Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Neutrality in the Cosmos
In putting together a cosmological chart for my Anethemalon campaign, I found a couple of things looking like add ons in 3.5 D&D and 3.5 OGL cosmology.
The first thing that I took note of was the Concordant Opposition. This appears to be an outer plane to place the powers of neutrality or balance. My take here is that the balance is always shifting. It is not a thing of itself. It has its champions and they play out their cosmic shifting actions on the stage of the Prime Material Plane, the home of neutrality. This is the place between all of the outer alignment planes (or celestial/spiritual planes) that act against one another and where their shifting is felt. Here too the Positive and Negative Material planes mix along with the Elemental Planes to create reality. The mixing creates the uneven neutrality that is the Prime Material.
The other thing that really seemed unnecessary to me is the Shadow Plane. This is supposed to be some negative plane of the dead or something. With the ethereal plane being the home of ghosts and other disembodied creatures, how is the Shadow Plane required? In my thinking the ethereal plane is created from the interaction of the positive and negative material planes. Not all of the ethereal is of the disembodied undead, but the negative parts attract and trap them on their way to the spiritual planes. Also the ethereal is what prevents the inner planes (or as I call them the temporal planes) from collapsing. The ethereal creates enough resistance, due to the repulsion of the positive and negative material planes, to prevent the elemental planes from negating each other. Just enough of everything is allowed to seep in, mix and create the universe.
As noted above, the Prime Material is a mixture and as such is the only plane without an opposite, thus creating a stronger case for the redundancy of the Shadow Plane.
Neither Shadow or Concordant Opposition are in the AD&D Cosmos (Prior to Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes) It looks like Gygax actually thought about how this whole thing might work. I won't be including either.
The first thing that I took note of was the Concordant Opposition. This appears to be an outer plane to place the powers of neutrality or balance. My take here is that the balance is always shifting. It is not a thing of itself. It has its champions and they play out their cosmic shifting actions on the stage of the Prime Material Plane, the home of neutrality. This is the place between all of the outer alignment planes (or celestial/spiritual planes) that act against one another and where their shifting is felt. Here too the Positive and Negative Material planes mix along with the Elemental Planes to create reality. The mixing creates the uneven neutrality that is the Prime Material.
The other thing that really seemed unnecessary to me is the Shadow Plane. This is supposed to be some negative plane of the dead or something. With the ethereal plane being the home of ghosts and other disembodied creatures, how is the Shadow Plane required? In my thinking the ethereal plane is created from the interaction of the positive and negative material planes. Not all of the ethereal is of the disembodied undead, but the negative parts attract and trap them on their way to the spiritual planes. Also the ethereal is what prevents the inner planes (or as I call them the temporal planes) from collapsing. The ethereal creates enough resistance, due to the repulsion of the positive and negative material planes, to prevent the elemental planes from negating each other. Just enough of everything is allowed to seep in, mix and create the universe.
As noted above, the Prime Material is a mixture and as such is the only plane without an opposite, thus creating a stronger case for the redundancy of the Shadow Plane.
Neither Shadow or Concordant Opposition are in the AD&D Cosmos (Prior to Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes) It looks like Gygax actually thought about how this whole thing might work. I won't be including either.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Fantasy Economics
Earlier today I found this bit of writing on the Castles & Crusades Society fan site. Its available at the Tempest Damnosa blog.
It is a very interesting look at fantasy economics in a way that I think could provide greater depth of encounters between player characters and NPCs. There is a wealth of information here and I suggest that anyone interested in adding more importance to the exchange of wealth and its consequences in their games take a look.
Part 1: Agriculture and the Economy
Part 2: The Unguilded Townsmen
Part 3: Guildsmen of the Town
Part 4: The Nobility
Part 5: The Clergy
Part 6: Feudal Law
Part 7: The Royal Bureaucracy
It is a very interesting look at fantasy economics in a way that I think could provide greater depth of encounters between player characters and NPCs. There is a wealth of information here and I suggest that anyone interested in adding more importance to the exchange of wealth and its consequences in their games take a look.
