Metroidvanai My Dungeon

What a horrible night to have a curse, indeed. 

October has come and gone. Usually, in the weeks leading up to Halloween, I play some Castlevania games on my various emulators (PC, phone, TV box, or handheld). This year, I was too busy to play much. I did play a bit of the PS1 Castlevania Chronicles on my handheld emulator, but not much. And yes, I know the new Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is out on Steam. I did consider buying it on release, but again, I was too busy to play it. I've heard good things about it (like, people saying it's hard -- bring it on!). I'll try to get around to it this winter. 

Along with playing CV games, I'm always considering how to make a Castlevania style megadungeon for D&D in October. This goes back 20 years or so. I've got the old document from my first aborted attempt saved on my computer still. Back in my 3E days (shudder).  That was focused on building the "Transylvania" around the castle, with the goal of making the central Demon Castle Dracula the megadungeon that required multiple expeditions inside, and to smaller dungeons outside, to complete and face Dracula up in his turret throne room. 

These days, obviously, I'd use a much simpler system, like my own Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins rules. Or maybe adapt Missions & Mayhem. A CV style campaign module might be fun. Something a bit more historical than Hellspawn & Horror. Or maybe just H&H, minus the machineguns, smartphones, and sports cars. 

Regardless of the rules system I use, the big problem, as other bloggers, DungeonTubers, and forum posters have pointed out in the past, is that the types of "locks" and "keys" found in exploration platformers like Metroid and certain Castlevania games, and similar modern games like Hollow Knight, are all things that work to limit progress in a side-scrolling video game, but don't work well in a game of the imagination, where players can try to do things that coding just doesn't allow in a computer game.

However, I think the Metroidvania style can work in a megadungeon. One just needs to think of the game system being used, and base the "locks" and "keys" around those game mechanics. Computer games usually do it by giving the player new ways to move. Double-jumps. Super jumps. Turning into a bat and flying. Running really fast that you break through walls. New weapons. Or sometimes, just messing around until you find a wall that will break or the right spot to perform some action that reveals a secret. 

 In a tabletop RPG, we have several options, some more metagame-y, some more diegetic. 

• Character Level: Obviously, this has been the yardstick of D&D since the beginning. You don't need to be locked out of these areas, but once you get into them, it should be obvious if you're over your head, or you've entered an area way too easy, and therefor low reward. But having doors, portals, or whatever that can only be accessed once PCs hit a certain level is one way to lock off areas. 
• Physical Barriers: These are hard to control. A Thief has their climbing ability. Levitation or flying magic isn't that hard to come across. A clever party, with time and resources on their side, could physically move or remove barriers through hard labor (build a bridge, tear down a wall, etc.). Still, this could be useful. Not every group will have the tools or desire to get past a barrier right away. MV games usually "key" these with new movement power-ups, but smart play or movement powers can be used in an RPG.
• Secret Doors: Again, there from the beginning. Also, very much part of the Metroidvania experience. If players find the secret door, they get access. If they don't, they don't. And you can put maps or hints or wands of secret door detection deeper in the dungeon to make them circle back to find any secret doors they missed. Very much in the spirit of the MV style game. 
• Spell Requirements: At low levels, wizard lock can block access to areas, until the party gets a knock spell. Other low level spells, like bless, detect magic, read magic, read languages, or even magic missile (I magic missile...the darkness!) could be keys to unlock access to areas. Mid- to high level spells could do even more. Obviously spells like water breathing, passwall, dimension door, and teleport allow this. But there could be other situations where progress isn't possible without a certain spell at hand. And while this has overlap with level requirements, scrolls, potions, or other items may allow earlier access to some of these.  
• Magic Item Requirements: This one is maybe the most MV. Beat a "boss" and get a magic item. Go back somewhere where you know there's something or somewhere you couldn't get to before, and use that magic item to access it. Of course, this has overlap with physical barriers and spell requirements. 
• NPC Interactions: Many computer games use NPCs to give the player hints, clues, or the special means to access restricted areas. This is easy to do in RPGs as well, although the interactions will be more fluid and dynamic. And you've always got the risk of players killing or abandoning the NPC before they can deliver the information.

The important thing, in my opinion, is to design the megadungeon with gated areas, but don't prescribe any one particular key to enter that gated area. Sure, there may be a "preferred" method, but allowing for player creativity in problem solving is the greatest strength of the TTRPG over any other game. Cutting that out leads to railroading or inverse quantum ogres (no matter what the players do, they CAN'T get past the door). 

In designing a Metroidvania style dungeon for a TTRPG, one needs to: divide the dungeon into sections, which are of different levels. Put secret rooms, passages, and so on in liberally. Have ways to observe, learn about, or otherwise detect the presence of areas within a section that can't be accessed directly. Make some connections between sections easy to navigate, others hard. Deliberately leave information, useful objects, or access to spells that will allow players to get into these secret or blocked of areas deeper in the dungeon. Also, make sure there is ample treasure all through the dungeon, so players can actually level up as they explore.

And most of all, when running the dungeon, allow players to get creative and bypass the "correct" keys to the blocked of areas. If you thought they should use fly to get to a region, but they use a combination of thief climbing and a potion of gaseous form, let them. If they hire a dwarven engineering team to tear down the giant stone slab door that's too heavy to open (even though you'd put a potion of giant strength nearby for them to find and open it with), let them. Also, keep the information flowing. As an individual, I may spend a lot of time trying to figure out a puzzle in a solo computer game. But my group won't want to wait for me forever in a TTRPG. The hints and information need to be available, so that the deeper you go, the more you learn about the areas you've already explored.

However, leave the players with the consequences of their actions. If they manage to find a clever way into a 4th level section of the dungeon while they're still only 1st, they will realize the monsters are too tough pretty quickly and if they're smart, retreat and return later when they're more powerful. Or maybe they'll get lucky, and manage to snag the magic item there that makes another gate trivial. Good! They're playing the game smartly and well if they do. 

