Im Deutschunterricht in der 8. Klasse haben wir Bücher vorgestellt, die wir lesen. Eine Klassenkameradin hat den "Hexenmeister vom Flammenden Berg" vorgestellt. Ein Buch, mit innovativem Konzept, bei dem man sich seinen Weg durchs selber suchen konnte. Ich habe es mir ausgeliehen und mir kurz darauf "Die Zitadelle des Zauberers" gewünscht. In der Stadtbücherei habe ich dann "Knaurs Großes Buch der Rollenspiele" entdeckt. Dann Traveller von Fantasy Productions bestellt. Und schließlich die DSA Basisbox gekauft (vom Taschengeld). Die ZauberZeit wurde bestellt und gespielt hatte ich bis 1989 immer noch nicht! In der Umgebung meiner Kleinstadt in BaWü (Vaihingen/Enz), gab es keine Rollenspieler. Aber AD&D hatte ich entdeckt!
Zum Spielen kam ich das erste Mal kurz nach Silvester 1990 in Baton Rouge. Der Sohn meiner Gasteltern nahm mich erst zu einer Runde MegaTraveller und dann zu AD&D 2nd Edition mit.
Zurück in Deutschland fand ich 1990 Anschluss an meine erste AD&D Runde. DSA war gestorben. Und seit 1991 leite ich selber!
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Pre-Launch 31 Tage RPG Quest
Over at Google+ in the community "Rollenspieler (Deutschsprachig)" the "31 Tage RPG Quest" will be started on October 1. I am participating in this RPG Quest and will be answering the question for each day. Unfortunately, this is a German language community and therefore, the posts of this blog will switch to German for the whole month of October, 2013. I am truly sorry for that inconvenience, but I really want to archive the posts in my blog and do not have the time at the moment to do a proper translation that preserves content and tone of the post.
Starting with November 1, 2013 there will be English language posts again.
Starting with November 1, 2013 there will be English language posts again.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Interesting Discussions on the Web
This is just a short, informative reminder for myself. There are two rather interesting ideas pertaining to my planned Fate, Blood & Seven Sins hack:
How to convert VtR Blood & Smoke straight to FATE Core
How to use the Wild Blue Hack to do vampiric weaknesses
Interesting things to take away from both articles:
Now, the only issue is: how do you gain thirst consequenes and how do you get rid of them?
You would probably gain thirst consequences for not meeting the blood requirements of a discipline, as defined by a roll. You would lose them by hunting and feeding. How to emulate that ties-in to the sevcn sins. The sin related to the thirst would of course be Gluttony.
From there, the question is: can each sin be used for all four actions or is each sin tied to specific actions, thus losing a bit of the free format of FAE? Thus, would Wrath be limited to physical attacks and overcoming physical obstacles, Pride to social attacks and overcoming social obstacles, and so on? Most importantly, what would I use Sloth for? Getting other people to do your job? Could it even be the "Age" statistic, thereby implying that older vampires are getting tired and bored?
Drinking blood and satiating your thirst could change internal consequences into external ones. For example, by removing your mild "Thirsty for a sip of blood" consequence, you would create an external aspect: "Drowsy party goer" aspect that symbolizes your feeding and goes away at the end of the scene. Or removing the severe "Thirsty beyond reason" condition creates a "Dead body hidden in the closet" aspect.
Or, drinking blood removes your consequences but creates campaign stress. Campaign stress clears at the end of each session. But stressing out the campaign creates a lasting consequence related to the discovery of vampires.
Enough rambling... as long as the central issue about drinking blood is not solved, I can't really go ahead with FATE, Blood & Seven Sins.
How to convert VtR Blood & Smoke straight to FATE Core
How to use the Wild Blue Hack to do vampiric weaknesses
Interesting things to take away from both articles:
- The more powers vampires gain, the more weaknesses they get
- Hunger is basically a trinary state: vampires are sated, hungry or ravenous. In FATE this might translate as having no consequences associated with thirs, one or more consequences associated with thirst and being taken out by thirst.
Now, the only issue is: how do you gain thirst consequenes and how do you get rid of them?
You would probably gain thirst consequences for not meeting the blood requirements of a discipline, as defined by a roll. You would lose them by hunting and feeding. How to emulate that ties-in to the sevcn sins. The sin related to the thirst would of course be Gluttony.
