Help! My Wheels are Burning!

It's a crazy time of year - Thanksgiving just passed (hope everybody had a wonderful one), and the holidays are approaching.  Sadly, this has meant that getting gaming groups together can prove a bit challenging, considering family obligations and all the things that need to get done.  I myself have had some trouble over the past couple of weeks getting my Burning Wheel group together, but we ended up having our second session last night, which was a big plus.

As I've mentioned before, my group (including myself, really) is brand new to Burning Wheel, although three out of the four of us were part of the Mouse Guard campaign that ended earlier this year.  Obviously with a system like Burning Wheel, there's a lot to try and work through for new players.  The biggest part of this is obviously the Beliefs.

Now you may remember that our setting is kind of weird - there's a city guard who at more or less as mercenary soldiers akin to The Three Musketeers, but with everybody wearing unique masks similar to lucha libre.  All this is in a more or less gothic horror setting.  Our first session was a reworked version of Words Remain Below, and it went pretty well.  The action was smooth, there was a lot of urgency, and it ended up with a fairly spectacular and tense (and successful) exorcism.  The problem was, coming out of that more or less self-contained session, there wasn't a lot of direction as to where to move things from there.  Looking at the players' Beliefs didn't add much guidance for me either, and it made me think more about the game I'd presented.

When we got together last night, the first thing I did was mention to everybody that I wanted to take a look at their characters' Beliefs a bit closer and get tighter with them.  I explained to my Mouse Guard players that, while they're called the same thing in BW, Beliefs function closer to a mashup of MG's Goals and Beliefs rather than the standalone, creedo-style Beliefs in Mouse Guard.  I used an example from the Codex of more of the two part Belief wording, where it's phrased more as a cause/effect relationship.

One of the players burned a relationship with a rival swashbuckler that involved a lot of Musketeer-esque posturing and one-upsmanship, and I used him as an antagonist in the first session to pretty decent effect.  I used his Belief as written in the first session as an example: "I will embarrass my rival Jank."  We talked about this a bit, and we discussed how the Belief as written was rather flat - "embarrass my rival whenever possible" is a good Instinct, but as a Goal/Belief it was too vague and generic.  We talked through a more actionable Belief akin to "Jank is my rival and I must undercut him whenever possible; I will embarass him by..." This gives me as a GM much better direction as to what the players are interested in exploring, which I explained to the group, and everybody got it.

That being said, I'm not placing the blame for a lack of direction coming out of our first session on my players, and I was absolutely ready for the first question for me once we ran through the example above: "Can we know more details about the setting?"  This was one of the pitfalls I realized when looking at the player's characters when trying to put together the second session - we had established a feel, not a true setting, and definitely not a situation.  So we ran through a bit more of the world to try and figure things out, and discussed a bit more about how I envisioned the game being structured to a degree, provided the players were down with it.

One of the big things we established coming out of our discussion was fleshing out the masks more.  We had established that everyone within the society wore a unique mask, and that those masks were tied to a person's identity.  We also established that, in keeping with the high-honor type of setting, the masks could be wagered in duels, with the loser being unmasked and humiliated.  What we talked about during this session was the idea of there existing in the world "lost" masks.  These would be masks of great renown whose owners had perished in battle or, in some cases, enchanted masks that could be sought out by people as either honor missions or to replace their own mask and regain their standing in society.  This is something that our dwarf, who started the game unmasked, can work towards.

We also had originally started off with necromancy being illegal in the kingdom.  However, we brought up the idea of it only being illegal in this particular kingdom.  I'm a big Elder Scrolls fan, and a lot of my gaming ideas come from that game series.  This idea comes from TES lore of necromancy being banned in the Imperial province of Cyrodil, but completely fine in the College of Winterhold in Skyrim.  We don't have any magic users in the group, but this has some possibilities later on I feel.

All in all, I feel very good about where things are headed with the game, probably even more secure now than I was following our first session.  It really just shows the pitfalls possible in putting together a Burning Wheel game.  The system has endless possibilities, but you still need to play to the system in order to make it go.  Otherwise, you're just wandering around in a fog.

Lucha Musketeers!

I've thankfully gotten back into the gaming swing of things as of late, which has been a very welcome distraction from everything else that's been going on.  Coming off of the successful Mouse Guard campaign that wrapped up, we've finally moved onto Burning Wheel proper, which I'm incredibly excited about.  I've been dying to run this system since I first bought a copy at PAX East years ago, and now finally getting the chance to do so.

Part of the appeal for me of Burning Wheel is both the lack of a baked-in system setting, as well of the flexibility of the lifepaths and skills to create almost limitless possibilities for settings.  This can obviously also be something of a curse as well as a blessing.  It can be very easy to get bogged down with endlessly discussing setting ideas simply because there's so many options available to you.

My original plan, as I've mentioned before, was to run a session of Questlandia in order to come up with a setting as a group and then move that setting into a longer campaign of Burning Wheel.  We had gotten together with this idea in mind, but between setting up a time to finally get together and all physically getting together as a group, I had some odd inspiration.  I brought it up with the group once we all sat down at the table and laid out my setting idea, with the caveat that this was just a suggestion.  If they still wanted to run Questlandia to try and build something fresh, I was more than willing to do so.  However, as we discussed the setting idea I had in mind, I could see everybody kind of start their wheels turning listening to everything, and so I wasn't wholly surprised when that was the plan we went with.

So what's the setting then?  Where did this inspiration come from?  Turns out, a number of places.

Coming off the heels of Halloween, and leafing through the Codex on my downtime, I had the inkling for a kind of gothic horror feel.  Some supernatural monsters, some folklore and superstition, that kind of thing.  I've also been reading The Three Musketeers (my first time - I know, I know), so I also had that mulling around in my brain.  Something like official city guards that are commissioned to defend the countryside against supernatural beasts, with lots of rules of etiquette and honor.  Still, musketeers fighting werewolves still seemed like it was lacking something for me.  What else could we add?

Lucha libre!

Alright, so not lucha libre specifically, but the mask portion.  If I haven't disclosed this information previously, I'm a pro wrestling fanatic from childbirth really.  Over the past five years or so, lucha libre in particular has fascinated me.  For those unfamiliar, a lot of lucha libre culture and history is tied into a luchador's mask.  Most wrestlers compete under a mask, and each mask is unique to that luchador - it really defines their identity.  Because the mask is so important, a lot of the most important matches center around the masks themselves.  Wrestlers will challenge each other for their masks, with the loser being humiliated into having to permanently remove their mask, essentially losing their identity. 

This fit perfectly into the feel of the setting I wanted.  So much of The Three Musketeers story is built around honor and rivalry that I wanted something tangible to draw players into that mindset.  Having a rival in the game that you could needle and play off against until the tension is so great that you finally challenge them to a duel to claim their mask is just so attractive of a story element to me.  And then after one of you loses your mask, what then?  How does that change the rivalry?  How does losing your mask affect your standing, and what other relationships are now changed because of it?

We had a session and a half of character creation and then played our first actual play session last night, which went surprisingly well.  The group is made up by two thirds of my Mouse Guard group and one player who hasn't played in the system before, so it was a good mix.  That being said, there was a lot of relearning of rules in the early stages, particularly as to how skill advancement works in Burning Wheel versus Mouse Guard.  But I think by the end of the session everybody had a grasp on the basics.

I struggled a bit with coming up with our first scenario, and was really stuck for ideas.  I ended up going with a kind of rework of Words Remain Below, which ended up being perfect.  All in all, it was a great game and everybody came out genuinely excited for our next session, which is what everybody wants at the end of the day, isn't it?

