Gamma World Random Character Generators

I had lots of fun with the new D&D Gamma World last night, just creating random mutant characters. Today I found a Gamma World online character generator.

Give it a try. Those characters rock!

For even more options (20 additional origins from Famine in Far-Go and 8 from Legion of Gold) check out the official Gamma World Random Character generator on the Wizards of the Coast website. They call it an Interactive Character Sheet.

And finally a third one: it does not seem to include Famine in Far-Go, but has the Origin Powers listed. That was missing from the other two character generators: Gamma World Random Characters with Power Cards.

I printed loads of random Interactive Character Sheet characters and keep them in my Gamma World box. If a player needs a new character, he or she just pulls out one of them and decides if he wants to keep it. (I also photocopied all the origins, so that players don't have to look up their powers in the rule books during the game.)

Update, May 2011: I found out about another JavaScript character generator for Gamma World 7th edition, or D&D 4E Gamma World, as you can call it as well.

Random adventure generators

Random created adventures seem to solve many of the problems people have with GMing. They are created superfast and instead of preparing stuff that maybe never come up for hours you can fill in the details really needed during the session.

With the only versions you don't even need to roll on a lot of tables.

I found this nifty adventure generators recently. Give them a try!

Random dark future adventures.

Random fantasy adventures.

Bonus: a random Viking generator.

Luftenwelter - A look back

I used to have the following text in my signature on tanelorn.net

Luftenwelter - Savage Worlds Luftpiraten-Fantasy ohne Gebrochene Himmel, aber mit fakedeutschem Namen...

Last Tuesday we finally finished the campaign with its 40th session. While we were playing weekly the first year, the second year we had lost some steam.

Still it was the longest campaign that I participated from the beginning to the end and actually my character Brulus, an alchemist hunchback, was the only one who made it through all 40 sessions.

I have to add though that most sessions were "only" 3 to 4 hours long, while the 50 Fathoms campaign had often 7 hour sessions.

We only used battlemaps and miniatures in the beginning and very end. One player said she could not imagine the scenes in her head, when she was seeing stuff on the table. I luckily don't have that problem so much, but I guess a little bit of it is still there - subconsciously.

What was a little bit annoying was that the GM did not real know the rules and showed no intention in learning them. Therefore he obviously was not able to balance encounters properly or look out for interesting special abilities for the foes. In my opionion D&D4 would have helped him with that.

Nevertheless I had much fun with us being able to mess with the setting. There were many opportunities for character play, the GM was very flexible and I never had the feeling of any railroading going on. Some of the sessions I enjoyed most actually developed seemingly out of the blue. For example a stay in a dwarven city. That actally was very sandboxy and where we only had the one line mission statement to get a certain hammer. It proved that no plot is necessary as long as the GM is fast enough to make stuff up in realtime. :) This kind of sessions seem to give even more space for character based developement of the story.

What was kind of a pity was that many of the strong or important NPCs did not reappear until the 10 minutes epilogue. So it felt there were still some lose ends.

Doctor Who Online Character Generator (and Messageboard)

I just found this amazing Flash online character generator for the Doctor Who RPG AITAS.
I got the link from the as amazing Doctor Who RPG Messageboard.

I also found a handy player handout pdf online.

Time travel galore!

Doctor Who Character: Alternative Time Lord, First Draft

So we created the Time Lord of the coming Doctor Who campaign.

Everything noted down here could change, but we could a good first concept. That pretty much started with the Gadget Card: Sonic Lipstick. That way we started discussing a Robert Smith (Cure singer) like Time Lord.

Here are the stats:

Awareness: 3
Coordination: 3
Ingenuity: 6 (incl. +2 from being a Time Lord)
Presence: 4
Resolve: 4
Strength: 2
[=20 Character Points overall]

Good Traits:
Time Lord (2) includes: Feel the Turn of the Universe, Vortex
Boffin (2)
Photographic Memory (2)
Screamer (1)

Bad Traits:
Code of Conduct (1)
Distinctive (1)
Eccentric (1) (manic-depressive)
[=4 Character Points overall]

Skills:
Fighting: 1
Convince: 3
Subterfudge: 4
Technology: 4
Science: 3
Athletics: 2

[=17 Skill Points; 1 STILL MISSING!]

Gadget: Sonic Lipstick

He was stuck for 20 years in the 1980ies in a time loop.

Personal Goal: Explore and find other Time Lords

We wanted him to have the TARDIS, so we decided to have him swap time machine with the Doctor, as the Doctor needed to have one with working Chameleon Circuits for some time.

(We discussed, but forgot to add Owes Favour and Tecnically Adept as Traits)

Doctor Who Adventure: Using Mythic for adventure creation - an example

I just created another adventure. It involves the PCs coming to a primitive world, where the PCs find a mind controling device that they can use freely. But the device turns those who where mindcontrolled mad after some time...)

