New Version of Little Colony

I've updated Little Colony to version 2. You can find the rules zine and a fillable character sheet in the sidebar on PC. (You need to choose, "View Web Version" to get to the sidebar if you are on your phone.)

Regards,

Jeff

Triumphant Together

Here's a little RPG project I was toying around with. As with pretty much all my work, this was an experiment. I learned a few things from it, and it's got some interesting ideas in it that I may decide to revisit at some point.

Triumphant Together is a superhero RPG meant to tell adventure stories in the sort of story arcs seen in the Super Friends cartoons or the Justice League comics of the 1970's. I have tried something new here in that the task resolution mechanic is based on Trick-Taking card games.

Feel free to share your opinions here. I read and post all comments.

Thanks!

Jeff

P.S. Here's a form-fillable character sheet!

Character Evolution In TTRPGs

I want to talk about how characters change over the course of play in tabletop role playing games. How a game system manages growth can be crucial to a game's popularity and success. Players want to see their characters evolve along with the story. I theorize that this evolution falls within one of two growth categories. These are Narrative Growth and Mechanical Growth.

Narrative Growth is the flavor that sparks the imagination and colors the way a player envisions and describes their character's effect on the game world.

Mechanical Growth is the numeric crunch that adjusts the math that is used and the dice that are rolled.

Consider this example for a character with the power: Super Strength.

Super Strength Level One

• Narrative: Your character is strong enough to lift a mid-sized car or small SUV over their head.
• Mechanical: Your melee attacks inflict +2 damage.

Super Strength Level Two

• Narrative: Your character can lift a city bus over their head.
• Mechanical: Your melee attacks inflict +4 damage.

I struggle with the Five By Five game system and am constantly bringing it back to the drawing board so to speak, perhaps because it doesn't handle character evolution very well.

In Five By Five your narrative growth is in the definition of traits. When a player defines a trait, they are creating a handle that they can hang narrative on to. Mechanical growth is reflected in the trait's value. This value is what a player must roll in order to engage the related narrative handle successfully in the story.

It's an easy system and it's great for one-shots and short campaigns with very little character growth. Why? Because Five By Five doesn't handle character growth well.

Because traits are player defined, the game is versatile and can handle any sort of genre or setting. For the same reason, traits must be very basic and open to a great deal of narrative interpretation. This means that there is not a method for growing or evolving any given trait narratively because there is no way to know what a trait looks like or what it can do before a player defines it.

In my Super Strength example above, the narrative description of what super strength can do is defined and can grow because it was created with that kind of growth in mind. To facilitate this kind of narrative growth means looking at every possible power or ability and defining it in these terms. Since Five By Five doesn't do this, such narrative growth isn't possible.

This means that Five By Five's only method of narrative growth is in the defining of new traits. This is a weakness as players will tend to define the things that are most important to them initially and things added later will tend to be ignored.

Mechanically, Five By Five also struggles. It allows players to improve trait values. I love the idea that players can look at their character sheet and know instantly what they need to succeed. However in order to balance growth, that chance of success must start out very low in order to have some place to grow, meaning that new characters rarely succeed. At the same time, after several games, a character can improve their trait values so much that they almost never fail.

In my Super Strength example the power's growth provides a bonus to damage. This bonus works because it can be tempered by the concurrent growth of the character's challenge. An enemy might have more armor or hit points to counter-balance the increase in damage. This sort of Cold War escalation is a common practice in RPG design because it allows characters to grow without making the challenge too difficult or too easy.

I created Five By Five because I wanted something versatile and quick to table. Five By Five works for that. I have come to realize that if I also want a game that has longevity at the table, I need to design with both mechanical and narrative growth in mind.

I need mechanical growth that can be balanced by ever increasing challenges. This means embracing Cold War escalation style mechanics. To prevent this style of advancement from feeling "meaningless" it is also equally important to emphasize narrative growth.

I need narrative growth that expands on a player's options and sense of utility. This means that every character trait, power or ability must be predefined so that this growth can be addressed. The Super Strength example given above shows exactly the sort of thing that I need to do.

I also would like to stay as close as I can to the simplicity and accessibility of Five By Five. This is where things become the most challenging. That's okay. I enjoy a challenge.

Sci-Fi Kick (and some Final Fantasy)

I know that I haven't been posting much lately, but I'm still here.

I still plan to post a review of the potentially excellent, We Can Be Heroes superhero RPG, but I'm not there yet. I've been on a kick reading sci-fi rpg books and playing Final Fantasy. I picked up the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Bundle on Steam and have decided to work my way through all six games in the set. I just finished the first game and am currently working my way through the second. 

These are the NES and SNES classics that defined an industry and I couldn't be happier with these updated releases. They are the games we remember with visual and audio makeovers that play great on modern PCs. Luckily that includes my ten year old laptop running Linux. (No problems so far playing the games using Proton.)

As for the mentioned, sci-fi rpg kick, I am reading through four different sci-fi rpg books at the moment:

1. The Space 1999 RPG, that I preordered from Modiphius and just got my PDF.
2. Dark Matter, that looks to be a superior take on space fantasy using 5E rules.
3. Pulse Drive, which focuses on giving players narrative control. (I've had mixed results with these kinds of systems.)
4. ... and Space Pulp which is pulp sci-fi adventure using the same system as Barbarians of Lemuria.

Probable most excited about Space Pulp and most uncertain about Pulse Drive. Space 1999 uses the 2d20 system and looks really solid, and Dark Matter is based on 5E which makes it potentially the easiest to table. So, reading all of these means that I have kind of pushed We Can Be Heroes to the back burner, but I will get to it.

On a personal note, I have misgivings about a lot of what's happening in our world today, and I have been avoiding Facebook. I plan to link this blog post to my group there this time, but I won't be doing that anymore.

I am probably shooting myself in the foot, but if you want to keep up with me in the future this blog will be the only place to do it.

Regards,

 

Jeff

Superheroes on the Brain

I am currently in the process of watching all of the Arrowverse television shows in broadcast order from Arrow Season 1, Episode 1 to Superman & Lois Season 4, Episode 10. At one time, not all that long ago, the CW was overflowing with DC Comics superhero shows. They crossed over with one another and inter-connected. It was awesome!

I have decided to revisit all the shows, but it is necessary to watch the shows in a specific order because of the way that they occasionally crossover. The episode order information is available out there online, but it's not in the most accessible format. I decided to compile my own list and format it into a PDF document that I could easily reference from my phone at any time.

While that might not be the sort of stuff that I share here, I spent a lot of time on this document. So, I thought, "Why not share it?" If you decide to try to watch all of the Arrowverse shows in order, I promise, you'll thank me.

Included in the document are: Arrow, Flash, Constantine, Supergirl, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, and Superman & Lois. -- You're welcome.

Here's the link to the PDF optimized for phone use!

I seem to have superheroes on the brain. I'm also watching Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney and am enjoying that (but am only 3 episodes in.) I'm working on my own superhero themed RPG that uses trick-taking mechanisms, and reading a superhero RPG called, We Can Be Heroes that I plan to write a review for here in the not so distant future.

Feel free to join my Facebook Group to discuss this post and anything related to RPG's and superheroes!

I'll be reviewing this book soon!