Sapsorrow

Previously I said I felt lucky that when a really good idea hits me (or at least an idea that I think is good), it sort of POPS! into my mind complete and fully formed. After that it's all about cleaning off the direct and shining up the details.

Well, this one keeps coming. It hasn't stopped yet. I keep getting new ideas for it and ways to improve it and unfortunately, with the holiday weekend coming up, there is no way I am going to finish this project this month.

I am as sad a sap as Sapsorrow.

 

Now THAT is a sad sight if ever I saw one.

Even as I was getting ready to detail how Legend and Lore work, I began thinking how to refine the ideas for them, as well as considering adding a subsystem called Peril. I am on a roll. And yet...

The more I work on this the more I realize this is exactly the kind of game I would love and my players would not really get into. It's perfect for RECESS and would do very well with my old New Jersey group. For my current New York crowd...no so much.

I will continue to work on this and should have a finished game very soon. I will definitely be running it at the next RECESS Game Day, mark my words!

In regards to a new Fantasy game for my present group of players, I'm sort of back where I started. I say sort of because I have a bit more insight now as to what I want that will also work for them. If D&D is on the Red end of the spectrum and StoryTeller on the Violet End (although really its not. Its more Blue/Indigo), I need to find a way to locate or make a game that's...Green.

Green? Did I say Green?

It seems I walked right into my own metaphor. I knew there was a reason I liked that color.

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Barking Alien

The Luck Child

Sometimes I get lucky and when an idea hits me, it hits all at once, bringing the theme, setting and mechanics with it in one fell swoop. It is like being buried in an avalanche of coolness.

Yeah. It's like that.

With The StoryTeller RPG it was very much like that, although granted, it didn't start that way.

Actually, it started something like this...

Search for the right Fantasy Game - Get frustrated - Keep searching - Get frustrated - Consider making my own - Keep searching - Get frustrated  - Wait... POP! BOOOM! The StoryTeller.

So here's what I have so far...

Basically, the game is mechanically very similar to The Muppets RPG, which is in turn based on Risus, Sketch! and a number of other RPGs. In addition, some ideas from my Smurfs RPG have snuck in here as well. Since I designed that game with a heavy faerie folklore emphasis, a lot of the same concepts can be applied here (it also goes with the type of game I want to run and the stories I want to tell).

Above you will see the character sheet I designed for the game. It begins with, "Once There Was A...", where you list the type of character you are. Preferably, make this either as descriptive and folklore related as possible or as simple as you can. For example, The Luck Child could be identified as A..."Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" or A..."Luck Child".

Next is "Named", where you write your character's name. In our example, "Lucky" is the The Luck Child's name. Fancy that, eh?

"Who Sought Out" defines your character's overarching goal, quest, purpose or just what they really want in life. It need not be epic but it certainly could be.

The Luck Child did not initially seek anything, being happy to live life as the adopted son and bookkeeper for a Miller and his wife. After being discovered by the cruel and greedy King of the land to be the child prophesied to one day claim his throne, Lucky was told to head for the castle with a written, royal proclamation. Little did Lucky know that the proclamation told the Queen that, upon meeting the boy, she was to have the guards seize him and chop him into a thousand pieces.

Since Lucky did not know this, what he "Sought Out" could be listed as "His Fortune" or "The King's Castle".

This is where "Despite" comes into play. You could say, Despite "A Cruel and Greedy King" or "The Plans of a Greedy King".

Much of the interaction between the PC and the game mechanics and game universe (though not all of it) will come from trying to seek out what you want despite a thing trying to impede you. In the story of Fearnot, Fearnot is a young man "Who Sought Out" What It's Like To Be Scared "Despite" Being Incapable of Fear.

Finally, the opening of our sheet ends at the beginning with "And So Begins Our Story..." in which you give the title of your particular folktale. You see, each PC is a folklore character in a legend all their own. Not only will you be going on adventures of a mythic nature but you are also always on your own, personal mythic adventure. 

How are you liking it so far?

What's that? Hit points? Where are the hit points and armor class you ask? What is the Luck Child's strength? I don't know. Haven't the foggiest. Hmm? Initiative? Don't worry about such things right now my friend. We're here to tell tales by fire light. If it's important I'm sure we'll get to it.

You old schoolers getting a bit uneasy? Keep calm, read on and Fearnot...

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Barking Alien

***

I don't want to depart for today without acknowledging a few items of interest and importance.

Today commemorates the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech and the March on Washington that let it be heard. We could use an ounce of that fire in today's world.

On a personal note, I want to say Happy Birthday to another 'King', Jack 'King' Kirby, born this day in 1917. Born Jacob Kurtzberg, a native New Yorker, Mr. Kirby passed away at the age of 76 from Heart Failure in February of 1994.

He is remembered by comic book fans every day they look at an image or read a story featuring any one of the dozens upon dozens of characters he created or co-created for Marvel and DC Comics including The Fantastic Four, Black Panther, The New Gods, Mister Miracle, Galactus, The Silver Surfer and of course, Captain America.

I neglected to make mentioned on the 23rd that it had been one year since the passing of musician and Muppets puppeteer Jerry Nelson.

In loving memory.

A Story Short

As you may have noticed, this month I have been trying desperately to find a system with which to run a Fantasy role playing game of a very different sort from that embodied by the approach used in Dungeons and Dragons, it's simulacrum, clones and the seemingly innumerable games inspired by it.

