Jaws of Tamriel - PDQ Hack for Skyrim (Part 1)

I have the opportunity to play a game with my wife and niece in the next couple of days. We live a good two hours from our niece, so the visit for a couple of days is something we're both looking forward to. We've played Fiasco, and she's had some exposure to other rules without a lot of successful actual sessions under her belt, but the wife and I are ready to change that and allow her to be a true bad-ass. There's nothing like you're first real adventure, and so I want to make it awesome.

I also have been itching to try out the Jaws of the Six Serpents PDQ rule set from Silver Branch Games. The rules are very, very lite sword & sorcery, and while the setting does sound pretty awesome, I'd like to shift it to something I understand and know a bit better - Skyrim. Skyrim's my first elder scrolls game, and I've played hours and hours of the thing (which really has no end in sight). It has the added bonus of being almost completely unknown to my wife and niece.

With that in mind, I'm putting together a very simple hack of PDQ for Skyrim, which I have titled Jaws of Tamriel. What I love about PDQ is its simplicity and ability to sculpt into what you need. That being said, I haven't had to put much effort into changing much of the rules. You will need the Jaws of the Six Serpents or at least the Nugget rules (found for free on rpgnow.com) to use these for your own game. Between Jaws of the Six Serpents, the elder scrolls wiki, and the huge, impressive hardcover video game guide, I've got pretty much all I need for not just an epic adventure, but hopefully a huge campaign as well.

Below you can find the first part that I've worked on - replaced the peoples presented in Jaws of the Six Serpents for the ten player races open for players of Skyrim. I plan on posting most in the next week, specifically my magic rules, unique item rules, and potion rules. That's pretty much it for the hack. Enemies are just as easy to make up for Skyrim as they would for any other PDQ game, so I just need to look for the source material for inspiration.

Looking for sci-fi setting inspiration? Forget Mass Effect and head to your local comic shop.

Ever since the New 52 launched last August, I've been buying comics weekly digitally from Comixology and have been loving it. I've been focusing on superhero books and only buying three of four different issues each week after I've figured out which would work in the long run, and I've noticed a real trend in the books I keep on buying and enjoying - Science Fiction!

SF has always been more core genre since Star Wars as a kid, and even my love of Lord of the Rings can't quite push me over the edge to say I prefer fantasy over science fiction. Of course, if you can mix it up together, all the better. I find that the titles I'm buying even from the larger publishers tend toward more science fiction-y tropes and settings. For example, it being Wednesday, I picked up three issues from series I started with and haven't quit - Green Lantern, Batman and Robin, and Wolverine and the X-Men. While all three books are definitely superhero books, they also all tend toward high-tech gadgets, outlandish villains, and quirky aliens.

Even more so, this seems to be the year of Image Comics, and two books that recently launched have really captured my imagination. Even better, they're both very firmly rooted in the tradition of mashing-up science fiction and fantasy, although the first one is more of the swords and planets variety while the second is looking like it might be a definitive space opera.

Prophet is just two issues in (starting at at #21 with pretty much a complete revamp of the character from the 90's), but it's AMAZING when it comes to new ideas. Conan meets Rip Van Winkle meets Planet of the Apes (but weird), The art from Prophet is one things that sets it apart from everything else I'm reading right now.

At times it can be weird, down-right gross, and uncomfortable, but the story is amazing. It's set in the extreme far future and our main character is only slightly more aware of what's going on than the reader is. In just two issues, Prophet has presented an amazingly weird world that defies genre expectations. It's cryptic, constantly throws new ideas at you, and you are desperate but eager to keep up with the pace. I really recommend picking the first issue up digitally for $1.99 to give it a shot and see if you it's your thing. Then, do your best to not be incredibly motivated to play a traditional swords & sorcery game out of the setting.

Saga, which heralds the return of Brian K. Vaughn to comic writing, is probably one of the biggest hyped books to come out in a while. It's actually a fairly traditional story of star-crossed lovers, and while the characters are likable and interesting (something fans of BKV will come to expect of his writing), it's really the outrageous setting that drew me in.

