Hillfolk’s DramaSystem as a Meta System

Today’s guest post is from a longtime LARP ally and RPG writer friend of mine, Chris V. Chris has always astounded me with his knowledge of game systems, to which this post stands in testimony. Enjoy his exploration of the DramaSystem.

Robin D Law’s  Hillfolk: the Roleplaying Game of Iron Age Drama, and by extension the underlying DramaSystem game system, has been around since the end of 2013.  Thanks to the Kickstarter project we have many settings — or Series Pitches as they’re called — and the DramaSystem reference document.

The Hillfolk hardcover book has had a major impact on my gaming group, but not in any way we would’ve imagined when I first explained the game to them.  It changed how we build characters for other games.  We’ve begun to use parts of DramaSystem to build our characters and their relationships, before we even pick up the character sheets of the game we’re actually playing. It has become a metasystem we use for most of our games.

Pirates airship by Min-Nguen DramaSystem
Pirates airship by Min-Nguen

In Hillfolk, Robin Laws distinguishes between dramatic systems e.g. Hillfolk and procedural systems e.g. D&D, White Wolf’s Storyteller, Cortex and SilCore. In traditional games, the focus is more on what your character does, instead of why they are doing it. Instead of pouring over tables, calculating modifiers and having the dice decide your fate while facing off against an antagonist, dramatic systems have you and the other players come to a mutual agreement on the result of any challenge.

The focus always returns to the characters and their interactions with each other. This is very much in line with the style of storytelling found in television series such as the Sopranos and Game of Thrones, where while there are actions scenes, the focus is more on the characters and their personal goals.

In our groups, we discovered that we enjoy a balance between the different styles of game play. We enjoy the different procedural systems for the excitement and flavour they bring to action scenes.

Dramatic systems, on the other hand, encourage depth and increase player involvement in the story. They add layers to characters, turning the characters into more than just a collection of numbers that exist only to deal vast amounts of damage to foes. They bind adventuring groups along more lines than just abilities and the bonuses. Characters become brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. They become chiefs and advisors, rivals and lovers.

Many groups—including ours—consider those concepts when building our characters anyway, but using a system such as DramaSystem focuses the group on it. Everyone becomes involved in the dramatic side, even the player who always plays the loner and only speaks up to call out the amount of damage they did, gets involved. Instead of their tragic backstory getting lost in the Gamemaster’s notes and being resolved in one on one sessions, it becomes part of the whole game.

Both types of game systems gloss over the parts the other focuses on. Instead of playing a pure DramaSystem game, we use the system to add more to our traditional procedural games. Instead of clashing, we found that the systems ended up complimenting each other.

The first game we used the DramaSystem in this manner for was our Abney Park Airship Pirates game. Our Game Moderator came to us with the idea of playing a crew of pirates or traders belonging to the Skyfolk faction in the Abney Park setting. He then set precedence (a DramaSystem concept) by asking who wanted to be the captain?

As the first player it fell to me to proclaim my name and role in the group:

  • Always a fan of playing a dashing swashbuckler, I stepped up and proclaimed myself as Captain Eric Hail and said that I liked the idea of having a family member on board.
  • Our next player decided to play Eddie Hail, a scoundrel and Eric’s younger brother.
  • Our last player noticed that both of us had picked names beginning with an E and chose the name Epitome (Epi) Hail for our levelheaded younger sister, medic and engineer.

In this way we decided each character’s name, role, and relationship in turn. We moved on and defined each character’s desires:

  • Eric wanted to rebuild the family name to honour the memory of their father and his wife after they had died due to a feud with another family.
  • Eddie desired nothing more than to be free to see the world after growing up in his brother’s shadow.
  • Epi wanted to keep her family together through this feud, so she could go back to university.

