I have acquired a copy of ICE's Fire and Ice Elemental supplement, which details the elemental powers of, fire and ice, obviously! But combined with Frostbite I have all the information I need to push on with Lords of Midnight, the Role-Playing Game.
The only trouble now is Im unsure in which direction to take the game. As noted in an earlier blog, should it be simple and uncomplicated or detailed and interesting?
Rolemaster
D20
or simple generic system
Either way, the game will require a strong magical content which is accepted as normal, rather than special. E.g. everyone knows of Ice-Fear and how it weakens the hearts of heroes. There is no doubt in everyone's mind of the danger even the most brave of heroes to enter Doomdark's realms. I have a system in mind that enables a hero to store energy with which to overcome/defeat/control the amount of ice-fear he is facing.
Friday, June 2, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Death of a Gaming Group?
Those of you who have been paying attention will know I have two blogs. This one serves as my writing and life blog, containing information on my family and writing. In my other blog it really serves as my ranting and raving page about well my rants and things that annoy me. But mainly it acts as devil's advocate to RPGpundits rants. I dont agree with everything he says but he still is worth reading.
So when I have to talk about my next subject, Im a little unsure where it should be, a gaming rant or life issue.
I gave up gaming while my wife is giving birth in June to daughter no.2. Before I said bye to the group, I tried really hard to recruit as many new players as possible to keep the group alive during my absense. On the day I said cheerio there was 9 of us, including me. I got an email from one of the players saying they are down to 3 regulars, but they have a problem staying on target for gaming every week.
There could be a multitude of reasons why the group has died, and I am aware of several minor ones. But I will blow my own trumpet and say the reason the group stays and games together is because of me.
My games, my adventures, my stories, my games running ability, my skills at controlling a group and ensuring they are having as much fun as possible while rolling as few dice as possible. Im proud of my group, but this recent development has made me realise Im surperbly proud of my skills as hosting a game. Creating a sandbox for the players to explore, but in the full knowledge that the world in which they play in is consistent, universal, fair and responsive to their input.
I feel sorry for the others in our group who have run games and failed. But you are not me. You cant read the group, you cant read when players are being bored. Im sorry, but I promise I will return.
So when I have to talk about my next subject, Im a little unsure where it should be, a gaming rant or life issue.
I gave up gaming while my wife is giving birth in June to daughter no.2. Before I said bye to the group, I tried really hard to recruit as many new players as possible to keep the group alive during my absense. On the day I said cheerio there was 9 of us, including me. I got an email from one of the players saying they are down to 3 regulars, but they have a problem staying on target for gaming every week.
There could be a multitude of reasons why the group has died, and I am aware of several minor ones. But I will blow my own trumpet and say the reason the group stays and games together is because of me.
My games, my adventures, my stories, my games running ability, my skills at controlling a group and ensuring they are having as much fun as possible while rolling as few dice as possible. Im proud of my group, but this recent development has made me realise Im surperbly proud of my skills as hosting a game. Creating a sandbox for the players to explore, but in the full knowledge that the world in which they play in is consistent, universal, fair and responsive to their input.
I feel sorry for the others in our group who have run games and failed. But you are not me. You cant read the group, you cant read when players are being bored. Im sorry, but I promise I will return.
Monday, April 17, 2006
2 Role-Playing Game Projects
Just a quick update to tell you about 2 gaming projects that have been on the writing back-burner for longer than I can remember.
They are both role-playing games
1) Dune - a role-playing game based on Frank Herbert's wonderful books.
2) Lords of Midnight -a role-playing game based on Mike Singleton's epic computer wargame, role-playing game series that was released on the 8bit computers in the 1980's.
Why?
Well Dune because I feel the internet efforts to date have been poor, and not deserving of the awesome majesty of the epic series, and the Last Unicorn Games' version appeared literally minutes before D20 in the guise of DND3.0 arrived. It showed promise. It also has the honour of probably the most consistently sought after RPG book on Ebay. Ive even seen incorrectly bound copies of the book (the first 16 pages bound in unside down) selling for over £100.
And Lords of Midnight simply because it has never been attempted before, and ranks, I believe, with the epic J R R Tolkien and Terry Brooks' Sword of Shanara series. It was an incredibly involving game set in an Ice Wasteland, where elves, dwarves and trolls fought each other for the control of the landscape. Lords with armies at their fingertips hid behind old ancient castles. While armies of Midnight fought on the ice wastes, 4 lone heroes set out to defeat Doomdark and his army.
