Playing Over Google Documents

I have had fairly strange interests in RPG games. My first roleplay experience was when I was ten at a freeform play-by-post forum. When I learned D&D 3.5, I was 14 and had nobody to play with. So I played it over MSN Messenger with some friends. Since then I’ve played a lot more maptools, chat games, and play-by-posts than real life stuff. I’ve always liked running the game with text. I think it lets you do some fun story stuff that you couldn’t do around a table because people don’t have the text they can go back to, manipulate, or take their time with. The way I play takes more time than a normal game, but I enjoy it, especially because I have limited time to allot to running games over Maptools or Google Hangouts. I can play more leisurely. Google Documents has been a big help hosting play by post stuff for me. So I thought I’d briefly discuss how I play on it.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Oblates of the Spirits

Come the Firemoon, a temple apprentice would hang a dozen paper lamps on each of four long, tasseled ropes from the top of the Vindran shrine to nearby trees. The apprentice climbed atop the shrine several times to prepare all the lamps. Baru had volunteered for the whole task this year, hoping it would impress the Brahmans. He woke early, performed the morning prayer, washed his hands and face, forewent breakfast. The temple halls were empty. Out the back of the temple, near the kitchens, he took a net bag filled with the lamps and the ropes, and several old candles used routinely for this purpose, still not entirely burnt out. He took them into the wood.

Erected in the midst of an ashen clearing, a three-tiered stone pagoda served as a shrine to the Great Spirit of Flames and Justice, Vindra. The shrine was several strides tall, and a clumsy fall would certainly end in broken bones. The lamps and strings turned the Pagoda into a celestial compass, marking the way along the four cardinal directions. Baru spent his morning climbing up and down the tiers of the Pagoda, careful not to scratch the stone work or catch his tail on anything. He hung the ropes to the four hooks, climbed down, and stretched the ropes out on trees so that they were taut. He hung the lamps, one by one, climbing up and down and hanging by the ropes deliver each.

He was unknowingly several hours into his labors, when the bell rang for lunch. Baru climbed down the Pagoda and felt he would collapse at its base. He laid back against it, his drenched robe heaving with his labored breath, and his dog-like ears twitching with a terrible itch. He noticed someone approaching and could hardly wave.

“It was very kind of you volunteer!” Called Brahman Amara. She was dressed in the long, black robes and high collar of a Brahman, the clothes that distinguished her from a simple apprentice’s colorless, sleeveless robes. A tiny fan-shaped decoration held her gray hair into a ponytail, and her lips were colored a bright gold. Her status in the temple was evident, and it was the goal of every apprentice to wear the high collar as she did.

Baru raised his head, surprised at the visit. She had brought him a trencher with a few phakuras and some dhaal, and a cup of nectar. Her fan-shaped, gray-feathered tail opened and closed contentedly.

“Thank you,” Baru said. He accepted the food. Brahman Amara looked overhead, seeming to approve of his work.

“You will have to climb again to light the candles, I see.” She said.

Baru nodded dolefully. He would have to climb multiple times to light them all. He hardly felt like eating, knowing that. At once he tried to stand, but found Brahman Amara’s hand at his chest, pushing him back gently.

“I think you’ve done enough,” She said, her voice taking a sly turn. “Allow me.”

She took in a deep breath, pressed her hands to her chest, and sang.

Baru was startled, he saw no instruments but could hear a melody, whispers and chimes and drums.

Brahman Amara’s voice grew high and passionate with the mystical tune, and the words convoked, compelled and demanded a show of spiritual power in an ancient lyric. The air around her body picked up like a column, and swept past her hair, and carried her passion in colorful flames up the pagoda, across each rope, and through each candle. Baru felt no heat, and saw but a burst of colors. The music subsided and Brahman Amara’s hair fell again.

All of the candles burnt with bright orange flames.