Next up we defined our character’s dramatic poles:

  • The pull between being a dashing hero and a responsible elder sibling became Eric’s dramatic poles.
  • Eddie, on the other hand, was torn between being a free spirit with a criminal bent and a respectable member of the Hail family.
  • Drawn from her desire, Epi’s poles became the need to continue her studies and take care of her brothers.

At this point, we had a good idea of the characters and began to define what each character wanted from the others and why they would not give it.

  • Eric obviously wanted the well educated Epi on his crew as an engineer and medic, but her player pointed out that Epi was an independent young woman and that, while she would fulfil those roles most of the time, Epi would not be ordered about like a common sailor.
  • Epi, on the other hand, wanted Eric to forgive himself for the deaths of their father and his wife, but Eric saw it as his duty to avenge them and rebuild the family name.
  • Epi wanted Eddie to rejoin the family that loved him, but Eddie loved his freedom and had done things he didn’t want his family to know about.
  • Eddie wanted Epi to just let him go, but Epi was afraid of losing him for years again.
  • Eddie wanted Eric to see him as his own man, but in Eric’s eyes he was irresponsible and had deserted his family in their time of need.
  • All of this was because Eric wanted his brother at his side, rebuilding the family, while Eddie had acquired a taste for doing what he wanted and not what others wanted of him.

Our character concepts defined and explored with DramaSystem, we ignored most of the procedural system of DramaSystem. We used the Abney Park system to build our characters as we normally would and used its procedural system instead.  An interesting side effect we noticed was that because we already had fully-formed concepts, the nitty gritty character building went quicker.

Some of our choices even added side characters and background to the family we ended up creating.  For example: Our youngest brother named Ernie who looked up to Eric and got himself into trouble trying to impress him, usually spurred on by Eddie and taken care of by Epi.

The game played like most of the procedural style games we have played through the years.  We enjoyed the action that the procedural game provided.  Using DramaSystem though meant that when scenes became dramatic, we focused more on them and they turned into an enjoyable part of the game.

We knew what buttons the other players wanted to push on their characters and how our characters would react when they did.  The procedural nature of the game defined who was in a scene and established the framing and all that was left to do was to roleplay the scene.  The lessons learned from DramaSystem affected how we resolved the scene.  In this way we overcame a shortcoming of traditional procedural games: how to resolve emotion-filled scenes.

So when we discovered Eddie’s secret family and Ernie’s actions almost turned the crew against the Hail family, we had powerful scenes of family struggles, set against a backdrop of dashing duels and tense airship chases.  Instead of playing a DramaSystem game with a Series pitch, we played an Abney Park Airship Pirates game enhanced by the DramaSystem.  It focused us on our characters, deepened the connections between them and to the world, and enhanced our overall experience.

Chris lives in South Africa, where he enjoys exploring the depths of RPGs and other forms of storytelling. He also enjoys cooking and organizing events, as a way to live and hear even more stories.

Dwarves Rule

I’m overly fond of the little guys, although I’d never use the word “little” to a dwarfs face. I love everything about the bearded warriors. Their lore, their grim nature, … their beards. I guess I’m part grumpy dwarf me-self.

Recently, I’ve been watching the excellent Vikings series. In one episode, I believe the first, one character says to another “we’ll be as rich as dwarves.” That struck me as a veritable gold mine, excuse the obvious pun, for a dwarf related blog post, so here we are.

Dwarf by armandeo64
by armandeo64

Dwarven PCs are often portrayed as greedy, but there’s no RPG I’m familiar with where they are actually rich. There’s an obvious reason for this: game balance. You simply don’t want every dwarf to be running around with better weapons than everyone else in the party. Or do you?

Imagine a world where dwarves generally are much richer than your average human, elf or halfling. You can bet that every inn, blacksmith and brothel is going to charge our squat friends a much higher rate for their wears. And then we have the all too commonplace issue of thievery. An escalation in the cutting of dwarven purses leads to more heavily armed dwarves (if that’s even possible), which leads to a veritable arms race. No wonder dwarves are reclusive.

