OGRE DUST: Violence

I've got a calender over my computer desk, and every day, I mark it off with a slash. It's never a set time, it's always when I think about it. Since I like being on my computer when I'm home, it's usually about an hour into my free time that I mark it off.

I haven't marked off a single day in two weeks. That's how it's been around here.

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Anyways, I wrote a sort of skirmish minigame that functions as the core of a bigger roleplaying system I'm working out in my very limited free time. (1)

It's pretty simple. Each player has a single character they've made beforehand. Player and GM roles are basically standard D&D stuff. Your characters have four attributes- Meat, Bone, Spirit, and Resolve. Meat plays the role of hit points- you lose them in fairly standard D&D ways, and gain them back after a night's rest. Bone points are long-term health- you only take bone damage when you're out of meat points (usually) and they recover at a rate of one/week. When you're out of Meat points you're on your last legs, and when you're out of Bone points, you're dead.

Spirit and Resolve function similarly, except they're for mental health. You lose Spirit by taking physical damage, plus by some special spirit-only attacks. Fear is modeled with Spirit, and so is exhaustion. When you're out of Spirit, you can start to lose Resolve. When you're out of Resolve, you can die very easily. You can skirt along on low (or negative) Resolve for as long as you want, but you're very vulnerable.

Mobile Games

Ever since I got a smartphone that's actually smart I've been poking around the Google Play store looking for games that aren't completely awful.

It will come as a surprise to literally nobody reading this that a good 75% of the "free" games are money-grabbing, gameplay-free varieties of games that the rest of the world has been playing online for for free for the last decade now.

For example: Clash of Clans. It's literally the same timer-based city builder that people have been playing on and off in their lunch break since at least 2000. Except this one's on your smartphone, see, so even people who don't really "play games" are able to putz with it while they're on the john.

 

 

 

Just the first image I googled, but I assume that this is it

It's not like I hate Clash of Clans or non-gamers playing games or anything, it just makes poking through the G Play store a huge pain in the ass. The top games are universally shallower versions of games that were never that good to begin with.

But that doesn't mean there aren't some gems.

I'm thinking about doing a first-impressions styled review of some mobile games that initially don't seem terrible, like a Rock-Paper-Shotgun style "Wot I Think" except it'll just be free games that I downloaded on a whim because I'm in the mood for a card game. Or whatever.

Yeah, that could be fun.

Yer Lordship

I don't really feel like writing today, and I haven't for a minute, so I'll just say what's up and then go: I've been writing a game about being Lord of All You Survey based on the very vague idea that you're "supposed to" start building castles and raise armies when you get high enough level.

That and the fact that there have never been very good guidelines for doing so. The vast majority of information concerns what monsters to bonk and what kind of neato powers you've got that enable you to steal ever increasing amounts of loot that you can't spend on anything reasonable because magic item shops are stupid, or on books detailing somebody's generic homebrew world that's a pale imitation of Eberron, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, or whatever 4th edition's world is called.

Whee.

I've been doing a lot of research on farms and milling and bakeries and ancient logging techniques, and it's honestly extremely interesting and I hope that the information that I glean will make for a decently granular simulation. Time will tell!

Redesign And: Tweaking Dead Meaty Guys

I redesigned my blog today, which is something you certainly do not care about, but it is a thing that I care deeply about. The header had been bugging me for a long time, but today's the day I did something about it. Now the blog's sporting a regal dark purple and yellow look. It's like the blog of kings. Except better. You dig?

Anyways. I've been peeking around the corners of my blog (nearly spring cleaning, you know) and I've spotted some old, dusty games that don't seem to have gotten much attention. One of those things, as you know, is AIM FOR THE HEAD.

Now, I believe that AFTH is a decent game. Oh no, not perfect by a long shot, but it reminds me of Dead Meat, which is probably the only zombie game that you can read through in one sitting without your eyes glazing with the remnants of some awful d20 hack that's never been playtested and contains almost no interesting rules. Sorry, let me reel myself in. I like AFTH- it's fresh and easy to play. But it needs some love.

The way zombie infection is handled is great- when you're infected but not killed, you halve your attributes and you're pretty much doomed. And the three stat system (Fight, Flight, and Toughness) means that characters get created in the blink of an eye and when they die, that's ok, because here comes another one. Besides, because in the apocalypse, those three things are pretty much what matters. The pseudo-FUDGE task resolution system set in place is good (but for the next edition, I'm turning it into 1-3 is bad and 4-6 is good, to make it more equivalent to FUDGE and leave out the "on a 2-5, nothing important happens" thing that I forget to deal with), but ultimately flawed. I'll probably replace it with a One-Roll Engine inspired idea if I don't go with pseudo-FUDGE.

