[RPG] Using Scrivener for RPG Prep

I've recently been using a piece of software called Scrivener whilst writing my NaNoWriMo novel over the course of this month (you can find the website for Scrivener here for both PC an Mac) and have been very much enjoying using the software, at it's most basic Scrivener allows you to break your novel, manuscript or whatever into a series of discrete chunks, these can then be annotated and assembled in any way you see fit and output in a variety of formats. Whilst writing my novel i've been very much enjoying the program's corkboard facility where you can click on a chapter and see all of the sections that make it up, from here you can make notes on them and drag and drop to re-arrange the order that they appear in; as so often when I use a new program on my computer one of my first thoughts was 'how can I use this for RPGs?'

The answer in this case, i'm happy to report, is 'very easily', since Scrivener is a content manager it could easily be used to divide up the notes for a RP session into sections and re-order them as necessary, Scrivener also allows you convert websites to pdfs and tuck them away in a research folder for reference as you write as well as adding other files, this might be handy for people who make use of pdf rulebooks or character sheets during a game. They could easily be put in an appropriate folder and referenced when needed since another great thing about the program is that when you save the file, your position in files also seems to be saved so that you can pick up where you left off later on, this is an absolute godsend when working through large or complex documents and you have to sign off or end your session halfway through.

Another aspect of the program that would be of potential use for the budding RPG planner/GM is that there are a number of template documents set up within the software, of course most of these are based around the needs of authors but many could also be applicable to RPG session planners; two that spring to mind are the location and character documents which give you a prepared blank document with headings to fill in. For example the place template has the following headings:

• Role in story
• Description
• Plots involved in
• Thematic Relevance

And the character template has the following headings:

• Role in story
• Physical description
• Personality
• Plots involved in
• Relationship with other characters

These could easily be used to detail important locations and NPCs in a session and, since the templates themselves are saved as accessible documents within the project file they could easily be duplicated or changed to suit the particular needs of your campaign.

A project created in Scrivener can be set to automatically make a backup at regular intervals (I currently have my novel backed up to my Dropbox account so that if the worst happened and my computer blew up i'd still be able to get at it once i'd re-gained access to the internet) with the backups being essentially Zip files with all of your documents and materials stored in them. You can also compile a document into a variety of formats; i've only really experimented with the formats suitable for novels at the moment, but if you wanted to distribute your setting either during or after you've finished your game then you could easily compile it into a single PDF file from within the Scrivener software.

Over the next few days i'm going to be moving the notes for the Numenera game that i'm running online via Google+ Hangouts (you can find a link to the actual play videos here) onto a Scrivener file to see how useful it is during play and whether it will eclipse Tiddlywikis as my RPG information management tool of choice.

Scrivener costs $40 USD and is available for a 30 day free trial; as one of the sponsors of NaNoWriMo they are offering a special trial edition for participants (available here); all participants can get a 20% discount if they choose to buy the final product and, if they complete the November target of a 50000 word novel, can get a 50% discount off the final product.

Keeping Track of Aspects for our Serpents Fall Game

I'm always looking for ways to improve our online Serpents Fall game (and indeed any game that I run), it occurred to me recently that part of the reason that players might not be as on the ball with Self-compels and using Aspects may be (in part or in full) due to them being unaware of the Aspects that are actually available for them to use.

It's my intention, starting from next session to have a document (probably in the same Google Drive where the character sheets are stored) that lists all of the player Aspects and also any scene/NPC Aspects that the player characters are aware of available so that they can simply flick to the document in order to see what Aspects are available for use.

