Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 79
June 1, 2012
The Ancient Scroll Presents Storycraft
Today The Ancient Scroll, a site specializing in RPG story ideas, launches the inaugural edition of StoryCraft, a column of scenario outlines written by well-known game designers. They’ve engaged me to write an installment every two weeks. Subscribe to their RSS feed, or keep an eye out for my links here on the blog or from whichever social media platform you use to track my doings.
The first installment, “By Fate Enslaved”, keys off an intriguing passage in Edward Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to present a tale of sudden slavery, a decadent imperial metropolis, and daring rescue. Check it out... in the original English, or in Polish translation.
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May 31, 2012
The Birds: Made Gay
Click here for the complete strip archive.
Stuck in mobile mode? Click here for image file.
May 30, 2012
Shortlist For 2012 Diana Jones Award Announced
RPGs, LARPs, a board-game and crowdsourced funding vie for hobby-gaming’s most eclectic and exclusive trophy.
The committee of the Diana Jones Award has announced the shortlist for its 2012 award. The list contains five candidates that in the opinion of the committee exemplify the very best that hobby-gaming produced in 2011. In alphabetical order, they are:
BURNING WHEEL GOLD, an RPG system by Luke Crane, published by Burning Wheel.
CROWDFUNDING, with particular acknowledgment to Kickstarter.
NORDIC LARP, a book by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, published by Fëa Livia.
RISK LEGACY, a board game by Rob Daviau, published by Hasbro Inc.
VORNHEIM, an RPG supplement by Zak S, published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
The winner of the 2012 Award will be announced on Wednesday 15th August, at the annual Diana Jones Award and Freelancer Party in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con Indy convention.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product, company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the quality of excellence in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year. The winner of the Award receives the Diana Jones trophy.
The short-list and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones Committee, a mostly anonymous group of games-industry alumni and illuminati, known to include designers, publishers, cartoonists, and those content to rest on their laurels.
Past winners include industry figures such as Peter Adkison and Jordan Weisman, the role-playing games Nobilis, Sorcerer, and My Life with Master, the board-games Dominion and Ticket to Ride, the website BoardGameGeek; and the charity fundraising work of Irish games conventions. Last year’s winner was Fiasco by Jason Morningstar. This is the twelfth year of the Award.
More information is available at www.dianajonesaward.org or at the Award’s Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Jones_Award.
CONTACT
For more information or an invitation to the announcement of the 2012 Diana Jones Award you can contact a representative of the DJA committee: committee@dianajonesaward.org
May 29, 2012
The Warehouse of Dorian Gray
Insurers specializing in high-end art have become increasingly worried by the proportion of their clients’ art collections stored in a small handful of warehouses, mostly in Switzerland. By stashing their art at a so-called free port, the hyper-rich avoid taxes and customs fees.
To rip this story from the headlines, we can see an obvious plot for a heist flick, in which the PCs plot a single score allowing them to scoop up enough masterpieces to stock a world-class museum.
Let’s bend it a little into a premise for a Night’s Black Agents scenario. A venerable vampire, who perhaps once shared absinthe with Oscar Wilde, has transmitted his soul essence into a painting. You know the drill—it ages, he doesn’t. The only way to destroy him is to burn the canvas. He’s stashed it in a free port, confident that its experts will give it all the security they’d provide to a Rembrandt or Picasso.
The mission: under the guise of an ordinary heist, get in there and grab the painting—either to end him, or gain leverage to squeeze favors out of him, in furtherance of your broader war against the international bloodsucker hegemony.
May 25, 2012
May 23, 2012
Gaming on Google+ Hangout: After Action Report
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to gather a great group of players to test Hillfolk via the Google+ multi-webcam Hangout feature. Here’s how it went.
Like any poorly designed experiment, I was trying out three things at once:
a new, simpler set of procedural action rules
one-shot play
the webcam game experience
First of all, we had a fun time, leaving group members hoping for a follow-up—which my schedule unfortunately doesn’t quite permit. Maybe we can get the band back together in the event of a quorum failure for my in-person Thursday night playtest.
#1 went fine. The rules felt simpler and easier to explain even given the complication of displaying tokens and playing for online play.
In the case of item 2, I stripped the rules back even further than for the one-shot I ran for the Pelgrane gang in December. My conclusion is that the game still works without key elements, which is nice to know, but doesn’t offer quite as broad an experience. The written section on one-shots will recommend a suite of features closer to the previous run.
