just some album i made at home

in spanish :/ 

What binds the party together?

Over time, I've realized that there is a great advantage for everybody implicated on a campaign when the PCs party belong to an established group in-game, with an implied goals and sometimes, even a roster for backup PCs.

On our cyberpunk campaigns, it was the gang. Everybody starting as gang members gave you a drive and an identity instantaneously, leaving your character background story for whenever you wanted (or never). You never had to think about why your character was adventuring with the rest of the party (even though you could if you wanted). Blades in the Dark is built on that, too. On the game I wrote some days ago, PCs are assumed to form a group of Vampire Hunters.

They are not as evident, but Shadowrun and OSR D&D work nice for that, too: Your character starts as a gold seeker first, background second. It is very easy to work a game with no preemptive thinking as long as you start the game in the door of the dungeon (One of the best advice I've ever heard). By the time the party has reached town/downtime, the characters and the dynamics amongst them will be fleshed out organically. The world is designed so shadowrunners/adventurers are a thing running around the setting, so restoring a lost member is an easy task for the players.

Now that I think about it, on our Naruto campaign, we started as a team of three under the tutelage of a Jonin NPC, and our master started the game during a ninja exam. It was one of my first games and I roleplayed my ninja girl trying to go home until the teacher set a trap on her hahaha. 

On the opposite side, I remember the Usagi Yojimbo campaign I ran where I was fucking autistic trying to make sense of every single detail and had a session zero with all the players separatelly where we created the character, back when it wasn't called session zero yet. It was an awesome campaign that I wish I had made some kind of log. I used the old technique of putting the players on a tavern and dropping a hook and hoping they picked it. What got me in love with Pen and Paper RPGs back then was the idea of a Video Game with unbound freedom to do whatever you wanted, and if they had chose to ignore the hook and walk out the inn in the rain I was devoted to make it possible, but Im glad they didn't.

To summarize, the thesis is that the less background, and the more the characters are defined by their role instead of their personal idiosincrasy, the easier it is for the GM and players alike to start a campaing in a meaningful direction, leaving the rest for a second or third sessions where the inertia has already put the game in motion.

Crime Gangs, Esoteric Cults, Brotherhoods against a common evil and Public Officers of some kind are good examples of groups that work nicely (and D&D raiders count as crime gangs I guess). I'm set on running a fantasy game with no dungeons someday, playing into the medieval/court life part of medieval fantast, but I have trouble imagining what kind of elements for party cohesion can I make up, being that things such as a wizard doesnt fit into a group of knight retainers... IDK. Its not that its really needful: we are adults today and I can just make up missions, point my finger at the player and say: "take the hook, motherfucker" but you know, I always spend time thinking about things like that. 

 

 

 

VS THE VAMPIRE LORDS (a one page rpg)

 

Something I sent to this game jam to make me write a little. The game is here. You can see many of the last year's entries condensed in that single page, Of course, it is not tested, its written in just a couple of nights as a test, but I'm actually very happy with it. Google's AI helped me with one of the last letters, can you guess which one? Answer in the comments! 

Into the Odd + Pokemon = Into the Oddish

Something I found out that somebody else is doing,

 

 The only page I have seen from the rules. I love everything about this. 

 

 this third party blog is recruiting people to write the whole 151 pokemon + all the moves. I'll try to contribute if I get some time

Meta-Abilities

 

 

Which is in where the players influence the world not through the actions of their character, but by writing the narrative around it. 

I've been using this kind of things more and more every year, and I love how much crap they cut, how many problems they solve and how many good ideas they inject into the sessions. 

As for now, I have "codified" them in separate skills, which must be picked up by characters alongside the combat skills and the spells. I think about them as the "rogue" moveset; solving some problems I had here.  Translated from my spanish rules, they are: 

 

)) FLASHBACK: Every character can roll 1d6 to declare having done a simple action retroactivelly (alerted an NPC, bought a item, took any specific precaution...). If you have the FLASHBACK skill, you roll 2d6 instead. If your character has a relevant backstory, this can involve specific items such as antidotes or lockpicks

On a 1-3, it didnt work. Deplete this skill

On a 4-5, it worked, but deplete this skill until downtime

On a 6, it worked

)) ALCHEMY: You are expert making a specific alchemical product that you normally have on yourself. If you have this skill, you can roll to produce any alchemical product you have seen in the game or just describe it, and your GM will give you the closest to it as possible. Roll 1d6:

1-3 you have that amount of your alchemical compound doses. Exhaust this skill until downtime

4-5 you either have your classic compound, or get any other but exhaust this skill

6 you get any alchemical thing but exhaust this skill

Normally I rule that health-related items are not alchemical, though poisons and acids are.

 )) INVESTIGATOR: You can ask the GM any question related to a presented mystery, and as always roll 1d6. The GM will tell you the answer but you must roleplay a moment of epiphany watching whatever random shit there is at the game location.

As always, roll 1d6: 1-3 means change your question. 4-5 means you have it, 6 means you do not expend this skill. It recharges by downtime resting.