From there, the question is: can each sin be used for all four actions or is each sin tied to specific actions, thus losing a bit of the free format of FAE? Thus, would Wrath be limited to physical attacks and overcoming physical obstacles, Pride to social attacks and overcoming social obstacles, and so on? Most importantly, what would I use Sloth for? Getting other people to do your job? Could it even be the "Age" statistic, thereby implying that older vampires are getting tired and bored?
Drinking blood and satiating your thirst could change internal consequences into external ones. For example, by removing your mild "Thirsty for a sip of blood" consequence, you would create an external aspect: "Drowsy party goer" aspect that symbolizes your feeding and goes away at the end of the scene. Or removing the severe "Thirsty beyond reason" condition creates a "Dead body hidden in the closet" aspect.
Or, drinking blood removes your consequences but creates campaign stress. Campaign stress clears at the end of each session. But stressing out the campaign creates a lasting consequence related to the discovery of vampires.
Enough rambling... as long as the central issue about drinking blood is not solved, I can't really go ahead with FATE, Blood & Seven Sins.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Humans are Fragile
Today, I was browsing through the FATE System Toolkit and discovered the section on scaling the stress tracks. Then it suddenly became clear what I need to do. Humans don't have stress tracks at all. If they are Supporting or Major NPCs, they take consequences right from the start. If they are mooks, they are taken out immediately. In FAE a mob of mooks would have a standard stress track. In FATE Core mooks would still get the supporting bonus. But if they take even a single point of stress, they are taken out.
Vampires on the other hand will have stress tracks, and probably complications acting as a blood supply, as suggested by one comment. Not sure how to go about this. The stress track of course represents the ability to shake of minor (and not so minor) damage. The complications will power the stunts and allow the vampires to get additional bonuses for physical feats.
Vampires on the other hand will have stress tracks, and probably complications acting as a blood supply, as suggested by one comment. Not sure how to go about this. The stress track of course represents the ability to shake of minor (and not so minor) damage. The complications will power the stunts and allow the vampires to get additional bonuses for physical feats.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Continuing the Work
I am starting to itch for my go-to-game Vampire: The Requiem, when reading "Reap the Whirlwind", the FreeRPG Day starter kit for Vampire: The Requiem 1.5 called "Blood & Smoke: The Strix Chronicles". But I don't really care for the rules update in God Machine Chronicle. It seems to be a bit excessive compared to the leaner versions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem. Also, I have a long-running chronicle (8.5 years) that shouldn't have a radical switch of rules after such a long time.
But then I remembered my first steps with Fate, Blood & Seven Sins. Back then it was based on White Picket Witches, but before my first playtest I switched to FAE. The first playtest was ho-hum. The player feedback was: you didn't notice that you were a vampire. The playtesters had a lot of experience playing vampire, and the said there should probably be some mechanic to remind you who you are. They said, there was no blood pool of any sorts, nothing to really get you to hunt for blood at all. Something they think is very elementary for the vampire experience. A bit disheartened, I put the design away to be pulled out later. Now I feel later has come around.
Today, I re-read Duncan Bain's blog post on The Thirst by accident. My game needs something similar as the Thirst. Maybe something called the Hunger, which would be nice since there is a vampire movie with Bowie, Sarandon and Deneuve by the same name.
Also this got me thinking. In his Shadowrun 2050 hack for FATE Core, Rob Wieland calls out stunts as spells or as cyberware. In my first attempt, I created the vampiric powers close to the spells from White Picket Witches. But since the stat I associated with these spell-like powers was Age, the players kept failing their activation rolls. Therefore, I am thinking of doing it differently this time. Maybe I'll call out certain stunts as "Powers" or "Dark Gifts" or something like that. These stunts emulate the supernatural powers, work like real stunts (i.e. no activation roll) and you get to have a maximum of Age+X of them. But because you are a vampire, you have to take at least two. Not sure about their power level though. If they work on the same level like regular stunts, they won't feel very vampiric. One way would be to rule that mortals do not get to take any stunts in this game, thus de-powering them compared to vampires. Another way would mean stronger stunts. Stunts that don't balance with other stunts. But I am not so sure I like this. Having only vampires (and maybe other supernaturals) with stunts creates an immediate divide between ordinary humans and vampires. Also, I can still keep the traditional stunt structure in place... hm... on the other hand, the Extras chapter in FATE Core nicely details how stunts can be double or triple-strength. Need to do some more thinking on that. Suggestions welcome.
