Faction Procedures + Dolmenwood Example

Sandboxes tend to imply factions, but faction play is sometimes a boogeyman for open world games. Should it be subtle, just a thought? Should it be a tracked rubric of needs and wants, like a private rumor table with bonuses? Should it be a complex system of rolls and resources, like a solitaire Matrix game the referee plays behind the screen on off-hours? Well, it ought to be something if merely to add some variability to whatever sociopolitical forces prop up the flavor of the setting. 

d66 Star Wars Background Loadouts Adapted from Edge of the Empire

Like I did for Cairn via Old School Essentials, I've adapted here thirty-six backgrounds selected from the greater Edge of the Empire RPG for use in general Star Wars games (specifically, for my purposes, Galaxy Far Away). If using the latter, follow character creation as normal, including random starting items, but also roll d66 (or choose) to determine a background with a unique beginning loadout. The background is a narrative "career" of sorts and should inform gameplay, but its not a shackle and obviously you can go and pew pew (or not) to your choosing. There are no mechanics or modifiers or any such thing tied to the items listed here. It's all keywords and interpretation. Flavor, yo.

Obi-Wan gets it.

RPGs with Kids, 6: Prepare for RAMMING SPEED

The game: Any Planet Is Earth

The players: Ted, my kid son (playing Miles, two-term expedtionary). Brian, my older brother (playing Chet Lancaster, three-term expeditionary, two-term mercantile). Nate, my kid nephew (playing Blaze, five-term military). 

The situation: Dornami Station, at the edge of a long trade lane, is evacuating due to a sudden solar shift in the system's star, dooming everyone on board with an imminent supernova.

The complication: The player's are dead-broke and want to hijack the expensive med supplies in the storage complex but are being forced to leave by the private security firm running the station.

The scheme: Leverage guile, lateral thinking, and a bit of gumption to score and leave without a bust (or a blast, ahem).

Ben Nicholas - Artstation

Ponderings on Any Planet Is Earth v2

At the time of writing this, I've sold just over 400 copies of Any Planet Is Earth (with about 4,800 downloads). That's small beans, to be sure, in the world of publishing, even in the indie/niche corner of the RPG hobby, but I only ever wanted to release it because it's what I want to run. That said, I am warmed by it's name popping up from time to time on reviews or threads or discussions, and getting messages from strangers and close peers alike who like it a lot and have riffed about with it on their own time. That's neat.

I've had a "second edition" in mind for a while now since it's original release back in June of 2020. My original timeline was a release earlier this year before the arrival of Spring 2021, but then I had another kid and bought a house. There goes 6+ months of so-called free time. C'est la vie.

Jeff Woodman

Twenty Quick Settings/Games for Immediate Use

 About three weeks ago, I posed a simple design challenge to the scene writ large:

1. Pick a genre, setting, or time period 
2. Write one or two paragraphs on context 
3. Produce one page of random tables 
4. Give advice on tropes and how to use them

Using these guidelines, I surmised that one could create a fully-actionable setting for use at the table, and with the advice and assumptions baked in, little to no abstracted rules would be necessary to actually conduct play. The setting begets the way things work. You agree in good faith to navigate the world as it suggests it can be navigated. Instant sandbox, minimal work. 

Well, I was greeted with TWENTY full responses to this challenge, so without further adieu, enjoy! 

How I Run and Play an Ultralight Game

I take it for granted that I know how I run and have been running my games for a few years now according to the "free kriegsspiel/FKR" (henceforth "ultralight") approach. For almost a calendar year since this concept has become increasingly vogue across the interwebs, many earnest folks have raised repeat questions not about "what is this?" but "how does it actually work?" At the risk of being overly ironic, think of this post as an introductory rulebook to a style of play that assumes a rulebook is patently unnecessary. I'm going to make this quick, because that's something I especially appreciate about this method: it's fast, it's intuitive, and it only needs a little nudge to get going. 

Disclaimer: This is how I run my games. This is not "how it always works." It is a (hopefully clarifying) example. The approach here is a varied spectrum. Two referees adopting similar styles may yet produce very different tables. This is, of course, how any two different people running any two different games will pan out, but it's worth stating here since there is not, in fact, "one way" to adopt this method. There are various preferences, emphases, and relationships to consider. So, to reiterate, here is how I go about it.

Play Worlds, Not Rules: Design Challenge

I find that I love the free kriegsspiel model not because it is simple (though that is a large plus) but because it all is about intuition and honesty with subject matter. In general, storygames and mainstream modern RPGs and even a swath of the old school community don't appeal to me because portions of the experience are deliberately gamified when they could just be role-played. I've said elsewhere that an adventure game needs little more than interesting choices regarding interesting people amidst interesting locales. 

You've met a person, right? How do you talk to them? Now talk to a person inside of a game in the same way. Context, motivation, and the assumptions of the setting guide your actions and approach, not mechanization. I appreciate arguments made that certain rules and precedures help to emulate genre or setting, but my counter is that those methods are redundant, as even with passing communal knowledge of the setting at the table, everyone can reasonably play anything with imagination and conversation. Rules can be helpful as a framework, but they are not necessary for play. All you need is a world in which to act.

My challenge for you all is thus: 

1. Pick a genre, setting, or time period 
2. Write one or two paragraphs on context 
3. Produce one page of random tables 
4. Give advice on tropes and how to use them

This is how I put together Galaxy Far Away. Humor me: anyone with even a tangential exposure to pop culture has either seen or knows the gist of Star Wars: A New Hope. Close your eyes and imagine the tropes. 

There is an evil human empire with smart uniforms and bureaucracy. Stormtroopers are ubiquitous but only effective in numbers. Common people are either disinterested outliers minding their own business or enterprising vagabonds looking to be a big fish in a small pond. Organized crime is everywhere. Almost everything is janked together, rusting, or smeared with dirt. There is space magic, but it's mostly a philosophical matter and the vast majority of folks have no exposure to it or its lightsaber-wielding practitioners. There are thousands of sentient species, but they all commingle. 500 credits will buy you a cheap blaster. 

I followed that with random tables for gear, intrigue, rumors, contraband, complications, and rivals. The dice and mechanics are effectively invisible, with the destiny/force token bit little more than a meta ruling. How to play: go do things--let the tropes be your guide.

...

But instead of Star Wars, you could pick Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin, or My Neighbor Totoro by Hiyao Miyazaki, or A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man by James Joyce, or Final Fantasy 6, or the concept of 18th century fur trapping in Canada, or the brief context of pre-isolationist China adjacent to Zheng He, or [insert Saturday morning cartoon], or [insert that one brochure you read one time in a doctor's office], or [insert early hydraulic society's first steps]... you get the idea.

So, bloggers and referees and players and tinkerers, give the above formula a shot and let me know about it. Let's call it at three pages tops.