Computer game programmers can get away with making a wall that can only be blown up with the super-bomb, or a gate that can only be passed in mist form. TTRPG designers need to pose the challenges, and provide some keys, but be willing to let players find their own keys to get past the gates.  

A Confluence of Ideas

Yesterday, I was watching Mike Mearls' YouTube channel. If you don't know who that is, he was a designer for WotC, working on 4E and 5E before Hasbro/WotC let him go. I think he was the D&D brand manager during the early 5E days. 

He put up a video this week discussing the shortfalls of 4th Edition. I don't disagree, although I think he has some blind spots with regards to WotC's editions of the game. Most importantly, though, he says that one reason 4E failed was that it was built for the system mastery crowd, not for the casual gamer. In his words, the players that "just want to swing their sword" at the monster weren't happy with a game that wanted them to learn and optimize all these options (at will, encounter, daily, utility powers). Some players are just there to have a good time with their friends, pretend to be a warrior or a wizard fighting orcs and dragons, then get on with their lives. 

It's one of the reasons I've been working on Missions & Mayhem for the past year. I like the concept behind d20 Modern -- a toolbox set of rules that is flexible enough to emulate many modern-era genres and character archetypes. But, as Mearls also admits, the 3E engine is not a light and easy to master system. You CAN create a simple character with it, but it's designed for the guys who want to look under the hood, make modifications, and customize their ride. 4E was even more so a game like that. 

Thinking about what Mearls had to say last night, I had a realization about my Flying Swordsmen 2E design. It hasn't been on my mind much lately, but suddenly now it is. Don't worry, I won't let it distract from getting Missions & Mayhem finished. But I came to see the flaw in my FS2E design. 

For those who may not remember, as it's been a year or more since I was working on it, I'm revising Flying Swordsmen to use the WEG d6 game engine. I think it's more fitting for a cinematic style game of wuxia than either old school or new school D&D design. The original Flying Swordsmen, and Dragon Fist before that, failed in that D&D combat really isn't designed for wuxia style combat. And it has next to nothing to offer the player that wants to get into character and play up the drama of being a wandering martial artist, in love with a forbidden partner, pursued by a vengeful rival, on a quest to avenge their slain master, and all of that sort of thing. The d6 engine has more support for cinematic combats AND for the drama (although not as much as a dedicated narrative/story-first game does). 

Watching this new video from Questing Beast this morning, about Pawn/Protagonist/Author stance while gaming, consolidated my thinking on the matter. I need to have a game that supports more than just "punch a monster in the face" but doesn't punish players who just want to punch a monster in the face. It should be fun for everyone. 

So, what's the big change? I'm getting rid of the martial arts techniques. Yes, they're the descendants of the martial arts maneuvers and spells of the original game. And they're not going away completely. But my new idea for how to structure Flying Swordsmen as a d6 game is as follows (subject to revision when I finally get around to implementing this): 

Instead of Powers (magic) similar to the Force Skills of Star Wars d6, and then specialized Techniques that you gain as your Power dice go up (like the dedicated Force Powers of Star Wars d6), the magic and martial arts will just be skills like any other. 

There will be six ability areas, each with related skills under them. I'm not sure if there will be one kung fu/magical skill under each ability, or if there will be a Magic ability, with the magic while the kung fu (qinggong lightness techniques and neigong physical conditioning techniques) will be under other abilities. 

Either way, all the special techniques will just be things you can do with the kung fu/magic skills IF you roll high enough. Anyone can try. Those with training will be able to pull them off consistently. Those without will need some luck (exploding 6s on the Wild Die, and/or character points spent). 

I'm uncertain if I'll add a narrative meta-currency like Force Points in Star Wars. I currently don't have one, but it could be added easily enough. And I could potentially tie them into the templates, to help reinforce the archetypes of wuxia. Or they could be earned by doing all the dramatic stuff mentioned above, similar to the Inspiration mechanic of 5E D&D. That's something to ponder as I finish up Missions & Mayhem, and the various campaign modules. 

Format Issues

 I've got the first draft play test rules for Hellspawn & Horror written. This is the urban fantasy/horror supplement. Unlike d20 Modern's Urban Arcana, I'm going a bit more of a dark route. More along the lines of a Stephen King or Clive Barker novel. There is magic, there are spellcasters (Acolyte = Cleric, Mage = Magic-User in D&D terms), there are fairly typical D&D style monsters...but more in the horror range than general vanilla fantasy range, and of course there are magic items including modern weaponry and devices with magical twists. 

This weekend, we're gonna give these rules a spin. 

I've been writing up the adventure on my computer rather than by hand (which I usually do). It's given me a good idea of the format I should use to make my normally piecemeal and incomplete adventure notes into something that others could use. I've figured out a good information nesting system and where to use bold, underlines, and italics to highlight key information. Also how to note difficulties for general proficiency checks, monster stat blocks, and XP for various tasks. 

Already, I'm regretting dropping the "soft sciences" from the proficiency list. Well, psychology made the cut, but the history/anthropology/linguistics etc. humanities got folded into the science proficiency a while back, when I was streamlining. Possibly because I've been watching Stargate SG1 on Netflix, and Daniel and Sam are both scientists but very different scientists, but mostly because of the way I'm breaking down tasks in this adventure. I'll probably include it as a sample adventure in the book, so I won't spoil it now. But I've had to note things that should be about culture/language as requiring science checks if careful dialogue doesn't provide the answers, and other things that are definitely hard science (physics, chemistry, etc.) as also science checks. And one place I used psychology instead of science for a more "humanities" themed problem, as science didn't seem right at all. 

