Trigger Discipline: 5 Campaign Ideas

As mentioned in the last post, I'm hoping to run an online playtest for Trigger Discipline. Here are the different campaign ideas I'm mulling over; as I intend to see how the system handles attempts to pursue a serious plot, the premises won't be quite as wacky as they could be.

Idea #1: Millenium Hand and Shrimp
Say that two years back you were a cyberpunk spec ops team, like in Deus Ex or Ghost in the Shell- but intended espionage and foreign black ops rather than public security. Facilities that officially don't exist, experimental tech that won't be out for years, so highly classified that you operate autonomously from the main body of the government. It's that last bit which gave you the chance to realize that something bad was going on.

Something was happening to the government, a highly covert and fast-acting operation that seemed to involve mind hacks and duplicate replacement- those were your early theories, but the more evidence you acquired the more things defied rational explanation. Then the smaller limbs of the government that couldn't get taken over started getting taken out. When contact broadcast a live video feed of he and his team getting torn apart by three men who shrugged off bullets as their arms transformed into organic-looking bladed limbs, you decided to get the hell out. Forget civilian cover identities- in the modern day the only way to be off the grid is a full removal from society.

And THAT is why you're all hobos who are secretly cyborg black op agents.

If nothing else, at least there's no hassle when you mutter to each other about government conspiracies all day. Some of your equipment is offline or only has the juice left for a few more uses; the rest you maintain through black-market deals with criminal elements and junkheap scavengers, plus the occasional heist; sometimes you kill terrorists and take their stuff. Other times you give them your number; after all, your main objective is still to take down the Conspiracy, and while you can't trust anyone you'll need all the help you can get just to figure out whether or not you're dealing with something human.

Idea #2: Warlock Highschool
The "school fighting" genre has some interesting hallmarks, such as delinquent protagonists vs. Lawful Jackass authority figures and the involvement of curiously big-league organizations like corporations and yakuza. So what if you took that genre and set it in a wizard's academy- Hogwarts if it was an underfunded public school in a bad part of town?

Martial arts would be replaced with magic, though brawling is hardly out of the question. Pick a fight with a fourth-year, then interrupt his advanced-level bowel-shriveling spell with a flying tackle; it's all good. You can side with a house/gang/faction and battle rivals for supremacy, or try and chart your own road.

Idea #3: Super Kaiju Defense Girls
It starts with a fairly simple premise: when Godzilla and company attack, the military's best hope is a defense force of test-tube children infused with DNA from different monsters. The teenage protagonists, all female (because of science), are seven-foot tall superhumans who can leap twenty stories in the air and punch a monster hard enough to send them crashing into a building and make it collapse. Characters can fight with things like handheld missile batteries, eight-foot swords made from experimental alloys, and their own inborn monster powers.

For those of you who know your anime, a friend describes this concept as a cross between Godzilla, Blood+ and Tokyo Mew Mew. I don't want to give much away as to how the story would develop, but the underlying theme is a blend of elements from the sentai, magic girl, and "our monster who fights the other monsters" concepts.

Idea #4: Colossus Masters
This war-torn fantasy setting used to be a fairly low-key medieval fairytale realm. Then people started to realize that a certain kind of magic- Kinesis, focusing the mind to move objects as extensions of your own body- had potential far beyond just oversized gauntlets. Make a man-shaped objects with a few joints and a hole for the user and the sky's the limit. You have colossi made of metal, living trees that plant themselves between battles, even experimental "elemental" models that can compact into a pond/rockslide/bonfire when not in use (Air Colossi were scrapped after the prototypes kept getting lost).

Players can fight in this war-ravaged land for a cause, a side, or just large amounts of gold. The starting circumstances are fairly open-ended, since the story is a flexible one.

Idea #5: Bugging Out
This one would be straight sci-fi, on the more realistic side of the mecha genre. The setting is a mining colony that's had a few centuries to grow into a profitable settlement. Conditions on the surface are venus-like, too harsh to support life; but underground there are now several cities as well as underground tunnels to connect most larger outposts. Mining and a variety of other tasks are performed with the aid of sealed powered exoskeletons.

The game start with a previously unheard-of phenomenon for the planet: Seismic activity, in the form of a large earthquake. In its wake, players find a host of Starship Troopers-style monsters crawling up out of the depths. The closest thing to a combat mech on this planet is a law enforcement model designed for riot suppression, so the players (largely blue collar mechanic types) will have to modify and outfit their vehicles with weapons improvised from power tools and so on. That, or just get good at smashing bugs to a pulp with their bare hands.

