State of mind, state of projects (Goblintribe-Simulator, S!A!C!, Lost Songs, Community Projects ...)

Since I'm right now up to my elbows in various projects here on the blog, I thought it's about time to give you all (and myself ...) a short summary of the state of affairs. I'll try and keep it fresh (or at least short).

The Analogue Goblintribe-Simulator:

It's developing slow, which is a shame, since it got quite popular and I fear loosing the wave here. I will dedicate a weekend in May pushing this forward. Here a glimpse of how that sheet is filling up:

A "0" indicates a place for a die, there'll be different forms of storage and you
see the angry/happy scale somewhat improved ... lots of stuff to discover if
you knew the last incarnation of this thing. This is still happening :)  

Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! - Combat:

The idea to use a deck of cards to build a dungeon got quite some legs. +Eric Nieudan and +John Payne took the ball and came to some great solutions in this regard (check here and here). I love it when those things happen. It's all far better than anything I could come up with.

Anyway, that's not what S!A!C! - Combat is about. Instead it's about cleaning random space stations from alien scum. And how far am I in finishing this baby? Well, I need to test it, that's how. The girlfriend and I are trying to make a test run happen, but no luck so far. We'll find the time this weekend, I'm sure. What I could do until now (it's what needs testing ...) is streamlining the combat as far as possible.

So instead of having armor and health, you have just one stat and loose action points as soon as you drop below 10 (when wounded you get slower). I came up with an idea to make firing a gun a bit more than using a die and bookkeeping ammunition (I think it's a dull exercise to keep track of those things).

What happens now is that each clip is a d6 and if you hit the target (roll d20 above card number, 11 is a true hit), you loose as much ammo as you rolled above the target number but never more than a d6 (this way you just change the die number or just take the clip from the sheet). If you miss, you roll the d6 to see what's left in your clip (keep the number you rolled and a 6 means the clip is emptied). We'll see if it holds in play-testing.

Another little problem I have is with what I call "Card Intelligence" (C.I.). How should cards move and all that. Should they move towards the player or take cover and let them come?. Again, we'll be testing all this the next few days.

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs:

We are still testing this in our Friday group and it's still developing further and further. Combat is getting somewhere but still not at a stage worth writing home about. Magic is a big gap and I need to do something about that soon, but level advancement is more important right now, as the players are already asking for it (not surprising, three sessions in).

I think the most important development so far is how ability scores are handled. Everyone starts more or less the same and the narrative (fate) decides how characters are shaped. Organic character growth, if you will, mixed with a level-based advancement system that allows some freedom in how a character develops in that regard.

Character creation takes 5 minutes and still creates unique snowflakes individuals.

In my head it keeps manifesting more and more. So much even, I'm way behind in writing this stuff down. And it's not just one thread either, but at least three sub categories that need updates. Let's see:

• Reading the Nibelungenlied: Will take time. I might even switch to writing about each chapter in a separate post. The first post was received quite well, as far as I could tell. We'll see if I can keep people interested, but I think it's a great story with some beautiful verse and really very much like a session report of sorts.
• Bare-Knuckle Fighter/Pub Brawl (the mini dice-game series): A bit neglected on the blog, but I test this stuff as often as possible. What needs to be happening is a complete re-evaluation of how the rules are presented. I got some ideas and I talked a good friend of mine into writing a guest post. As soon as this happens (or I know for a fact that it doesn't ...) I'll start with the updates and give this stuff a permanent home somewhere on the blog. I plan to make similar mini games for magic combat and armed duels. All of this should in it's final stage work as a skirmisher and I still plan to use this combat system for lost songs. It will take time, though.
• The Lost Songs Page here on the blog: Needs updating. ASAP, as they say. There are already lots of strays to collect and put there. Also need to do some work on the logo. Ah well, it will happen soon enough.
• Loose ends: Level advancement will be the next thing, but I'll start talking about layout and design of the game very soon. DM procedures will also be a topic in the near future. What I have in mind here is a method using 3d10 to generate a fully developed region for the characters to explore. I have some vague ideas how to make that happen, but all I can say is that it'll happen some time this year. Which is a shame, really, since I think it will be great fun exploring some old ideas further ...

Lost Songs is a big project and will most likely expand in many more directions I didn't think of right now. Being a weekend blogger doesn't help with all that either. I need to have some food and shelter, though :) Anyway, I'm getting there, step by step.

Community Projects

As of this writing I'm participating in two awesome community projects. Both were initiated by +Charles Akins over at Dyvers. The first will be about revenge, murder and mayhem in role playing games. I aim for two entries in this: one will be my first attempt at short fiction here on the blog and the second is a surprise (as in: no idea ...).

The second community project is about writing love letters for role playing games. I really love that idea, as it will collect a huge amount of essays about the games out there and what makes them special. It'll also get a pdf release and I imagine it a great help for introducing new people to the hobby. If we can spread it that far, which I really hope.

But look at the line-up linked to above! It's 5 names short of a Who's Who in the OSR, so it's sure to generate some noise. My entries will be the D&D Rules Cyclopedia and HackMaster 4e. Both are a big deal for me and I'll do my very best to do them justice.