Baru was rendered speechless at the power of the Spirit’s Voice, his heart still beating in rhythm with the phantom drums, the voice still reverberating within his mind. Brahman Amara sat next to him against the Pagoda, casual in her demeanor, and smiled. “You earned that song.” She said. “But don’t neglect breakfast next time.”

Read the rest of this entry »


About Potentials [Expedition RPG]

I had a bit of a discussion on twitter about this with someone, so I thought I would clarify some of this subject. However I would like to preface this with one of my philosophies when I make my games. I make a lot of elements in my games that are open to tweaking or interpretation. I don’t want to create a game where I’m always an infallible authoritative voice on everything therein – there are games which do that, and which do it much better than I can because they have R&D and Q&A departments and bunches of designers on the project. In Expedition some rules are clear-cut, like what the Perks do. Those rules don’t change or warp from GM to GM or player to player. Other rules are meant to be more open-ended, and to give players a shot at, in essence, writing their own small rules with each character. Potentials are one such rules element that’s open-ended. They’re really flexible because they’re supposed to be traits and skills that define your character. If I wanted them to be a closed skill list, I would’ve written a closed skill list (and I did, as an alternative rule in the same section).

So when you read the following, I hope it makes you think, rather than just immediately take it as the Word of God.

Read the rest of this entry »


Expedition RPG News and a bonus

I’m working on a sample adventure for Expedition soon that will hopefully give you something to start with on creating your own adventures with the system. If you’re already familiar with fantasy games of any stripe, you can use adventures from other systems, and things you’ve learned from building adventures for other systems, in Expedition. I intended Expedition to be a game where these kinds of narratives can be ported over without great shock. Things like Skill Challenges from D&D 4e, or the merciless dungeon crawls of AD&D, or even some of the gimmicks from newer Pathfinder Adventure Paths, can be interpreted as Expedition adventures with some time spent converting the monsters, and a little imagination for porting the challenges.

You don’t have things like definitive spells, so if a module requires a spell to be cast for something then that might seem like trouble brewing, but you can turn those into Favors or just have players engage in Events using their Potentials to solve those problems. I think you’ll find the game can be very flexible about these things.

Expedition’s been downloaded 167 times now. A friend of mine is planning a campaign for his players, and Shaun Welch has created a character on his Gnoll’s Den blog. I’m pretty excited about it all! My time for running my own games is limited so right now I’m just planning to play with some friends, but hopefully I can inspire you to try out the game in your own way.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Culture of the Western Sea

The Adelian continent is the center of the world often discussed herein, but there are other places and cultures to explore as well. The Western Sea is home to many lands and people. Like the Adelian continent, most share a somewhat similar cultural milieu. The Vikerur are a seafaring culture that spread throughout the Western sea, and are sometimes known as the “Vikerur Diaspora” by continental peoples. They are the indigenous inhabitants of the Western sea, and though they mirror the Adelian milieu in many ways, they are also different in others. In this article we’ll look at culture of the Vikerur diaspora throughout the major territories of the Western Sea and compare them to the continental diaspora of Adel.

Read the rest of this entry »


Expedition Beta: Errata Post

AS OF MAY 17: ERRATA RED FLAG! THERE BE ERRATAS AHEAD

In the process of making a game, a billion things could go wrong. I could’ve given the Dragon 750 health instead of 75. I could’ve written a non-sentence that rambles unendingly down five pages, thought I’d deleted it, and it’s still actually wedged there. I could’ve misplaced a gender pronoun, and I could’ve suggested that by consuming ganja, characters could restore all of their health as a non-action, leading to pot-smoking hippiezards dominating the game. This post is the traditional errata post, where mistakes are corrected, where horrors are unveiled, where insults are leveled at the author from positions of nigh-impunity. This is where the magic happens. Post all the errors. Post the things that might be errors but aren’t, they’re just that crazy. Post the things that aren’t errors that you still want to see changed in some way.

Read the rest of this entry »


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 584 other followers