Q: Scifi World?
A: Primitive Insanity, You

Q: You=PCs?
A: An Incorrect Assumption about Authority

Q: PCs think they are mind controled?
A: The Exact Opposite of Violence, A Random Passerby

Q: So PC find mind control device?
A: Horrifying Hilarity

Q: The PCs discover a mind control device that turns the victims batshit insane after use for some time.
A: NO

Q: The PCs discover a mind control device that mutates the victims. Maybe mind control only side effect?
A: YES

Q: WHo is the PCs opponent?
A: A Rough Likeness of Grotesqueness, Finding something to do

Q: The villain is a mutated PC?
A: YES

Q: Does the tech look like magic? YES

E: Progress on 'Finding something to do': the Movement of the Physical

Q: The villains looks for a mission? YES

Q: He asks the PCs for a mission? NO

Q: Someone tells him to move huge objects? YES

Q: Does the villains mission giver have bad intentions? YES

Q: Does he want to harm the PCs? EXCEPTIONAL YES

Q: Does he hate them? YES

Q: Does he know them from before? EXCEPTIONAL NO

Q: Has he lost his memory? YES

Q: Is he also time traveller? NO

Q: Is he an important political figure? YES

E: Positive for You: the Oppression of Elements

Q: Are the huge objects ancient pillars of tech? NO

Q: Living pillars? YES

Q: Are the pillars intelligent? NO

Q: Are the pillars intelligent? NO

Q: Does the task giver/ the villain's boss dream of the PCs? NO

Q: Did someone else tell him about them? EXCEPTIONAL NO

Q: So he just hates them when he sees them the first time? YES

Q: Does he show his hate? EXCEPTIONAL NO

Q: Is he a women? NO

The Mythic Gamemaster Emulator

I own the Mythic RPG already for a few years. It is a great way to play solo without a GM. The Gamemaster Emulator takes over the decisions. Most of the time you get a Yes/No answer, but every few rolls, a random event happens, that gives much more detail and new inspiration.

Originally this was a table in a pdf, but recently I found a flash version of the GM Emulator online.

An amazing thread at rpg.net details how to use the GM emulator for world building.

It's especially cool for settings, where you regularly need new worlds - like the Doctor Who RPG.

I just tested it and we created a world, where less than 10 gods exist, but those are banned into weapons and heavily interfere with the life of all mortals. Those gods are now weapons of mass destruction and seemingly can be used by a few chosen (but generally by everyone). These godweapons seem to be missilelike. I imagine them as talking weapon silos. Seems to be a great start!

Roundbased Conflict Resolution

I was reading some 90ies Thunderbolts comics yesterday and issue #2 (the fight with the Wrecking Crew and the sudden final twist, to be exact) gave me the following idea.

Comic books don't have unlimited space for their fight scenes. They need to be resolved in a few pages. So wouldn't the same be handy for fast RPG conflict resolution?

The conflict would have a certain number of rounds that you would decide before hand, depending on the importance of the conflict. Let's say 2 for fighting some minions or 5 for the dramatic final battle.

Each round is resolved either group based - if it is suppossed to be fast, e.g. against minions, or character based, if you want more detail.

So in every round everyone does their action and each round has its outcome. Something along the lines of.

Victory and
Victory
Victory, but
Loss, but
Loss
Loss and

You see where I am going here, especially if you know the new Doctor Who RPG...

The "but" gives an advantage to the losing side? I have to think about that...

Rifts Rant

In this thread someone complained that the early Rifts stuff was serious and the game later on became ridiculous with every crazy comic drawing becoming part of the world, I replied that this is exactly what I am looking for.

And while some early Rifts players moved on to play being elves but seriously, others like me embraced the Heavy Metal cover style and went straight to Synnibarr. :D

The core of roleplaying for me is cooperatively coming up with crazy stuff like our characters' amazon minions merging into a 20' Megazon. Now I would like to have a picture of that. :)

Off the rail: that is my direction. :P

Free RPG Dungeons: Every Day

Ôkay, Free RPG day is over, but there is still much more great free RPG stuff out there on the web than anyone will ever be able to play. Especially free short adventures, dungeons and modules seem to be very handy. Next to the One Page Dungeons, especially useful with D&D and the Savage Worlds One Sheet Adventures, I especially like the 5 Room Dungeons.

They offer a topological drama structure that inspired my own FAWS7 adventure sketching technique. The most interesting of the 5 Room Dungeons really offer a dungeon and organize the rooms in an interesting way. Honestly we were never able to play more than 5 rooms in an average session anyways. Some see the 5

Anyways: Here you find the link to the dozens of 5 Room Dungeons usable for D&D, Savage Worlds or whatever fantasy system you enjoy.

