Took a birthday hiatus in March (though Sea Monkey RPG and In the Works on the website happened then, so I'm guiltless), and am back with an April game!

Shadows, a roleplaying game for all ages

And, being a design forum, I'll ramble a bit.

The game was improvised in all of a few minutes, when my niece and nephew wanted to roleplay (they're 6 and 10). The earlier version of the system was this:

* You had two d20's. One was the Good Die, one was the Shadow Die. Anything conflict was resolved by saying what YOU wanted to happen and what the Shadow wants. The Good Die had to roll equal-to or over 5 (easy), 10 (average), 15 (difficult), 20 (impossible) AND be higher than the Shadow Die to succeed.

* You earned a Token for upping the difficulty a step, and you spent a Token to lower the difficulty. You could also spend a Token to reroll one die.

Well, Jared awesomely told me to write this up for HMaus, so I took out the Difficulty clutter, and left it at what you'll find on the website. So it's now a Narrativist (i.e., the game creates interesting situations over anything else) game with a Fortune system & a little Karma thrown in to keep players involved with each other's actions.

It's perfect for kids who want to roleplay but don't want to learn a ton of rules (my own younger family loves RPGs, but won't pore through any gamebook, no matter how short). And since kids generally affect a ton of Author/Director stance in everything they do, Shadows really supports that mindset.

Any critiques or comments or playtests would be wonderful. I feel like it's complete, but there may be issues I have missed.

Hey Zak,

I'm not really sure what to comment on, but I was sure happy to see a new HK Maus game.

Shadows reminds me a bit of the mechanic I use in Appalachia Now. In AN, I use two d20s - one is your straight resolution die, the other is your "Licker" (that being the hillbilly way of spelling "liquor"). You make two statements of intent - the first being what your character wants to accomplish, the second being some fucked up thing that might happen because your character is drunk off his ass (like tripping over a rock and accidentally discharging your shotgun, inadvertently shooting a spaceship out of the sky - that happened once). Of course, it's different, bcause in Appalachia Now, both rolls can succeed.

I can say for certain that mechanics like these - which, in my case, were inspired by Elfs - pretty much generate content all by themselves. And they're so low threat that (being largely slapstick comedy, at least in AN's case) just about anyone can get into it and have fun. Of all my games, Appalachia Now is the favorite of my old gaming buddies, preferred to WYRD (which they've never played) and NightWatch (which they have)...and these guys are mostly gamists and simulationists.

So there, I plugged one of my own game designs. Not bad.

Keep up the good work Zak.

- Scott

This is great! This is a really basic system that really anyone can play. So did the kids just say "we want to roleplay" and you just came up with this? Pretty damn cool.

So a general question... I am training to be a teacher (elementary and possibly HS) I am wondering what people here at the forge think about kids and the feasability of introducing them to rpgs at young ages are. Also if anyone has any experience or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

-Shane

Scott wrote:
Of all my games, Appalachia Now is the favorite of my old gaming buddies, preferred to WYRD (which they've never played) and NightWatch (which they have)...and these guys are mostly gamists and simulationists.

Shane wrote:
So a general question... I am training to be a teacher (elementary and possibly HS) ...

Where should I move it do you think? Leave it here? Actual Play? RPG Theory? The whole RPG's and kids thing really facinates me...

-Shane

Zak,

Regarding my friends and their GNS preferences...some of them may be narrativists in training. It's hard to tell. They've reacted extremely well to "ownership" of the game, both in games like Appalachia Now, and more recently in an excellent game that Mr. Matt Gwinn ran for them. I'm trying to get at least one of them over here to The Forge...which reminds me, I need to send him an e-mail.

But there is definitely one pure simulationist in the group. And the absolute best experience I had with Appalachia Now was when I ran it at CobbCon (that's a sort of apartmentcon my friend runs every year...it has a website, check it out) for, maybe, seven people. The only rp'ing experience two of them had was from the endless MUDding they do, and one game of D&D they had played the night before. They were pretty gamist. But man, did they like playing their fucked-up, inbred, drunk-as-shit rednecks. And they did it with style and verve. It was great.

And none of this has anything to do with Shadows, except that I think this method of introducing Director's stance works great with people familiar with more conventional games (the testimonial of one of my friends after having played Appalachia Now for the first time: "I really liked that I could make stuff up.").

Of course, I used comedy to make the Director's Stance go down easier and to explain away continuity problems. What was your play of Shadows like? Different, I'm sure, because you were playing with kids, who have fewer expectations for this sort of thing.

- Scott

* Zak, Appalachia Now is only partially up at my site. There's some color text and some chargen stuff. Funny that I haven't finished writing it up and posting it, since it's the game of mine that's received the most actual play.

Scott wrote:
Regarding my friends and their GNS preferences...some of them may be narrativists in training. It's hard to tell. They've reacted extremely well to "ownership" of the game, ...

