*Poof* Goes the Conversation

Well, that hurt.

Years ago, Google, of which Blogger is a subsidiary, urged me to host the comments for Trollbones on G+. And that seemed like a fine idea at the time. I was very active on G+ so it meant my social networking and blogging would dovetail nicely. Yeah for corporate integration!

Jump ahead to 2018, and G+ is being shutdown on an ever accelerating schedule. The developers behind Blogger and Google are disdainfully non-forthcoming with a way to migrate Plus-posted blog comments to the traditional system, and the longer I hold out for that, the more new comments are made that will just vanish come April.

So, metaphorically ripping off the band-aid, I've just flipped the switch back to the default comments system. I had hoped the old comments would still be preserved in my regular G+ stream, which can be downloaded before the termination date .... but no, they're just gone. Years of insight and suggestions, criticism and insults ... gone. 

To Hell with corporate integration. Particularly, to Hell with Google. I'm seriously considering migrating this blog to Wordpress, or Dreamwidth.

Planet of Infinite Monkeys

Google+, the preferred social network for discussion of tabletop role-playing games, has not entirely unexpectedly announced it will be shutting down, effective August of 2019. While unfortunate, the situation has stirred active meaningful debate about what sort of online space best serves the needs of tabletop gamers, and a desire to actively create such spaces. Some really interesting and progressive options are being worked on. Take a look at the G+ RPG Escape Rocket group to see much of this discussion.

One of the highlight efforts: Alex Schroeder has put together two "planets," one-stop aggregators of blog posts, one for OSR material and another for Indie writings.  Go check them out and, if you're a blogger yourself, submit your blog to be included.

Old School RPG Planet

Indie RPG Planet

Howls of October: the Blue-a-Jeun

It's October, and I've got a bunch of fearsome monsters for Swords & Wizardry: White Box I've been looking forward to sharing. Here's the first!

Sobbing in desperation, a wiry scar-faced man fled over the darkened twisty forest road, a pouch clutched desperately to his chest. Chimes of rich gems sounded every time the pouch shook. The wolf pack rushed through the brush on both sides now, and despair swelled in the scar-faceed man; only moments were left until he was entirely surrounded. But far worse was the singular lupine beast snapping at his heels with manifestly cruel glee, a living shadow so black it seemed to flash blue with every move. The man’s mind reeled from his manifest doom, cursing whatever spirit had led these wolves out to this normally placid country where their like hadn’t been heard in a generation. It wasn’t fair, he’d been so careful, planning the theft, choosing the escape route … he’d even shrewdly eliminated his feckless partner Geoff after the job, pushing him off the path when it looped around a cliff-face, if not killed by the fall to be helplessly devoured by the beasts of the forest … Suddenly the scar-faced man had a terrible realization and glanced back. The black-blue wolf returned the stare with uncanny familiarity, turning to hate redoubled as it lunged forward.

Blue-a-Jeun

Armor Class: 6 [13]

Hit Dice: 3, 4, 5, 6

Attacks: Bite (1d6+1)

Special: see below

Move: 18

HDE / XP: 4 / 120, 5 / 240, 6 / 400, 7 / 600

Original image by Nathan Siemers, modified by me,

CC BY-SA 2.0

When a wolf of jet-black pelt chances by fate to devour the flesh of one given over to hate, that spirit of ire takes hold of the wolf and turns it into a instrument of cruel retribution, becoming a Blue-a-Jeun.

This monster hunts at night, singling out one victim per evening, someone who the spirit believes betrayed or wronged them. Possessed of man-like intelligence, the Blue-a-Jeun will stalk shrewdly, easily bypassing traps and barriers that would confound normal wolves. 

The creature’s deep midnight blue-black pelt renders it nearly invisible at night, in shadowed forests or similar settings, granting it a 5-in-6 chance of attacking with surprise in such dimly-lit locations.

The Blue-a-Jeun gains an additional permanent Hit Die for each intelligent being it slays and feasts upon, up to a maximum total of 6 Hit Dice. Additionally, the Blue-a-Jeun gains the memories of those it devours, which it will exploit in future hunts. 