Actual Play - The Hive

So earlier this week, I released the playtest document for my game The Hive for anybody who wants to give it a try.  But today I figured it would be a good idea to run through a solo playtest to give a better understanding of what the game is and how it works.

Setting Up the Game

So the first thing I'll need to do is figure out which species my hive will be.  Being a bug nerd, I know a few, but I've yet to come up with one that creates a better narrative for this game than leaf cutter ants.  

Leaf cutter ants

Leaf cutter ants do exactly what they sound like - they cut leaves.  However, what they do with these leaves is pretty fascinating.  Rather than eat them, they actually use them to feed fungus that they cultivate inside their colony inside a large chamber.  So for this play through, I'll go with leaf cutter ants as my species.

I take three d6 and set them aside to represent my Queen.  These will be rolled at the end of play as needed to see if my colony makes it through the winter, but I might need them in between.  Now I roll 3d6 in turn to set my starting citizen die pools.  I roll in order:  3, 4, 4.  Not too shabby - this makes my starting totals as follows:

Workers - 3

Soldiers - 4

Drones - 4

Not a ton of Workers, but I've got a good number of Soldiers and plenty of Drones to replenish my colony as needed.

Now I'm ready to get started.

Turn 1 - Spring

To start the first turn, I draw six cards from the top of my deck.  I draw:

2 Hearts, 2 Diamonds, 1 Spade, 1 Club

Nothing terribly dire is threatening the colony to start with, so that's good.  I've got a small Food Issue (Hearts), a small Health Issue (Diamonds), and minor Predatory (Spades) and Environmental (Clubs) Issues.  So what's going on then?  I need to figure out what these Issues are and how they're affecting my colony.  Here's what I come up with:

It's early spring, and we've been feeding on our fungi all winter while waiting out the cold.  As a result, our fungi supply has been depleted, and we'll need to get to work right away on cutting some leaves to help it grow back to full strength.  The trouble is, the forest around us hasn't fully thawed, and so leaves are in short supply at the moment.  Worse yet, a spider has stumbled upon our harvest line, and is trying to make a meal of our workers!  

So there's how my Issues are playing out: the Food Issue is that we need to cultivate more fungi, and our Environmental Issue is that the late cold has stunted growth.  I move my Club card over to my Food Issue, since that's how it's working against the colony.  My predator is a spider - nothing overpowering, but still threatening.  And it's taken out a number of the workers in the colony, so there's my Health Issue.

So now we set about addressing things.  The most pressing matter is the spider, as we can't effectively find food or replenish our numbers without getting rid of that first.  I attack the spider with my Soldiers to start, and roll my 4d6 Soldier pool:  3, 5, 2, 1.  I roll my one success needed to vanquish the spider, but that 1 means that I've suffered some casualties in the battle.  I reduce my Soldier pool down to 3.

Now that the spider has been dealt with, we can recover from the damage it caused a bit.  I roll my Drones 4d6 in order to bring our numbers back up to snuff:  5, 4, 6, 1.  Three successes - enough to solve my Health Issue, but that 6 means I've lost a Drone due to exhaustion (Drones count only 6s as casualties, not 1s).

That leaves only my Food Issue to be dealt with, which is going to be tricky.  I have 3 Worker dice to tackle a level 3 Issue - not great odds.  My workers are going to have to bust their butts to try and solve this:  3, 3, 5.  They manage to knock off a bit of the problem, but not enough to cancel it out completely.  I decide that my soldiers are going to have to get involve.  They'll move some of the larger debris out of the harvest path to help bump up the efficiency of the line:  6, 1, 4.  Their help manages to help my Workers harvest enough food to grow the fungi back to sustainable levels, but the work was grueling.  More of my Soldiers have died off, and I'm in real danger of attack in the coming seasons.  But no Issues are carrying over to Summer!

Turn 2 - Summer

Here's how I'm looking going into the warmer weather:

Workers - 3

Soldiers - 1

Drones - 3

I draw my six Issues cards: 

3 Diamonds, 1 Heart, 1 Spade, 1 Club

Things are a little more dire in the summer.  I've got a pretty severe Health Issue on my hands, but luckily nothing else is really causing real problems.  Let's figure out what's causing all this:

In their haste to harvest enough leaves to bring our fungus back up to full health, it went unnoticed that a few of the leaves my workers brought back to the colony had spores of a fungus that feeds on ours!  These spores have started attacking our fungal food supply.  We've got to remove the predatory fungus and find more healthy leaves to feed on, but there's been a lot of rainfall as of late, so there's puddles everywhere.  This has caused a rival colony to divert from their usual harvest route, and they've started encroaching on our harvest territory.  We need to drive them back!

I move my Environmental Issue over to my Health stack, and we're ready to get rolling.

I'm going to get a little strategic here and address the rival ant colony first.  I send my remaining Soldiers out to drive them off: 4.  Bugger off!  (Pun intended)

Now that my Workers don't have a rival colony to contend with, They can focus on addressing the fungus issue.  They work to start removing some of the infected parts of the fungus from the colony:  5, 6, 6.  My Workers eliminate the fungal issue, but the predatory fungus is incredibly toxic to ants, and those two 6s take a big chunk out of my workforce.  This doesn't leave me in very good shape to tackle my remaining Food Issue.

I decide to get a bit creative.  I send my Soldiers out to raid the rival colony's harvest chain in order to scamper off with some of their leaves: 2.  Not much of a help.  It's up to my Workers now: 2.  Uh oh.  Looks like our Food Issue is rolling into Autumn.

Turn 3 - Autumn

Not in the greatest shape at the end of the workable year:

Workers - 1

Soldiers - 1

Drones - 3

I draw six cards for my Issues:

3 Diamonds, 2 Clubs, 1 Spade

I've got another bad Health Issue on my hands, plus a decent Environmental Issue to go along with the Food Issue from Summer that I'm still dealing with.  And barely any Workers to deal with any of these!

An early frost has set in, and between the extreme cold and the depleted food source the colony's numbers have dropped off dramatically.  Ants that aren't being knocked off through starvation or freezing are fighting over the remaining food sources as they prepare for the long winter.  The colony will have a nearly insurmountable task in trying to secure enough food to see it through.

Based on my narration of my Issues, I move my Environmental cards over to my Health stack (now a level 5 Issue!) and get to work.

A Health Issue like this one is one of the few problems my Drones can try and tackle.  Let's try and get the population numbers back up!: 6, 4, 2.  We've whittled away a bit of the problem, but lost a Drone along the way, and I'm still looking at a level 3 there.  My workers are going to have to try and dig deeper tunnels to escape the cold:  1!  Not only did they not succeed, I've lost my only Worker die!  I'm going to need to shore up the number with my Drones to have any shot of making it through the season:  6, 1.  I'm now down to my last remaining Drone, but I've got 6 Workers!  My last shot is to try and get creative - my Soldiers are going to use their bulk to corral the ants in the colony into a central area, trying to combat the cold with body heat:  3.  No luck.  My Queen is going to have to try and get us through that one in the winter, which doesn't bode well for our chances of survival.

Needing to give up on my Health Issue, I set out tackling my Predatory one.  My Soldiers set out with my Workers to act as bodyguards and fight off any competing colonies: 1!  Not only did they not succeed, but I'm out of Soldiers!  My Workers are going to have to try and fend for themselves:  3, 5, 6, 5, 6, 6.  Four successes more than what I needed, but unfortunately with a ton of 6s.  My Workers made it through, but took heavy losses for a task they were ill-suited for.

I now have no Soldiers, and only 3 Worker dice to tackle my remaining Food Issue with.  I roll:  5, 2, 6.  They scrounge up enough food, but the cold weeds the weaker ones out.  I finish with 2 Workers.