But there’s a shiny side to every coin, and you can bet it would be dwarves who organise the best expeditions to the most wondrous locations, along with the best send-off parties (with the best beer) and the best victory banquets. It is, after all, the excentric rich guy who usually blows his money on the absurd adventures (cough cough Brandson cough cough Musk).

Got any ideas for rich dwarves in your campaign?

(See what I did, I called the post “Dwarves Rule”, when I’m actually talking about rules for dwarves. Sneaky little hobbitses.)

Imagination by Design

Are video games killing our imagination?

Imagination by Design

Berin Kinsman of Asparagus Jumpsuit, when talking about creativity in our play experiences, wrote on his blog, that
“The thing I like most about tabletop roleplaying games, and the reason I’m not overly fond of video games, is that aspect of creativity and imagination…”. In other words, the great thing about roleplaying is that we can freely create and imagine, creating our own play experience. On the other hand, we can’t get this same creative freedom in video games.

Video games have to deal with a number of limitations. To work, they are designed and created to be a complete whole that fits within those limitations. The story, characters, setting, graphics, available actions and even the possible endings are all set. There isn’t room for more, and the players’ imagination is usually bound up within that whole. Play Batman: Arkham Origins and you’ll spend your time imagining that you’re Batman. Play any First Person Shooter and your imagination will be bound to the paradigm of the FPS.

Is this something we can solve with clever design? Can we design for the imagination?

Berin mentioned LEGO in his post, and the comparison with Markus Persson’s Minecraft is an obvious one to make. Minecraft is fun because the player creates, and when we create our imaginations go into overdrive.

That’s the key, create gaps for the player to fill.

Create + Activity = Creativity

But we don’t need to build games about building. We just need to make those fill-able spaces. The character in silhouette, who we never learn much about. The evil tower on a faraway hill that we never get to visit. The coin in our pocket that we started the game with. The things we hear moving around under the floor boards. These all help to engage our imaginations on some level.

What do you think? This topic certainly has a lot of depth. Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.

Star Wars: Age of Rebellion

This week I got to play Star Wars: Age of Rebellion. Read on to find out my thoughts on the game.

Inspired in Japan
It’s surprising how may Japanese role-players seem to get started on Call of Cthulhu. I have no idea why, but, where most westerners start with D&D, and might even refer to all rpgs generally as “D&D”, Japanese players have a firm foundation is the mythos. Certainly all of the Japanese players I’ve met, mostly teenagers, can’t get enough Cthulhu. Perhaps it has something to do with the ghosts and monsters that are so prevalent in Japanese culture?

Justin Mullis writes for the Lovecraft eZine that Lovecraft’s work came to Japan in the 1940’s, and has had a major impact on many creatives, including anime and manga artists. Certainly, Lovecraft’s work has inspired a huge number of artists and game designers all over the world. Maybe that’s why Call is so popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.

If you can find it, check out the anime Haiyoru! Nyaruko-san, but be warned, SAN loss awaits you.

Avernos Unearthed
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Rising Phoenix News
In a few weeks I’ll be introducing you to some of my friends, guest authors who’ve got some fantastic articles that are sure to inspire you.

Campaign Journal
I got my first chance to play Star Wars: Age of Rebellion, playing the ace character Zal in a run of the beginner game. I love starter sets, because they’re well put together and easy to play, and ease you into the bigger game.

The concept: It’s Star Wars, and you’re playing a Rebel up against the Empire. Sign me up. The action is set somewhere during the original Star Wars movies. In the starter, you’re tasked with infiltrating an Imperial base and capturing it for the Rebel cause.

Mechanics: Edge of the Empire shares mechanics with many new generation RPGs I’ve played, such as Marvel Heoric Roleplaying (and Cortex). You’re not going to be counting squares for movement or range, and there’s a fair bit more emphasis placed on telling a story from the results on the dice, rather than just saying “Oh, you hit with your blaster.”