The Blue-a-Jeun is accompanied by a pack of normal wolves, 2 per Hit Die, who will sense and obey their master’s wishes.

Use in the campaign: The Blue-a-Jeun may be an old foe of the party, impossibly returned to inflict misery upon them. Or perhaps the adventurers will hear tales of a beast terrorizing a small village, picking off peasants as the antipathies of its spirit dictate, in which case the challenge is as much to deduce who to protect next as it is facing the monster itself. It is key for the Referee to express both the Blue-a-Jeun’s intelligence and obsession; it won’t risk its life carelessly, but neither will it  forget it’s chosen prey.

White Box doesn’t have stats for normal wolves in the main text, so here they are translated from the Monster Book: 

Normal Wolf

Armor Class: 7 [12]

Hit Dice: 2

Attacks: bite

Special: none

Move: 18

HDE / XP: 2 / 30

The Journeyman Class

This is a follow-up to my previously posted "Genius" rules for Swords & Wizardry: White Box. In that post, I referred to the Journeyman class, which is built to take particular advantage of Genius, so here are the particulars.

Clearly, this is just a modification of the White Box Thief class (as first presented in James Spahn's White Box Companion and then adopted fully into White Box: Fantasy Medieval Adventure Game), and it's intentionally designed so that players looking to play a traditional thief can easily use this class for such. However, there are some changes that may need explanation:

• I'm generous with XP bonuses, thus every class in my campaign has two prime attributes rather than just one.
• Back-stabbing is an option for any character, thus why it's not specified for this class. To backstab, a character must successfully position themselves to attack the target unaware. A backstab grants a +2 bonus to hit and if successful the character rolls damage twice, inflicting the higher result +2.
• I moved guild establishment to 8th level from 9th. Partially this was so certain demi-human races with level limits would have a chance at establishing domain-level bases. But also my impression is that guilds are a softer, more subtle power base than strongholds and temples, and a town-based redoubt serves as a good stepping stone for other members of the party before hacking a stronghold out of the wilderness. 

 

Journeyman

While some adventurers rely on their battle prowess, and others their magical might, Journeyman get by on skill and cleverness. Having just completed their apprenticeships in their craft, Journeymen take to the road to hone their skills and find fortune, hoping one day to be recognized as Masters. A Journeyman may be a professional surveyor, architect, troubadour, apothecary, shipwright, scholar or any of a hundred other trades, including such dubious vocations as thief, assassin or spy.

Yes, you can even be a Barber.

Prime Attributes: Dexterity, Intelligence.

Weapons and Armor Restrictions: Journeymen may wield any weapon, but magical weapons are limited to daggers and swords. It is frowned upon by the guilds for Journeymen to engage in martial posturing, so they may only wear leather armor, and may not carry shields.

Enhanced Genius: Journeymen acquire points of Genius faster than other classes, 1 every two levels rather than every four.

Secret Technique: Once per session, a Journeyman may throw twice for a single Genius use, and keep the better result.

Decipher Languages: Journeymen are familiar with a great variety of documentation, so can figure out the gist of most mundane writing. They comprehend the general intent of foreign books, treasure maps or other text on a throw of 3-6 on 1d6. This does not mean they automatically decipher codes or solve riddles, although they understand a riddle's phrasing. A journeyman may attempt to apply this ability to magical writing, to identify what spell is written on a scroll, but only succeeds with 5-6 on 1d6 in such a case. Once identified, they may attempt to cast the spell from the scroll, but again only have a 5-6 on 1d6 chance of success, and the referee is free to apply dire consequences for a mis-read casting.

Saving Throw Bonus: Journeymen gain a +2 bonus on saving throws against devices, including traps, magical wands or staffs, and other magical mechanisms.

Establish Guild Hall (8th): At eighth level, a Journeyman may be declared a Master by the guild elders, and granted right to build a chapter hall in a city or large town. The hall will attract students of the craft and others seeking the master’s endorsement, and give the Master influence over the town's affairs and politics.