Similarities between the two runs suggest that by default a single-session game develops into a power struggle to destroy and replace the clan chieftain. This offers a clear narrative everyone can take part in, and a definitely shaped conclusion. It works and it’s fun. But I’ll need to add some text showing the GM how to direct the storyline in other directions, so you can play in multiple one-shots without having them all follow the same dynamic.
Thoughts on #3: the Tabletop Forge app, which I used to present the flow of tokens and cards, and create a simple graphic allowing us to remember who was playing who, proved invaluable. At present its interface hearkens back to the clarion days of chat, with command lines and all. The creators of the app are planning a crowdfunding campaign enabling them to add the needed UI interface and other features. As this tool becomes more robust, so will Hangouts as an RPG platform.
One remains at the mercy of each participant’s computer and peripherals, especially where sound quality is concerned. A couple of the players fought with choppy audio streams and had to repeat themselves a lot, which impeded the flow.
Because it consists almost entirely of dialogue between characters, DramaSystem felt like an ideal match for the platform. Despite the kinks, I’m happy to be able to mention this in the rules as a viable way of getting a group together, for one-shots or the longer-term play the game is tuned for.
On the Isle of the Cyclopes, the One-Eyed Man Wants To Kill and Eat You
Raiders of the Fever Sea, part two of Paizo’s Skull and Shackles Adventure Path, is now raiding its way to your purveyor of fine game products. Included among its high-grade swashbucklery is part two of my serialized novella, “The Treasure of Far Thallai.” In “Butcher’s Rock,” captain Challys Argent and her unwilling sidekicks journey to Butcher’s Rock, so named due to its shape, and its population of ravening cyclopes. Furious battle and grim prophecy ensues. For more info, sail your galleon to Paizo’s product page.
May 22, 2012
Characters of the Greasepaint Series
In response to playtest comments, I’ve simplified one of the core systems of the DramaSystem engine, which powers the Hillfolk game. To test this, I’ve started up a non-Hillfolk game with the Thursday night group, because we already laid that epic series to its fitting conclusion. This time I threw the choice of setting open to the group, enabling us to collectively create something that isn’t intended for publication. The gang arrived at Carnivale with the serial numbers filed off, and thus are portraying members of a traveling show in dustbowl-era Texas. I’ve dubbed this series Greasepaint. Here’s who they’re playing.
Player
Character
Role
Relationships
Desire
Dramatic Poles
Paul
Jo-Jo the Wildman
Freak
Dr F is his father
B is his rival
Acceptance
Human or freak?
Rachel
Barboa
Snake Charmer
C is her childhood friend
J is object of pity
Control
Independence vs Neediness
Chris
Dr. Fritz
Impresario
Sees B as a daughter
C is rival for status
Protect the show the way it is
Arrogance vs. Wonder
Damian
Caravaggio
Magician
Owes J a debt
lionizes F
People to trust
Honor vs. Suspicion
Scott Foster AerialistWants power from Dr. F
alliance from J
Dr. F’s jobShort-Term vs. Long-Term
May 21, 2012
May 18, 2012
Wu Xia
Forensics meet fu in Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s Wu Xia, my favorite martial arts film of the last year. In a premise that somewhat recalls History of Violence, modest paper maker Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) tangles with and dispatches a pair of dangerous thugs who descend on his rural village. Detective Xu Baiju (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a hyper-rationalist laden with the emotional and physical damage of a mistaken act of clemency performed early in his career, realizes that Jinxi’s story doesn't hold up. Applying his knowledge of physics and Chinese medicine to the crime scene, he comes to suspect that Jinxi is a powerful master of qi energy. And if he is that, the Imperial law enforcement system isn’t the only an organization who might want to know about him and his new family...
Set in 1917 but with nary a firearm in sight, Wu Xia executes a gorgeously-shot slow burn before escalating into a satisfyingly emotional fu epic. CGI effects appear, but only to add grace notes to physically performed stunt sequences. The CSI-style forensic recreations, based on Eastern instead of Western anatomic principles, show us what Xu Baiju is thinking as he peels the deceptions away from Jinxi’s story. Yen delivers a career highlight performance, as a man who has discovered his real identity but still has vestiges of another one moving below the surface. Kaneshiro undercuts his matinee idol status as a man with a brilliant mind trapped in a weakened body. Jimmy Wang Yu, classic star of the Shaw Brothers era (One-Armed Swordsman), makes his first film appearance in eighteen years as a climactic heavy as rife with pathos as he is with menace. And he can still fight!
Two equally generic English titles, Dragon and Swordsman, have attached themselves to the film, suggesting that someone at some point was hoping for a North American release. Snag it wherever you stock up on Hong Kong home video imports.