And a short rant to finish this post:
When I was young I assumed a good module or scenario needed to have been written out in at least 64 pages. I hated hook, line and sinker adventure sketches for examples. But later on I realized: only the short stuff is flexible enough to keep all options open for the players and a GM will rarely be able to remember all the details in long adventures anyways. So what write the details for? For the GM to learn it by heart?Or for him to read it to the players? Ough. That always seems super pretentious.
Anyways: in our good session the adventure is only a simple framework that hopefully does not interfere with our characters' motivations and interactions. The characters should be in the spotlight, not the "plot".

Roll Right Under System Alpha Version 0.2

I changed some details of the stuff I have so far. New stuff is bold. Designer notes are in italics.


Stats and Checks

We have the following stats between 5 and 15:

Fighting/Close Combat (=base for Parry (better call it Evasion?)
Courage/Willpower
Smarts
Charisma/Social
Agility Used for Shooting and Throwing
Strength/Body (= base for resistance and cap for maximum melee damage and maxium carried weight)

Designer note: While I started with the stats from The Dark Eye 1, I realized I would need to weighten them in another way instead, because there is no space for stats in RRUS.

You create them by spending 50 points. 10 is an average human and default.

Skill checks are done by rolling a d20. If you roll higher than your stat, your character fails.

The difficulty of a check is decided by a Difficulty Number. If you roll below that number you fail as well. (An example for that is the Defense score of an opponent.)

If you roll 10 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve a great success.

If you roll 15 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve an amazing success.

If you roll 20 and you have a stat of 20, you achieve a legendary success.


Traits Character Focus
Each character starts with one Trait: a Talent Trait, an Origin Trait or an Supernatural Trait. If a Checks falls under a Trait, the player can roll 2 dice (d20) and choose a result her prefers. Traits are not cumulative. You never roll more than 2 dice in a Check. (Only important characters have Traits??)
Supernatural Traits are the exception, because you can not roll without the Trait and with Trait, you can roll only 1 die.

Talent Traits:
Fighting
Shooting
Athletics (Climbing, Swimming, etc.)
Social
Tech

Origin Traits:
Nature
City
Sea/Coast
Nobility/Elite
Caves/Mines

Supernatural Trait:
Magic
Blood Magic
Psionics
Nature Religion
etc

Designer note: The traits are superpowerful, nearly doubling your effectivity (as far as I can calculate), so the game needs a weaker category as well. I renamed Traits in Character Focus, as you will have only one and make Traits something different: little rule modifications. E.g. Ninja: your Damage Roll caps with Dextery, not Strength.
Another option would be to make Traits less general. E.g. not Fighting, but Backstab etc. Generally the second d20 should be granted by lots of dramatic and cooperative situational modifiers.


Attacks

A great success means 2 dice for Damage (and take the better), or hitting d4 additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).

An amazing success means 3 dice for Damage (and take the best), or hitting all additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).


Damage

If someone gets potentially hurt, you also roll a d20. Each source of Damage has Damage Rating between 1 and 20. If the result of the roll is higher than this stat, no damage is done, but the enemy is Shaken.

If the result is the same or below (but not the same or below the Resistance, see next paragraph), it causes a wound. If the result is 10 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 2 wounds. If the result is 15 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 3 wounds. If the result is 20, but still not higher than the Damage Roll, it causes an instant kill.

The Resistance of the victim is used as Difficulty Number for the Damage Roll. That means that Damage Rolls that do not top the Resistance are just shrugged off and cause no effect.
(Armor is part of Resistance.)

Abel Wellington - Primetime Adventures Character from Rockheart

Trait: Excentric artist

Contact: Creepy big city wife Agnes

Contact: Local family renown

Issue: Wasting money like there is no tomorrow

Private Set: Putting up his film/photo equipment/ canvas/ installation equipment and taking over a place with it.

Nemesis: Local cousin Warren Walker who was like a son to Abel's father Richard and helped run the Heartrock while Abel was doing nothing of value in the Big City

Abel is a tall, slim man in his mid-30ies. His hair - kept in a short ponytail - already turns grey, but his short cut beard is still all dark brown. He looks really young for a guy turning grey, especially because he hides his eyes behind dark glasses most of the time.

Abel wears a new and expensive looking suit.

Paad Ulhof - Female Human Warlord from Karrnath

Backstory

Paad comes from a family out of the lower nobility in Karrnath. She studied at the famous Rekkenmark Academy from a young ago to join the ranks of what she was told to be the finest warriors of the Khorvaire. During the later years of the Last War the academy had to close. (I don't have a year for that event I hope it goes okay.) Paad, who was still a teenager, had to continue her training to become a warlord at the damaged and wartorn castle of her parents.

When the War finally ended, she was 17 years old and still to young to go to war. At least her parents did not let her sign up. While she somehow understands that fact - her older brother died on the battle field in the Mourning, she blames her parents for being selfish. Wouldn't real patriots be willing to sacrifice their child for the greater good and the glory of Karrnath?

