Last week saw a test, as part of the confluence of two neat things: a game of the RPG Warrior, Rogue & Mage, and an RPG setting that we’ve been building here at the Gamer Assembly. This was the first public test of the setting, though it was mostly a backdrop.

I described the overall history of the world at an extremely high level in a few sentences, explaining how that history has shaped modern society. I then described the empire in which the game would be played, and we launched the adventure.

I asked for no feedback; I just wanted to see how the players would react. I got nods and a “Cool.”

That was all I needed. For a setting that still being built, I mainly want to know one thing: can it be quickly and easily explained? So far, so good.

Here’s a cleaned-up version of the introduction. Does this make sense to you?

Far back in history, in the beginning, there were the Old Ones. They ruled over the world, creating all the humanoid races.

After many years of toil, the humanoids allied with the dragons and killed the Old Ones. The dragons taught the humanoids magic, and all went well until two crises appeared.

The first was the Dragon Plague. Many humanoids and dragons died before a multi-racial party of adventurers found a cure. Meanwhile, many dragons left this plane of existence, some returning much later. Those who remained sequestered themselves into their own burrows and caves, and they were somehow changed. The dragons of old were brilliant thinkers and social; today’s dragons are barely more than beasts.

The second crisis began with the Ascendancy of Ana-Lesh, an elven mage who learned the secret of godhood and became a god herself. Soon, others followed, until the paths to godhood were closed.

Today, this history has created an intensely multi-cultural world. There are no racial empires; instead, three empires now rule the land.

This game is set in the Empire of Illusion, a magical oligarchy ruled by a cabal of extremely powerful wizards. They maintain a secret police, the Wolves of Shadow, who deal with any large-scale problems. Otherwise, the populace is left on its own, so petty crime is rampant.

However, there’s a large middle ground of dangers that may one day threaten the empire, but are too small for the Wolves to bother themselves with. For these, the Wolves have built a network of adventurers. Individuals will be summoned into teams, who are sent out on missions for the Wolves, who at least pay handsomely.

© Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghibli and its most famous director, Hayao Miyazaki, are known for their remarkable animated films. Their stories emphasize pacifism, intelligence, kindness, and respect for the natural world. While several of their movies could be labeled “action movies,” their protagonists (mostly girls) are usually not warriors, and they wrestle with complicated, multi-faceted problems rather than simple good vs. evil fights. There is rarely any combat in a Studio Ghibli movie.

What would a role-playing game like this look like?

I can think of a few design goals:

• The system should encourage group collaboration and consensus.
• The system should resolve conflict at a high level, rather than using blow-by-blow dice mechanics.
• Conflict resolution should be less about success and failure and more about many outcomes.
• The system should have minimal combat abilities.

Let’s look at existing systems that are close to what I’m looking for. The first that comes to mind is FATE. Thanks to the Fudge Ladder, Aspects, and Skills, characters can be described using personality traits and beliefs than as physical abilities.

So, let’s define characters by giving them a bunch of aspects. How do we keep track of them? One convenient method is cards, so we’ll assume that each character is defined by a set of 10 personality traits, each written on a card.

(Some people are, apparently, very anti-card. Those folks can just as easily write down the cards’ information on a sheet of paper.)

Some cards will be more useful in some circumstances than others, and we want a mechanical way of representing that. For now, we’ll put keywords on the bottom of each card, indicating the kind of situation that the card is particularly suited for.

How do we handle conflict? Let’s take a few pages from the recent Marvel RPG, by establishing scenes and conflicts, and letting players build dice pools. But instead of facing off against just opponents, let’s also add possible outcomes to the mix.

So, each conflict is made up of a mixture of Dangers and Futures. Players bid their cards on a particular Future, which adds dice to a dice pool on that Future. When all players have bid, the dice pools are rolled. Dangers must be neutralized by assigning dice to them.

How to prevent players from just throwing low-rolling dice on the Dangers? We’ll give each Danger a value, so you must sacrifice a die that rolled at least as high as the Danger’s value to neutralize it.

That’s a first stab. What do you think?

Have you got a neat idea for a game that uses playing cards? Want to throw together a quick, cheap prototype?

Here are spreadsheet templates for OpenOffice and Microsoft Excel for cards the size of standard poker or playing cards. Type in a few words and hit Print!

The template will print 6 cards per sheet.

PAX East is this weekend in Boston, the 6th to 8th! Many members of the Gamer Assembly will be there and we’d love to see you too! If you want to stalk any of us, we’ve put together a brief schedule below of things we’re pretty darn sure we’ll be at.

Pay special attention to Fix your Tabletop RPG with the RPG Doctor and the Gamer Assembly, on Friday Night at 7 PM. If you didn’t guess by the title, it’s our panel (Brent’s the RPG Doctor). We’ll be answering questions about trouble with your home campaign, how to make problem areas more awesome, and our experience with a vast array of RPGs. Heck, if you have a different RPG question, we’ll probably answer it. Our panelists include Freelancers, Designers, Editors and Artists.

