Worldbuilding 101: The Three Zones

So you feel ready to build your world but you don't know where to start. Suddenly the enormity of your task dawns on you and you panic! Do I have to script out every town and city, their populace, points of interest, and ruling bodies? Do I need to know how the toilets flush? And so you searched online for assistance. So did I.

Sadly I gleaned very little about a process for actually building a world. It all felt like that old cartoon joke:

I've made a few observations on the subject that might assist you in this endeavor. First, we will zoom out to view your entire blank world. What is your world? It's the playground for your players. But we need to know how they want to play. How do we find out? Well, there are typically three playground zones in any setting. They are:

1. Civilization: This zone is all about the inner cities, the core worlds, mega-city 1. If your players want adventures in the city, they are telling you they want a game about intrigue. The villain's are primarily other people. The heroes must navigate their way through political pressure, corruption, all while making the right allies to help keep them alive. Cyberpunk is exclusively a civilization game. 
2. The Fringe: The fringe is where civilization has a tentative hold over the wilderness. It's a popular starting location as it offers both intrigue and exploration storylines. It's also a quick hop back into a city if the heroes want, or into the wilderness. Fringe stories involve societal breakdowns like raiders, rising warlords, and corruption but also include stories about natural disasters, plagues, pestilence, rampaging creatures, and forbidden things lurking in the shadows. Players will often be hired to deal with local problems since on the fringe, there aren't a lot of peace-keepers. Almost the entirety of the original Star Wars trilogy occurred in the fringe of the Empire. We only ever saw one civilized world... briefly, Alderaan.
3. The Wild: If your players choose to play in the wild, they are telling you they want survival to be important. In the wild, there is no resupply or comfy taverns. In the wild, anything strange can and should happen. The players are out here to explore. The locations should be awe inspiring. The threats should be unique and terrifying. This is the home of lost civilizations, ruined tombs, and undiscovered countries. Give it to them.

D&D tends to place its lost tombs conveniently in the fringe so that adventurers can investigate a sunken temple at noon and be back at the pub by nightfall for fried chicken. Well the fringe is a good place for it but might I suggest treating the search for the sunken temple as a transition between the fringe and the wild? You'll get more adventures out of it and survival without support will ratchet up the suspense.

So now that you know the three zones, what do you do with them?

If the players choose to play in civilization, then you know you need to pour your efforts into a city. That's just ONE city. Where do I put it on the map? It doesn't matter. There ought to be plenty of adventure there and it doesn't sound like your players are in the mood for cross-country travel.

If the player's choose the fringe, then you know you need a town. Your players may not like the town you have made but they won't know that until after the first adventure. Once you have an idea for a town, come up with three things that are troubling the town: Frequent orc raids, a mysterious blight on the crops, and a band of thieves are harassing the townsfolk. Your players will choose to tackle one of these issues, and if they hate the town by the end of the adventure they can go to a different town. In which case make a town more to their liking and come up with three things that are troubling the new town: Well those orc raiders are striking here as well, children are suffering from a strange "sleeping sickness", and there's rumor of a sunken temple in the nearby swamp. Build the towns as they are needed.

What if the heroes choose the wild? Then build an amazing location that holds a terrible secret, don't forget the keeper(s) of that secret. Also focus on how the heroes are able to survive the wilderness trek. What problems might they face? What random creatures might they encounter? Each adventure the heroes should: experience an amazing locale, fight something they've never encountered before, and learn a secret that the forgotten place holds. Here's an example: My heroes are trekking in the wilderness, survivors of a shipwreck, cast away on an unexplored shore. They strive to survive the wilderness when they come across an inland grotto decorated with the remains of torn-apart ships. What are they doing this far inland? The water in the grotto links to the ocean and the grotto is the lair of a kraken! The same kraken that destroyed the heroes' ship! That's not all. A local tribe of beast-men worship the kraken and view the pillaged vessels as gifts. As far as they are concerned, the heroes have violated their holy ground.