Part 1: Agriculture and the Economy
Part 2: The Unguilded Townsmen
Part 3: Guildsmen of the Town
Part 4: The Nobility
Part 5: The Clergy
Part 6: Feudal Law
Part 7: The Royal Bureaucracy
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Finishing "Deities of Anethemalon"
Spending the day adding the last few details to my Deities of Anethemalon document.
So far this is just a list of nine deities corresponding to the nine alignments. It's a simple start based on the format in "Of Gods & Monsters".
Once I'm done with this first step I'll post it as a PDF.
I plan on at least doubling the list of deities based more on role rather than on alignment.
I plan on at least doubling the list of deities based more on role rather than on alignment.
At some later point, I want to create the list of gods for the age that precedes this one.
This setting is actually one where the gods have lost interest in the affairs of mortals and many have left the world. At the campaign start time, several of the deities on this list are new compared to others as they are the replacements to the gods that disappeared. This creates a push-pull between the gods as the new ones are more interested in gaining new ground and the older ones are reluctantly forced to act from the pressure being put on them. Let's just say the gods know something here that most mortals do not.
This setting is actually one where the gods have lost interest in the affairs of mortals and many have left the world. At the campaign start time, several of the deities on this list are new compared to others as they are the replacements to the gods that disappeared. This creates a push-pull between the gods as the new ones are more interested in gaining new ground and the older ones are reluctantly forced to act from the pressure being put on them. Let's just say the gods know something here that most mortals do not.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monetary Systems for Anethemalon Campaign
So here is the monetary system I plan to use for my upcoming Anethemalon campaign. (The Dying Empires was my original campaign cobbled together from my earliest adventures, I was 10 - 15 years old at the time, and is related to Anethemalon).
This campaign is supposed to contain the "masterpiece" super adventure I wanted to create just before I stopped playing RPG's in the early ninties. Its the main reason I began looking at RPGs again and how I discovered the OSR. My plan is to use Castles & Crusades because I want an AD&D feel and access to resources, but can really do without the cumbersomeness. C&C plays with the fluidness of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh D&D, the version of D&D my group and I played the most.
This campaign is supposed to contain the "masterpiece" super adventure I wanted to create just before I stopped playing RPG's in the early ninties. Its the main reason I began looking at RPGs again and how I discovered the OSR. My plan is to use Castles & Crusades because I want an AD&D feel and access to resources, but can really do without the cumbersomeness. C&C plays with the fluidness of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh D&D, the version of D&D my group and I played the most.
Dying Empires & Anethemalon Campaigns
5 gp = 1 pp
1 gp = 2 ep
1 gp = 20 sp
1 gp = 200 cp
or
10 ep = 1 pp
2 ep = 1 gp
1 ep = 10 sp
1 ep = 100 cp
pp = Sovereign (s)
gp = Crown (c)
ep = Royal (r)
sp = Noble (n)
cp = Guilder (g)
Common currency is the Royal.
C&C Conversion with gp being common and equal and 1 Royal being half a gold piece
2 pp = 1 C&C pp or 10 C&C gp
1 gp = 1 C&C gp
2 ep = 1 C&C gp
20 sp = 10 C&C sp or 1 C&C gp (2 sp = 1 C&C sp)
200cp = 100 C&C cp or 1 C&C gp (2cp = 1 C&C cp)
This is essentially the same rate of conversion as AD&D but the pieces are named by value rather than material and the common piece here is the Royal or ep. I'll probably make up an equipment list with conversions to Royals based on the C&C lists with some other sources added on to present to my players.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Deals on C&C and bringing more players to the table
Troll Lord Games is having a sale on some items until Thursday.
If you have at all been interested in Castles & Crusades I suggest you check it out.
Of particular interest is that "Of Gods & Monsters" and "Monsters & Treasure of Aihrde" are on sale as a set. I would also suggest pre-ordering C&C Complete, a boxed set of Players Handbook, Monsters & Treasure and Castle Keeper's Guide. That will pretty much get you a complete set of C&C Books.
