Western Knights - The Twin Gunmen

Drawing by
Milo Barasorda

This is my character Flint Westwood, and Chad, his evil twin.  Or is Flint the evil one?  At this point it's a toss up.  You'll see why.

The story thus far... Flint and Chad were Shanghaied in Britain by the Imperial Merchant Marine, and put to work as galley slaves.  Arriving in New Albion (America) they discovered that the town of Kennsington was ruled with the same Totalitarian Brutality as the motherland.  They were shoved into a battle as cannon fodder when a local tribe, the Kawuki, dared to attack the settlement.   Flint, Chad, and Albedo Ray (another member of the original Galley crew) fled the battle in an attempt to escape the settlement, but were tricked and fell into an ambush of knights by a mysterious character they chanced to meet in a dark alleyway who promised them freedom.  They were questioned and tortured, but the three of them proved to their captors one essential thing - they could think for themselves.   And so their captors revealed that they are The Resistance, and so the three amigos joined forces with Lord Kennsington's twin brother, the rebel, and took a mission to go to town and report back the results of their latest sabotage attack.

Having found out all they could about the explosion that took out one of the Imperial frigates in the harbor,  they decided to jar the townsmen's sense of stability by putting up a crudely drawn picture of the boat sinking with a sunny face above.  This resulted in the town Militia rounding up all of the Indentured Slaves and killing them.  The Imperium tolerates NO free thought.  Period.

Fortunately, Flint, Chad and Albedo were rescued by one of the knights of the Resistance, and brought back to the secret encampment.  From there Flint and Chad decided to leave town and strike out Westward to see if they could learn, and report back, more about what lay beyond the hills, and more about the Kawaki Indians.  They slid past the guards, through the woods, and up into the foothills.  Along the way Flint saved Chad's life by shooting the head off a rattlesnake that was coiled up ready to strike down his brother.

After some further trekking through the hill country they ran into another outlaw.  This man has serious emotional problems, among them being generally frightened out of his wits by other people.  He also is a dreadful liar, and a trickster.   But Flint didn't find that out until too late. The only clue he had was that the man was excessively evasive.

They also ran into a horror.   In the hills thereabouts there is a fog that rises out of nowhere and engulfs people.  Within the fog one may chance to see a horribly large black wolf.  It may or may not attack, and in this case it merely watched and then faded away from each of them.   Unfortunately, when Chad was engulfed, and Flint was running from the fog being followed by their new "friend" stabbed him in the leg with his knife!   WTF?

Well, the mist-wolf faded away, and they caught up with the stabby friend, and after much debate decided to keep company with him after all.   As they marched they put him in the middle rank between Chad and Flint.

And so ... Flint gave the guy a whack over the back of the head with a branch to teach him a lesson... and nearly killed him by accident.  His intent was to merely teach the miserable fellow what it's like to be sprung on unexpectedly by your supposed friend.   Maybe he learned something.

And that's the story thus far.

Free RPG Day @ Modern Myths

Another fine Free RPG Day hosted by Jim Crocker at Modern Myths in Mammaroneck ...  It was quite a fun event, and gathered about 50 Players and Gamesmasters of various and sundry RPGs...

Jim ran Lady Blackbird for 5...

A few fun game-tests of Elthos RPG Skirmish Board.  :) 

 We played several games, and my testing partner won all of them!  He was tactically smart, brash and tricky, and I must admit - I had a bought of particularly rotten luck!  ;)

There was lots of laughter and enjoyment in the hall that day!

Elthos RPG Weapons Skills Selection Update

My play testers have consistently identified areas that need further genericization in order to make a truly generic RPG game system that allows GMs to configure their worlds in whatever way they want. This is of course one of my primary objectives, and I'm grateful to my Play Testers for pointing out areas that need improvement.

One of those areas was the Edit Weapons feature. Previously I had no way to associate weapons directly with skills. However, since having learned skills for weapons usage affects the Attack Level calculations, it was necessary to include some code that associates certain weapons with certain Skills. An example was "Ranged Weapons". When the Character is using a "Missile" Weapon the code would go and look to see if that Character had learned "Ranged Weapons", and if so they got the correct Attack Level calculated. The problem was that this was quite brittle, and requires every GM to have a "Ranged Weapons" skill in their world, or missile weapons would not get calculated correctly. As long as the GM kept "Ranged Weapons" then everything was ok. But what if they want to change the name, or split it into alternative sets of Ranged Weapons, such as "Hand Guns" vs "Bows", which if you think about it, are two completely different skills.

Therefore I modified the site to allow GMs to associate Weapons with whatever "Combat" skills are in their World. Did you add a Combat Skill for "Butterfly Knives"? Ok, so now you can add a Weapon named Butterfly Knives and associate those to the Skill. Thus, when the Character purchases their Butterfly Knives and learns the Skill, he will have the correctly calculated Attack Level.

