Social interaction Combat

Social interaction "Combat"

Laying in bed. Back all fucked. Thinking about ways to reinforce RP the way that combat encounters are reinforced. Don't get me wrong violence in RPGs is fun but the way it's done is not fun. Maybe a better blog post about this after I think it some more. There are lots of improv games; I mean LOTS. I don't do improv. So I may get off base here. I tried LARPIng once at Camp Nerdly and it literally blew my mind about how different RPGs could be if we had the will to mix it up a bit. I use DCC as a basic thought framework, here, and it makes an assumption that you also add in reaction rolls a la Moldvay and morale rolls in combat (interestingly, I think that morale rolls can be transitioned into the system I am about to propose but hang on cause I need some Tylenol)

Say we wanted to promote Role-play the way that the ritualized combat roll-play gets highlighted in our games.  DCC is great in that it awards 1-4 XP based on encounter risks/costs more than monster power or gold accumulation. A dragon and a major demon and an angry god all gonna award 4. Easy peasey. That's if you kill it; sneak away; trick it; ally with it. Whatever - modified subjectively by the DM.  A friendly God of Partying will not award as much as an Angry God of Partying on account of less risk to the PCs

If we want to promote/reinforce role play, then players, rather than just DM ought to be role playing and expanding and advancing the story at these interactive times. So we need to reward those actions. In a non-combat encounter, a player needs to know motives to do the acting. PCs come with built-in motives. NPCs offer an opportunity for a group to expand the narrative and so if a group wants to Role play/improv and encounter actors and directors are nominated. You get points for rounds where you move the narrative toward your motivation as an PC/NPC but if aren't "acting" then you also get points for expanding on the action for people to use in the role playing. Personally I would give points or bonuses for "selling it" by using dumb voices and body language but that's me

You go a couple of rounds with no cap on length until the group or (optionally) the DM figure its enough. I think an hour of roleplaying/acting in turn in a circle would be as enjoyable (possibly more so) than dicing hits/misses. You can squeeze in mechanics as appropriate (bluff/intimidate) and this offers the opportunity to burn Luck on dicing

More later, maybe. The key is that no one's setting there picking their nose, either you're improving by acting/drama-ing/role-playing, or you are adding to the narrative by introducing/expanding the current action. ("The kobold is thinking that the thigh meet in the elf looks especially luscious" or "little does the party know that a gang of Meazels is around the bend with garrotes if this thing goes south")

Popcorn initiative. Passing is not punished it's just not reinforced with IP (improv points) that round. The IP points are divided up equally so if you pass, the group gets less IP which are converted to LUCK/HP/XP (choose one) at the end of the encounter. Sorry about the Blithering Idiocy, I'm still in bed and in a gray haze of lower back pain

More later. I encourage feedback and thoughts

Edit: makes the assumption that HP are not an indicator of physical condition but of ability to avoid killing blows  a PC with low HP is maybe unscathed but in existential peril, or maybe (according to the player) wounded pretty badly

The Mathom-Making of Calabraxis

Daniel Bishop of the Raven Crowking's Nest, has a great tradition, based on Tolkien's Hobbit practice of Mathom-ing.  A mathom is a gift that the owner doesn't use to the full extent, and is given freely on the owner's Birthday. I forget when Daniel's birthday is, but to get his Mathom this year (as in dusty years gone by) one need only review a DCC thing and link to Daniel's OP

HERE IS MY REVIEW

Hearken, Wayward Traveller!  Have you a need for weird interludes, full of novel critters and strange situations?  Do your adventurers tire of kobolds, dragons, and Standard Template Spells? Well, look no farther - Claytonian's Wizardarium of Calabraxis seems to me to meet your requirements, Mendicant!

It is spilling over from one plane of reality into the next with interesting to fight/roleplay monsters and alien entities, offers strange toys to play with and experiment upon captives with, deadly traps to kill the unwary, and of course an evil and twisted Wizard that is long dead but still haunts the locale...

I admire Claytonian's work, in that the WoC is a thing he made all on his own, including the art.  In addition to writing and layout, he also has contributed artwork to other DCC authors' productions and is a talented visual artist in his own right. In the span of maybe 18 (6x9?) pages, he gives both a bare-framework and rich opportunity of Roleplay and Combat and Explorative play, with a healthy dose of hooks to bring the PCs in.  In addition, it seems to me that no PC that enters will leave the Wizardarium unchanged, and the multiverse itself may open up before them - weird time-travel possibilities and even transmogrification ought to be expected (and to my mind encouraged)

Disclosure: with Claytonian's permission, I incorporated his suggested Psionic power rules into my own solo gamebook as a way to strengthen the network of bonds between DCC authors' individual work, the way that HPL and Smith and Howard did so long ago. Claytonian is an advocate of this position and practice, I think, as all we DIY hobby-publishers ought to be.