Endgame - Winter

So my colony prepped as best they could, but I'm still left with a level 3 Health problem that only my Queen will be able to solve during the winter.  I grab my three Queen dice and get to rolling:

2, 6, 2

My Queen made a dent, but she's weakened.  I roll again:

5, 3

She's powering through.  We might have a real shot:

3, 6

We made it!  The Queen nearly killed herself, but the colony makes it through another winter.  What the future holds, though, looks uncertain.

So that's the game!  Again, feel free to download the playtest document here and give it a spin.  Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

BEES?!

So I've been working on a game...

I've tinkered with game design a bit over the past year or so, with a couple of different attempts producing half-finished designs that will need to be revisited later.  But I think I've stumbled upon something that I wanted to share with all of you.  What's the game about?

BEES!!!!

Well, not just bees, but any type of social insect really.  The game is based around the idea of working through the various obstacles that would befall a beehive or ant colony through one year as they prepare for a New England winter.  The game took inspiration from Questlandia and also from a 200-word game created by Grant Howitt called Exodus.

I've done a number of solo playtests (the game functions perfectly well solo),  but I would love for other people who are willing to take a stab at running it and give me their feedback.  The playtest document is available here.

The game itself is, as mentioned, based on the idea of a beehive working through a year in preparation for their winter hibernation.  Play is broken into three turns, which signify one of the seasons - the first turn is Spring, the second Summer, and the third Autumn.  At the beginning of each turn, players draw six cards from a deck of playing cards to determine which issues they need to address to get their hive through that season safely.  Any issues that aren't fully dealt with in a given season carry over to the next.  At the end of the third turn, the survival of the hive depends on the strength of its Queen to power through any remaining issues.

The problems are dealt with by using the usual citizens of a hive - Workers, who carry out most tasks; Soldiers, who provide the muscle and defend the hive; and Drones, whose sole function is to mate with the Queen and reproduce.  These groups are represented by dice pools, but are very vulnerable, and so their numbers can dwindle quickly as they carry out their tasks.

If this sounds like a game you're interested in playing, feel free to download it from the link above and give it a spin.  Any feedback is more than welcome.

Life and Games and Such

So I didn't realize until today how long it's been since my last post.  Unfortunately, Real Life has not been kind lately, and I haven't had a ton of motivation related to gaming.  I lost both my dad and our dog within the same week, and so sadly I've been in a bit of a funk that's been a little tough to get out of, but there's enough good on the horizon to be optimistic.

So let's talk about some of that, shall we?

My home group finally had the conclusion of our multi-year Mouse Guard game before everything really hit the skids, which was wonderful.  The group ended up completing a coup of Elmoss, and our patrol leader ended up sacrificing himself for the cause.  It was all in all a wonderful game, and part of me is reluctant to let it go, but I think we were all ready to move onto new things.  Coincidentally, this has also coincided with the end of my Stars Without Numbers campaign that never really gained any traction, which is largely on me, and me dropping out of my online Mouse Guard game because of all my Real Life business.

So what other things to move onto?  Well, we originally talked about using Questlandia as a jumping off point to building a Burning Wheel campaign, which would be the ideal (at least for me).  I've also talked to my SWN group about possibly trying out Burning Wheel as well through Roll20.  I put together everything for running Twilight in the Duchy Verdorben, which is an intro collection of three adventures for Burning Wheel.  If I was more savvy about Roll20 I'd try and make the module available for people, so if anybody has tips on that feel free to let me know.  My wife has also been at me as of late to take another stab at putting together a weekend group with some of our friends who are new to roleplaying like her, so we'll see if I can get that going as well.  I'll likely keep that group to something in the Powered by the Apocolypse family for ease, although I do also have Ryuutama that I think would fit that group well enough.

While I haven't had much available scratch to throw down for new games as of late, there have been a couple of Kickstarter campaigns I've stumbled upon recently that have caught my eye.  One is Eden, a GM-less roleplaying game where players play either humans learning the ways of the world from their animal companions, or the animal companions themselves.  The game itself looks adorable, and appears to be that it would make an excellent roleplaying game to run with children.  The gameplay examples show the game to be designed in a way that the advice the animal companions give to their human friends is largely rooted in the instincts of that animal, making it both a wonderfully imaginative roleplaying game as well as a way to incorporate more science/biology into your child's play if you're into that.

The other Kickstarter I want to mention is a game called Rise Up.  This game, which I can't do justice to here, is a board game centered around protest and bringing about social change.  This is, from everything that I've seen, an incredibly profound design put together by The Toolbox for Education and Social Action, and is the first Kickstarter that I've backed at a non-reward level simply to help it see the light of day.  Please check them out, seriously.

Speaking of board games, I have Granite Games Summit coming up this weekend!  This is going to be a bit of an adventure for me, despite literally being less than four miles from my house.  I'm obviously much more of a roleplayer than a board gamer, but helping to support a gaming convention in my hometown along with being able to meet new gamers is quite exciting to me.  For whatever reason I tend to have some anxiety when it comes to gaming with strangers.  It's a very odd thing, considering I'm generally a pretty outgoing and social person in most other aspects of my life, but when it comes to gaming I tend to be very shy, hence the adventure of this particular convention.  I'm going solo, and outside of the wonderful people running G2S, I do not know anyone else attending that I'm aware of.  So how do I counter this?  With baseball!

Bottom of the 9th

Bottom of the 9th is a fantastic board game that was one of my first Kickstarters that I backed.  The game is based around playing one half inning of baseball between two players, one controlling the pitcher and the other controlling a lineup of hitters.  The game is pretty easy to learn and teach, so I'm planning on bringing it with me to G2S to try and run for some people to help try and bring me out of my shell a little bit.  Hopefully it will lead to me interacting more than I would normally at this type of thing.  Getting more comfortable with a setting like this is something I'm very keen on, and might lead to me being able to stretch out a little bit with online gaming.  I'm part of an amazing community of roleplayers online that I have as of yet played very little with, and with some more confidence from situations such as G2S I might be able to become more involved with that arena, if that makes sense.  At the very least, it'll help me play the game more, which is one of my favorites.

As always, thanks for reading my ramblings.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

I had a bit of a rough Sunday this weekend, so I decided to distract myself from Real Life a bit with some work on my Witcher Burning Wheel hack that I've been tinkering with.  I posted the lifepaths and traits that I shared previously on the BW forums and got some excellent feedback on those from a couple of people, including some amazing advice from Thor for tweaks, so I'll be reworking those.

One of the big things that Thor pointed out is that the elven spell songs probably were a better model for the signs than using the Art Magic rules that I had initially intended to go with.  This solved one of my big concerns I had with having witchers use the Sorcery skill when there would be actual witches using the regular Sorcery rules in the game, which is something the Codex specifically calls out as an issue.  By making the signs themselves individual skills based off the elven spell songs, it eliminates the conflicting magic rules while still achieving the same effects.

That still leaves the issue of creating the new sign skills, though, so I've take a stab at that below!  These function mechanically as the elven spell songs more or less, being open-ended rolls but not requiring the Gifted trait.  Instead, the use of these skills requires the Witcher trait I shared before.  The other chief difference obviously is that use of these skills doesn't require sustained singing as the elven spell songs do in order to use to make them a bit closer to the magic used in-game.  Each of the signs is its own individual skill, it should be noted.


Quen  -- Ob 4^ -- 11 Actions
The witcher surrounds himself with a magical shield, absorbing damage from enemy blows. Functions as the existing Turn Aside the Blade spell.

