Painting

Trying my hand at painting. Doing the xwing board got me inspired.

I'm aware this lighting and camera might not be the best for displaying this picture.

This here is my work station. 

Still drying but mostly done.

Posting again, xwing game board project

Gonna start posting here again. Still going to do gaming related material but I will start posting art and other hobbies I pick up.

What got me inspired to start doing stuff again was this xwing miniatures game board I made. Here's some photos of the journey.

Playtest 1 report... Finally

Okay I know its been awhile since posting.  Last post I stated I would be running my first playtest for my cyberpunk game.  I'm using the name SprawlWalkers right now but that's just a working title .  I'm really going for a generally rules lite cyberpunk game but I want to have additional rules that can be added to the game to give GMs and Players a bit more control over difficulty and complexity.  The idea being that if a GM doesn't want a hyper lethal experience for their players we have systems in place to scale that without the GM needing to scale all their NPCs.

First playtest went well as far as I could tell.  My players seemed to have alot of fun which under normal circumstances would be more important then how well the actual mechanics affect the flow of the game.  I recorded the session and once I have done a little editing I plan on posting it.

My main goal with the playtest was to make sure the base mechanics worked and there was nothing that was extremely broken.  Which is not to say there aren't improvements to be made.  Combat did seem to run a dad sluggishly and not terribly unique.  The skill system again does not seem terribly unique and will probably need some tweaking.

I have another play-test scheduled for this weekend with a few other players some more experienced then others.  My last play test was made up of primarily people who were fairly new to table top role playing games in general. This was partly based on convenience but getting newbie eyes on it lets me know that the basics of the system were accessible enough for a new player to grasp, which is a goal I have with this project.

I know I've posted this picture before but I need an illustration to show the similarities between my system and world of darkness.  I've been playing world of darkness for nearly the last 17 years of my life so I have to be sure not too much of its influence gets into my game.  Take my character sheet and compare it this mortals World of Darkness sheet.

My system is using the same idea as World of Darkness, take an attribute and add a skill to it then roll the total, then things happen.  This is something one of my playtesters pointed out.  Changing out the skill system will be alot of work but the game will be better for it in the end. 

This week I'll be focusing on adding a perk system, cybernetic implants, and making some tweaks to the combat system.

Cyberpunk RPG Development Blog - Playtest 1 preperations

While it is still early in the development of my untitled cyberpunk game I want to go ahead and plan on running a play test this weekend.  I think its important to make sure the basic mechanics of the games not only work but are actually fun before I go to much further.

So this Saturday I'll be running a one shot game to test some of these mechanics for fun and ease of use.  Just for fun though I'll go ahead and share the quick reference rule sheet and character sheet.

Playtest 1 - Quick Reference Rule Sheet

Rolling Dice –

All dice rolls are performed by combining an attribute and a skill declared by the GM for action you’re character wishes to perform.  Count the combined total of the attribute and the skill then roll that many D6. 

Successes – 5 and 6 (you may reroll as 6 results)

Botch Dice – 1s (if you roll more 1s then you roll successes your action botches and you suffer a penalty as determined by the GM)

Attributes are rated on a score of 1 - 8

Skills are rated on a score of 0 - 8

Combat –

As with other dice rolls in combat an attribute is combined with a skill as well as the damage rating of the character’s weapon.  The player will declare a target to attack then both the attacker and defender roll off to determine the success of the attack.

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Attacker Rolls Attribute + Skill (melee/firearms/brawl) + Damage value of weapon

Defender Rolls Attribute + Dodge (or melee/brawl if close combat)

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For every success over the defenders total success is one point of health damage.

Ties result in no damage but certain weapons may have a special effect

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When all health boxes are filled character has turns = physical resistance attribute to be stabilized before death.  Each turn the player may roll 1d6 and a result of a 5 or 6 will stabilize the character.  Other characters may perform a first aid roll difficulty 3 to stabilize and heal one point of damage.  Each success over the character’s physical resistance stat on a first aid roll will heal another point of damage.

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Turn order in combat is determined by each participant rolling 1D6 and adding the combined value of their Physical and Mental Prowess scores.  Turn order is determined by highest roll + stats first and descending from there.

Apologies for the Radio Silence and an Announcement of a Project

I haven't posted in awhile so I figured it would be time to give some updates on what I've been working on.  I got a promotion at work that will be affording not only more monies but also a more reasonable work schedule so I'll have a bit more time on my hands for my gaming pursuits.  Other good news, and this isn't official yet, but my wife and I are in talks right now with Twilight Creations, the makers of Zombies!!!, to volunteer to help them out at Gen Con 2015.  So with any luck we'll be hanging with some of the nicest people I've ever met in the games industry and seeing the con from a whole different angle this year.

Now on to what I'm working on now.