So I think I need to make one final rules revision, adding back in a "soft" science proficiency. The only problem is what to call it. Humanities is appropriate, but maybe too academic. Linguistics or sociology could work, but each is only part of what the proficiency covers. Maybe culture would work. That could cover language, history, cultural knowledge, art, etc.

If I do add it in, I'll need to modify the classes and starting occupations, but that won't be too hard. I've done it before. And it may distinguish a few of the starting occupations a bit more, as well. 

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Side note: My cover artist is working on the cover for Cryptids & Conspiracy. From the sample she sent me the other day, it's also going to look great.  And I need to get back to my interior artist for the Core Rules. He's also really good, and fast, too. Even with the small rules change, and the need to get the examples for all the rules written, and a bunch more interior art, and editing and layout, I think maybe I can get the Core Rules out before the end of the year. If not, then very early next year. 

The Eternal Question

 Well, not THE eternal question, but one that always comes up when I design a game meant for public consumption. 

 How much "introduction to RPGs" does a game need? 

I've immersed myself in these games for 80% of my life. I play them. I read them. I modify them. I write them. It's second nature to me. 

And, I'm in a bit of an information silo regarding them. I have some friends who are new to RPGs and some who have never played them at all. But most of my gaming friends know what they're getting into if they pick up an RPG. 

But I'm also practical. I write OSR games. Not quite what the OSR has become in the past 5 years or so (I feel narrative gaming is co-opting the scene but that's just the way things go, this is not a complaint about that, just an observation). But still, most folks who know about me as a blogger or game designer are OSR folks, and they, like me, already know RPGs. 

So my intended audience doesn't really need a lot of hand-holding text to explain just what an RPG is, or the basic concepts involved. 

BUT... 

There were people who complained about Chanbara not having the hand-holding sections to it. My little niche of a niche of a niche hobby game found its way into the hands of some people who were new to RPGs and would have appreciated a bit of intro to this style of game. And it is a big departure from most games people are familiar with, even if they're immersed in CRPGs or MMOs. 

Also, I feel like I've got a solid game in Missions & Mayhem. Something that is simple enough to play easily, but adaptable enough to fit lots of different genres. I have no illusions of it being able to fill every genre well, but it was designed as a tool box and it works as one. It has potential to catch on beyond my little corner of the OSR space. Not Shadowdark/OSE levels, but I expect it to be a lot more popular than Chanbara (Flying Swordsmen got a lot of traction, but it was completely free so I can't really compare it).  

 I'm not worried about space constraints. Right now, the M&M core book is 82 pages in draft form. And that is with me leaving some pages mostly blank to be filled in later. If I add a sample adventure or two, and a bit of hand-holding introductory text at the beginning, I'm probably still going to be under 100 pages. 

So I guess I should probably add some at least rudimentary "what is an RPG" text before the "what is this game" text at the beginning to help folks out. It never hurts to have it. Veterans can skip over it. New folks will appreciate it. 

 

Thanks for reading along as I debated this with myself. I was hoping to get at least two of the campaign modules ready for release along with the core book, but the way things are going, I could have the core ready to go before the end of the year (assuming the guy I found to do interior art can pump it out quick enough, and after the first order I gave him, I think he can). I may just release the core book this year, then put out the first couple campaign modules next year and the rest in 2028. 
 

The Big Reveal (Missions & Mayhem Core Rules Cover Art)

 I think I mentioned before how I met this artist, but if not, I'll repeat myself. A few months ago, my wife started taking classes to learn watercolor painting to supplement her calligraphy art. The teacher, Lee Hyunjung, has a studio about three blocks away from our apartment. While I was looking on Fiver for possible artists to contact for cover art, my wife suggested we talk to her art teacher. So we did.

I hired her, gave her the details of what I wanted and some reference pictures, and she would contact us at each step of the process to make sure she was executing my vision. 

She knocked it out of the park, in my opinion. 

Then, with some advice from various friends, including Jeremy Hart who has a background in graphic design and my son Flynn who's artistic among his many other talents, I decided on the layout for the title text. After quite a bit of experimentation.

And now, without further ado, I present the cover page for Missions & Mayhem's Core Rules book: 

 

I've commissioned Hyunjung to paint the cover for Cryptids & Conspiracy next. 

Missions & Mayhem Cover Art is Done

 My artist, Lee Hyunjung, has finished the cover art for the Missions & Mayhem core rulebook. I'm still playing around with fonts and layout for the title, so I'm not revealing the picture now, but I'll build a bit of anticipation. 

I've shown it to quite a few friends and family, and everyone is impressed by it. Solid details, vivid colors, and it fits the 70s through 90s action movie vibe that inspired the game. Actually, it's also a bit reminiscent of modern video game cover art as well. Not that games technically have covers anymore, since they're just digital downloads for the most part. But you know what I mean.  

And two hours ago, I commissioned Hyunjung to start work on a cover for Cryptids & Conspiracy. 

Now I need to secure some interior art. There's a guy up in Seoul, Jeff Witty, who's doing a lot of work for Dungeon Crawl Classics these days. He likes the general idea I pitched for interior pictures, but he's too busy. So maybe I'll see if Hyunjung could do some black & white interior art (yeah, I'm going old school RPG style with this one). I've also scouted out a few potential artists on Fiver that I plan to contact. 

Oh, and I've gotten some art from Jeremy of course (that's Jeremy Hart, or JHIllos) for monsters/aliens/mutants in the various campaign books. 

There's also some decent free to use (Creative Commons) character art I've found out there that I can use for a few filler illustrations. 

So, time to start re-writing the rules in a way that will be easy for folks besides me to understand and run. I've been trying to keep everything as brief as possible for the play test, so I don't need to reprint a huge document every time I make major changes. I'll revise things and not worry quite so much about the space they're taking up. Unlike Chanbara, this is NOT going to be a mere 64 pages. Although I also don't expect I'll go over the 128 pages of Flying Swordsmen. At least not for the core rules. 

