Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World. Hiero’s Journey was recommended reading for Gamma World. To me, reading it sounded like a script for what play transpired in a game session or sessions of Gamma World.
Star frontiers, Traveler.
Gang Busters, Top Secret
Villains and Vigilantes, Marvel Superheroes.
Boot Hill
Games we invented back in high school: Space Pirates and Scout. As I recall pirates was more about ship combat and getting the cargo off the target ship. Scout was role playing and small ship combat.
I once owned rules for Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret. I don’t recall if I had Star frontiers, or just played it.
I own Mega Traveler, but never played it. I got is so I could have an RPG without grief from my now ex.
I also once had a game about being a carton character, Toon. It was a simople booklet like in the blue box D&D or Metamarphosis Alpha rules. I could never get anyone interested. I lost it in the leaky pipe disaster that trashed a lot of my gaming materials.
I don’t know which blog I ran across this. The way the blog that mentioned this described it was a new campaign in 24 hours.
As I look at the website it looks like it was only active for 2003, 2004, and 2005. I’m not sure why the owner of the domain would keep paying for the domain name and web hosting if it was not an active contest.
At one point their was a Yahoo Group, but it no longer exists.
Looking at the 2005 entries, it looks like people designed whole new games and rules instead of campaigns based around existing rules. Looking at their rules it is about designing a whole new RPG.
24 hours to design a new RPG? We need more RPGs? What niche does not have rules? The basic mechanics of dice for character stats and dice to do stuff and lists of equipment for the genre, and mechanics for how it all works can easily be done by taking what you like from existing games you have and make your own homebrew game. My brother and I and our gaming group did that in high school 30+ years ago.
Are any of these RPGs doing a new take for rules? Are stats different? If you have stats, can you come up with names that are not synonyms for stats in existing games?
For me, I don’t need another game. I wouldn’t put time to develop another game, unless I thought I had an idea I could market and sell.
Designing a campaign in 24 hours, I can see the value in that. Whether we do a 24 hour marathon, or 24 one-hour sprints, it could be a way to force oneself to focus on designing a new campaign, or new area of an existing campaign. I can see having different categories: 24 hour marathon, 24 1-hour sprints, 12 2-hour sprints. Set a timer for those sprints and an alarm for the marathon. There would be a total honor system.
I know that I have the ability to pull an all-nighter, but my thinking gets fuzzy after awhile and I would lose the ability to focus. It is not the same as running a game session that runs all night. There are notes to guide and ad-lib is not the same as designing a campaign that makes sense/fits together.
The idea of a 24 Hour Campaign Design sounds like a monumental contest to organize. I know I don’t have the time to run a contest. I know I wouldn’t pull an all-nighter for this. With one or two hour sprints it could still take a couple weeks to do this. Perhaps a 24 hour sandbox design using one of the sandbox design structures from Bat in The Attic or West Marches would be a way to structure it.
For all I know, there has already been some sort of 24 hour campaign or sandbox design blogathon or contest in the past.
Interesting ideas. Not sure any of them are my thing.
Pick a game–any old rules will do. Stick to one set though.
Dream up a campaign setting–it can’t be anything you’ve previously posted, published, or talked about before. It doesn’t have to be “new” per se, just new to the rest of us.
Create a new blog–yes a new URL and everything, but use your current account so we can tell it’s still yours. Name if after your campaign settting.
Write 30 posts in 60 days. (C’mon, that’s less than 1 a day!) You have just that long to outline the major key elements (setting, monsters, rule modifications, classes, races, etc.). This is straight-up worldbuilding using elements you’d normally talk about on your home blog. But here, you’ve got economize and decide what the most important elements are. Here’s some general guidelines:
30 POSTS TOTAL
13 on monsters or villains, one type or one specific individual per post (so “hobgoblins” is one, a “kaiju” is another, “Vader’s granny” another, etc.)
4 on special treasure, a lost artifact, weapons, vehicles, etc., however you choose to parse.
3 on setting, this is all aesthetic so you’ll want to focus on places, maps, NPCs, the way magic works, how the local ruling space authority, uh…rules the galaxy, etc.
3 on classes with each dedicated to a separate player class.
