Rule of the Dice

About 6 months ago I read through all of JS Morin's Black Ocean series.  These are short novellas, episodic in nature and feel a lot like the TV show Firefly where a crew of a ship gets up to silly hi-jinx while always looking for the next job, the next score, or the next get rich quick scheme. The whole time I was reading the series, I felt like there was potential for a  RPG to be based on this setting.  It has all the essentials - an easy to sum up background, potential for fun quirky characters, and a familiar enough feel to get the uninitiated in to it.  Keep this last point in mind while I tell this next part... Yep, this gets complicated.... A group of 6 or 7 of us have been playing a D6 Star Wars adventure fairly regularly for the past 4 months or so - typically meeting on Skype twice a month.  While not everyone can make it every time, we've managed to keep a fun adventure going with different characters popping in and out as available.  to ...

Excalibur. Narsil. Stormbringer. Shieldbreaker. The Vorpal Sword. Lauralee . These are mighty swords of power and legend, of myth and song, blades that shall be remembered until the end of time. The following blades, however, are probably best forgotten. Not every sword can be an artifact of immense power. Not every sword is even a boring "long sword +1." And not every sword can be cursed. Some swords, despite their enchantment and pomp and circumstance, are merely, "meh." These are those swords. Sword of Itching The grey, rough blade of this sword chips and splinters easily. A fine powder - like iron filings - flakes off it almost constantly. When it's first found in its scabbard, if it hasn't been used in awhile it's probably even covered with a layer of rust and corrosion. This irritating, flaky oxidized iron powder is transferred to anyone wounded by the blade, and will remain in the victim's body if they survive being struck by the...

Since it's Halloweek , we decided that our last game of the night should be thematically appropriate. I had just bought last night on earth, so we opened it up and got cracking.  Here are my thoughts on the game: 1) Packaging.  The box has tons of room, but the interior plastic trays are poorly thought out.  When the game is new and all the tokens are still in their cardboard frame, it fits beautifully.  Once you punch out all the markers, there's no good place to put them where they won't slide around in the box. If the "card" areas had been made deeper, all the other bits would have fit perfectly.  Not the end of the world (though that's the theme of the game), but something that could be improved. 2) Gimmicks.  The game comes with a CD for background mood music.  The music is fine, but the CD is too short to last a full game.  Especially a first full game where you are stopping to look up rules and figure out strategies. 3) Speaking o...

I've been considering running a couple of new RPG games, one as a PBEM , and one with a live group.  I've mentioned in the past that I know I'm better at running PBEM's than live games, but I'm hoping they both work well.  But that's putting the cart ahead of the horse.  What I need to do first  is find a system, a world setting, and a campaign. While I have a bunch of 2e and 3.5e adventure modules, I know I prefer unique worlds in the games I play.  My usual GM has an extensive world he has created and sets most of his games in it, which I really enjoy.  I hope to be able to give my players a similarly satisfying experience.  I know I don't want to go the extreme route of creating my own system the way C.D. has with Splatter-Elf .  However I am considering adapting one of the systems I know well to a unique world. Likely the system will be 2e or Advanced Labyrinth Lord  (hooray for free!), or with a bit more work, I can make my ide...

Why? Short answer: Because I can. Long answer: Because I'm still learning FATE and the best way to learn a new system is to tear it apart and make something new with it. Of course, the cool thing about FATE is that's the whole point - you're expected to tinker with it and make it your own. I chose Thomas specifically for a number of reasons. First, a cursory glance shows no other Thomas homebrews out there. ( This is a pretty awesome list of other FATE hacks, though ) (Fun aside - someone tried to make a Thomas video game RPG on Kickstarter a few weeks ago, which was quickly shut down for copyright reasons. +John Williams - I apologize in advance Gullane Entertainment shuts down Rule of the Dice for this) Secondly, I've been watching a lot of Thomas with my son lately so it's at the front of my mind. The trains of Sodor live in an incredibly detailed and expansive world (a world with an insane amount of railroad on an island only 60 miles across). Plus,...