So far it's been a great experience working with all those creative writers. As those things usually take lots of time to come to some sort of conclusion, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this to happen very soon. But it will happen eventually :)

Smell what (else) the Ranger is cooking!

Yeah, sorry, there is more. I'm going to take a close look at the blog and check it for loose ends. I need to come to a point where I actually finish the things I've started. Right now I'm thinking of one adventure and a series about clerics that need finishing/reactivating. I'll do this whenever I get the feeling I need some variation in what I'm writing about at the moment.

I also want to start doing interviews around the blogosphere to learn more about the people I read so much on a daily basis. A first shot on this will happen soon, featuring the great +Adam Muszkiewicz, finding out who he is and where he's going (if you for some reason never heard of his fantastic blog Dispatches from Kickassistan, go and check it out - you're in for a treat).

If it works, more of the same is going to happen on a monthly basis (I think).

And there is a vague idea to write about great old school products out there that people already lost out of sight (like this great D&D supplement by Cygnus, for instance). But it's just that for now, a vague idea.

That's it, folks. A lot is happening, it's just not happening fast ...

A picture of an OSR logo by Matthew Adams, because
it's fantastic and for other obvious reasons ...

How to play Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! (a card-based mini-skirmisher) Part 1

Still working on that title and it would be more accurate to call this a Third-Person-Shooter (I had FPSs in mind when I thought about it, but anyway ...). So, as I've written in my last post, I had to built this up from scratch after I had lost my notes. It is also most and for all an exercise in writing a game and exploring mechanics, so please keep this in mind (for now a random dungeon generator, among other things). This is part one because I wanted to keep the portions of information small. Part 1 mostly explains the set-up in detailed examples and will only give hints about the game play (which will be in part 2).

The set-up

A full poker deck (with jokers) will do the trick. You'll also need some dice, a pencil, a piece of paper and a counter of sorts for the soldier. The map will develop randomly. Here is the first important part of my last post to have it all in one place that illustrates how:

"You need a big table for this. Clubs and hearts will be corridors, diamonds are rooms (with some cards giving cover, too), spades are enemies. Pictures are doors with different difficulties, black aces are shops, red aces are healing stations. Jokers are the Big Bads. 

Now you'll make two piles. One has the corridors, all red doors and the enemy cards 2, 3 and 4. The rest is the second pile. Each pile is now shuffled, but the Joker needs to be the last card of that second pile."

I've played this now a few times and this holds. In the worst of cases you'll have some corridors left, but that's fine since no important cards are lost. The second important part of yesterdays teaser is this: 

The game starts now with the corridors until a door is drawn or there is a shift of colors. It'll expand now into a room (either behind a door or after the first card with a different color). How those cards are put on the table follows a simple pattern: 

 8     9     10

7     6     5

2     3     4

The first card gives the direction of the corridor, of if it's a 3 it will go up, if it's a 4 it'll go left and so on. After 10 it goes down. If a direction is for some reason not possible (end of the table is a reason, too) take the next available position clockwise for red cards and counter clockwise for black cards. Just follow the numbers and go where it's possible.

Rooms always start in the same direction as the corridor indicated, but let each card give directions for the next. The first room card needs to be a spade or an ace. If it's a door instead, put it in the direction of the corridor and move the next card in one direction (as color indicates, see example below). If the first card is an ace, put the next card after the ace in the same direction the ace got.

Built rooms and corridors until closed doors stop the development. You will end up with something like this:

Example 1 (open in new tab to see in detail)

So you see, corridors and shot doors are turned over. Drawn enemy cards are put aside, the counters for those enemies are put on the last card put for a room or corridor (but not a door). In this case it was the ace of hearts and one just in a corridor.

Detailed example

The set-up for this scenario started in the upper right corner and went two cards to left, opening in a room. That room started with a shop, so the next card needed to be in the same direction. A 2 of spades, which means the next card after that will go right, but since that's not possible, it will appear on the next position clockwise from that, so it'll go down. The card after the 2 was a door (now shot to pieces), which ends the development of the map until the door is opened into a new corridor.

It's always like that, corridor until shift of color or door, after that it's a room until a door is drawn (unless the first card was a door, see above) and it's a corridor after that, repeat ...

in this case the door was shot down and opened into a corridor downwards (because of the 2 of spades) of two cards. In this case a change of color indicated that the corridor ended in a room without a door in between, but the first room card had been a door. That was (as the picture shows) put in the direction of the corridor (the queen). The next card after that was, again, a door, so it was put into the next position clockwise (must have been a red card that ended the corridor). That's where the jack landed.

The third card had finally been a room card. Still going clockwise, the 3 of spades had no other place to go than where it landed.

This room now is another good example how the cards go. The next card after the 3 needed to go up, there is room, so that's where the 4 of spades went. But the direction of the needs to be to the left and that's just not possible because of the corridor/shot door in that direction. Up isn't an alternative, because the is already a room, so going clockwise, going to the right is the only option.

That's a ten, the room develops down to a 7, which would have gone up, but goes right instead to the ace. The ace now keeps the direction given from the seven, so the king (a door) ends up on the right and finishes the room.