When she was finally old enough to fight the war was over and her education seemed to be worth little in the bled white kingdom. Sure, Paad could have taken a position on her parents' land as marshall or leader of the guards, but she prefered to leave Karrnath as mercenary.

She hopes to find the reason how it was possible for the Karrnath not to win the Last War. She is still very convinced that there must have been a hidden act of treachery within the kingdom - a theory that is pretty wide spread among Karrn nobles and soldiers. She is for example split between cheering for King Kaius III. as righteous leader and seeing him as the one that sold Karrnath under its value by the peace treaty.

Personality

While Paad is for sure still somewhat chauvinistic and naive, the last 2 years have opened her mind for different cultures and ways of life. She is convinced that the Karrns have the highest culture in Khorvaire, but only by understanding and sometimes adopting to the mentality of other people, she can hope to solve the ultimate mystery how Karrnath could loose the war.

Still it's hard for her to hide her pride and her natural talent for leading. She appears quite stubborn sometimes, until she has a moment to cool off and to decide to use what she calls diplomacy.

Physical Characteristics:

Paad is an athletic woman with light brown hair. She normally wears impressive Screaming Scale Armor, covered in ornate patterns of screaming faces, but under most circumstances does not show Karrn insignias while working as mercenary.

Roll Right Under System Alpha Version 0.1

This is a follow up from the last blogpost. In the meantime, I created an alpha version from the sketch for a simple not experimental RPG system.


Stats and Checks

We have 5 stats between 5 and 15:

Courage
Smarts
Charisma
Agility
Strength

You create them by spending 50 points. 10 is an average human and default.

Skill checks are done by rolling a d20. If you roll higher than your stat, your character fails.

The difficulty of a check is decided by a Difficulty Number. If you roll below that number you fail as well. (An example for that is the Defense score of an opponent.)

If you roll 10 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve a great success.

If you roll 15 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve an amazing success.

If you roll 20 and you have a stat of 20, you achieve a legendary success.


Traits

Each character starts with one Traits: a Talent Trait, an Origin Trait or an Supernatural Trait. If a Checks falls under a Trait, the player can roll 2 dice (d20) and choose a result her prefers. Traits are not cumulative. You never roll more than 2 dice in a Check. (Only important characters have Traits??)
Supernatural Traits are the exception, because you can not roll without the Trait and with Trait, you can roll only 1 die.

Talent Traits:
Fighting
Shooting
Athletics (Climbing, Swimming, etc.)
Social
Tech

Origin Traits:
Nature
City
Sea/Coast
Nobility/Elite
Caves/Mines

Supernatural Trait:
Magic
Blood Magic
Psionics
Nature Religion
etc

Attacks

A great success means 2 dice for Damage (and take the better), or hitting d4 additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).

An amazing success means 3 dice for Damage (and take the best), or hitting all additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).


Damage

If someone gets potentially hurt, you also roll a d20. Each source of Damage has Damage Rating between 1 and 20. If the result of the roll is higher than this stat, no damage is done, but the enemy is Shaken.

If the result is the same or below (but not the same or below the Resistance, see next paragraph), it causes a wound. If the result is 10 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 2 wounds. If the result is 15 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 3 wounds. If the result is 20, but still not higher than the Damage Roll, it causes an instant kill.

The Resistance of the victim is used as Difficulty Number for the Damage Roll. That means that Damage Rolls that do not top the Resistance are just shrugged off and cause no effect.
(Armor is part of Resistance.)

A simple RPG system - Another Sketch: Roll Right Under System

I was thinking about using a simple RPG system for a potential game of Nightspawn/Nightbane. Generally you could use it for everything anyways.

So the game would be based on 1st edition The Dark Eye/DSA (a simple d20 roll under system with 5 stats), but there would be one big difference:

Instead of an active parry or modifiers to make ability rolls harder, difficulty would be expressed, by a a value that you are not allowed to roll under.

So if an opponent has a Parry of 4 in this system, you only hit him if you roll above 4, but below your attack value (e.g. 10).

But to make things more interesting, the higher you roll (but not above your value!), the better the result is. Therefore someone with a really high ability can get special successes. (This aspect could be similar to the the Dragon Age system, but I did not read this one yet.)

If you know Unkown Armies, you will notice certain similarities.

The system would also include Tricks (based on any stat/ability), like Savage World does. This could also be influenced by page 42 of the D&D4 DM Guide.

(Something else I like a lot are aspects from FATE, but I am not sure, if they fit this system or make it too complex.)

Talislanta is free! What could we play?

I was looking for an old fashioned and simple system recently and stumbled upon Talislanta.
I own the 2nd Edition of thie classic non-EDO fantasy setting, but my books are a few 1000 kilometres away.

So I was happy to be able to download most of the pdfs for the system.

Here you find the free RPG books for Talislanta.