Class Level	Experience Progression	Total Genius	Hit Dice	To Hit	Saving Throw
1	0	1	1	+0	14
2	1,250	2	2	+0	13
3	2,500	2	3	+0	12
4	5,000	3	3+1	+1	11
5	10,000	3	4	+1	10
6	20,000	4	5	+2	9
7	40,000	4	6	+2	8
8	80,000	5	6+1	+3	7
9	160,000	5	7	+3	6
10	320,000	6	8	+4	5

Genius: Yet Another Approach to Skills in OSR Play

Recently the G-Plus OSR community has been talking a lot about skill systems. So here's my current take on it.

Skills are a thorny subject in the context of old school gaming. Learning to embrace the freedom that comes from forgoing codified action resolution is one of the major experiences of old school play, and yet it can't be denied that delineated skills show up early in role-playing's history. And it can't be ignored that most people, when role-playing, expect to have defined skills on their character sheets.

Skills are definitely utilitous, from a purely procedural perspective. They offer quick clear means to resolve events and to define the capacities of characters. Unfortunately they tend to take the narrative away from discussion and negotiation, turning it over to the dice instead. And they curtail player initiative by discouraging any action that doesn't have a clear numerical advantage behind it. Players blanch at trying anything they can't calculate the odds on, designers try to get over this by expanding the skill list, until the track leads to something like Basic Role-Playing as implemented in Runequest where even such specific actions as drawing a map and appraising the value of gems are defined skills.  

But still, it's tempting to add skills to the game. Class options can be expanded handily simply by adding some skill to the regular classes. Rangers and Druids are pretty much just Fighters and Clerics with some Wilderness Survival training, after all. And it allows for slight variations without having to build whole new classes to accommodate them. No need to figure out a "Sailor" class when you can just add Semanship to any character. The trick is adding an option that by its presence doesn't imply everyday-incompetence in characters without the skill, nor demands that a whole host of numbers be added to the character sheet just to address edge cases.

Well ... I'm out of preamble chatter, so here's what I've got. I call my approach Genius, as in "He has a genius for weaving tapestries."

The core mechanics I've built Genius around I first saw in Christopher Cale's Backswords & Bucklers, his reinterpretation of S&W: White Box for urban adventures in Elizabethan England. I've since found it earlier utilized in Rob Ragas's alternate White Box thief class, the Treasure Seeker, published in Knockspell issue #2. I've yet to see it in an earlier source, so I assume, until shown otherwise, it's Ragas's invention.

Regardless of origin, the approach immediately appealed to me because it put the focus of resolution not on pass/fail, but on time, the most important resource of an adventurer, the passage of which is the danger intensifier of any adventure.  It doesn't really matter if you can unlock the door, so much as if you can unlock it before being discovered by somebody with reason to stop you.

 

Genius, a System for Character Excellence

Every character has aptitude in a non-combat, non-magical field of expertise. All characters start with 1 point of Genius to define as they choose. Characters of the Journeyman* class gain an additional point of Genius every two levels, all other classes gain 1 point every four levels. Points of Genius gained after the 1st level may be added to an existing field of expertise, or used to start ones new to the character. 

*The Journeyman is my take on the role typically filled by the Thief

Some potential types of Genius:

• Wilderness Travel
• Ancient Lore
• Masonry & Construction
• Religious Ceremony
• Weaponcraft
• Politics & Statecraft
• Seamanship
• Trade & Barter
• Burglary
• Taxonomy of Monsters
• Forgery & Counterfeiting
• Brewing & Cooking
• Music, Dance & Theater
• Alchemy

Defining Genius

A Genius should entail broad related areas of endevour, any one Genius enough to qualify as a full career in itself. A good rule of thumb is that any single Genius should imply at least two distinctly different kinds of activity. For instance, Seamanship entails knot-tying and ship-building, and Burglary entails stealthy movement and maintaining underworld contacts. Goals of action cannot be forms of Genius in themselves (Persuade, Intimidate, Deceive, Climb, etc.).