There’s even be a give away including the first issue of Call to Assembly, The 4e Red Box, a set of chrome Dwarven Dice, a Gamer Assembly T-Shirt and more! We hope to see you there.

Simply roll a d6 and a d14 (or a d7 and a d12) to determine which code phrase to use when referring to D&D Next.

1. The Canary Eats The Sunshine In Russia
2. The Squawking Goblin Sheds No Tears
3. The Reindeer Has A Large Handbag
4. Tomorrow’s Soup Is Made From Owlbears
5. When The Troll Farts, Eat Baguettes
6. The Bag of Holding Has Developed A Portable Hole
7. Your Princess Is In Another Castle
8. The Ioun Stones Have Reached A Count Of Nine
9. The Drake Squats On The Rooftop In The Rain
10. Beware The Dwarf
11. The Lady Watches What The Devil Desires
12. The Wizard No Longer Lives On The Coast
13. The Captain Dropped his Keys
14. The Portcullis Is Down But The Lever Is Stuck
15. I Saw The Baker But His Bread Did Not Rise Today
16. Loan Me Two Copper For A Silver Bullette
17. Knock Three Times On The Tap Or All Ye’ll Have Is Elven Wine
18. The Tomatoes Have Not Ripened In The Dark Sun
19. The Sorcerer Heads Inland
20. The Platinum Has Left The Coffers
21. He Lost The Trail In A Pile Of Gold
22. The Griffin No Longer Speaks In Riddles
23. I Wanted To Play D&D And All I Got Was This Lousy NDA
24. My Parents Left Me A Portable Hole
25. Orcus Is My Butler
26. The Vrocks Fly At Midday
27. The Griffon Dueled The Snake But The Wizard Still Fell
28. The Eagle And The Stork Do The Lambada At Midnight
29. The Game That Shall Not Be Named
30. I Never Learned Thieves’ Cant
31. My Other Game System Uses Powers
32. Never Mind The Medusa
33. Save Or Die!
34. Fiddling With Vecna
35. Delayed Polymorph
36. Hare Today, Gorgon Tomorrow
37. Illithid Bard
38. Incanatrix With A Flame Tongue
39. Save Vs. Errata
40. Seven Defences Are Too Many For Forum Trolls
41. Now With 100% Fewer Power Sources
42. Shadow Primal Arcane Psion-ACK! *dies*
43. Learning Fate Causes Worry
44. Monte Cook’s Lejendary Adventures
45. The Hunter’s Arrow Missed The Housecat
46. Ten Gold Pieces On The Housecat
47. Last Night I Married a Bar Wench
48. Half-Dwarf Half-Elf Is A Viable Race
49. Succubus In Sensible Armour
50. The Temple Of Ioun Endorses This Knowledge
51. Best. Game. Ever! (Thank you @ComedyRockStar.)
52. The Prince Was Hexed But She’s Adjusting Well
53. My Squire Buckled In Half The Time
54. Charisma Lacks The Bison’s Heart
55. Society For The Restoration Of Vecna
56. The Tour Of The Sunless Citadel Was Cancelled Due To Poor Lighting Conditions
57. My Other Weapon Is A Vorpal Warhammer
58. You Don’t Have To Go Home But The Universe Is Ending
59. Save Time; Cast Gate
60. I Had A Witty Passphrase But I Forgot It
61. Keep Calm And Roll Initative (With a nod to @SkylandGames’s Twitter avatar.)
62. The Alleys of Sigil Are Never Wrong Turns
63. Thay It Ain’t So
64. Golems Growl At Stirges’ Proboscii
65. Gold Pieces Don’t Grow On Trees
66. Thief, Dagger, Gold. Old Story.
67. I Should Have Suspected When I Saw The Girdle’s Aura
68. She Had Tea With Vecna’s Taxidermist
69. Beware The +1 Letter Opener Of Justice
70. Is That Your Hut Or Do You live In A Giant Chicken?
71. Mind Your Tongue, Trolls Ahead
72. Orcus Begone Or I’ll Put That Wand Where The Sun Shines
73. Con Is Not My Dump Stat
74. Death Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
75. Drizzt Is Just An Elf In Makeup
76. Just For The Record, A Fifteen Hits My AC
77. Never Trust A Halfling With A Spatula And A Frying Pan
78. Dire Canaries Make Great Travel Pillows
79. Beware The Proboscis
80. Never Put The Barbarian On Watch
81. Three Eyes Between His Two Heads
82. Black Dragons Smell Of Death At Night
83. Dryads Never Dance
84. Never Extend Xerxes’ Table

Contributors: @absentdm, @adampageuk, @brentnewhall, @brianliberge, @deusinnomen, @gameknightrvws, @paulbaalham, @twwombat, plus an honourable mention to @greywulf for planting the seeds of madness this morning.

