gang drip

porting Naruto to Blades in the Dark is looking more and more like "What if the movie the Warriors was set in Edo era Japan?"

These are some prompts to generate gang aesthetics (d12). Roll as many you want on each until you like it.

 

1. Tattoo/Mark (discrete)
2. Tattoo/Mark (showy) 
3. Bandana or scarf
4. Patterned robes
5. Elegant robes
6. Modest robes
7. Make up
8. Signature hat or hairstyle
9. Rings or bracelets
10. A necklace or hung ornament
11. A mask
12.  Vest or armor

Styles:

1. Spiritual (an animal? a demon?)
2. Flexing (flowers? feathers?)
3. Idealistic (a word/kanji?)
4. Baddie (skulls/spikes?)
5. Naive (fire or martial arts?)
6. Dreamy (Clouds or maritime?)
7. Tryhard (Monsters? Thunder?)
8. Ostentatious (gold or jewels?)
9. Humble (homemade? handknit?) 
10. Dyed (one distinctive color?)
11. Religious (icons? principles?)
12. Old School (abstract but recognizable logo? animal patterns?)

 

 

Virgin Naruto, Chad Sasuke, Retarded Itachi, Based Rock Lee

 

NARUTO:

-"I'm gonna bring Sasuke back, the girl I like told me so"

- Never mind that Sasuke doesn't want to come back. Ignore friend's desires and invalidate his decisions.

- Never offer your friend help with his revenge because that would be so evil (but go revenge Jiraiya)

 

 SASUKE:

- See brother kill all your family, be put in school and slowly see that nobody in your village gives a fuck about finding the responsible of the crime.

- Be called an emo for decades for wanting justice for an affront, both in konoha and IRL forums, get your anger downplayed by Kakashi and your peers. Be called a braggart when you decide to get strong to act yourself on it. 

-When you decide to train with Orochimaru everybody loses their minds.

 

 ITACHI:

- So in order to get possible peace for a time in this village I just have to genocide everybody I love including innocents, and some far cousins. What can go wrong?

- Fails to do the mission anyways by leaving his brother alive because after killing his parents you suddently discovers that he loves him a lot. Loves him so much that he decides to pile up psychological torture on him from now on to ensure his life is long and miserable, then tries to trick him into killing his best friend Naruto for the lols.

- Somehow remembered as a tragic, sacrificed figure and a super intelligent ninja. 

 

 ROCK LEE:

- "kerosene can't melt steel beams"

Casting Chaotic Evil Spells.

this entry has its own OST

  

GOAL: I want to have both good and evil spells available to the PCs, but the evil ones must have a gamist reason to be tempting to the player as much as to the PJ, while their consequences must also be punishing to the character and the player alike, with enough leeway to not mean instant doom. I wanted to have a little more substance to this than to make a "corruption score" which makes their character an evil NPC when topped. 

My current system works on a Magic attribute and a spell list. The magic attribute grows as the spell list does, and that happens on level ups. (I have this idea to give them only spell slots, and then make the spells "things to be found", but hasn't happen yet)

Ok so now you have your Magic Attribute, your first spells and you start your adventure. They are probably very useful on the real world, but the Magic Attribute, which also defines the overall strenght of your spells, is not very high yet so you might not feel like a powerful wizard at level 1. 

You can artificially put your magic attribute into steroids by going evil. In the fiction, this may not be as easy as saying "I am evil give me power" but, at the table, it can be. 

In the fiction, it requires a dark patron to get in contact with you: This can be an evil spirit, a shady old man, an obvious vampire, a floating demon made of eyes or an aboleth that contacted you on a ship travel. At the table, just ask your GM and he will send one to meet you soon. You may even know them from before the game started. Their methods may vary: one might have to bite you. Others will give you a present. They all might have different agendas, but in the end they all want to use you. But in the inmmediate present, your spell list will grow and, subsequently, your Magic Attribute. 

In the practice, this will put you one or two levels above a similar wizard: This goes very well with the classic trope of dark magic being a shortcut to power. In addition, certain spells will gain additional effects, such as a little extra damage for psychic attacks, or make charm spells less restricted, or imprint a compelling fear into your suggestion spell.

Instead of corruption increasing per spell used, I will only count failed rolls or partial successes. Even though an increase of the Magic Attribute will make failures more sparse (representing "mastery" of the Dark Arts) having more power and relying on it will make you want to use it more in compensation.