Casual use of genius always succeeds; a sailor can tie a quick knot, a ranger can find fresh water in a forest, a sage can name an ancient queen, all without needing to throw dice.

 

Resolving Challenging Use of Genius 

To check genius in a challenging situation, throw 1d6 twice. The first throw determines how many units of time the effort takes. This can be days, hours, turns or rounds depending on what makes sense for the situation (maybe even years!) but usually it’ll be turns.

The second throw determines positive or neutral results. Add the points of a character’s relevant Genius to the throw, and the relevant attribute modifier if the referee allows it. If the total is 6 or higher, the effort succeeds. Characters may subtract 1 from the initial time result for every point a successful throw exceeds 6. If after modification the time throw is zero or less, the effort requires only one unit of the next lower time increment (hours down to a turn, turns down to a round, and so on)

Characters only know if they succeeded or failed after the determined interval has passed. Conditions permitting, they may keep spending time to make further attempts at the same effort until they succeed.

If the attempted effort would require less time than is relevant to the current context of play (rounds when exploring a dungeon, turns when crossing wilderness) then don't bother rolling, just call it a success and move on.

 

Miraculous Results

If a character has enough of a bonus between Genius, attribute modifiers and magical benefits to guarantee success (+5 or more) they may try for miraculous results, literally fantastical feats beyond the ken of normal mortal arts. Simply subtract 5 from the total bonus and otherwise resolve the attempt as described above.If the character succeeds, they have performed a miracle, fit for legend.

A Miraculous use of the Textiles Genius; she's sewing together a cloak literally made from the laughter of children.

Stupid, Stupid Luck

I rather like stories where serendipity plays as much a factor as skill and strength to win the day, and a growing amalgamation of mischance looms over all until something prosaic resolves it unexpectedly.

For example, I'm currently watching The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, a satirical anime poking fun at the heroic space-battleship genre, with a lead character who gets by mainly through blind fortune and refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of any situation.

By the way, this series is legitimately free to watch on youtube.

So of course I eventually mused how to implement this in an OSR fashion. Here's one possible approach.

Add a trait called Stupid, Stupid Luck. Every session, it begins with a value equal to 10 minus the character's current level. Yes, "stupid" being stated twice is vital to this mechanic. Vital.

In any given situation or encounter, the character may attempt to roll against their Stupid, Stupid Luck by throwing a d20. if the die lands greater than the current value, luck is against them and things get worse (probably in a non-lethal but embarrassing way) but they get to raise the value by 1d3 points.

If the die lands less than or equal to the current value, luck is on their side and things align in their favor, preferably in a way that is non-violent and paradoxically mundane. The dragon that was about to breathe on them develops a distracting case of hiccups, the sprung trap turns out to have been accidentally loaded with harmlessly pleasant lilac powder, the ogre gang boss turns out to be an old football buddy. However, after the success the value of Stupid, Stupid Luck is halved.

In practice this should lead to a progression where the character depending on luck suffers several indignities only to end up on top at the end, smelling of roses ... or lilacs.

Ways to implement this could be as a character class for whom it's their main ability. Call the class, say, the Blessed Idiot using the Cleric's advancement tables. Or as a communal resource the whole party can make use of. For a truly bonkers game, every character could have Stupid, Stupid Luck, possibly even monster's and NPC's.

HaberDash: First Cut

I've been mulling over playing cards in a roleplaying context for quite a while now, at least since Everway and definitely since the SAGA versions of Marvel Superheroes and Dragonlance. It seemed like something that should be easy, drama powered by, instead of the proprietary decks of those previously mentioned games, the elegant probabilities and imagery of a generic traditional deck.

The Saks-Werbespiel deck, displayed on the excellent World of Playing Cards.

But for whatever strange reason, there hasn't been a card-based roleplaying game published (at least not that I've heard of. EDIT: since I wrote that, folks have reminded me of Castle Falkenstein). And my own attempts to write one kept drying out in conceptual dead-ends. Frustrated, I hadn't done anything with the project in years.

