November, 1994
Virgil S. Greene
email : klyfix@aol.com
November in an American election year. The time when we US residents get to determine at least a portion of our fate for the next two years. Given my personal choice I'd rather that the United States of America had a Parliamentary system in which we chose a whole government instead of our present system where we vote for our Congress people and President separately and hope that between Congress and the President a passable government can be worked out. We often end up with a divided government in which blame gets passed from one branch to another. Congresspeople end up in office in perpetuity as they can often avoid blame for government's failings. With a Parliamentary system, every Congressperson would also be judged as a member of their party particularly if they are in the party in power. More responsibility, more accountability.
Enough of the political sermon that has little to do with the normal topics (except that an American Parliamentary government is sort of SF); on to the Official Topic:
Clowns are raining down.
Hear the scream of the grease paint; danger!
Clown puddles.
-Tom Servo on MST3K
That's from memory; I may have some words wrong. Uhhh, ummm, unfortunately most of my experience with haiku was in elementary school in Hot Springs, South Dakota with a somewhat odd teacher. On to one of the alternate topics:
Ahh, much better. How do we use poetry in our campaigns? Here's some ideas.
I would guess that in most fantasy campaigns and even some other genres there will somewhere be a bard or minstrel or a close equivalent. They are a standard element of fantasy fiction and of gaming at least back to AD&D's super powerful bards in the original version. The bard sings the standard folk songs of his culture of course, but he also carries news and sometimes even inspires action against a great threat or evil. Ideally, a bard in a campaign will be a wondrous poet and beautiful singer. In practice, we often have to fake it unless we have such gifts in real life. For Live Action Role Playing it is not likely to be able to fake it, though in one game we were treated to the sounds of the great Eastern Bard Sanyo (think about it). But in table top games we can use descriptions of the reactions of the NPC's or what feelings are invoked in the players. We can also dig up appropriate poems from books and under some circumstances use recorded music as the song of the Bard.
Foul Slime, Curse of existence, begone! Turn your back and Flee from Me. I will kill you, you are evil. Lie and whimper before me.
Orlanthi challenge of things of Chaos from Cults of Prax.
The above is an example of a ritual poem that Orlanthi Wind Lords are required to use. Religions, orders, and other organizations are likely to use such poetry as prayers, challenges, oaths, or other ritual purposes. This can add a bit of flavor to a campaign and even some depth as PCs and NPCs do more than just state that they've made a challenge or performed a ritual. And the poetry doesn't necessarily have to be all that good; it just needs to fit the occasion.
Charlie Sheen, Ben Vareen, Shrink to the size of a lima bean!
Spell from an episode of Pinky and the Brain.
Spells in fiction frequently are poetic, or at least rhyme. Look at any episode of Bewitched. :) GURPS Magic even has rules for cantrips or "Poetic Magic" in which the result of the spell is determined by the content of the poem. Another way of adding flavor to a campaign but it also requires a lot of thought; players are likely to analyze any spell an NPC casts and try to determine the logic behind it.
There's of course loads of other uses for poetry in RPG, this has been a light sampling of potential uses.
Reindeer Games Published by Gamescience 1512 30th Avenue Gulfport, MS 39501
Here's a system that doesn't cost $25 or more for the basic book and another $18 or more for supplements. The basic rules and the supplements cost around $3 each. Of course we're not getting a big book for this price, we're getting a booklet, a ten sided die, and other variable stuff like maps, character sheets, and other play aids in every supplement. Is it worth $3? Well, let's see.
The system is indeed pretty darned simple. You role a tensider and check a table to get a starting Strength of 3 to 7. There are no other stats; success roles and hit points are determined from Strength. A character can sacrifice a Strength point to acquire additional skills (PCs start can start with a free skill or profession) or if they are a Mage to acquire additional spells or spell levels during character creation. Additional Strength, skills, and spells are purchased with Victory Points (experience points) earned during play. I don't want to give too many details because I'd end up including the whole of the rules in this article. :)
There's been several expansions to Twerps in most genres. The only ones that I think they've missed are Espionage, Western and Smart Animals but I think that it is possible to create those from what's available. Here's the ones I have seen.
Fly By Knights
This is actually a campaign book detailing Land of Demuria and featuring characters that ride flying creatures in service to Lords and Ladies.
Twerps Magic
Adds magic and mages. The system is actually rather similar to RuneQuest Divine Magic and can also be used for psionics in campaigns.