This was a very solid advance as it allows GMs much greater flexibility to define their Worlds the way they want.

Maelstrom Report - 2014

Maelstrom 2014 took place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Morristown New Jersey this weekend (April 4-6). It was an experimental format. Here's what the organizers originally stated:

"In collaboration with Steve Segedy of Games on Demand, Double Exposure advances the concept of unstructured gaming, as we run an entire convention without a fixed schedule! Role Playing, Story Games, LARPs, Board & Card Games, Wargames - everything we'd normally run at DREAMATION and DEXCON - will be played when the Gamemasters and the players are ready - and without time limits. New Gamemasters will have an opportunity to be mentored by those who have more experience, and players can be exposed to new game systems at any time they choose. Groups of players can form at any time to play a game or learn a game."

To read more: http://www.dexposure.com/ms2014.html

This was a very interesting experiment on a much looser organization for gaming than in the usual Double Exposure conventions. The attendance on the other hand was low because the idea was hatched without much fanfare or lead time, however, despite that, it was a lot of fun and the people seemed to very much like the new format. I ran a demonstration table for my game system (Elthos), which was a great experience for me, and gave me very useful feedback. I had, overall, a great time and learned a lot from the experience.

The setup is designed to allow flexibility in the organization of play groups.  For me, well, I was busy manning my demo table, and so didn't have much chance to browse around and really experience the thing, so my account is based on what I gleaned during conversations with gamers that I met during the Convention.   So you can take my viewpoint with the appropriate grain of salt., but that's the report as I heard it.  But from what I gather, the positive side of the idea is that people can spontaneously join what they like as they browse around and hear pitches for games.  This can help new comers to pitch their games without running into the problem that most people may have already per-selected other games prior to the convention based on their already settled preferences.   In other words, as far as I can tell, it's a cool way to give new games a foot in the door.  On the down side, for some, I heard feedback suggesting that it was a bit confusing and some people wound up wandering around not quite sure what to do.  There are some kinks that the organizers are working out. 

To get a feel for how the thing looks I took some pictures during my brief jaunts away from my table.

My booth was set up with a computer monitor to show what the Web Application does (World Weaving Studio and Gamesmaster's Toolbox). It looked like this:

My friend Charles Hoge leapt into action as soon as we found out I had a table, which came as a complete and unexpected surprise-gift to us. He's a really talented Marketing Guru and put together the posters, and business cards, and Elthos Gamesmaster's Mini GM-Shield Post Cards with the General Resolution Matrix on one side.  Charles, by the way, has been one of my Play Testers since 2011, and played the Infamous Ischandar Character, as well as Bantum the Gentle Giant, and Praymar, the Insidious-Something-We're-Not-Quite-Sure.  He came by to help out with the table and chat people up as well, which was fantastic.  He's a great guy, a super friend, and all around awesome gamer.  Special Shout-Out and Thanks, Charles!

A little later on, Steve Vitka, a brilliant guy with world-conquering engineering plans, came by and we tried out his newly minted game as of one week prior, which he spontaneously named "Dice Clash!" so I could call it something. It's a fast paced rigorous and viciously fun game.  Steve also happens to be an awesome witty guy and a lot of fun to talk to.   Catch him sometime if you can. 

I also had the chance to run some demo games, which was a lot of fun and very instructive!   Here's the game board I concocted for the event.  It is a terrain map with pieces on the board.  On the right is the General Resolution Matrix.   The green blobbies on the board are Hedges which afford safety, but slow movement and severely hampered attacks.  The brown blobbies are Rocky Knolls on which combatants can climb for 3 movement points (pieces have 6 movement), and get a +2 Attack Level and Armor Class.  The objective is to get to the far side of the board and capture the other team's flag.   Combat will ensue.

Another cool thing about the Convention is that they have a Board Game Library that's open for borrowing.  It's got what looks like hundreds of awesome games, so if you want to try a game, without necessarily plunking down the cashola for it up front, you might be able to find it in the Library and give it a whirl.   Charles and I also me Kevin Grieves who's a long time associate with the event.  Great guy, very helpful and engaging.  Thanks for the tips, Kevin!

Here's a few shots of people and things along the way...
As you can tell, this was an extravaganza of amazing games, and tons of people having a great time playing them. Overall, I give Maelstrom a thumbs up.  While it has a few organizational kinks to iron out, it's still a great concept and I hope they continue it.

And a final shout out to Vincent Salzillo who organized the event: Thanks! That was great!