Saga presents a world (galaxy really) of two races who have always been at war. You can see a representative of each race just by glancing to the left there at the cover of the first issue. And yes, that's a baby, so you probably think you've got it all figured out. Truthfully, you probably do have a lot of it figured out regarding the story, but the setting itself is something different.

Magic and tech exist just as equally viable methods to get your way in the universe of Saga. I was quite taken aback when early on in the issue we were shown some truly cool D&D style magic showing up in the middle of this clearly science fiction setting.

Also, there's robots, or some kind of weird mechanical guys with TV's for heads. It gets kind of hard to explain, but it's safe to say that Saga will be published as long as BKV wants to do the work. I would love to see an officially-sanctioned RPG for this universe (yes, even after only one issue), as I feel like there's a lot of meat on the bones and a TON of room to play around and create something original with your playgroup.

So there you have it! Mass Effect is great, but for real science fiction inspiration, comics has taken a turn for the awesome. Don't miss out.

Why Skyrim Makes Me Want to be a Better GM.

Skyrim isn't technically me first Elder Scrolls game. I tried playing Oblivion on both the PC and the PS3, and could not get into the story at all. I didn't care straight away from the opening, and the controls seemed counter-intuitive for me (the same could be said for my experiences trying Fallout 3 sadly). I was however taken in immediately from the opening cart ride through avoiding the dragon to choosing (obviously) to work with the Storm Cloaks instead of escaping with the Imperial Legion. The game just felt right immediately. If a game grabs me like that, it usually has me for the whole ride as I delve deeper into the story. Skyrim took that and ran with it, and Bethesda has done something truly amazing with the game.

I've got two big reasons why Skyrim just works for me. Because I love making lists, I made a list!

Shocktober Day 13 - Horror Gaming Fodder - The One Shot

Perhaps there is no better genre of gaming than horror to choose for a one-shot game for a Friday night. The genre lives and dies (excuse the pun) with disposable characters that get torn to shreds physically or metaphysically beyond repair. While many of the greatest horror movies are actually franchises full of monsters and a lone protagonist who simply refuses to die, there are countless others where one movie is all you need. In these one-shot stories, they can often be more satisfying than a long, drawn-out struggle of a seemingly immortal serial killer and his perennial almost-victim. There's real resolution, an ending, and completion to one-shot movies, and the same applies to one-shot tabletop games.

There are exceptions, but some of the best horror games published are keyed in specifically to present a perfect system to run a one-shot game. The exceptions are notable - the World of Darkness games, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Unknown Armies - but for the most part, games like Dread and Call of Cthulhu don't care so much about otherwise important role playing mechanics like the silly idea of advancing a character and leveling up. No, these games focus on entropy and the eventual/inevitable loss of life, limb, and/or one's mind. What does hitting level 2 matter when Cthulhu is CL Infinity?

The one-shot game is a standard for horror gaming, and for good reason. For starters, it's just plain easier to plan a single night's worth of story complete with introduction, rising action, climax, and falling action. For another, it's pretty darn satisfying to play a one-shot because, unlike I would guess most campaigns, one-shot games actually finish. One-shots for horror specifically also mean you can raise the stakes to an appropriate level to really raise the tension and show your players that anyone can die (a necessary evil/joy to get across when GM'ing horror).

The big thing about horror one-shots is that they allow you to try really weird stuff in your games. You can be as far out as you want to be when planning a one-shot because the worst you've done is waste one game night and the best you can do is truly surprise, confuse, and disorient your players with new, weird mechanics or horror concepts they've never seen before. I chose In the Mouth of Madness for the image for today's post, because I think it represents this ideal perfectly. If you've never seen it, go watch it on Instant Watch right away. John Carpenter is one of my all-time favorite directors, and I believe Mouth of Madness is a cinematic version of Carpenter trying some weird shit just to see if it would work. In my opinion, it does, but it goes way out there before the credits roll. Carpenter took a chance with futzing with the narrative to tell an interesting Lovecraftian story, and the result is a disorienting series of creepy coincidents that turn out to weave a much larger tale.

