[Forge Midwest] Official Thread, Part 2 of 2

[Matt Snyder]

Ok, the details are confirmed now.

Forge Midwest will be held Friday April 20th through Sunday April 22nd.

The location is the DoubleTree Hotel in Rosemont. We have 1 slightly larger meeting room. It should accomodate well over 50 people, which is the number we had last year. We will have the room all day Saturday and much of the day on Sunday.

Last year, people arrived Friday at various times, gathered for supper, and hung out to socialize in the hotel bar or nearby. I plan on doing the same this year.

To make reservations to stay at the DoubleTree, call: 847-292-9100

Also, there are several hotels in the area as well. This page is a good start.

The next step will be an evite I'll set up. We did this last year, and it worked beautifully. The purpose is to get a solid number of attendees so we can figure out costs per person. It will be really important to register on the evite. I'll post it very soon as a reply in this thread.

Stay tuned!

[Roy Batty]

(Cross posted at the RPG.net)

I picked up Dogs in the Vineyard about a year ago, and I'd like to use it for a new gaming group.  The default setting was a tough sell for my players, so I became interested in Wolves of the North, John Harper's alternative setting for DitV where the Wolves are Nordic priests hopping between Viking villages.  It keeps the mechanics entirely in place while changing the flavor. 

But while I was noodling all of this around, Roanoke caught my eye.  I got to thinking about increasing the tension in the villages by setting in the New World.  And that's how I got to thinking about Leif Erikson... Vikings + Mysteriously Disappeared Village = Leif (and if it's not a perfect historical fit, it's close enough for my purposes).  So my plan was to start the game with straight DitV rules and to try and incorporate something of the Doom mechanic from Roanoke as the campaign went on.  And then last night I found out about Afraid, Vincent Baker's forthcoming DitV re-imagining as a horror game. 

A quick word about what I'm envisioning for this game: I'd like the supernatural dial to be turned up fairly high, and for the tone to have a lot of tension and fear.  I love the intro to Roanoke I read introducing the colony as doomed from the very beginning, but not specifying how it will vanish.  This is the intro sketch I wrote:
Players will take the roles of "Wolves," who, like the Dogs of DitV, go from village to village to keep the peace, root out corruption, and bring righteous justice.  The villages will be the early encampments of Leif Erikson; Viking settlers far from the home of their fathers and their gods, surrounded by a vast, strange, and ominous new continent.  Demons held at bay in the old country through powerful priests and magic see their opportunity for revenge against this new, fragile colony so far from home.

So my quandary is this: should I forget about Afraid entirely and go with what I'd been thinking?  Or are the mechanical tweaks and additions in Afraid a good match for the setting and tone of the game I'm putting together? 

Also any comments re: incorporating the Doom mechanic into DitV would be appreciated.  Or any other thoughts/suggestions for that matter. 

And last, here is an image to help the creative juices flowing

[Buceph]

So how would I go about convincing indie authors to come to a con and display their wares?

[Banesfinger]

On page 48, the rules state:
You always assign your battle dice before you make position rolls.

Knowing how your opponents have assigned their battle dice (Attack or Defend) can make a big difference on how you assign your battle dice.

How do you assign your battle dice?  In secret?
If not, then who assigns first, and do you allow others to switch some of their dice after seeing how others have assigned theirs?

[Banesfinger]

On page 48, the rules state:
You always assign your battle dice before you make position rolls.

Knowing how your opponents have assigned their battle dice (Attack or Defend) can make a big difference on how you assign your battle dice.

How do you assign your battle dice?  In secret?
If not, then who assigns first, and do you allow others to switch some of their dice after seeing how others have assigned theirs?

[Banesfinger]

On page 48, the rules state:
You always assign your battle dice before you make position rolls.

Knowing how your opponents have assigned their battle dice (Attack or Defend) can make a big difference on how you assign your battle dice.

How do you assign your battle dice?  In secret?
If not, then who assigns first, and do you allow others to switch some of their dice after seeing how others have assigned theirs?

[Banesfinger]

On page 48, the rules state:
You always assign your battle dice before you make position rolls.

Knowing how your opponents have assigned their battle dice (Attack or Defend) can make a big difference on how you assign your battle dice.

How do you assign your battle dice?  In secret?
If not, then who assigns first, and do you allow others to switch some of their dice after seeing how others have assigned theirs?

