[tSoy] Alternative settings?

[Darren Hill]

Does anyone know of any webpages containing guidance for running TSOY in alternate settings - things like Keys, Secrets, etc?

[Eero Tuovinen]

On the off-hand chance that this is what you're looking for: I'm currently running TSOY set in the Warhammer Old World. It's not in the web, but if you have more specific questions, I can answer those. I assume you don't just want to skim my list of Keys and Secrets?

Other than that, there's a TSOY portion at Randomwiki, which has lots of the kind of stuff you want.

[Darren Hill]

Actually, I've just learned I've a game of tsoy to run tomorrow or Saturday, and I'm not familiar with the World of Near. So mainly I'm (desperately) looking for things I'd need to design characters for any world I'm more familiar with (like the secrets and keys you mentioned!) - the world of Warhammer would do quite nicely. Actually, that seems like a very good fit to the tone of TSOY.

Did you adapt the concept of careers in any way to tsoy?
It's hard for me to come up with focussed questions at the moment (I'm still reeling with shock!), but if you can anticipate any problems that might arise, that would be great - especially if you had the answers :)

[John Harper]

Pick a world that you and your players are familiar with, and then adapt as you go. Spending a lot of time beforehand trying to write up 50 new secrets and keys will be a waste of time. Instead, step through character creation with the players, using the default TSOY system, and convert the parts as you go.

"Oh, you're a Wookie? Maybe you should have a Key that involves your Life Debt. Anything in there like that? Key of the Vow... yeah, that's pretty close. Let's call it 'Key of Life Debt'."

Much simpler, and you will actually use all the new things you create.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Listen to John, that's exactly the tack I took. We decided on the setting and the campaign framework on the fly (an imperial expedition into the Africa-equivalent). We literally just took a bunch of Warhammer sourcebooks (the miniature game is hot among the teenagers here) and riffled through for any interesting bits and pieces. The map in the Orcs army book was the most important inspiration; I just stared and stared at how there's all these painfully scripted notes about different orc and goblin tribes, swamps, deserts, dwarven mountain strongholds and all, and I'm thinking to myself "Eero, there's no humans there at all. Can you spell colonization?" I've never even played Warhammer, but my inexpertice didn't matter, because the players know more than enough.

Notice how the TSOY rules insist that you have to first come up with the character consept before fiddling the rules? That's important, do it.

When figuring out the characters for Warhammer, steal blatantly from any and all Warhammer sourcebooks. Like, I insisted that the players choose which kind of troop their character is from. No ratcatchers here, we're all fit for the army! Because in the world of Warcraft... THERE'S ONLY WAR! (That pretty much became the motto of the game.) One player wanted to play a goblin. I look at the book, goblins all have Anomisity towards elves and Greenskin-hate (or whatever it's called). Well, saiz I, seems you have Key of Elf-have and Key of Greenskin-hate, my boy. By the same principle, any and all unit special powers tended to become Keys an Secrets. One of the characters is a Bretonnian questing knight, so he has the Secret of the Lady's Blessing:

Secret of the Lady's Blessing
Requirements: Key of the Quest (only questing knights have the blessing in the game, I understand)
The player gets a pool of dice equal to the gift dice at the start of all sessions to be used as the Blessing, to protect his character against the darkness. The Lady of the Lake will only ever give these dice to worthy causes, so the GM may temporarily deny them for a good reason. A fallen knight gets the xp back.

We just churned out this stuff as necessary. One of my favourites was:

Secret of the Squire
Requirement: The NPC has to be willing.
The player promotes a NPC into a player-NPC: the player plays the NPC instead of the GM.

So I recommend you do the same. Just look at the most typical mechanics that Keys and Secrets use, and map them into the game world you're going to use.

[Kaare_Berg]

Hey Pm your mail adress i'll send you my ripped off sci fi keys and secrets.

Did just what the guys said so you've seen it all before, but they might help you think in the proper paths.

[Judd]

I just put Planescape Keys and Secrets on my livejournal last night.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/judd_sonofbert/153004.html

[MetalBard]

I just put Planescape Keys and Secrets on my livejournal last night.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/judd_sonofbert/153004.html

This is awesome to have it all in one place.  Thanks, Judd!

[Judd]

I just put Planescape Keys and Secrets on my livejournal last night.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/judd_sonofbert/153004.html

This is awesome to have it all in one place.  Thanks, Judd!

The final document that I will have on my table is really pretty with the fonts I fixed it up with too.  Drop me a PM i fyou want the Word doc and the fonts e-mailed to ya.