This time of year always comes with people asking for recommendations for one-shot scenarios to play for some good old-fashioned Halloween gaming. Last Friday we played a Halloween themed Call of Cthulhu game in modern day which was a ton of fun. Beyond that, I would really recommend using Dread to run your game and introduce some new players to the hobby. There is no simpler game to bring new people in, and you can explain the game in a manner of a minute or two. You can download the quick version of the rules here on The Impossible Dream's website, but I would encourage you to try to find a copy of the book or download the pdfs of their two scenario books which work just fine with the downloadable free version of the rules - Dread: Tales of Terror - Wastelands and Dread: Tales of Terror - Precious Illusions. Otherwise, go read my review of the game to see if it's for you.

Shocktober Day 10 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Suspicion

So life intruded a little bit into my plans for my Shocktober posting, so to get caught up, instead of posting a Seed of Horror today, I'm posting an article about this week's theme - suspicion. I still want to get a Horror to Play post up before the end of the month about the movie I picked out for last week's theme of isolation, so I'll probably put an extra post up one of these weekends. Anyway, here we go!

Have you ever played a game of Diplomacy? It's one of the oldest board games that still gets played regularly at tables across the country, and it's pretty much a devastating set of rules that encourages lying and betrayal in its best players. You can't trust anyone in a game of Diplomacy, and it's always the go-to example of a game you should never play with a significant other. Sure there are other games where alliances are made and the only way a player can win is to break them, but nothing truly requires you to be a sneaky bastard like Diplomacy.

Shocktober Day 6 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Isolation

Safe from the flood, but what about the serial killer hidden in the house?

For today's Horror Gaming Fodder post I wanted to look at another key principle of what can make a horror game a true success. Last week I looked at the use of props in horror games which set the tone for the rest of the week's posts.  Horror games are full of tropes we all know and love. These common characteristics are so common because they tend to work, but nothing is more integral to making a horror game work more than isolation. Whether it's physical isolation that forces the characters into a location where they can't actually access help or it's psychological isolation that gives the characters that hopeless feeling that no one out there could help you or, worse, would help you if they could even understand the problem they faced in the first place, isolation is necessary to put characters and players in the mindset that no one is going to come to their rescue. 

Shocktober Day 1 - Horror Gaming Fodder - Props

Welcome to the first day of Shocktober 2011! This is my favorite month of the year and my favorite gimmick of my blog. If you want to see what I did for previous Shocktobers, got check out Shocktober 2009 or Shocktober 2010. This year every day of the week has a column devoted to it. Check this post for more details.

It being Monday in Shocktober 2011, it's a day to look at the core of what Shocktober is all about - horror gaming fodder. I define my gaming fodder posts as posts that are useful to general role-playing whether it's D&D or Fiasco. Monday's this year are all about gaming fodder to enhance your horror games. In a loose sense, I'm going to take the opportunity each Monday in my horror gaming fodder to introduce the theme of the week. This won't be anything like last year's theme weeks, but I hope to have at the end of each week five posts of very different styles that all address the same general idea.

Riffing on the Military Campaign.

For some reason, no one volunteered to play the Scuba Steve Trooper.

One of the things I've wanted to do since getting into tabletop role playing has been a military campaign. The first adventure I planned for my group was a Star Wars Saga Edition game that was a follow-up to several sessions running the free campaign Wizards was producing at the time. It was a huge learning experience, those early days of our group's trying out what turned out to be one of the best versions of the d20 system. We had a lot of fun, but I was itching to run my own game.

Harry Potter Setting Riff - The Silent Castle.