Until yesterday when, literally on the verge of sleep, the seed of a system abruptly coalesced in my mind. I've been reading several minimalist designs lately (particularly Minimal6) so perhaps my long-latent notions got hooked by a new concept, pulling things together. Whatever the genesis, here's what I've got so far. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

  HaberDash; first cut

(Note: previously these rules were called "Cheap Suits.")

0.0 Set-Up.

These are rules for tabletop roleplaying. They assume a traditional arrangement for such, one person serving as a GM (game moderator) who presents a scenario to one or more players each running a character of their making. Play will require note-cards, pencils and a full deck of playing cards (all four suits plus jokers).

1.0 Making a Character.

Divide thirteen marks between the four suits of Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades.

Clubs represent speed, dexterity, reflex and sudden intuition.

Diamonds represent endurance, slow action and deliberation.

Hearts represent awareness, logic and erudition.

Spades represent forceful action, strength and intimidation.

Each suit may have no fewer than one mark and no more than six. Three is about average.

Describe three Qualities, each a short but evocative phrase declaring something heroic about the character. These must be things that both help the character excel in particular situations but just as often lead to complications in others.

1.1 Example Characters.

Emma “WireShadow” Bequist

(cyberpunk outlaw)

♣♣♣♣♣

♦♦♦

♥♥♥

♠♠

-Hacker pioneer, spelunker of the deepest data caverns.

-Modified this myself, I’m testing some new ideas.

-Everyone on the Network has heard of me.

Brutalina

(sword & sorcery adventurer)

♣♣♣

♦♦♦

♥♥♥

♠♠♠♠

-Blood-furious berzerker.

-Barbarian daughter of the Iceblue Mountains.

-Furious passions, deep melancholies.

XX-878

(galactic wanderer)

♣

♦♦♦♦♦♦

♥♥♥

♠♠♠

-Last of the Armageddon Androids.

-Enough plasma warheads to level a city block.

-I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

Katherine Zephrenos

(courtly wizardess)

♣♣

♦♦♦♦

♥♥♥♥

♠♠♠

-A weaver of illusions.

-Always dressed in sharpest fashion.

-On first-name terms with a devil or two.

2.0 Facing Challenges.

When the character is faced by a challenge of uncertain outcome, the GM will decide which suit is most appropriate. The player then draws as many cards as they have marks in that suit, meeting the challenge if any of the cards match the suit. The number value of the matching card indicates how well they succeed. If multiples of the same suit are drawn, the player acts per the single most advantageous value.

Drawing no matching suits means a failure.

Values 1-5 mean an iffy success entailing complications. The lower the number, the worse the complication. 

Values 6-10 indicate a superlative success granting dividends, the higher the number the better the bonus.

If the character has a quality relevant to the challenge they are facing, they may draw an additional card or improve the value of one of the cards already drawn by 2.

Royalty cards (Jack, Queen and King) offer power, but at a price. Royalty can be worth 10, but taking it requires the player declare a complication based on one of the character’s qualities. If the player turns down the 10 (and connected complication) the royalty card is worth nothing.

If a joker is drawn, regardless if the player also draw any successful cards, the GM may declare a complication, up to changing the entire nature of the scene.

The deck should be reshuffled after the second joker has been drawn.

 

3.0 Future Cuts

Things I want to consider for the next cut:

The probabilities so far are pulled out of thin air; a suit rating of 3 as "average" just feels about right, I've no math to back it up. Actual play will likely indicate needs for adjusting the numbers.

A consequence mechanic of some kind (in other words something like Hit Points); the obvious way is to check off suit marks, but that seems a bit blunt.

An oracular system for the GM, by which they can also draw cards to build situations and opposition.

I may or may not add skills to characters; a preliminary idea is a simple binary thing that let's one draw an additional card only if a suit card hasn't been drawn yet.

I haven’t as yet thought of a mechanic to dial the difficulty of challenges, but I doubt one is really needed.

Likewise, there’s no advancement mechanic, but I’m comfortable not bothering with one.

