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Eow Links 21 |
| 2021-05-22 |
Eow Links 21
"Eow" for End Of Week. Links I gathered during the week. This is iteration 21.
For more weekly links, head to The Seed of Worlds Shiny TTRPG link collection or Alex's Blogosphere posts.
Most of the links below are found via the RPG Planet that Alex Schroeder built and maintains. If you have a RPG blog, please consider joining the conversation.
Fewer links this week.
Book Notes: The War of the Fists
[The bridge] of San Marziale, in particular, was considered "privileged beyond all the others to host those especially celebrated and notable wars [that are] put on for [visiting] Princes, Cardinals, and Great Lords of Italy, due to its location, beauty, convenience, and size" (it measured a good seventeen by fifty feet, according to de Ville).
A good saint for a semi-martial event.
A simple system for supplies and hunting
So here’s my take on it. The foraging system is taken straight from the Expert set, and expanded with the hunting mechanic. With how often players will likely go hunting throughout a full campaign, I really don’t want to bother with having combat encounters with rabbits and deer that might just run away.
Poaching on the rise.
This is not a common genre in RPGs, but it’s very recognizable from popular culture; my players had no trouble feeling the setting and tropes of the game, especially after the cozy places group activity at the start. Characters are both broadly competent and physically vulnerable – while Brindlewood Bay is a generally safe environment, shadowy figures stalk around and the suspect is still at large.
Jason, the author of Brindlewood Bay is also the host with Tom of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast.
A Simple Way to Handle Ability Scores
Roll is 5+ on 1d6. This is not a roll to succeed, but a roll to see if the task is finished in the shortest time possible (1 round, if performing an action in combat.) On a “failure”, the result is how much longer the task takes.
As always, I am adding this to my notes about "keeping the game fluid and fun".
Micro Exposition for Game Masters
If your campaign world is not this world, at this time, and in this place, there are going to be elements of your setting that need description and explanation. The players won’t know the milieu’s history, its major figures, its architecture, technology or much of anything. You will have to provide them with that information.
Okay about encounters conveying information about the setting, but I do not get the logic in the last part of "If you want your players to learn something about the campaign setting and retain it, attach that information to an encounter. This is one reason I use random encounters."
Gygax has penned a magnificent mechanic in OD&D that has been completely lost in his inability to express it coherently.
Writing rules is hard.
There's a worldbuilding challenge called Gygax 75 that's been making the rounds on the blogosphere. I decided to try to look its origins and follow the people who undertook it, as is my way.
Lots of worldbuilding efforts are detailed there. A dungeon and a home base in a wilderness region in a larger world.
The top of the list sent me to World Building with Gary Gygax in his Later Years
Lists of lists. The lists of lists. And I said Gary, where’s the romance? Where’s the drama? - Oh players don’t want drama, Chris. They’ll make that up on their own.
I come back to the same general advice: stay in the fiction. Instead, of asking how the game mechanics work for something, ask how that thing works in the world and then let the mechanics represent that.
and also
first look for monsters that make sense for the environment.
Entretien avec Xavier “Tikokh” Brault autour de Okimba : Le Jeu de Rôle
On peut vraiment résumer ce jeu de rôle en 3 mots. La survie, la tribu et le mystère. Survie, parce que c’est un monde sans pitié et épique qu’il faudra affronter avec nos crocs et nos griffes. Tribu, parce qu’ensemble, il est plus facile de survivre et la tribu devient tout pour l’individu même si tout semble vouloir séparer les gens entre eux, différentes races, différentes religions, différents modes de vie, etc… Il faudra donc apprendre à vivre ensemble. Enfin, les secrets, le manque d’information dû à une tradition orale et surtout le monde des esprits apportent cette brume qui noie le tout dans le mystère !
Do excuse my French, there is a very interesting roleplaying game named Okimba getting crowdfunded.
The author is interviewed (French again) on the Vieux Geeks channel as well. Tikokh comes from the Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, no dwarves nor elves in sight.
Meet the new boss: some thoughts on domain-level play
They've built bridges. They've set up trade routes. They've negotiated diplomatic marriages. They've organised the planting of stands of date palms and the digging of irrigation canals. I keep worrying that they'll get bored by all this SimCity stuff, but they insist they're really enjoying it. Mysterious wildernesses on the edge of the map remain resolutely unexplored in favour of yet more civil engineering.
"Stay in the fiction!" as written above.
The book is about a boy who travels to an island to free an enslaved baby dragon. The dragon is being used to ferry animals across a river (see map), being held captive by cruel and intelligent animals
Looks like a wonderful book.