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In other M&M news, Sunday was another play test. Bughunts & Bedlam, we tried out giving everyone power armor and a lot of big guns, and throwing a bunch of bugs at them as they defend a colony complex. Getting everyone's power armor loadout/setup took longer than expected, so the colony defense will continue next session. And it showed me that I need to make a special character sheet addition for power armor management. 

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In other other news, print copies of the Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby Players Rules book arrived on Friday. On Saturday, I ordered small print runs (10 copies each) of the rest of the line, so I will have copies to sell at the upcoming book fair at Gwangan Beach (next month). The Korean PoD service I found is cheap and quick, so I expect to have the books this Saturday, or next Monday at the latest. 

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Oh, and one final note back to Missions & Mayhem: I'm working on the Urban Fantasy supplement, Hellspawn & Horror. Unlike d20 Modern's Urban Arcana, which had the conceit of D&D monsters living among us, this is more like Stephen King/Clive Barker/Jim Butcher/Anne Rice, Blade, Ultraviolet, Friday the 13th The Series (anyone else remember that one?), From Dusk til Dawn, or whatever modern monster-hunter (horror) fantasy you want to play out. So no bugbears working the register at 7-11. Just vampires, werewolves, fae, nasty demons, and the occasional dragon that you need to track down and shoot with your M-16 or battle with a holy sword you recovered from a ruin in Antioch. 

Another trip 'round the Sun

 Another blog-versary is here. Nothing big to say at the moment. I'm too busy. The semester has stared, I'm working on another academic paper, painting minis, working on the Hellspawn & Horror module for Missions & Mayhem (modern urban fantasy/horror), the artist is finishing up the cover art for M&M, and Justin and I are considering doing a board game/war games focused event this fall rather than an RPG one. 

Oh, yeah. And my son is working on a short film (comedic zombie apocalypse story) and wants me to play the redneck bartender. Should be fun. 

Anyway, I'll try to knock out posts here on the blog when I can. For at least one more year. Hopefully more. 

Selling Physical Books

 Because of the SummerCon and the start of the semester, I've been pretty busy the past two weeks. I was going to post about a recent YouTube video from the Mystic Arts channel where he seemed to not quite get what OSR is (or, as I was thinking, maybe OSR has moved on from what it once was and he's right and I'm stuck in the past). But Ben from Questing Beast made a response video with Dađi that addressed most of what I was thinking of writing about. 

So we move on. A few days ago, Richard was asking if I was ever planning to release a PoD version of Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. Honestly, formatting Chanbara for DriveThru was a bit of a chore, and the books are just Pay-What-You-Want anyway, so I never planned to. But he said he'd like copies if I ever did. 

A little earlier, Justin had mentioned that he's going to be involved in a book fair again in October.  He asked if I wanted to sell some copies of Chanbara or some adventures or whatnot. I ordered some copies of Chanbara from DriveThru. They arrived two days ago. 

Anyway, Justin and Richard got me thinking again about Korean PoD options. I looked at a couple of sites, and found one that looked simple and easy. Especially since they said they could accept PDFs created in Word, not just ones made InDesign or Scribus or whatever.  I'm using LibreOffice, but that should work, right? We'll see!

As implied there, I have re-formatted the TS&R line (well, not the rules reference books, but very few people download those anyway). I still have a little work do do on the covers for some of the books, but I'm almost there. Last night, I ordered copies of the Ruby Players Rules. 

The service can print 2 copies, or multiples of 10 only. I should have played it safe and ordered two, but went ahead and ordered 10. I know Richard will buy one. If Justin can sell two more at his book fair, that will reimburse me for the printing costs. It was 50,000 won (40 page softback, with single-side cover printing) including shipping (3,500 won), which at the current exchange rate is about $37. 

The website estimated they'd ship on Wednesday so I should have them by the end of the week. If they're good enough quality, I'll order the other TS&R line of books to be printed. I know Justin won't sell them all, but I can sell one set to Richard, keep one set for myself, and what Justin can't sell this time I can try to sell at a future book fair or game event. Some of my regular players might be interested in getting their own copies as well.  

SummerCon Experiences

 The TTRPG in Korea Discord group had another online con this weekend. 

 On Friday evening, I played in a Shadowdark game, set in I6 Ravenloft. This was my first experience with Shadwodark, but of course I know Ravenloft pretty well. This game was really fun. I was playing an elf wizard who had the "ranger" background. And I had both magic missile and acid arrow on my spell list. So with the DM's permission, I had an energy bow like Hank from the D&D cartoon that I fired my spells from. 

We explored the castle, managed to find the history book and sun sword, just before the GM's timer ran out and Strahd appeared. We were down in the crypts. The sun sword did so much damage that Strahd died in two rounds. Of course, our fighter was charmed by Strahd, but with advantage on rolls from our Seer and Cleric, and a dispel magic from me, the fighter broke the charm and put down Strahd. And just before the time limit for the session, too! 

Saturday morning, I ran a Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby game. I had two players, so they each got to run 2 PCs. They also had money to hire plenty of hirelings, so they took advantage of that. They were searching an ancient elven tomb for treasure, encountering lots of traps, some bugs, some undead. They avoided the gelatinous cube. They avoided some traps, fell into a few, and solved several puzzles/challenges to get the treasure at the end. Only one halfling man-at-arms died. 

Saturday afternoon, I was a player in a game of Free League's Alien RPG. The GM had asked us all who our favorite characters were (besides Ripley or Jonesy), or at least who we'd like to play. I was Hudson from Aliens. Riley was Kane from Alien. Oz was Hermit from Alien Earth, and W1ng was Rusten Quinn from Alien vs Predator. This was also my first time playing FL's Alien game. 

Hudson was the only one to die, getting firebombed by Kane while the alien was dragging him away.  