Also take advantage of the free PDF offer for the latest issue of Crusader.
As per my previous post I think that C&C, as a rules light game, has the potential to bring more new players to the table. Although I do play Pathfinder I find it somewhat bloated. Rolemaster comes to mind here, lots of crunch at the expense of playability. Although Pathfinder is a great improvement over D&D 3.5 its still d20 and suffers from the rules bloat style that Monte Cook brought over from his time at I.C.E. (the developer of Rolemaster).
Lets look at Pathfinder in relation to targeting new players. I think that the 3.5 OGL obsession with game balance and focus on cool abilities to create cool characters is much too complex for new players. Players could and should make their characters cool with back stories and deeds. Also I really think its going to take more than the religious use of "her" and "she" in the rule books to attract new female players. I personally think that "crunch" or rule mechanics are a sub-interest in RPG gaming and have been emphasized in RPG development to cater to what is an inevitably shrinking male demographic. This being said what Pathfinder has going for it, especially for new female players (this is in addition to its inclusive language use in its rule books) is a cool setting (Golarion, a setting created to include several fantasy/sci-fi type genres with alluded reference to settings in the RPG tradition) supported by interesting NPCs and locations in their adventure path publications. To me it seems obvious that Pathfinder is doing so well not because it has a great set of rules, its because it has a lot of cool new support material.
In order to assist anyone who is interested in getting involved in some of the Pathfinder materials with a more agile set of rules check out this article from the Goodman Games forum on conversions to C&C.
If you have at all been interested in Castles & Crusades I suggest you check it out.
Of particular interest is that "Of Gods & Monsters" and "Monsters & Treasure of Aihrde" are on sale as a set. I would also suggest pre-ordering C&C Complete, a boxed set of Players Handbook, Monsters & Treasure and Castle Keeper's Guide. That will pretty much get you a complete set of C&C Books.
Also take advantage of the free PDF offer for the latest issue of Crusader.
As per my previous post I think that C&C, as a rules light game, has the potential to bring more new players to the table. Although I do play Pathfinder I find it somewhat bloated. Rolemaster comes to mind here, lots of crunch at the expense of playability. Although Pathfinder is a great improvement over D&D 3.5 its still d20 and suffers from the rules bloat style that Monte Cook brought over from his time at I.C.E. (the developer of Rolemaster).
Lets look at Pathfinder in relation to targeting new players. I think that the 3.5 OGL obsession with game balance and focus on cool abilities to create cool characters is much too complex for new players. Players could and should make their characters cool with back stories and deeds. Also I really think its going to take more than the religious use of "her" and "she" in the rule books to attract new female players. I personally think that "crunch" or rule mechanics are a sub-interest in RPG gaming and have been emphasized in RPG development to cater to what is an inevitably shrinking male demographic. This being said what Pathfinder has going for it, especially for new female players (this is in addition to its inclusive language use in its rule books) is a cool setting (Golarion, a setting created to include several fantasy/sci-fi type genres with alluded reference to settings in the RPG tradition) supported by interesting NPCs and locations in their adventure path publications. To me it seems obvious that Pathfinder is doing so well not because it has a great set of rules, its because it has a lot of cool new support material.
In order to assist anyone who is interested in getting involved in some of the Pathfinder materials with a more agile set of rules check out this article from the Goodman Games forum on conversions to C&C.
A theory for the decline of tabletop RPGs
I've read many ideas about the decline in interest of RPGs. Most, if not all of them, site a growing market in video games and the popularity of CCGs like Magic: The Gathering. I've come up with my own theory and think that the problem may be more dire than anyone ever thought.
Traditionally RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons have been played by a disproportionate number of male participants. Its hard to say why but that appears to be the demographic. It does appear that more female players are discovering the hobby, and that is good because they may be what saves it over the next ten or so years.
I've been working on a campaign setting that I think would be female friendly for a number of reasons with the most prominent being that everything that boys thought was cool in the eighties, mainly comic books, video games and heavy metal & heavy rock music, is now cool with girls currently in their 20's, and boys are rediscovering this stuff because its cool with girls. Table top RPGs seem to be the only big trend of that time that hasn't benefitted from the interest of a new generation of women, or at least not quite yet.
