World-Building via Letter Tiles: Last Example Round (Solo RPG)

This is, mercifully, the last post recording my playtest of using letter-tile prompts.  I carried it through the fourth oracle question in order to show just how malleable the emerging story can be. 

Speaking of emerging story, I’ll forgo the complete recap and attempt a two sentence summary.  “An aged Nazi attempts to arm his warlike Hollow-Earth patrons with a Wonder Weapon from WWII Japan, the weapon itself adapted from Hollow-Earth technology.  Only our heroes can stop him”.

OK, so learning about Roswell-in-the-Pacific from the oracle dice, I now fill my hand back to ten tiles and get on with laying down more words.  Hitting two orange squares gives me two hand refreshes and I complete four words before triggering the next oracle question: IDENTITY, GUSHER, MOTOR, and GUARD.

I'm not sure what to do with IDENTITY and GUARD, but since one is oriented horizontally and the other vertically, I'll say they're a word-pair.  So, the IDENTITY of a GUARD at the fringes of the aforementioned royal wedding might be in question?  Or, even better, perhaps it’s the phrase GUARD IDENTITY, with someone trying to hide their true nature.  I like this a bit better, and since IDENTITY is actually built off the previous word NAZI, I think we know who this refers to.

 

The new word MOTOR plays nicely into threads already forming, especially since it's indicated as Goal-related.

 

The word GUSHER gives me some initial ideas about introducing an NPC from the surface world.  I researched oil and gas exploration in the Indian Ocean and read that Japan was a key player in the late 20th century, in roughly the timeframe of my game.  Synchronicity!  Hmmm, maybe I'll change the narrative from last post that the "moon-rocket" is actually a super-science nuclear powered-borer?  Or possibly that there are two vehicles, somehow related?  I’m leaning toward the first option, but this is about letting the universe push us into unexpected directions, so let's ask the Oracle.

 

4th Question: Did a second vehicle from the surface world recently wreck in the Inner World kingdom?

 

Result: 5 "Yes, and…"

 

I can work with this!  Yes, a second vehicle from the surface world recently wrecked in the kingdom, and it has a close connection to the WWII spacecraft!

    

As the picture shows, I still have 37 tiles remaining in the bag and I could keep going.  In fact, I did continue on to a fifth oracle question, but I think I’ve demonstrated the process.

Does it produce a Hugo-award winning narrative?  No.  Does it produce any narrative at all?  That’s debatable, but since there’s no structure, the answer seems no.  I’d say the letter tile process is an idea generator, and a slow one at that.

Still, I find it a fun mini-game and the tile/dice oracle combination does inject unexpected inspiration.  Personally, I would have never introduced World War II elements into my subterranean fantasy world, but now I have an adventure arc featuring just those things.  I’ve got NPCs, their potential motivations, technology that could offer the PCs a way to escape back to the earth’s surface… lots of angles to explore and interpret after only four questions.

The playtest documented here was essentially adventure creation, like a GM getting ideas to build an entire session or two worth of material for a group of players.  The next time I use this technique, I’ll integrate it real-time with a true solo RPG adventure to see how that works.

Steps for solo RPG integration:

1. Start with generalities defined: the PC(s), setting, premise, etc.
2. Run the board set-up as in the intro post and play the tile process through the first oracle question; the intent is to set the solo RPG opening scene and, in Mythic GME terms, define some open threads.
3. Refresh the tile hand and lay down additional words, continuing until the next oracle question is triggered.
4. Leave that question unanswered and return to the solo RPG proper, using the newly generated words either to interpret an altered/interrupted scene, or as additional threads/NPC details; play the solo RPG scene as normal.
5. Between scenes, use the events of the actual play, amplified by the existing tile words, and answer the still outstanding Oracle question.
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 above.      

I used 76 tiles over five questions during my playtest, so that suggests about 15 tiles per question.  A bag of 100 tiles would therefore yield six, maybe seven questions with the first one occurring prior to play.  The tile-based word prompts therefore only last for the first five or so scenes but honestly, that feels about right.  After five or six scenes, there should be plenty of threads to explore. 

World-Building via Letter Tiles: Example Round 3 (Solo RPG)

Last round of the emerging story of the subterranean Inner World suggested two warring factions, including one guided by Nazis!  The tile-formed words also hinted that a royal wedding could end the fighting.  The oracle dice confirmed this, stating that:

Yes, the marriage is part of a truce between warring factions, but the bride's (or groom’s?) people were never truly threatened by the Nazi-influenced kingdom.

Seven more tiles drawn to fill the hand back to ten, and then another round of word-building.  If I were playing Scrabble, I could have racked up an impressive score on a longer word.  Generating story connections by hitting the desired colored squares and then triggering an oracle question, have me laying down three short words instead: MOON, ODE, and ACE.     

It's coming together!  This shows how the entire story can morph and how it's OK to jettison big portions of previous ideas.  Look at it as if from a character's limited perspective… maybe the previous brainstorming reflects what appeared to be going on, but then more is revealed.