Known Art Credits: Warlock Highschool's attached art is from Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder line, I'm not sure which artist. The colossus (Idea #4) is by Noxypia.

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Trigger Discipline: Beta Rules

Happy new year! And so, the other project is revealed: I've finally given the rules document for Trigger Discipline a complete update. I'll be adding more explanatory examples and optional extra rules, but what's there is enough to run your own tongue-in-cheek anime action game (this version of the rules takes the open approach rather than treating non-Mecha games as a variant).

Also, I'm planning to run an online playtest game of my own. The big question is what sort of premise to use- I've got alot of mecha concepts on the back burner, but I'm also intrigued by the idea of crossing Harry Potter with the School Fighting genre. . .

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Merry- er, Happy Holidays!

The trouble with wanting to post something(s) on Christmas is that it means having to post on Christmas. That plan got thrown off by 5 days spent either at the households of relatives or working 8-hour shifts and then coming home to play host to groups of young cousins. But now, at last, I have access to my computer and the time to use it. . .and I'm leaving to a beach house that probably doesn't have wireless for 4 days in under 24 hours. (sigh)

Anyway, one of goals is done: I've gone over the Portraits section of my image collection, checking for duplicates and renaming all the files whose titles were just strings of numbers. The fully updated and hopefully-more-searchable gallery can still be found here; I'm still working on sprucing up the contents of the other sections.

As for the other project: It's something I swore I'd have done before 2009. With any luck, it'll be done before I have to leave tomorrow morning, to a destination with low odds of having any net connection. We'll see. . .

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We've got Spirits, how about you? (Part 1)

So against my better tastes, I checked out some parts of the Ghost Rider movie. WOW, is it bad. But some of the glimmers of potential helped push forward my own thinking and help me expand on the cosmology I started to outline in my earlier piece on souls. The following is a rewritten version of the start of this scene; it also serves as a demonstrative anecdote for what I've got in mind. . .

(Johnny stops and stares at the man inspecting his bike.)

JOHNNY BLAZE: You.

MEPHISTO: (Without looking up:) Good to see you to, Johnny Boy. Nice bike.

JOHNNY BLAZE: Stay away from me.

MEPHISTO: Oh, I couldn't do that. I'm your greatest fan. Pheonix, Denver, Houston. . .I've been watching over you, all along.

JOHNNY BLAZE: It *was* you- keeping me alive.

MEPHISTO: Oh, no, no- It's all you, Johnny! You've got that fire inside, that special something which keeps you going, always driving you on to the next big thrill. Me, I've just been here to watch it grow. And now I need that fire to make sure a little job of mine gets done right.

JOHNNY BLAZE: Not interested.

MEPHISTO: (Chuckles) You think you have a choice.

JOHNNY BLAZE: I know these games you play- they've got rules. You can't make me do anything, not if I refuse.

MEPHISTO: Ah, yes. That pesky old rule number one: No direct control over those poor souls who catch my eye. (Continuing as he points towards Johnny's chest:) But I don't see any soul there, Johnny. Just a shell; a brain and a body, going through the motions.

JOHNNY BLAZE: You trying to say I'm just a machine?

MEPHISTO: Normally you would be. But I'm a generous kind of guy, even though no one ever shows any gratitude. See, there's something special about that empty space where a soul used to be. It's the perfect place to plant a seed, and watch it grow, until the day it finally bears fruit. And believe me, ten years is nothing when you've been around as along as I have.

JOHNNY BLAZE: Whatever you want done, do it yourself.

(He gets on the bike to leave, but Mephisto closes a hand on his arm.)

MEPHISTO: It's time, Zarathos. Find the one called Blackheart and destroy him for me.

(Johnny reacts to the name as though he's been dunked in ice water. It takes him a second to remember to jerk his arm away.)

JOHNNY BLAZE: What'd you just call me?

MEPHISTO: Part of you recognizes that name, doesn't it? (Continuing as Johnny begins to shudder and gasp- he's having some kind of attack.) A part that's buried deep, and now it's clawing its way out to answer its master's call.

(Johnny tries to say something, but can't get the words out.)

MEPHISTO: I told you, Johnny- you're just a shell. It's the fire inside I want; so now I'm turning that shell inside out.