Just to make myself clear, when I say female friendly I'm not talking about anthropomorphic bunnies and romance mechanics. I sat in on a talk at Keycon 26 (in 2009) presented by Liana K on women in gaming. Although her talk centred around video games for the most part the main thing I took away from the talk was that women want pretty much the same from their games as men except they want to interact with cool characters. Character development is very important. This could be NPCs PCs, or monsters. Men want to vanquish, women want to see what happens over time, and will vanquish in order to do it, as long as the characters are cool and exciting developments happen to those characters along the way and toward the conclusion.
Tabletop RPGs have a number of great things going for them that computer RPGs do not. First they are a social activity. Who doesn't like getting together with their friends and making new friends around the table. Most importantly though I think the main advantage that table top games have is that they allow the creation of any scenario that one can imagine. If a person was to play a game like Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying (BRP) then they could literally play a game every session that took place in a different genre every time without having to play a new ruleset. That's a pretty powerful idea, and one that I think is under utilized by the RPG industry in advertising to its target audience (assuming that new players are a target audience).
On the other hand RPGs are seen as geeky and hard to play. A new generation of gamers including women is needed to break the geek stereotype. Rules light rulesets appear to be the right way to go. Its not hard to notice that D&D was at its peak in the eighties when Moldvay (and Mentzer) basic were on the shelves.
In the preface to Gary Gygax's Lejendary Rules for all Players (Lejendary Adventure RPG from 1999) Gygax states that:
"there is a waning interest in role playing amongst young game enthusiasts. This is understandable, for they have probably been introduced to gaming and fantasy through card games, games that are easy to understand and play. Meanwhile, roleplaying games tend to be supported by a diminishing number of aging players who demand more complexity, even complication, and whoi wonder why they are not getting the support material they desire. It is a matter of economics – as more and more esoteric material is produced the accessibility of the game diminishes, the audience shrinks, and the publisher sells less material. Support items are produced with less frequency and become even more complex and detailed, resulting in fewer being sold. The system is no longer viable and no more support materials appear.
What went wrong, of coarse was a failure to have a basic understanding of what keeps a role playing game vital. Participation is the critical element. This means active Game Masters primarily, but they, in turn, need players, and all need a game that facilitates play. To be truly vital, the RPG must have new GMs and playera all the time. There is attrition of the playing audience, and without replacement, the game begins to wither and is in danger of dying a slow death. A shrinking group of old grognards is about as useful to all concerned as an aristocracy is in a democracy. This is not said to denigrate the long-time enthusiast, but is intended to assist such a critical core in retaining a game vehicle that remains vital, growing, and expanding, continuing to entertain"
With the coming of the OSR a not insignificant number of players, including me, have returned to tabletop RPGs, and rules light is a popular trend providing for greater accessibility. Although a lot has changed since the above preface was written, and a lot of players have returned to the hobby, a significant trend is poised to make matters worse. Boys are reading less than they used to. Interest in tabletop RPGs is dependant on an interest in genre books. Without an interest in reading there will be no interest in reading rules to play in imaginary campaigns – based in no small part on written stories and specifically on their corresponding genres. In an industry who's major demographic is male this poses a serious problem for future sales and product development. The industry is only going to be able to attract a smaller amount of males than in previous years. Game developers need to make sure they are not catering to the tastes of young boys exclusively and males in general, as this will be a barrier to the only demographic that is likely to provide growth, young females. Role playing games need to become smarter and more attention needs to be placed on the characters instead of the mechanics. Unless game companies know something that educators don't, and can get boys to read more, they will not be the ones coming to the table in the amounts required to prevent the decline of the hobby.
Traditionally RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons have been played by a disproportionate number of male participants. Its hard to say why but that appears to be the demographic. It does appear that more female players are discovering the hobby, and that is good because they may be what saves it over the next ten or so years.