2 on house rules, specifically how your campaign either strays, modifies, or embellishes on your chosen rule set (posts can be as detailed as you like); carousing rules, etc. all apply here
3 on any topics you like, these help you round out the rough edges and could be additional classes, races, setting, etc.
1 intro post to set up your premise for your campaign (e.g., , declare your ruleset and acknowlege participation in the contest
1 report of actual play, which should include at least one picture, be it from the campaign or actual play; you can make this your final post with a big sign off or you can use it as a playtest, but you gotta play it at least once and record it for posterity
My Take:
I don’t like the idea of a whole new blog. A category on existing blog, yes. Whole new blog to manage/maintain, but only for two months. I don’t see the value. If you have to link it to your current blog, it can’t be to hide it from players.
I’m not sure I will be blogging on this topic. I know I won’t be any time soon. I can see the value of using the topic ideas and counts on certain topics to help build a framework for a campaign fast. I may use this for ideas, but use a NoteTab outline.
The Awful Green Things From Outer Space is a TSR board game by Tom Wham. I have my original game. I only lost one weapon effect chit over the 30+ years I have had it. I just made one from the boarder for the card stock chits. Tip:Always keep the boarder for cardstock chits so if you lose some, you can easily make new ones that are the same thickness. All the pieces are still in the pre-ziplock sandwich bags from the 80’s. All the original five red minidice are still there too.
When looking for a Wikipedia link, I discovered that the game is back in print, thanks to Steve Jackson Games. the SJG version is here. You can find a PDF of the SJG rules online. They have added other combat options for outside the ship. I have not read the full rules, but it looks like it takes some of the devastating effects of a totally random game out of the mix and gives the crew more options.
My son, David, came over Saturday to spend the day with me, since his girlfriend is out of town for ten days. Also his dog, Picard, a pit bull, and my dog, Lucy, a lab-pit mix were both going stir crazy because of all the cold and snow. When they get together an play, they are quiet and peaceful for the next two days.
David wanted to spend the day playing boardgames. He did not want to try rolling up a new character and try solo adventuring. He did not want to try Waterloo (It is only in a list of Avalon Hill Games on Wikipedia, there is no separate article.), or Imperium. I always beat him at Risk, so he wanted to try Awful Green Things.
So while he took the dogs out to do their business and run and play, I got out the rules and read them quickly and got out the crew pieces and made placements. I would have let him change the placement of the crew for those that had alternate placement options, but David wanted to be the green things. So he separated them into adults, babies, eggs and fragments and rolled a die for starting, and he rolled a 5, then rolled a die for placement. The AGT basically cut the ship in two. One of my crew was trapped in a room with the only exit into the area with the AGT. David knows strategy pretty well and he played the AGT very well. He grew the right group of AGT into the best next category for continued expansion.
Every game is different in such a way that any advantage of the AGT starting with a lot of adults can easily be offset by weapons effects. However, the weapons effects are random for every game. There are some great area of effect weapons, but they can either have no effect or make fragments, which is another way for the AGT to spread. I had a couple crew grab rocket fuel, but I drew the “no effect” chit. At least that was better than fragments. For the Comm Beamer I drew “3 dice to kill”. Unfortunately, he only had adults in most of the areas I could get those crew to and I could never roll a 16+ on 3d6.
Since we just jumped in and started playing, and we had only played the game once together over five years ago, the last time I had played; I did not pay attention to the Electric Fence and Fire Extinguisher being available in any area. I finally noticed this towards the end of the game when the AGT had trapped the captain and three other crew in the central corridor with them totally surrounded and cut off from the means of escape. I did have the Mascot and two crew get away in saucer and the scout ship saved another crew member. I drew well for the Electric Fence and Fire Extinguisher effects. The Fire Extinguisher did “5 dice to stun”, and the Electric Fence did “4 dice to kill”, but it was about two rounds to late to make a difference.
Once the AGT had eaten the surrounded crew, I then had to roll to determine the fate of the crew that escaped. The crew in the saucer were within a year of running out of food when they contracted a fatal disease and died. The crew member in the scout ship managed to make it home.
