Tikhon HERO

The last week or so has been spent converting our existing fantasy campaign from the homebrew UbiquitousRPG to HERO System 6th Edition. Why on Earth have we been doing that? 

Three reasons:

1. I wanted to try out the HERO System (as I own it and all the main supplements).
2. There were major bugs in the UbiRPG system.
3. I wanted to spend less time writing rules, more time writing setting and adventures.

This post, however, is less about WHAT we're up to and more about HOW the fan forum has made this a far less painful experience than I expected.

An innocent question...

It started with a vague itch to stop writing rules, and to focus on setting/adventures. The next step was posting a question on the HERO Games Forums:

"Why run HERO 6th?"

My question: Why should we run Hero 6th? What does Hero give me that makes the benefits outweigh the effort?

Secondary question: If you persuade me, what can I do to make GMing easy?  

That was what started it. I didn't expect quite the awesome responses I got. Wow!

Super-helpful Community

Without a doubt, and with only one real exception, the folk over on the forums have been super-helpful and very enthusiastic. Yes, if you read the thread, there have been a couple of wobbly moments where passionate players (and one Troll) have highjacked the thread... but the moderation has been good. The advice has been very practical and encouraging.

HERO Games have a fabulous (if small) community of gamers who are passionate about their game. And with good reason, I feel very much welcome and supported. This is a credit to the company and to the game.

My worries were genuine, my preconceptions real, and my weariness with learning games tangible. Yet, as of today, I have converted all five existing characters to HERO... and was cackling with glee designing creatures this morning.

Complex? Less than apparent...

HERO 6e is a detailed system. But the core is very simple: 3d6, roll low, for tests; d6 damage dice, roll high.

Complexity is all front-loaded into character creation. Real bummer for new players, much easier when you play. Several GMs commented that you're best off demo'ing HERO with pre-gen characters, and I'd agree. Thankfully, we already have characters to port over.

How was the conversion process? Well... easier than expected. 

Yes, I had to learn and get to grips with some concepts that are different to D&D-style thinking. A good example is the fact that everything is entirely relative in HERO. Thus, a Combat Value of 3 is probably a bit poor... unless your opponent's Combat Value is lower, in which case it's cool. Whereas in most systems the standards are clearly defined, in HERO you have to set the standards for yourself.

Build Your Own?

HERO requires you to build your own... well, everything. Or, at least, that's the theory. That was what I was afraid of. I imagined hours of designing every little detail and essentially doing what I'd had to do for my own system - write every item, every spell, every creature. And, frankly, you could do that.

Or you could do what I did and ask the community.

Using Hero Designer (the very affordable character management software) and some supplements, I got the ball rolling in a few minutes. Over the course of a couple of days, posting iterations of characters to the forum, I got VERY useful feedback from a group of helpful HERO fans. By the end of the weekend, I felt confident that I was "getting" how things work.

This morning, as I sat down to stat some Mountain Goblins, I found that I have come a very long way indeed... as it took less time than it had using OSR resources.

Conclusions?

Ok, so I have yet to run the game with my group. That's Friday. I am, however, confident that a "learning session" (where we run a couple of fights and try out the rules) will be fine.

I'm mightily encouraged. I'm a lot less stressed. I'm feeling excited.

There are not many games where, a week of prep later, I am left feeling excited. Actually... this might be a first. Honestly.

HERO asks me to come up with what I want in descriptive terms and then lets me build it for my setting. Oh, you want an invocation that calls down a thunderous bang and hurts everyone in an 8 metre radius? No problem - I built that and called it, "Thunder of Helles"... it's one of Umbar's (the Priest) miracles.

Look... just because I am parking my own system doesn't mean I'm giving up. It's just that, to be honest, I just fancy playing a game for a while. HERO lets me do things my way, in my style... it doesn't say, "No." 

Hopefully the guys will enjoy things too. Fingers crossed for Friday.

Game on!