With internet shows like @TableTop and websites like Boargamegeek , tabletop gaming has had a huge resurgence in the last few years.   Damn you Wheaton!!! Game publishers are jumping on this to try to capitalize while the market is hot, and so there are a plethora of new games released in a constant stream these days.  On top of that, funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo , and easy distribution through places like DriveThruCards are allowing more and more amateur game designers to get their work made and distributed.  So this is all great, right? That's a LOT of shitty games. Well, not really.  As with anything in life, board games run the full spectrum of awesome to terrible.  And in this spectrum, there is the typical bell curve of distribution.  So based on that, only 4% of the games released will be awesome.  Some 7% will be really good.  Another 12% will be Ok.  The rest are going to s...

In case you're new here (in which case, welcome aboard!), Splatter-Elf is a "Grimmer-than-Grimdark" table-top RPG game I'm pulling out of my butt based almost entirely on this post by Philip Overby . I've been going on about it for months. More detail about The Grumblesnatch is available at the Splatter-Elf Blog . If you're not new here and you're fed up about me going on about Splatter-Elf for months, I'm not going to apologize because you probably haven't read this far anyway.  FIRST GRUMBLESNATCH WAR (c. 1000 years ago) It all began innocuously enough. Tales began began to drift into the cities of the Inner Baronies of increased grumble activity in the more remote regions of Groteskia . It was hardly newsworthy; Grumbles always attack and burn down farms and villages and besiege travelers on the roads. That's what grumbles, farms and travelers are for. But as the weeks passed and the rural townships raised militia to fight off...

The first group finally made it to the end of the first Splatter-Elf adventure, and it was glorious. Whether or not the rules or the game system worked (more on that later), I have to say this was the most fun I've had running a game in a long time. Everything moved at a reasonable pace, everyone clicked and seemed to have fun, and there was plenty of goofy weirdness that I always see as a staple of a good game. We had the same Soldier of Slaughter and Uff from the previous session , though our Cutthroat player was replaced by a different guy running a Detritus Dwarf. It took him a few minutes to understand why he carried around a giant sack of garbage and filth like an insane hobo, but he was eventually cool with it. Some wild fighting took place as the players tried every trick they could come up to gain an advantage in a fight with a group of pistol-wielding cattle rustlers. After much swearing and threatening and climbing through windows and hiding behind doors and t...

Last week, appropriately enough on Friday the 13th, we played the second-ever session of SPLATTER-ELF: The RPG . I had a new group of three completely different players from the first session, which works out well to get new perspectives on the game. It was also great for me because I got to reuse the same adventure! In the first session we had three people who game just for fun and didn't really care about the rules. They had a good laugh though, and really enjoyed hacking the shit out of everything they ran into and accidentally choking out enemies with their own intestines. The second session had two guys who were more familiar with and comfortable with game mechanics so they went out of their way to try different things, which from a testing perspective was very helpful. The third guy hadn't gamed in years so he was just having fun being there. It was interesting to see how the two groups reacted to the same situations. In some instances they did the exact same thi...

I've been rather surprised by the feedback for  Splatter-Elf: The RPG so far. I've had people approach me asking for more info about it (someone even wanted the rules so they could play it!) and I've seen it discussed on forums completely without my prompting. It's pretty nice to have a circle of supporters (as small as it is) and it encourages me to keep tinkering with these rules to create a full-blown game. Of course, no discussion of Splatter-Elf is complete without mentioning Philip Overby , the Godfather of Splatter-Elf himself who coined the term and gave me the idea in the first place. But that's all Philip gets: one quick mention. The rest of today's post is about some ideas I've been kicking around for the game. The Core Mechanic For those of you who have been paying attention, the basic mechanic for Splatter-elf uses a d12. If you want to attack something you roll d12 and add applicable modifiers. The target rolls d12 and adds his modifiers...