Fantasy Flight love to give you custom dice, and much of the mechanics revolve around rolling a number of dice against other opposing dice. This is all very intuitive, and it seemed to make for a faster game. Combat didn’t take long at all, and was very easy to understand.

Components: I loved the map, the character booklets, the tokens and the dice. I don’t like that I can’t use my own dice for this game, but the dice compliment the game well. Fantasy Flight got better at making dice; the dice from my copy of Doom: The board game are fading fast, but dice from newer products are indented and should last forever. I only got to skim the rulebook, but it looks great, with plenty of pictures to inspire and examples and tables to clarify the rules.

Characters: the included pregenerated characters were great. Out of three players, everyone felt some connection to their character before starting out. Personally, I felt that Zal, my character, would be loads of fun to play and I wanted to really explore her motivations in game. I’m also glad that the characters weren’t rubber stamped copies of Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and Luke. You’re very much telling stories in a world where those characters are doing their own things.

Unfortunately there are no rules for character generation in the starter, but it looks like you’ll still get a few sessions and levels out of the box before you need to expand your collection.

In Short: Buy this game if you want to tell your own Star Wars stories. This box will get you started and set you up for expanding your game with other books in the series.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


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Sweat and snow

Today my students hiked 32km from school up a dormant volcano and back down again. It’s the 95th year we’ve run this event, so particularly special. I participated two years ago but chose to be a supporter this time around.

Today is wonderfully sunny with a slight breeze. Excellent for cheering, but the poor girls are struggling with the 26C heat. Throughout the hike there are stunning views of nature and at one point the path leads through a historic hot spring village. This photo was taken at the route’s half way point. Can you spot the snow capped peaks in the background?

New Pathfinder Tech

This is the year of hoverboards and Star Wars hype, which is all good news for role-players. Today we’ll look at basic rules for hoverboards in Pathfinder and inspire you to tell the story of three daring Tie fighter pilots.

Hoverboards
Imagine your players faces when they discover the ancient artefact they just uncovered is a hoverboard. Here’s my proposal for these awesome rides in Pathfinder.

The Fly skill gives us a great basis to work from, using a hoverboard is just like flying and generally uses the same rules. Hoverboard maneuvers are a little different.


Flying Maneuver Fly DC
Increase speed above normal speed by +5ft 6 (+2/5ft)
Turn greater than 45° by spending 5 feet of movement 15
Turn 180° by spending 10 feet of movement 20
Ramp of up to 45° 20
Balance while grinding 20

Hoverboard speeds: Hoverboards minimize resistance between the board and the ground, so are capable of intense speeds. Start with a base speed equal to the rider’s base speed +10. Going faster than this requires a Fly check, and each turn the rider can spend a move action to increase her speed by +5ft. So a human with a base speed of 30 rides easily up to 40ft a round and would have to make a DC 8 Fly check to reach a speed of 45ft per round. Note that hovering and riding slower than normal doesn’t require any checks, that’s easy stuff.

Turning: hoverboards turn as the rider shifts his weight on the board. To turn sharply, the rider has to contend with his momentum. One way to overcome the direction of momentum is to use a foot or hand grab to swing the board around sharply.

Ramps: If a rider takes a ramp of 45° or less, they can attempt to jump using their current speed as if making a running jump. They make the DC 20 Fly check for the ramp and then an Acrobatics check for the height or distance of the jump.

Rails: To grind a rail, the rider needs to ride or jump onto the rail or ledge and make the Fly check each turn to maintain the grind. Ending a grind is a free action.

Falling: Collisions at high speeds can hurt. For every 10ft of speed above the characters base speed (not hoverboard speed), a collision deals 1d6 points of damage. So a rider with a base speed of 30ft who hits a wall while riding at 40ft per round takes 1d6 points of damage, or 3d6 damage if riding at 60ft per round. Falling off works much in the same way, except that the damage is none lethal if the rider can make a DC 14 Acrobatics check to roll with the momentum of the fall.