The next thing to consider: standard vampiric powers as portrayed in popular TV series like Vampire Diaries or True Blood should be baked into the character from the beginning. Things like supernatural strength, speed and resilience (except towards sunlight) should be available to any vampire. Maybe relative strength based on Age, as this seems to be a common denominator when watching or reading about them in a modern context. Using those abilities might kindle the Hunger (much like described in The Thirst). Still need to decide how Age plays into this, how Hunger is handled (e.g. as separate stress track, as mental stress or something else, but stress seems to be a good way to do this).
The last item to consider is mythology and origin. With Vampire City there is already a game out there that allows you to custom build your vampires, their origins, the social structure and so on. Then, there is Vampire: The Masquerade. One of the strongest aspects of that setting was the involved and complex mythology surrounding the Kindred, as well as the easy to grasp war between two vampiric groups. When looking at Vampire Diaries and True Blood, then personally I found the stories involving the origins very fascinating. Same with reading "The Queen of the Damned". In the end I am torn between creating a toolbox that can be used to create a variety of vampire settings or creating a firm background on what it means to be a vampire in my game.
Expect to see some solutions to various quandaries I've pointed out in the not too far future.
But then I remembered my first steps with Fate, Blood & Seven Sins. Back then it was based on White Picket Witches, but before my first playtest I switched to FAE. The first playtest was ho-hum. The player feedback was: you didn't notice that you were a vampire. The playtesters had a lot of experience playing vampire, and the said there should probably be some mechanic to remind you who you are. They said, there was no blood pool of any sorts, nothing to really get you to hunt for blood at all. Something they think is very elementary for the vampire experience. A bit disheartened, I put the design away to be pulled out later. Now I feel later has come around.
Today, I re-read Duncan Bain's blog post on The Thirst by accident. My game needs something similar as the Thirst. Maybe something called the Hunger, which would be nice since there is a vampire movie with Bowie, Sarandon and Deneuve by the same name.
Also this got me thinking. In his Shadowrun 2050 hack for FATE Core, Rob Wieland calls out stunts as spells or as cyberware. In my first attempt, I created the vampiric powers close to the spells from White Picket Witches. But since the stat I associated with these spell-like powers was Age, the players kept failing their activation rolls. Therefore, I am thinking of doing it differently this time. Maybe I'll call out certain stunts as "Powers" or "Dark Gifts" or something like that. These stunts emulate the supernatural powers, work like real stunts (i.e. no activation roll) and you get to have a maximum of Age+X of them. But because you are a vampire, you have to take at least two. Not sure about their power level though. If they work on the same level like regular stunts, they won't feel very vampiric. One way would be to rule that mortals do not get to take any stunts in this game, thus de-powering them compared to vampires. Another way would mean stronger stunts. Stunts that don't balance with other stunts. But I am not so sure I like this. Having only vampires (and maybe other supernaturals) with stunts creates an immediate divide between ordinary humans and vampires. Also, I can still keep the traditional stunt structure in place... hm... on the other hand, the Extras chapter in FATE Core nicely details how stunts can be double or triple-strength. Need to do some more thinking on that. Suggestions welcome.
The next thing to consider: standard vampiric powers as portrayed in popular TV series like Vampire Diaries or True Blood should be baked into the character from the beginning. Things like supernatural strength, speed and resilience (except towards sunlight) should be available to any vampire. Maybe relative strength based on Age, as this seems to be a common denominator when watching or reading about them in a modern context. Using those abilities might kindle the Hunger (much like described in The Thirst). Still need to decide how Age plays into this, how Hunger is handled (e.g. as separate stress track, as mental stress or something else, but stress seems to be a good way to do this).
The last item to consider is mythology and origin. With Vampire City there is already a game out there that allows you to custom build your vampires, their origins, the social structure and so on. Then, there is Vampire: The Masquerade. One of the strongest aspects of that setting was the involved and complex mythology surrounding the Kindred, as well as the easy to grasp war between two vampiric groups. When looking at Vampire Diaries and True Blood, then personally I found the stories involving the origins very fascinating. Same with reading "The Queen of the Damned". In the end I am torn between creating a toolbox that can be used to create a variety of vampire settings or creating a firm background on what it means to be a vampire in my game.
Expect to see some solutions to various quandaries I've pointed out in the not too far future.