[Ludanto]

Hey, maybe I'm just dense, but I totally don't get this.

Apparently, Tony says that you can't stake/split between your Action and your Reaction, that they are a whole unit and staking/splitting can only happen before the Action or after the Reaction. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19894.0

Having looked at the rules on page 25, I totally don't see it.  As a matter of fact, it would seem that the opposite is true.

The last paragraph actually says that that you can't stake/split during a reaction, and that you can only stake/split immediately before or after your action.

I mean, if Tony says it's so, then it's so, but I'm sure that it will come up if I introduce this game to friends, and they're going to want to see the rules.

Any insight on this?  Is there any reason why the rules are better this way?

[Valvorik]

Vincent said in the end-notes on Afraid that he hoped to see monsters created and posted like towns in DitV. 

I think some sample monsters would be great, helping getting the hang of access/victimization series etc.  As I believe others have said, stats and traits etc. are the easier part of the monster.  Working out the access (how it's ongoing) and victimization for the monster is trickier.  Fitting into that how it gets slaves and acolytes also a skill.

A strength of the system is the push towards novel monsters, but testing it on classics, the Dracula example from end-notes ~ how does this look?

Vampire

[skipping the process of making vampire and moving to stats and access/victimization]

Acuity 5 Body 4 Heart 5 Will 4
Traits - Bat Form 2d4+1d4, Turn to Mist 1d8+1d4, Hypnotic Gaze 2d10+1d4, I snear at any weapon but a stake of wood 2d6+1d4 (invoked in Answers to attacks with other weapons)
Bonds - I sleep in coffin with earth of my homeland 3d8, I don't enter an abode uninvited 1d4, I hesitate before a holy symbol wielded by a believer or a mirror 2d6, I don't suffer harm (from anyone else) to come to my chosen Victim (name x) 1d10 (increase/repeat as victimization grows/victims added).

First Access - be in general (a few miles) proximity of victim, the victim having come to their specific attention.
Type - nightmarish events in environment (roses wilt, dogs howl, ships crewed only by the dead appear off the coast etc.), a trained investigator might recognize these as signs of supernatural passage but hard to spot as vampire in particular.
Ongoing - simply remain in area
Undone - drive vampire from the region or destroy it or recolate the victim (though in 1st and last case, the vampire is likely to return or to search out the victim eventually)

Second Access - direct contact with the victim and feeding from them.
Type - nightmarish physical symptoms (bit wounds)
Ongoing - return to bite again at least once every moon (usually does so more often in order to have a cushion against the undone basis)
Undone - prevent the vampire from biting for at least one moon (month)

Third Acess - speaking to the victim, spending time with them (around a feeding or otherwise), planting dark thoughts etc. ~ this can be done by a slave or acolyte as well, what makes it harder to accomplish is that it requires more uninterrupted time with the victim.
Type - nightmarish behaviours and moods as the victim becomes moody, melancholy, wanton, blasphemous by turns.
Ongoing - return to keep spending time with the victim, at least twice a moon.
Undone - prevent this social interaction for a full moon.

- At this point, for an additional conflict, the Vampire can convert the Victim into a Slave, promising them its continued attentions, that it will not kill them, that it might make them an Acolyte, and threatening death for the Victim and all they love as the penalty of failure.  It's a trait of the Monster's Victimization in this case that to their own horror and not aways consciously, the Victim is often their Slave.

Fourth Access - inducing the victim to drink of its blood (this is a vampire-type which creates others only through this process, not the 'every victim rises' type).
Type - nightmarish experiences, the deed itself, the hallucinations of shared memory and dreams of preying on the living that follow this experience.
Ongoing - the access deed need not be repeated, but the hallucinations etc. must continue for access to continue.
Undone -  can be blocked by suitable ritual etc. activity in conjuction with blocking 3rd and 2nd access (essentially, the 2nd and 3rd levels are interchangeable once reached for being ondone, stop the biting but not social access, that's minus -1d10).  The ritual can be a follow-up conflict to the blocking of the other type of access.

A more physically rather than pscyhologically seductive vampire might swich 2nd and 3rd.