New Feature - Group Cloning

Pistachio Nut Shell Pieces, yes.  :)

Things are coming along well with the game testing, and the modifications to the Elthos Web Application are making steady, albeit museum-speed, progress.  The latest game tests were a bit disrupted by the fact that the web application can auto-generate adventure groups, and I created two groups of six fighters each for the tactical board game - however, my players, who tend to be more observant than I, noticed right away that the two groups were different.  Very different.   The Adventure Group Generator randomizes the rolling of Characters within the group.  So while you can create two Adventure Groups defined as six fighters of maximum 3rd Level, you can't get it to generate two groups that are exactly the same.  In this case, Adventure Group A was far heftier in terms of bonuses from higher Requisites than Group B.   So whoever got Group B was kinda under the gun in a big way.  I thought that was kind of cool and random.  But my players pointed out - it unbalanced the test results.   We're testing combat tactics in the board game aspect.  Ok ok!   Off to the salt mines!   So.... I needed to clone Group A.   But I have no Clone Adventure Group feature on the web app.   Correction:  I had no Clone Group Feature.  Now I do.  And it works marvelously!  :)

Rounds of Play Testing

Since the completion of the 2009-2013 RPG Test, which came out great, and produced a remarkable book (coming to ~850 pages, single spaced in MS Word), we have now launched into the next phase of Game Testing.   The Board Game Rules.   The focus for these tests is on specifics related to the tactical rules.  I want to polish those up, and get a final PDF on them.  

I"m also working with a friend of mine to look at the possibilities around using Construct2 to create the board game side of this thing, that will be playable online (or offline) via a web browser using HTML 5.   That should be interesting!  

But one thing at a time.  Board Game Rules.  

Current Tactical Map for Board Game Rules Test

This is the board we are using.  At first we used pistachio shells for pieces.  Yup.  In fact they were easy to work with and we could use slashes on them to indicate hits taken.  And they're tasty to make.  Can't be that combination. 

We then went on to create, using the website, actual tactical pieces and played with those.  The numbers printed on each piece turned out to be a bit bothersome in that they're small and you have pick up the piece to look at them.   One of my wonderful play testers suggested just printing the number of the piece on each piece, with the name of the character, and then having a printout of the stats relevant to the board game.   That's a good idea.  I programmed that this week.   If all goes well we will be testing that tonight. 

So far so good.  Keep going.  :)

Lion Statues In The Salt Mine

Down in the Salt Mine below the Prancing Unicorn Inn, our heroes found in the darkness two great Lion Statues and they looked something like these...

Dragon On The Edge

After the game I went to review the Experience Gains Sheet that was kept this session by Charles.  Lo!   A Dragon!   Nicely done, Charles!   Let's just hope it is a friendly dragon after all... ;)

The Perils of Game Testing

So I'm running the fourth in a series of game tests tonight. This series is to test the progression of levels for characters, and so each game they go up one level and we add their new stats, skills and whatnot. At the same time I'm using the game test to focus on the magic system. I'm also experimenting with World Weaving and Gamesmastering techniques, and infusing some ideas from my new Elthos Tarot System as well. So far so good. Oh, and I'm also using this series to test the Elthos ODS Web Application that does much of the GM grunt work for me. So it rolls characters and groups, and lets me assign properties such as skills, races, etc, and keep track of all the math for calculating Attack Levels, Armor Classes and so on. It pretty much could run the entire game if I added more code to handle some AI functions. Anyway, of course, since it's a relatively new application it has some bugs. So here I am rolling up a set of characters in a specific group, the Mordalia Gang. A bunch of goblins, a kobold thief, and an ogre, run by a beautiful mystic warrior mage in black chainmail. Woopsie, I forgot to include Hormund the Ogre. I go to roll him separately and KaPow! Application Fail! Now it won't load the debug symbols. Time is running out! And of course what do I do? I go and blog this. LOL. Ok back to work!

The Beta Phase

A lot of hard work and six months later... I have uploaded, finally, the Elthos ODS Web Application online for the Closed Beta Testing Phase. Everything seems to be working. The Closed Beta will be for friends who I have invited to kick the tires on the application for a while, and provide bug reports and feedback. I'm also considering working with the old New York Group on a more advanced concept for the game system, which would take us between one and seven years to complete, with probability set on about two years. That's a long time. I would also have to relinquish some control over my side of the project, and to some degree a certain amount of ownership. Not necessarily crazy about that aspect, so I have to think about it. In one case I will continue to work on and improve the application over the course of this year, in the other case I will put this down for a while and work on the Advanced Aspects with the New York Group. I'll give myself a week or two to mull it over.

Anyway, I'm very excited to have the application online in any event. While not open to the public yet, I have met my goal for 2008! Very happy about that! :)

First appeal to the Indie Crowd at Story Games

Ok, on the advice of the guys at the Indie Explosion (Independent Game Developers) I put out a call for game testers in the Westchester area. Lets see what comes of that. It would be great to start some focused play testing, at the very least on the ODS system, but also the Mythic Template System as well (not to mention the web application).

Ok, here we go.

You can find my post here:

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=5454