Further exploration would mean opening doors.

Teaser for the game play

The picture gives already some of it away. The area a character can access is laid out first. Monsters that are drawn are put aside and dice showing the value of the monster cards are used as counters and put on the last card of the segment (room or corridor) that spawned them.

A character has 20 health, 20 armor and 20 rounds ammunition. He has 5 actions per round. 1 action moves him from card to card during exploration (as soon as everything is explored, a character may move from room to room or door in one round). Shooting one shot is also one point, shooting a salve is 3 points.

Doors have difficulty levels (jacks are level 1, queens are level 2 and kings are level 3). The level is the amount of ammunition needed to shoot it open (but there will be keys, too). Searching a room is another action and costs 1 point per room card.

Shooting enemies and searching rooms will give a character credits, stronger enemies also drop health armor or ammunition. Health stations recharge a character's armor and health. Recharging a full round will give 5 health and 5 armor back.

Enemies re-spawn cyclic every six rounds, so time and resource management is important.

Combat will be in the second part, as will be enemy movement, weapons and tactics. I just need to test this with two players to see if it works as supposed. I can say as much, you roll a d20 every time you shoot at something. The number rolled is the damage you deal, but if it doesn't kill the monster, you get the health it has left as damage instead. Jokers will be the only ones that attack themselves, close combat is quite deadly right now (and subject to change). But that's enough teasing for now ...

This is also a random dungeon generator!

If someone needs a fast way to generate a dungeon, this could be it. Just key the monster cards to a random encounter chart and you should be good to go. You might even use more cards for bigger dungeons or more monsters (start with adding more room cards, as you'll most likely have more than enough corridor cards as it is). So that's something, I guess.

But I'm still sorry that this needs to be in two parts. As if I'm not having enough on my plate as it is. Anyway, another post about this game and maybe a pdf with the rules and a character sheet to seal the deal doesn't sound too much. So stay tuned for more before too long.

This game still needs a better name, though.

Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! An Analogue Card-Based FPS

I don't even know if some of you remember this, but I wrote a post once upon a time about the idea of writing a little strategic mini-game about an alien invasion. Just like in the film Battle: LA (haters be damned, I really love that movie!). Anyway, I started fiddling with it and, as those things sometimes do, came up with a completely different game. A game in which drawing cards builds the halls and rooms of a space station with aliens in it and you have one (or more) players exploring it, shooting everything down that spawns, collecting what they dropped.

It turned out to feel like a First Person Shooter, so the rules started to mirror that. I wrote it down, played a few games with a friend and it worked. It even had shops to buy stuff and health boosts, ammunition, all the things we know from doom and the like. I wanted to post about it, too, but got derailed (I know, happens far to often ...). Then I lost my notes and with that I sort of lost my ideas about it, too. But the game kept lingering and festering in my brain, rearing it's ugly head every now and then to remind me of what I couldn't recreate.

The Doom series had been so much fun! [source]

Well,  I have a long weekend right now and I needed a break from Lost Songs of the Nibelungs, so I thought why not make this weekend about writing board games instead. One post will discuss the rules for S!A!C! (I really don't know about the acronym, though ... might need another name) and with another post on Sunday I'll be back writing about the Goblin-Tribe Simulator (which is over-due again).

Teaser (how to build a space station with cards)

You need a big table for this. Clubs and hearts will be corridors, diamonds are rooms (with some cards giving cover, too), spades are enemies. Pictures are doors with different difficulties, black aces are shops, red aces are healing stations. Jokers are the Big Bads.

Now you'll make two piles. One has the corridors, all red doors and the enemy cards 2, 3 and 4. The rest is the second pile. Each pile is now shuffled, but the Joker needs to be the last card of that second pile.

The game starts now with the corridors until a door is drawn or there is a shift of colors. It'll expand now into a room (either behind a door or after the first card with a different color). How those cards are put on the table follows a simple pattern:

 8     9     10

7     6     5

2     3     4

The first card of a corridor gives the direction of the corridor, the last card gives the direction of the door and the room behind it. Just follow the numbers (a ten goes always down ...). If a direction isn't possible, resolve clockwise for red and counter-clockwise for black cards.

While corridors only go into the directions the first card is indicating, it's decided with every card when laying down rooms. Room cards are drawn until the next door is drawn (black doors in the pile). A door is put on the highest card in a room and in the direction it indicates (if the indicated direction is not possible, resolve clockwise).

A opened door (indicate by turning the card) is always the first part of the first room/corridor, so if another door is drawn next, it blocks passage in the first indicated direction and the room or corridor expands in the next possible direction (depending on color clockwise or counter-clockwise).

The next card after an ace follows the direction of the last card before the ace. Enemies are always put aside first and start acting from the last card of a room or corridor ...

More tomorrow!

I gave this a few spins and it definitely creates a dungeon. The number of cards will indicate the movement needed from A to B. The rest is shooting at things, taking their loot and buying ammunition or better guns to confront the boss monster at the end. Combat will be based on some light D&D rules variants.

But more on that tomorrow (with examples and pictures). I'm still looking for a name of this, so if any of you got an idea, I'd be open for suggestions :)