Index Card RPG Master Edition!

 In recent months I have been gravitating toward more rules lite RPGs. Partially because of how hard it is to get new players to understand the complexities of RPGs, and partly because I have found them too limiting. Then I discovered RUNEHAMMER. I suggest you go check him out.

Hankerin has stepped away from the crunch talk of D&D to talk about the philosophy behind it all. It was all stuff I understood in the early days of the hobby but lost as new RPG systems wrote rules for everything under the sun.

The truth is, you don't need that many rules. Here's what you need - 

• Who is the Character?
• What is the Character good at?
• How do we resolves tasks?
• What happens when the heroes do something that makes the task harder or easier?
• How long should the encounter last? (See my post about Hit Points are Timers)

RPG's are actually about time: Can you do X before Y? Can you defeat the Dragon before it defeats you?  Suspense is also about time as well, and ICRPG introduces the idea of TIMERS to put the pressure on. Now it's "Can you pick the lock before the Boulder smashes into the party". And fact that the timer is visible to all players? No, it isn't realistic but it does generate suspense! In the Story-verse, suspense is worth more than realism. In fact, anything cool is worth more than realism, right CSI? Zoom and enhance!

This blog is now going to extol ICRPG. It's a fantastic rules-lite system that has enough depth to play a campaign and enough freedom to do anything you want. ICRPG is a system of simple suggestions. Yes, you may have to do a little work to get ICRPG to do what you want but believe me when I say it will only be a little.

Stay tuned as I gush over ICRPG the way Kami-Kun gushes over her Senpai. I don't know what that means. My daughter said it would help me connect with a broader audience.

Hit Points are Timers

I've played a variety of RPGs over my lifetime. Many of them have substituted Wound levels for Hit Points, such as Savage Worlds and WEG's Stars Wars. As a system, I don't mind them and they seem more realistic than Hit Points. There is already a huge RPG philosophical debate over what Hit Points actually are. Are they a measure of health and blood loss? Are they a measure of luck and combat prowess?

My friends... they are TIMERS. That is all they have ever truly been. If a 4 heroes do X damage per round, my creature needs Y Hit points to survive long enough to do its cool abilities. If you want an encounter to last longer, give the villain more Hit Points. If the players change the timer speed by doing more damage in a round, BRAVO!

Well that's definitely an argument against Hit Points, right? If we know it's a meta-measurement, we should stick with the realistic Wound systems?

Not exactly. One of the things I've found with Wound systems is a lack of suspense. Often times a hero or villain can be taken down in one hit (realistic), but that eases tension imho. The player accepts the possibilities of their character being in one of three states: Fine, Wounded, or KO'd. If fine, keep attacking. If wounded, keep attacking. If KO'd, kick back and wait until you revive.

But with Hit Points, the results are more nuanced and random. You might be hit for a point of damage or you might be slammed leaving only one hit point. As a result, there is greater range of dread. Hit Points build suspense because it is a timer that can move a little or a lot, but still leave you alive long enough to worry how you'll be next round. You hope you might only take 1 Hit Point of Damage while you scurry for safety.

You know, the older I get, the more I realize that a game will always be abstract, never realistic. And that my players want "Movie-verse" reality, and that we are so well versed in that reality they we don't necessarily need complicated rules to emulate that. We can just use the Rule of Cool (That's cool so yeah, you can try it), and all be accepting of the ruling, and we remember that in an RPG, everyone is supposed to win.

Coronavirus Craft Week 01a - Gamer Box Done!

And here it is!

Coronavirus Craft Week 01 - Gamer Box

So I've been watching a lot of Adam Savage's One Day Builds, feeling the week long cabin fever setting in. So I decided to treat myself to a gamer box. My stepdaughter donated the box. It was one of these.

This is what I wanted it to hold:

Full set of Jumbo Koplow Dice

Dice rolling tray

Clay poker chip bennies

Generic villain tokens of medium, large, and huge sized.

