Age of Animus Roleplaying

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Feb 252013
 

As promised, this week I’m gonna discuss my Age of Animus roleplaying game project.

Some time ago, I decided to try to run an adventure scenario set in Pelaria for my friends. Writing the scenario is one thing (not finished yet), deciding how to run it was another. I have fond memories of West End Games’ D6 system, in part because of its simplicity. I could whip up an Non-Playing Character (NPC) in that system in seconds, compared to the half hour (or more) it would take to create an NPC for use in a D20 game. Less time working on stats means more time that can be spent on writing the scenario.

So for this “one-time” session, I decided that I would use D6 and maybe come up with my own system later. I did some searching on the D6 system online and found out that the owner, Eric Gibson has made the D6 system an open license system. That is, people can use it for their own games (so long as the license is respected and the proper credit was given). I could work with that. So now, barring any mishaps or changes of heart, Age of Animus Roleplaying (when I’m finished adapting the text and rules) will be a D6 game.

I’m less than a week away from the date I set to play and I feel there’s still a lot of work to be done. Fortunately, D6 is a forgiving system. If something comes up during the session that I haven’t planned for, I can come up with something on the spot and if it’s a good fix, I can add it to the rules. Otherwise, I can just come up with something better for the official release.

Most of the work so far, has been to develop the character creation process. The Mouse Guard Role Playing Game advanced an instinct system that permitted a mouse to get a bonus when performing actions that are instinctive to a mouse, but required the mouse to maintain balance between their natural instincts and their more man-like behaviours. Straying too far towards either extreme was bad and would result in having to stop playing the character. As the Age of Animus concept deals with animals who have “awakened” versus those who remain wild, I thought a similar system would be good.

I like the idea of being able to depend on luck. You could argue that the very nature of rolling dice for success takes luck into account, but I want to push the idea further. The base D6 system uses a fortune system, which I’m using as a base, rebranding it as Luck rather than Fortune.

Okay, enough talk. I’ve got work to do before Saturday’s game! Take care folks!

Creating a Roleplaying Game

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Feb 182013
 

Last week I talked about playing roleplaying games. This week, I’m going to talk about my past and present efforts to create roleplaying games.

There are two ways of going about creating a roleplaying game. You could start from scratch or adapt an existing rules system to your needs.

One of the biggest advantages to adapting an existing rules system to your needs is that you can focus more attention on creating the setting. Why reinvent the wheel right? The only rules you need to worry about are the ones that are particular for your game.The disadvantage is that it might be difficult to market your game. In fact, unless you’re using a system with an open game license (like the d20 system), you’re likely plum out of luck.

Creating a system from scratch is understandably a lot more work, but also potentially more satisfying when you really nail the product. Even if you’re starting from scratch, you’re probably going to look at other game systems to at least figure out everything you need to cover. You can make the game as easy or as complicated as you like.

Last week, I talked about my first attempt at creating a roleplaying game using the Starfleet Battles rulebookless box set I had. That set had the grid map and counters I needed and ship layouts. The system was super simple. Even you succeed, odd you fail. The space battles were a little more elaborate. You rolled a die to see what direction you had to move your ship and another die to see how far. You fired your weapons (again using the even-odd method of determining success) and then rolled dice to determine where you hit your opponent’s ship. The ship layouts used a lot of little squares so you could check off. If you hit a certain section enough to fill in all the squares, the section was destroyed…at least that’s how I remember it worked. That was a while ago. I no longer have the box set to be able to check it out. Having to roll for direction made little sense, but it added a little bit of challenge which the game was lacking. It also led to a hilarious situation where Fab was controlling my friend Richard’s ship while he stepped out for a half hour. When Fab rolled to see where the ship flew, the results made it fly right into the sun. Okay, so Richard didn’t find it so hilarious when he found out his ship was destroyed (his character made it out in an escape pod) but it sure was funny to the rest of us. “What did you guys do while I was gone?” “Oh nothing much…destroyed a few Romulan ships, did some repairs. flew your ship into the sun…” “WHAT?!!!”