It was really fun, but while the general task resolution mechanic is solid, the whole stress/freakout/losing control/panic system seemed a bit clunky and kinda slowed down the game. 

I think I mentioned that my Saturday evening workshop on exploration-focued play was canceled from lack of interest. When I canceled, there was a DCC game at that time in need of players so I said I would play. But yesterday morning, my wife got upset that I was going to be gaming all day on the computer and ignoring the family. So I bowed out of that game. Luckily, others had also joined, so the game went on without me. 

Finally, this afternoon (Sunday), I was a player in a Mothership game. This was maybe my fourth or fifth time to play Mothership, and I have to say I really like this game. It's got the similar vibe to Alien, of course. And while the general mechanic (percentage checks) is fine, Alien's die pool system is maybe a bit more fun. But the stress/freakout mechanics in Mothership are a lot simpler than Alien, at least from my experience as a player only. 

We were up against a cold, uncaring computer AI, who wanted to eliminate us to complete the ship's mission. I was playing an android, and towards the end of the session, the AI took over my body. Scott (the GM for this game) fed me some lines here and there and let me continue on as the corrupted android, while the players thought they'd reset me but weren't quite sure. It was pretty fun, but in the end the AI made my android body end its existence. So it goes. 

The final Sunday evening session is going on right now, but obviously I'm not in any of those games. It was a pretty fun con, but I had lots of technical issues this time, so I may take a back seat next WinterCon. Playing face-to-face is more fun anyway. 

Font Testing

I've been using a title font for my drafts of Missions & Mayhem since the beginning (more or less), but talking to Jeremy about using some of his monster art last night, he asked if I had a logo for the game yet. I didn't. So I made up a simple logo in GIMP. 

Today, I figured I'd test a few other font options to see if I liked any of these others better. I think I'll stick with my initial font, called Gunplay/Gunplay 3D. But I figure I might as well stick the tests up here to see what people think. 

If you've got any preference, or suggestions for the logo as a whole, please let me know what you think. 

 

 

Gunplay font, no border

Gunplay font, border

Jeremy suggested TTRPG instead of just RPG

 

And then the ones I made today: 

Action Force

HP PSG

MisterEarl

Weathered Solid

 

IM FELL English

Edit/Update: After discussing designs and swapping ides with Jeremy a bit more, I came up with this: 

Along with an inverted color version for the inside title page: 

 Pretty sure this is what I'll go with. Gunplay 3D for the main title, Gunplay for the subtitle. 

Thanks to Jeremy, PatrickW, Anzon, and my son Steven for the feedback. If anyone else has some feedback though, please let me know!

Blog Readers, Satisfy My Curiosity Please

 Today, I was chatting with Richard (who runs CoC). He will be in my TS&R Ruby con game in a week and a half. He said he was thinking of running a TS&R Ruby campaign himself. He asked me if I knew anyone who was running TS&R (Ruby or Jade) besides myself. 

I told him I know a fair number of people have downloaded the books, but I haven't heard of anyone running it besides myself. 

Will Richard be the first person to run it besides its creator? If any of you have run it, or know someone who has, please let me know.  

"Universes Beyond" Seriously?

 So the big announcement from WotC was that they're rolling out "universes beyond" content for 5.5e. 

I think most of my blog readers know this. They also probably know I'm not WotC's target demographic. But here's my thoughts on this anyway. 

First off, is anyone surprised? Since the days of 2E, when TSR was cranking out the setting products, they realized that people love these. People want books of lore that they can dive into and study, and use as the base for their campaign. And every major edition has seen re-releases, with updated stat blocks/content, for many of these settings. 

So we're getting a new 5.5e Dark Sun, and Dragonlance, and there's probably already Forgotten Realms since that's their main setting anymore. But they're also doing World of Warcraft (like someone did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days) and Star Wars (like they did back in the d20/SRD/OGL days AND the 4E days) and probably some Final Fantasy or Diablo (again, they did that back in the day) or Marvel Supers tie in content. Just like with Magic: the Gathering. 

I'm aware of the MtG tie in sets, with Marvel, Final Fantasy, etc. I haven't bought Magic cards in around 20 years now. Maybe a bit longer. So I don't really care what they're doing with the game. It's always been more about milking the random pack dollar than about the game itself, but I got out and haven't looked back. And now, with D&D (official D&D anyway), I'm also out. 

So I really don't care if WotC is going back to try again with the old campaign settings and with brand tie-ins. They're trying to make a buck, and from what I hear the "Universes Beyond" thing is making them a ton of money through MtG. So it makes sense from a business standpoint to try it with D&D. 

From a player/fan perspective, I think this is a bad idea. They tried to make D&D the be-all-end-all of RPGs, not just the 800lb gorilla of them. We had all these official, licensed, and unofficial nerd media tie-ins 25 years ago. And a lot of them sucked. 

A lot of those old tie-ins (Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Warcraft, Diablo, various superhero properties, various non-supers comics, all sorts of video games, and just about every fantasy/sci-fi book or movie franchise) needed to either twist the rules of the game to fit the media property, or else needed to twist the media property's "canon" to fit the game mechanics. 

Sure, a few instances, things worked out pretty well. The Diablo stuff fits right in with D&D, because those games were heavily inspired by D&D to begin with. The d20 Star Wars games were pretty poor representations of the media, to be honest. The WEG d6 is of course my favorite, but I've heard good things about FFG's current game. I don't know many who look back fondly on d20 Star Wars (there are some, but not many). And does anyone seriously think 5E D&D will be a better fit? 

Anyway, I'm gonna keep doing my thing. WotC will keep doing theirs. And they'll probably make a ton of money making sub-standard game products with big franchise tie-ins. I'll make a pittance making substandard game products without the big franchise tie-ins (but with enough references to them, wink-wink). And I'll be happy. 