At the moment the document will look something like this:

* * *

Aspects Available

SCENE ASPECTS


NPC ASPECTS


CHARACTER ASPECTS

• Ozuchi Komodo
• Last of the Komodo Tribe
• Those Stygian Shaman will stop at nothing
• Medicine man
• Easily assimilates local culture
• Stygian
• One day I will return to Stygia and unite my people as the prophecy foretold

• Horesh Komani
• Initiate sorceror death-priest
• Uncomfortable with living energies
• Destined for sorcerous greatness
• Skilled with ceremonial obsidian death knives
• Khemrian
• It is my destiny to become the most powerful death-priest in Khemria

• Gunnar Kron
• Raiding party warrior
• Murderous reputation
• Experience raider
• Warriors instincts
• Norsican
• I will redeem my past

• Captain Benito
• Cursed pirate captain
• Cursed to never again sail the seas
• Lemurian Heritage
• Stick to the code
• Member of the Scarlet Brotherhood
• One day I will take back my rightful place as the Pirate King

* * *

It is also my intent to discuss with the players re-wording their Aspects slightly to make them into phrases that could more comfortably form part of a normal sentence, some of them already fulfil this criteria but I think there's room to make them a little bit more descriptive now that we're all a little more comfortable with how Aspects work.

Serpents Fall - Overhauling Spirits & Sorcery

Following on from our first Serpents Fall game on G+, one of the aspects of the game that I wasn't particularly taken with was sorcery; it worked okay but whenever something involving spirits occurred it pretty much split the party into sorcerors and non-sorcerors with the two not really meeting until the matter was resolved.

After looking at an excellent conversion of a pulp hero by Garth Rose on Google+ I decided to make an attempt at using his rules to model the spirits and sorcery within my game.

* * *

Amended Rules

Spirits

It does not require any special Stunt or ability to perceive spirits any longer (unless they are specifically hiding themselves using their powers), all people can perceive and interact with spirits.

Sorcery

In order to use sorcery the character must have an appropriate High Concept or other Aspect that includes knowledge of sorcery.

There are a number of Sorcery Stunts (as shown below).

Bind Spirits: When in contact with a spirit the sorceror may engage them mentally (as per the Stunt - Mental Contact), instead of inflicting stress the sorceror may ask the spirit to perform one task (lasting no more than a few hours) for every two levels his roll beats the spirits; if the task is utterly against the spirits nature the GM can pay a fate point to veto the task and take the stress instead. If the sorceror loses then he takes the appropriate amount of stress himself due to psychic feedback.

If a spirit is Taken Out by psychic damage, the sorceror can bind it to a task for a year and a day (although if they want to take is as a companion then they will need to buy it as a new Stunt).

Mental Contact: The sorceror can make a Clever roll to make contact with someone (resisted by the same Approach) in the same zone; if the sorcerors roll is higher then he may ask (and receive honest answers) to 1 question per every two points that his roll beats his opponent or inflict levels of stress equal to the number of points his roll beat the opponent. If the sorceror loses then he takes the appropriate amount of stress himself due to psychic feedback (the opponent may only take information from the sorceror's mind if they are also a sorceror).

Sorcerors receive +2 to attack/defend against mental contact.

Being Taken Out by psychic damage generally means one's mind is completely open to one's opponent.  Post-hypnotic suggestions, compulsions, altered memories, and the like are all possible.

Unearthly Knowledge: Once per session, the sorceror can get the answer to a question he would have no earthly way of knowing the answer to.  This is generally accompanied by watching birds, or even having a raven land on his shoulder - it probably won't work indoors, unless maybe the spirits are really restless. 

* * *

Please note: Credit for the original work on these rules goes to Garth Rose, i've simply tweaked them a bit and done some small adaptions for use with Fate Accelerated.

Reflecting on the first Serpents Fall session

Well we made our first attempt at running an introductory session of Serpents Fall (our G+ Fate Accelerate Fantasy game) last night; i've just sent off messages to all of the players in it asking for feedback and thought i'd put my own views in this blog.

You can find a link to the video footage here.