Yrden -- Ob 4^ -- 2 Actions
The witcher casts a circle of magical fire on the ground, trapping supernatural foes caught within it. The caster chooses a single supernatural target to make a Steel test.  Hesitation is increased by the margin of success.

Igni -- See Description -- 2 Actions
A burst of flame erupts from the hand of the witcher, setting torches or foes ablaze in its path.  Functions as either the existing Flame Finger or Fire Fan spells as applicable to the intent.

Aard - Ob Speed -- 1 Action
The witcher assails his foes with a telekinetic blast.  Targets in the path are knocked prone.  Weapon length: as spear; Range: as pistol.

Axii -- Ob 3 -- 2 Actions
The witcher influences the mind of a target, forcing them to speak honestly or stunning them into inaction.  Targets must make a Steel test, and must speak honestly for a number of actions equal to the result.


Please take a look and let me know your thoughts, especially any changes you think might need to be made,  Are they too powerful?  Are they not powerful enough?  Let me know!  Once I get enough feedback, I'll work on putting together a post with the revised lifepaths, traits, and signs in a single post as an easy reference for anybody to use in their games.  At some point in the future, I might even take a stab at putting together some folklore monsters and Wild Hunt NPCs for those that want them, but that's a hill I'm not quite ready to climb just yet.

Curse the GMs!

So for those that are unaware, there's been a fairly tongue-in-cheek hashtag going around the G+ called #INDIEGAMEaDAY2016.  Similar in nature to the #RPGaDAY hashtag that goes around every year, this one tends to poke a bit of fun at a lot of the trends around indie RPGs and try and get everyone to not take their hobby so ultra-seriously.  For an example, here's today's topic:

#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016

16. Are GMs abusers, control freaks, or both? Best story explaining why this is so.

Now if you don't follow indie RPGs too closely, this might not land for you, but a lot of indie games strive for player agency and there's more than a few GM-less systems out there (one of which I've talked about before and will do so again in a bit).  But anyway, I'm not going to discuss the hashtag itself, because I thankfully have no GM horror stories to share.  However, the question did get me thinking about GMing, my style, and why I got started into it.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I only very recently got into GMing, probably within the past two years or so.  My first real run of it was an online Mouse Guard PbP game with a group of people I've been playing with for years, kind of as a feeler.  I had a campaign idea, and we had a player dropping out, so I asked the person who had been running the game for years if he would mind letting me run the game for a bit.  He was delighted, and I ran a fairly decent campaign, especially for a first time running it, but had some issues.  Primarily, running a PbP game is a completely different animal, and the chief challenge is keeping everybody focused and checking in regularly.  I quickly learned I am very bad at this, as I am not a generally authoritative person by nature.  I ran I think one full year, three sessions, and then burned out from chasing one of the players and turned things back over to the original GM.

The experience did reinforce my own feelings on why a lot of people end up GMing, though:  they want to play games.  If you enjoy a game or a system enough, you want to play it, and it is the eternal struggle of a gaming hobbyist that they don't ever have enough players to play with.  And so in order to play a game they want to play, they have to convince other people to play with them, and the easiest way to do this is to volunteer to do the heavy lifting and run the game for the other players.  Ask your GM if they'd mind you taking over for a bit and watch their eyes light up.  Seriously, do it.

That being said, I think there is definitely a group that prefers GMing to being a PC, and I think I may be skewing more towards this end of things the more games I run.  I have always been a writer at heart from childhood on.  I have never been published and never have really put much effort into that end of things, but I've always written stories if for nobody else but myself.  It's part of the reason I play the video games I do (only massive open world games where I can create a character and do my thang.  Your game doesn't have a story?  Perfect.  I will make my own), and it definitely is a muscle that I enjoy flexing as a GM.  I find I enjoy putting together scenarios and watching players develop over time more than any character I have played.

For the most part, I enjoy improvising when I run games, and reacting more to what the players are doing than anything in particular that I planned, and so I gravitate more to those systems that allow me to do that.  It's one of the main reasons I have issues running a lot of OSR games where there's more prep involved.  But my primary focus with any game I run is simply to make sure everybody is having a good time and enjoying creating stories alongside me.

New Games!

I bought some new games!  Well, one new game and another game I already owned but only in a digital format.  

Questlandia

Questlandia I've written about before, and I already grabbed a digital copy when Hannah Shaffer offered it as a free download for Free RPG Day this year.  The game is so good, though, that I felt guilty having not paid for it.  That and it's typically much easier for me to get into games in physical format.  As I've said before, I really can't recommend this game enough for world building, both just for a fun game to play with friends and especially as a prep session to starting a longer campaign.  Once we wrap up our home Mouse Guard game, I'm planning on running this for a session or two to lead into a Burning Wheel campaign.

Ryuutama

Ryuutama is a game that is completely new to me, but one that I've had my eye on for quite a while.  I almost grabbed it at PAX East this year, which was the first time I had seen it, but thankfully waited and bought the physical/digital bundle from Kotohi direct.  Having both formats is kind of perfect for me, as it allows me to do session prep during my lunch break or slow days at work, while allowing me to get deeper into the game reading before bed.  Plus, I always prefer buying direct from creators whenever possible.

I started reading this one last night, and I really am excited to play it.  The system is kind of brilliantly simple, and it will make a great introductory game for people that have never roleplayed before.  I'm especially looking forward to eventually running this game with my daughter in a few years when she's old enough for gaming, provided she shows an interest.  This and Michtim are going to be my go-to early years roleplaying games, but both are also robust enough to easily entertain players of all ages for years.  If you have kids, or even if you just like cute stuff and also RPGs, you should definitely own both these games.

Oh, Witch-AY Woman!

(Note: Outside of this post being related to The Witcher 3, the title of this post makes no sense, and serves no purpose to the post outside of giving me an opportunity to quote my favorite obscure Seinfeld line.)

After some delays with Real Life going on (not the greatest week of my life, unfortunately), I've managed to make some kind of progress with the Witcher 3 Burning Wheel setting hack that I've talked about before.  Specifically, I've set about trying to come up with the new lifepaths and traits that I think burning a witcher would require.  While the Codex doesn't contain the rules for burning lifepaths and traits that I was hoping would be included, the Burning Wiki does have the worksheets for creating a new trait, which I used as a rough guide when putting the new traits together.  Mostly, though, I just tweaked some existing lifepaths and traits in order to get where I needed.

The big things I was concerned with when trying to put this stuff together were making sure that I covered the crucial skills a witcher would need, along with covering the very specific mutation process that a witcher goes through, leading to the fun cat eyes.  I decided against going with a separate lifepath for the mutation, given that I couldn't come up with any actual skills that would be gained form the process itself, and ended up just rolling an additional two years onto the Witcher lifepath.  I ended up basing the new lifepath on the dwarven Adventurer lifepath, which ended up also providing a pretty sweet bonus guide for the Witcher trait.  I also created one additional lifepath - that of the Witcher's Apprentice.  This was a slight tweaking of the existing Page lifepath from the mannish stock, reducing the years served and adding the Demonology skill, but with a big hit to the Resources points gained.

The one little wrinkle that I will say is probably necessary to tweak the game rules a bit to fit in is that the Witcher's Apprentice lifepath, like the Squire lifepath it's based on, requires that it be the second lifepath a character takes, but is itself an Outcast lifepath.  This means that, due to the lack of Born lifepaths that lead to the Outcast subsetting, you might have to fudge things a bit in order to incorporate this into your games and allow other lifepaths to lead into the Outcast setting.

Anyway, here's what I've come up with.  Please feel free to respond with your thoughts, and to use in your games.  If you DO end up using any of these for a game that you're running, please let me know how they play out.