There you go. Marty McFly would be proud. Let me know if you try these rules out and happy riding.

Inspired in Japan
It took artist OtaKing77077 4 years to finish his short film entitled Tie Fighter, and it’s way impressive.

With the Star Wars Age of Rebellion Rpg, plus the new Armada game and of course X-Wing, we have a great chance to tell the story of these three pilots. So, who are they, how did they get here, and why are they loyal to the Empire? I’d love to see someone write a scenario for this.

Avernos Unearthed
Avernos opens up with Avernos—Secrets, a free web enhancement available to all blog subscribers. Subscribe today and jump into a world on the verge of destruction. Be warned, there’s no turning back.

Campaign Journal
Getting in a quick RPG session is possible, but needs some work from the GM and all players involved. We played a 2 and a half hour session this weekend and here’s what we learnt.

Prep: As a GM, you’ve got to be as ready as possible before you play. Pre-written adventures are great for this. If there are rules you’re fuzzy on, read up before you play. I made sure I knew all about flying before game, so my dragon could terrorize the skies without disrupting play. Bookmark those rules too. Players can really help the GM by sending character sheets in before the game and reading up on all their feats and skills.

Setup: Similar to prep, but really, this is what you do when everyone is arriving, or just before. Roll20 is great for prep, because you can set everything up before hand. Make sure you have tokens or models for everyone, and a few pre-generated characters. Keep down clutter as much as possible. Really all you need is some paper, a pencil, the rules and a set of dice. Only add to this if it will make for a faster game.

Game Time: Establish a turn order and stick to it. Keep things simple and focus on the fun stuff. When the party approached a beauacrat wanting to know about an artefact, it sped things up to give them a summary, rather than force them to probe for details. Players should roll attack and damage dice together and think about what they’re going to do when it’s not their turn.

Aftermath: Really, fast games take real teamwork. Talk about what worked and how you can improve on things. Also, take the time now to get ready for the next session. If you’ve done the work, the next time around will be so much easier.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


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Spicy Stories, Free Books and Creepy Japan

I cooked a pretty good meal today. Garlic chicken, rice, onions, and cauliflower. It tasted amazing. The thing was that it looked plain, everything was a shade of white. As a GM, it’s our job to bring the excitement, to colour the world and spice it up for a fun session. This takes a number of skills, not least of which is story telling.

At Rising Phoenix Games, our motto is Tell Thrilling Tales. That’s at the heart of everything we do, and the key concept to this blog. I have always wanted to tell stories, and I realised that telling captivating stories is something that can be learnt and that takes time to practice. Role-playing games are the perfect medium to practice with, and the games table makes an excellent “dojo”. So here’s to learning to tell thrilling tales together, cheers!

Avernos Unearthed
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Get your free copy of Avernos—Secrets when you subscribe to the blog.

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Avernos Secrets Cover

Campaign Journal

Have you ever taken a look at dragons in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary? Have you ever played around with their stats, tweaking them to bring something unexpected to challenge your players? A different set of skills and some feat changes can give you some very interesting concepts.

The Covetous Wand Wielding Wurm: Ranks in Appraise, Spellcraft and Use Magic Device give you a wand wielder who knows the worth of every shiny object and has the magic to add it to his collection.

The Silver Tongued Serpent: Ranks is Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate and Sense Motive makes for the kind of dragon that might send the party on a merry dance, all for her own good.

The Slippery Snake: Ranks in Acrobatics (not a class skill for dragons though), Climb, Fly and Stealth make a small or medium dragons particularly deadly. Add feats such as Dodge and Mobility and you’ve got a very tough little worm.

Inspired in Japan

Who better to take you on a tour of Japan than Cthulhu himself… um, actually, I can list several better options. Chaosium, for example, have a book, so their’s need to endanger your soul (just the soul of your character).