Scott wrote:
Of course, I used comedy to make the Director's Stance go down easier and to explain away continuity problems. What was your play of Shadows like? Different, I'm sure, because you were playing with kids, who have fewer expectations for this sort of thing.

My girlfriend is probably going to use Shadows for a Sunday School lession sometime! Good job, Zak!

Of course, she will have to modify it a little bit.

Is there anyway you can hash together a real quick PDF version of it? When I printed it out, some of the text was cut off on the right side of the page.

Thanks,
Nathan

Zak Arntson wrote:
Any critiques or comments or playtests would be wonderful. I feel like it's complete, but there may be issues I have missed.

Play tokens (coins, beads, etc) are also required, about ten per Player should work.

Zak,

I can't read this without thinking "Fight Club" for kids. Kick-ass.

Hi Zak,

I really like this (big surprise, Ron likes funky intuitive Narrativist game, shock!). I'm having a tad of trouble printing it out for going-over purposes, though ... any hope of a print-friendly layout or download file? Even RTF would be OK by me.

Best,
Ron

Nathan wrote:
My girlfriend is probably going to use Shadows for a Sunday School lession sometime! Good job, Zak!

Of course, she will have to modify it a little bit.

Andrew wrote:
I think that "ten" should be "three", based on Step 4 in Setup. Or may be Step 4 needs fixing?

Andrew wrote:
Perhaps as an optional rule, would it worthwhile allowing the players more influence on the game, by allowing them to add more things to the game depending upon the number on the low rolling dice?

Zak Arntson wrote:

Nathan wrote:
My girlfriend is probably going to use Shadows for a Sunday School lession sometime! Good job, Zak!

Of course, she will have to modify it a little bit.

What kind of lessons? The system wouldn't work well for a right vs. wrong situation (I'm thinking Sunday School here), since you have a good chance of the Shadow Die winning. Add to that the secret (or not so secret) desire I've seen kids have for the Shadow Die to win out ...

Zak,

Very nice! Simple, effective and would work very well with children's make-believe play! We're going to be trying this in my group, and I see some definite classroom possibilites (at least for small group settings - a typical 18-25 student count would just be too big). BTW (and as you can probably attest to sice you've got your neice and nephew), kids are fascinated by polyhedral dice...the 20 is the fave in my classroom.

Andrew Martin wrote:
I very much like how the tokens can be used by the players in a negative or positive sum way, and how you harvest what you sow. ... It shows the benefit of working together as opposed to working against each other. It's a very nice mechanic that follows "natural law".

Matt Steflik wrote:
kids are fascinated by polyhedral dice...the 20 is the fave in my classroom.

Zak,

I think this is your strongest game yet. I strongly recommend not doing your usual "point and shoot," but taking some time to promote its use. Get some art and do some hyping on various sites to draw attention.

Best,
Ron

Thanks, Ron! It does feel really good as a game. Real, I don't know, solid.

But I'm wondering how to hype something that is essentially two simple rules. It's not a complicated thing. I wouldn't know what kind of art and what kind of hyping I'd do. Any suggestions? It's a far simpler game than, say, InSpectres and doesn't look to lend itself well to any grand treatment.

I'm considering expanding the concept out in different areas, kind of like how James used The Pool as the basis for Questing Beast. Would you recommend this approach to getting the word out? So the base system is 2 pages, but the "supplements" are actual full-fledged games? (I suppose Shadows does have a default setting: A bunch of kids waking up to a noise)

In any case, the two concepts behind Shadows is definitely part of my permanent toolbox (this thing is getting all crammed full of great stuff! Thank you, Forge!)

A guy had this idea on the rpg.net:

All Hallows Town is a unique place; it was the town founded by the victims of the Church's most secret pogrom in the middle ages. This pogrom rooted out all the supernatural monsters and forced them into one place on earth - and this place evolved into a town all of its own, All Hallows Town.

This town now exists with an economy and culture all its own, eerily mirroring that of mortal culture, yet populated by the supernatural, all of whom are just trying to eke out a living.

Or so it was until the mortals returned; the last ten years has seen an influx of mortal concerns into the town as the local mountains have been discovered to contain a very precious ore: crystalised fear. A most potent resource to many of the worlds big businesses who seem to thrive on the effects it produces when burned.

Now the town is overrun by greedy human enterprises who strip the landscape, pressgang the locals as cheap labour and then leave the town in pain.

Life is hard for a supernatural monster trying to earn a living, but the real evil comes from mankind - as ever. Old wounds die hard.

Hey,

Zak, I may have missed it or just be dumb in some way (like missing a "greater than" or whatever), but what's up when the Good Die and the Shadow Die are tied?