For me the game was something of a mixed bag, consisting of both positives and negatives; since I was on a bit of a downer following the amount of work that myself and the players had put into the campaign setting only to have the first session so dogged by technical hitches I thought that i'd list some of the positive and negative points in an attempt to cheer myself up:

Positives

• Everyone seemed to enjoy the session.
• Character genning was fairly quick and I really loved how the players all grabbed hold of the story based idea of the Fate Accelerated rules system.
• Was good to do some tabletop with friends whom I don't get chance to game with (in that format).
• The player characters seemed to gel as a party with the first flickers of IC banter and relationships forming.
• We managed to carry out a small introductory (since not all players are familiar with the Fate Accelerated rules) combat that went off fairly well.
• The scene is now set for the next main session.
• All of the players seemed willing and keen to do another session.

Negatives

• Almost constant technical problems meant that we had people dropping out and jumping back in, I got booted from the hangout twice meaning that we ended up having to film it in three segments.
• Due to the tech problems the game felt a little dis-jointed since we had to keep re-capping for people who had dropped out and re-joined.

In Summary

Despite feeling a little down about the campaign when I originally sat down to start writing this post, looking at the list of positives and negatives there are far more positives from the game than their were negatives, indeed the only negative points seem to stem from the technical issues that we had.

Writing this post has cheered me up no end and made me far more optimistic about the potential of Serpents Fall as a long running campaign; I'm now going to wait for the players to get back to me with their feedback and see where we go from there, our next session is scheduled for a couple of weeks time - hopefully we'll have a bit better luck on the technical side of things and we can just jump straight into the game :)

Serpents Fall (Fate Fantasy Campaign) - Character Sheet - Amended

I have made some additional space on my character sheet and added an additional Aspect (Character Goal) to the sheet, this will be an Aspect reflecting what a character's driving passion or endgame is - once the goal is achieved the Aspect can be changed.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7eHBaekNxUTVmTHc/edit?usp=sharing

Serpents Fall (Fate Fantasy Campaign) - Character Sheet

After some prompting from one of my future players, i've knocked up the character sheet below for my Serpents Fall game.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7RGcySmQwN2F3V00/edit?usp=sharing

Serpents Fall (Fate Fantasy Campaign) - Finished Handouts

Below are links to the two handouts that I have been working on for the G+ Fate Fantasy game that I am going to be running soon:

***

Ages of the Known World

This contains the rough history of the world through the various ages up to a brief summary of the present day.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7T0lHY19TVExmdEk/edit?usp=sharing

***

Character Generation & Nation Handout

This handout contains a brief summary of character generation for the game in addition to a page of suggested general Stunts as well as a write-up of each nation and additional relevant suggestions.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7MWlwb282MjFYREU/edit?usp=sharing

***

Latest (unfinished) version of player handout for Serpent's Fall Fate Accelerated Fantasy Campaign

This is the latest version of my player handout for my Serpent's Fall Fate Accelerated Fantasy campaign (beginning soon); please note that this is in no way finished yet nor do I make any claims to own the artwork used in it - this handout is for non-profit purposes only and no challenge is intended to any copyrights.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7Ul94Z0lQNWY4SnM/edit?usp=sharing

Fate Fantasy Game : Player Handout - The Ages of the Known World

I've been working on a brief history handout for my players about the campaign world for our Fate Swords and Sorcery game; thought i'd post in on here for people to have a look.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3N7nFBlEi_7SE9NdTNHX0JaNUk/edit?usp=sharing

Working on map for Fantasy Campaign

I've been working on a rough outline map for our forthcoming G+ hangout Fantasy FATE game (although hopefully we'll soon come up with a snappier name); map is based around an image of Pangea with some additional islands added by myself (unfortunately only had access to MSPaint at the time so until I get to my own computer the quality isn't great).

I used some of the continental line to suggest borders and erased others, given that the players seemed to like the idea of large nations this map has potentially 6 nations (including the Sword Isles, although I envision them as more of a loose coalition of buccaneers and raiders)- the plan is to fill in the details of the nations with the players input.