Outcast Setting	Time	Resources	Stat	Leads
Witcher's Apprentice	5 yrs	5	+1P	Any
Skills: 6 pts: Brawling, Read, Write, Sword, Demonology
Traits: 2 pts: -
Prerequisites: If chosen, this path must be the character's second lifepath and may only be taken once.
Witcher	7 yrs	10	+1M/P	Any
Skills: 12 pts: Sorcery, Climbing, Folklore, Herbalism, Haggling, Brawling, Sword, Crossbow, Axe, Appraisal, Munitions, Survival, Symbology, Alchemy
Traits: 2 pt: Witcher, Mutant
Requires: Witcher's Apprentice or any Soldier lifepath.

Witcher	Dt
Witchers are feared by the commonfolk, considered freaks and meddlers. As such, Witchers gain +1 Ob to all Circles tests when dealing with Born Peasant or Villager humans. However, they may take a minor (1D) affiliation with the school that trained them for free.

Mutant	Dt	4 pts
The mutation that witchers undergo renders them sterile and unable to produce offspring. However, the procedure gifts them with sight into the supernatural realm. All Observation tests made to see traces of the supernatural are open-ended.

General Gaming Goodness

Between finally taking a vacation last week and this week being super busy (as first weeks back from vacation invariably are), it's been a bit since the last post.  I figured it worthwhile to give a few updates about my gaming-related life and where I'm at with certain things.

Burning Wheel Witcher 3 Setting Hack!

The first thing I'll address is what's garnered the most interest up to this point, which is the Witcher 3 setting hack that I talked about a bit in one of my last posts.  Unfortunately, in perusing the Codex a bit more, it turns out that the rules for creating your own monsters, traits, and lifepaths were not carried over from the previous editions of the The Monster Burner.  For this I say boo, as this was one of the biggest things I was looking forward to when the Codex was announced, and for it to not be included is kind of super disappointing.

However, what I DID find after some online snooping was the worksheets for trait burning and monster burning.  The two biggest hurdles for the Witcher setting are determining the correct traits for the witcher transformation process, and the skills and traits for the various folklore monsters.  Using these worksheets, I've started trying to piece together some of these details, which I hope to have to share within the next week or so.

My Game!

Some of the distraction from my witcher project has been due to the progression of the game that I've been working on designing.  It's my first real attempt at designing my own system, and I've been shocked at how it's been going on.  Originally, the game was inspired by non-fantastic games centered around ordinary folk, pushed forth by my desire to create a game about kid-to-teenager life and the perils therein.  Seeing games in this vein being worked on like Damn the Man, Save the Music and Sarah Richardson/Magpie Games' Velvet Glove hasn't cooled that thought at all.  As such, I took a lot of inspiration from Paul Czege's wonderful Nicotine Girls game, which provided some of the framework for the character generation and some terms. 

However, as I've been moving forward, the game has moved from being a hack to it's own system, which has been very exciting.  I've reached the point where I'm just about ready to start playtesting, which is both thrilling and terrifying.  But hopefully I'll have some tests soon, and then I may reach out to some of my far-off internet gaming friends to try and run some playtests for me.

Games I Wanna Play!

As is always the case with gamers, I have more games than I have time or people to play with. Out of these games, though, there is one I've been reading and thinking a lot about lately, which is Hannah Shaffer's Questlandia. I first heard about this game at PAX East this past year and saw Hannah's display as part of the lumpley/Make Big Things/everybody from Massachusetts booth, but whenever I walked by she seemed to be tied up talking to somebody, so I didn't get a chance to inquire further about it (probably a great problem to have, as a game designer).  I did make sure to grab one of her fancy bookmarks for the game and researched it a bit following the convention.  The game, which for those unfamiliar, is a GM-less collaborative world-building game of sorts, I found super interesting and kind of outside of anything else I've run into in gaming to this point.  

Not having much available cash (I'm having a baby finally!), I couldn't scoop this one up as quickly as I wanted, but fortuitously enough Make Big Things offered it for free for Free RPG Day and I grabbed the digital version until I have the free scratch to pick up a physical copy like I always need to do.  Actually having the game rules and seeing how it helps with such deep collaboration only made me more fascinated.  While it clearly functions as a game in and of itself, what I find most compelling is how well it can tie into any other game for a campaign.  Seriously - for any system you enjoy or want to start a new game with, start first with a session or two of Questlandia to flesh out the setting.  You can pull characters and world details from that game into the next when you move systems, and having that as a jumping off point for a campaign is bananas awesome to me.

Cons!

I've been itching to go to a gaming convention lately, most likely due to my regular groups dropping off due to scheduling and life.  However, we're kind of outside of the big con seasons, and unfortunately I missed almost all of them besides PAX East.  There is the Boston Festival of Indie Games coming up in the next few weeks, which I've been debating heading down for.  It seems to be more tabletop and video games than roleplaying, but I still think I'll end up heading down.  While I'm clearly more of a roleplaying geek, there are still some appealing board games and indie video games I get into from time to time, and at worst it'll be a chance to hang out with some new gamer people.  I do need to make it a mission to attend JiffyCon next year though.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some more substantial progress with the things I'm working on soon.

Getting My Wheels Burning

Busy and productive week this has been!  After months of trying toying with the idea of various different game designs and hitting various walls with each one, I had a random bit of inspiration the end of last week, and put together the early parts of a new game!  It's obviously still very raw, but I'm very excited with the shape that it's taken so far.  I gathered up some additional materials that I'll need, and I think the next step is to actually start some playtesting.  I've never hit this stage with a game before, so this is all very exciting.  Once I get a bit father along, I'll likely try to recruit some additional playtesters to get some more eyes on it.  But still, progress.

Also very exciting is the fact that I received my Kickstarter copy of the Burning Wheel Codex.  For those unaware, the Codex is a sort of rerelease of the original books that made up the original Burning Wheel set but weren't included in Gold - specifically, the Monster Burner, Adventure Burner, and the Magic Burner.

The Burning Wheel Codex

So not that I finally have the complete rules in hand, I've been pouring through everything pretty regularly.  The essays contained in the Adventure Burner in particular have been fantastic to go through, with a lot of great advice on running the game itself and some pretty rad ideas of gaming and GMing as a whole.

Anyway, the biggest upside of all the information contained in the Codex is that now I have better tools for making a setting to run a campaign!  Outside of the people I've played with online, the majority of the people I play (and I think a lot of casual gamers in general) are more likely to get behind the idea of a new game or campaign based on the setting.  So which one is the best to explore with my fancy new books?

Banner Saga
This one is partially on me playing this one recently, or rather Banner Saga 2, but I think from a Burning Wheel standpoint there are a lot of awesome possibilities.  The setting itself is pretty close to the out-the-box Sagas of the Icelanders game, but with enough distinctions that I think there would be a lot missed running in that system.  In particular, I think BW allows for really trying to flesh out the hulking Varl.  Still, pretty niche audience I think for the most part.

Elder Scrolls
In keeping with the northern European but not quite viking high fantasy idea, the Elder Scrolls series provides some great options for running a game I think.  The setting itself is incredibly fleshed out, which is a benefit as well as a bit of constraint, as there's more room for butting up against canon in terms of campaigns.  Not the hugest deal in the world, but something to think about.  The other question in using the Tamriel is settling on the primary province of the game, and how that will affect mechanics.  Skyrim?  At least one person is going to want to play as a dragonborn, meaning shouts will need to be fleshed out.  There's also a much greater number of race options that will need to be determined.  The various man and mer races are likely to be covered by limiting and tweaks various existing lifepaths, but what about the kaihjit?  Or the argonians?  Some heavy lifting would be required here.

