Endy's RPG Stuff

Sorry, today’s post is non-existent. The snow caused me to be outside all day. I apologize whole-heartedly for that. See you on Friday if the atmosphere permits.

Okay, I need comments here. You’ve seen the change between Recent Posts and the Dropdown Archive. Which do you prefer?

Hey, any of you all out there like Cyberpunk? Well, over on new2rpg http://new2rpg.wordpress.com/ and the 1KM1KT forum, Misterecho is running a Cyberpunk revival contest. I suggest you all get involved, if you can.
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Okay, everyone. We all know I just missed two posts. I, like everyone else, was busy with the holidays, and I hadn’t built up a backlog of posts like the surprisingly slow Free RPG Blog. However, Mr. Lang has been busy lately and dealing with one’s offspring comes before RPGs in every particular, so I cannot blame him. Plus, he gave us a nice New Years’ treat: all of the games reviewed in 2009, organized by category. You can find it here:
http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2009/12/become-expert-in-free-rpgs-2009-in-free.html.

That’s 29 games reviewed. About half the year’s worth of posts were of games, the others were helpful guides for all of us out there online.

My own progress has been slow and tedious. I almost created a 24-hour Wuxia RPG and now have been working on it over a month. It will not sit in development hell like the other two projects, Star TreX and Pokemon. I give you my word on that!

Alright. That’s all for now, I will be back with a post at latest on 1/13. Haven’t decided what it’ll be yet.

Alright, I don’t have a better title for today’s post, I’m not going to lie. That’s mostly because I have so many ideas and some stuff to say that I don’t know of a better title. Let’s roll down each category as we go, eh?

Administrative: After minutes of agonizing self-debate, I changed the former “Pokemon RPG” category to “My RPG Developments”. This is an attempt to reflect my list of current projects, of which the Pokémon RPG is but one. There are now at least 3 other projects batting around in my queue at the moment.
Also, I’m sorry to say this, but next week, Christmas Day, will not be much of a meaningful post.

Generic RPG Information:
I want to talk about the above topic in addition to everything else. Games get backlogged when you’re knowingly creating for free very easily in my experience. The problem is that, as you’ve seen in many of my posts lately, inspiration springs on us all at the strangest of times. I suggest that you do one of two things, both of which have pros and cons:

• Keep a notebook nearby: Write everything down, at the expense of possibly developing such a backlog as I have or worse. When you have ideas, you get them out and leave even the widgets there.
• Focus on one project: This is the opposite of the above. Seek to forget ideas that are not related to the project at hand. You might lose the idea of a lifetime with this, but you will finish your project eventually.

My RPG Developments: I have a few ideas for the Pokemon game. And I have an idea for a new game. A game of Wuxia-type action, where the elements (outside of Spirit) are each rolled for, and the highest element becomes the Spirit element, dictating a person’s best form. More of this will come.

Now, as far as next week is concerned, I’m just going throw an Instant Game and a dice chart for 2d20 up, if not a little more. But there’s not going to be big content. It’s Christmas.

Okay, I just want to point out something that’s really rather old now – two weeks. In Internet time, that’s, oh, a lifetime or two. Well, see, The Free RPG Blog has an interesting post, and while I’m not in a mood to display the images here – not out of a disagreement, merely a lack of interest in coding, I’d like for everyone in the world to see this post: New “In Philanthropy We Trust” Images. Alright. Soapbox over for this week, people. Have fun, and good gaming!

Oh, and for those of us out there who just celebrated Thanksgiving and are in the process of working on Black Friday? I wish you the best of luck shopping! Drop your best RPG-related buys in the comments!

Some of you happy few that read this blog may have noticed that I didn’t post last week, and I’m sorry to say that there is actually a small reason for that. I’m getting tired of spambots.

There’s not much I can do about them, but still. Oh, and progress continues slowly on my two games. Very slowly. All of you out there creating 24-hour RPGs…?
How do you do it?

And on a lighter, much happier note, I wish to congratulate Rob Lang (of The Free RPG Blog) and his wife the best of luck with their new addition. May it and you remain healthy, happy, and safe for a very long time.

When I started this blog, I had a whole bunch of great ideas, and correspondingly, some really great posts. Unfortunately, my ideas are starting to peter out and so is this blog.

I don’t know how other writers come up with daily blog posts, like Dyson Logos. I really don’t get it. So I’m going to change the posting policy for this blog. It’ll be once a week, on Wednesdays.

If I start getting more ideas (or more suggestions), I will post again, notifying you of the new posting schedule.

But I’ve had too many almost late posts for this daily thing to go on.

I’ll be back on Wednesday, September 30.

Nick Fury. John Anderton. G.I. Joe’s Duke. James Gordon. Shinji Ikari. James T. Kirk. Motoko Kusanagi.

What do these characters have in common? They all work for a government agency or NGO. They are heroes in their own right, given authority to act as they do by their government or employing agency. There seem to be very few, and when we get to PCs, there seem to be even less. Most characters are outside of that structure and thus are criminals. Very few games feature a world centralized enough to reign these figures in. Even less campaigns go on long enough to give the establishment justification to do so. After all, in the eyes of the Lords of Waterdeep, they keep Waterdeep safe by throwing adventurers into the Eye of the Beholder. They have access to these things, the evil under the city is controlled, and the characters are controlled as well.

It presents a whole new list of challenges to the PCs, especially if you have the ability to lay out exactly what the PCs are and are not allowed to do, as well as what authority they have. After all, if they are the representatives of the law, does it bend around them based on their will? I don’t feel that it should. I think that this is a large part of where my questions on morality in our hobby come from. After all, the great mass of my experience comes not from dungeon-crawling, but from superheroes, except we were agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Our morality was greyer than the world at large. At one point, one of our friends was a “guest player” (i.e., had nothing else to do, it was an especially rainy Sunday, and he joined in as an NPC), playing none other than Frank Castle. How our team and he came to work together is a long story, but the player had a comment, in character, that worried me as Judge.

“Man, you guys are nuts. You sure you’re the cops?”

This in reaction to the fact that we’d just been talking about apprehending the Kingpin for framing us (again, long story). In retrospect, the fact is that we were less talking about taking him into custody, and more about killing him and making it look like we were just doing our jobs. The plan wasn’t nice, nor did it involve due process or Miranda warnings. Frankly, the end result was two of the Agents going in through the elevator while my character crashed through the plate window with a flying Porsche.

We look at institutions as villains so often that we never try to make them the good guys. Or if we do, they often take the role that S.H.I.E.L.D. did in Marvel superheroes comics – supporting specific teams of heroes, giving them assent to do what they wanted.

This is part 1. Part 2 will come when I have more to say.

Comments are always helpful and encouraging.

I just wish to thank John Kirk for commenting on this blog – it’s the first time anyone has told me I have “impeccable timing”. I also wish to point out something he did – After just 13 days short of four years, his work, Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games is officially no longer a draft! The page count has been increased, and while I have not scoured through it looking for the updates yet, I know they are of value, based on everything else I’ve seen from this gentleman.

Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games contains patterns gleaned from a study of many traditional and cutting-edge role-playing games. Game Summaries of the source materials are also included. (272 pgs.)

Alright. Soapbox is clear for a few hours.