Another mechanic I like from 13th Age - Background Traits

As I said in my review of 13th Age the book is chock-full of interesting ideas that can be piked for use in whatever game you may happen to play; i've already talked about the escalation dice dice my previous blog post, now i'd like to talk about another interesting mechanic, background traits.

In 13th Age background traits take the place of skills in a more standard D&D game, this background traits can be anything you want, from "queen's secret assassin", to "raised by wolves", "a dwarf with a clockwork heart" or anything else that you can possibly imagine; after creating their traits the player has a number of points to allocate to each, resulting in a modifier against each trait. When it comes to making a test, the player adds the modifiers of any and all background traits to their D20 roll to determine success.

This is quite an interesting mechanic for me and it seems like a hybrid of the more freeform Aspect rules in the Fate system and a more traditional skill system; as someone who is a die-hard fan of the more abstract Fate Accelerated approach to gaming (you can see my original written blog post on Fate Accelerated here and my video review of it here) i'm a great fan of not using more mechanics than necessary, preferring a minimal-crunch approach to my gaming. This is especially true given that i'm current slowly wading into the murky waters of online playing via G+ hangouts and want my players to be able to easily pick up and understand the rules without having to constantly clarify them for the players.

I've recently been considering using an Aspect only approach to Fate (as detailed here) but, as has been pointed out to me, that Approach does create a rather huge list of Aspects and involves having to add up the numbers of a lot of Aspects prior to each roll, something which may slow down a game significantly.

Perhaps the solution lies in having a smaller number of freeform Approaches/Traits and giving the characters a number of points to allocate to them (as per the 13th Age rulebook)?

Summary

Using these rules a character would look something like this:

• Starting refresh/fate points: 5
• Traits: Character picks 8 Traits (which can be anything), they then receive a number of points (currently i'm thinking 12) that can be allocated between these traits (although no individual trait may be raised above +3 at character gen) 
• Stunt: 1 (a signature move than can be used to do something cool once per session, as detailed in the Fate Accelerated book- costs 1 FP)
• Stress: 3 boxes
• Consequences: 3 consequence boxes

When a character wanted to make a test they would use their highest appropriate Trait and add an additional +1 for every other trait that was applicable.

Creating a Fate Accelerated Fantasy Game

Having just completed GMing my first G+ online game (a mashup of GTA and the mythos christened Grand Theft Chtulhu, part 1 write-up here and part 2 write-up here) and given that it went quite well, all the players seemed to enjoy it and I certainly had great fun running it despite a few technical difficulties and it being a little challenging to sync all of our RL schedules together.

I always think that a good measure of how much the players have enjoyed a session is whether or not they are keen to come back and play again; given that we managed to organise the second session running only a few days after the first for our last game and that the players were already talking about what we could next, I would judge the endeavour a success thus far. But that did raise the question, what game do we run next?

Originally one of the suggestions for our first game had been to run something set in a fantasy world, but we didn't use that idea in end, however now we're potentially talking about doing a more long running campaign using the Google+ hangouts, I think that some sort of epic fantasy campaign could be just the thing we need; plus I am just finishing reading the Fate game 'Legends of Anglerre' and, whilst I don't think i'd run an Anglerre campaign as depicted in the book, it certainly has some great ideas in it that have fired my imagination for running some fantasy.

What sort of fantasy campaign should it be and what should be in it?

I've spoken at fairly great length both on this blog and my Youtube Channel about how I am a great fan of games (such as Dungeon World and FATE) that encourage a collaborative approach to world and campaign design, so it should come as no surprise that I want to get the players involved in the decision making from the ground up, nor do I want to restrict us entirely to the traditional westernised version of fantasy; as I put it to my players, "if you want magi-tech and mecha that's fine as well."

I'm looking forward to the conversation (which we're trying to organise on G+ for next week) and intend to post it to my Youtube channel using the Hangouts on Air feature; I might even attempt to use some sort of cutdown version of the yes/no list from Microscope.