 

The Japanese vessel that disappeared long ago into the Inner World was not a submarine but a MOON-rocket (more of a spaceplane maybe?).  Originally designed for peaceful purposes (Goal), the rocket's development was hijacked to support the war effort.  The NAZI who advises the primitive kingdom was not a scientist but a test pilot, part of a two-person crew with a Japanese ACE fighter pilot turned test pilot.  Their test flight ended in the Inner World, with the German surviving.  Did the Japanese pilot live?  Unknown, but the cryptic Haiku (ODE) he left holds the interest of more than one character (Connection). 

 

Why have we never heard of Japan's WWII-era moon ambitions before, or since?  I'd say this points to a unique vessel; perhaps the HULL of the rocket utilized one-of-a-kind alloys and/or a special propulsion system…

 

3rd Question: Did Japan receive help from the Inner World to build their World War II rocketship? 

 

Result: 3 "No, but…"   

 

No, Japanese scientists did not receive help from the Inner World to build the rocket, but they did reverse-engineer a wreck of an Inner World craft!

The story’s getting more focused but no less weird.  Stay tuned…

World-Building via Letter Tiles: Example Round 2 (Solo RPG)

Continuing the demonstration of my tile-laying method of world building, we ended last post with the following question posed to the oracle, and its answer:

Question: Are elements of the subterranean world's nobility actual German Nazis? Answer: Yes, elements of the Inner World nobility are actual German Nazis but acting as advisors, not in charge.

Getting to that question exhausts my hand of tiles, but since the last word built over a "?" square, I refresh back to a hand of ten letters (see previous two posts for a rundown of the rules).

The next hand of tiles looks promising, especially the Wild tile.  Although I used the 100 tiles included in a basic Scrabble set for my story-creation system, I replaced the two Blank tiles with two “Wild” tiles, labelled “|+|”.  The player uses Wild tile as either a traditional blank tile, i.e. representing any letter desired, or the player can cash it in for 3d3 additional tiles.  As seen from the picture below, I choose the latter option, the additional letters allowing me to make five words this round: VEX, JAPAN, WEAPON, MARRY, and HULL.

Interesting… so both Axis powers from WWII are somehow involved.  VEX shares a Goal story element with VAULT; someone is frustrated by failure to access a sealed area/container, but their failure is someone else's goal.

 

Since MARRY is a Setting element, the scene is a royal wedding!  The background of The War Inside says the inhabitants of the Inner World are advanced, with technology beyond current understanding (anti-gravity, beam weapons, etc.).  The assumption however is that there are different factions, maybe even nations, with disparate technology levels.  Who could be advised by Nazis?  Certainly not high-tech utopian people but instead a more primitive kingdom.

 

The JAPAN-WEAPON pairing suggests that maybe this has to do with Japan's nuclear weapon program in WWII.  JAPAN is an Obstacle here… perhaps a Japanese submarine was lost in the war while carrying heavy water to/from a collaboration with German scientists?  Of course, the submarine did not sink to the depths but disappeared, sucked into the Inner World.  The Nazi adviser to this kingdom here in the present day (1978) Inner World wants to build an H-bomb and knows the wreckage of the submarine holds the key ingredient.  Is that what's in the VAULT though?  Or is it scientific notes?  Perhaps he's already accessed the heavy water and made a dud?  Or perhaps he hasn’t even found the submarine yet?

 

A narrative is starting to form, but I don't want to box myself in.  I’ll explore one of the other words then…

 

2nd Question: Is the marriage part of a truce between warring factions?

 

Result: 4 "Yes, but…"

 

Yes, the marriage is part of a truce between warring factions, but the bride's (or groom’s?) people were never truly threatened by the Nazi-influenced kingdom.

 

How were they not threatened?  Superior technology I assume, but it could be another advantage.  Why give one of your nobles in marriage then?  Who is this new faction and what are its motivations? 

  

Like most solo games, each answer just seems to create more perplexing questions.  The fun lies in interpreting the mess, and we’ll do more of that…. next post.

World-Building via Letter Tiles: Example Round 1 (Solo RPG)

Stepping through the fourth, and final playtest of my Letter-Tile-Worldbuilding technique is the easiest way for me to explain the process.

First, before we start pulling tiles out of bags, we need a general overview, a light scaffolding to hold everything together. If this was a video rental store (remember those), or a library, in what section would your story be found? Is it science-fiction or fantasy? Or maybe science-fantasy or horror? Within those choices, is it fantastical, or gritty-realistic? We’ll use the letter tiles to help us fill in details, but we need some context to bound things. 

I suspect, for solo RPGs, this context is easy to describe, since presumably most players would start with a preferred system or setting. 