Secrets of Japan is a 360 page book that takes you to modern day Japan, Call of Cthulhu style. It’s loaded with stuff for your investigator, delves deep into Japan and Japanese culture, and expands the Mythos into Asia.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales

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All the books!

We’ve got a bunch of titles that we’re about to publish, some book recommendations, and some lessons learnt from Disney. Enjoy.

Inspired in Japan
In my spring break I went to Tokyo Disney Sea, one of the world’s busiest amusement parks. What struck me was how much the park controlled the visitors experience, much like a GM control the player experience (there’s a pun in there somewhere).

Here are some ways they achieve this.

Visuals: Eye popping architecture, characters in costume, moving sets, smoke machines, lights, darkness. Every visual effect you can think of. We can use candles, light switches, props and costumes for the same effect, if not with the same budget.

Elimination of distraction: The park is cleverly designed to keep your eye—and attention—inside the park at all times. This keeps you immersed in the fantasy world that Disney creates. It’s also surprisingly difficult to see the exits to the park and quite easy to get lost in the labyrinth-like layout. Again, this keeps your attention where the park operators want it. The more we limit the distractions, the more our players are immersed in the worlds we create for them.

Sound: Sound, even the sound of birds in the trees, can really set the mood. It’s easy to do sound wrong, but I think the best thing is to keep it simple. Use sounds that set the mood you want but don’t distract players.

Avernos Unearthed
Everyone has a secret, and every secret has a price.

Avernos—Secrets is an upcoming free ebook that introduces you to the world of Avernos, a world where a secret war threatens humanity at a time of broken alliances and forgotten destinies.

Coming soon.

Rising Phoenix News
I know you’re as eager as I am to send your gnome from the garden and down into the deadly depths of the earth with Claustrophobia! And you don’t have too long to wait! The layout/artist guru-gnome just sent me a preview of the book, in all it’s illustrated glory, and it looks awesome. But I’m not going to show you anything just yet, I don’t want to spoil the big unveiling. Watch this space, you’ll be blown away.

Campaign Journal
I’m all over Pathfinder Society Quests at the moment. If you don’t know what Quests are, go check out The Silverhex Chronicles on Paizo, it’s a free download and well worth a read.

I’ve adopted the quest format for a bunch of once-off games I’m planning to run on Roll20. I’m so busy at the moment that it’s hard to squeeze in a game, but Quests only take an hour or so to play, making them perfect for busy people.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

Dwarves and Cheap NPCs

April 11th is Tabletop Day.

Tabletop Day 2015

Go join a game near you, find out more on TabletopDay.com.

Inspired in Japan
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, by Lafcadio Hearn, is a great read if you like your horror with a distinctive Japanese flavour.

Avernos Unearthed
As tough as their mountain homes, the hardy dwarves make their stand against the coming darkness. But it is a losing battle which they wage against the forces of the Abyss, as their numbers slip ever more rapidly into decline.

I love dwarves, I enjoy playing them and I feel I really understand them as a race, so I’m very glad to present them to you this week on the Avernos Wiki

Rising Phoenix News
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Campaign Journal
If you play Magic the Gathering, even half as much as I do, then you probably have a bunch of cards like these.

Magic Marketing NPC 1

In the spirit of Reuse, Reduce and Recycle, I turned mine into NPC cards.

Choose a side. I picked the sides that had cool characters and monsters .

Use correction tape or stickers to make some writing space.

Magic Marketing NPC 2

Add some text with a marker. I chose 4 points; Name, Race and Apparent Occupation (not class, because my “paladin” might actually be a rogue posing as one), Demeanor (how the character behaves) and Speech Quirks (how the character talks. Are they soft spoken or haughty? Do they have a lisp or do they tend to drone on and on and …)

Sleeve them. Shuffle them. Use them.

The final product looks pretty good. And they work well with my NPC Strategy Cards too, simple sleeve them together.

Magic Marketing NPC 3

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com


Be the Hero