Kung Fu Dragons
This campaign book adds martial arts. It isn't a serious simulation; the skills are called "Fus" and include Sna Fu and Toe Fu. It also contains the world's smallest GM screen.
Space Cadets
This adds futuristic science fiction to the Twerps universe.
Rocket Rangers
The Twerps spaceship design and combat system; a companion to Space Cadets. Features spaceships plans.
Superdudes
This adds superpowers, of course.
Robo-Punks
This is sort of the cyberpunk expansion for Twerps.
M.E.C.H.-Tech
The universe of giant robot combat for Twerps.
Twisted Tales of Terror
A horror campaign set, featuring great Ragu-Lhu among other terrors.
Metaphysical Ninja Maniac Chainsaw Vitamin Junkies!
Uhhhh, this is sort of a post-holocaust campaign book in the spirit (kinda) of Mad Max and lesser films. Yes, Twerps is often not totally serious.
Twerps Twek
A Twerps parody of Trek. Features characters and ships similar after a fashion to those we know and love.
How To Do Everything...Better!
This is a general expansion featuring a lot of additional goodies for almost every setting. Also has some errata.
But Can You Really Play It?
The truth is I've never ran or played in a Twerps game. Most (all?) of my associates react negatively to the system. About the only use I've made of my Twerps stuff was in a one night session where I used the RuneQuest system, a modified version of Demuria from Fly By Knights (mainly used the Demuria map), some Call of Cthulhu monsters, and the Story Path cards White Wolf used to produce. I've also used the world's smallest GM screen from Kung Fu Dragons. I think it would be great fun for not very serious one session games. I'd modify it though. I'd give people eight or nine points that they could use to pick skills and set their starting strength. I'd figure that each level of a spell also includes one magic point that can be used to cast that spell or other spells, allowing for greater versatility in spellcasting. And I would likely use a chaotic universe setting where any sort of mix of characters could be in a party and people could bring in characters from another session with little more trouble than a dubious explanation of how they got from one place to the next. I'd be going for fun and maybe a little silliness; not profound and insightful deep role playing.
[Since this was written, I've run a Twerps one shot. I gave everyone a Strength of 8 and two skill choices, with some possible extra skills in some profession choices. It worked pretty well, but the scenario needed a bit more structure than I elected to use. And the Strength 8 was a bit too high.]
Most of my SF and Fantasy reading is in the various SF magazines; I rarely read full novels and these days I almost never buy a new book. Paperbacks cost $4 and more these days. So when I buy a book it is generally used. My reviews are therefore not exactly timely, but hopefully I can give some ideas on books to look for. Some may even have useful gaming ideas. These will be fairly short, hopefully.
First published in 1937
In my readings on SF I've seen references to Stapledon's work as amongst the great world-spanning classics. This book isn't one of his more famous works, but it is quite an interesting work.
When outsiders criticise SF, they often refer to the lack of characterization. But in SF, the story and the ideas are the things; characterization is a good thing but not essential to SF. This novel is not a character study; heck, there's almost no dialogue at all. But it deals with the basic nature of all of intelligent life.
The story consists of a mental voyage by an Englishmen and various other intelligent minds throughout space and time initially in search of intelligent life but ultimately in search of "The Star Maker"; God, essentially. And it covers galactic history from beginning to the end of Time, and before and past the existence of the Universe. Stapledon assumes that the majority of intelligent races are searching for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything and seeking God or His rough equivalent. The greatest races ultimately achieve a higher consciousness; a sort of racial mind and even beyond that to a Cosmic Mind. These great racial minds brought the Englishman and his alien companions out into the cosmos to learn of the universe.
What stands out for gamer purposes is Stapledon's descriptions of alien races. He assumes that most races will be at a core level "human"; understandable somewhat to each other. But physically and to an extent mentally they are vastly different. He describes near humanoids, plant creatures, starfish like creatures, spiderlike and fishlike creatures living in symbiosis, and so on. There are broad histories of the races from earliest barbarism to their ultimate demise. Interestingly, Earth's humans play almost no role in the history in the cosmos; passing away in an eyeblink compared to other races. Even if one doesn't like the overall story it has potential for inspiring very unusual races for SF and fantasy games.
This is a series of shared world anthologies in which a setting was created, the city of Sanctuary, and various authors were allowed to people it with various characters and use other writer's characters as long as they didn't kill another writer's character. In some ways it's a bit like a big RPG campaign with Mr. Aspirin as the GM; well, that's stretching it a bit but the writer's essentially were running characters in a world created by Mr. Aspirin with the assistance and ideas of various other writers.