My current solo RPG project could best be described as science-fiction, specifically in the “hidden lands” sub-genre. The setting imagines spies from both Cold War superpowers stumbling upon a subterranean “Hollow Earth”-type world in 1978. The likely PCs are the spies themselves and other travelers from the surface world wrapped up in the web of espionage. Player Character motivation is chiefly returning to the surface world, while preserving or gaining an advantage for their side in the East vs. West ideological struggle. The Inner World consists of many different lands and peoples, allowing all sorts of bizarre encounters, from dinosaurs to advanced technology beyond comprehension. 

While that helps set the stage, I see I still have a very wide playing field and nearly anything could happen in the opening adventure. We have a blank page before us, so let’s use the letter tiles to fill it up! 

Picking up from the set-up detailed in the last post, the board sports five randomly placed letters and a random chit-draw has determined the functions of the colored squares (picture repeated below for clarity). 

Set-up complete

I draw the first ten letters and begin building off of any of those five initial tiles. The first three words come quickly: REIGN, VAULT, NAZI. I play the tiles in that order making sure I save NAZI for last, as it will be built over a “?” square and trigger an Oracle Question and hand refresh. Building those three words uses all ten of my tiles, so after I answer the question I also get ten new tiles! 

First round complete, including oracle roll

Now the fun part: interpretation. Systems like the Mythic GME and Ars Magica have taught me that interpreting word-pairs can be easier than divining the meaning of a single word. One technique I therefore use here is splitting the new words into two categories based on orientation, vertical and horizontal, to limit the number of possible word-pair combinations. If words actually share a letter tile however, I honor that as a link. 

So, getting back to our words here… well, no need to try to form the best horizontal/vertical pairing, REIGN and NAZI both share a letter, so they are obviously linked. Even more so, the letter shared sits on a blue-colored cell, indicating this link has strong Connection to something in the story (likely a character or characters). The word REIGN features two colored squares, actually, the second being a magenta Setting indicator.  The word VAULT also overlays a colored square, in this case a green one, which indicates a Goal-related story element.

First thoughts: the scene obviously opens in a palace where the nobility have some sort of connection to the German Nazi party! A VAULT of some sort has significance to someone's Goals but I don't need to work that into the question directly. 

First Oracle Question: Are elements of this nobility actual German Nazis?

I use a custom oracle method where I roll 5d6 and rank order the dice by score, using the middle (third rank) die. 1-2 indicates “No, And…”, 3: “No, But…”, 4: “Yes, But…”, and 5-6: “Yes, And…”. The oracle gives a 50/50 chance for “Yes” or “No”, with the “But” modifier favored over the “And” roughly 60/40. 

Result: 4 "Yes, but…" 

Yes, elements of the nobility are actual German Nazis but acting as advisors, not in charge. 

That’s the example done, to the first question. I’ll carry through these posts all the way to the fourth question, where I stopped, having gained sufficient detail for an opening scene. 

If this example doesn’t make the process clear, hopefully the follow on posts will. A big thing I wanted to show here is how the process is a mini-game in it own right, with word-building not just based on what seems interesting for the story, but also trying to hit those colored squares to get hints how the words play into the story.

The results seem “from the ether” to me, and not forced. I certainly didn’t anticipate Nazis in my subterranean world, but honestly, it fits with the whole Hollow Earth conspiracy silliness. And it gives me some immediate baddies for the PCs to punch. And who better to punch than Nazis?

World-building via Letter Tiles: Intro (Solo RPG)

Uncharacteristically for me, I actually followed through on both the brainstorming ideas I recorded last post.

The map idea evolved into my Town in a Pizza Box technique almost effortlessly, but developing a method of letter tiles for story prompts took a bit more work. I’m pleased to say that after three iterations I closed on the final form, and the fourth playtest produced an unexpected but fun narrative framework, with virtually no further mechanical tweaks required. 

I created a custom, narrative-focused board to use in place of the normal Scrabble board. As the picture below shows, the board eliminates all references to scoring, instead showing a pattern of blank and colored squares. Tiles are placed from a hand of ten tiles, but refilling the hand back to a full complement occurs only when tiles overlay certain squares on the grid. Tile placement on the various colors suggests different clues to the narrative, and can even trigger narrative questions. 

I start by drawing five chits, in a separate (virtual*) bag from the normal bag of Scrabble tiles. Four of the five chits represent story elements: Connections, Goals, Obstacles, and Settings. The fifth chit bears an “R” to signify that one color offers additional Refresh opportunities. The five tiles are drawn from the bag and placed on the color index track to the left of the board. As shown here in the example picture below, for this story the colors represent the following: 

Orange: Refresh 
Yellow: Obstacle
Green: Goal
Blue: Connection
Magenta: Setting 

*NOTE: I use the website Playingcards.io to host my custom board and tiles, all of which were created by me; no copyrighted material used.

Next I draw five starting letter tiles and place them randomly on the board. The board has 225 squares total, with 81 squares split into nine central regions, each designated by dashed borders like a keypad. Rolling a d33 (two different-colored d3s) twice identifies first the region and then the actual square itself to place the tile.