How To Stop Santa Killing Your Campaign

Every year, my group faces the same problem:
Santa kills our campaign.

This year I am determined, as GM, to work damn hard to keep our campaign on life-support, even if I know I can't compete with family visits, the demands of wives, the needs of children, and the fact that everyone buggers off for December.

Life happens, dude. Get over it. Deal.

Harnassing Technology

I'm using two tools to keep my game alive: our existing OOC chat forum, and Realm Works.

The plan is simple: keep the players engaged, keep yourself engaged (as GM), and thus keep the game played. 

We all have online access, even when away, via SmartPhones and the Interweb. Let's use it!

OOC Chat Forum

I've set up two threads for the players to access:

1. An IC (in-character) thread, focused on the scene immediately after the last in-play game scene.
2. An OOC thread, focused on setting the players some challenges and asking questions.

The IC thread is aimed at keeping the characters on life-support. The biggest killer of campaigns is the inevitable loss of identity with the heroes over an extended period of dead-time. By holding an online IC chat, I hope to help the players stay in-role and enjoy some roleplaying time.

The OOC thread is aimed at two things which really add up to one thing: helping keep me engaged as GM. I'm asking the players questions. I'm setting challenges (with XP rewards) which are about adding details to the setting.

Taken together, the idea is that we keep talking about the game. Along the way, I get some assists on my prep, while the players get another hit of that wonderful drug, "Setting Investment". The more I ask the players what they want from the game, the more I use their ideas, then the more chance there is of keeping the campaign alive. It's like adding an IV drip to the patient who needs life-support: without it, they'll probably die.

Realm Works

My other tool for keeping the flame alive is using Realm Works to document (properly) the setting and events so far. This is about keeping me engaged plus making sure nothing gets lost and forgotten.

Realm Works is an excellent tool for campaign management. By New Year it'll probably be available to everyone. As a Backer, I got to play with it months ago. Now I need to really get down to harnessing its powers.

The problem? I've been using it badly. My realm is a mess.

The solution? Well, actually, I feel it's time to re-do my realm using the best-practice advice.

That's not a ball-ache, though, because (aside from the software being very easy to use) it allows me the opportunity to also tie in another project that needs doing - namely, writing the Tikhon setting background book. 

So, while I tinker away and re-build the setting database in Realm Works, I have an excellent opportunity to write up the stuff long-hand too. What better way to keep me engaged with the setting, while adding depth and detail, over Christmas?

Game on!

Of Tikhon and Realm Works

As a Backer of the Realm Works Kickstarter last year, I have recently become privy to the Beta testing.

While I can't talk about any of the specifics of the software, I wanted to comment on how incredibly cool it has been to work with it over the past couple of weeks.

Tikhon Campaign

As you're probably aware, I've recently been GMing an ongoing campaign set in the collaboratively designed world of Tikhon. 

Our "Mortenburg Chronicles" game is several months old now... but it's been amazing to see how much more detail I've been crafting in response to Realm Works.

All I've been doing is entering information to the database for my own realm of Tikhon, but the way the system works has helped me to both see how much we've created already and what comes next.

Session Prep

Over the past few days I've been prepping for the next session. Only a month ago I took the time to create some templates to help streamline my prep... but these are already obsolete due to Realm Works.

Yes, it's tedious to input data to what is (in reality) a highly-specialised database. Yet... as I've been progressing through the outstanding notes from last session, I've found myself adding and tweaking in response to the various fields in Realm Works.

What Realm Works does really well (apart from linking all of your notes into a coherent, encyclopaedic whole) is prompt you on stuff you could do with fleshing out further. As a GM, this is invaluable because it helps me to be less lazy and prep in more depth than I might otherwise be tempted to do. It also makes prep quicker because anything already in the system can be accessed, or even recycled.

Player Access

The Beta allows me to show players information that they have learned. The next step for me is to test this out during a gaming session. I aim to set up a second monitor and show players partially-explored maps and summary information live in-game. Although I'm not used to having a PC at the table, I suspect that this will quickly become a "very cool" feature of having taken the time to codify my realm using Realm Works.