What means "non-EDO"? EDO=Elves,Dwarves,Orcs? Talislanta breaks out of the Lord of the Rings mold and is not influenced by old nothern European myths, but much more by Jack Vance and H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

But what adventure should you play in such a huge setting?

I would let the players only chose between archetypes from the Seven Kingdoms and maybe the Wilderlands. That is enough choices. And I would set the adventures as well in this region.

Probably I would start in the near the realm of the Gnomekin, as some of the Seven Kingdoms are a little bit too cute. And for exactly that reason I would create an adventure where someone wants to create a Civil War in this nice union of races. An intrique that should split this bright corner of Talislanta apart.

Some interesting seeds:

• The Muses don't have a real ruler, but one is assigned randomly every month. What if a player character Muse becomes ruler, or if an "evil" (or blackmailed) Muse takes reign.

• The bird people (blue and green) seem to be quite split, it is a good point to start a war.

• The Cymril people seem to quite arrogant. It would also be easy to seed suspicion among the other races.

Now combine this 3 ideas through one villain and let the players run wild and create even more of a mess. Then villain should even empower the PCs to behave like PCs do. What a fun mess.

Synnibarr Volcano Island One Shot as FAWS7 Write Up

Here is another FAWS7 write up:

Village of Winterhaven: INTERACTION: Fishermen say a hooded stranger named Dusk hung out with mayor and tell that the mayor disappeared
"The Lazermead" (Village Bar): INTERACTION: Simera, the Talking Racoon hunter, hangs out here tells that her children are missing
Mayor's mansion: ACTION: find piece from Dusk (he was a robot!) and fight with Poltergeist => fight smashes secret entrance to casino
Secret Casino: ACTION: the lazer roulette forces them in a game and tells about the mayor and that he was hanging out with the Gremlin and having debts. Access to volcano tunnels.
Volcano Tunnels: ACTION: rising lava and Batmen
Pirate Harbor: ACTION: Tenjohussen in whale, too many too confront diretly, have mayor as prisoner with them
Jungle: ACTION: flying deer and Rock Weird (that catapults PCs up to Gremlin Cloud if they are late) (WANDERING OFF SPACE, random encounters)
Vulcano Tip: INTERACTION: hard to spot volcano tunnels from inside funnel, but dissappearing flying deer gives hint
Gremlins Cloud: ACTION: Gremling attacks anyone entering his cloud on sight

TWIST 1: the contact person can't be found
TWIST 2: there is a secret entrance to volcano from Mayor's house
TWIST 3: the Tenjohussen pirates prepare to attack the village for slaves

Villain: Gremlin: he is behind the mayor's betrayal of his people, because he wants to get payed back his gaming debts

McGuffin: find their contact person Dusk in village

PPP Hospital as FAWS7 write up

This is my Plüsch, Power & Plunder one shot Hospital redone in Fast Adventure Writing Structure.

Mini locations:

Hospital room of PC's kid: ACTION: minions attack; Plush robot Dusk and Smurfette as victims
Hallway: ACTION: nurses (stompers) can spot them, random encounter table
Other kids' rooms: INTERACTION: mini stompers who can't leave bed, other victim plushes and their addiction
Toy room: INTERACTION: cat in cage
Nurse kitchen: ACTION: Weapons without getting caught by nurses; also KEY for laundry
Above the steerages: ACTION: Thing plush with KEY for laundry elevator
Laundry elevator: ACTION: Monster spider plush Shelob
Laundry room/basement: INTERACTION: addict Dusk and Smurfette reappear; Plush gamepad The Brain creates drugs
Operating room: INTERACTION: Prophet plush and more equipment
Boiler room: ACTION: evil nerd plush: Pin and his 3 Martial Arts Plush Pandas
Garden: ACTION: super dangerous cats in garden/woods (WANDER OFF AREA)

TWIST 1: kids die one after the other
TWIST 2: victim plushs are drug addicted traitors
TWIST 3: minions unleash the cat
TWIST evil plush want to kill kid of PCs to keep them in hospital forever

VILLAIN: The Pin controls minions and victims by being in charge of drug cartel. Wants new kids regularly to have more people to control.

McGuffin: Survival. Getting out of this Plush hell.

The Wails of Planet Norr

A created this adventure following my guidelines in Fast Adventure Writing Structure. Actually if you read the document, you will see it is the example there.

Just to remember here are the steps again:

1. Have a one line idea or title
2. Create 6 to 8 mini locations with hooks
3. Decide if the single locations are about ACTION or INTERACTION, or something else
4. Adding a TWIST or three
5. A villain
6. The McGuffin
7. Spaces for wandering off

Don't forget that the notes are only for yourself. So no need to be self explaining!