Dark patrons may be overt, but most will present themselves as compassive figures that want to help you, give you a gift, because they see potential in you, so you can get that wish you said you have (vengeance, love, power, riches). They know they will eventually benefit of your downfall, if not also of the trail of chaos and sorrow that will precede it.

Depending on the nature of the patron, and the nature of the player, choose which 2 consequences are most befitting to a given botch. Let your player choose one.

1. Inevitable corruption score. You gain 1d3 "corruption". Once your HP go below that mark, dark powers will seize control of your body to any degree the GM wants. The patron might want to use you for fun for a while and allow you to rest later, or maybe want to keep you forever on. Some NPCs may perceive corruption score in you, even if subconsciously, as a small buzzing fear. If you don't abuse corruption, you might level up and gain HP to keep up with it for a long time. Your friends can try to exorcize the evil or heal you above the corruption score level, if they can get hold of you.

2. One of your attributes is permanently drained; probably charisma but again, whatever befits the patron better. You also suffer a hideous transformation to reflect this; not monster-like at first, but enough to know something is wrong about you. They will become more like jynxes later. Alternativelly, a cleric spell is permanently erased from your list (those that heal, bless or work against evil). 

3. The spell has unnecesarily horrific side effects, the GM will tell you which.

4. The veil between our dimension and the patron's wears out, and strange things start to permeate over your house/territory/kingdom, if your character is settled somewhere. Alternativelly, your patron will soon appear to cause chaos nearby, or strange entities will start following you for a time until they crash somewhere.

5. The patron convinces you to do something drastic that tangentially suits your goal, and you think its actually your idea. You can avoid doing it by choosing the other option your GM presented you, but your character still felt the suggestion. 

6. Right now, nothing happens. But the patron has decided that the free trial has expired, and reclaims you to be their full time servant, their new body, their food or similar. This is not automatic and you may still present battle. Alternativelly, they may impose a quest on you, which you cannot freely ignore.

to play naruto (spoilers!)

Following this, I am thinking on how good it sounds to play a low level Naruto campaign...

But better so, inspired by naruto, but my own thing. The main reason is because the actual anime canon is too good to manipulate in a meaningful way, and I don't want to doublecheck information on the wiki about clans, dates and facts. 

I have actually some sketch of the rules. You start doing low level ranked missions at the start, as members of a ridiculously small clan, village or reassembled group. The main catch is that I want your character to be expendable, and to have the "ninja village" grow during the game, in the style of Blades in the Dark. Better ninja villages mean better starting characters, and the possibility to play during an overarching plot. I want parties to eventually include ninjas of different tiers: masters, students, legends alongside rookies, focusing more on deceit and tactics than in shonen powerups. I am rewatching the series and I really enjoy watching the Akatsuki (like the baddest ninjas you can find) being still cautious about an ambush in the woods, or being mindful about the money (both personally like Kakuzu or as a group like Pain). I loved when Jiraiya turned a giant frog into a bar called Frog Club in order to set a trap for two minions. And I love the overlapping bijuus, cursed seals, elemental techniques, mantles, special eyes and all. All those concepts are great and I want to use them, but, in relationship with the appropiate canvas (a tabletop RPG), there are some points that are so broken:

1 The Sharingan. A "just opened" eye with the sharingan can see chakra and genjutsus, physical movements at any speed and allows the user to copy them instantly. Also has the power to cast illusions and compel targets who look at it. And this is all the first level of the ladder of broken shit (mangekyu, rinnegan, etc). Like what the fuck, its really hard to manage this shit for a  GM. The greatest barrier to port Sharingan to a tabletop is, however, murderhobo players (I know some of them) that will put away any mission for searching an Uchiha and steal one of his eyes.

2. Genjustu battles. D&D fixes this as "you are stunned for 1d4 rounds" or similar. But in naruto, genjutsus are special, each one of them and ask to be played in. Sometimes, at least. They allow the user to draw information from the victim, or to speak to them apart. There are whole battles in mindscapes. But finding out you are in a genjutsu is also part of the concept, and that becomes harder to do, mostly when they target one member of the party and you are narrating to all of them. 

3. Shadow clones. They are easy on the surface: create X clones, say what they do. You wait until an enemy strikes you to reveal that he attacked a clone and that the real you is attacking him... just to see that he was a clone too, and the real one is behind you. Repeat. Something inside me thinks that it would be better to play that in reverse: Do not care about cloning yourself before the battle: just spend something to reveal it was a clone all the time. Same for the NPCs. The whole anime seems to work on retroactive logic, actually. 