Playtest #4 Set-up; Story Elements defined and five tiles randomly placed

Next, I start the story generation in earnest by drawing a hand of ten letter tiles. Unlike with Scrabble, I’m not trying to earn points, but rather determine significant story aspects. A number of constraints therefore drive tile placement.

A word formed with tiles overlying colored squares gains hints on how to interpret the word within the story context.

Placing a tile on the specific color marked Refresh allows an immediate refill of the hand back to 10 tiles. Since there are a finite number of these spaces, it pays to empty one’s hand by forming other words, while still being prepared to build a word on Refresh color.

Placing a tile on a “?” square triggers an oracle question, pausing the tile-laying (after the full word is laid down). The player reviews the words placed so far and any associated story elements indicated by colored squares, and asks a question to be answered by the game mechanism of their choice. As shown here, I use a 5d6 dice oracle; it’s a custom method that generates four possible answers: “Yes/No” each with a “But” or “And” modifier.

Triggering an oracle question also refills the player’s hand back to 10 tiles. Building over the “?” squares is therefore a key focus, but best done only after enough words have been formed to both guide the questioning and empty the hand of tiles. I find I get about three to four new words between each question.

The best way to explain further would probably be to just step through the rest of my fourth playtest as an example.  I'll do that, but in the next post... this one has gone on long enough!

Letter Tile Prompts (Solo RPGs)

Originally posted by me over on RPGG

If this seems eerily familiar to my one or two non-bot readers out there, I actually wrote this up before the Town in a Pizza Box setting-builder post; this was the primordial ooze from which that idea sprang.  The text below only slightly cleans up my brainstorming notes, which started around the concept of Scrabble-like letter tiles and quickly progressed to examining the modification of the underlying game-board to better interact with the tiles, from a solo RPG perspective.

We all have our ways of getting adventure (or dare I say it... story) prompts: from random tables, picture cubes, to grabbing a passage from the nearest book. Personally, I always used the dictionary, rolling a random page, then random column on that page, then scanning down and finding an interesting word (or three and letting one last random roll decide).

Starting Abandoned Solo RPG Campaign #1023 last summer, I decided to try prompts from Scrabble-like letter tiles and it worked pretty well. I grouped the letters into two piles and played against myself, alternating between the two piles with high score as the only goal to help me choose between which tiles to lay down.

Making sense of the resulting mess of unrelated words, framed by some very broad assumptions about the background, led me to an unexpected but surprisingly meaty adventure hook. The first of the following two pics shows my tiles and board.

I used my tablet to host the virtual game pieces, and then took a screen-grab to take notes on. The white erased regions aren't hiding anything naughty, I just wanted whitespace to write on. The second pic zooms in on the notes I took in one of those whitespaces. For context the setting is the far future Pax Galactica framework described in the (highly recommended) Fate Space Toolkit.

The Universe gave me this to work with???

A glimpse inside a weird mind...

(The 🥩 of the post) Tile-based word association is useful for prompts, but I keep having this nagging feeling that the Scrabble board itself could be pulling its weight more. Perhaps it could be replaced with something specifically designed for solo RPGs?

My first idea was to replace the colored markings on a traditional Scrabble board with RPG specific markings. Instead of “Triple Word Score” or “Double Letter Score”, certain squares on the grid would state things like “PC-NPC Connection”, or “PC backstory”, or “Important Place”. Perhaps the colored blocks could be left blank (but still different colored), the words filled in with tiles, and then each color defined randomly with a chit-draw. Finally, for this variant, I’m thinking that a number of tiles could be placed randomly, at the start, to help prevent lock-up in the middle.

My second idea was, how about just replacing the board with a gridded map? It could be a literal map for an RPG set in a rural town or on a space station or similarly “local” campaign. A more wide-ranging setting could instead employ a concept map, that shows perhaps major players and ideas with proximity implying strength of association. Regardless of the map type, a handful of letter tiles could be dropped from height, leaving those that land upright (i.e. readable) on the map to indicate not only the initial germ of a word, but exactly what in the setting (by map position) it relates to. Perhaps instead of dropping tiles, the solo player drops a six-sided letter die, one for each PC and maybe a few for significant NPCs. Each die would have a discrete color to identify to whom it belongs, and words would then be built off these with normal tiles. And if words from two different characters cross… perfect, that implies interaction.

I imagine this only as world-building or adventure design prompts, as it would be too time consuming for use as an oracle. I like the second idea more but the first idea would take far less production effort and I could be testing it today.

Anybody who has read this far… have you ever done something similar? How did it work for you? Thanks for reading!

Town in a Pizza Box (Solo RPG Prompt)

Or: An inspiration tool for lonely fun.

I love “quantum game prep” techniques, where players or GMs can flesh out an RPG (or wargame) setting on the fly. The brilliant RPG Weird Heroes of Public Access uses this technique, charging the players with imagining localities in the fictional town of Fairhaven. I played (unfortunately only) two wonderful sessions of Brindlewood Bay a few years back and the GM employed a similar technique, having us answer leading questions to fill in the details of our PCs’ little burg.