The way that Stuff is as abstracted as it is doesn't work for me; I believe the game would be better served by more concrete examples for each category of things that are useful. The fact that I neglected things that help you Flee (bikes, cars, helicopters) is nearly criminal. The fact that there aren't any good rules for "don't make noise or you're boned" is bad. The non-existence of rules for battling hordes is nearly as bad. Something as easy as "when there are multiple zombies, add together their Fight and Toughness and roll it as one enormous organism," and bam, you have zombies that are pathetic one on one and nigh-lethal as a horde.

What few bits of setting information are there would have been better left out, so as to give more of a framework for the game, and I think that the PDF deserves to be expanded to five or six pages. What the game really needs is a section on stuff the GM can do to ramp up tension, because that's completely missing anywhere. The bit about not trusting other survivors? There's absolutely no in-game reason to betray anybody else, and there's no hint of even being able to fuck with the other players. There has to be a bit of tension, and I think a better design than the blank floorplan I came up with would highlight that. Things like in The Walking Dead video game- you have six pieces of food, so who do you give them to? Or even something as simple as: one of the people in your party's been grabbed through the window and is going to be bitten. Do you save them and possibly die yourself, or do you leave them?

That's what's important about a zombie game, not some half-assed hints about Other Survivors or A Cure or Destroying Zombies. The game needs a section about Death, Difficult Choices, and Inevitable Death. The tone should be grim, because there's nothing shittier than being in a world where everybody you know is probably dead.

Still, it's good that it was released even in a half-playable state; even in the resounding silence that followed, it's been just long enough that the faults are clear. It's not what I'd want to play, so why should anybody else want to play it?

Hopefully the next revision is better.

ONI PUNCHER Adventure!

One of the first things I want to do for ONI PUNCHER is similar to what I did for Aim For The Head; namely, an introductory adventure to show people what I was thinking about when I made the rules.

One of the reasons, I think, that oD&D took off so strongly was that it was possible, through the adventures and modules and ramblings of the creators, to see exactly what the first DMs were getting at. You get a very good sense of what Gygax was like when you read what he produced. You get a very good sense of what Arneson was like when you read through his material, as well. It's not quite as good as having them sit down and play a game for you, but it's pretty close.

And so that's something that I plan on doing. I have a lot of ideas for a one-page module for Oni Puncher, as well as some nifty extra rules for it. I think you'll like it. It features a very dangerous Oni named Hideaki, a luminescent demon that's causing some serious problems among the westland farmers. Will you be able to defeat him, or will you yourself be defeated?

(That reminds me, I never included rules on how to lose in Oni Puncher, or how your Punchers might be defeated. I might have to add something in!)

Mall of the Dead

Honestly, I'm tired of having this in the back of my head, bothering me- so I'm putting it out for everybody to see.

It's a system built around AIM FOR THE HEAD, but I'm not picky and it's pretty system neutral. Since it's one page, you're treated to, basically, a couple of set pieces with a lot of room for improvisation. If you haven't figured it out by now, that's pretty much all I need to get a game going, and that should be enough for you.

The basic flow goes like this (and this is going to end up being longer than the pdf itself, if I'm not careful):
1) The players' survivors are in a department store where they've been hiding out- the zombie apocalypse happened while they were shopping, and naturally nobody bothers to tell the people at the mall, so they're stuck. The players can hear a helicopter going overhead at roughly the same time each day. Might as well try that, there's shit else to do.
2)The players emerge and the mall's nearest entrance has been smashed to shit by somebody driving a truck through the mall. Near the smashed wall is a horde of zombies, who are prevented from rushing in by the wreckage. Bad idea to try and go through, but if the players can swing it somehow, their car could be out there.
3) The only safe option is through the mall. There are lots of little stores which could have something, but they could also be time-wasters with nothing but zombies and gore. Its up to the players.
4) The players get to the food court, where it's open enough that there are way too many zombies. Zombies eventually fall from the enormous skylight, raising one hell of a racket. That's bad.
5) The players are left with a choice- try and go out to the other parking lot and escape via car, or try and hail the helicopter. Up to them, really.
6a) If they try the helicopter, there are still more zombies up here, as well as a firearm. If the players brought something to get the helicopter's attention, the chopper can rescue them if they're not being eaten alive. The pilots aren't going to fire their weapons, in case they crash somewhere horrible, they're going to need the ammo. The players might escape at this point.
6b) The players go to the parking lot. There are a whole lot of zombies out here, as well as zombies in cars and a pileup. The players' cars might be wrecked up, but if they aren't, they can escape- provided the roads are clear.

And that's the Mall of the Dead. It feels like it's missing something, but honestly, I could care less because I think that's all you need to get your creative juices flowing at the table. I'll probably go back and add more later, but don't count on it ;)

Here's the link, my friends.

Black Shield, the HeroQuest pseudo-clone

Welp, I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?

Who am I even talking to?