My next attempt was making a Peanuts roleplaying game. I created a system from scratch that was eerily reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons only I used a d12 instead of a d20. We only played it once or twice. To be honest, as much as I love Peanuts, the setting is rather limited in what you could have the characters do that would be interesting to play out. The adventures I created featured things that you’d never see in the comic strip, so really it was only Peanuts in that I had created stats for the Peanuts characters and if you played Linus you could find creative uses for his blanket.

I was going to talk about the work I’m doing on the Age of Animus roleplaying game, but I finished work late today and it’s getting late, so I’ll keep that topic for next time.

Have a good week folks!

Lllllllllllllllet’s Get Ready to Role Plaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Feb 112013
 

One of the first gags I wrote for Fun ‘n’ Fantasy way back when was a riff on ring announcer Michael Buffer’s trademark intro, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” I liked saying it out loud so much that I use it for real when my friends and I get together to role play. Anyway, that’s where this week’s blog title comes from.

I’ve been playing role-playing games since I was…13? Wait let me do the math. Secondary II (Grade 8) was in 1987 (feeling older)…yeah 13. My friend John had received the Dungeons and Dragons starter box for his birthday and lent it to me. Shortly thereafter we played our first game with Fab as our Dungeon Master (DM) (Fab started even younger than we did). Just about every Friday night (as well as Saturdays and sometimes even Sundays) were dedicated to role-playing.

Fab went on to introduce us to Marvel Superheroes (we killed Captain America) and Call of Cthulhu (we went insane during the first encounter), but we would always fall back to D&D.

Fab left a game master void when he graduated that just about everybody in our group tried filling.

The first game I ran used a Starfleet Battles box set my friend Martin gave me. The rulebook had been lost some time earlier so I devised my own simple system. You rolled a die. Even, you succeeded, Odd you failed. Rather than running straight Star Trek, it was a parody where no idea was too crazy. Magical Raisin Bran cereal that would transform you into a California Raisin if you ate it, a hand weapon that killed a person by sucking out all the mucus out of a person’s body, a starship weapon that bombarded enemy spacecraft with chickens…those are just some of the ideas I came up with. A lot of them were crass and juvenile (I was only 14). Surprisingly, we played that one for several months. It lasted until my players got tired of the increasingly mean things I kept doing to their characters. I was petty that way.

And yet they let me GM again! This time, it was West End Games’ Star Wars system. I bought into the game in January 1989 and we played well into 1995 when we all started going our separate ways after University. If you’d asked me a year ago about the adventures I ran, I’d have told you they were that special kind of lame that only a teenager can find cool. But then I saw some very similar ideas show up in Bioware’s The Old Republic MMO. Maybe they weren’t that so special a kind of lame.

Star Wars has been the setting I’m most accustomed to running. I skipped Wizards of the Coast’s first Star Wars rulebook, but got the next two. We played those sporadically throughout the naughts. I’m pretty much Star Warsed out now. I’ve told most of the stories I wanted to tell. I want to try my hand at other settings.

Next week I’ll talk about my attempts at creating my own role-playing game systems.

What role-playing games have YOU played? I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, but here are some of the games I’ve played/owned/read:

(Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons (almost every edition)
– Spelljammer
– Dark Sun
Call of Cthulhu
Marvel Superheroes
James Bond
Star Wars (d6 and d20)
Star Trek
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (Tri-stat and d20)
Paranoia
Shadowrun
Werewolf
Changeling
Pathfinder
Legend of the Five Rings
Sailor Moon
Hollow Earth Expedition
The Slayers
Munchkin d20
Mutants and Masterminds
Serenity (Firefly)
Mouse Guard
Robin Hood Rolemaster
Battletech
Heavy Gear
Space Toaster (I can’t remember the real name, just that I bought it because it had a space toaster on the cover and it was only $10)
Starfleet Battles (home brew system)
Spaceballs (friend’s home brew system)
Duck Tales (different friend’s home brew system)
James’ Gang (from the creator of the Duck Tales home brew system)
Peanuts (home brew system)

 

An Above Average Sunday

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Feb 042013
 

If you live in North America, chances are you’re aware that yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday (also referred to as Super Sunday). Heck, even if you DON’T live in North America, you might have heard about it. Well, I’m not sure about how SUPER it was, but I’ll concede that it was a better than usual Sunday.