I am not in the mood or mindset to run D&D. but boy, am I ready for some medieval fantasy.

At some point while contemplating this rather vexing conundrum and discussing it here, on a few forums and most notably in a private RPG discussion group I am a member of on Facebook, I remembered a pet project I had put by the wayside which could very well solve my problem.

Ever since I finished my Muppets RPG (finished is relative as I am forever tweaking it), I have wanted to create a variant that could handle some of the more serious and less overtly Muppety Jim Henson productions such as The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and one of my all time favorites, The StoryTeller

***

"When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for...The Storyteller."

For those unfamiliar with Jim Henson's The StoryTeller, shame on you. Shame! Leave! Go on, shoo! Never darken my doorstep again. You are not welcome here.

Oh, alright fine. Perhaps it's not your fault. You can stay but be on your best behavior and try to learn something. Neanderthals.

The StoryTeller was a combination live action/actors and puppet/animatronics series of television episodes that originally aired in 1988. It was an American/British co-production, originally conceived by Lisa Henson, Jim Henson's daughter.

Jim and Lisa brainstormed the concept of the series, basing all of the episodes on authentic folktales from a variety of countries and sources. Although all the folktales were Western European, many where considered quite obscure by modern recollections.

To me, there has never been anything else quite like The Storyteller. It is an amazing series and every time I think of running a Fantasy RPG, this show is what I am thinking of and hoping for.

As I have mentioned many times before, I did not read very much 'modern' Fantasy or 'Sword and Sorcery' growing up outside of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and a little Robert E. Howard. Much later I would read Moorcock, Lieber, Vance, and others but not until I was already 13 or 14.

Prior to that and even prior to playing D&D for the first time at the age of 8, I had read the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, the book Faeries by Alan Lee and Brian Froud, and a number of other tomes of fairytales and folklore.

While I came to appreciate both types of Fantasy for their own individual merits, there is a game for one type and not the other.

So, what I am endeavoring to do (fingers, toes and eyes crossed) is create a StoryTeller RPG based on the sensibilities of the show and the tales that it told and using a slightly more 'grown up' version of my Muppets RPG rules.

Will it work? Will my current group understand it?

Only time will tell...

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Barking Alien

I'm On To Something...

Gaming epiphany coming on...how about...

Oh yeah...

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Barking Alien

It's A Kind of Magic

Things have been pretty crazy around Barkley's Den lately. August is never great for my business, plus I've been kinda sick, so posts might be light until after Labor Day as I try to survive the end of summer.

As in the past, I look forward to Autumn when things should get back to normal.

Now in gaming news, I am still thinking about Fantasy. Strange right? I know. I can't believe it either.

Speaking of Fantasy, have you seen this...

It's pretty darn cool. Hyrule Historia is basically the Encyclopedia Zelda. It has everything from the various 'Legend of Zelda' video games, including but probably not limited to: characters, locations, storylines, a timeline of events and of course, the monsters and villains of the series.

I can't afford to grab it right now but wow, it is definitely on my list. Looking it over in a book store today I was even more inspired to run something in the vein of Zelda and Final Fantasy, perhaps with a touch of Oz and a side order of Ryuutama, The Dragon Egg.

It's very difficult to put into words how much I want to run Fantasy and how little I want it to be like D&D. It's not that I don't want combat or treasure or magic items or any of those things. It's that I want...

I want the setting to seem truly medieval and yet truly fantastic. The PCs should start poor, maybe even downtrodden. Their decision to go on an adventure or quest isn't for glory or riches, it's because it's their only hope. Perhaps it's more of a Jack and the Beanstalk situation. They sold their only cow for magic beans. When the beans grow into a huge beanstalk, what have they got left to lose?

It is my goal to create a campaign where there is more to (a PC's) life than just killing monsters and taking their stuff. There is a greater calling than finding gold and getting more powerful.

I want magic to be magical damn it. I want it to be dangerous and unpredictable, difficult and perhaps costly to use. I want cheap, simple spells to be relatively easy and safe to conjure up but powerful magics to be tricky at best and far worse than death at their worst.

I would like monsters to matter. I want Players to be unsure of their survivability when facing things that make them go WTF! is that. At the same time, I want to employ creatures of legend and folklore.

Honestly, this one should be easy or at least not that hard. D&D has made monsters so run of the mill, they are no different from seeing a horse or a cow on a drive through the countryside. Taking one of the dozens upon dozens of mythical beasts and faerie creatures D&D has ignored and painting a picture of them that most gamers haven't yet seen is something I know I can do regardless of system. Though, if something in the system helped with that it wouldn't hurt.

I want longevity. I would like my next Fantasy game to last a while. This may not be as simple as it sounds. I tend to get bored with Fantasy easily these last few years. Add to that finding a system that doesn't raise the PC's personal power up too fast or too slow (such that they get frustrated) makes this the most difficult element of all in my opinion.

Well, there you have it...a good idea of what I want and no decision as to what will do all this.

It's starting to feel like I need some real magic to conjure up the game I'm looking for since no such game exists.

Take it home Freddie...

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Barking Alien

Oh, forgot - This is the 666th post on Barking Alien. Wild right? I am so metal.