Savage Worlds and D&D GM screens

A blank Paizo Flipmat

Pencils and wet erase pens

5 minis

2 decks of playing cards

Water spray bottle

So firstly, the box was well used and beat up, and all the dividers for the top tray were missing. So after I disassembled the box, I sanded it down to strip the previous stain and get rid of the dings. Then I chopped the bottom tray's dividers down to 1 1/2 inches high. I also cut and glued in some more dividers. I did the same with the top tray. The top tray should hold cards, bennies, dice, and the big section is the dice tray. So I can pull out just the top tray to use for most games. I made sure there was a long section in the bottom tray that would hold some pluck foam and have spaces for five of my character minis.

Next I added so,e rails into the lid as spacers, cut a board with a thumb hole to fit in the lid, and I will put magnets into the rails and board to create a pocket in the lid for the GMs screens (once Ace opens so I can get the right sized drill bit). Then I stained the wood with Kona, and lined it with green felt.

The white ribbon in the left tray is to help get the poker chips out.

And finally, I created a stencil with my  Cricut Maker and painted my name in gold letters.

Stay safe out there!

Musings on the New SWADE

Yup, I'm still pouring over the rules but I have noticed a couple of changes I will be making in my home game.

EXPERIENCE

I'm just going to leave the old experience points rules in. It's not that the idea of the GM deciding when heroes level is bad. It's fine, if you have a regular game or granting a new level after every game session.

I'm a gamer of the older variety so running a continual story is difficult as is getting player schedules to match up. So it's hard for me to remember how long it has been since the heroes leveled up. Did I decide they earned half a level last time, or was that the game before (4 weeks ago)? If only there were a way to have my players write down how close to the next level they are.

Oh...yeah.

WEALTH

I used to be really bugged about coming up with a wealth system that bypassed the bean-counting. Turns out, you don't need a system for everything. Common sense works better as an abstract.

No rolls. If it sounds like something your character's wealth could afford, you can buy it. If it's expensive or hard to get, then it's time for some role-play. Nothing is added to the game by telling a player "no, you can't rent a car". If they make a huge payment that pushes their finances, I will just rule that they are tapped out for the rest of the adventure.

CHASES

The new chase rules are remarkably like a cleaner version of the SWEX chase rules, but I don't like the second deck of cards. Instead, I'll print out a 1x10 grid for chases and a 8x8 grid for dogfights, like these:

I printed 4 of these for a game board.

 I use the action card suits dealt to indicate complications just like in SWEX. Other than that, I use the maneuvers from SWADE.

THE THINGS I LIKE

Skill Changes: I was iffy on these, even working out my own skill list. After a while, SWADE's list grey on me. My proposed changes didn't really outweigh the confusion I would have to suffer with new players who read the book but were unfamiliar to my house rules.

The New Statuses: This does streamline things.

The New Creature Size/Wounds chart: I like that larger creatures gain extra wounds, but I still think that beyond a certain size, a creature has natural heavy armor. Just as a swarm of mosquitoes can't sting a human to death (unless you count poison effects), pistols and rifles aren't going to do anything but annoy whales and dragons. So Huge or larger creatures in my games will have natural Heavy armor. Of course, called shots to the eyes and other vulnerable areas will bypass armor.

An Issue of Tone...

I've been silent for a while. Part of it is chaotic home life. Part of it is I am still developing Starpunk, now for SWADE. I'm having difficulty gauging how silly I want to make it (leading me to create the meme above.

I'm leaning somewhere between Star Wars Holiday Special and Lilo and Stitch. Honestly, the games usually end up like Stitch, but I have had a few players that want something more "serious". When I do, they still end up playing Stitch.

I'm mulling over publishing Starpunk. I'll need to scrub it. I began this setting using Daring Tales of the Space Lanes. I'll need to scrub out anything that plagiarizes his work.