This is a new class for Dungeon World that I’ve been working on for the last few days. It hasn’t been playtested yet (though one of my players in my upcoming DW campaign has agreed to play it), so if you read it or play with it, I’d appreciate feedback. You can send it to me at engard (at) gmail (dot) com. Also, this is a Photoshop hack job of one of the official DW character sheets (the Ranger, if you’re curious). The art assets are NOT MINE, except for the Marshal’s symbol in the lower left, which I kinda-sorta threw together based on some random Google images. If I ever decide to sell this thing, I’ll commission my own art assets.

The class itself is my answer to the 4e Warlord, which is a concept that I liked a lot in that game. The Marshal is a commander, a warrior who makes those fighting under her more effective. She has a loyal follower and a number of moves that grant her access to even more people she can command. Enjoy.

The Marshal

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Want to start the players in an interesting situation and get their help filling in some of the details of the world? Use this.

First say: “You’re standing around a pile of bodies.”

Then ask one of these questions to each player in turn:

• Where are you?
• Who sent you here?
• What killed these people?
• Who were they?
• What’s out of place here?
• Whose fault is it they’re dead?

Bam. Instant adventure starter.

The post Cold Open for an Adventure appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

This is something I’ve been noodling on lately. It’s kind of a mashup of Fate, Apocalypse World, and Lady Blackbird, because fuck yeah.

Basic idea behind skills is that you choose a skill and narrate in any relevant tags on that skill. You roll 4dF, and get +1 for the skill and +1 for each tag you narrate in. Tags also act as aspects, and you can spend a fate point to invoke them in the same way. If something tells you to roll+2, you just add 2 to your 4dF, no skills involved. Other stuff should be self-explanatory, but feel free to comment with questions if it’s not.

Attack
When you try to do harm to someone, either physical or mental, roll against their defense score.
Fail: You either fail to hurt them and give them a boost, or you get a boost and they hurt you.
Tie: You don’t hurt them, but you get a boost.
Success: You hurt them.
Success with Style: You hurt them and get a boost.

Defend
When you defend against someone else’s attack or attempt to create an advantage, assemble a defense score. Do this by choosing a skill and selecting tags the same way you would for a roll; your total sets the difficulty for their roll.
If you’re surprised or unable to defend, your defense score is 0.

Overcome an Obstacle
When you try to overcome an obstacle, roll against that obstacle’s difficulty.
Fail: Something goes horribly wrong. The GM will tell you what.
Tie: You overcome the obstacle, but at a cost. The GM will tell you what.
Success: You overcome the obstacle and nothing goes wrong.
Success with Style: You overcome the obstacle in an impressive way. This may translate into a boost, or it may be purely narrative.

Create an Advantage
When you try to create some sort of advantage you can use later, do one of the following.

• If someone can oppose you, roll against their defense score.
• Otherwise, roll against a 2.

Fail: Something goes horribly wrong. The GM will tell you what.
Tie: You create your advantage, but things don’t work out quite the way you planned. The GM will tell you how.
Success: You create your advantage. Name an aspect or create a new one; it becomes a scene aspect. You can invoke it once for free or pass that invocation to someone else.
Success with Style: As success, but you can invoke the aspect twice for free (or pass one or both to other people).

Jode Kelber

Grizzled Jedi Warrior
Force Mobility, Lightsaber, Unshakable, Telekinesis
Sith Hunter
Intimidate, Track, Mental Defense
Teacher
Weight of Experience, Spare the Rod . . .
Survivor
Instincts

Physical: Winded, Injured, Wounded
Mental: Shaken, Exhausted, Broken
Dark Side: Angry, Furious, Murderous

Use the Force
When you use the Force to overcome an obstacle or for defense, you can spend a fate point to use Grizzled Jedi Warrior and one other skill.

Power of the Dark Side
When you call on the Dark Side for aid, you can add all applicable tags from up to two additional skills. After the action, advance your Dark Side track.

Slippery Slope
When you perform an act of evil or use the Force to attack, advance your Dark Side track but take +1 to the roll.

Force Heal
When you call on the Force to heal another person, spend a fate point and roll +2 against a difficulty based on their Physical track: Winded 1, Injured 3, Wounded 5.
Fail: They get worse somehow. The GM will tell you how.
Tie: You give them comfort but don’t truly heal them. They get a boost, but that’s it.
Success: You reduce their Physical track by one step.
Success with Style: You reduce their Physical track by two steps, or by one step and they get a boost.