4. Battles sometimes become kaiju fights alongside person fights. More rarely, a person fights a kaiju. Maybe is not as hard to portray as it seems, and its just giving those crazy abilities and tons of HP, but still. Summons, however, are broken on another sense: they allow instant communication by autodispelling from a danger zone, and being summoned by a receiver. This is easily fixed by allowing summons, but not unsummons: every animal must find the way to their home by physically travelling or any other.

5. The most broken shit, hands down, is those scrolls. Fuinjutsu: the ability to seal any kind of shit, of any size or nature, inside a piece of paper (technically, sealing spirits or monsters is also possible if sealed into persons or other living matter). Stealing a 50x50x50 meters statue from a musemum is easy if you take some time to draw some seals, unfold a parchment and cast some jutsu (it will make an audible "poof"). This makes characters able to carry virtually anything they can come up with: a canoe, endless shuriken, 10 tons of water, a house; make a legendary object dissapear by sealing it into a roll and tossing it down the toilet... In the series, there is no limits on how much they can hold. The chakra is spent sealing the objects, but not releasing them, so you can use them all in the same battle, providing you spent downtime preparing them. And if downtime is in practice infinite on the inside, so are the potential scrolls.

6. All of those are probably usable somehow, but the ability of making real operating clones is not available to PJs on any case. That is like mtg's Memory Jar of the moves, broken as fuck for a thousand reasons once you move it away from a controlled medium like an anime, to a chaotic like a game. 

 Am I being too much a pussy? Am I too scared of it? Maybe. What do you think?

 

 

Catching pokemon in a pen and paper game

Related to this and this. If I am using tamed monsters as a magic system, there has to be a way to catch them. Or not? I am very confused about how to do it. 

On one hand I have the analogic ways:

Getting into the wilderness (aka the tall grass)  until a monster pops up, then catching them with a pokeball equivalent. This works perfectly on the videogames, but I see how it can become tedious on a tabletop. Grinding a place to find one pokemon that one player happens to want makes all the other players who dont have anything to do at that place just stop and watch the show. If I do it too easy so the pokemon is catched fast, its almost the same as giving the player the monster straight. 

An even more analogic version of this is if the monsters are not catch with pokeballs, but convinced to follow a leader by actually roleplaying and discovering the monster's motivations or personality. This is great to have sometimes, but having it as the main point of the game for sorcerers and not for the rest of the classes might make them absorb a lot of game time that is not spent doing teamwork. It is also difficult, as it might seem easy to bond with a pikachu in game, but other monsters can be a challenge for the GM to roleplay in this manner.

A middle option is to make the player roll their pokeball or do their talk no jutsu once per downtime or so, allowing retrys once some time has passed.

The more boring option is just to give the players pokemon on level ups just as if they were magician spells. They can select from a random heap of them (whatever invocation scrolls are available on the local library, or whatever local pokemon are on the nearby grass), maybe adding any monster they met on their adventures to the list of possibles. This removes the need of doing all the work in character, though still the first options can be used for legendary or special pokemon. But something feels bad about taking from players the experience of catching their rattattas.

This opens the problem of that players catching their pokemon diegetically advance more than those spending their level ups on them. Its easy to fix, though, by making those diegetical ones "temporal" until the next level up, and then requiring the player to spend the level up "keeping" them just as if they were their downtime catch. This can apply from cosmic monsters who manifest as spells to a plain dog who is an animal companion. 

As an addendum, there is something I don't like about Naruto's summoning: Servant animals are supposed to be someplace when you just "teleport" them into battle or whatever. This is ridiculously easy to break by PCs in order, for example, to send real-time messages through them as they dispell the summoning; and you run into the risk of summoning a sleeping dog at night or summon a giant toad at the moment he was sitting on the toilet taking a shit,

 

 

 

 

 

rpg design tips I heard somewhere.

 

 

1. Have a setting, as to write the rules around it. Do not be as lame as to make a generic ruleset and then put a setting over it. 

2. Evoke the setting. Make it as tangible as possible through description, implied descriptions, tables, clichés. Tangible is better than sensible. 

3. Do not write optional rules; make the effort to choose the best option yourself, you are the designer. GMs do not like having to decide that shit. Players in general are not dumb and will homebrew their own rules eventually if they don't like the established ones.