David was amazed at how easily he beat me. He usually doesn’t beat me very quickly or easily. I pointed out that the totally random nature of the effects of weapons and number and placement of AGT’s made every instance of the game unique.
We only played the one game, but I suspect we might play it again sometime.
My brother, Robert, and I played this game non stop for dozens of games in a row. We laughed at how ridiculous it was for some of the random effects. Robert is an artist and he even made a few of his own comics about the crew and AGT. I remember one where he had all the crew amazed that something killed all the AGT, and one crew said, “Sarge farted.”, and it showed Sarge blushing. LOL good times.
Below are some pictures of the setup from Saturday’s game:
Cover
Back
StoryGame BoardSetupState Of Game Before The Effects Of Fence And Extinguisher KnownWeapons Effects
I have an idea to combine the giant crustaceans and insects of Mysterious Island, with dinosaurs. I did not realize that Mysterious Island was based on a Jules Verne story. I have read some of his writings, but not all. I have a large backlog of them on my Kindle. That is the nice thing about stuff going out of copyright. Also the combination of creatures on Kong Island in the King Kong movies. (Note to self: Stat out Kong.)
I have a few ways I am thinking of handling this. Either one big island that has the giant insects and crustaceans and Pleistocene creatures and another area with dinosaurs, or two islands one with the dinosaurs and another close by with the rest.
Another might be an island with all giant insects, with the Thri-Keen at the top.
Definitely cavemen & Neanderthals with sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths would be cool.
An island could also be defined as an area with high mountains and no viable passes, or separated by a huge surrounding desert, center of the earth type scenarios, pocket dimensions, etc.
My idea it to design something that I would find fun and challenging to play.
I went through the Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, and Fiend Folio and collected a list of all the dinosaurs, giant animals, insects, etc. That is a long set of lists!
I am sure someone has done all or parts of these ideas. As I did not buy or play in most of the classic modules, I don’t know if TSR or other companies did something.
With the size of the dinosaurs, it would take a large land area to support viable sized groups of each. Random encounter tables would be quite long.
The thing with this is a party would have to use their brains and avoid trouble. Finding and allying themselves with primitive humans who know the best hiding spots and refuges and what parts of the island to avoid.
The challenge could be complicated by needing something the primitive humans prize or worship and are reluctant to part with it. If the party just takes it, they are all on their own. If they do things to gain the trust of the primitives, they might be able to borrow it or if a great enough service just keep it. All kinds of different ideas there.
Throw in some giants here and there and other humanoids and regular monsters to spice it up. Maybe the giants have always been there, but the humanoids and other monsters have washed up on shore, or they are after the same thing the party seeks.
Or the party could just be shipwrecked there in a storm, teleported there by a teleport trap in a dungeon and have to figure out how to get home. Is there another teleporter back? Can they figure out how to just travel home? Do they have a wizard with teleport?
I have too many ideas. I want to use them all, but always leave them wanting more. I know I have the more. I just want to use it all! Am I the only one fighting the temptation to use it all?
This was not too difficult for me. Some of my entries were only a few lines, others were quite long.
I had fun with this and it was a great tool to get content for my blog.
I have already signed up for the April, 2014 A to Z Challenge and have entries either schedules already or most of them in a draft stage. I have a lot of time to get ready for that.
I have also read about other blog challenges and will consider doing them if I think it is something I find worthwhile.
I found one such challenge that I will comment on in another post, but I will not be doing that challenge.
Looking at all the other entries, my attempt was hampered by three things for better quality.
I was under the effects of a confuse spell and thought the deadline for submissions was the same as that for the OSR Superstar contest. I was rushed in my error in the deadline, so I submitted a sub-par map. My only hope of winning is that the winner is picked randomly.
My printer was on the fritz so I could not print it out and work by hand. I have two scanners and multiple means of taking pictures, so that would not have been an issue.
I had trouble getting GIMP to cooperate and do what I wanted, so I went with MS-Paint. I was able to cut and past and rotate some lines, but Paint is not the quickest for that.
I started using the random dungeon generating tables in the 1st edition DMG, but ended up with lots of tunnels and small rooms, so I started just making stuff up. Those tables are weighted in such a way as to require a lot of time and input from a DM to get a workable dungeon.