The post Aliens vs. Jedi: An Idea appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

This is something that’s been on my mind lately as a possible thing to do in Fate. FYI: after some conversation with Lenny Balsera, I’ve found out that this speaks to how he and Ryan Macklin reverse-engineered Apocalypse World when they were designing Fate Core. So here’s an Athletics stunt:

Wind Step: When you perform a feat of impressive acrobatics and speed, roll Athletics against Fair (+2) opposition. If you succeed, you can run on vertical surfaces and make improbable leaps until your next turn ends. If you succeed with style, you can do it for the rest of the scene.

You might think this could end up in the Toolkit, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

The post A Stunt Hack for Fate appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

With all the excitement of signing up for GenCon and getting a room (and the unfortunate timing involved with my missing Dreamation), I’ve been thinking about cons a lot and what to bring with me. I have a standard con kit that I typically bring with me everywhere, and it evolves as I get new cool gaming gear. In no particular order:

1. My bag of holding. Got this thing from ThinkGeek, and I love it. It’s spacious, easy to tote around, and full of pockets to store the kit proper. I use the thing almost every day (it’s my work bag too), and it’s holding up really well.

2. Dice. In addition to the standard set of polyhedral dice, I also make sure to bring a big pile of fudge dice with me; I run a lot of Fate games after all. I also like to throw a handful of extra d6s in there, because you never know when you’ll need a handful of d6s.

3. Realm Coins. I backed these through Kickstarter a while back and I don’t regret it. I’ve got 90 of these little coins in three different types (gold, silver, copper), and they’re great for any time you need tokens or counters of some sort. Need fate points? Plot points for Marvel? Something to track hold in Apocalypse World or Dungeon World? These things are great.

4. Index cards. Always, always, always. Doesn’t matter what game I’m running, I almost always find a use for these.

5. Pens, pencils, sharpies, dry erase markers. All useful for different things. It pays to be prepared.

6. My folding dry-erase board. I just got this thing and I can envision all manner of uses for it. It folds up to the size of a stack of index cards, unfolds to a size that’s great for most tables, and comes with a cloth bag you can use as an eraser. Can’t wait to use it.

7. A notebook. I almost always need to write things down, so I always make sure I have a nice thick book full of blank pages.

8. Binders of stuff. For games I run, I tend to print out materials and keep them in binders — either separate binders or one binder with dividers. I do tend to switch these out a bit more than the other stuff because they can get heavy.

9. Books. I find I usually need a book for reference when I’m running a game, but I try to minimize the number of books I’m carrying because of the weight thing.

10. A bottle of water. I get thirsty, and I like to stay hydrated. Most cons have places I can refill throughout the day, and it’s better for me than Mountain Dew or coffee.

The post My Con Kit appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

I read (and responded to) a tweet today that got under my skin a little. Because tweeting in that state often leads to escalation and misunderstandings, and because you shouldn’t argue a point with someone just because you can, I thought I’d let it simmer for a bit and turn it into a blog post.

I’m paraphrasing here, but the tweet boiled down to: a good GM can save a game when faced with bad players, but it’s rare for good players to do so when faced with a bad GM.

Now, leaving aside the idea of labeling people as “good” or “bad” players and GMs, I have a major problem with this statement, as well as with the statements that followed. If this statement is true, how does it help to state it as a truism? Wouldn’t it be more constructive to come up with solutions to the perceived problem and talk about those instead? So again, assuming that that statement is true, how can we as gamers address it?

Take responsibility. Every player at the table is responsible for every other player’s fun, in addition to his or her own. It’s not the GM’s responsibility to save a game; it’s the whole group’s responsibility. How do you do that? By starting a conversation. Your fellow participants in the game are people, and people can only correct things when they know something’s wrong. Don’t wait for the GM to guide the game back into the fun; start a conversation with the group and discuss what you find fun and what you’d like to do that you think will be fun. Don’t sit there and stew about how the guy next to you keeps on hogging all the treasure; tell that guy, as politely as possible, that you’d rather he not do that. You can get a lot just by asking nicely or discussing things with people in an open, honest way.