'absolute' by dexxus on Flickr

I challenge you to create an RPG thing–creature, location, adventure, setting; whatever–that does not contain:

• Dragons
• Orcs
• Elves (of any kind)
• Dwarves
• Zombies
• Kobolds
• Goblins
• Vampires
• Werewolves
• Ninjas
• Steampunk
• Cowboys
• Xenophobic aliens
• Mummies
• A Quentin Tarantino aesthetic
• Anything Cthulhu

You may well ask: Well what does that leave?

Exactly. Think about that.

Note that this list does not mention samurai, lizard people, fish people, mummies, giant worms, jellyfish, ringworlds, sentient plants, huge floating brains, tiny people, dinosaurs, psionics, carnivorous bathtubs, kung fu, gun fu, the Crusades, Atlantis, Dyson spheres, animal familiars, creatures made of light, or giant insects.

So, post your original creation in the comments. Show the world what you can do.

Call to Assembly, issue 1

We love print magazines. We love the feel of paper, the ability to curl up in bed and peruse the corners of a publication stuffed with content.

So, we’ve collected a bunch of our best blog posts into the Call to Assembly, the first issue of a print magazine. This issue is 36 pages, and covers our first two months’ worth of blog posts. You can download the PDF for free or buy a physical copy on Lulu for US $7.99 (plus shipping).

This issue includes most of the content from our post-apocalyptic setting 3 Generations After The End, Brian Liberge’s Weeping Angels creature from StufferShack, and much more.

Enjoy!

So we’re going to push it out by a month and shake the bushes a bit more. I’ve edited the dates in the announcement post, so point interested parties there for now. If you’re interested, please follow the directions and leave a comment at the signup page.

Now get out there and start thinking up devious new angles to attack war from.

Thanks for your patience and continued interest!

So I decided it wasn’t over. I try to give my players a lot of room to make choices, and their characters decisions should have weight. However, I also believe that the DM’s job is to facilitate fun, and that ending, while natural, was just not fun. I told everyone we had one more session and began planning my ultimate ending. I wanted to make sure it fit certain criteria to make it fun, challenging and have that epic feel.

1. Getting the Band Back Together. I told my players that they could bring any character they had played so far in the campaign. Whomever they chose, we would find a reason to get them involved, and a reason for them to have reached level 30. This gave them the opportunity to end with the character they connected with the most, and really end that characters story with a big event.

2. Time Passed. I set ten years between the last session and the finale. This serves two purposes. First, it gives the PCs reasons to have reached 30 more slowly, so it doesn’t feel like we missed a really exciting session. The second reason is to respect the natural ending that we previous came to. It’s true I didn’t like that ending, but that doesn’t mean it should be disregarded. By having a length of time between these two events, it gives the last session weight. That ending changed the way the characters viewed and interacted with the world in the downtime and set up how they would treat the threat before them.

3. Truly Fearsome Encounter. To that end, whatever they faced now had to be an extremely dire foe. Not only does it have to challenge characters of Epic Power, but scare them in such a way that they won’t handle it individually. Some characters needed really strong reasons to be present for this fight, such as the cleric who ascended to the heavens or the warlock who had been captured and tortured by Tiamat.

I decided an outbreak of the Abyssal Plague was finally joined by two of the Elemental Princes of Evil. The gods cannot directly interfere on the mortal plane in my campaign, but their mortal servants can. That gives Tiamat a reason to release a favored captive, and the other gods a reason to turn a blind eye when one among them chooses to descend.

4. Tie It Into the Campaign. It has to feel like an ending, and not just a big fight for the sake of it. I had plenty of enemies to choose from. I knew I wanted Tharizdun as the final enemy for my next campaign, so setting that up made sense, especially since the players had been battling his cultists, and accidentally freed his avatar. The Princes of Elemental Evil are powerful foes in their own right, who are naturally tied to Tharizdun.

Pazuzu was also a favored villain. He loves chaos and I could see how the Abyssal Plague might amuse him to no end. He had previously led a PC astray, and it seemed like the perfect time to bring that PC back. This time, he would be the embodiment of the Voidharrow.

5. Challenging and Dynamic Combat. I didn’t want this to be a series of static fights against solo brutes. Epic characters are powerful, damn near impossible to kill and full of options. I wanted each fight to have terrain, multiple enemies and allow the players to think creatively.

I kept it under the open sky but on a dead rocky terrain. That gave us boulders, ledges and crevasses to deal with. First fight was Imix, with a couple of powerful demons and plenty of minions. That made sure if the solo got locked down, there were still powerful threats to deal with, but not so overpowering that they didn’t save some dailies for Ogremoch who loomed in the distance. When they got to Ogremoch, their former ally was revealed as the Voidharrow (Elite) and they had to deal with both foes at once. I added a voidharrow goop hazard that would cause an instant of domination. I also decided that if the Voidharrow was eliminated before Ogremoch, then new minions would stop spawning. That allowed a natural change in momentum, halfway through the fight. I made sure Ogremoch kept two action points till then to keep the combat threatening.

The end result was a much more satisfying ending. The players were challenged but not overwhelmed. They felt like they had accomplished a real goal, which made their epilogues more meaningful. The moral of the story, don’t accept a crappy ending. It’s your game.