Which, I think, brings me to my most likely setting for a future Burning Wheel game.

Witcher 3
I'll confess something here:  I have Witcher 3.  I've played Witcher 3.  I have, as of yet, been unable to really get into Witcher 3.  This is largely to due with the control schemes of the game itself, particularly when it comes to combat.  For whatever reason, the game is very counter-intuitive to my play style when it comes to video games.  However, what is inarguable is that I do find the game world itself incredibly fascinating, well developed, and (perhaps most importantly for my purposes here) open.

There's a lot of generic in Witcher 3 that I think it would be simple enough to try and convert to a default setting like Burning Wheel's, and likely without much fuss.  Are there towns in Witcher 3?  Are there important characters?  Yes, of course.  But while I know many players could tell you there's a character named The Bloody Baron, I would think fewer would be able to tell you what the name of his town is.  I'm a fairly reactionary GM - I plan scenarios, I'm good at interpreting player action and coming up with creative responses to that action, even if I didn't plan anything ahead of time.  Where I am very weak is in carefully planning out encounters and fleshing out the meticulous details of a world.  I'm perfectly fine referring to a town as "that place we went where the duke killed his wife while we were there" in my groups, and I'm much more apt to remember that than the name of the town anyway.

That being said, it doesn't mean there's no work to be done in order to convert Burning Wheel's default setting framework over to Witcher 3.  For one thing, there's a lot of limiting of the available character races.  Dwarves would make sense given their roles in the game, elves would be iffy I think, but no orcs.  Really I would ideally limit the PC choices to human and dwarf.  Then, assuming the players are mostly planning on playing witchers, there need to be some specific traits made up.  Witchers are sterile in game terms, and also have their unique cat eyes that allow them to see the magic secrets in the world around them, so there's some call-on or die traits to be dealt with there.

Where the Codex really caught my eye as it relates to the way magic and the witchers actually tackling supernatural creatures would be handled.  The game is largely based around northern European folklore, so the system works perfectly there with the Folklore skill.  Players can use that to try and discern remedies and charms for combating various ghouls and beasts, very similar in that regard to how the story progresses in the actual game.  The bigger question relates to how the game would handle magic.  The game has witches and the like in it, so there are some spells there, but by and large the witchers themselves have only a handful of magical powers to work with.  These come off less like true spells in the traditional RPG sense and more general skills that happen to be magical in nature.

This, I think, would be something best covered by using the Art Magic rules rather than the standard sorcery rules built into the system.  For the most part, the spells like Igni and such would be covered pretty well by the various functions of the Sorcery skill under the Art Magic rules, maybe with some slight tweaking and interpretation.  The big thing is that, in trying to emulate the game world, the witchers less learn new spells as they do improve their existing powers, which grow in strength as they go on.  In that sense, it seems to me to work better to just have a single skill, broken into different schools of magic in order to allow a bit more customization opportunity and less ability to munchkin as much, and having that skill improve through play as the game wears on.  Plus, then we don't have to constantly remember exact spell names and functions (again, planning and details aren't exactly my thing).

This will take some time and some percolating as far as the specifics go, but I think there's enough here to work with.  Once I get things fleshed out a bit more, I'll try and post some of my tweaks and such for anybody else out there who'd like to run their own Witcher game.

As always, thanks for reading.

Timely & Efficient Posting

So this has been a busy week games-wise, what with Gen Con going on and the 2016 #RPGaDay.  I've also personally had a busy game week this week - ran another session of Stars Without Number Sunday night, did some Mouse Guard prep yesterday (although tonight's session unfortunately ended up being cancelled), and got to get introduced to a bunch of new roleplaying friends through Epidiah Ravacol's Google+ post, so no complaints on that end.

I started mulling over this post yesterday, and I honestly wish I had gotten it up then because it dovetails pretty nicely with day two of RPG a Day.  For those unfamiliar, the #RPGaDay hashtag posts a different discussion topic everyday during the month of August for us roleplaying nuts to come together and talk about.  Yesterday's topic was "Best game session since August 2015?"  So I'll call it close enough and post a day late.

Interestingly enough, last week's session for my Mouse Guard campaign was completely accidentally one of the best single sessions that the group has had to this point.  This same group just came off probably our best campaign stretch where they helped a group of female outcasts from Grasslake set up their own community, which I've posted a bit about before.  This ended up culminating with the patrol meeting up and forming a relationship with a civilization of moles that exists in the Wilds east of the Territories, and then fending off an army of weasels lead by a sable warlord.  Needless to say, it set some pretty high expectations for the following year in-game.

This year I've set up something slightly different.  Coming off a merchant escort run in early spring, the patrol needed to clear the northern shores of crabs that were causing shipwrecks and shutting down trade routes.  However, during this adventure the patrol found that one of the wrecked ships had been carrying a suspicious shipment of weapons.  Following sessions saw them take the investigation east to the port cities where the ships had come from, and followed the trail back west to where the weapons were headed.  Turns out that the weapons shipment was being funneled to help fuel a long-overdue rebellion in Elmoss, where things had gotten so dire that the merchant leaders had begun gleaning wages off of the citizens to keep things afloat.  Somewhat unsurprisingly given the patrol's history by this point, my players jumped in on aiding the rebellion rather than trying to shut it down.

This is where it's gotten interesting, though, and the Big Moment that I honestly did not realize was the Big Moment when I did the prep.  The leader of the Elmoss rebellion, a young but hardened leader of a lass, didn't fully trust the patrol's intentions and was hesitant to involve them further in the coup.  She therefore (following a failed Persuasion test to convince her they were on the up and up) gave them a mission to help prove themselves: coming from Copperwood was a shipment of food and supplies to act as relief to the mice of Elmoss.  The patrol needed to ensure that shipment never reached Elmoss in order to keep the citizens hungry for change, both literally and figuratively.

When I originally designed the mission, I had assumed that this would be a covered by a test or two during the Player's Turn - it was a possibly twist, and I honestly didn't even consider this as being something that needed to be addressed during the GM Turn.  I was shocked when this revelation completely halted the game (in a good way).  As their table chatter went on though, I realized that this twist managed to hit on each of their Beliefs in some way or another.  For reference, the group's Beliefs are as follows:

• Never back down, never give up.
• The needs of the many outweigh those of the few.
• Always work to better myself and others.

The logic behind the rebellion leader's giving them this task is very important to understanding why this became such an internal struggle for the patrol.  In the 1E canon, Elmoss' government was originally set up when the city was a thriving supply hub for the western Territories.  However, once many of those towns began falling during the Weasel War, Elmoss began to fall in power and influence.  The government, though, made up of the heads of each trade practiced in the city, remained the same, and became a huge burden to the citizens of the town.  In the rebellion leader's mind, this rebellion had been coming for far too long, and now that she had the citizens ready to pull it off, the relief supplies would cool their heads and the coup would miss its window.  

The first mouse (the patrol leader) understood this logic right away, and knew the danger - these mice were finally on the door of real change, and something like this might turn them away from their goal.  The second part of his Belief really shown here, not wanting to see the rebellion in any danger of falling apart, even if it meant he needed to do something questionable and that mice might suffer for it.  The second mouse and third mice were the ones that really were struggling with what was going on.  For the second mouse who strives to work for the greater good, who represents the few?  Is the need for rebellion among the Elmoss mice forcing permanent change greater than the need for them to feed their families?  Is providing food really buying time and avoiding danger for an small oppressive elite?  Similarly, the mouse looking to make herself and others better had quite the quandary on her paws.  Is the betterment of the Elmoss mice really with overthrowing their antiquated government in a bloody coup?  Can she honestly view herself as taking the steps towards her goal of bettering herself by denying starving mice food?