Mini locations:

1. Only village of human settlers: INTERACTION: The PCs land here. They meet a drunk mechanics woman who wants to start a fight and talks something about her lover killing himself in the icy fjord. She has it on video. 300 inhabitants
2. The administrators house: INTERACTION: The administrator personally introduces them to job. Tells them how boring it is here and plays the decadent, incompetent guy.
3. The bar: ACTION: Central hang out place for all the dirty miners. PCs meet some people with symbiont/ alien here. Idiots want to bully the PCs.
4. Cliff in icy fjord: ACTION: After some wandering, willpower tests near cliff. Weak ones jump off.
5. Underwater village of "aliens": INTERACTION: Symbiontes all on their own. Look like bat like coats. Give psionic powers. The suicidal player character hang themselves up as well. Different layers of cocoons.
6. The cold oceans: ACTION: storm, tentacle whale monsters (WANDERING OFF AREA)
7. The "oil" plattform: ACTION: a crazy scientist, tells the PCs that the oil won here is not worth anything, that he lost all his money in speculation here. Then they are attacked by "malfunctioning" mining robots. (WANDERING OFF AREAD)

TWIST 1: The aliens are actually the suicidal humans.
TWIST 2: The administrator knows about Twist 1, but does not tell anyone.
TWIST 3: Actually the aliens are the resource the administration is really interested in. The mining is only an excuse to attract people and turn them into aliens.

VILLAIN: The administrator. He wants cover up any evidence and uses miners and robots to get the PCs out of the way.

McGuffin: Superpaid job and psionic symbiontes.

Fast Adventure Writing Structure

I came up with a new simple way of writing adventures in a few minutes. I have to admit, I did not test it yet, but it seems that this way has a lot of potential. I am only GMing sporadically, but one of my biggest problems is to guess how much or how little the players will have time to explore in a session.

This blogpost is not about writing campaigns, but preferably adventures that can be run in one session.

I have to admit I never run an too short adventure. Normally I am so euphoric that I don't stop in time. Anyways: this is the concept I came up with:

1. Have a one line idea or title

Obviously you need to have something to start with. If you don't now anything, a random article from Wikipedia can be really inspiring.

Example: For a scifi game I need a new adventure. I pick a random wikipedia article and get the county of Norrland, some 17th century Swedish place.

2. Create 6 to 8 mini locations with hooks

The next step is to imagine a handfull sceneries that could be cool for the player characters to have something happen at. Obviously there will be happen more, if certain people or creature are there as well. Don't worry about what the characters will do and the consequences, just imagine what cool things anyone could do there.

Example: Somehow the county lets me think of meadows, seas and - sorry for the cliché - Vikings. But this is a Science Fiction game, so I have to twist things a little bit. I come up with the following:

Icy fjord on frozen planet. It's the ultra short summer. Atmosphere of loneliness. I ask myself: what can characters interact here with? Interact with loneliness? How about a some whispering that turns people suicidal?

Village near the seaside with human settlers. Ok, humans alone are a little bit cliché as well. So how about them having a symbiotic relationship to some strange aliens? So they coexist in the city.

This makes me think of trolls and vulcanos. Maybe I will boost the Icelandic vibe, because it seems mysterious. If the aliens play a role, they should also have a location: I give them their own pack village near a geysir.

But why did the humans land here and live by the water? Probably there is something like an oil platform to access some superspecial underwater resource.

(I make the example a little bit shorter, because this blogpost should be mainly about the structure.)

3. Decide if the single locations are about ACTION or INTERACTION, or something else

Sure, you don't want to force your players to deal with any situation in a certain way, but you can think beforehand what outcome is most likely. For a normal party you want a good mix of action scenes and "roleplaying" opportunities.

You also want to think about a potential way the characters could solve the problem. Obviously if the come up with another solution, that is even better. Remember to never say "No!", but "Yes, but..." later on in the game. I mark probable follow up scenes with "=>".

And it is great if what happens connects one location to another.

Example: I go through the locations sketched out before and think what will be going on.

The whispering of suicide is a life threatening situation. So it will probably be an ACTION scene. But how to deal with such an abstract problem? I guess it takes willpower to resist and because I don't want a total party wipe out, if probably is about making some skill checks until only 1 or 2 characters are up. At that moment something you can touch should appear. Probably the local aliens. They take the characters to their village. I think about it again and realize that it makes sense to make the suicides "go somewhere", because we want the impact of the situation without killing the characters. How about a cliff near the sea, where they jump down?
How about making the village of the aliens exactly there? It could be that jumping down there does not kill, but instead takes you to the aliens place. Maybe you are transformed in the process? What if the aliens are not real aliens, but transformed humans? Sounds pretty cool. I will adjust the other locations to follow up this idea?

The human village is about INTERACTION. That seems pretty clear. Sure, you could make it action, just to be unconventional, but this time, we decide against it. Still: we don't know whom to interact with exactly. Who is the person the players will meet? It should carry the atmosphere of the location. So how about a pretty ordinary fishergirl? We want to connect that to the suicide cliff location. So maybe she is drunk on the street, because she just lost a loved one?
Obviously the village has more to offer, so we split off another location: the house of the local administration. Also about INTERACTION and the player characters will encounter the local administrator, a guy who does not want to stay too long on this backwood planet. He is not too important so we are happy with a cliché bureaucrat. What does he want? He wants the player characters to leave.