I've been working on a campaign setting that I think would be female friendly for a number of reasons with the most prominent being that everything that boys thought was cool in the eighties, mainly comic books, video games and heavy metal & heavy rock music, is now cool with girls currently in their 20's, and boys are rediscovering this stuff because its cool with girls. Table top RPGs seem to be the only big trend of that time that hasn't benefitted from the interest of a new generation of women, or at least not quite yet.
Just to make myself clear, when I say female friendly I'm not talking about anthropomorphic bunnies and romance mechanics. I sat in on a talk at Keycon 26 (in 2009) presented by Liana K on women in gaming. Although her talk centred around video games for the most part the main thing I took away from the talk was that women want pretty much the same from their games as men except they want to interact with cool characters. Character development is very important. This could be NPCs PCs, or monsters. Men want to vanquish, women want to see what happens over time, and will vanquish in order to do it, as long as the characters are cool and exciting developments happen to those characters along the way and toward the conclusion.
Tabletop RPGs have a number of great things going for them that computer RPGs do not. First they are a social activity. Who doesn't like getting together with their friends and making new friends around the table. Most importantly though I think the main advantage that table top games have is that they allow the creation of any scenario that one can imagine. If a person was to play a game like Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying (BRP) then they could literally play a game every session that took place in a different genre every time without having to play a new ruleset. That's a pretty powerful idea, and one that I think is under utilized by the RPG industry in advertising to its target audience (assuming that new players are a target audience).
On the other hand RPGs are seen as geeky and hard to play. A new generation of gamers including women is needed to break the geek stereotype. Rules light rulesets appear to be the right way to go. Its not hard to notice that D&D was at its peak in the eighties when Moldvay (and Mentzer) basic were on the shelves.
In the preface to Gary Gygax's Lejendary Rules for all Players (Lejendary Adventure RPG from 1999) Gygax states that:
"there is a waning interest in role playing amongst young game enthusiasts. This is understandable, for they have probably been introduced to gaming and fantasy through card games, games that are easy to understand and play. Meanwhile, roleplaying games tend to be supported by a diminishing number of aging players who demand more complexity, even complication, and whoi wonder why they are not getting the support material they desire. It is a matter of economics – as more and more esoteric material is produced the accessibility of the game diminishes, the audience shrinks, and the publisher sells less material. Support items are produced with less frequency and become even more complex and detailed, resulting in fewer being sold. The system is no longer viable and no more support materials appear.
What went wrong, of coarse was a failure to have a basic understanding of what keeps a role playing game vital. Participation is the critical element. This means active Game Masters primarily, but they, in turn, need players, and all need a game that facilitates play. To be truly vital, the RPG must have new GMs and playera all the time. There is attrition of the playing audience, and without replacement, the game begins to wither and is in danger of dying a slow death. A shrinking group of old grognards is about as useful to all concerned as an aristocracy is in a democracy. This is not said to denigrate the long-time enthusiast, but is intended to assist such a critical core in retaining a game vehicle that remains vital, growing, and expanding, continuing to entertain"
With the coming of the OSR a not insignificant number of players, including me, have returned to tabletop RPGs, and rules light is a popular trend providing for greater accessibility. Although a lot has changed since the above preface was written, and a lot of players have returned to the hobby, a significant trend is poised to make matters worse. Boys are reading less than they used to. Interest in tabletop RPGs is dependant on an interest in genre books. Without an interest in reading there will be no interest in reading rules to play in imaginary campaigns – based in no small part on written stories and specifically on their corresponding genres. In an industry who's major demographic is male this poses a serious problem for future sales and product development. The industry is only going to be able to attract a smaller amount of males than in previous years. Game developers need to make sure they are not catering to the tastes of young boys exclusively and males in general, as this will be a barrier to the only demographic that is likely to provide growth, young females. Role playing games need to become smarter and more attention needs to be placed on the characters instead of the mechanics. Unless game companies know something that educators don't, and can get boys to read more, they will not be the ones coming to the table in the amounts required to prevent the decline of the hobby.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)