It’s become a tradition for me and my friends Fab and Frank to get together to watch the Super Bowl. None of us are real football fans. Oddly enough, I’m the one who actually follows the sport throughout the season. I even check in on games from time to time. I do so because I have a friend at work who IS a football fan and it gives us something to talk about on our breaks on Monday.

But the Super Bowl is more than just watching football. It’s an excuse to get together with friends, eat junk food and just have a good time. This was accomplished last night.

For the first time, we had NEW people join us. People who knew next to nothing about football. I don’t think we converted them to football fan status, but they left knowing more about football than they did going in.

I didn’t have a horse in the race. My team (the Minnesota Vikings) were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. I nominally like the Baltimore Ravens (I like the name) but I also like the 49ers quarterback. I outwardly took for the 49ers, although inside I just felt like it was going to go to the Ravens (easy to say that in hindsight I know). Everybody else I was with seemed to get behind the 49ers and that only made me want to see the Ravens win, because sometimes it’s fun to go against the crowd (even if just inwardly).

I didn’t care for the Halftime Show. Beyoncé does nothing for me. To me, she has no synergy with the product of football and therefore has no business being there in the first place, but that’s MY opinion. I read an article on CBC News which stated the Halftime Show was one of the better ones in recent years, so what do I know?

The saddest part about watching the Super Bowl in Canada is that we don’t get to see all the nifty commercials. CRTC regulations make it so that an American signal must be pre-empted by the Canadian signal airing the same program at the same time. So even though we were tuned into CBS, we got CTV’s signal and it appears that Canadian advertisers don’t want to try to do anything special. So unless a company that was advertising on CBS also happened to pay for air time on CTV (a few did), we didn’t get to see the good stuff. At least we can look the best ones up on the internet.

Earlier in the day, I drew a Funnies strip and finished the last of my Final Fantasy IX mash-ups, so my day was productive. I also played the new PS3 game I bought, Ni No Kuni, which I’m enjoying (more on that another time perhaps). All this together is what leads me to reiterate that it was An Above Average Sunday.

Have a good week y’all!

Oh yeah! Before I forget, I’ve expanded my release schedule for the site to add content on weekends as well as weekdays. On Saturday you can expect SOMETHING I’ve written, either a new story or (more likely) a new entry from Ardebast’s journal. On Sunday, it’s Mash-ups Revisited, uncoloured mash-ups that you can print out for the kids (or you) to colour (yesterday it was the Ani-vengers).

Anything But Final

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Jan 282013
 

For the last week and some, I’ve been working on Final Fantasy IX mash-ups. This led to a discussion with the girl who sits next to me at work who’s also played various Final Fantasy games. Well wouldn’t you know it, we both got the urge to play again. She went back to versions she bought for the PSP and I bought Final Fantasy Dimensions on Google Play.

I’ve only played FF VI through X. I came late to the party so I didn’t play the first five. XI was an MMO which didn’t interest me at the time and I never did go and buy XII. When I read up on XIII I decided that the franchise had deviated too much from the formula I enjoyed to even try it.

Final Fantasy Dimensions is a throwback to yesteryear’s Final Fantasy on the SNES. You start the game and the familiar refrain carries you back. The plot seems almost directly lifted from the plot of previous installments, but that’s okay. You come to expect and even like that from the series.

I haven’t advanced very far in the game. I play the game in short bursts and then move on to something else for a spell. I want to make it last.

The first of the FFIX mash-ups go up on Wednesday. I’m really happy with how they turned out. I still have two more to go in the next two weeks. Maybe they’ll make you want to pick up the game too.

Have a good week yall. Talkatcha again soon!

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