The pack village near the geysir has changed already to an underwater place under the cliff. For whatever reason, I imagine them in there like bats hanging from a cave - just upside down and under water. ACTION or INTERACTION? That should be pretty flexible. Still: if the players get that the aliens are actually the suicide humans, they maybe won't kill them right away. ;) So a hint would be good. And why aren't they transformed themselves? Probably it takes some time.

4. Adding a TWIST or three

Everyone likes surprises, so things should always turn out different than they look in the beginning. Probably you already got a few just by thinking about locations and interactions. It is good to have a second or even third twist, just in case the player characters see through it very fast and the game turns out too short. Most of the time you won't need the third twist. Just remember that we plan one session adventure here.

Example: That is so obivious here.

TWIST 1: The aliens are actually suicidal humans.
TWIST 2: (We also want to base it on something we established already. So we look trough our notes.) The administrator knows about Twist 1, but does not tell anyone.
TWIST 3: (We go even further with the idea from Twist 2.) Actually the aliens are the resource the government/corporation is really interested in. The mining is only an excuse to attract people and turn them into aliens.

5. A villain

By this time it will often be clear, who is the opponent of the player characters. You don't need to twist it even further. But maybe you make someone not too important yet, the real villain, by giving him the agenda.

Example: The administrator would be a great villain here. Makes sense. He is some evil mastermind after all. But because we have seen this so often already, we decide that actually the nature of the planet is much bigger and more dangerous than his cookie cutter plan. But how to make a cool showdown with a planet? We want to blow things up in the end! After all the we want a great final. A Cthulhu like entity would be boring as well. An earthquake would be a fun end, we remember that, but the administrator is still the best villain. After all we want to INTERACT with him - or at least kill him.

6. The McGuffin

We still need a reason why the player characters go through all of this. There has to be a reason for them - something to win. This is especially important in a location based adventure, because you can't just push them along the plot. Often it makes sense to use the motivations of specific charcters as reason, but never underestimate the motivational power of filthy lucre or powerful items. Working since 1974. :)

Example: The administration looks for workforce, so it seems pretty simple to get them here. No reason not to offer the player characters a huge ammount of money and point to the cool stuff they will be able to afford with it. The administration is pretty sure, it does not need to pay anyways in the end. And because PCs are rarely miners, it would make sense to offer them a contractor's job in security. A good reason to send them to the suicide plains. Maybe hook them up with a NPC they like from earlier adventures: the NPC gets a job there and because of a favor he is owing them, he gets them this excuse of a well paid job. It's only 1 week anyways...


7. Space for wandering off

It is good to give the players some freedom. A place, that is not directly connected to the bigger scheme. If any locations are left over, just use those. And if you have the feeling that you could improve the atmosphere of the whole adventures by adding a place or two, add them now. Remember: something should happen everywhere! But whatever is going on here should be simple and work on itself.

Example: The ocean and the "oil" platform are not really important to the plot, but they are great to add to the feeling of solitude. Still we want something to happen there. So how about an attack of sea monsters and a rowdy bar with suicidal sailor man on the plattform?

You see: just by going through a few basic ideas in a structured manner a couple of times, I have a lot of stuff to run with. Just look at same ideas over and over and connect them. Because you think the scenes in locations and not in plot, the players have a lot of freedom. And best: you only need the write down a few lines and everything should work from there.

The have a look at the whole write up, read this post: The Wails of Planet Norr


And to keep it extrasimple, just copy and paste the 7 steps in your document:
1. Have a one line idea or title
2. Create 6 to 8 mini locations with hooks
3. Decide if the single locations are about ACTION or INTERACTION, or something else
4. Adding a TWIST or three
5. A villain
6. The McGuffin
7. Spaces for wandering off

Savage Worlds RPG Dice Roller Software

You want to use all the funky dice in Savage Worlds like d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12? And obviously the Wild Die should be included?

My Viennese GM Flanf has an amazing program on his homepage. He did it himself.

All your stated characters from Savage Worlds can finally be played much faster. But obviously the program also rolls d20 and d100. And there is even card support. So the program can simulate a Poker Deck.

Here you find Flanf's Dice Roller!

You will find a more detailed description on his page.

The Autumn Silence

November and December I did not post a lot. This had mainly to do with the fact, that I got involved in 2 Google Wave RPGs:

an English language D&D4 Ebberon adventure where I participate as a player
and a
German language Primetime Adventures pilot called "Spacemarines!". I am directing the latter.

Both games are still running at the moment at a comfortable pace, although they slowed down a little bit.

So I have more time for the blog again. :)

In case you want to participate or just want a Wave invitation, just leave a comment here.