How then can a solo RPG enthusiast, or maybe a GM looking for inspiration during prep, replicate the unpredictable responses of a group of diverse gamers? As always, the dice have the answer.

I made up a quick way of generating a map of small rural town, with the dice indicating not only the spatial positions of the landmarks, but the relationships between them. I generated the landmark category table by referencing the Yellow Pages for my own hometown. Modifying the die roll table could conceivably generate a different setting: a space station, a neighborhood in a metropolis, or a fantasy settlement for instance.

I playtested the idea just this morning and I’m happy to say it works well, at least with my overactive imagination. Only three rounds of rolling (and only the d8, d10, and d20) yielded a couple of juicy relationships that could spawn adventures and NPCs, including a direct relationship between the police station and a financial business over by the local dam.

A quick roll on my homebrew oracle answered “Yes, And…” to the question “is the relationship shady?”; in fact, not only is the relationship shady but it is also a well-kept secret. The nearby presence of the (randomly rolled) dam immediately spawned thoughts of flooded lands drowned by a controversial reservoir project. Illegal seizure of private land? A convenient way to hide the bodies? An inconvenient discovery of a sacred archaeological site? Who knows why the land was flooded and why the police helped hide that reason… it’s a meaty adventure hook that I can leave vague enough to branch off in a number of red herrings.

I haven’t posted this to my downloads page because I plan to expand the tool, adding at least another page to provide examples of each landmark category and include some additional rolls I use to further define certain features (like quantifying elevation changes).

Solo RPG: Star Trek Cards

I finished my set of 100 cards for a solo Star Trek RPG.  A big thank you to the folks behind the Final Frontier and Trekbats fonts, both of which they've graciously posted for free download online.

The 1 of Agility

Although I made extensive use of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros, it still took some time. Unfortunately I've found the VBA environment on the Macintosh (my home machine) is quite unstable. Compounding the frustration, the Windows machine I have access to doesn't accept new fonts. So it was necessary to create the general card templates in MS Powerpoint and Excel on the Windows machine and then transfer to my Mac to make it look "Trek". The data transfer wasn't flawless however with the colors changing. The background colors in particular are brighter and everything else seems a bit washed out to me. Oh well, as they say: perfect is the enemy of good enough.

I made some changes to the central "display" area from the WIP in the last post, the most prominent being the addition of the Trek iconography. The large icon in the left of the display simply exists for flavor; it has no game purpose. I kept the Star Trek-specific scene focus and moved the arbitrary symbols to the right side.

I plan to print these out and use them with a set of home-brew rules for solo roleplaying. The home-brew is heavily based on the SAGA System, as presented in TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game from the late 90s but with some significant modifications. I hope to get a few sessions logged which I'll share here.

"Peril" replaces the "Doom" card suit from Marvel's version

WIP: SAGA System Cards for Sci-Fi Setting

The picture below shows my current WIP: SAGA System cards for a science fiction setting. The card template is build in MS Powerpoint, using solely MS Office shapes.

I know in the last few posts I said my next set of cards would be for fantasy but then I stumbled across a treasure-trove of old FASA Star Trek material and got inspired. Although these cards will be usable for most sci-fi settings, a keen-eyed reader can probably discern the Star Trek-specific font and themes.

The example card to the left is a 3 of Agility. Starting at the top left and proceeding down and then right, I'll explain the individual parts.

The "3" obviously is the value of the card; under the SAGA system playing this card would result in 3 points added to the character's attribute to form a total action score to be compared against the GM-defined difficulty score.

The plus symbol below the number is the card's "aura", in this case Positive. Three auras exist: Positive, Negative and Neutral, and serve to provide some nuance for GM scene interpretation. "The captain fails his Agility roll and goes tumbling off the cliff... [GM makes card draw] but, Positive aura! The captain flails wildly and manages to grab the cliff edge, holding on by the finger tips!"

The large "Agility" on the bottom left corner identifies the card's suit. Note, in SAGA players use any and all suits for any task, for example this Agility card could be used for an Intellect action.  Matching the suit of the card to the correct attribute type (let's say using this card here for an Agility action) provides a potential bonus however, in the form of an extra card draw.

Heading up to the top right, we see a read-out box with the Calling, an idea taken directly from the Marvel Super Heroes game. The calling is primarily used in character creation but can also be used during the game to reveal character motivation.

Below the Calling is a large display area that I'm still trying to decide how to populate. Right now it shows a Focus phrase, which the GM could use to determine the person or thing the scene centers around. I've also included a random phrase, in this case a quote, which can spur the action. I think I will replace these with random words, perhaps two random subjects and two random action words. The symbols on the left side of the display mean nothing: I just thought they looked "space age".

The next display shows the Event, another idea taken from the Marvel game. As you can see here, I'm not using the exact list of events from the Marvel game however and plan to make a custom list for these cards.