Because why do I need WotC to do any more of my imagining for me? 

Hitch a Ride to Arcturus

 This weekend, I wrote up a more detailed description of my (very silly, not likely possible, but plausible enough) faster than light travel system for Bughunts & Bedlam. In addition, I came up with some technobabble to explain FTL communication as well, cribbing a bit from Star Frontiers. 

Star Frontiers has FTL at a speed of 1 light year per day, so I went with that for military or "elite" ships, and one light year per week for freighters, colony ships, or other pleb options. The one light year per week rate was suggestive of Alien, where they had a 10 month trip from Zeta Reticuli (40ish light years from Earth) to get home. 

And of course, FTL can warp your brain unless you're in hypersleep. There are now rules for space madness and how to treat it. 

 I had already made a blurb about the setting, where humans have 23 active colonies and 5 failed attempts, and had explored out about 100 light years from Earth. A bit of Google/Wikipedia work gave me a bunch of potential systems with exoplanets that could be colonized. Plus, I remembered that I had a couple of alien species in Cryptids & Conspiracy that have nearby home worlds. 

So I made a big chart of about 30 systems and the distance in light years (rounded up if a decimal of 0.1 or more due to the way the FTL drive works in 1 light year-ish jumps). This took some time. After a lot of slow Googling and math, and a webpage that said it had distances that most turned out to be inaccurate, I gave in and turned to AI. I asked it to generate distances from one target system to all of the other systems. I found discrepancies with that webpage. Then I found discrepancies within the AI output. 

Eventually, I asked AI to make me a spreadsheet with all of the systems. Then I found a game on Steam called SpaceEngine that shows distances from system to system. I went in and did a bit of random checks, and found the final AI numbers to be close enough of a match. So assuming the SpaceEngine people know what they're doing, and that the AI did the math more or less correctly, I've got my travel/communication chart. 

A subspace message (one way only) takes 1 hour per light year. 

A military or high end ship crosses 1 light year per day (no relativity effects for reasons, but you're probably in cryosleep anyway). 

A blue collar working ship crosses 1 light year per week. The chart just has rounded up light year numbers, so it works for all three purposes. 

I'm not proud that I turned to AI for help. I'm usually against it. But it did save me MANY hours of boring labor. And I am NOT using it for text (rules or flavor), or art. 

 Now that the FTL rules are done, I'll add a few options for GMs that want warp drive, hyperdrive, orbital jump gates, or terrestrial stargates in their games.  

 ________

Oh, and an update on the cover art. The artist sent me the first sketch of the two characters that will be front and center on the cover. It looks really good. No notes. I'd given her pretty specific art direction and reference pictures of what I wanted. Now, we wait to see how she fills in the background!  

 

Combat Math in Missions & Mayhem

Yeah, another math post about the mechanics of Missions & Mayhem. These (here, here, here, and here) get a lot of reads, but rarely much comment. I assume either that means people don't want to comment on something they're just reading about but haven't played, or else everything I'm posting seems alright to them so they have not much to say. Either way, there seem to be no egregious math that would elicit corrections so that's encouraging. 

I was reading Eric's thoughts on a single saving throw (Swords & Wizardry style). It got me thinking about the math behind my saving throw system, and the combat mechanics more broadly. 

Following d20 Modern, M&M has Fortitude (modified by Constitution), Reflex (modified by Dexterity), and Will (modified by Wisdom) saving throws. Originally, I gave each class lowering target numbers for each save, the way classic and advanced D&D do it. If you multiclassed among the various Heroic Classes, you took the best value. But then when I started adding Advanced Classes in the campaign modules, I had wonky math going on. 

So, I've changed it to be more like the original. Now, each class provides bonuses to the die roll, along with ability modifiers. If you multiclass, you just add the new modifiers to your save values. 

Unlike the original D&D saves with different target numbers depending on the type of save and your class/level, or the d20 system that I'm riffing on which had varying target DCs for different types of saving throw, there is one constant and unchanging save target number: 16. 

This gives someone with no bonus (average ability score and no class modifier) a 25% chance to succeed on any saving throw. 

Combat, for comparison, uses ascending AC with the base AC as 11. So rolling a flat d20 with no bonus to hit, and the target has no armor or Dexterity adjustments, and no situational modifiers, you have a 50% chance to hit. 

These numbers seem like a good base to work from for me. 

It also means that area of effect attacks (spray autofire, grenades, etc.) need to hit AC 11 to affect the appropriate area. There's a "grenade bounce" check to see where the effect actually lands on a miss, which still might affect some of the intended targets. And then the targets get saving throws to avoid or mitigate the effects. 

Again, the math works well, giving I think, fair odds for combats in the game.  

 

TTRPG in Korea's Online SummerCon 2026

 SummerCon 2026 is approaching. It will be on August 28th to 30th, KST (GMT +9). 

We have a lot more games than gamers, apparently. Maybe lots of folks are on vacations at the end of the summer. Whatever the reason, we have a lot of games with open spots. So we (I'm part of the organizing committee) have decided to open up the Con to people outside Korea. 

 If anyone reading is interested, check out our registration page on Warhorn. You'll need to register with Warhorn, and the Con is on Discord (plus various VTTs at each GM's preference) so you'll also need to join the TTRPG in Korea Discord server at least until the end of the conference. 

SummerCon Registration 

https://warhorn.net/events/korea-summercon-2026

TTRPG in Korea

https://discord.gg/5P7pM7Vpn 

I'm running a Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Ruby game, and I've got the Exploration Focused Play workshop as well, both on Saturday. The only person yet to sign up for the workshop is also on the organizing committee, so I may cancel that and just chat with him about the topic one-on-one sometime. But there's still a week to sign up, so maybe it will get a little more interest. 

There is a wide variety of games, old school, new school, traditional, narrative, cozy, etc.  

