Review: Creatures

I backed the Kickstarter for Creatures which billed itself as "Designed by the creators of Shadows of Esteren and Fateforge, Creatures is a love letter to fantasy bestiaries." Still waiting on the hard copy to arrive, I am going to talk through the draft document I have my hands on. Things may change, grain of salt etc.

tl;dr - nice product, a new angle on classic city and fantasy countrside plus a whole new steppe setting; I will be putting it to use.

First impressions on a flick through is that its gorgeous and exactly what I hoped it would be - one of those bestiary / setting combos similar to Veins of the Earth. The art is great, all tied together in a more 'pencils and watercolours of a real place' than the high fantasy standard of D&D main line products.

Plot creation: lessons for DMs from 10 years of Nanowrimo

tl:dr - for games as for books, plots spring from characters running about under their own impetus

I completed National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year which makes 10 years I have been doing it to varying levels of suces. Short version - 3 first drafts worth a damn, 4 I never finished, 3 that probably could be salvaged for parts. Maybe.

Change in preference for D&D edition

This was done as a check on survey responses for D&D Research Wizards to see which of two survey blocks was more representative. Gathered in September and November 2020, it seems odd that the editions preference should be so different.

Short answer - more recent block B is more representative. First block A had a strangely high group of 3.5e respondents within it compared to the understanding of the general player population. Using Roll20 player data as reported by Orr Reports we can see the shift in preference for different editions over time. This also happened during a large increase in players on Roll20 so we need to verify this.

Review: Thousand Thousand Islands

I went on a jag almost exactly a year ago, looking for RPG sources I would not normally pick up and followed the whisperings of something truly remarkable until I found the Thousand Thousand Islands. Then I ordered everything I could get my hands on.

Review: MÖRK BORG

To quote the site "Pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy OSR RPG about miserable bastards doing their best/worst in a bleak, dying world." Its arrival has made such a seismic clang it reached as far as the Guardian.

I backed the kickstarter because it looked cool and I got a snootful of loot, see below.

Hailed as "the most dangerous tabletop role playing game" I love the tear off pad for character sheets - it is a beautiful detail to emphasis 'do not get too attached to your character, life is cheap'. The system is a great, stripped down d20 based one. The summary of the rules on the inside back cover fill an A5 double spread - everything you need can be printed on a single A4.

But whats it actually like? Well for me, gorgeous, evocative art and a great set up for 'everything you need in one book'. I suggest it would be tricky if it was the first ever RPG product you picked up as there is no 'what do I do with this' but for anyone with a basic handle on the past-time I think there are good lessons here for paring back a game to be all muscle and sinew, nothing wasted. A fast, mean, predator of a game.

The blacker than the blackest black ethos is one I am down for but my current table likes things slightly more genteel and less gruesome, so we are waiting until the Corona-times pass. I think it will be excellent for one shot, high-kinetic games and look forward to giving it a shot.

Even without playing is though I adore the up-welling of content around it and some of the resources to help Game Masters and Players navigate MÖRK BORG are really useful no matte what you play. I particularly love DNGN Maker which is a great location creator when you want an evocative dungeon in a hurry.

Should you want more infor - another review of this "dark and bloody pinnacle" on Gaming Trend.

Results #1 from D&D Research Wizards

The Tabletop RPG Research Survey 2020 - 2021 Results Update #1 shows a first pass on results from their surveys - some interesting outputs and some verifications of things we might have expected.

The geographic balance of responses looks similar to other surveys - 96% from North America, Europe and Australia + New Zealand. It looks like a slightly stronger Europe response compared to other surveys seen and a lower response from the South America community (the Brazilian community appears abesent for whatever reason).

Looking at the European breakdown we see there is a lot of variation in the response from different countries between surveys. The UK is consistently the largest European presence in surveys but the variation between other countries shows an element of luck is involved in whether or not people respond - see the strong response from Germany and Ireland to this survey compared to others and lower response from Denmark. This suggests to me that the European scene is more atomised with pockets of the hobby existing with not so many interconnections.

The age profile of the respondents is in line with 'new generation' players - as confirmed by 92% playing 5e currently.

Very, very interesting to me is the response to the 3 pillars of TTRPG - combat remains flat across all age groups but the division between Roleplay vs Exploration is very strongly age dependent - this is super interesting - implying older gamers are in for the puzzles and the lore and younger ones are more interested in the chance to roleplay.

I am looking forward to seeing what outputs are gleaned from processing all the interviews.

NPC motivations to meet player role-play preference

tl:dr - popularity of RP suggest more easy NPC motivator/goal generators would be handy.

The various polls that say that for ~50% of people, their favourite pillar of TTRPGS is roleplaying, ~33% is exploration / problem-solving and ~17% is combat imply that the arguments we hear about systems and editions of games are overly focused on their combat systems.

From this great list of "Ten Challenges I Love in Games" only 2 of 10 options are combat - 1 is fighting, 1 is evading. 3 are variations on cold 'problem-solving' which the players not their character need to solve and 5 are role-playing - more or less matching to survey responses.

The question I would pull out of this is what sources can we lean on to meet this apparent large chunk of the game? D&D carries a great deal of combat system with it - it did grow out of wargames after all. While 5e DMG has NPC ideals, bonds and flaws (pp90-91) and schemes and methods for villains (pp94-95) these are a little light for people who do not want to conquer the world. I like the NPC motivations dice-drop sheet from Rolang or you get 'instincts' and 'obligations' from this NPC generator tool.

My personal approach is to quickly get RP hooks for NPCs is to tag them to their daily activities if there is no over-riding plot hook and then use a factional or 'fronts' style approach. So I will know what 'petty nobles of the Duchy' or 'major craft guilds' or 'good-aligned temples' are generally doing and what this front thinks of various things so these can be subbed in for any given NPC. The party goals table in 5e DMG pp72-73 can be used to generate faction goals though these may be far removed from the aims of an individual NPC. If the minor nobility has a goal of 'hunting a specific monster' then perhaps it will be the topic of conversation at a ball or the obsession over who killed the larges one last season rather than a thing they are all actively doing just now. Once you have that hook, pp244-245 of 5e DMG has a framework for Social interaction assuming everyone starts at indifferent unless there is reason to say otherwise.

Personally I like the 5 steps of the old 3.5e NPC attitudes (pp72 in the 3.5e PHB) which adds unfriendly (between hostile and indifferent) and helpful above friendly. Particularly where weight is being put on role-play and potentially achieving goals without combat, I think this is a helpful increase in granularity. The table has detail but generally DC 15 for Charisma/Diplomacy can bump attitude a step, DC 25 to bump it two steps. The actions that correspond to the attitudes are a neat cheat sheet to help manage face to face encounters without having to think too much on 'what would this NPC be willing to do at this point'.

The other two dials I tend to use is a) how informed the NPC is so whether what they know is close to reality or filtered through fourth-hand tavern talk and b) how much they care about what is going on which will manifest as how intensely they react to things; will they argue their factions point or just shrug and ignore if someone tries to needle them. I have not formalised this as a table, but I tend to block is as a d20 with 1-5 as 'low' 6-15 as 'medium' and 16-20 as 'high' whether that is information or engagement.

Going deeper on all this, I think sources from writing that discuss personality conflicts could be a useful addition to reading lists as sources to loot for NPC drivers and motivations.