On my wish-list for the software will be the ability for the software to create both a GM-only and Player-only version of the data, presented in something like a Wiki. Pointing my players at such a resource, generated automatically from the data in the system, would be priceless.

I might also like to see Roll20 integration to allow the players to see Player-only views on screen across the web too.

What's Next?

Having nearly finished inputting the data from my paper notes into the system, I aim to spend time detailing new locations, characters and stuff for the campaign. As it's all so easy to manipulate using Realm Works, I think that prep might just become a lot more fun.

If you've not backed the product, fear not! It's due for release later this year and will have most of the kinks ironed out by then, no doubt. My tip: start re-organising your notes and check out the Kickstarter video:

It Lives! Almost...

The week has been a pretty intense ride of writing, editing and discussion.

Having made the promise that we would write up the rules stuff we've been working on, I was pretty keen not to let down the guys who come to Friday Roleplay Night.

As of this afternoon, I'm about six miracles and a chunk of editing away from a finished draft. That's a really cool thing to have achieved together!

Publishing Tikhon

"Tikhon" started as a collection of rulings made to facilitate play within our own fantasy world but, at nearly 200 pages, has grown up to become a set of game rules in its own right. 

While our game has roots in the Old School Renaissance (OSR), and was developed through mashing up several sub-systems from existing games along with our own take on roleplaying, it has really become something... different. After all the work, it would be a shame not to publish it while we continue to play with it. If nothing else, it gives everyone involved a "standard" rules reference to work from.

Team Effort

The best thing, though, is that both the game and the setting has been developed openly through player contribution. Week by week, session by session, the players have been making suggestions and adding on details which have brought the world to life. As I write, I'm still waiting for the latest submissions for me to edit prior to publication. 

The big upside of this team approach has been that we are experiencing player (and GM) engagement at a very high level. Each player has spoken to me alone to feed back a similar message: this is one of the coolest gaming things we've ever done. That is the real reward for all of the effort.

As we come to the end of this initial writing phase, ready to continue our campaign in earnest from September, it looks like there will be a steady stream of new submissions ready for the future. It's really pretty exciting to bring the efforts of the whole group into sharp focus.

Reflecting...

Looking back, I think the big learning so far has been two-fold:

1. Don't be afraid to mash-up your own game.
2. Don't be afraid to say "yes" to player contributions.

While I love that there's an "industry" of roleplaying game designers, none of them plays or thinks quite like we do. By mashing up our own rules (and fitting it to our setting), we've unleashed a whole bucket of fun. On top of that, saying "yes" to players suggestions has poured fuel on the creative fire... and we have something exciting as a consequence.

The plan is to produce the booklet of rules through Lulu within the next week or so. It'll be a low-key thing, but it does allow us to hold the fruit of all our labour in our hands... and not lose as many loose-leaf pages as we might if we just ploughed it through a laser printer.

For me, it's simply great to be almost there with the rules and ready to focus back on the campaign.

Game on!

Musings From Pembrokeshire

The past week has seen my wife and I visiting Pembrokeshire, viewing awesome landscapes and visiting inspiring ruins and such.

I've also been absorbing Arduin II (aka "Compleat Arduin") and mulling over many additions and changes to the UbiquitousRPG fantasy rules.

All in all, it's been a busy week.

Deepening Tikhon

One of the main features of the week has been my focus upon "deepening" the world of Tikhon, the campaign world we're currently engaged in exploring. 

If there is one thing that reading David Hargrave's work will do, it's getting you to think a little more about the nature of things in your own world. This is a pleasant effect... and it has got me to make small changes, such as making the core currency a bit different. 

As I was writing new sections for the Tikhon rulebook, which is the next evolution of the game system blended with world details from our campaign, I found myself itching to speak a little more about Goblins, Orcs and Hobbytts. 