4. Make it so the players have either a long or short term goal right at the start. A good long term goal will make the players decide a first step towards it. A good short term goal will unlock new goals by its pursue and/or its resolution.   

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! 

 

EDIT: If you don't want to go through the ItchIo process, just read the game below in text format, I'm gonna copy and paste it here.  Download it if you want it optimized for one page.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VS THE VAMPIRE LORDS,  by alchemistnocturne.blogspot.com

Roll/Choose a Background: 

1-2-3: Vampire Hunter: When the order was disbanded and your leader was captured, he managed to give 
you a 12x12 square map: it marks the secret hideout of the Vampire Lord of the East. Many allies died making that map. You start with a sword, a javelin or a bow. 

4-5: Retrieved Child: Those bird.masked doctors gave you a catatonia-induced drug and told your parents you had died from the plague. The order rescued you on their way to the vampire's lair. 

6: Skeptical peasant: You are too smart to believe in vampires, but had to flee with the party when the king's men mistook you for a member during the raid. 

Distribute 1d4, 2d6, and 1d8 between these skills. When playing, a 6 is a full success, a 4 or a 5 you succeed partially or with complications.

Combat: on a 4 or a 5, deal 1 damage. On a 6, deal the weapon's damage (usually 2 to 3). Roll your combat die at the start to find your Maximum Hit Points. If you get 0 HP or less, you are wounded. When on negative HP, roll your combat dice + your current HP and try to reach 1, on a failure you pass 
out and will die if abandoned. 

Lore: Once per session, decide something that is true in the current place, or put something you want in the map, 1d6 squares away, On a 4-5 the square is randomized. 

Item: Produce any item from your backpack. On a 4-5 this skill depletes until next downtime. You can normally carry four objects in your inventory but ignore that limit when you use this skill. 

Attitude: Choose, roll or make up your own: 1.Bossy, 2.Angry, 3.Teasing 4.Devoted 5.Meek 6.Emo 7.Pick-me 8.Empathic. If you think your attitude is beneficial to any action (any), you can roll this instead of relying in the GMs fiat. 

When you level up, you can change your attitude. Also raise the die size of any attribute, and re-roll your combat die for HP. If the amount is higher, keep the new one.

ARMOR is mostly Roman-Inspired loricas that add 1 to 3 HP. Actually, when in doubt, imagine this game with late roman and post-roman V century aesthetics. 

BLOOD is what all vampires crave. Victims do not have to be drained to death, and some vampires feed on the same person many times, but the victim becomes mentally manipulated by the vampire, gets sick and eventually dies unless the vampire gives the victim its own blood (turning them into a vampire) or the vampire attacker is killed. 

CAESARS were the governors of the world before the plague. The last caesar is defamed as a madman who spread the plague, but only a few know that he actually tried to expel the Vampire Lords and set the foundation for the Guild of Vampire Hunters. Praying on the secret grave of the last caesar will make you level up at the end of a session.

DOG ROSE can be set on any door or coffin lid to prevent a Vampire from opening it. Garlic flowers and crosses are also strong repellants.

EMPIRICS is the official name for the bird-masked doctors who treat the sick and sicken the healthy. They work directly for vampire handlers.

FOUL demons also exist and manifest as disasters and plague. Vampires have probably a demonic origin.

GUARDSMEN are most often women, due to strong, able men being constantly purged. They are mostly loyal to the king they serve, but are oblivious to the vampire existence. Their classic weapon is the sword. Most peasants will eagerly report any plaguebearer behavior to them.

HETAIRAS are often pretty young girls who were raised and brainwashed by vampire handlers. They travel from town to town singing songs interlaced with vampiric propaganda. The male equivalents are Hetairoi and use to form boy bands.

INITIATIVE is simultaneous, everyone declares their actions and then they happen. When two or more people are involved in a melee against each other, only the biggest roll happens. In case of a tie, they both happen and those involved can attack each other again.

JOURNALS written in the ancient times are now only found in forgotten, ruined enclaves or in the hand of secretive owners, for vampires sought to find and destroy them all. Recovering an old journal will get you a level up.

KINGS are puppets for the vampire lords. They have promised that he will someday become a vampire too if they obey their commands. 

LOW LEVEL VAMPIRES do exist, and work for a Vampire Lord master in some way, such as lieutenants, assistants or brides. Their powers and combat prowess are limited. Killing a vampire or thwarting any vampire's plan will make you level up after a session.

