Monday Musings #13 🎲
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Good Monday Gamer,
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This week, in the 5-in-one SciFi OSR experiment, I played X-Plorers. Three out of five games so far. It's been pretty easy to play a game a week; it's classic five stats, AC, saves --you know! I think the real differences are that last '20%', we don't get to see much off because we're playing short games. I would like to see more of each game.
We returned to our Classic Traveller game on Twitch with Judd Karlman at the helm. The Mazi family has worked out a deal with pirates to recover a lost capital ship...guess who gets to go bring it back! I thought Classic Traveller didn't have a character advancement mechanic, but I understand it's in Book III. This brought up games that use the items accumulated and status in the game as advancements. Do you know any games like that?
And the universe moving with me; Thomas Manual's The Indie RPG Newsletter this week is What is XP for. Check it out.
Straight Outta Kalisz Saturday is now on Sundays. The PC’s dance card is full, and the wait queue is growing! It is winter in Wroclaw, and though they have made a nice shelter in a junkyard, they have a notoriously violent neighbor, squatters outside the fence line, missing staff, wounded and nosey bunch of American GIs wandering by. XPs in this game are questions:
Did you participate in the game session? You get one XP just for being there.
Did you follow your moral code despite significant risk to yourself or your group?
Did you risk or sacrifice something significant to realize your big dream?
Did you travel through at least one hex on the travel map that you had not visited before?
Did you overcome one or more dangerous events, using violent or non-violent means?
Did you risk your life for the PC who is your buddy?
If you did that thing, you get an XP. AT 50+ game sessions in, maybe these questions are incentives —but I think if you engaged in the 'incentive,' then action happened in the game, drama, and dice were present. That’s a win, right?
ICYMI - I have fully leaned into using C/C++ for developing Wizard Time! I’ve posted an update on Medium, but maybe I’ll break out a section here for it. My video game is a survival game about wizards in a world of dying and lost arcana. I should probably come up with a better title... suggestions?
See you next week!
Monday Musings #13 🎲
One of the most fascinating XP systems I've seen was Vincent Baker's Freebooters game that I don't know he ever finished - but it had a very specific list of events that could happen in play with bubbles you filled in next to them whenever you pulled it off. It's something I've always been surprised to not see more often in games after that, as it's a really great framework to me of presenting "this is what this game is about".