Midwestern Magic

The midwest is goofy. I won't deny it. Revel in it instead. Here are a few midwestern stereotypes and customs boiled down into magic items and a spell.

Bag of Bags
A plastic shopping bag that's always half-full of something you can't quite see. Incredibly lightweight. Anyone can reach into the bag and pull out another plastic shopping bag. The bags are always intact, clean, and from a local store. When a bag is pulled out it might be rolled into a ball, folded into a neat geometric packet, or just kinda wadded up. There are always bags ready to be reused.

Road Map
A detailed map of the local counties printed on durable waterproof paper and folded haphazardly. The locations and roads on it are positioned to show how much time it takes to travel between them instead of accurate distances. It the travel time changes (due to weather, traffic, or other obstacles) the map updates itself to show the new estimates.

Ice Scraper
A 3' long metal handle with a heavy-duty plastic blade set on one end and a combination plastic brush and squeegee attached perpendicularly at the other. Lets the wielder effortlessly clear away ice and snow. Using the scraper for any length of time makes your hands go numb, even if you wore gloves.

Ope!
A versatile spell. It can only be cast as a reaction to something else and the caster has to say "Ope!" out loud for it to work. When you cast it choose one:

• Smooth over a faux pas. Any rolls related to apologizing get +5 and advantage as you try to excuse yourself.
• Undo a mistake. Restore an item you broke, un-press a button, un-stub your toe, etc. Only fixes problems the caster caused.
• Move freely across an area. For one turn get unlimited movement through any type of terrain and occupied spaces without slowing or provoking attacks. To use this effect you have to say "Lemme slip on by ya there." along with the "Ope!" when you cast.

Anyone can learn Ope!

Project Ampersand 2: A Learning Tool

The first thing I noticed about the original text is how focused it is on teaching new players everything. Not just the rules but also the basics of roleplaying. Absolutely basic things like "pick a name for your character" and "your character can have their own personality traits." I suppose I just ignored it before, but looking at it under a microscope like this really drives home how aggressively the publisher was trying to expand their market.

Normally I wouldn't mind. Introducing new people to RPGs is a good thing. Doing it like this though? It's not elegant. If someone is interested enough to get the book and sit down to read it, you've already got their attention. They're putting in the effort to learn, so give them something clear and straightforward to read. The amount of guidance in the original text feels excessive, borderline insulting even.

Players are smart. New players are smart. They don't need a shepherding authority to guide them through a book. They just need a set of rules to work with and the author's trust that, however they end up implementing those rules, they'll do it in a way that's fun.

New players especially do just fine with minimal guidance and bring a staggering level of creativity to the game. They tend to go with what seems like the most fun and consistently knock it out of the park. GMing for newbie players is a blast.

With that in mind I'm cutting out all the text that feels condescending or covers things you could understand by looking at the character sheet for a few seconds. If something is actually necessary to play the game I'll rewrite it to be concise.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: December

First prompt! Let's see how this goes. The format for these will be [prompt] and [what was in my head when I chose it]. The 'what I was thinking' bit isn't part of the prompt, it's just a second serving of me shouting into the void. Run with it or ignore it as you like. 

This month's prompt is:

"trust in the strength of what you stand on"

There are abstract interpretations in that, but for me it's very concrete: The solidity of the actual surface I'm standing on. The sense of sheer mass underfoot when on a slab of exposed bedrock, the perceptible sway and rattle while climbing a lighthouse staircase; but mostly childhood memories of walking out on the ice. Knowing that a foot of ice could support a car and I'm perfectly safe; even though I'm looking down into dozens of feet of dark water that would kill me in minutes if I fell through. And later in life, the heart-stopping realization that I've made a horrible mistake as my boot sinks inches into a patch of spongy, partially-melted ice.

Have at and have fun!

*I'm using #TinyCoffinsChallenge to announce these, so that hashtag exists for real now. Go ahead and use it if you also want to yell on twitter.

Project Ampersand

I've picked up an old project again: I'm un-writing a book.

This is something I started in the spring as a personal challenge and experiment to work on when I ran into blocks on other projects. I'm taking the fifth iteration of the world's best-marketed RPG and editing it for length and clarity. The goal is to see how much I can excise and still have the game feel like the original when you play. So far it turns out I can cut a whole lot. (Page 23 in my working document is the info that's on page 60 in the original text.)

My goals for the experiment are:

1) Determine how much of the 317-page original text is unnecessary padding that doesn't affect the underlying mechanics.

2) See how much of the original game's success comes from the rules and how much is what the players bring to the table with their creativity and enthusiasm. If the pared-down skeleton of the rules plays the same as the original, then the key ingredient is the players.

My process is:

1) Cut out all setting lore and fluff. Anything that's not rules text or something you'd reference while playing is gone.

2) Clean up the remaining text by rewriting it. Remove padding, passive voice, and awkward rule descriptions. Fix whatever's left to be as concise as possible.

Things that are important to maintaining the feel of the original game are exempt. The goal isn't to make the tiniest game I can, it's to make the tiniest game possible while still preserving the original's flavor. If that means it ends up being 100+ pages long, so be it. I'm trying to distill the game to liquor, not evaporate it completely.

I'll do several editing passes before the new game's ready to go. Right now I'm still hacking away at fluff and doing rough work. It's forcing me to take an in-depth look at the game and consider the rules more minutely than I have before. In the past I've always just flipped to the sections of the book I needed and only gave the rest a cursory skim. Going over the entire text line by line has made me realize that hot damn the writing is awful, but there actually are some very good bits buried in the word slog. I just need to dig them out and dust them off.

When I'm done I'm planning to release the distilled version as a free PDF. It'll likely be a way off because while this is an interesting project, it's also exceptionally tedious and time consuming. There'll absolutely be breaks for other writing.

Introducing the Tiny Coffins Challenge

I've been introspecting about the reason I've not posted as much (or at all) this year. It's mostly that my blog content is fueled by my in-person games and the material I make for them. Pandemic hiatuses cut that off and I moved to working on other things like zines and books instead. While I'm not going to force it, I am going to try and post more. Writing small bits and pieces along with the larger projects is probably good for me. I'm also going to start giving challenge prompts. That way even if I fail to write, others might be inspired to create.

Here's how it'll work:

It'll be an informal, open blog-writer's circle. Each month I'll post a prompt and some associations it brings up in my mind. Anyone who wants to can think about it and do something with it. It can be RPG related or not, just so long as you make something. Then over the course of the month everyone can share what they've done and compare where your minds went.

I'm not going to write for the prompts or be involved in any way beyond yelling them into the electronic void in an expression of Tiny Coffins. I may not even look at the results. (Though I likely will if you tell me you wrote something.)

We're too late for a prompt this month, so I'll post the first one in December. Hopefully it'll be fun and we'll see some cool things come from it.

Obviously and as always: Give content warnings as needed and no bigoted or -phobic content.

*If you want to share posts on twitter, maybe try using #TinyCoffinsChallenge. That hashtag doesn't seem to be used for anything.

Oneironauts 2

 And a second volume! More surreal backgrounds, enemies, items, and spells for your dream-based Trokia! game. 

Get it here for PWYW.