Ordinarily with this kind of conflict among the group, I would have moved this into an inter-patrol Argument Conflict to resolve it, but there was really one side and two questions.  Two of the three were having such an internal debate over what was the right course of action that there didn't seem to be enough to combat against the one mouse who was game for sabotaging the shipment.  They might get there on their own eventually.  In the end, I at least got them to agree that we would address the shipment in the next session so we could finish out the rest of the mission, so it'll be interesting to see what the end result is and how they handle everything.

While the session itself was interesting enough, it was really this moment that stood out as one of the best I've had in my gaming history.  I am slightly bothered that it came about so unintentionally, and that I didn't recognize ahead of time what the situation actually represented for the players, but such is a learning experience as a GM for a game like this.  I am at the least very happy that I got to be a part of the moment.

Breaking, Hacking, Burning!

This weekend I had some free time and was nosing around the internet as one does, and I came across a post on the Burning Wheel forums that Luke Crane made a few years back when Mouse Guard was first released that laid out some guidelines for hacking the system.  Mouse Guard is, to this point at least, my all-time favorite roleplaying system, but I've never really thought about hacking it.  Not only that, but Scott Acker and Patrick Riegert did an amazing job with their Realm Guard LotR hack that they did a few years back.  Still, I've been wanting to get into game design a bit, and the idea of trying my hand at my own hack is intriguing.  At the very least, Mouse Guard is probably the first system that I've gotten involved with to the point that I would actually feel fairly comfortable working with it.

I started to try and figure out ideas for what would work as far as a setting.  As Luke outlines in the opening of the post, a proper Mouse Guard hack requires three things to function - team-based adventuring, an over-arching force of nature, and dramatic adventuring that emphasizes on fighting for your beliefs.  Without these things, the system just doesn't hold up and you'd be closer to creating a new game instead of a system hack.  Therefore, the setting and the player characters would need to be characters that would believably need to unite for a common goal, but one with enough grey area involved that there isn't one "right" way to approach the overall conflict.

I've been heavily into the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter lately, and seeing all those tweets of fantastic creatures has really pulled me a lot in that direction as of late in terms of inspiration.  There are more varied stories of fantastic creatures and beasts than I ever would have imagined.  I've been toying a lot with the idea of trying to make a game that focuses on those types of woodland creatures, but the trouble in doing that with Mouse Guard comes down to what would unite these creatures to fight in unison?  Most of the mythic beings in the Norse and Scandinavian tales that have really peaked my interest are more meddlesome and chiefly are concerned with toying with humans.  This isn't really something I'm looking for in terms of my hack.  Still, I definitely want to go the fey route.  An early idea that I had when first mulling this over was to go with ents, with players acting as sort of woodland shepherds looking over the wilds.  While the premise seems to fit in where I want to take things, I can't really wrap my head around many credible threats for ents as PCs.  One of the main things that makes Mouse Guard work so well is the idea of the number of things that present real threats to the characters, be it weather or run-of-the-mill forest animals that would dine on mice.  With PCs the size and strength of ents, a lot of that is lost.

The Hidden People by Cory Godbey

Then I remembered a book that I purchased a few years back, artist Cory Godbey's excellent sketchbook The Hidden People.  This is a sketchbook that Godbey put together following a trip to Europe and was heavily inspired by the European creature myths.  Fittingly, I first heard of Godbey and saw his work in one of the Legends of the Guard comics.  In The Hidden People, the first chapter shows sketches of The Tree People, a group of humanoid creatures with twigs growing out of their heads that are born from acorns.  There are a few different sizes and varying builds, which plays into another issue I was having with the ents that I'll discuss in a bit.  I immediately began thinking over ideas that could play into a fantasy roleplaying setting, and I believe I now have my inspiration for this hack.

While I'll likely use the sketches as inspiration more so than an actual source material, there are a number of ideas that I'm planning on pulling in order to start building my game.  For one thing, the concept behind the tree people (who will definitely have to be renamed for the system) is perfect in that they are born of the wilds and are largely tied to to the (un)natural world around them.  Just as importantly, they contrast with the ents that I was considering originally in that they are much smaller, and therefore much more easily threatened.  Godbey also uses a few different models for the treefolk, which lends itself more to the Mouse Guard idea of The Territories.  The idea that these creatures can inhabit different parts of a forest and be born of different natural materials (trees, soil, rock, and what have you) gives a bit more customization in terms of player character options, and also allows for a territory system that's a bit closer to the standard game.

So now that I have some better idea of what the characters would be, now comes the tough part: what are they fighting for, and what would cause conflict?  I have some initial idea, in large part inspired by Princess Mononoke.  I'm a Studio Ghibli fanatic, and this is undoubtedly one of their best films.  For those who haven't seen the movie, a lot of it has to do with seeing to the well-being of the wilds, and the demonic corruption of the woodland beasts themselves.  Going off of this idea, the treefolk are the caretakers of the woods, similar to the role the ents play in LotR.  The difference here, though, is that rather than simply trying to grow the forest and make sure it's not destroyed by man or orc, there is a corrupting dark magic that the treefolk are battling against.  This allows for some opportunity for more unique NPCs, as in addition to simple beasts like wolves and bears, there can now be those that are corrupted by the darkness and provide a greater threat to the PCs.  Furthermore, and probably more important in a system sense, it gives a possible conflict for player beliefs.  Is there a way to cure the beasts, or is it wiser to destroy them?  Does the dark influence serve some kind of divisive good, similar to the way fungus helps decompose and renew a forest floor?

Circling back around to Luke's advice for hacking Mouse Guard, I've now largely answered two of the three primary focuses of the system: reasons for team-based adventuring, and something for the PCs to fight for that's maybe not as cut and dry as it would seem at first glance.  This only leaves the nature question to address.  While I'm toying with the idea of having different Nature descriptors depending on what type of treefolk a player chooses and where they come from, I think in general the nature of the PCs could come down to three descriptors: Hiding, Growing, and Renewing.  I may tweak these slightly before settling on the final descriptors, but I'd ideally like to shoot for this overall effect.  In Mouse Guard, if a mouse's nature rating gets too low, they lose what made them mice and can no longer live among mouse society; conversely, if it gets too high, they become too mouse-like and can no longer serve in the Guard.  I like the idea, given the creatures are born of seeds, that the nature descriptors could also somewhat apply to trees.  Perhaps if the nature rating gets to high, the treefolk just become trees instead, similar to the end of the old David the Gnome cartoon, where gnomes who are too old leave their friends and family and die, turning into trees.  Also, if you've never seen the series finale of David the Gnome, it was one of the most depressing episodes of a children's cartoon series ever.

So this is where I've landed, and as I tinker a bit more I'll try to share more of my process.  I'm hoping to have at least a draft for playtesting by the end of the year, but we'll see how ambitious I am.

As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.

 

NPC Rolodex - Urias the Bear King

The Bear King by Chris Tulloch McCabe

Born and raised in the village of Kingshearth, seated at the feet of the capital of King's Ferry, Urias began life as the only child to a poor farmhand.  Helping the family by working as a lowly woodcutter as a youth, Urias began showing a talent for hunting at a young age, and was already an accomplished woodsman and trapper by his mid teens.  Through his skill, he was able to secure additional land surrounding his family farm, and by the time he reached adulthood he had one of the largest homesteads in Kingshearth.

