When looking at RPG Attributes, one fact returns to me constantly: Olympic Athletes cannot compete in every sport.
Top wrestlers are stocky, and cannot compete in basketball.
Top basketball players move quickly, and cannot compete in weightlifting.
Weight lifters cannot compete in climbing events.
A certain amount of focus in one thing seems to preclude master of another.
This suggests an RPG system where people have some general score (e.g. ‘fitness’), and another on a sliding scale.
Perhaps something like the WoD system, but the initial Attribute receives only up to +3, while the others can add up to +2 further.
When making things, once in a while you spot a pit-trap laden with spikes, and screech to a halt to think about the route ahead carefully.
When making chairs, I guess people test by sitting in the chair.
Writers and RPG designers can’t get this kind of snappy feedback, so I guess we’re all a bit fumbly when testing solutions.
I certainly am.
The Goddess of Abortion
The most recent trap came in the form of old women - ‘doulas’.
I like the word ‘witchcraft’, and want to see more ‘witchery’ in the fantasy space.
It all seems a little unexplored.
My partner suggested leaning into the notion of people who make medicine, assist births, and weave things, and then suggested the word ‘doula’.
New RPG creators and tech-startups both enjoy giving themselves the badge of ‘open source’ without having to open up a single source file.
In the tech world, they call the company ‘Open AI’, and in the RPG space, they call their licence the ‘open gaming licence’, or simply declare they have an ‘open RPG’, then let people infer their good intentions from the name alone.
This shallow illusion has bamboozled just as many RPG enthusiasts as tech optimists.
My favourite image from A,D&D’s monstrous manual is the nymph.
The write-up leaves no surprises to anyone who knows A,D&D.
Gygax et alia created a genre, which entails a lot of making-shit-up-on-the-fly, which tracks well for a DM.
He took a standard mythology creature, and introduced it to a Lord of the Rings world.
The legends stated that nymphs’ amazing beauty could blind a man, which apparently entails a save vs spell (the standard saving throw for anything not covered by dragon’s-breath, death-rays, or poison).
RPGs with a shared narrative mechanic - where players and the GM both come up with interesting people, results, and situations - come with a cost.
They pull focus away from the puzzle elements of the RPG, and that’s my favourite element, so I can’t see myself enjoying shared narration mechanics.
Let’s start with an example:
A quiet shuffling sound echoes around the massive cavern. Your stomach groans from hunger. What do you do?
I wrote this piece about Machine-Learning art a year ago, and set it to self-publish.
Let’s see how much of an idiot I look like!
First off, ‘AI’ doesn’t exist.
Some marketing team took a load of coke, then called their vision ‘Open AI’, because being ‘Open’ is good and being ‘AI’ is impressive.
The reality is neither, and the technical meaning of this technical term remains unchanged, no matter what us unqualified plebs on the side-lines of the real research might tweet, toot, or post.
I’ve decided against having online printing available for BIND.
This may change, but here’s the thinking so far:
Printing means I need to have the book mailed to me, but posting to Serbia means a whole bunch of faff.
Of course, a voice in my head reminds me I could always find a way.
Send the book to a friend, and have them check it.
But setting up a book for printing means an outdated book.
I’m always tinkering with BIND.
I’ve enjoyed Ravenloft more than any other A,D&D setting, and the 3rd Edition expansion gave it a lot more life.
Despite that, a lot of the best themes seem under-used.
Beginnings
Ravenloft began when A,D&D was busy asking ‘what else can we do as an RPG?’, and someone said ‘horror’.
Specifically, ‘Hammer Horror’.
The monsters were 1D4 bats, the plots assumed foetid stupidity from the players (or at least PCs), and the big-bad-enemies all aped classic horror monsters.
Using real-world time in RPGs has worked out great in my last fantasy campaign, so I’m thinking of using it for a Dark Ages: Vampire Campaign.
I want to create a game where every single neonate in the city has a player.
I want to see a dozen players, all with a chatroom online, called ‘Elysium’, shooting the shit, making plans, and ‘DMing’ each other with skulduggery.
The campaign would be set in Belgrade, Hungary, in the year of our Lord 1130.
Belgrade would have a limited number of feeding grounds, prized according to some difficulty number to hunt.
In Vampire: the Masquerade, the first level of the Dominate ability lets the vampire issue a one-word command, which the target instantly obeys.
It might be ‘sit’, ‘stay’, ‘fight’, ‘run’, or any other one-word command.
It’s flexible genius, because it clearly defines what the ability does, but can still allow players to invent all manner of clever things outside of what the spell states.
GMs (or ’the storyteller’ in this case) also have leeway to mess with the vampire.