Total Party Capture

Today was the third linked adventure for play testing Bughunts & Bedlam, following on the previous two planetary mine investigations. Today's session was all aboard Longinus Station, in orbit around planet RX-55. 

During the first investigation (krytes from the movie Critters invaded a mine), one of the station technicians was an oddball.  What the PCs didn't know is that a Puppeteer, a mind-control bug based on Heinlein's Puppet Masters but also Ceti eels from Wrath of Khan, the brain parasite aliens in TNG's Conspiracy episode, and any other creatures that latch on to your brainstem and then control you, had taken control of the technician. And there was a crate full of them waiting to infest the rest of the crew. 

Session two (battling Alien Bounty Hunters and Coeurls), when they returned to the station, a few more people were odd. 

This session, they set out to find out who was mind controlled, or a secret synthetic, or maybe a doppelganger type shapeshifter. It actually didn't take long, as early in the session Jada's Hero Sarah went off with one of the infected crew members, who took her to the cargo storage area to try to infect her. She avoided that, but the infected scientist got away. Charles and Steven's Heroes Magnum and Conner (respectively) were looking for clues and not finding much, when suddenly there was an alarm. Someone had sabotaged part of the engineering section. They went to help patch it up, but failed their rolls. The first infected tech showed up to "fix" the situation. 

Our heroes met up with each other and took one of the security officers (compromised!) to confront the station medic, who they knew had acted oddly. There was a fight, but both infected crew were subdued. Sarah  performed surgery to remove the medic's puppeteer, but failed to remove the security officer's. Another alarm went off in the loading dock during the surgeries, but they ignored it. Finally, a decompression event happened in the maintenance bay. 

They put on oxygen masks and went to see what they could do. All of the remaining infected crew (five of them) were waiting. Unfortunately for our crew, Steven was tired (and maybe a bit bored of mostly talk talk talk) and fell asleep at the table. So Connor was out of this final battle. And it went sideways quickly. One tangler grenade wrapped up the infected admin guy with a rifle. Another wrapped up more. The remaining infected crew fired stunners, but didn't take out the Heroes. One last tangler grenade missed, and the bounce roll showed that it came right back at the Heroes. They both failed their saves. 

So, all the Heroes were captured, and they and the remaining uninfected crew became hosts for puppeteers. 

They should have destroyed the case the puppeteers came in when they had the chance! 

_______

Luckily for the players, we're running play test games, so despite the horrible end, the PCs will be back next session for more. And they leveled up, with Sarah taking the Xenologist advanced class, and Magnum taking the Trooper advanced class. I'll get Steven to level up his PC later, and Denis and Justin can level up their Heroes next session. 

Serendipity (III)

 At the beginning of the year, my wife started learning Korean calligraphy. Then, a few months back, she found an art teacher to teach her watercolor painting to decorate the calligraphy designs. My wife came home from her art class the other day and said she mentioned to the teacher that I was writing an RPG book. The art teacher offered to do some art for the book. 

So we messaged a bit, and then went to talk to her a couple of days ago. 

She's now working on a design for cover art for Missions & Mayhem. It will be a full color acrylic painting, if we do commission her for it. Her work that I've seen is very good, and we shared some concept art, other modern-ish RPG cover art, etc. along with some reference art for the characters that will grace the cover. 

She said she can also do black and white line art fairly easily, so I'll probably commission some more interior art pieces from her later. 

Another artist in Seoul, Jeff Witty, has been doing a lot of art for Dungeon Crawl Classics lately. We've also talked, and he likes my concept for art to highlight the character classes, but he's pretty busy with commissions already. Hopefully, I'll be able to snag a few pictures from him as well.

There's no monsters in the core book, but I'll of course be commissioning some monster art from my buddy Jeremy Hart for the campaign module books. I want to support him as much as possible, too.

I'm pretty excited to see what the art teacher does with the concept I gave her. And once I've got the cover art, it will be a lot easier to start promoting the books. Other than revising some "how to play" and "how to run the game" sections, the main Missions & Mayhem core rules book is done. I'm pretty happy with how it plays, and I don't expect to make more than tweaks to the game from here on out.  

Encouraging Exploration

 

Amae (Aurelian) and the good folks at the TTRPG in Korea Discord server are again hosting an online Summer Con, coming up at the end of August. I've volunteered to help with organizing this time, since I've got a bit of experience from the BTGC last fall. So far, I haven't had to do much.

I pitched one Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins game (Ruby), using an old adventure I wrote back when I was still in Japan. It's been updated and modified along the way. Actually, I think I used to give it away as a free download here on the blog in the old days. 

I also pitched, since the New GM workshop was cancelled at the Busan Con this past spring, a workshop about exploration-based play. It will be based on the main gist of my New GM workshop idea. Trying to get younger/newer players out of the mindset that they need to craft a story before they can run a game. 

But since it's a general workshop, I'll also be trying to give player advice to help players think and explore the fictional worlds of our games more, rather than just waiting for the next crumb of a plot hook from the GM. Themes/topics may include: 

Dungeon Crawls

Hex Crawls (including West Marches style play)

XP for Gold

Diagetic Problem Solving through Questions and Detailed Observation

Sandbox Play 

Setting Up a (small & contained at the start) World, Not a Story 

Because he used those special parts / To make his robot friends

I've spent the better part of this week working on the robot rules for Bughunts & Bedlam. 

Not special rules for running robots (I already have the Android Character section written), but rules for designing and building robots. 

I looked at the various robot rules in d20 Modern products (core book, d20 Future, and Menace Manual all have robot design guidelines, and they're all a little different). I also went to refresh myself on the venerable (or at least tolerated, in some circles) robot rules from Star Frontiers. 

And while I'm done with it, and it should work just fine, I'm looking at it now thinking maybe I made it too fiddly.  I've got base costs based on the frame (armature, standard, and aesthetic) and size. Then add-ons like legs or wheels or sensors or security systems are either a set cost or a % of the base frame's price. 