The last display is the small random letter screen, in this case showing a "K". I talked last post about how I use these random letters to generate words I'd never come up with myself, which I then try to weave into the story.

The rest of the items: the orange light, the moire pattern display, the three black knobs, are all just greeblies (or nurnies for the Brits) to add to the sci-fi flavor.

Now that the pattern is done, the real work begins: populating the spreadsheet with the Callings, Events, and random words that go on each card. I'll start with my Marvel spreadsheet and modify the Callings and Events to better fit a Star Trek setting; many of them are still very appropriate and will remain unchanged though. The random words I'll have to make up or perhaps borrow from a well thought-out list like the one in the Mythic Game Master Emulator. Once the spreadsheet is done it's just "presto": activate the macros and the deck will be built.

Maybe then instead of just thinking and talking about solo RPGs I'll finally starting playing them again.

Solo RPG: Ideas from Random Letters

I mentioned in my last post that the cards I've made for the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game have letters for random word generation. Since there are 100 cards, I used the Scrabble distribution and create words during some break in the game, using the discard pile. As also mentioned I plan to make some cards for fantasy and sci-fi settings as well.

Although I frequently use random word lists, I also like the card method because as cards are played I can start to see the random words take shape.

My procedure is simple: when I lay the first card in the discard pile I note the letter on it as the first letter of a random word. I lay the next card and if that letter will work as the second in a potential word, I'll place it to the right of the first card. If it won't work I'll place the second card below the first in a column and its letter too is now the start of a random word. I'll continue this process until I have sufficient letters for about three to five words (or until the discard is exhausted). What is sufficient? Basically when enough letters form the root of several words that I can then pick from. I like the universe to suggest words through the random card draw but I also like to choose the most interesting of those suggestions.

Here's an example showing how it works.

For a fantasy campaign I'm creating a character and decide to randomly generate seven words (or the start of seven words). I draw the cards and place them as noted above, resulting in these seven word roots:

ONO
YOKE
OIL
BOAN
SEBA
TEA
TEA

Starting with the first word, I looked over all the available dictionary definitions and chose a noun: "onolatry" or the worship of donkeys (or foolish ideas).

This worked well with "Yoke", which I decided to keep.

I didn't know what to do with "oil" so I decided to come back to it.

The next word was really interesting. The only thing starting with BOAN was "boanthropy" or the delusion that one is an ox. Now the character was taking shape.

SEBA made me choose "Sebaceous", so I combined this with the previous letters "oil" and decided the character might have very oily skin, or suffer profuse sweating.

For the last two letters combos I decided the character was a "teamplayer" and carried a dented "tea kettle".

From there the character's story wrote itself. The character is a low level cleric who serves a deity which manifests as a donkey-headed man. The deity (and its priests) silenty suffer the burdens of others. To symbolize this clerics often serve as porters, as low level initiates must carry literal burdens in the form of heavy loads, while high level priests are renowned healers and counselors as they voluntarily take on the physical and mental wounds of others. As a symbol of their faith, clerics of this god wear actual yokes around their necks (not tied to anything). As they advance through the clerical ranks, the yokes become smaller and more symbolic than burdensome (a pendant on a necklace for the head priests), but the yokes always act as spell focus.

The character himself is a small, wiry individual who thinks of himself as much larger. While he's not so deluded to believe he's an ox (boanthropic), he is truly deluded in that he forgets his small stature and approaches all challenges as if he were really 6'5" tall and 300lbs. He's generally pleasant however and a team player, who carries around a dented tea kettle to brew healing potions for his party.

So, from just few unrelated words, many of them strange and ones I'd never have chosen, I now have a clear picture of not only a player character but an entire religious order as well. 

Solo RPG: Marvel SAGA (TSR) Custom Card Update #2

I finally finished the custom homebrew Fate deck for TSR's defunct Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (MSHAG, also known as "the SAGA System") which I started years ago.

Preview: not to scale.  Deck features 100 cards

The cards are posted on my downloads page and I've also submitted them to RoleplayingGameGeek (RPGGeek) for upload into the Files section of the game.  The format is a .pdf and it is designed to be printed onto blank label sheets, then cut out and fixed to card stock (or old playing cards).


As highlighted in the previous post, the cards have dispensed with the character art and instead include a large open area to write campaign/adventure notes.  The cards also feature a random letter, following the Scrabble letter distribution, for random word generation.  I'm hoping to use these cards for some solo-gaming as I always found the MSHAG gave both the GM and player more narrative control than most other games in the same era.

Enjoy and please give me feedback.  I created the cards using MS Excel, using macros to quickly build each card from the raw database of information.  As such, I can make changes and regenerate the entire deck with the click of a button.  My next plan is to make a fantasy version of the cards (custom ones, not recreating the Dragonlance Fifth Age cards however).  I've also contemplated making a Star Wars Fate deck as I've always felt the Star Wars universe is very comic book like.