So Far?
Dune has been fleshed out using a simple variant of the Guardians of Order system, MIND, BODY, SOUL, but before this and all the way through the design concept, I have introduced a unique character bidding concept, which I am loathe to talk about to anyone at the moment but has wide-reaching implications for metagaming for Dune. It fits the genre perfectly and enables epic political games to be run by a group of players jointly with a series of Judges/Games Masters. I am a huge fan of the Dune boardgame, and I wanted to incorporate as many elements of that game too, and as such my idea, I think, works. All I need is someone to help me write it and develop it.
Lords of Midnight originally started out as a Rolemaster campaign, but I felt that the game would be lost under the complexity of Rolemaster's rules. The reason I went for RM was a) it was my system of choice when I first started writing LOM, and b) it had a fairly comprehensive spell list of Fire and Ice magics. So having said no to RM, I stripped the game back down and turned it almost into a Fighting Fantasy game, but instead of STRENGTH and STAMINA, I chose ICE FEAR and STAMINA. These are ideas I want to resurrect, but in the meantime I have used the D20 SRD as my basis for the system, while writing more on the background and setting. If you are interested in co-writing either or both projects, or taking one or both of the projects over or just want to discuss it, then please let me know. I would hate to have what I have written so far go to waste. Both projects I am excited about.
They are both role-playing games
1) Dune - a role-playing game based on Frank Herbert's wonderful books.
2) Lords of Midnight -a role-playing game based on Mike Singleton's epic computer wargame, role-playing game series that was released on the 8bit computers in the 1980's.
Why?
Well Dune because I feel the internet efforts to date have been poor, and not deserving of the awesome majesty of the epic series, and the Last Unicorn Games' version appeared literally minutes before D20 in the guise of DND3.0 arrived. It showed promise. It also has the honour of probably the most consistently sought after RPG book on Ebay. Ive even seen incorrectly bound copies of the book (the first 16 pages bound in unside down) selling for over £100.
And Lords of Midnight simply because it has never been attempted before, and ranks, I believe, with the epic J R R Tolkien and Terry Brooks' Sword of Shanara series. It was an incredibly involving game set in an Ice Wasteland, where elves, dwarves and trolls fought each other for the control of the landscape. Lords with armies at their fingertips hid behind old ancient castles. While armies of Midnight fought on the ice wastes, 4 lone heroes set out to defeat Doomdark and his army.
So Far?
Dune has been fleshed out using a simple variant of the Guardians of Order system, MIND, BODY, SOUL, but before this and all the way through the design concept, I have introduced a unique character bidding concept, which I am loathe to talk about to anyone at the moment but has wide-reaching implications for metagaming for Dune. It fits the genre perfectly and enables epic political games to be run by a group of players jointly with a series of Judges/Games Masters. I am a huge fan of the Dune boardgame, and I wanted to incorporate as many elements of that game too, and as such my idea, I think, works. All I need is someone to help me write it and develop it.
Lords of Midnight originally started out as a Rolemaster campaign, but I felt that the game would be lost under the complexity of Rolemaster's rules. The reason I went for RM was a) it was my system of choice when I first started writing LOM, and b) it had a fairly comprehensive spell list of Fire and Ice magics. So having said no to RM, I stripped the game back down and turned it almost into a Fighting Fantasy game, but instead of STRENGTH and STAMINA, I chose ICE FEAR and STAMINA. These are ideas I want to resurrect, but in the meantime I have used the D20 SRD as my basis for the system, while writing more on the background and setting. If you are interested in co-writing either or both projects, or taking one or both of the projects over or just want to discuss it, then please let me know. I would hate to have what I have written so far go to waste. Both projects I am excited about.
Friday, September 9, 2005
Why OOP?
Why is it that
(a) my role-playing group only wants to play Out of Print (OOP) games
or
(b) I want to only run games which are OOP?
Now my last game I ran was Werewolf, which proved expensive, but I managed to get all of the books I needed, plus some others. Next on the agenda is Deadlands. Do a search on Ebay, and you find zip, nada.
(a) my role-playing group only wants to play Out of Print (OOP) games
or
(b) I want to only run games which are OOP?
Now my last game I ran was Werewolf, which proved expensive, but I managed to get all of the books I needed, plus some others. Next on the agenda is Deadlands. Do a search on Ebay, and you find zip, nada.
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