Doctor Who RPG: Adventures in Time and Space - Campaign Planning

Actually I spent the last month collecting ideas for a Doctor Who campaign for Cubicle 7's new game. For whatever reason I mad notes mostly in my iPod touch or on Evernote on my Android phone.
I guess this has to do with the fact that I think about it before going to bed or when waking up. Maybe it is also about the fact that I have much better portable devices for notes nowadays.
Anyways: my notes are pretty incoherent at the moment and in a mix of German and English.

Still I created a new way of sketching adventures and I hope that it works out fine.
I will soon post a first sample adventure.

The basic idea for the campaign is the following:
The player characters are from all over time and space (there has been no character creation yet). The find their way into a broken TARDIS. Inside the dark time capsule they meet the other PCs and a seemingly dead old woman in a techno coffin. The old woman sometimes talks a little bit and explains that the TARDIS was nearly destroyed and its pilot, the Doctor Who, has been thrown out in the Vortex by an unknown opponent and is lost in time and space.

The only way to repair the TARDIS and make her route controllable again is by letting her drift along the Doctor's fall and collect the parts he has lost. This cosmic hint hunt can only be done by free moving people and as soon as the TARDIS has landed somewhere, the PCs have to leave the time capsule with a provided cronon measuring device, and get 3 readings from different points at least 400 meters apart from each other and with 15 minutes between them. With this readings it is possible to measure the source of the cronons - most probably one of the items the Doctor lost - and retrieve them. The item will allow the TARDIS to travel to the next spacetime location, until the Doctor has been found.

Obviously each of the places is "interesting" and there will be an adventure before the item is returned to the TARDIS.

I have a millions of ideas for adventures. Basically you can go through your whole RPG collection and turn every scenario you ever wanted to play in an episode, but it will also depend on what characters the players choose.

The 1 items are:
1. Psychic Paper
2. Coat
3. Sonic Screwdriver
4. Converse Shoes

(As you can see it is about the 10th Doctor.)

Free dungeon map

Here you can find a free dungeon map.
It is a pity that the description is in German.

Thanks to the LARP dungeon masters Nik and Claudia!

My RPG Calendar 2010

January
21st Luftenwelter 34: Valandir the Great (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)
26th Nyrondria 24: Ethic wants the Stone! (Tom;Dan,Jor,Man,Ser)

February
7th Luftenwelter 35: Hertie's Awakening and Mutter's Demise (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)
16th Luftenwelter 36: Return of the Aegis at the jelly lake (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)

March
-

April
15th Luftenwelter 37: Cave of the Gem / Vankaut Falling? (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)

May
-

June
16th Nyrondria 25: The Final Battle against Sophilis (Tom;Dan,Jor,Man,Ser)
21st Luftenwelter 38: Memories of Destiny in the Gem Sanctum (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)
28th Luftenwelter 39: Out of the box: Versus Croc and Beligor (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)

July
-

August
10th Luftenwelter 40: The Final Battle against Theladios and Baal (Ser;Dan,Jor,Jea)
24th Doctor Who 1: Starlight Casino (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)
30th Doctor Who 2: In the Realm of the Gardener (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)

September
7th Doctor Who 3: The Experiments of the Gardener (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)
14th Doctor Who 4: The Time Flower (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)
21st Doctor Who 5: Maggots without Master (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)
27th Doctor Who 6: Oblivion Station (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)

October
19th Doctor Who 7: The captive lizard (Jor;Dan,Hel)
28th Doctor Who 8: At the end of the Doctor (Jor;Dan,Hel)

November
26th Doctor Who 9: 10.000 Time Lord Souls (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)

December
2nd Doctor Who 10: Facing the Looper (Jor;Dan,Hel,Jea)

My RPG Calendar 2011
My RPG Calendar 2009
My RPG Calendar 2008

Savage Worlds Plush Power & Plunder: Pregenerated Characters

In case that we finally play the Hospital adventure I posted in this blog, I wanted to create some pregens. The players want stuffed animals as characters, that's clear. What is not clear is what specializations or niches the characters are going to have. So I came up with the following ideas - and will stat them up here:

Big Teddy - Strongmen with little Dexterity. Defender.
Skillmonkey - Has lots of non combat ability. Kind of a nerd. Healer as well?
Faceman - specialized in Charisma and persuasion.
Flitzer - Not much of a fighter, but very mobile. Less combat focus.
Woom Uahrtist - A martial artist. Striker.
Superteddy - A charcter specialized in the skills that are unusal, like bouncing, detachable eye, bouncing etc.
Trenchcoat Teddy - A weapon specialist.

I think a wizard would be too much for a one shot. Spells in the original system are not very combat focused and so it would be a bad fit for Savage Worlds anyways.
A beastmaster character would be an option, but could short circuit the big challenge of the one shot: the cat, so I won't make one either.