Oh yeah, and I presume that for a given roll, a given die can only be forced to re-roll once? Or can you blow all your tokens on really cranking up a given re-roll?

Best,
Ron

Pale Fire, thanks for the offer, but I've got plenty of my own ideas for extending the Shadows system. It's also a philosophy of Shadow (so far) to have no addition, only comparison. I think what I'm going to do is taken the initial Shadows system and provide it as-is (i..e, the default setting, where it's intent is an all-ages game), and also offer different subtle modifications to the rules for different kinds of games. After reading Wagner's Bloodstone and talking at length to Jared (who is the master of getting me to analyze my design), the first extension I'm working on is Pulp Fantasy.

If I ever publish the thing, it would be sort of like Hogshead's Pantheon, a basic introduction to the system, and a ton of extensions/ways to play. I'm also considering making an educational system-friendly version (i.e., emphasize the educational & creative value), and see what avenues are open there.

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Ron, the Shadow die loses ties. It's in the rules there, but I'll make it more explicit. About multiple spending, I don't know. I'm tempted to say that you can be forced to reroll as often as you like. A big part of the system (for me) is that there's no loss of Tokens, only the distribution differs. So if you want to give someone all you Tokens to keep rerolls going, feel free. Whether you use that to hose or help them, you'll probably get it back in some way (either that, or you'll learn more about your group's social dynamic :)

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Lastly, I'll be damned if I'm going to rewrite the rules AND modify the HTML to be PDF friendly (for my HTMLDoc program) every time. If I write some sort of script that automatically does it for me, I'll make it publicly available.

Okay, added clarifications to both your questions, Ron. I also added Game Moderator advice, a mention towards the social contract in the Introduction, and a Designer's Words at the end. I also updated the copyright notice so that any teachers out there can use it during school without getting permission.

Zak Arntson wrote: Okay, added clarifications to both your questions, Ron. I also added Game Moderator advice, a mention towards the social contract in the Introduction, and a Designer's Words at the end. I also updated the copyright notice so that any teachers out there can use it during school without getting permission.

Here's some more ideas for Zac's Shadows game, that I thought of while walking home from work. Zac, feel free to grab any/all of these ideas as you want or even ignore them if you want.

When using player characters, instead of oneself, just describe your character in general terms. When rolling the dice in an area where your character doesn't support this, the Shadow dice has the advantage in that it wins on ties. Note: I'm thinking of using D6, not D20.

If your character is particularly strong in an area, then this counts as a free token that can be spent by the player to re-roll one of their own dice. So if Amy is really good with horses, her player can reroll one of her own dice in a situation involving riding horses, as it's more likely that Amy would succeed than another character in the same situation. This free token is invisible and automatically refreshes. There's effectively an infinite stock of tokens here, but only one reroll is allowed at a time.

If the player chooses to reroll their own dice (usually in order to get their character to succeeed), they pay their token into a group/individual pool called Shadow's Tokens.

If the player chooses that the character lets Shadow win (instead of rolling dice) and suffers the consequences, based on the character's weakness, the player gets a token from Shadow's Tokens.

The GM can use Shadow's Tokens to force a player to reroll (usually to make Shadow come true), and then gives the token to the player, if the Shadow's version of events takes place.

The above three guidelines allows the GM's stock of tokens to come into play.

I'm not sure if it's better to have one communal pool for Shadow's Tokens or each player has a pool of Shadow's Tokens, placed on top of their picture of the Shadow. Probably better to have individual pools? Thoughts?

Zak Arntson wrote: Took a birthday hiatus in March (though Sea Monkey RPG and In the Works on the website happened then, so I'm guiltless), and am back with an April game!

Shadows, a roleplaying game for all ages

Bob, let me know how the GM Token thing goes. I'm working on a (possibly) commercial version of Shadows with tons of "add-ons," though my current (and untested) philosophy is that only Players should use Tokens.

I haven't gotten to S.H.A.D.O.W.S. (my tentative name for a Supers add-on), but I have done Flashing Steel for swashbuckling (and general heroics). It doesn't mimic the personal relationships of comics, but it would do the heroism/tragedy part nicely.

Zoiks! I can't remember the Flashing Steel rules, so I'll cut 'n paste tonight. In any case, the Shadows Add-Ons should consist of: GM never has Tokens, changing the nature of the Outcomes is key to changing the nature of Shadows, and a Special Token with a few simple rules goes a long way.

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Andrew, again with the GM Tokens! While these additions sound interesting, allowing a Player to change her own Outcomes and giving the GM Tokens makes it an entirely unShadows RPG.

I also toyed with measuring Player effectiveness with something like a Trait, but figured an equal playing field where effectiveness was measured by Tokens only made the most sense for Shadows.

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Great ideas from everyone, I just don't know if they'd work to keep Shadows what it is. But then, I haven't playtested it much, so I'd love to hear any stories!