EDIT: RPGGeek rejected my submission on the grounds of "submission contains scans of copyrighted images).  Nope.  The cards were handmade by me on Powerpoint, including drawing all those little black circles to emulate the "Kirby Crackle".  Of course all the information on the cards (suits, auras, values, etc.) are copyrighted but I derived this information from an Excel file already existing on and downloaded from RPGGeek!

5d20 Action Resolution for RPGs

Here's a little action resolution mechanic I've been thinking about as the skeleton for a homebrew RPG.  I'm posting it here because I'm not entirely happy with the combat/damage and thought perhaps a reader could suggest a fix.

OK, to set boundaries, let me say that I've embraced the "rules-light" movement and want my system to focus on storytelling not number crunching.  Also, this system fits settings dominated by "normal humans"; it probably would fall apart trying to replicate super-powered settings (Nothing I come up with beats the SAGA system for Marvel).

I won't go into character creation; suffice it to say characters in the system have Action scores ranging from 1 to 19 with higher being better.  A future post will detail some curious die score distributions I found with 5d20 that work well for attribute generation.

The GM assigns one of seven difficulty levels to the task.  The levels are:

Automatic
Trivial
Mundane
Difficult
Daunting
Heroic
Impossible

Seven difficulty levels exist for completeness and symmetry but as stated above, this homebrew RPG would attempt to maximize description and minimize dice rolls.  So anything Automatic or Trivial generally happens without a die roll; conversely anything Heroic or Impossible generally can't happen without spending some type of finite "hero point" resource or such.  So the middle three difficulty levels are really the only ones that typically require a dice roll.

Once the difficulty level is established, 5d20 are rolled.  Two dice are discarded and the remaining three dice are considered individually against the character's Action score.  Each die score exceeding the Action score is a failure, equal and under counts as a success.  The total number of successes can therefore be 0 to 3.

Exactly which two dice are discarded depends on the difficulty level of the task.  A Mundane task results in discard of the two highest dice.  A player rolling against a Difficult task discards the highest and lowest dice, leaving the middle three.  Finally, a Daunting task results in discard of the lowest two dice.

The four possible success totals (0 to 3) correspond to the four levels of success (or failure):

3 successful dice: Total Success
2 successful dice: Modest Success
1 successful dice: Near Failure
0 successful dice: Total Failure

The specific definition of each of the above levels depends on the task really and is up to the GM to describe.  The important point is the resolution system isn't binary and allows for gradients of success.  Success gradients are featured in many games but the three-tiered structure presented here was most directly influenced by the first edition Prime Directive RPG.

What about the four other difficulty levels, the two higher than Daunting and lower than Mundane?  Well, as stated before they should be exceedingly rare: either ignored on the low end and out of reach on the high end.  If a roll absolutely needs to be made, 5d20 are rolled as before with Automatic and Trivial tasks using the same dice-discard scheme as Mundane tasks, while Heroic and Impossible tasks use the same scheme as Daunting tasks.  The difference comes in how the success totals are interpreted.  For each difficulty level above Daunting, one successful die roll is ignored.  So the best a character could hope for at a Heroic task is a Modest Success, and could get no better than a Near Failure at an Impossible task.  This is where a hero-point mechanic would come in, with a successful die roll being "purchased" to increase the Success Level.  On the flip side, for each difficulty level below Mundane, one successful die roll is added to the total.  Therefore Trivial tasks can suffer no worse than Near Failure, Automatic tasks no worse than Modest Success.

I've messed around with non-combat situations and the system outlined above seems to work fine.  Opposed rolls are easy: simply assume the middle difficulty level (Difficult) for each character and roll normally with the higher number of successes winning.

I'm not entirely sold on how it works with combat however because no damage mechanic has been developed.  I've been reading the old Ghostbusters RPG (West End Games) and I like the idea of damage being taken against the same finite resource noted above (hero points or whatever you want to call them).  I'm also a big fan of directly reducing Attribute scores, or at least the idea of it.  Unfortunately that path seems to involve a lot more record-keeping.

If you've made it this far and can think of a good damage mechanic, let me know.  


  

Storytelling with Dice

…Or, Stupid Dice Tricks

The following is a long-long post about how I roll dice to come up with stories. There may be some good ideas buried somewhere in here but you'll have to wade through my philosophizing. Here goes...

What are role-playing games if not story-telling? I think that's why I always loved being the GM; directing the game meant I was weaving the story. I haven't played an RPG proper in nearly two decades but I have tried a couple of solo-RPG game master emulator products, such as the Mythic GME and the Conjectural Roleplaying Gamemaster Emulator (CRGE).

The Mythic GME was my gateway-drug into the world of solo-RPGing and works pretty well. The creator of the CRGE made a few revolutionary observations in designing his game however. First, he approached the whole GM-emulation thing as formal story-telling, i.e. using the three act structure. Second, and far more important, CRGE ditches the whole assign-a-likelihood aspect of Mythic. The author of CRGE believes that if the unresolved story question isn't truly at chance odds (50/50) then the story-teller already knows the answer without consulting dice. I agree and that's the one thing I've taken from the CRGE for my own story-dice methods.