Unfortunately, such wealth eventually attracted the envy and scorn of a local noble, Cleofis Grandall, one of the king's closest friends.  Looking to seize the sizable plot that Urias had built and amass even more influence in Kingshearth, Grandall orchestrated a plot with a few of the local trappers and framed Urias for poaching.  The king seized Urias' homestead, which was turned over to Grandall in short order.  Urias was to be arrested, but some of the townsfolk that Urias had helped through the years created a diversion by setting a house ablaze, allowing Urias to escape in the confusion.  Now a fugitive, he retreated to the woods with little more than a rifle and the clothes on his back.

Living as an outlaw in the wilds, Urias survived on what the forest could provide him, living alongside all manner of beast while evading the hunters who had turned against him and the king's men still looking halfheartedly to find him.  He and the fabled bears of the king's wood grew to have a grudging respect for one another, and eventually (largely through Urias' skills in healing) began living side by side.  

Now years later, Urias has grown into a kind of folk hero, a boogeyman that the villagers of Kingshearth use to scare their children into behaving.  He is known throughout the surrounding countryside as The Bear King, the protector of the wilds, and he stalks the forests waiting for those hunters who turned against him to pass beyond the treeline so that he may have his revenge.

Urias, The Bear King, Man, 38 years old

Lifepaths: Born Peasant, Woodcutter, Hunter, Trapper, Poacher, Outlaw, Strider

Will B5, Perception B5, Power B4, Forte B5, Agility B5, Speed B4, Mortal Wound B10, Reflexes B4, Health B6, Steel B5, Hesitation 5, Stride 7, Circles 2, Resources 1

Traits: 

Foul Smelling (char), Outlaw (Dt), Loner (char), Low Speech - wild beasts (Dt), Salt of the Earth (char), Suspicious (char), Intense Hatred (char)

Beliefs:

The bears have been true allies; I will see that they are protected as they've protected me.

I will bring those to justice who betrayed me, starting with the poachers who framed me.

I have lived too long outside the lands of man; I will never be able to return to a life in the city.

Instincts:

Always make sure I have ammo.

Never take a nobleman at his word.

Always check for tracks before making camp.

Skills:

Firebuilding B4, Mending B5, Foraging B4, Orienteering B6, Great Bear Husbandry B3, Great Bear-wise B3, Hunting B5, Tracking B4, Stealthy B5, Cooking B4, Firearms B6, Trapper B5, Observation B3, Royal Parks-wise B3, Authority-wise B3, Inconspicuous B4, Conspicuous B4, Forest-wise B4, Riding B4

Gear:
Rifle, clothes, shoes, Leaky shack, personal effects

Relationships: 

Cleofis Grandall, Kingshearth noble (significant, hateful)

Affiliation: Thornfang Great Bears (local)

Reputation: The Bear King (1D infamous, local)

The Waiting Game

I think it's true of any roleplaying game enthusiast that at some point in your life, your collection outpaces your actual gaming.  Inevitably, you end up with more games than you have either time or players to get on the table.  Sometimes time is the enemy - you're involved in too many games concurrently to be able to devote prep or play time to another game, or simply real life doesn't allow for any more game nights on top of your other responsibilities.  Other times, it's that the game you really want to run doesn't appeal to your playgroup, and so the book sits on the shelf, waiting for either their minds to change or for you to find another playgroup interested in the game.

So for this post, I'll look at some games that, for one reason or another, are still sitting on my shelf awaiting their first go:

Dogs in the Vineyard

Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard starts off the list.  This one is an interesting one, as this is one of the few games that my wife is really on board with playing.  We went to PAX East a few years back and the Burning Wheel guys ran a panel on adjusting your GM style to suit the game system that you're playing, and Dogs was one of the games they mentioned.  When we left the panel, my wife mentioned that the game sounded interesting, at that we should look into getting it.  I grabbed it, but the problem at this point has been setting.  For those unfamiliar with the game, Dogs is based around the idea of an alternate-reality Old West that was originally settled by a people very similar to Mormons.  The players then take the role of God's Watchdogs - members of the faith that go from town to town settling disputes and rooting out demonic influence.

Given the religious-heavy setting, I haven't gotten any other players on board with this one as of yet, and given my wife's reticence to play solo (she's not really much of a gamer, despite her interest in this game in particular), this one hasn't seen play yet.  However, the system is one of the most innovative I've seen, so I may end up trying to hack this one a bit to get it to a more player-friendly setting that will appeal more to my friends.

Swords Without Master

Speaking of innovative systems, another game I've yet to play is Epidiah Ravachol's Swords Without Master.  This one is more or less on me for not playing, as this one comes down to two factors.  For one thing, there's a time issue, as the #SundayAMSwords online game that runs weekly (when there's enough players) tends to not be super convenient for me to be able to jump in schedule-wise.  But the other part of it comes down to me being a little bit shy when it comes to jumping into online games.  Google+ has been an incredible boon for me as far as gaming goes.  I've been very lucky to have had nothing but good experiences so far playing games over Hangouts and PbP games through Drive, but I still always hesitate taking people up on offers for new games, particularly when there's a webcam involved.  Chalk it up to just shyness I guess, but I'm hoping at some point I get past it enough to be able to play this gem of a game.

World Wide Wrestling RPG

Fun fact about me: I am a wrestling fanatic.  And so between my love of wrestling and my love of roleplaying, it's only logical that I would own Nathan D. Paoletta's wonderful World Wide Wrestling RPG.  It's admittedly kind of surprising that I haven't gotten a game of this one rolling yet, given that there's a considerable overlap in my friends of wrestling fans and roleplaying fans, but this one really just comes down to time.  I've got a regular Mouse Guard campaign running along with a Stars Without Number campaign, and so this one is really just waiting for one of those to wrap up so I can get it on the table.  It'll have it's time to shine soon enough.  Also, if you're not aware, Nathan D. Paoletta is both a genuinely wonderful human being and also a fantastic game designer, so if you're reading this you should head over to ndpdesign.com and check out his stuff.

The Burning Wheel

The last game I'll talk about in terms of those that I haven't played yet is also probably the most surprising.  Full disclosure: I am an enormous Burning Wheel fanboy.  Luke Crane's Mouse Guard was actually the game responsible for getting me back into roleplaying games.  I'm a huge fan of David Peterson's comic, and I actually found out about the game because of that.  When I picked it up, I was kind of dumbstruck by how much roleplaying games had changed since I was playing them regularly as an eleven- or twelve-year-old kid.  I immediately fell in love with the Mouse Guard system, and it was actually the first game I ever actually GMed.  Similarly, I grabbed Torchbearer as soon as it came out, and that game was the first and only game to this point that I've played over Hangouts, with an amazing group of gamers that I was fortunate enough to play with.

Here's the thing though: I have yet to actually play Burning Wheel proper.  To this point, all I've been able to play have been it's offshoots.  This one has largely come down to system.  Burning Wheel has one of, if not the most complex combat systems I've ever seen in a roleplaying game.  For a lot of my friends who are roleplayers, who generally were brought up on Dungeons & Dragons like most other hobbyists, the most important rules for a gaming system are how a game handles combat.  This presents a problem with Burning Wheel.  As I've always looked at the game and explained it people, Burning Wheel is more a game that has combat than a game about combat.  A fight really only takes place when it has to, when it's really important, and so the rules are set up to make those really important fights seem as epic and important as they should be.  Unfortunately for players who head straight for the Fight! chapter when they first crack open the book, this means that the rules for combat can be incredibly overwhelming, and that has turned off most of my friends from being willing to try out the system.  However, running my Mouse Guard campaign has gotten a group of my friends much more comfortable in the Burning Wheel system, and we've talked about finally getting this one going after our current game ends.  I really cannot wait.

Feel free to comment below and let me know what games you've been dying to play but haven't been able to as of yet.