RPG a Day: Resourceful

26. What’s an RPG item that provides awesomely useful resources?

There are so many games that provide wonderful resources, whether it’s game-mastering advice, bibliographies, play aids, online content, or a vibrant support community. It’s hard to pick just one, but I will go with Fiasco because there are now so many playsets you can enjoy, both official and fan-made, that you can now use the framework to do much more that its original mission. Few people are availing themselves of of it for continuing series, I should write something on that one of these days! but in the mean time, you have so many worlds to pick from…

#RPGaDay2017

 

RPG a Day: Fan-Made Resources

22. What are some awesome fan-made RPG resources?

Today’s default question was too similar to others I’ve just answered (”What RPGs are easy for you to run?” calls for an answer that’s pretty close to the one I gave for “What is an awesome RPG you enjoy adapting?”) So I decided to ask myself a different question, and answer it. 🙂

I want to celebrate fan-made and shared materials. There are so many, so I will just point to a few of different types.

• Mad Irishman’s character sheets
• Randy Oest’s Fate SRD site
• The Burning Wheel Wiki, and its companion wikis for other Burning Wheel HQ games.
• The Fiasco Playsets collection curated by James Gabrielsen
• Lizzie Stark’s Safety Primer, John Stavropoulos’ X Card, and Brie Sheldon’s Script Change
• HishGraphics paper miniatures
• HeroMachine
• Seventh Sanctum and Abulafia random generators

Yes, I do realize that the distinction between fan and professional is very subjective in the world of role-playing games. I’m just trying to shine a spotlight on quality resources created for love of the game and generously shared.

#RPGaDay2017

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Credits: Image by Ali Edwards, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

 

 

 

Fate of the Mouse Guard: Here you go!

Mouse Guard RPG (1st ed.)

War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus

That’s my mouse, running away from three giant spiders and dragging the bad guy with me.

The Mouse patrol defeats the weasel.

As requested by a fan of Evil Hat Productions, here is some information on running a Mouse Guard game using the Fate system. TL;DR: My thinking process, followed by lots of useful links at the bottom of the post.

When I was in the final stages of writing War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus for Evil Hat Productions, I wanted to test the rules we had grafted onto Fate Accelerated to support the use of miniatures. I wanted to check whether they would play well when used in another setting and handled by a game-master who wasn’t part of the development team. My friend Kit was nice enough to run it for us using the setting from the Mouse Guard RPG (Archaia Studio/Burning Wheel Games) and the episode was a success. I later ran it a few times at conventions and it was great fun.

Recently someone (Tim R.) wrote to Evil Hat to ask how we made these adaptions. I never posted any notes before because in truth, this was not a full-fledged conversion. However, the Fate Accelerated engine is excellent for  conversions-on-the-fly! And I think the miniatures rules we came up with work very well with otther settings, especially fantasy settings. 

RPG a Day: Character development

31. What is your preferred method of character improvement and why?

[Alternate question from BrigadeCon’s list. The default question for today was: “What is the best piece of advice you were ever given for your game of choice?” but it didn’t shake loose any ideas.]

For me, the question of character improvement has become less about “advancement” and more about “growth” over the years.I like getting rooted in plots and organization, forming relationships with characters, seeing a player character mature and change.

A number of modern games offer characters that are very competent from the start and playing them over a long time means not so much accumulating skill points and treasure, and more becoming integral to the story of the setting, whatever its scale.

A number of systems offer ways to modify your drives, motivations, descriptors, relationships, and so forth rather than just increasing ratings: games based on the PDQ, Fate Core, PbtA or Burning Wheel engines, for example. Alternately, some more traditional games are exploring options like “partial levelling” and more narrative rewards; I’m thinking of 13th Age and The One Ring, for example.

#RPGaDay2016

 

 

RPG a Day: Fictional character?

17. What fictional character would best fit in your group? Why?

Klara, from the graphic novel series Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. And I want her to play Burning Wheel and make the GM weep.

#RPGaDay2016

 

 

Review: Mouse Guard RPG

(Cross-posted to RPG.net and Emerald City Gamefest.)

The Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game is based on the on-going comic book series Mouse Guard and a streamlined, simplified version of the Burning Wheel system, in which you play the protectors and warriors of a medieval society of sentient mice.

Burning Empires

(Cross-posted to RPG.net, where it won 3rd prize for Science-Fiction Week, and to Emerald City Gamefest.)

Burning Empires is an attractively presented, very crunchy system in a colourful science-fiction universe, that will please those who like rules-intensive competitive games, but will overwhelm gamers who like a more streamlined approach.