus brush on the same Satyr. My wife likes the brush one, but I feel I have a lot to master with the brush, but I think long term it’ll produce much better effects. I did try a bigger image:

Paris Cityscape in Ink/Brush

In the thumbnail version it looks okay, but I’m not particularly happy with the end result. I should have gone for deeper blacks and less tried to capture tone with shading. I think the original pencil version is better but doesn’t translate to computer well.

So I’m finally getting over being poorly last week, but I’m finding I’m not up to full speed yet. I’m quite tired from the run of antibiotics. Last night, after the kids were in bed, I planned to do some writing (on Lost Heroes) and some painting (bought some new watercolours) but instead, all I could do was zombie out in front of the TV for half an hour before I crawled up to bed.

Today has turned out to be a frustrating one. Work was going fine till after lunch, when my PC started to act weird. It’s a new PC that I’ve just got up to spec with all the software I need and have been using fine for two weeks. So I reboot and it won’t start – can’t find “boot device”. As it turns out my hard drive is fecked. So the whole afternoon is lost, I couldn’t even go and do something else. I’ve lost some stuff, nothing critical, but I have lost some work on TDO Mini Forms which I hadn’t been backing up. 

Anyway, chin up. I’ll get a new harddrive tomorrow, spend the rest of the day re-installing all the software I need and trying to recover as much data as I can and just getting on with it.

I had fun with this. I’ve known about Inkscape for a while, but I never used it. I know SVG is much better “image” format for DTP (Desktop Publishing) so I should have looked at it sooner. Particularly because Inkscape is also open-source. SVG basically allows you export your image at any size without a loss in quality that you might get by resizing a jpeg. As it turns out, inkscape is a doddle to use. So easy to start doing stuff, it looks like it’s going to be my default diagramming tool from now! I’ve already converted my lost heroes logo into SVG.

I set myself a little project, to create a “Family Tree” of the Olympian Gods that I’ve mentioned in Lost Heroes. My plan was to make this part of the setting text. I want to do something similar for the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Aesir when I finish that. I have idea about something for the Angels as well. Now don’t go thinking this is a complete family tree of all the Olympian Gods, thats just something I don’t have time for and someone body has already done that. This is instead, just the Gods and other characters mentioned as part of the Olympian God pantheon in Lost Heroes RPG.

Family Tree of the Olympian Gods from Lost Heroes RPG

It’s missing a “legend”, though I’m not sure it needs one. It looks pretty cool, because Inkscape simply rocks!

Two friends I know from the Irish gaming community (and someone else I don’t know) have gone off and setup a podcast about the Irish Gaming and Roleplaying scene: The Adventuring Party. (I’ve already added it to the Planet Irish Gaming feed).

I haven’t listened to it myself yet, mostly because I don’t normally listen to podcasts and I don’t own an ipod, but I think I’ll have to make an effort for this.

I’ve been regularly roleplaying with Liam for a while and so I know he’s a good guy and fun to game with. He’s involved in the Irish gaming scene on the ground more so than I ever was and was activiely involved in STOCs and Sillicon when it he was in DCU.

Shane is another STOCs head and while, oddly, I’ve never played a game with him but we have on occassion discussed gaming and roleplaying. While having different opinions about it, he always has some good points to make. If you follow his livejournal, I think irishgaming.com describes him pretty fantastically: 

The martial artist, RPG writer, paramedic, snowboarder, LARP writer, ex-online-RPG-pundit, James Bond afficionado and wearer of a fine selection of Hawaiian shirts Shane O’hUid

So best of luck guys and to everyone else, get listening!

I mentioned briefly in my previous post about “the Day of Fudge”.  Well, it’s official. On Saturday, 10 GMs (members of the community) volunteered to run a Fudge game, on the 6th June, in a public place for non-Fudgers. In fact there is more than 10 GMs, many more have been enlisted outside of the community and there are groups in Spain, Brazil and France! It’s more like a “distributed” FudgeRPG con.

The whole thing was the idea of Patrick Benson, intended as a sort of grassroots/viral movement. And the new community answered the call. Patrick requested that 10 people from the community volunteer before the last day of January and it seems to have paid off, all coming together at 6.30pm on Saturday, Jan 31st (a nice dramatic ending there)! Ann Dupis of GreyGhost games has also promised goodies to all the GMs who take participate which is amazingly generous.

Sadly, I won’t be doing it myself for various personal reasons – unless there is a bunch of Irish-Dublin based gamers who want to try Fudge, who also happen to be reading this blog. But to all the GMs participating, I applaud you!

I meant to write this up a while back, but I haven’t had the time to do the dutiful blogging. I’m working during the day, coding free software in my spare time, and the in evening I’m writing/working on Lost Heroes RPG (for Fudge). And then of course my free time is spent with the kids and family. 