It's a curious thing, but the more we play and the more I muse upon writing up the campaign world's description, the more I feel that the whole thing comes to life with increasing vibrancy. I guess that, until now, I've just not had the time nor the desire to really record what was floating around in my head.

That's about all for now... but I'm sure I'll get around to updating you some more later in the week.

Game on!

More UbiquitousFantasy

+10% XP for wearing costume...

About a month ago I wrote about the decision I took to draft my own house rules modifications, which I entitled "UbiquitousFantasy". These were a mash-up of ideas derived largely from taking the existing Castles & Crusades rules we were playing and colliding them with some ideas in Monsters & Magic. The result had me feeling nervous... you can read why in the original article.

Friday night's game arrived with me feeling nervous. Although I had "published" my ideas to the group, and received some generally upbeat feedback, the group's attendance had stalled due to good British weather and holidays. With a month having elapsed since we last played, I was worried that the proposal of change would scare off my players.

I was, of course, wrong to worry.

What happened next?

The guys arrived, spent some time chatting and, eventually, settled down to convert their characters from C&C to UbiFantasy. The process involved altering Attribute bonuses, choosing some Traits from their new Role (aka Class), rolling up some Fatigue, and slotting into the new card-based Initiative. Within 30 minutes we were ready to play.

There was some annoyance from one player who, looking at things on paper, felt he wasn't as good as he was... and that my vision of his Role was contrary to his own. Things improved when I allowed a simple switch of two Attribute values. Giving clear reasons for the setting decisions he was uncertain of also seemed to help. Once we were playing, however, it was clear that his misgivings were unfounded: the heroes are all slightly more capable than before.

What surprised me was that many potentially far-reaching changes were just happily accepted - such as the need for the Cleric to roll when summoning Miracles (aka casting Clerical spells)... and things went fine when, first time out, he failed his roll. I was amazed that they didn't end up unhappy.

At the end of the session the feedback was generally positive. We had generated a raft of ideas and suggestions too... which I decided to accept on one condition: each suggestion needs to be typed up and sent in to me for consideration; this is to free me from the need to interrupt play with writing down random suggestions - I want those suggestions but I want them when they really matter to the players.

What did I learn?

Well... I learned a lot about the way UbiquitousFantasy will play and what I need to tweak from the GM's point of view. I need to adjust creature and GMC* Armour Class values (adding their Level) in the same way the heroes have been altered, for example. 

I also learned that there is real, powerful and genuine value in the stuff I wrote about last week. The level of player involvement generated on Friday was higher than anything I have ever experienced. Period.

My players suggested and talked about some ten to fifteen new Traits for their characters. How many of these ideas will make it to the game is not important: the point is that, playing in a game that suddenly places no outer limits to their imagination, the guys were inspired to make suggestions. 

Examples include the anti-magickal Witchhunter who wants to explore the idea of "sucking powers out of Mages" and "using their power against them"; we also talked about a kind of "Improved Initiative type Trait which opens up stepped-upgrades at higher Levels". Marvellous!

Right there, in game, when the Priest of the Lightbringer asked, "What is my Holy Weapon then?" and I answered, "Erm... you're the Priest of the Lightbringer... you tell me"... THAT was marvellous! When he said, "Right. It's a Lucerne Hammer then" we created a new detail for the setting. 

That's when I learned what player engagement means. Big grins all round!

What's next?

More details need writing up. I need to get my teeth into how Mages work, for example. We don't have one in the party but they are set-up to hunt and kill magickal GMCs*, so I need to sort that out for next session.

There are new rules to propose introducing. One example is Hargrave's take on Hit Points designed to stop the heroes having more HP than a Dragon. I like these rules... but then I need to tweak a few other things to make levelling up even more interesting.

Finally, there are tweaks to make to what I've already written. Little stuff, like a limit on how many Traits they can invoke in one test. Minor tweaks but important.

Oh... and I need to ride the wave of enthusiasm that their play and encouragement gave to me. Getting a full draft of UbiquitousFantasy written over the summer would feel really cool. 

