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.

Thoughts on Professional Gamesmastering

I'm interested in exploring the concept of Professional Gamesmastering.  I'd like to start by saying that I've done it myself several times, and it's been both a fantastic experience, and to some degree profitable.  You can read my notes on it here:  http://elthos.com/ProGM/ProGM.aspx

I'd be curious to hear what others think of the concept, and if anyone else has managed to make money Gamesmastering.

Where I'm going with this is ... I think the future holds in store for us the opportunity for a much more dynamic form of entertainment than simply going to the movies or playing video games.  The problem with these activities is that they are essentially passive.   Yes, even playing a video game is passive in the sense that you're not really creating something, but are following along in the groove of someone else's creation.   I'm thinking of first person RPGs like World of Warcraft.   In that style of game you are in someone else's world.   Yes, you can run around and do stuff in that world, but you can't really help to create it, nor can you really affect it very much by your actions.  That kind of gaming, while obviously far more active than a movie, is still passive in comparison to your average run-in-the-mill tabletop RPG.   In those games you participate in the creation of the actual history of the world.  You are, as it were, a main character in that story.  And that's a lot of what makes it so great.

In the future I believe we will have the tools, and I'm working on one aspect of that with the Elthos RPG system, that will allow for a much more dynamic form of interactive gaming.  Roll20 has brought us into a collaborative virtual gaming space and that's a big step in the direction I'm pointing to.  The next step, I believe, will be an online utility that parallels Roll20 and allows Gamesmasters to create their Worlds online, and play out campaigns in that world.   The Elthos Gamesmaster's Toolbox and World Weaver's Studio is designed to make Creating Worlds, and Gamesmastering them much easier by providing Gamesmastering functions that handle the number crunching and record keeping, leaving the Gamesmaster free to do the more creative work involved with story and world development.

Finally, I envision a further phase in which these worlds are tied to graphics engines that allow the Players and GMs to go fully into their Virtual Worlds en mass, and play in ways that games like WOW don't quite allow (yet).  With Live Gamesmasters who not only run the major NPCs (and mostly act like Admins in an IRC Chat Channel), but allow them to manage a large number of groups of players in their Worlds - all with the same virtues of tabletop RPGs, but with the added advantages of stability (ie - not losing track of stuff), accuracy (the computer does the number crunching), transparency (the computer could allow people to determine who did what when, and what the odds were / are), and enjoyment of mind blowing visualizations of people's worlds.

This all will give rise, I hope and believe, to a class of Professional Gamesmasters.  These people will have a combination of necessary skills to entertain large numbers of people with fantastic worlds, and exciting adventures in an online environment that I suspect will be emerging in the next decade or so.   The skills necessary for Professional Gamesmastering involve knowing the tools, as well as all of the current challenges that GMs face, such as social skills, math skills, knowledge of history, of story arcs and character development, and of the ability to improvisationally represent multiple non-player characters as well as monsters (to name a few off the top of my head).  Yes, there's a lot of skills required for the successful Gamesmaster.   But mastering those skills is incredibly rewarding.  And I would love to see a future in which those Gamesmasters who excel in their art are also able to be rewarded financially as well, so that they can take the hobby to the next level and make it into an experience that extends and enhances the entertainment possibilities for society.

Yes, people will still read books.  I know I will.  But I would also really enjoy being able to play the hero of a story that I am helping to create in a fantastic virtual world whose concepts I would never have imagined on my own.   And that, friends, I'd be willing to pay for.  I think many other people would, too.  And that would be the basis for starting to think about Professional Gamesmastering as a serious pursuit.

Would you be interested in a gig as a Professional Gamesmaster if the tools and infrastructure were available to you?   I would.   Would you be interested in participating in the advancement of this concept?  I would.

I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on this!  

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.

Western Knights - Kau-Akai Braves

Kau-Akai Indians storming Port Kennsington

From the fertile imagination and excellent pen of Milo Barasorda‎! In the world of Western Knights, brought to us Players by the Gamesmastery of Charles Hoge, the Kau-Akai are a tribe of aboriginals to New Albion. At some point they ran into logger heads with the invading forces of The Empire. They fought a decisive battle during which their Chief used a mystical scythe to slay one of the Magnificent XII. This bodes at least somewhat well for our rebels, as at least they now know that the Pretty Magnificent XI are not completely invulnerable. All we need to do is rustle up some of them there mystical weapons! Hah!

The drawing is by the amazing Milo Barasorda

Slorg-Vrol Island

*** SPOILER ALERT ***
If you happen to be a Player in the Elthos World, you probably want to avert your eyes quickly from this post, least you ruin the awesome experience of playing this scenario for yourself.  It will be fun.  Avert your eyes. 

After being thoroughly inspired by the amazing map work of Dyson Logos, I thought I would try my hand at a map which I named Slorg-Vrol Island. I tried to keep the map itself somewhat generic to the fantasy genre in filling in some of the details so that other GMs could potentially plug this into their own Campaigns and fill in the details as they see fit. I have written up my own Campaign based on this map, and it's fun and exciting enough that I intend to play it sometime. Mainly though, this was an exercise in map making.

As for the map, I did the rough outline in Microsoft Paint (latest version) using the Calligraphy Pen Brush, and added shading and the text by bringing it into Picasa and using the tools for that there.

Western Knights - Flint Westwood

Drawing by Milo Barasorda

Our party of three were shanghaied from Britain and sent to New Albion where we were to be slaves of the Empire.  We were of course looking for any means to escape.  During a battle with a local tribe of Kawaki Indians (the leader of which took out one of the Magnificent XII with a single blow of his mystical scythe), we managed to get rescued by The Resistance.  We decided to stick around and help out.   After all, The Empire is about as brutal as they get, and we figure it's high time they lost a few pegs.

This is a picture of my character Flint Westwood. It was drawn by the ever-so-talented Milo Barasorda.

Other pictures to follow. :)