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.)