MIRRORS are an effective way to detect vampires. Dogs are also detect them very easily, but the tax for having a dog increases every year.

NIGHTFALL is when vampires can freely act and use their powers. Sunlight weakens the vampires, who become letargic and defenseless, so they normally hurry up to their coffins or any other shelter before it. They cannot cross running water either, or a portal into an inhabited place without being invited first.

ONE square travelled takes one day.  GM can make up things on the way, but they can't be changed afterwards. Generally, the party must agree an action for the day and another for the night (march, search, rest, socialize, forage...) 1d6-2 lost HP are refillled by resting. 

PLAGUE never happened. It is being used for decades as a general method for control, like keeping peasants away from hot squares, attributing rebellions and resistance to alleged “plaguebearers” and justify the acts of the empirics.

QUEEN on the eastern castle is actually an obvious transvestite man. Vampire Lords forced the king to marry him as an act of submission. Anyone pointing at this fact has been accused of plaguebearer to date.

REVELATIONS about the plague, reading old books or defying the impending narrative openly will soon mark you as a plaguebearer and be captured for punishment or execution. Waking up an NPC to these revelations will, however, make you level up at the end of the session.

SHIELDS are commonplace and can be used after you have received an attack, Simply roll your combat die over the enemy's roll. On a tie, the attack hits and the shield breaks. 

THREE more lairs exist in the world, and simply finding their placement will earn you a level after that session.

UTENSILS that can be used as weapons deal 2 damage, while proper weapons do 3 but are banned to the 
commons under the accusation of being a bandit. Real bandits are extremelly rare, and felony murders are often a discrete way to dispose of a rebel.

VAMPIRE LORDS rule the world unopposed, only rivalled by each other. After centuries of being feared and persecuted, they finally convinced the world that they don't exist. Their powers include summoning storms, vermin, wolves and all kinds of ruin, assuming the shape of enormous dogs or mist, reading the minds of their thralls and controlling them mentally. They can also know things remotelly through bats and other informants. Once you have crossed a Lord, expect them to send constant trouble until you've deceived their radar. 

WARS are programmed periodically between kingdoms as a way to purge strong men. In order to dispose of all of them (even the victors) vampires have pushed poisonous weapons into fashion. Some Vampire Lords like to witness battles with their vampiric vassals in disguise, so they can feast on the dying after the carnage.

XYPHOS are legendary two-handed sabers, forged in the times of the Caesars. On a roll of 6 or more, you can make a second attack.

YIELDING destroys the spirit progressivelly. Sometimes, the vampire law has practical benefits, other times,laws such as prima nocte exist to assert dominance and make people defend the new regime through the sunk cost fallacy.

ZEPHYRUS wind strangely blowing in the cold months means you're gonna receive a sign shortly, if you say “tell me, good Zephyrus”, or so the oldest amongst you heard as a kid. 

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, but not alchemical compounds as they are too specific (see next one)

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.

 

 EDITED: I've been thinking on how to allow pokemon to ninjas while still having "non-magical" fighters in the world, be it as players or as NPCs if their gameplay is not interesting enough.

1. Pokemon are very hard to find for the common person. They are not physical animals, but more spiritual entities from another plane. If you start with one, it means that is has a some kind of contract with your clan (this casually also puts emphasis on the clan aspect of the ninjas). This pokemon is rolled at random from a list of starters.

2. When you level up as a ninja, you have the choice of, instead of raising speed, strenght or whatever attributes you have, studying your village's pokemon scrolls. This will give you access to a new pokemon at random that you can pick if you like it, or level up the one you already have. 

3. Certain NPCs will introduce you to new pokemons if they like you. Old ninjas might want to tell you about their own, or a mystical girl of the mountains may talk good about you to the local Kami. When you roll to pick a random pokemon, you can choose the random one or any of those introduced to you through the adventure. Normally, ninjas will only reveal pokemon to other ninjas of their own or allied villages. Sometimes, Pokemon will appear in your way by themselves, even searching for you if they want to "get XP" through being used by a worthy caster.

4.  Pokemon are summoned through hand seals, because it is aesthetic and fitting. Pokemon may be physically present as "animals" but most of the time, only some of their aspects will be visible (feathers, fire, snow, etc). Sometimes they will be channelled through the body of the caster.  If the hand-seal thing is a upgradeable skill, it is only natural that more martial characters such as samurai don't invest on it. 