So I learned a lot from this contest. Don’t get the submission date wrong, and don’t rush is you don’t have time or cooperating computer/printer/equipment to do a good job.
Three times a year, The Escapist encourages gamers to read an RPG book in public; any book from any RPG, as a way of educating the public that RPGs are fun.
The weeks are “during the weeks surrounding March 4th, July 27th, and October 1st (starting on the Sunday on or before, and ending on the Saturday on or after).”
The rationale for these three dates are: “March 4th was designated as GM’s Day in 2008, and was coincidentally the same day that E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away. July 27th is Gygax’s birthday, and October 1st is the birthday of Dave Arneson, the other co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. It is also common for the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week to happen on or close to this week – and RPG books have been banned from some schools and libraries in the past due to many misunderstandings about their content and nature, which is the exact sort of thing that this event is hoping to clear up. ”
For 2014, this means March 2-8; July 27 – August 2; and September 28 – October 4.
As a DM, patience and scope of campaign and session preparation are my biggest weaknesses. I have so many ideas for higher level characters, but I want to have players work their way up to get there.
I have always had trouble with scaling encounters, dungeons and sessions to low level parties.
As DM there are so many things you can do and experience in play.
I agree that there can and should be things that low level characters should stay away from, but if players ignore the famous DM question, “Are you [really] sure you want to do that?” It’s not the DM’s fault if the players make bad choices. That is easy.
The hard part is having low level characters have fun and excitement without everything being instant death.
I designed an area with some simple tombs and the weakest of all creatures for them to go up against, centipedes, the weakest spiders, and such. I even had a couple skeletons. The tombs go back 40 to 100 feet or so with alcoves on both sides every ten or twenty feet. Some have a room at the end, bigger ones have a room in the middle and the end. Those were appropriate encounters.
The temptation to avoid is throwing higher level NPCs at a situation, just to get into it. This is what I did playing with my sons. It was fun and they enjoyed the way I handled it. The problem is, I got into that rut and ended up with another scenario. The boys are having fun, etc. The hard part is for me to have the patience for them to work up to that level.
One solution to this is to get some other players. My oldest is on his own and not available most weekends, and my youngest is back living with his mom. So I can only dream of playing. I have been on Pen and Paper Games for a few years now. I live just far enough away from areas with a large concentration of gamers that I haven’t had much traction. I am hoping to get into an online game for at least a few sessions as a player to learn how it can be done as a substitute for in-person play. I definitely don’t have the patience for a play by post game in chat or email. Video or audio chat of some sort is the way to go.
The other solution to my problem is the concept of challenge ratings from Swords & Wizardry. I am not sure, but I think that came along with D&D 4.0. I missed the whole 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 rules, so I only know the good and bad I have read from others online. What I like about the challenge rating as it exists in S&W Complete, is that it gives you an idea of how to configure sessions, encounters, dungeons, adventures, whatever to fit the level of the party. There can still be a larger challenge rating monster or two so there is a challenge and an incentive to use their brains.
Scope is my other problem. I like the idea of a sandbox, and the campaign world I have been fiddling with for years is like a Western Europe sized sandbox. It is not detailed down to the low level, but I have a lot of the grand concepts and ideas to tie it all together. I want to have more of it “complete” and have worked hard to make myself work on the smaller area where I have players starting for a more reasonable scope for the sandbox. I will still jot down notes of ideas for campaign scale items so I don’t forget them. When I get to reading other RPG blogs, I get wrapped up in them and make notes and copy tables and maps.
It is like I am at an all you can eat buffet and am trying to pile some of everything onto my first plate rather than making multiple, more manageable trips.
I have ideas on my own plus a flood of new ideas from what I read online and elsewhere. It all looks so good, so where to start….
The lack of success in finding players has also made it easy to excuse myself from focusing and making area specific wilderness encounter tables and more low level possibilities. I do have quite a few, some just ideas, but for now, I need to focus on organizing what I have so I can find it when I need it and finding an online game I can join as a player to learn the technical ropes. Running an in person game is easy, it is throwing all the technology into the mix. I work with computers, so I can figure it out, but I would like to participate in how others do it, so I can decide how I want to do it. Then I can make an effort to find players.