Speaking of story-dice, this is how I do it. For most of my homebrew games I use a "rank-order" system meaning I roll a bunch of dice simultaneously and then order them in ascending order with the lowest die score being rank ONE. In order to not confuse the rank order of a die with the individual die score, I will put spell out the rank in bold italics, like in the previous sentence. Rank ordering allows one to manipulate the probabilities without having to reference a bunch of charts and add/subtract modifiers.

OK, so back to story-dice. Let's assume I have a premise for my story and it's going somewhere but I come to a logical fork-in-the-road and the story can go either way. I'll roll 5d6 for any questions in each act in the story and rank order the five dice, using only one result, the Rank THREE die score. What does that do for me? Well, it ensures the results tend to cluster around the central die scores; Rank THREE gives a nice symmetrical curve with about 58% of the results clustered around the central two die scores.

I translate the die score into an answer to my question. Exactly what each die score means depends on where I'm at in the story. If I'm still defining the story and the protagonist, the conflict, and the (apparent) path to resolution of the conflict have not all been discovered yet, then the following scale is used (sorry for the wonky alignments; again with the unpredictable Blogger formatting):

Die Score Answer



6 Yes, But…
5 Yes, And…
4 Yes
3 No
2 No, And…
1 No, But…





If the protagonist, the conflict, and the (apparent) path to resolution are all defined and now the protagonist is facing obstacles on this path to resolution, I'll use this scale.




Die Score Answer



6 Yes, And…
5 Yes, But…
4 Yes
3 No
2 No, But…
1 No, And…




If the story gets into a "war-gamey"/RPG type situation, such as where two characters are opposing each other and perhaps each have different applicable skills, then I'll use this scale:



Die Score Answer



6 Yes, And…
5 Yes
4 Yes, But…
3 No, But…
2 No
1 No, And…



What about twists? Well, whenever I throw 5d6 to resolve a question, I ensure three of the dice are one color (usually white) and the remaining two dice share another darker color. If the darker dice are both same number on a roll, then this indicates a story twist. The original question can still be resolved normally regardless if the dark dice come up doubles but with an unexpected turn.

If a twist is indicated, I roll 5d6 and rank order them again. Only one die score is used again but the rank order is not automatically Rank THREE as when answering a question. Instead, at the beginning of each story segment, the "twist-rank" starts at Rank FIVE and decreases as the segment progresses. I track the Twist-Rank with a different color/size/type die. This ensures a lot of loose ends get generated at the beginning which hopefully point toward a coherent story as the segment continues. The following table explains how to read the die score if a twist roll is made:

Die Score Result



6 Fade Out
5 Suddenly! (New Character[s])
4 Suddenly! (New Character[s])
3 Suddenly! (Conflict)
2 Suddenly! (Existing Character[s])
1 Back to Our Story


Here's what these mean…


Fade Out: Immediately decrease the Twist Rank by one (minimum Rank ONE). The current scene is suspended and a new one is started. This new scene is either concurrent (Meanwhile…) or in the past (Flashback!). Another 5d6 roll on a new table is necessary to determine the new scene type (see below).


Suddenly!: Immediately decrease the Twist Rank by one (minimum Rank ONE). Something immediately changes or is revealed in the scene and the focus of the change/revelation is indicated in the parenthesis.


Back to Our Story: The Twist-Rank remains the same. No changes otherwise affect the scene and the story can continue to progress.




So at the beginning of the story segment the tale will likely go spinning off into flashbacks or concurrent actions happening elsewhere. Then, as the story progresses new characters will likely be introduced. Then details of the conflict and existing characters are revealed by the twists. Finally, everything should calm down to allow the story-teller to wrap the story segment up to a logical conclusion.


I mentioned the Fade Out result required another 5d6 roll. This roll uses the Twist-Rank as well; here's how I define the results of that roll.



Die Score Result



6 Meanwhile...
5 Flashback!
4 Meanwhile...
3 Meanwhile...
2 Flashback!
1 Meanwhile…


As a side-note, once the story goes into an alternate scene (Fade Out result on a twist roll), it stays in that scene until returning to the Main Story. There are two differences however. First, when in an alternate scene, the Twist-Rank is always Rank FIVE. Second, if a Fade Out result is scored when making a twist roll in the alternate scene, the narrative immediately returns to the Main Story. This makes these alternate scenes short, chaotic scenes which serve to amplify the main story and not supplant it.


OK, so there are alternate scenes and changes to scenes with the twist rolls. In order to spur my mind into a direction that explains these plot-twists, I use random words. Originally I used the 200 or so random words that came with the Mythic GME. Recently however I have created an Excel VBA file that generates a list of about 100 words from a list of the 35,000 most common English words. I've set up the file to allow me to reject words that are useless (proper names, abbreviations, "the", "a", etc.) and the macro will then eliminate that word from future consideration.