YOU MAY FIND CLAYTONIAN'S OPUS MAGNUM HERE

NOW, BRING ME THE HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST AND A MATHOM, UNLESS THE HEAD IS THE MATHOM 

Offending the Elementals

I'm impressed at how often I have random RPG thoughts pop into my head while I am waiting for the dog to take a deuce on our morning/evening rounds.

 

It's Father's Day. My kid is about 4, and since she could walk she has had a bit of an interesting habit, in that she seems to collect rocks. Not special rocks, as far as I can tell, just "nice ones". She almost always has a rock in her pocket when we are out and about. My compulsion, I chalk it up to 35 years of thinking about Dungeons, is to peek into sewer grates and open manholes and drainage sluices. We all have quirks, I guess.

My wife has a fish tank that she fusses over. A good honest hobby. I got to thinking, whilst I prepared to stoop down to pick up some warm dog poo this AM, what if my wife and kid were like offending the Natural Order of The Universe?

Tiny rocks are baby rocks. Rocks start out Old and Awful, mountains with roots and the millennia sheer and crumble them away to helpless infancy. My kid sees a kindred spirit in a helpless stone, and picks up good vibes. My wife has a 5-gallon waterthing that she checks its chemistry and ammonia and the 5 little souls darting around inside. A fish tank is a constrained body of free-flowing fluid, sedated and captured for a human's amusement. Do Grome and Blibdoolploolp take offence?  I hope not. Maybe they dig it as it allows a greater sphere of influence. In an animistic world, every rock and stone is a potential friend and a spy

There are other than the 4 natural elements. Elementals of happiness, moonlight, gravedirt, ironworks, springs, ink; not just the 4 basic or 8 demi-elementals, or the infinite paraelementals. Anything that has a Platonic Ideal can be ripped (un)ceremoniously from There and brought to Here. Pretty common for the animal world paragons to come to The World but rare for elementals of other sorts, and only where the connections are strong

The Paper Elemental often appears on my dinner table. Covered with scribbles and made of unpaid bills and half-read magazines. If one is able to get into the innards of a paper elemental, you can get a level-worth of spells for each physical successful attack one makes, but you're suffocating and being shredded by an infinity of paper cuts each round, so have Protection

The Fishtank elemental has beautiful fish inside and enjoys being fed and given jewelry and when the chemistry is off it gets hateful and murderous and the fish are killed and then whatever it can get to next

I made that one post about the Imbue Spirit spell for DCC - the link should be in the side bar

Gotta get back to Father's Day stuff now this bacon and eggs and coffee are digesting

Hmm Breakfast Elemental. Sleepiness, lethargy, contentment as attacks. You awaken some hours later with nothing done

Putt-Putt 40K

FORE THE EMPEROR

I was reading this series of Zombie Golf posts by +Stiubhart MacChoille and immediately got to thinking about ways to use what I already have to make a Golf40K game or something like it

"Wilkins, pull the flag as the ball approacheth, and prime the Promethium Pumps."

"The ball travels 3d8+10 inches plus the golfer's S score, and deviates from the marked target by 1d6-BS, to a minimum of 0 inches."

What I have in mind is Hivegolf.  9 holes of creaky hive towers, Plague Zombies, sludge, sumps, and gang warfare.  A couple of gangers surround and escort the driver and putter and you pop up encounters like from the Outlanders random encounters, and there's a ref like in Blood Bowl and your gang can pick up loot counters, archaeotech

Wyrds can telekinetically slice/hook you.  Hive conditions.  Stroke penalties. Spook-enabled targetting of hidden holes.

http://www.twohourwargames.com/zombiegolf.html

You can grab the rules +Stiubhart MacChoille used, or close to it, at the above link. Certainly got to model up some ball and hole counters.  Melta-Photon-balls and Exhaust-vent/Bunker-targets?


I think +David Okum may have done a golf series, also (maybe not, but he should have done)

Mini-Molds

Got some heat-activated instant mold compound and toyed with it last night in a slow spell at work. Problem is I only have some old Green Stuff (like 5 years old) and it didn't soften very well so my results were pretty abominable. Still working out the kinks but here is the essential process, on some RTB1 plastic beaky marine heads and the only female Imperial plastic head in my collection, the gunner head from the SoB Inmolator kit. Next will maybe be some autoguns and old power fists