5. Staves as magical tools can work as a symbol of status before pokemon, just like a king's scepter. They only work after a downtime period of attunement, and are useful mostly for powering up spells that are "shot". It makes normal for ninjas that use spells on target:self to forfeit wants altogether, even more so if they difficult things such as climbing trees or keeping stealth. 

 

 

gaara and his sandshrew

 

 

Pokemon and Worldbuilding

I am playing Dragonsden's Pokemon: Team Rocket Edition again. Its a fan game made by a Spaniard but I think its becoming translated into english already. It might be the greatest pokemon game ever made. This is the pitch:

You start the adventure as just another recruit on the Inta Island headquarters, at Archi7, with the intention of ascending little by little into the Team Rocket organization. Yoy must fulfill succesfully the missions assigned by your superiors. 

The story unfolds in the same timeline than Red's and Blue's adventurers (the MCs of gen 1 pokemon) and, given that you will be sent to Kanto, you will be able to witness their stories from the perspective of a Team Rocket's member, and everything that happened on the backside, keeping the canon from the original games intact but adding a surprising depth into the lore.

You soon find that the Team Rocket, while still being criminals and Pokemon thieves, are at the core a patriotic resistance from Kanto, resisting an invasion of the Lance, a warlord from Johto, and their Elite 4 who invaded the region using their pseudolegendary Dragonites, and you can feel first hand the campaign of hate and the media manipulation they use trying to paint Giovanni's Team Rocket as crazy terrorists (If you were a vaccine-skeptic person by covid times you'll know what i mean)

If the plot is not enough to sell it to you, the pokemon-training part is awesome: you can potentially capture basically 99% of pokemon of the first 4 generations and fully visit Kanto, Johto and Hoenn. This is my current team:

 

This game really shows how good pokemon worldbuilding is. We don't speak enough of how crazy its premises are:

* A world where there are no animals beyond a very specific number of species, most of which are evolutions of each other, and a great number of them are legendary and not really seen around. 

* Pokemon can be so powerful that there are no arms race between countries. No guns, tanks, nukes or even more primitive weapons: There is no need of them when you can just train a worm into a Beedrill and make it fight for you. Everything in Kanto, from the small to the big, is settled by combats, and all combats are fought by pokemon. A government getting hold of Mewtwo is the equivalent of the race for the Nuclear Bomb.

* In a sense, pokemon work as local fauna, flora, workforce, weaponry, pets and shinto gods. Everything and everyone in the setting has a different relationship with pokemons. Every city has a pokemon something: a museum, a safari zone, a pokemon burial yard. 

See this video if you want to see all the types of pokemon trainers of gen 1, or just marvel on how artists could make peak 56x56 pixels pictures with 4 colors. If you are like me (a worldbuilding ultra geek) you can spend hours thinking on how each of the random trainers represent an alignment chart of personality x strate of society, which defines their lifestyle and which pokemons they get:

Bugcatchers are kids trying to get pokemons in their nearby forest. I like to think that, given that bug type pokemon are strong against dark and psychic, those kids can defend their homesteads of evil Sneasels, Hypnos and Kadabras. Some bugcatchers will stay sheltered or forego pokemon hunting as adults, others will attempt to get a Pinsir or a Scyther, but most will switch to another type as they grow up. 

Swimmers strike to me as some sort of 60s surfers, living in the coastal areas by and for the sea. Sailors are also water-pokemon users, which reminds me that while there are cruises available, there are no sight of cars. Kanto is a good example of a non-globalized world where people lives near their workplace, and travelling is done by bike and for fun. I don't think planes are really needed either, when important persons can teach FLY to their pidgeottos.

Bikers and Team Rockets are the organized criminals, the former using poison/fight pokemons such as weezing or mankey, and the latter using their signature rattatas/zubat combo. As revealed in the game i'm playing, they pretend to be lamer than they are as a way to gain advantage over the elite 4. As Giovanni says: "you cannot fight what you don't know it exists"

Mountaineers (geodudes and onixs) are the common country man who loves Lynyrd Skynyrd. Blue collars become engineers (magnemites and voltorbs) in more industrial zones. Fishermen complete the middle class triad. The most drunk of them talk about the magikarp they will never evolve, the most level headed about where and when to find more (or less) level 19 tentacools at this time of the year.