As it turns out, porting the HeroQuest rules took me a little under one page, as long as we're talking about the stuff that you just need to play: how to move this guy, how to move that guy, what spells do, you know, the basics. The sort of thing that's covered in the "basic rules" section of the thing. It was easy. The spells are on self-explaining cards and so are the weapons and armor and potions and stuff, so that's even less to go on the actual "rules" page. I'll probably make this into a multiple-page PDF instead of a strictly one-page project (because I'm having so much fun, this is a trip down memory lane), which includes the need to find a great, iconic image or some sort of graphics wizard to whip one up for me. It's almost done. It's so close, you could run something right now (like, right now right now), but I'm going to wait to do the items and the magic for a little later. Because that's how I roll.

That was supposed to be the good news, but it ended up also being the bad news. In case that wasn't enough bad news for you, here's some more: It's gonna take longer than a day. But that's good news if you didn't know that I was on such a tight self-imposed schedule.

The more you know!

If you've got any suggestions to HeroQuest, let me know here. I'll also be scouring some of the HeroQuest messageboards and seeing what people come up with. I'm probably going to avoid most of it, embrace some of it, and marvel at the insanity of some people for a very tiny amount of the cases.

Anyways, I've been up for almost 18 hours now and it's probably getting close to nappy time. I'll probably see how much work I can continue dredging out of this brain of mine before I call it a night. Probably, I can at least write the cards into a text form, or find a copy of Zargon's screen and transform it into text-only before the night is up.

EXCELSIOR!

Mall of the Living Dead

Continuing my enjoyment of not only zombie games but of writing things for them, I'm writing up a one-page "module" for AIM FOR THE HEAD, my zombie roleplaying game, wherein I intend to subject my players to the delights of a mall full of zombies.

I know, right? It's a cliche for a reason. In a world where you're one of a handful of survivors in a sea of grey shambling flesh (talk about special snowflakes!), there's a certain appeal to mowing down the inane, mindless hordes of consumers like you always fantasize doing on the rare occasions you're forced to go inside of a mall. It's a beautiful thing, and it even does a couple of things for a module design that I think are really nifty.

1) It lets you confine the area very naturally. Malls are built like ye olde castle, in that you're designed to stay in. It's absolutely intentional- they're supposed to be nearly self sufficient, easy to get in, and difficult to get out. For all of the spacious courtyards and high ceilings, there are naturally a tiny number of semi-hidden, chokepoint-styled exits. When the living dead are all around you, chokepoints are a horrible thing, meaning that once you get in a mall, you're going to need another way out. This very naturally creates drama, because
2) For all of the junk inside of a mall, very little of it is useful in guaranteeing your survival. This means that your players aren't finding rocket launchers or chainsaws (well, maybe chainsaws, but there's not really any gas to power them), which would ruin the feeling of "holy shit, zombie apocalypse." More pertinently, the players aren't going to find much in the way of food or water, except in the Food Court, and the great majority of that is going to spoil very, very quickly and probably be entirely uncooked. Mall food is pretty unpalatable even when cooked fresh, and a couple of days with no power and no new shipments of food is going to leave a horrible place.
3) A mall is a place you visit, not a place you stay. This ties into 2, but in a totally different way. In daily life, you don't stay because you have a home to go to, the crowds are tiring, and the security guards will yell at you when you try to sleep there anyways. In a zombie apocalypse, you can't stay because there's nothing to eat, there's almost no real defense, and there are a hell of a lot of zombies around already, between the people that died there, the other people that thought it'd be a good idea to hide there, and the zombies that wander inside periodically and can't get out again.
4) It ties into the Dawn of the Dead-styled "zombies as consumerist allegory." The less said about that, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a philosophy blog and I'm certain you expect only those philosophies here which pertain to gaming.
5) It makes sense to get caught there. It almost feels like you're stuck there on a normal day, so getting caught there when everything is zombies? Totally plausible. Furthermore, it's very diverse. Pretty much anybody can be at a mall, meaning that characters can be literally anybody- a vacationing family man, a down on his luck homeless man, a security guard, a trucker just there on a pickup, a UPS guy, anybody.

All of these things are pretty easy to get across, I think, although in a one-page design I'm a bit more brief.

Watch this space- it's on its way soon.

AIM FOR THE HEAD

I'm releasing it here first for feedback from the five or so people who read and comment here.

It's a one-page zombie RPG. I actually had space to devote to setting, because the core mechanic is so damn simple and after that, it's all about setting anyways.

Zombie games are the ideal in designing a short roleplaying game, because so little can (and should) be expressed via rules. There shouldn't be hard and fast rules for what you find, what survivors are like, or what zombies can do. It's not important, and it shifts the game from "oh shit, what'll happen next" to "oh, whatever, that zombie has six movement and does 1d6 damage, that's not even a threat."