(Still struggling to breathe, Johnny manages to seize the throttle and send the bike roaring away. Mephisto watches him go with a smile.)

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What is a roleplaying game?

At the start of this year, I made a post wherein I attempted to work out my philosophy of game design. (Philosophy meaning "the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, esp. with a view to improving or reconstituting them") Though it helped to advance my thought process, I can't say I succeeded in reaching a clear thesis at the time. The other day, while explaining roleplaying games to a non-geek, I realized I now had a clearer idea of just what (in my mind) makes something a roleplaying game:

A roleplaying game is a form of group storytelling with rules that dictate the mechanics of player success and failure. These rules enhance the experience in two ways: First, they make the story more compelling by providing concrete gauges of a situation. Second, they provide the player with a series of interesting strategic choices, turning the experience into game.

Read on for a more detailed description of what the different parts of this definition mean, as well as an explanation of how they relate to GNS theory.

"A roleplaying game is a form of group storytelling. . ."
I could get into the use of a GM here, but that's a common aspect, not an essential/defining one. Same reason that I don't mention, say, the use of random chance.

". . .with rules that dictate the mechanics of player success and failure. . ."
I had my doubts about this phrasing- I was imagining the possibility of an existing or future RPG which "killed the sacred cow" of rules dealing with player success. But then I realized that without the possibility of varying degrees of success, you can't have a game- it would just be a roleplaying exercise.

". . .These rules enhance the experience in two ways. . ."
If you want to get technical there certainly other ways that one can use rules to hypothetically improve the player's experience in one way or another. But the following two are the only ones I consider significant and defining.

". . .First, they make the story more compelling by providing concrete gauges of a situation. . ."
For example, your current level of injury. It's not actually necessary for the player to have access to a given gauge- for example, in Unknown Armies the GM keeps track of everyone's hp and just gives players rough descriptions of how their characters feel. The point is that the players know there's a gauge measuring their character's health- that there are procedures in place which will dictate what happens, even if that procedure is sometimes just "it's the GM's call".

I'm actually tempted to split this bit into two subcategories- rules as a source of consistency and rules as a frame of reference to help us understand a situation.

". . .Second, they provide the player with a series of interesting strategic choices, turning the experience into game."
I was going to say that it makes the experience fun. But fun, defined broadly, isn't essential. A roleplaying game doesn't have to involve a "fun time". It's easy to envision a well-done roleplaying game where the player's primary emotions consist of sadness and anger, and the PCs strive to achieve their goal but still ultimately fail. "Fun", in the sense of pleasant sensations, wouldn't seem like it apply to such an experience- but a different sense of the word would still be quite appropriate.

In his book on game design, Raph Koster says that games are fun because we derive satisfaction from learning how to overcome the challenges they present us with. Even faced with inevitable defeat at the hands of endless enemies, we enjoy trying to kill as many as we can. In this sense, a game can be simultaneously fun and depressing- imagine playing a game where the goal is for your character to kick as many defenseless puppies as possible within a set time limit.

How this relates to GNS Theory: As I've said before, I think Jon Edward's concept of creative agendas (as seen in both his old threefold model and his current theories) has merit because it identifies three key ways a roleplaying game can be enjoyable, but that his view of these "agendas" as separate audiences that an rpg designer must choose between borders on a violation of common sense-there is no reason why a player can't enjoy both the strategic and dramatic aspects of a given situation. What he views as different tastes, I view as different aspects of what makes a good roleplaying game. I would say that the view he describes as "Narrativist" focuses on the group storytelling aspect of a roleplaying game; his concept of a "Simulationist" view would focus on the ability of the rules to provide consistent, concrete gauges of a situation; and his conception of a "Gamist" view would focus on the game that the rules create, obviously.

I'm not quite done writing about this manner. The above is a definition of roleplaying games; but it doesn't touch on what I think makes roleplaying games special. That'll be another post. . .

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d20 Rethought: Hits and the Status Track

In d20 Rethought, hits represent different conditions that have a negative effect on a character's performance. These conditions can be due to poison, fatigue, physical injury, mental trauma or some other cause. There are many different kinds of hits, with different nasty side effects and criteria for removing them; what they have in common is that every single hit a character currently has moves them down a step on the status track.

In and of itself, the status track is an unabashed rip-off of the SWRPG Saga Edition's condition track- an escalating series of penalties. You from being fine to receiving a -1 penalty on all checks, then -2, -3, -5, -10 and finally unconsciousness. Six strikes and you're out.

