Ideas... wow

Right, quick jot:

Based loosely on the anti-Pool, but things about a character limit the number of dice you can bring to bear.

GM can seed the story in two ways: name phrases, people, vibes with a pot of bonus dice. These increase the number of dice you can bring to bear (or just add some freebie dice). When each pot is used it either disappears or is reduced by one. Or maybe the player gets to choose how many they want to take from it and they disappear.

Other way to seed. A list of game-specific things that are thing a character or player is rewarded for. For example, being gung-ho, getting cursed, etc. These are added up in some way at the end of the story to replenish a player's Pool.

Yet another way. Character creation uses a bidding system where players bid for things they want to write down about their character. The GM can throw in things they want, that provide hooks into the story they want to tell, like "Son of the King" or "In love with the noble's daughter".

More to follow...

Current projects

I'm currently working on several RPG projects, namely:
* playing in a Forgotten Realms D&D (3.5 Ed.) game,
* gearing up to run my first (Seven Leagues RPG) story, and
* trying to design an alternative rules system for The SkyRealms of Jorune RPG.
At the moment the D&D game is running once every week or two, on a week night. We get about 3-4 hours play in each session. It's been a long while since I actually played in a P&P RPG. If found it took me a session or two to find a groove and start enjoying it. I located the group I play with using (FindPlay).

The Seven Leagues thing is something I've been wanting to get running for a while now. The game allows you to tell stories about Faery and would normally involve players taking on the role of a more or less supernatural character. In my first story (in which there is a single player) the protagonist is a regular human being who crosses over into a fantasy world. I'm figuring that because he's the only character in the story who's not supernatural, that will make him intrinsically unusual. Given that the player is an old friend from school who I don't live near to anymore we'll be playing it using OpenRPG. It's the first time I've used this 'virtual table-top' so it should be interesting to see how it goes.

Last but certainly not least, I'm trying to devise some rules to allow myself and friends to play an RPG using the Skyrealms of Jorune setting. The 2nd and 3rd edition rules that my friend and I own just aren't very good! The character sheet is horrible and the mechanics use all sort of different die-rolling techniques (roll d20/3d6/d% over/under a value). Frankly, it's a mess and the setting deserves so much more. I'm obviously not the only person who thinks this: over at Return To Jorune they suggest several alternative rule systems you could use. None of those grab me particularly though. My current thinking is to develop some new rules that capture the spirit of the setting well - if that doesn't work out I've been told that The Shadow of Yesterday RPG might be amenable to the subject matter. So that's on order. :)

What's this all about?

I'll be talking here (at probably irregular intervals) about my ideas on roleplaying games. It's likely to lean towards analysis of various types of system mechanics for 'pen & paper' RPGs. It might include comments on computer RPGs, MMORPGs and specific game settings as well.