Up and Away! My First Icons Characters

In order to get around the ubiquitous D&D Adventurer League events hogging up space at public gaming venues, I've been considering offering to run a superhero game at a neighborhood comic shop. But which system? Superhero gaming is sort of my white whale; a genre I very much enjoy with incredible potential for tabletop play, but I'd yet to find rules that properly clicked. And I've been looking all the way back since Villains & Vigilantes.

A few years ago I had good success with Supers!, but have since found parts of it at odds with my preferences. I took a chance on FASERIP (a retroclone of the 1980's Marvel Superheroes game) and had some fun rolling up characters, but ultimately decided it lacked proper GM support systems. Commentary indicated that Icons was the spiritual successor to Marvel Superheroes so I finally abandoned my resistance* to it and tracked down a copy.

I've got the Green Ronin printing of this ... which has some noticeable typos and editing mistakes. I may get the Ad Infinitum POD just to see if they were corrected.

*Why did I resist Icons for so long? Possibly out of a bizarre notion that Icons was competing for the same niche as Supers! and I had an existing loyalty to Simon Washbourne's work.

On an initial read-through, it looks like Icons is exactly what I've been looking for, a fast and breezy system unhindered by detailed modeling but with strong support for tone and genre tropes, and prompts to encourge creativity rather than procedures that contain it.

As my first glimmer of actual-play, let's see what I get when I roll up character's for the first time (character portraits are snagged off-the-cuff from GIS with no attempt made at attribution):

Quantum Cop

Origin: Transformed

Attributes
Prowess: 2 (Poor)
Coordination: 4 (Fair)
Strength: 2 (Poor)
Intellect: 6 (Great)
Awareness: 4 (Fair)
Willpower: 6 (Great)

Powers
Shrinking: 6 (1" tall, Limit: max only)
Duplication: 4 (Limit: only when shrunk)
Fast Attack: 6 (Limit: only when shrunk)
Leaping: 4 (about a city block, Limit: only when shrunk)

Specialties
Investigation
Law
Science

Qualities
"Always on the case"
"Lack of funding keeps me clever"
"Never truly know where I am"

Determination: 2
Stamina: 8

A brilliant and dedicated but unassuming forensic lab scientist, Phoebe Boson was ambushed in her lab one night by criminals out to destroy damning evidence she'd uncovered in their case. Locking her in an experimental quantum-scanning device to create an "accident," the rays of the machine instead imbued her with the ability to express quantum characteristics. After foiling her attackers, Phoebe now serves as the mysterious special agent Quantum Cop.

This was a pleasing result for my first try at the char-gen system. Definitely a concept I didn't have in mind going in and was happily surprised to end up with. I confess, to get the final result to match the crystallized image, I freely tweaked the results, trading in some attribute and power levels and adding the "only when shrunk" limit to buy the Leaping power, which isn't actually how the char-gen system works RaW. I'd allow (even encourage) such trading in a game I ran, but other referees may not be so flexible.

R.E.C.O.N. (Robotic Extreme Combat Operations Nocturnal)

Origin: Artificial

Attributes
Prowess: 2 (Poor)
Coordination: 5 (Good)
Strength: 5 (Good)
Intellect: 6 (Great)
Awareness: 7 (Incredible)
Willpower: 5 (Good)

Powers
Adaptation: 7
Detection: 3 (Heat)
Life Support: 5 (No need to breath, eat, drink, sleep and immune to disease)

Specialties
Military, Expert
Technology
Weapons (firearms)

Qualities
"Mission objectives ... targeted"
"A two-hundred million dollar asset"
"Just because it's war doesn't mean we can't be civil"

Determination: 2
Stamina: 10

An android built to survey and survive even the most extreme of battlefield conditions, with secondary roles as sniper and ambusher (often serving with counterpart units A.R.M.O.R. and S.T.R.I.K.E.). After several years of experience, R.E.C.O.N. has developed a professional pride in its performance and a unexpectedly personable demeanor (it enjoys trivia contests and collecting knock-knock jokes).