This is not an excuse to nitpick your fellow players’ faults and focus on every little perceived slight; that won’t make anyone happy, it won’t generate any fun, and it’ll likely bring the game to an abrupt and unpleasant halt. Instead, keep the lines of communication open. Be clear about what you want out of the game. Listen to your fellow players when they tell you what they want, and do what you can to give it to them.

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Thought y’all might be interested in this; it’s the art reference doc I sent to Evil Hat today so they can make pretty pictures for Wild Blue. Enjoy.

Wild Blue Art Reference

The best way I can think to describe the aesthetic of Wild Blue is that it looks the way Bastion’s narrator and soundtrack make you feel. If you haven’t played Bastion (or if that nonsense just doesn’t mean anything to you), then think of a Weird West-ish setting with a bit more fantasy thrown in. Prairies, mesas, great mountain chains, untamed forests, deserts; all that stuff has a place in Wild Blue. But there’s fantastical stuff too, like a town built on top of a lake, or copses of trees the float in the air, or a glowing blue rock that’s mined for its magical properties, or a train in the sky.

Things I think should be handled with art pieces:

Whitehorse: This guy’s the narrator of the setting. He sounds like Sam Elliot and Chris Kristofferson mixed together after a night of hard drinking. Looks like that too. Grizzled gunslinger type, wears the gunslinger garb, and he’s got a hard, haunted look on his face. Whitehorse can see into the future but he can never change anything he sees, and that’s had a profound effect on him. He’s dangerous, probably one of the most dangerous men in the Blue Lands, but he’s past his prime. He’s a teacher now, teaching younger Wardens to do what he once did himself. Maybe some regret, maybe a little pride (but only a little).

Wardens: Wardens are the superheroes of the setting, but they don’t necessarily dress in superhero costumes. Stylized cowboy outfits, great big dusters, wide hats, six-shooters at their sides. The Cobalt Star of the Wardens on each and every chest. This thing’s a badge, like a sheriff’s star, and it’s the badge of office. Each Warden may have some affection, some bit of garb or facepaint or whatever that speaks to what they can do, what their power is. Run with that a little. Also, don’t be afraid to give Wardens obvious physical manifestations of their powers, but don’t overdo it.

The Sky Rail: This is a train that rides on tracks in the sky. The tracks are made of skywood and cobalt, with great skywood buoys that hold them aloft. It’s not like a regular train or train track; the train rides in between the rails, with open sky above and below, wheel-arms jutting out to either side fastening onto rails such that they don’t easily detach.

A Sky King’s Ship: The Sky Kings are pirates with delusions of grandeur. Run with the pirate motif. They captain these big flying ships, but their ships don’t look like sea-going boats. They’re giant hemispheres of skywood, flat end up, with sails that can swivel around the outer rim and a great main mast that’ll spin in place when needed, right in the center of the ship. Their landing gear look like a big spidery tripod that folds out when they need to rest on ground.

The Folk: They come in every shape and size, and I do mean every shape and size. Short, tall, bipedal, quadropedal, hairy, scaled, horns, human-looking, winged, blue skin, whatever. These guys are a bit like the fair folk of Celtic legend, with more than a little wandering monster thrown in. They are not mindless beasts though; they’ve been displaced by the humans who moved in and took their land, and will look alternately either dejected, furious, or mischievous. Some assimilate into human culture, but most either go to the Folklands (a vast reservation for their kind) or join the Crimson Council and fight against the Wardens and the people of the Blue Lands.

The Citadel: This is the Wardens’ base of operations, a huge floating fortress on a giant chunk of rock that stays aloft through cobalt reinforcement and skywood buttresses. It hovers several hundred feet above the city of Cobalt (the capitol of the Blue Lands), and you access it by way of either the Sky Rail or a system of rope-and-pulley elevators all around it.

Laketown: It’s a town on a lake. Not on the shore of a lake; on the lake. The houses, streets, everything; it’s all boats and floating platforms and bridges and such. They farm kelp, fish, and harvest all manner of medicinal herbs from the lake. Laketown is also home to the largest collection of guilds in the Blue Lands, so there’s plenty of wealth here.

And finally, some inspiration and reference pieces:

http://pinterest.com/zelgadas/wild-blue-art-reference/

The post The Art of Wild Blue appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

Not all playtest feedback is valuable. This isn’t to say that you, as the designer, shouldn’t at least listen to any feedback addressed to you; you should, even if you’re ultimately not going to take the suggestion. But designers, this post isn’t for you.

