Spes Magna Games

One of my current projects is Heroes & Monsters, which I hope to have done in time to playtest in May. This roleplaying game hopes to provide a suitable introduction to gaming for people who’ve never to hardly ever played an RPG before. My design goals for H&M encompass four areas:

1. Flexible & Easy to Learn
I want a game that can be adapted to a wide variety of situations and scenarios within the fantasy genre. The rules of an RPG should serve the players and the kind of game they want to play rather than unnecessarily limit choices.

Many RPGs are quite complicated, presenting players with dozens to hundreds of different options, and that’s just looking at character creation. The rules that govern the use of skills, magic, and combat then contain oodles of variations, situational modifiers, and exceptions to the norms. As a result, these sorts of RPGs include hundreds of pages of rules that are not only not easy to learn, they’re down right unfriendly to new players.

H&M takes the core mechanic of the d20 System and adds to it tools to increase flexibility and flatten the learning curve. The result is an RPG that you can start playing almost right away.

2. Shared Narrative Control
Narrative control in game terms refers to the ability that players have to shape the direction of the story they are playing. In many games, the bulk of narrative control rests in the hands of the Game Master. The GM makes up the adventure, sets the challenges, determines what happens next, et cetera. More or less, the other players react to the situations set forth by the GM.

There are two unintended consequences of investing so much narrative control in the GM. First, the GM ends up doing much more work before, during, and after the game session that the other players do. Often, the GM does more work than all the other players combined. This can result in the GM getting tired of GMing, and a tired GM makes for a poorer RPG experience. Second, the other players get little training in the skills needed to be a GM. With the GM calling so many of the shots, players have less incentive to immerse themselves in the game in meaningful ways.

H&M strives to spread narrative control more evenly among all the players. The GM ends up with less work, the players with more options, and everyone with more fun.

3. Heroic
It seems like the recent trend in RPGs is toward what’s referred to as edgier or darker elements. Fans of these games claim they explore adult themes, and often toss out examples such as drug abuse or exploitation of one group by another. Drawing distinctions between right and wrong gives way to shades of moral gray that end up robbing characters’ actions of meaning. After all, if all choices are equally right, then all choices are also equally wrong.

This recent trend smacks right into one of my abiding prejudices in RPGs. I don’t like things to be edgy and dark except in contrast to the heroism of the characters. Things like drug abuse and exploitation are not entertaining, and they’re not really suitable for the good guys. I like for player characters to be genuine heroes, fighting against the forces of evil. I like for there to be a definite right and wrong, and for heroes to do their best to end up on the side of right.

I’ve written H&M so that your PC isn’t just an adventurer. Your PC isn’t a mercenary hopping from one paid mission to another. Instead, your PC is a hero. A hero might get paid for being heroic, but the money isn’t the primary motivation.

4. Cooperative
RPGs should be played cooperatively. There is no way to win an RPG. You aren’t competing against the other players, and that includes the GM. Since no one gets to win, you can instead focus on having fun and on helping ensure the other players have fun as well.

After all, what’s the sense in playing any game if you’re not having fun? H&M doesn’t really have rules for cooperation (although there are a few). Instead, the cooperative stance of an RPG deals more with the attitude of the players than the rules. Throughout the H&M PDFs, I offer suggestions about how to increase the fun. Use those that you feel work best for you, and ignore those that don’t. Best of all, invent your own suggestions. Make the game yours.

Tags: Heroes&Monsters

It’s time for another What Is It? Contest. This time the prize is unlimited bragging rights for having the best monster as judged by the votes of your peers plus any one PDF from my catalog. The picture for WIIC2 comes from Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584):

The rules are simple:

1. One submission per entrant.

2. Post a complete stat block and fluff text for the creature depicted above in the ENWorld thread linked to above using the standard format for PF monsters. Also, include at least two plot hooks for the monster.

3. Your work must be your own and cannot use anyone’s Product Identity or Closed Content material.

4. The deadline is 3 March 2011. After this, all entries are considered final.

5. A winner will be chosen via a poll set up in another thread. This poll will remain open until approximately 10 March 2011.

6. All entrants retain rights to their submissions.

The Prizes
1. The winner chosen by poll gets to brag about awesome his or her monster is.

2. The winner will receive a copy of any one PDF from my catalog. Reception of the PDF is contingent on me having a valid email address for the winner.

(Written for Game Geek 14.)

When in the Course of gaming events it becomes necessary for players to dissolve the roleplaying bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of Oerth, the separate and equal station to which the Rule of Fun and of Fun’s Arbiter entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of gamerkind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all gamers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Dice, Frivolity and the pursuit of Fun. — That to secure these rights, Game Groups are instituted among Gamers, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gamemastered, — That whenever any Form of Gamemastery becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Gamers to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Game Group, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Free Time and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Game Groups long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that gamerkind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Game Master, and to provide new House Rules for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Game Groups; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Gamemastery. The history of the present Game Master is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Players. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Rules, the most wholesome and necessary for the gaming good.

He has forbidden his Players to write Backgrounds of interesting and useful game hooks; and when so written, he has utterly neglected to use them.

He has canceled Game Sessions repeatedly and without advanced notice, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the gamers.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Rules for establishing nonarbitrary Difficulty Classes.

He has made Players dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their characters, and the amount and payment of their XP awards, causing them to languish without advancement.

He has kept among us, in times of unnecessity, Standing NPCs that hoggeth the glory without the Consent of our gamers.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our group, and unacknowledged by our house rules; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For nerfing large numbers of spells and class features frequently used among us:

For protecting monsters, by choosing only those invulnerable to the class features of our characters:

He has constrained our fellow Player Characters taken Captive by high Enchantments to bear Arms against their Allies, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Game Master, whose style is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the game master of a free game group.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Gaming brethren. We have appealed via Chat Rooms and Discussion Boards to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, claiming that the GM is like unto God.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united Groups of Gaming, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the campaign world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Groups, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Groups are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent Groups, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Bad Game Master, and that all gaming connection between them and the Bad Game Master, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Groups, they have full Power to search for a new Game Master and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Gamers may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Share of the pizza money, and our sacred Honor.

Tags: Game Geek