I like this one as well, but it took a bit more effort to get it to solidify. Again, I freely tweaked on the fly to bring things together. Particularly, I trashed a couple rolls that gave power ratings of 1 (I don't even see why that's a possible result, since there's no compensation) and swapped the +2 Strength bonus that comes with the Artificial origin for +2 Awareness in line with the reconnaissance role. In the end, though I ended up with an interesting character, R.E.C.O.N. works better as a NPC or antagonist than a player-hero.

Dame Diamond 

Origin: Gimmick

Attributes
Prowess: 5 (Good)
Coordination: 6 (Great)
Strength: 5 (Good)
Intellect: 5 (Good)
Awareness: 5 (Good)
Willpower: 4 (Fair)

Powers
Binding: 4 (Device: confetti cane; Extra: Burst)
Swinging: 4 (Device: confetti cane)

Specialties
Performance (dancing)
Martial Artist
Sleight of Hand

Qualities
"Wealth and fame I do Not ignore"
"Always looks good doing it"
"Knows who to know in theater"

Diana Karat was a multi-talented performer too good for the hack magician she was stuck serving as assistant to. When she learned his show was just cover for lucrative heists, she leapt into action (with full stage costume and props) to personally thwart his scheme (and not incidentally use the resulting arrest to break her contract). Flattered by the stunning front-page photos her exploit earned, she decided to pursue the crime-fighting gig full-time.

After ending up with a police officer and soldier, I began this character aiming for something decidedly non-institutional, so I deemed they'd be an artist before even touching the dice. Unsurprisingly I went with a dancer (it's a bit hard to justify an action-adventure sculptor). I like this flashy and well-rounded character who is much more of a broadly capable "adventurer" than the previous two. I don't recall nudging anything in char-gen, but the "gimmick" origin revealed I'd prefer a bit more explicit consequences and trade-offs for device-based powers. I suppose it could be argued that the vulnerabilities that come with a device are offset by versatility (Dame Diamond can just loan her Confetti Cane to anyone who needs it) so it's not really the issue I perceive it as; too much min-maxing instinct in me.

Buying a Yacht, But Paddling a Kayak.

Here's  a New Year's confession: when someone declares they're playing a heavy traditional roleplaying game like Pathfinder or GURPS, I don't really believe them. Not to say I think they're lying; I agree they're really roleplaying, and they're guiding that process using means gleaned from the text they're referencing. But they're not actually using all the rules implied by invoking the full sytem title. Because over decades of gaming I've come to repeatedly observe the following:

Given play centered around a multi-hundred page rules text, 90% of play will actually use only 10% of the official rules, and pushing play into that other 90% of rules will only produce about 10% as much fun for the participants.

  
Thus I regard traditional "big book" roleplaying texts as inherently ... futile, I'll say. I've never actually observed, in one-shots or campaigns, either as a player or GM, a big-book rule system that didn't in practice get whittled down to little more than just action checks, damage rolls, and whatever few broad-strokes setting points were needed to justify the wild schemes and monster hunts the players always ended up pursuing (in other words, about the same thing as a twenty-page rules-light system). Note, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing this way; in fact I feel accepting this practical upper limit on mechanical consensus only make things better for everyone involved. But somehow, despite all this, the commercial counterpart to this hobby keeps finding an audience for big texts that I think are mostly going ignored.

Perhaps I'm blinded by my preferences; I openly prefer light games, minimal stat-lines and lots of room for at-the-table improvisation and rulings. And I admit, I've heard second-hand of people playing mechanically expansive games like Burning Wheel and Champions with all the gears engaged. But I've played Burning Wheel myself (run by the author no less) and in those sessions, we ignored most of the small text on the character sheets and just threw dice like most other games.

A caveat I'll allow is that there's usually at least one participant who is very much into something in that outer 90% of rules. A player who's all about the magic system or another who's all about the personality mechanics, or a GM who dives into the tech-building processes. but those are effectively sub-games maintained by just those people; the group as a whole doesn't engage with those rules any more than is needed to validate the enthusiasts' contribution to play.

A tiny little book about vampires, from the blog On Being a Mini Mum.
Because something something rules light.