Right now I’m talking to playtesters. I’m a playtester too, you know. I often playtest things for fellow game designers, and something that I struggle with is offering feedback that isn’t valuable to the designer. I don’t mean saying stuff like, “This sucks” or “This is great.” That kind of feedback is also not particularly valuable because it lacks specificity, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

Let’s do a for instance here. You agree to playtest a game because it sounds awesome. You sit down and play it and you have a decent time, but there are things about the game that bug you, things that don’t seem quite right, things that make it a game that you’re ultimately not interested in playing. Worse, it seems like those things are deliberate choices, choices that marginalize you as a player and make it clear that you’re not the target demographic. Your immediate response is to call the designer on these choices, to try and guide him or her into creating the game that you want to play.

That’s what I’m talking about. I’m as guilty as anyone else when it comes to this kind of thing because it’s a human reaction. It’s human to feel jilted by something when you’re excited about it and it turns out to be something different. It’s natural. But that doesn’t mean your feedback, your attempts to guide the designer back to the correct path, are a good idea.

Here’s the thing: just because a game is not for you does not make it a bad game, or a flawed game, or a broken game. A game can be both well-constructed and something you’re not interested in; those things are not mutually exclusive.

The trick is that you have to recognize when your feedback is helping to make a game a better version of itself, and when your feedback’s intent is to make it into a different game. If the latter, your feedback isn’t going to be all that useful to the designer. Think about the intent of the design, and if you’re unclear on that, ask the designer what his or her intent is. Use that to guide your decision.

The post When Not to Give Playtest Feedback appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

Today we’ve got an excerpt from Becoming. This one tells you how to create a Hero.

Creating a Hero

Before play starts, the group needs to create the Hero. In each Quest you’ll find a section on creating the Hero, and in that section you’ll see a number of Assets listed to choose from: six Virtues, six Strengths, and six Allies.

Virtues represent the Hero’s core beliefs, the things she holds dear, things which are most important to her. These are the things that drive her to become a Hero in the first place.

Strengths represent the things that the Hero is good at. These are the skills the Hero calls upon when things look grim.

Allies are those characters who choose to accompany the Hero on her Quest and aid her. They are her friends and companions, and they stand by her when others would quail and run away.

There are six each of these Assets, but the Hero only uses three of each (for a total of nine assets). Before play can begin, the group must decide which Assets the Hero has at the beginning of the Quest. Starting with the player in the role of the Hero, select one of the available Assets and write it down on an index card. Write your selection near the top, leaving plenty of room for things to be added below it. If you’re using a printed out Hero card, cross the Asset off and pass the card to your left. If you don’t want to cross it out because you’re just using the Quest right out of the book, you’ll have to remember that you’ve used it already. The important thing is that you can only use each Asset once during Hero creation.

This continues until your group chooses three Virtues, three Strengths, and three for the Hero. Yes, this means that the Hero will get to choose one more Asset than everyone else. That’s intentional; the Hero should have more say over her character than everyone else, after all.

Finally, choose a name for your Hero. There are a couple of examples included in each Quest, but don’t feel like you have to use them. Make a tent card out of one of your index cards and write your Hero’s name on it.

Example: Tom, Mary, Jack, and Evie sit down to play through “Long Live the King”. Mary is playing the Hero, so she chooses the first Asset. Looking over the list, she decides that her Hero believes in a higher power, and chooses Devout Faith from the list of Strengths. She writes it on an index card, crosses Devout Faith off of the Hero card, and passes the Hero card to the next player, Jack. Jack chooses an Asset and does the same, then passes the Hero card along; this continues until Mary finally chooses the last Asset. When they’re done, she’s got three Virtues, three Strengths, and three Allies she can call upon during play. She decides upon a name not on the Hero card – Allia – and writes it on a tent card.

The post Becoming: Creating a Hero appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

That’s right, Becoming has its own site now! You can find it at www.becomingrpg.com. It’s a little bare-bones now, but it’ll fill out with time.

The idea is that the site will be the destination for any news having to do with Becoming (any future posts on this blog that are related to Becoming will also show up there), as well as the destination for new content for the game (once it’s out), both official and user-generated.

The new site is the next step in making this game a reality. I’m excited about the journey, and I hope you are too!

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