Hit the jump for an outline of some specific hits and what this means for the system as a whole.

Lethal Hit: You receive a lethal hit each time you lose any amount of wound points. Whenever you take a physically strenuous action, you take damage equal to the number of lethal hits you have. Lethal hits do not go away; instead, they must be treated in order to be downgraded to subdual hits.
Subdual Hits: When you lose wound points due to subdual damage, you receive a subdual hit instead of a lethal one. Subdual hits have no special drawbacks; you can heal one per day with 6 hours of rest and two per day with constant rest. Proper medical attention doubles the payoff.
Shock Hit: Mental equivalent of a lethal hit. (You receive a shock hit each time you lose any amount of trauma points. Whenever you take a mentally strenuous action, you take mental damage equal to the number of shock hits you have. Shock hits do not go away; instead, they must be treated in order to be downgraded to stress hits.)
Stress Hits: Mental equivalent of a subdual hit. (When you lose trauma points due to stress damage, you receive a stress hit instead of a lethal one. Stress hits have no special drawbacks; you can heal one per day with 6 hours of rest and two per day with constant rest. Proper therapy doubles the payoff.)
Stun Hits: Stun hits last until the end of an encounter and have no special drawbacks.

All this has several effects on how d20 Rethought plays. The single most significant aspect is that when a PC is taken down, it will usually be due to having accumulated six hits on the Status Track and fallen unconscious. Dying by running out of wound points becomes a much more unlikely scenario, akin to death by massive damage in 3.X. Players now have a motive to avoid any sort of notable injury or mental trauma, even if they have plenty of wound/trauma points remaining. This system also makes it much more feasible to swap out mental and/or physical damage tracking in favor of damage saves, depending on the focus of the game. Picture it- an investigative horror game, with occasional violent conflicts covered only briefly with the focus instead being on keeping your trauma points high lest you start to crack under the pressure. With one quick variant d20 Rethought can handle this just as well as an action-oriented gunfighting game.

Next time, I'll likely be doing a review of all that's been posted regarding d20 Rethought's combat, and how it compares and contrasts to d20 3.X.

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Maelstrom: Preface

Maelstrom is a new setting I'm brainstorming, one that started as a series of suggestions for Mr. Skrittiblak's Elysium Nebula campaign. These suggestions were aimed at giving greater depth and originality to a setting that that on the surface is a space opera starring the cast of D&D. (My impressions is that about half the suggestions were of use to him; the background I had in mind only partly overlapped with the secrets of the background he'd already conceived.) Over the course of our discussions I realized that if you took this fledgling concept and stripped away most of the elements that were being taken from stock science fiction and fantasy, the background meant to justify the presence of those elements could instead lead me to something intriguingly original.

Of course, this also makes the resulting concept really hard to summarize. I have only myself to blame.

The best way I can put it is this: You know how Firefly was the wild west in space? Maelstrom's "____ in space" is the world of the 19th century as depicted in fiction. And not just modern works, but a range of fiction that extends past pulp magazines to include the famous authors of the time, such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne. Picture a vast and diverse realm- you have hard-bitten settlers eking out a living on the frontier, ambitious scientists racing towards new discoveries (that could lead to triumph a la Tesla or tragedy a la Jekyll and Frankenstein), intrepid explorers who venture deep into unknown territory, and strange natives of unknown civilizations whose leaders wield mysterious powers. The "civilized world" has its intellectuals and industry as well as its fair share of armed conflicts and bogeymen in the shadows. Mysterious foreign empires are known through countless legends and a handful of firsthand accounts.

Take that all, and spread it out not between continents but between large numbers of moons surrounding four gas giants which all follow the same orbital path around their star. In this solar system the would-be vacuum of space is instead filled with Aethereal mists and populated by an ecosystem of strange and varied creatures. Space fills the roles of both the open frontier and the high seas, as towering starships sail past herdsmen on crystal-winged mounts.

I don't see Maelstrom as resembling the 19th century in any aesthetic way- the 'space cowboys', for example, wear goggles and breath masks while having no need for wide-brimmed hats. I'm just using the time period as a guideline for creating a believable world of mystery and adventure; a place where society is close enough to our own to be sympathetic and understandable, without having advanced enough for you to know whether the note on the map saying "here there be dragons" is true.

Make sense?

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