As a belated homage to the end of the Harry Potter series (and as a tribute to my favorite of the eight movies), HP 7 - part 2 had my mind running wild with What-If's and Elseworlds stories that, if tweaked just a tiny bit, could turn into one helluva fun setting for a one-shot game. Today I want to focus on one thought I had for a far-future adventure set in the HP world. I'm going to warn you that my HP appreciating nerdiness is going to shine through brightly here, but forgive me a bit of indulgence. My favorite sequence both in the movies and the books is going to be discussed with a bit of detail below right alongside some other spoilers from the whole series, so if you've been waiting to read the books or haven't seen the movie and don't want anything spoiled for you, don't read more! If this doesn't apply, come join me for a dark vision of the future of Hogwarts...

Elves - A Great and Terrible Thing

You'd think that countless years and countless lifetimes would lead the elves toward a greater understanding of forgiveness and allow them to develop the ultimate live-and-let-live mentality, at least you'd hope. Sadly, those who have had the ill luck of crossing paths with one of the lords of the forest know better. The elvenfolk are vindictive, vain, petty, and above all, powerful.

Some say their immortality has fostered a kind of madness known only to those who need not fear death. They believe the long, drawn-out, almost ritualistic ways in which they plot revenge and carry out personal vindication against those who have wronged them. Those few who have survived an elf's retribution and payment on what they whimsically refer to as a "life debt" often have no idea what they even did to wrong the fae creatures in the first place. They claim to have in fact offered the greatest hospitality and courteousness toward the fae lord or lady they encountered. Only a madness, those who have been repaid by an elf claim, such as that possessed by dragons and other creatures from before time could so cloud the eyes of those with such power.

The Evil Machinations of the Local Baron

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a character tick. Oddly enough, a great source of inspiration for this musing has come from the fact that one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Deadliest Warrior, is now on Netflix Instant Watch, and I've been watching the hell out of that bloody mess of machismo, pseudo science, and anachronistic bullshit of a TV show. I like the weapons, so sue me. Anyway, I began thinking about just how ridiculous the show is when they do their final battle. You see, they basically rate the common weapons used by each type of warrior against the other warrior's weapons. I do think it's possible to say, quantitatively, that one type of sword is generally better than another, but the thing that the show really misses is that it's actually really, really hard to do so without context. The reason these weapons are known today is that they were the best weapons for the people for the place and time they lived in.

So all of that hot air brings about today's topic. As a player, I'm responsible for fleshing out my character to give my GM and fellow players something interesting to work with. If you've seen my posts from the past two weeks talking about the Three Questions, you'll know what I mean, but to sum it up quickly - I need to know what my character wants, why my character wants it, and what my character is willing to do to get it. These three things about my character will give me enough information to react to any situation that could pop up and make life difficult for him (or her, but almost always him). The answers, in a way, are a shortcut to a lot of other useful information that I am than able to make up on the fly. This allows me to develop my character through play while still have a rock-solid foundation to fall back on for the sake of consistency.

But what about the GM? What about an NPC that you may only meet twice ever? We want our NPC's and supporting cast to be colorful and memorable, rigth? How do we make this happen? Since we're talking about a lord/mayor/baron whatever of a small area, I think the easiest way to make a character like this stick out is to make sure you have a clear understanding of how the town is affected by his leadership. You may only see the character once or twice (or maybe even never in some cases), but the thing that's really going to stand out about your Baron is the people who suffer or succeed around him. Yes, like any NPC, the Baron will benefit from having the Three Questions answered for him, but like I said, the three questions are really best used for laying the ground work and developing a character over time.

Adventure Riff - Titanic 3

Now that this is officially released and available on Netflix Instant Watch, I feel down-right inspired to make a terrible Titanic-based adventure (don't worry Moby Dick, you're up next, I'm sure). So the Titanic II happened a hundred years after the first (the fictional boat, not the terrible movie), and you can only assume that global warming kills it this time (it does). In the aftermath humanity has decided to wait another 100 years to build the Titanic 3, this time building the largest luxury spacecraft to ever be constructed by man.