Those self called Cool Trainers (endless nidorinos) represent the snob, against the true Gentleman's Arcanines and Manectrics. The Nerd will get their personal pokemon waifu (usually Slowpokes) for personal fulfillment instead of elitism. 

Maybe its just me, but I see many people at the street who could be the Gambler. Those old men with a couple of poliwags or wasted junkies with a meowth who should be taken away by the pokemon welfare; trying to get all or nothing in a street combat. One, trying to recover the spirit of his younger days; the other, some coins for some Silph-manufactured crack.  

Which leads me to one of the greatest pillars of the setting: Scientists. Wherever you go, under a very thin veil of innocence, they are doing massive pokemon-related shit. Cloning Articuno, Creating Mewtwo and creating countless waste (Dittos) in the process, creating all types of pokemon steroids, resurrecting fossils, inventing the pokedex or better types of pokeball, or closing the gap between science and parapsychology with the silph scope. I like to think that, just as they invented the teletransporter tiles, Escape Ropes really work as teletransporters in-setting. The clash of nature/divine vs science/manmade is a heavy underlying theme through all the games.

Karatekas, who use machops and hitmonlees, are beautiful to have. You never ever see a man vs man (or man vs pokemon) fight in all the game. I understand it so that no man can match the fighting skill of those fight pokemons, yet they still practice karate to hone their spirit, strenght and skills. True spiritual man that seek for enlightment and possibly get inspired by the energy of their pokemon companions. 

The spiritual representation continues on the Channelers at Lavender Town. It is refreshing to see that the game cares to show you that there exist death rites and beliefs in this world for men and beasts alike. They double up as goth girls, making the world become suddently much more interesting. Also, see this note on how Erika, the plant gym leader, was probably destined originally to be a ghost trainer or a ghost itself.

 

If I was a real person on Kanto, however, I'd probably be a Bird Keeper. They strike me as sort of a middle ground between a complete outcast and a functional life. Fearow is probably my favorite pokemon: its not just beautiful, but also a real (glass) cannon, a true sweeper if you can manage to never let your opponent get a turn

Interesting how policemen trainers carry growlithes for protection instead of guns or batons. I like to think that when they carry a random haunter or pikachu, they do it because they are on a special mission, so they are not easily targeted by a water-user criminal. 

As a wrap up, I'd say that all this examples paint a world in which the common people is very connected to nature, and most of them live meaningful lives pursuing their passions. You might not have noticed conscioulsy yet but now you just did. I will probably expand on pokemon-related ideas this month, because I am a huge pokemon nerd.

As another wrap up, just some quote that I might extend on the future: any worldbuilding is not great just for what the world shows, but for the stories and explanations it allows you to make. 

 

Is the Owlbear spanish?

Looks like an Owlbear, but its a Bú!

 I like Owlbears; it's probably my most used monster straight from the book. I love that, without having powers, they are big and terrible, and make players fear camping out at night in the woods. I rule that they can be easily stunned by flashing lights, as their pupils are so used to the dark.

 I've heard the tale of Gary Gygax making up the monster around a cheap toy he found on some shop:

 

 

Yesterday, researching some myths, I heard about a creature from a spanish region neighbour to mine: The Bú (maybe coming from the first syllabe of Búho? Thats how you say Owl in spanish) 

 

This page has some good lore about it (in Spanish). It is believed that it has it's origins on an ancient god, maybe even older than our celt/iberian/celtiberian past. I'll translate some of the descriptions:

 

"A hunchbacked person of bloated face and open feet"
"A bird of great size and terrifying aspect, of the likes of the owl and the barn owl"

"Gargantuan owl of enormous red eyes"

"Dark and sinister bird"

My favorite: "A big and black owl's body, great silent wings, plate-sized red eyes, a menacing beak and claws as big as traps for wolves"

 

It was said that on this villages the monster used to appear on the night sky, searching for kids playing on the streets after sunset. Mothers and Grandmothers called upon the Bú to scare the children when they didn't want to sleep:

 

Duérmete mi niño,

Que ya viene el Bú.

Que se lleva a los niños.

Así como tú.

 A castillian lullaby that translates to "Sleep my children, for here comes the Bú, that takes the children just like you" (perfect rhyme even in english!). But there are enough mountains and other landmarks dedicated to that monster to incite me to believe that, for the locals, it was a little more than a mere kid's tale. 

 

 

Sex scenes

 Related to this post, but not actually about that. 