Let me know if you want to join the party and take a look at what we're doing. It's all house rule stuff... but if peering under the hood will help your game, please feel free to ask.

Game on!

*GMC = Game Master Character

UbiquitousFantasy

This week two elements have collided and produced a whole new adaptation of an OSR-style game. 

On the one hand, inspired by my desire to blend the best elements of Castles & Crusades with Monsters & Magic, I found the time to draft the basis of something new: UbiquitousFantasy. 

On the other hand, inspired by the emails of one of my keen players, I've been seeking to further develop the fantasy world that we're currently playing in. Taken together, with a big dose of effort on my part, I've managed to put together something that excites... and which I hope will excite my players.

UbiquitousFantasy

We've been playing Castles & Crusades for a few months now. It's great: easy to play, easy to learn, lots of good and solid material. We like. Except that, having upgraded to Level 2 and being well on the way to Level 3, my players commented that there are really very few benefits from levelling up: in other words, it's a bit bland. That got me nervous about the longevity of playing this system.

Plus there's that pesky d20. Regular readers will probably realise that I don't like the randomness of rolling one die for action tests. For a long, long time I've fancied trying out 2d10 instead of 1d20... so yesterday, in a fit of creative energy, I wrote that into our house rules. That was how it started.

While I was in the process of writing house rules, I thought, why not introduce some of the other things that I've been mulling over for a while... and solve that blandness problem to boot? Inspired by Sarah Newton's ideas about Traits, I've modified the way adding the Level bonus works: in short, you get it when you invoke a Trait from your Race, Class or Personal Background. 

Taking things further, and inspired by the conversations with players, I also decided to re-write the classes to fit this change... and to introduce some Specialised Classes (or, to use another term, some Sub-Classes) which are customised to our fantasy setting. It was easy to do... and a lot of fun! Now we have options for a Lightbringer Paladin, a Ranger of the Wild, a Brotherhood Assassin and a Lightbringer Witchhunter. Each blends elements from both the C&C and M&M classes into something... different.

Finally, at least for now, I decided to adopt the idea of an Invocation Test for the Clerical Miracles (my new words for, "making a magic test to cast a clerical spell"). This forms the basis for a cool rule on organising Rituals with many participants and miracles which are upgraded by particularly high Invocation rolls.

Tikhon

Tikhon is a popular saintly name in the Russian Orthodox Church, meaning "hitting the mark". As the setting we're playing in has been doing just that with the group, it seemed a cool name for the world. Welcome, therefore, to Tikhon. 

On top of this, working with the players on their character backgrounds, I've been gathering more and more detailed material for the world. As the players work with me on creating the setting, it is long overdue to codify what we have so far. Thus, this weekend, I'm beginning just that process - typing up the notes.

What's cool is that their ideas, as players, are fuelling my creative process... in truly collaborative style we are producing something far more interesting than might have been expected. Combining this creativity with a desire to customise the game to fit the setting, rather than forcing the setting into a generic rule set, is not necessarily innovative... but it is something that I've never managed to do before. I've even gone as far as to commission a map for the area we've been playing in.

Being Bold

There's a massive risk involved in all of this: it might not work as well as we hope. The challenge, at least for me, is to be brave and bold. If past gaming failures have taught me anything it's that you can't keep doing the same things over and over, hoping that something will click. 

What has made the one-off Hunt for Gerulf adventure turn into the birth of the World of Tikhon has been boldness: a decision to wing a game off of a one sentence premise gave us Mortenburg and Gerulf's Raiders; another decision to introduce clues to the Moon Gate led to the birth of a conspiracy tale. The courage to listen to the players is leading me into a brand new and exciting setting, played with some customised house rules.

What's next? Well, next week's session is looming... will this all pay off? Fingers crossed... but you can't go through life wondering what might have been, can you? I reckon it's much more fun to risk failure on the opportunity of creating something really cool.

Game on!