It's why fighting a zombie in D&D isn't scary, but it can be in Aim For The Head. One zombie can kill you if you get a bad roll in AFTH. Trying to run away can kill you. The only way to be safe is to not roll, which means playing carefully, keeping quiet, and avoiding attracting attention. In other words, the only time you're rolling in AFTH is when you're potentially screwed, and that's exactly the kind of on-edge feeling that a game should provide. I haven't playtested it yet, unfortunately, so there are likely some rough patches out of the bat.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that I'll likely change is that the Fight roll doesn't explicitly limit how many zombies you take down (I was thinking one zombie per 6), but intentionally left it blank for the moment.

Let me know if Aim For The Head provides that. I'll be taking all criticism into account, and changing the document to suit it.



Here's the rapidshare link, and here's the mediafire one.

Dungeonslayers! A Review

Last night I ran (and tonight I will run again) a rip-roaring session of Dungeonslayers. It's a great game, and I highly recommend it for your rules-light fantasy roleplaying needs. It's about 10 pages long, with a handful of 2-4 page supplements that flesh out the game rules in beautifully worded and laid-out text that is both concise and interesting. It's available for free from http://www.dungeonslayers.com/, as a pdf download.

When you cut out the portions of the rules that deal with Equipment and Spells (a single page each), or the introductory adventure in the back, you have a game that clocks in at perhaps five pages. I printed it out, read it over, and we started making characters.

The character creation is both differentiated and meaningful, with players choosing one of three races and of three classes, both of which are easily modifiable. The races have a tiny handful of advantages and a +1 to one of maybe three abilities each, so the difference in play is miniscule. It doesn't seem like Dwarves get enough of a benefit in my opinion, but nobody's really power-gaming a system like this to get the Elven +1 to nimble things racial trait, whatever it's called. If you want to be a Dwarf, then be a Dwarf. Furthermore, Dwarves can't use two-handed weapons or longbows which upset one of my players, who chose to be a Dwarf Spellcaster. No quarterstaffs? What, they only come in one size? We decided that he had a Dwarven Quarterstaff, kept exactly the same stats, and went on our ways.

Classes are similarly easy to understand. You're a Fighter, Scout, or Spellcaster, and you get another +1 in a related ability. Your class affects what talents you have access to and when, and what abilities are easiest for you to level up. Your Talents are little perks that you gain access to as you level, like having a Familiar or getting a bonus to damage. All the Talents are flavorful and interesting, with only a couple of relatively lame ones that could be easily modified (What do you mean Familiars can't be scouts?) to suit your own personal preferences and desires. That's the point of the game, right?

Characer abilities are seperated into Attributes (which are Body, Mind, and Agility), and Abilities (which fall under the headings of one of the attributes, two each.) Your scores for things like Hit Points are Body + Toughness + 10. It's quick and easy to set up your character's abilities. The system is roll-under 1d20, say, Body + Strength to succeed at knocking down a door. A single die roll does just about everything.

Picture not related.

Combat is quick and painless, with a lot of missing on either side, at least for starter-level characters. I ran a combat last night where the goblins all missed, every time they attacked but it didn't really matter. Each goblin got a single roll, each player got a single roll, and that was that. Goblins aren't exactly known for their toughness or durability and, truly enough, they were all dispatched with a single successful attack. The really interesting thing is the way damage and attack are rolled on the same die- you want to get as high a roll as possible, but still under your ability so there's always a feeling of "Oh, I just missed em!" which is exactly like real fighting. When you go for the haymaker, you'll either knock 'em flat or whiff hard, and that's what it feels like. It's breezy, exciting, and visceral.

And I think that's Dungeonslayers' greatest strength: Things move extremely quickly, but satisfyingly. Everything is one die, rolled underneath your Attribute + Ability, with all the trappings of D&D but with the complexity of every edition filed off. This game moves extra, extra quickly, and that's great if you're the kind of spontaneous, seat-of-your-pants kind of guy that likes a light system that breezes through everything. It's all just one roll, the same roll, all the time. By the end of the night, my players were guessing what rolls they had to make to do things, and then making them before I even said anything, and that's yet another strong suit.

The other thing I really like is how much easy to digest crunch is in the game. Some rules-light systems feel to generic, like there's nothing weighing it down- the stats aren't interesting, or the rules don't click together in that nice way. Dungeonslayers knows who it's targeted at, and it shows. Spells feel Vancian without being Vancian, fighting is quick and dirty with lots of room to improvise (want to make a flying jump off that bandolier? Sure, roll your Body + Reflexes + Attack Value instead of a regular attack and we'll see what happens). In short, it's a truly excellent game that I wish there was more of. The expansions, also free, add a couple of interesting wrinkles, and the only bad thing I can say is that there really isn't enough of this tightly-designed, truly exceptional game. And did I mention it's free? Download it today. You won't regret it.