I am working on a magic system outlined in here, which works by calling forth magical spirits instead of casting the spells, and I was thinking on the incubus-like nature of ifrits. 

I don't know about how often do sexual themes or scenes appear in your games. Its not something I bring to the table on purpose (or so I think), but feel that sometimes they appear on their own and I have to work to circunvent them. 

From D&D, B/X: Nixies are 3' tall water sprites. They look like small beautiful women, and their skin is light blue, green, or gray-green. They avoid combat, but may try to charm an adventurer. Ten nixies can cast one such charm, and if a save vs. Spells is not made, the victim will enter the water and serve the nixies for a year. (Each nixie can cast a water breathing spell on her slave, but this must be renewed every day.)
If forced to fight, nixies use small tridents (treat as spears) and daggers, and each will summon a giant bass to aid them. Nixies dwell in rivers and lakes, making their lairs in the deepest part of the water.

You can try to make up whatever you want, but the logic on nixies is that they are obvious rapists of men. It makes sense they do it like this to reproduce, as their own race has no males. The charm, their attractiveness, the myth of nymphs and sirens and even the implied sensuality of water play into this story too well as to not use it. 

It think its appropiate to have Ifrits play a specular role, being smug fire devils that like to molest women. An ifrit taking/burning the clothes off a sorceress as a drawback from a partial success could work so good on the paper. Or granting strenght to a male caster, but also filling him with an unbearable lust. 

 The problem is that what makes sense on the worldbuilding aspect may be a little weird to pull on an actual game, like if you were pushing your rape fetish or suddently doing ERP with your friends. Sometimes the sexual option is the most valid: I've pulled out nixes straight, but also bandits who kidnap women to make them serve in brothels. My shadowrun elf was a gay samurai who prostituted himself a couple of times to advance plot (lol!). Never described actual sex scenes beyond the classic "roll a d20 to see how you perform" and that is OK. Its not something I would base a campaign on, but its a shame to deprive a world from the sexual dimension, which is so important in both our world, our history and our myths. From monsters that look a suitor to classic rapist bandits, they are expressions of human emotions and sometimes trying to tone them down is funny and childish; other times are bland and artificial, specially if they contrast with the tone the players assumed in your campaign.

 

Abstract wealth

Because I've never liked beancounting on games for multiple reasons; I can't remember what I did with my last abstract wealth rules. Let's rewrite them. But first, let's break the wealth tiers, even if just for having a reference:

Tier 0: You are broke. You suck dicks to survive. You must roleplay how you get your food and shelter 

Tier 1:  You have some silver coins. You can afford basic adventuring gear, cheap weapons such as axes or spears, some food and some nights at the inn until your GM says so.

Tier 2: You have some gold coins. You can afford a decent sword with a sheath, hiring a specialist/gang for one job (use common sense, GM's), a rare item that requires a specialized artisan; reagents or alchemical products (typically, alchemical products will be one tier more expensive than the reagents they use, but this might have exceptions)

Tier 3: You have some gemstones, jewels, or a stash of gold. You can afford plate armor, a warhorse, hiring an elite professional/warband for a job, extremelly rare reagents or alchemical products. You can commission the building of ship or a house, though this may require multiple "successes" depending on its size

Tier 4: You have a great treasure. You can afford building many ships or a castle (multiple rolls needed)

It's up to the GM to conceptualize other items or services on this table. If a PC wants to buy a plot of land, for example, think about the quality of said land and what does it represent for the owner. 

* PCs can buy whatever they want that is under their Tier Level
* PCs can buy some items of their current level. They roll 1d6, if they roll equal or under the items they bought, their Tier goes down. 
* PCs will occassionally find items for sale below their usual Tier, the GM will make up why and how (or randomize it). PCs can also try to trick or convince sellers to lower their prices.
* One (1) piece of gold or (1) gem can represent one use of their respective tier, or as having the tier below, as needed. 

 

not much related but here it is, an old drawing of a couple of hobbits paying the bridge tax to a troll

I started an NSFW webcomic

 And it's here: 

 https://phylacteryquest.thecomicseries.com/

Two adventurers are sent on a quest through an average jrpg land; It's sort of related to this blog because I can't help doing tons of OSR meta-references. I'm having a lot of fun doing it. Just Tome I for now (with surprisingly no female nudity yet), I expect to do the II this month, and honestly if there is enough interest, I have an actual epic plot in mind. (Please consider dropping a comment in there if you like it)