You are lucky enough to have made it onto the maiden voyage of this historic flight. The Titanic 1 went down like a chump before we knew ice was dangerous. The Titanic 2 went down, also chump-like as a result of extremely poor acting and even worse CGI effects. The Titanic 3 is the biggest ship there is! She is unsinkable! There are no icebergs in space! Whether you're the rich aristocrat who made all his money through selling anti-radiation cell chip cases, the hapless navigator who failed out of flight school but who's related to one of the shareholders of the project, or a lowly nuclear waste shoveler strictly confined to the lower deck (after all, people will freak if they see all your mutations), it is your lucky day!

Setting Riff: Bushido of the High Seas

I picked up the first hardcover collection of the Okko comic at c2e2 directly from Archaia Comics' booth on the cheap and just finally got a chance to read it. I've got mixed feelings on the story overall, but there's no denying that the art and coloring (two separate jobs in the world of comics) are gorgeous and down-right inspiring. Given the name of the first collection (The Cycle of Water), the first collection tells the story of how the group of characters get together and focuses on the adventures they have in pursuit of their quest across various islands and seas.

This got me thinking that, well there are several good samurai settings out there (Okko being one, but of course the granddaddy of them all is Legend of the Five Rings) to game in, I wanted to dream up a setting that focused exclusively on the concept of naval warfare in the world of the Samurai.

My first 24-hour RPG - The Strongest Link

The 24-hour RPG design challenge is something I've been itching to try since I first read PACE, itself a product of the challenge from Fred Hicks. I was intrigued with the concept of a sprint game design/writing session that could produce a game from scratch within a very short period of time. It's a lot like the flash fiction challenges I do every week posted up at Terrible Minds (and which you can find my entries for over at Paul Vogt Writes). I think the biggest appeal is that once you complete a challenge, WHAM! Instant game design credit you can claim for yourself.

So this time around I got in on the challenge early on. The rules are very simple. Write a game from start to finish within 24 hours with a theme using two of the four given words. The words for this time were: Amazons, Lust, Chains, and Queen. Obviously there's a lot of possibilities to be had in those four words, but I ultimately ended up going with Lust and Chains (it's not what you think) to develop and complete my first 24-hour RPG The Strongest Link.

Here's the blurb to go along with it over at 1KM1KT where they host all the games from the contest:

The Strongest Link is a game that examines how we make decisions in a group setting. Political in nature, the rules are simple (nine pages total) but work to recreate groups from government to movie studio executives to your average gaming group. 


You decide the setting, your individual character's motivation and direction he'd like to take the group, and then play with your friends through four rounds of debate and vote-casting to ultimately choose who has the best idea (or strongest motivation/force of will) for the group to execute.


It was a lot of fun putting the game together, and the best part is that while it's a very simple rule system, I feel like it offers a very complete play experience and prompts the discussion and theorizing about group decision-making processes that I set out to examine.

c2e2 Review: Berona's War Field Guide: A Complete Cartoon RPG Setting, Just Add Water.

Archaia Comics is probably best known for their publishing of the indie hit Mouse Guard (and it's corresponding RPG to boot), but they offer a lot of pretty neat, unique material. At c2e2 they had this insane buy two, get three free deal on their trade paperbacks, and so when we saw that we immediately had to pick up five hardcover books.

Berona's War Field Guide by Anthony Coffey and Jesse Labbe is something I've been looking at for a little while now. Although published by a comic company, it's definitely something different and lives up to its "Field Guide" name. The whole thing is presented as if written by some neutral observer taking notes in a note book and drawing sketches to what he sees. Of course the sketches are full color and posses a huge chunk of personality.

The titular was is between two races of little cartooney peoples, the Cropones and the Ele-Alta. They remind you of two different types of little furry animals, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly what types of animals they're supposed to be, which I consider to be a strength of the design work.