Final Victimization - drains the victim dry and kills them.  An additional conflict earns the vampire the Victim risen as an Acolyte, as the Victim makes the moral compromise at the point of death itself (the conflict to get compromise is actually done before the conflict to kill, the 2nd only taking place if the first fails - the Vampire doesn't get the "level up" effect of full victimization + an Acolyte).

Though the vampire Monster may kill others, its Victims are always those with qualities that it desires and who it hopes will become Acolytes.

[Valvorik]

Fallout Questions

Q 1. In campaign play, if some old Relationships start to "lie fallow", they become costless things to sacrifice to fallout when downsizing etc. Relationships is an option.  Is that "gaming of the system" okay?

Q 2.  There's no "self administered first aid" (I assume), so an Alone character who loses conflict to change circumstance and requires First Aid gets none and then needs Real Medical Care.  Being "Alone" do they still find themselves unable to get to it?  Since Real Medical Care also makes you "Alone", I would say "no, they can receive their medical care" in a continuation of their circumstance ~ the point of circumstances is to make life interesting, not end it.  That would be an exception to a general principle that you can't duplicate or double-up the same circumstances.

Q 3.  I see that belongings are never lost as fallout and also can't be stakes in conflicts.  Is that invulnerability intentional?

Stakes

Q 4. In Ludanto's p-b-post game, a character entered a conflict with someone "tell me the truth about your involvement with demons", the character Gave immediately revealing they had none. 

http://dndorks.com/forums/17/788532/ShowThread.aspx

That seems to be a very easy way to clear people of charges, establish truth of facts, is that intended - everyone who is innocent Gives and guilt is sorted quickly? 

It wasn't framed as a player defining the fact of innocence of guilt.

Unless players are allowed to decide actual fact of guilt or innocence with their challenge, I'm thinking such stakes would be defined as "She presents her preferred version of matter", you win and she doesn't (instead telling the truth, whatever it is), she wins and she gives her preferred version (which may be truth or not).  That way if she wins, you don't know if she's lying or telling truth.

[mauriciocabaleiro]

I just started this topic with the following in mind:

How creative and original the sageous forge members can be? After years discussing all about RPG what have they come up with? Is it worth it? What does it add to pre existing games?

Perhaps someone has a HUGE REVOLUTIONARY concept or idea that just didnt got enough attention..TILL NOW!
This is your chance..

just post...

bye..
mauricio

[Ken]

For the last couple of days, I've been tooling around with a magic system/setting called SPELLing Bee. The main idea is that students from magical schools across the globe (or where ever) participate in a spelling bee-style competition for spell casting. While the game originally worked with more traditional system mechanics, I eventually refined the systerm to this: the moderator of the competition draws a spell card from a deck of about a hundred or so. The spells are simple (ish) latin words or phrases that describe the intent of the spell. The player whose turn it is attempts to spell out the name of the ...er spell. Then the player rolls 1d10 and must score higher than the number of letters they got wrong (with character level and spell level mods of course).

Ultimately, the game seems like a short-run beer and pretzels type game, though there may be other opportunities. I thought of linking it loosely with the MYSTAT system I developed for Sync. Its pretty basic and loose enough that I think they compliment each other. This type of system probably wouldn't be very good with ultra serious magic gaming but might work well with a quirky setting.

Thoughts? Been done before?

Thank,

Ken

[chris_moore]

Previously, I described Psi Run's situation.

Characters:

1)  have a psychic power
2)  have been captured by a shadowy organization
3)  can't remember their past
4)  have just survived a car crash, which has killed their guards
5) are on the run

Characters may choose whatever traits they wish, but they must be posed as questions, since they don't remember anything about their background. Questions can range from "Why can I stare at someone and make them obey me?" to "Why is there a white streak in my hair?"  One thing characters do is remember the answers to those questions (as a product of conflict resolution). 

MY question is this:  I don't want the characters to have comic book scale traits (especially powers), since they are on the run, and need to be vulnerable.  What kind of parameters can I set around "trait questions" that would accomplish this?

Thanks, Chris

[Filip Luszczyk]

I'm after the first full-session playtest of Absolute Destiny Apocalypse, my Game Chef entry. Information about the game and link to the document itself can be found here.

It was a prep session, and it lasted about four hours. Fleshing out the setting took us an hour or so, primary Personae creation roughly two hours, creating secondary Personae slightly above half an hour, and the rest of the time we've spent working out the web of relations between the Duelists and their supporting cast. We didn't finish the last step, as it was already late, but as it turns out it would be superfluous anyway.