 

These skills are tied to a specific character and I like that they are tied to specific archetypes. They can be meta, but are not dissociated and you can understand how they did work in-world, or what the character did to achieve those results.

 
I also have some other examples which are more or less open to everyone at the table, which are:

)) An In-game bestiary: a book with 1d4 pages, which will answer some questions about monsters and then be depleted. It can be ported to any other topic, though. 

)) Spend downtime in the marketplace searching for a specific item and roll 1d6: On a 6, you find the item 1 tier cheaper than its normal value, you can decide why it is so cheap. On a 4-5, the GM will tell you, though maybe when it is too late and you are far from civilization.

)) I want to incorporate a new one, which now goes like this: Once per session, ONE of the characters can state something he/she did, someone he/she met or something he/she learnt at some point before the adventure started. On a 6, it is mostly true. On a 4-5 it is too, but nobody can use this move until the next session. 1-3, you cannot use this move until next session. The GM will note what you said, though, and play along if he wants. 

The once per session per party is a limit so the game doesnt devolve into making up PCs pasts every session: the first character to speak, does it. However, another player may also declare the move at the same time: the one who rolls higher, prevails. 

The statements must not contradict previous information and of course, the GM can say no i guess. The kind of things you can alter includes:

"I know one of the NPCs in the crowd, its an old friend/lover/relative"

"I know the king of this land" 

"This city has a clandestine casino somewhere" 

 "We are safe, Owlbears do not wander the forest on Christmas"

Basically anything that speaks about what the character has done or learnt on his early life. Young characters can portray this skill as carrying and reading an elder relative's diary, for example. 

With this skill, I want to give my players some agency into introducing random things they want to see in the game at any given point. They do it many times without any rules, just organically. But I like to make rules to codify their behavior because thats how autistic I am. 

No, I want to explain me better: I want those rules to be a way to invite them to inject more random things on the campaign, because I've learnt that many good things come from it: They are more interested on the things happening, and it makes the world richer because it normally pushes the game to places I would not have gone. 

  

 

 

Evil in Worldbuilding

Every day, our real world's lore becomes more and more grimdark. If you read it on any fantasy series, you'd think the plot is unbelievable and cheap.

Once monarchy was succesfully removed from europe, capitalism was unhindered to reach its natural state of monopoly.  The families behind this "social" movements grew rich enough to literally buy the world in a couple of centuries.

Their crimes are enough to put any fictional villain to shame, starting with their satanic worship to baal and moloch; the kidnap, torture and sacrifice of children; but that encompasses the creation of wars, the killing and silencing every dissident voice, the rewritting of history, mind and social manipulation, artificial empoverishement of every possible competitor, overtaking all nations and world organizations to use them as puppets, everything aimed to maim humankind mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. There is an eventual point in which we feel so tired and weak that we try to not think about them at all, and pretend that everything its allright. After all, it cant be so bad when the news dont mention them and we have the world cup, right?

I've noticed that its hard to make a serious setting featuring themes of good vs evil without making evil either an antisemitic analogy or, on the other hand, a cartoonish caricature of evil that is not even evil on its own setting (like koopa in super mario or something as shallow as that)

 I think that the only viable third choice is to set games on settings in which evil/demons exist, but monarchies are still strong enough so demons are still relativelly weak and do not control kingdoms, or are still confined into evil zones. Sauron in the third age is already on the next stage, sending its influence beyond Mordor through spies and agents. 

 

Naruto + Pokemon

 

 

The little black dot in the head of the frog that is in the head of the other frog, its a human.

 

My untested greatest rpg project of all time is to replace the whole magic system of my D&D clone with something parallel to pokemons: Wizards catching and collecting monsters that cast or are the spells, but at the same time create a bond with them. But at the same time, having the fighter class a viable and interesting choice.

After beating Koga, the ninja trainer at Fuchsia City Gym at Pokemon: Team Rocket, he says something like he had used techniques that were 400 year old. That got me thinking on how the relationship with pokemon was back then, in a feudal japan type world. Which is very close to my thing. 

 

 

Then I realized that Naruto could have become this very easily. In a different world, the Naruto anime went mostly the same until the Chuunin exams, and then derived fully into its "mon" facet: Kakashi's dogs, Jiraiya's toads; everybody's hawks, snakes, monkeys, etc. 

But I would have taken it further: Making every ninjutsu & genjutsu technique (that means: every technique that is not purely martial) some kind of summon; and that includes rasengans, illusions and shadow replications, personified with a little monster that actually does the thing for its master. Sharingans and Rinnegans could be reframed as family "spirits" that serve a clan or maybe keep them as genetic privileges, why not. You even have the bijuus working like that already, filling the setting's slot for legendary pokemon, with the steel type pokemon being the ninjas themselves; filling the slot that pokemon never tackles: Is there space for human fighters in a pokemon game?

I mean; I love Naruto. Gaara and Orochimaru are probably my favs. But how much better would be the series with 80% less Pain and Great ninja wars, and replacing it with mon catching and training, to be the very best like no one ever was? The pokemon entries on this blog are probably not over. Stay in tune.

 

gaara and his sandshrew