I’m not sure if this post should be done here or over on the blog I’ve put together on Lost Heroes RPG website, seeing that website is more dedicated to Fudge than my personal blog. But lets do it here for the moment. Since the Fudge community was re-born in the September of last year, it’s rolling along quite well. Activity seems to be up across the board!

If you’ve been using my Monster Fudge RPG feed, you’ll have noticed that activity is strong on both the Fudge Forums and the Yahoo Mailing List. And only last week, we now have a facebook group too!

One of the most interesting activities right now is the “Day of Fudge“. Basically get 10 GMs from all over the world, on one day, to run a game fo Fudge in a public place for people new to Fudge. It’s a great idea. There is at least one Spanish GM and one Brazilian GM in the list.

Also, recently enough, there was a topic on what fudge projects are people activily (and not) working on. Besides my own Lost Heroes game, there is number of interesting projects going on from Heroes of Oz (Wizard of Oz RPG), a spy-game, Power Extreme (a the Fudge supers RPG), Strange World (Carnivore Games), Cacería de Bichos (a spanish generic/bughunt centred sci-fi FUDGE game) and a few more besides.  Excellent work. As well as that Pablo Jaime Conill (zonkpj) has just written up a 7 page article on fudge for a Spanish fanzine.

And since the new yahoo group started there has been several web chats  including ones host by Ann Dupis and Brad Yonnie (of Now Playing), which is great way to bring the community together despite physical distances.

Sadly there seems to be some doubt over the fate of old Fudge Wiki, Fudge Factor archives and the old FudgeList archives. These are a great legacy from the old days of the community and it would be a pity to lose this content. The new community doesn’t seem interested, at least not right now, in having a one wiki to rule all of Fudge. Every project seems to have it’s own space carved out of the intertubes for itself.  For the moment, the legendary content remains in the hands of the previous owner Carl. My personal preference would be to see the content in a new form, like a PDF book, but alas I seem to be the only one.

But overall, it looks like Fudge is rolling a Superb these days!

Okay, so not earth-shattering news. I’ve finally done something with the lostheroesrpg.com domain and setup a blog and a custom theme. I’ll be releasing Lost Heroes Roleplaying Game there.

I was a bit afraid that I might be duplicating/crossposting content between the two blogs and I was looking at all sorts of solutions to do it. But practically it’s not going to happen. The purpose of lostheroesrpg.com will be a platform for promoting and releasing my Lost Heroes RPG project and there will be no worries about having to cross post, though I may “borrow” content from thedeadone.net for lostheroesrpg.com. In fact, the first thing I did was copy the Wordpress theme I created for here and modify it.

I’ve already added the feed for it to the Monster FudgeRPG feed but does it qualify for the Irish Gaming Planet feed? (Probably not).

While working on Lost Heroes RPG over the Christmas, I wrote this little flash fiction. I was hitting a bit of mental block so I changed tack and wrote something else. I think it works actual, what do you think?

He put down the staff beside him and scratched his head. “I don’t know if it’ll work. I’ve passed the message up the ranks, but Hermes doesn’t really have any pull with Hades you know? Do you happen to have a fag? I’m dying for a cig.”

I pulled a pack out of my pocket and offered him my last one. He accepted it and used his herald’s staff to light it. It sort of glowed and a flame squirted out of the top, lighting his cigarette. “You don’t happen to be a great singer or artist or something that I didn’t know about?” I shook my head. He weighed his hand heavily on his shoulder, “its not looking good.”

“I need to save her, bring her back.” I pleaded with him.

“The best I can do is allow you to see her one last time from the opposite shore of the Styx. You can say you’re goodbyes and all that. I hope she made it to the Blessed Isle otherwise…” he buried his head in his hands. He was suppressing a sob. “Why do you want to bring her back? The dead is better dead, Hades let nothing leave his domain.”

Controlling my own grief I said, “Because it was my fault. I killed her. I made a mistake…” But at my words, his entire body shook and his face drained of colour as he stared at me.

“Oh my. What have you done my friend!” The sky started to darken. “I’ve given them a connection, a connection to you and you damned fool admitted your stupidity!” His staff started to glow, the wings on his shoes started to flutter. “I can hear Erebus demanding justice!” He added meekly, “you’ve given her to the Furies by telling me this…”

“I don’t understand…” but I could barely speak, the roaring sound of a car drowned out my words and its lights stinging me and holding me in place. He was gone, already flying into the black stormy sky. Before the truck hit me, I saw her face, in the driver seat, an awful black aura burning of her deathly beauty, rage and revenge.