So I've been searching for a good cyberpunk game with fairly simple but not overly simple rules for some time now.  I think there's things I like about everything I've read but nothing ever had exactly what I was looking for.  Rifts have great fluff but it can be a little intimidating, Shadowrun again great stuff but the world is a little too high fantasy for my tastes.  There are more and all of them have their charm.

So I decided I'm going to write my own game, which is honestly something I've wanted to do for quite some time.  I'm still in extremely early stages right now.  I have some basics written up so far and combat rules started.  I'm hoping by the end of this week to have a frame work to test and see if the rules I have so far are going to work in practice.

I'll be posting the rules as I get them on here and would appreciate feedback from anyone.

When players misbehave - Apocalyptia Play Report

Last night we ran through another round of Apocalyptia. I was terribly unprepared, I had ideas for what I wanted to happen when the players finished their current story arch, but nothing much for what would happen after the last game.  I consider myself fairly decent winging story and thankfully the players that showed up early to the game (my wife, brother, and his girlfriend) seem to really enjoy just exploring ruins which makes my job easy. The group had looted a bunch of buildings returned home to find their home settlement destroyed by slavers.  So they started decking out semi trucks like some sort of mad max fever dream preparing to take the survivors on some grand exodus.

I was fearing I wasn't throwing enough at the players.  My first experience with Apocalyptia was fast paced and brutal, seems there was always raiders or zombies being tossed at us.  That was a game run at Gencon 2014 and the guy running the game just tossed obstacles at us until we got ourselves killed. Fast, brutal, fun. I think I get a little gun shy when it comes to throwing encounters at my players I think I have this fear if I throw to much at the players and wind up with a TPK my campaign goes kaput and I'll never be allowed to run Apocalyptia again.

Ofcourse one player showed up late and let me know the players will due a decent job of killing themselves even if I don't throw hoards of flesh eating undead their way.  You can always tell there's some shady backstabbing silliness afoot when players start handing you folded up hand written notes like you're their middle school crush.

I suppose I could have drawn that myself, not just slap something from a Google image search in paint.  Either way, my player that shows up late starts passing me notes that look alot like what is pictured above.  The tardy player starts rigging traps up to the mad max semi while he was supposed to be watching the group's camp site. Wakes up an NPC and murders him while trying to steal some gear then attempts to run away with the semi.

Now this behavior is not only self destructive but it puts the entire group at risk, and more importantly my campaign. If I wasn't hand holding my party through the first few sessions they would know they have to work together to survive in this game.  So this brings us to our next lessons in Game Mastering. 

How do we handle players behaving badly?  In my groups we've always kind of allowed player in fighting, it takes pressure of the GMs and the players get to mess with each other which seems to make them happy (sometimes).  Parties working against each other and hatching various schemes and conspiracies against each other can pretty much make the GM's job location description. Now granted my group mostly plays World of Darkness games which aren't as hyper lethal and have alot more built in for political back stabbing.  However the post apocalyptic wasteland is no place for such shenanigans.

What do we do with players trying to earn that TPK for you?  Does the GM jump in, hand of God intervenes? I certainly attempted to put some road blocks in the way and let the dice fall where they may but I really didn't feel like letting NPCs kill the rouge player.  In my mind justice for player betrayals need to be meted out by the players themselves. Intervening to keep party cohesion sets a bad precedence and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  Sure put some road blocks up, make the player deal with the world's natural reaction to their jackassery but when the hammer really needs to come down, let the players get the blood on their hands. 

Randomization Charts for the unprepared

Anyone who has ever had the audacity to write plot for group of role players should know that 9 times out of 10 this is a fool's errand.  I've been a part of plenty of games where our game master wrote some Shakespearean narrative, beautiful wordy descriptions of neon cities, and lush verdant rolling hills.  Then we, as players, said screw you and your plot we're going in the complete opposite direction and no one can stop us.

Totes a real conversation

GM: "You have to defeat the dragon, its the only way to save Miami."

Players: "Naw, we're going to Orlando."

GM: "You can't be serious."

Players: "Yeah screw you and screw that dragon."

Now this is not to say you shouldn't plan, you absolutely should, if you don't do some level of planning your game won't get very far.  The trick, at least in my experience, is to have enough planning done where if the the players aren't creating plot on their own you have something for them to do that feels substantial.  One the major difficulties is having something ready to roll when your players go off the rail. When they abandon the dragons and greater demons you've planned for them to fuck off to god knows what kind of silly shenanigans they dreamed up you have to have something ready to go.

One of the things I'm thinking about doing for my Apocalyptia games is designing a small program that randomizes certain events and NPCs for me.  The rule book has some charts that do this but I don't feel they provide enough variety for my style.  Bellow I've included a sample screenshot of some randomization tables for post apocalyptic suburbs.  

Enjoy.