Then I made a bunch of sample robots, and man, it was a pain to tally up the costs based on the options each model had. It was also a bit of a pain to have to list them all in the "monster" description. 

Star Frontiers has a much simpler function x body type chart, with some add-ons for different types of movement, programming, or additional equipment integrated into the robot. I may make something in that vein, although a bit expanded in the functional robot types and body types/sizes based on what I've already got. 

What I have now is 6 pages long in draft. I think I can streamline this a bit. 

_____

Update: After a weekend of revision, I'm down to 5 pages and a much simpler system to determine a robot's features and functions. 

Now I've gone back to the planetary environment effects. Thick atmospheres. Alkaline water. Constant earthquakes. That sort of stuff. 
 

 

Weekend of Gaming

 On Saturday, Justin ran a one-shot session of Mythic Bastionland. Here's my character sheet. I played Bertilak the Tankard Knight. Despite my fairly poor stats, I played him as a boisterous Brian Blessed type. C.C. played Glowy the Glass Knight, and Scott played Fainlin the Willow Knight. Glowy was exuberant and outgoing, while Fainlin was timid but hopeful of achieving glory. 

First, we had a tourney with three NPC knights (listed on my sheet). Glowy and Fainlin both won in the first round, but Bertilak lost to Demelza. Then Glowy, by lot, battled Demelza and won. Then Fainlin and Glowy fought, and Fainlin came out the champion. 

But at the feast that night, a weird minstrel woman put a spell on the assemblage and announced us the prey of Lord Spinjack's Hunt. Also, the lord's daughter was put into a magical sleep. So we did what mythic knights are wont to do, and set out to find Spinjack. We did, or rather Spinjack found us. And after a very rough battle, we emerged victorious. 

 ____

I have to say, Mythic Bastionland is a more interesting NuSR type game than the various Black Hack spin-offs I've played. The combat system of using a die pool and placing successes to do damage or have special effects (gambits) is complex, but a nice challenging mini-game. 

Also, the opponents get to make their own rolls, rather than me as a player having to roll defense. I've come to really dislike that type of system. But that's a topic for another post. 

Mythic Bastionland does a good job of making the game feel like you're in a fairy tale or Medieval romance, where everyone is representing some sort of superlative archetype. A bit like The Princess Bride. Buttercup is the most beautiful. Humperdinck is the greatest hunter. Fezzik is the strongest. 

On the ride home, Justin explained how the game normally sets up a campaign with six "myths" to explore, but once these are completed the campaign is finished. So it's really not designed around one-shots, but the campaigns have a built in shelf life. I like it, but it's probably not something I'd run myself these days. I've moved on to preferring a little bit heavier game (but not too mechanically complex). 

_____

Yesterday (Sunday), I ran Missions & Mahyem, trying out my near-future Bughunts & Bedlam campaign module material some more. Last session, the players explored a mining facility on an exoplanet that had been overrun with Krytes (the titular Critters from those old 80s movies). Honestly, I thought with their strong bite damage and paralyzing poison darts that they would be a challenge. But they weren't. I should have at least doubled, if not tripled, their numbers. Also, I realized that the d20 Future stats for laser and plasma weapons, which I copied directly, may be too powerful for this game. Charles's PC, Magnum, bought a plasma rifle and was doing crazy amounts of damage. Sure,when a Predator is chasing you, I want that damage to be nasty. But in the hands of the PCs, it was too much. So I toned it down a bit. Charles took a bit of convincing but he went along with it, and he seemed satisfied by the reduced but still impressive damage of the plasma rifle. 

And on to this session. The PCs were back on the space station orbiting the exoplanet. They had some clues that survivors of the mine might have escaped to another mine, and what do you know, that mine was also now not communicating with the space station or the other mines now. So they went back down to investigate. 

This time, they found a pair of Alien Bounty Hunters that were looking for the Krytes and also some Coeurls (a.k.a. the inspiration for the displacer beast in D&D). They didn't trust the party, but the Heroes tried to ally with them. Well, when they suggested that the ABHs head in first with the Heroes right behind them, they assumed the Heroes wanted to backstab them (sorta, the players just wanted the ABHs to take the brunt of any attacks). So they opened fire. After a short gunfight, one ABH was badly wounded and so were one of the PCs (Flynn's new Hero, on his first mission!). The ABHs retreated, and the Heroes spot welded them into the mine's habitat area -- unknownst to them, where three of the Coeurls were napping. While Jada's Hero Sarah dished out some healing treatments, I quickly rolled a combat between the aliens and the Coeurls won, with one of the three cat-beasts dying. 

The party went another way to explore the mine more. They found some robots still mining ice, and then in the fusion generator room found three Coeurls napping in the nice warmth of the Fusion GirlTM reactor.  The Coeurls had surprise, and attacked. Flynn's Hero, Agent K, was almost dropped again, and Denis' Hero Lloyd was also beat up pretty badly. Magnum and Sarah covered their retreat, and then Lloyd laid down suppressing fire (FINALLY got to test out that mechanic!) and let Magnum and Sarah retreat. Agent K blew up an oxygen tank to do a bit of damage to the Coeurls, then the party retreated and also welded shut that door! 

They headed back up to the space station to report their sorta failure. And when they got there, they realized something is off. In the first mission, one technician was acting oddly. Now, several people, including the doctor and vice-administrator, were acting weird as well. But that's a mystery for next session! 

____

It's good to be testing out a lot of these mechanics. There weren't a lot of general proficiency checks in this game, other than for healing. But the combat rules got a good run through, and seem sound even with some more powerful weaponry available. Also, the Krytes were not much of a threat in the previous session, but the Alien Bounty Hunters and Coeurls were good matches to a party of four 5th level Heroes.