We've been playing via Skype, and I suppose things would go a bit faster face to face. For example, I've been busy writing everything, and sometimes I had to read things aloud, cause other players were noting down only their own characters. I imagine it would be easier if we could simply pass the sheets around the table, and draw the relationship map for everyone to see. We should have used a wiki or something to facilitate online prep, but this thought came up only after the session (normally when we play online we do just fine scribbling stuff).

My players were Kamil, Sylwester and Jacek. Kamil took part in Game Chef, too, but didn't finish his entry before the deadline; he was the only one who had read my game in whole, anyway. Sylwester has been playing with us via Skype for some months now, but he is still strongly rooted in the “traditional” gaming mindset, and is probably the less spontaneously creative of us (we're making some slow progress with him, fortunately). Jacek designs games and digs “indie” stuff, and it was his first Skype session ever.

The Academy

Fleshing out the Academy took us roughly an hour. I've been expecting it to take this long, so it went according to my estimations (it's possible it would have went faster if it wasn't our first time, or if everyone read the chapter before the session). We went through the guiding questions and discussed the setting. During later steps, we've been coming back to some issues a few times, and we've added some things.

I definitely need to give a short summary of the process in the next version of the game, and include an Academy worksheet.

The idea of situating the Academy in Berlin during the first days of World War II came up some days before the session, and after making sure we're all OK with this and discussing how we'll handle the issues of Nazism we've settled on this concept. Note that historical accuracy wasn't our aim, and there are things we've approached rather loosely.

We decided that the Academy is a large palace near Berlin, surrounded by a forest. One wing of the palace is used as the dorm, and most students live there. Despite there being electricity, the palace is illuminated mostly by candles and lamps, due to an old tradition. Someone proposed that there are paintings hanging everywhere, and I find it a great idea, as it makes it possible for us to frame scenes with allegorical images in the background. This basically handles the issue of symbolism.

Important locations we came up with include:

-a small ruined castle on a nearby hill, with wild roses growing everywhere (the usual place of the duels).
-sparse vine cellars under the palace.
-a monument of the founder on the courtyard, with the dueling code inscribed on a big tablet.
-a bed of roses on the courtyard, with white roses surrounded by red. With the passage of time, some of  the white roses will start becoming black, slowly forming a swastika in the middle of the flower bed.
-there are stables in the Academy, and students can enjoy horse rides (this one was added after creating one of the NPCs).

The students come mostly from aristocratic or wealthy families, with some children of foreign diplomats in the mix. With a total disregard for historical accuracy, we decided that it's a coeducational school and that not all of the students are Hitlerjugend or BDM.

The Duelists are chosen and ordered to duel by the Academy's governing body. The duels are fought in secret, and take place in the nearby ruins, with only Dramatis Personae as witnesses (well, teachers are probably witnesses, too, but as per the rules they can't actively intrude into the story or even be directly narrated). There was a proposition that for the time of the duels, the spirits of old heroes enter the bodies of the Duelists. Consequently, some “ghostly” special effects are possible (e.g. the dueling students can cast shadows of fighting knights onto the walls, and things like spectral auras, glowing eyes and strange sounds can be narrated). The exact purpose for the dueling is not given yet, but there's an air of approaching change everywhere around the Academy.

The decadent sect is a group of students who enjoy special privileges from the Academy's governing body, as they willingly partake in its secret pagan practices.

The agents of the sacred order belong to Thule Society. They know of the coming Revolution and try to hinder it for an unspecified reason.

(Yup. Teenage occult ninja Nazis.)

[cydmab]

So we played our first game of polaris yesterday, and it ROCKED.   There were alot of observations I could say about that game, but there was one I wanted to post and ask about:

After play, everyone in the group agreed that it would be cool to try having only one protagonist, and if we had rotated the roles around him. In scene one player A would be heart, player B and D moons, player C mistaken. In scene two player A and C would be moons, player B heart, player D mistaken. and so forth. Basically noone would have their own personal protagonist.

Anyone experiment with this approach, and find advantages/disadvantages? One of the major motivations for trying it is that we felt there were just too many stories going on, too many characters (4 protagonists, each starting with 2 moon characters and a demon, so start with 16 characters, which grew to over 20 by the end of the session)