Cthulhu Nerf - You Won't Need Dice, But You May Need To Increase Your Dodge Skill

Last Friday Chuck ran a Call of Cthulhu game full of paranoia and crazy people. It was a great little one-shot scenario. The four of us were thrown into a room not knowing what our true natures were or why we were in the room. The scenario, appropriately titled In Media Res, made for a really fun night of playing the monsters. We didn't necessarily have to be the bad guys, but it was hard to imagine how we weren't someone's nightmare in the end.

But of course, I'm burying the lead here. While Chuck did a fantastic job of running another Call of Cthulhu session (the system I think he runs better than any other), The reason I'm writing about it would have to be the little experiment he ran in game mechanics. My headline was a tiny bit misleading. You see, we still rolled dice a little bit (although it was pretty much assumed we would succeed as we were largely alone in a big house and had some time to explore), but more than anything we were shooting off our arsenal of nerf guns to test how well we actually shot. Keep reading, and you can see more pictures of how it worked and my thoughts on it at the end.

Save Points in Tabletop RPG's.

It's been a little while since I've mused a bit on RPG's in general, so today I want to discuss the concept of a save point in a tabletop RPG. Save points, for those who don't play video games, are spots in a game specifically set there by the designers so that someone can basically jump back to that point in the game if they either a.) want to stop playing for the time being or b.) die later in the game and can thus avoid having to restart and play through the entire game. There are really two ways to handle saves in video games. Either a player can save a game at any given point or every once in a while a player runs up to... you know... that thing in the corner (see the small flamey thing right) clicks "save" and is good to go. Of course in video games, a lot of the time you'll be playing simply for learning and overcoming the challenge of the actual skill of playing. You play, save, go and die, load your saved game, and try again. With the possible exception of an RPG set-up like D&D 4th Ed. Dungeon Delves where the play really is in overcoming the challenges set before you, usually games focus quite a bit on the story aspect of the game.

Planetary: The RPG

  

I've been re-reading Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday in anticipation of the final trade paperback making its way to my door from the far-away lands of Amazon. Planetary is one of my favorite comics of all time, and as complex and unique it is, it's actually pretty easy to sum up the plot. A group of three super-powered individuals work for a mysterious organization called Planetary. The romp around the planet and the multiverse essentially discovering comic book tropes in their own world. Its Warren Ellis' playground to explore all the things that make comics great from horror comics to John Constantine (a character Ellis wrote for at one point) to pitching a battle between a WWII style League of Extraordinary Gentlemen team and a clear JLA analogue. The real villains behind the series are even a beloved superhero comic mainstay, and man, they are truly evil bastards. But how do we game?

Movies to Play: The Last Exorcism

Movies to Play is a series in which I examine movies for their game-ability. In other words, I try to grab character hooks, plot set-ups, general cool stuff to use for my own games. Today I'm looking at a recent Netflix rental of The Last Exorcism. As a life-long Catholic, I have a special place in my heart for exorcism movies. They've been one of the most consistently-freaky kind of horror movie because they're based so much on the weird things humans are capable of pulling off. It's the combination of real-world terror and the possibility of trickery on the part of the "possessed" in trying to convince the exorcist that he or she is truly with a demon. There's a lot of angles in exorcism stories, and that's really what makes them so great gaming fodder.

Drugs for D&D: Wyzyck's Weed

Tweekers and Meth-heads may be everyday occurrences in modern and near-future gaming, but have you thought of transporting these addicted human fiends into your D&D or otherwise Medieval game? This can get politically incorrect pretty quickly (like referring to drug addicts as "human fiends"), so take this with a grain of salt and use it as a piece of gaming fodder as it was intended.

The drug in question is made up. It should work in any medieval setting, but the premise is for games that have large urban city centers. Steampunk settings like Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms or D&D's Eberron would be even better. The drug serves a couple of story-telling purposes: it describes an antagonist in the wizard who created it, it describes the setting of the entire city in that it is dominated by both the addicted and the drug growing uncontrolled, and of course there's the item of the drug itself which can be used on the players themselves. Keep reading after the jump for the details.