The city of Sanctuary is sort of a backwater of the Rankan Empire, an up and coming nation that conquered the former rulers (to the extent Sanctuary can be ruled), the Kingdom of Ilsig. The Governor of Sanctuary, Prince Kadakithis (disrespectfully called Kitty Cat), is the half brother of the Rankan Emperor and was sent there in part to get him out of the way. Depending on one's view, he's either trying to impose Rankan tyranny or sincerely trying to bring law and order to a basically lawless city. The townsfolk deal as best they can.
There's magic in Sanctuary; professional mages, wizards dealing with curses on them, and sometimes even the workings of the gods as the Rankan pantheon attempts to establish primacy over the old Ilsig gods. The first book had very little active dealings by the gods, but the second book had obvious divine actions and conflicts between the gods. Most folk aren't don't use magic and even distrust and fear it.
And there's quite an underworld. Thieves, mercenaries, mages for hire, assassins, drug dealers and of course the ever necessary fence. It's a place where if you don't know what you're doing you'll end up dead. You may end up dead (or worse) anyway. A great place for a campaign.
In fact there was a Thieve's World RPG adventure pack put out by Chaosium with information for playing in most of the system available at the time, even Traveller! In Traveller the assumption was that this world was either a strange planet where for some reason magic works, a world fallen from a high tech state where the tech was like magic (Clarke's Law) with a little of it surviving, or a virtual reality (though the term hadn't been coined yet) computer game. There was also a Thieve's World Companion produced. The city of Sanctuary became the city of Refuge in RQ Glorantha during playtesting at Chaosium. Unfortunately these products have been out of print for some time and I picked up them up used. The Thieve's World boxed set I picked for $1 at the Brattle Book Store in Boston and featured a book signed by Andrew Offut, one of the Thieve's World authors.
But one doesn't necessarily need the boxed set to use Sanctuary in in one form or another in a campaign. Thieve's World is probably the fantasy setting most suited to adventure gaming that I've ever read and just cries out for a campaign. This is probably old news to some, but if one has yet to read the books pick one or more up and get some inspiration.
From the early days of Dragon magazine and the old Space Gamer comics have been a part of Role Playing games. While some have been serious comics detailing epic adventures the best in my opinion have been the humorous comics; the ones showing the funny side of gaming or of game worlds. Here's my choice for the best in '94.
This comic has been around ever since the original Space Gamer with various artists drawing the strip. But in all it's incarnations it's been a winner; pointing out the illogic and silliness of many gaming rules. And of course there's the occasional special themes like "Games That Should Not Be Played"; things like "Live Action Toon!".
Originally, "What's New? with Phil and Dixie" was in Dragon and parodied RPGs while perpetually threatening to cover "sex in D&D". It was gone for a long time when suddenly it was resurrected in The Duelist. Ah, but no longer did it parody RPGs, it was now all about Magic: the Gathering! While I suppose some folk will find that to be blasphemy, I think the new version is really pretty good and there's all sorts of humor to be had. I understand that there's a few overly serious Magic players who don't like the game being parodied so we know Foglio must be doing something right.
[Other CCGs ended up getting the treatment, also.]
This comic is sort of in the spirit of "Murphy's Rules", but instead of just finding weird rules it takes an average guy with average stats and abilities and average rolls, takes a given activity and sees what Joe Genero can do in different systems. You'd be surprised just how much difference the system can make; for instance an average guy can only lift 100 lbs. in Vampire (note that this is a normal human, not a vampire) but can lift 440 lbs in Warhammer 40K. It also notes oddities of individual systems; in the "Joe Runs Away" strip it is noted that in Shadowrun if two Joes run into each other at top speed they have a 50% chance of dying from the impact. An interesting strip.
This is a rather different strip. It is about RPG players more than the game. Each strip is about an established gaming group and the little things that often happen during play. Yup, rules arguments, accusations of backstabbing by player's characters, over-reactions to PC problems, all those little things that make life fun. There's also a comic book available in some game or comics stores or directly from Shadis for $2.95.
["KoDT" moved from Shadis to Dragon. For the comic book, check the "KoDT" Home Page below.]
LINKS
Wizards of the Coast (The Duelist)
Studio Foglio (Phil Foglio of "What's New" fame.)
Sanguine Empire (home of the Joe Genero archive)
Knights of the Dinner Table Home Page
The Book of Troff (big section on "Knights of the Dinner Table"