Fool's Moon Entertainment

 So, what's stronger?  Corruption or Purity? A trope I've seen often is that a region gets corrupted, the heroes come in, they destroy the corruption, but there's always some 'seed' of corruption that gets overlooked, and it spreads, and you have to deal with it all over again (Fern Gully's an excellent example).  Or, you defeat the corruption, and someone carries it within them.  Or whatever. It's like ... you can't just have purity. There's always got to be something . Which makes it feel like corruption is stronger than purity. (Another trope is 'I've cast this zone of purity, but the corruption's too strong, I can't keep it up!') I want to see the flip side of this.  Proof that purity is more the 'natural state', and as such the natural state always wins out in the end.  Without having to use outside influence. A corrupt zone with the manifestation of purity someplace, that slowly drives out the corruption and overtake...

I don't believe any given class should be inherently 'evil'. Sure, a majority of the people who take the class can be evil - I get that, but the class itself? Let me give you a pair of examples. 1) An Assassin. They only kill the corrupt and vile. They won't take a job to kill someone who doesn't deserve it, and they won't inflict 'collateral damage' (such as staff, guards, etc), unless it's in self-defence (and even then, prefers non-lethal methods). Their purpose is to ensure those who believe they're above justice face justice. They're doing the same thing hired adventurers might do, only with a lot less death involved. So, evil? 2) A Necromancer. They act as a go-between between the living and dead, act as a psychopomp, helping the dead find peace, eliminating undead, helping families grieve, and helping the ill or frail to pass on without pain. They're not raising undead, defiling graves, sucking the life force out of people, or an...

I'm going to begin with the following statement:  One is not inherently better than the other, they are simply different, and I have my preferences. This is not an attack on either style of RP, but just my thoughts on the subject matter. That out of the way, I like crunch. I like detail. I don't write games with a lot of crunch, because I'm casting a wide net - I want to write games that are easy for children and adults, and which allows you to put as much detail into the game as you want. The ASPS engine can be a streamlined, simple game with a focus on narrative play, or it can be resource heavy and detailed if that's your preference. The soon-t o- be-released Keepsakes (was Widdershins ) is incredibly simple, because it's supposed to be an all-ages game. But yeah. I want a game where poison is lethal, you need to keep track of that stuff and prepare for it. I want a game where if you're out in the wilderness, there's things like exposure , and you could ...

Because of a new RPG coming out that (if I recall) has a wheelchair available for PCs, the entire discussion about wheelchairs in a fantasy setting has come around again.  Here's my stance on it: It isn't a problem. People are making excuses, though.  Who'd want to adventure with someone in a wheelchair? How would they navigate dungeons?  Why do they even have wheelchairs, when magic can fix everything? Here's the thing. Not everyone has the ability to choose their course in life.  Not everybody has access to 'magic' that can fix everything.  And it's amazing what one can do with good friends who are willing to give them a hand. Dragonlance is a good example, in fact, with Raistlin.  Why didn't they dump his anemic ass and get a 'real wizard' to help them out?  They didn't.  Because he's a friend.  Oh, how about Charles Xavier of the X-Men.  You know there's skads of people in the Marvel Universe who could fix his legs - but he doesn...

Greetings! Let's talk about world building. While the mechanics of an RPG are important ('how the world functions'), the world building -- the setting and all its moving pieces -- need to be just as solid for immersion. There are plenty of 'generic' RPGs out there (Tiny d6, GURPS, Fantasy Age, FATE, Savage Worlds, etc) which can lay out how the world functions through mechanics, but most such games lack when it comes to building the world you're going to be playing in. Then you have games which lay out a world, but it is perhaps the most vanilla world that you'll ever see -- there's nothing fresh and unique about it.  Or it's just shallow, and any differences are superficial. (Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is a huge example). So what makes a setting interesting? Here's a few things to consider: Culture -- what cultures exist? How do they interact? How long have they been there? Religion -- what pantheons exist? How do they interact? How do they...

  Magic and Technology Don't Mix I've heard this many times, and I don't believe it. The conceit is that, since magic exists,  there's no reason for technology to advance. After all, magic does it better, does it easier, does it faster. Sure. Except that's not even remotely true. How much teaching does it take to get even a modicum of skill in magic? How much does it cost to get trained? Where do you need to go for that training? How many years to get good ? What are the restrictions on spell casting? Do you need to register to be a mage and be allowed to cast certain spells? How long to learn the proper spells? Sure. Developing certain technologies may take time, but the thing about technology is that it builds upon itself. And once something's been developed, it's not too hard to learn the foundations. For example? Steam technology existed in ancient Greece. They started doing all sorts of interesting things with steam. Given time and peace, who knows wher...

Balance Balance might be the #1 thing talked about in gaming when you go into game theory and play. We talk about balanced rules, balanced parties, balanced encounters... Here's the thing. Mechanical balance isn't possible. Not really. Not without harming the game itself. Because for true 'mechanical balance', you need to have the mechanics control the decisions that the players make - right at character creation. It needs to control the choices players can make in an encounter. It needs to control the choices the characters make in the setting. It needs to control the choices the characters make as they level up. What gear they get. What bonuses they get. Who they encounter. What they can get from each encounter. What they can gather out in the world. The characters get pushed into smaller and smaller boxes, with less and less choices, all in the name of 'balance'. And what this does is make the character sheet really bland, and the mechanics really bland. You ...

One of my favourite things about roleplaying games is that as a game master I will never be able to predict where the campaign will go. The players are quite good at surprising me -- they decide where to go, they decide what to do, and because I give them free reign, they can go on tangents I never expect. For example? I had the PCs encounter a young green dragon disguised as a bandit - she charged 'protection' from anyone who goes through her area, and utterly destroys anyone who doesn't pay. So what happens? One of the PCs negotiates. They pay the tithe, but he offers to make her business 'legitimate' with the local city paying her for the safe passage of anyone going through, and the utter destruction of any threats that are coming through. Being an artificer, he's offering to craft her some things to help her, and to keep in touch with her in case she ever needs help. ... not something I'd expected. In a friend's campaign, the group is supposed to be...

Saw a post on FaceBook today, by a GM asking other GMs how to get the PCs to actually engage in combat -- the GM was upset that the players were going for non-combat solutions to their encounters. Personally? Let them have their non-combat solutions. If the PCs are anti-murder hobo, why not let them? Another GM wondered at hearing the players drive the story, and responded with, "what, I should just suck it up? My desires don't matter?" That's a pretty raw take of the situation, so here's my thoughts: 1) The GM's desires matter at the table. However... 2) The players drive the story. And their desires matter to. And what you need is equilibrium. You want combat? Sure, put in combat. There's some people who just don't listen to reason - they're there to have a fight, and trying to talk them out of it pisses them off more. Go for it. But if the players don't want combat? Then hold back on the combat -- let them have their roleplay. This is a role...

You've heard the stories many times before. The land is corrupted and foul things rise up to torment humanity. A dark god rebels and spawns evil beings across the land. An evil sorcerer crafts an artifact that twists all who use it. Cool, fine, we've been down this path thousands of times. But why not the other way? A land blessed and divine things rise up? A god of light descends and spawns angelic beings across the land. A good priest crafts an artifact that guides others to the light? Consider the Story of Garg and Moonslicer But how would this be a 'bad thing', you might wonder? Where's the conflict that will drive the story? Well, that it needs to create conflict isn't a given. Not everything has to cause people drama and angst. But if you absolutely must -- it's unbalancing. A land with such an abundance of prosperity draws the attention of nations that don't have such benefits, and that can lead to war. Or you have a population that think they kno...

There's a game called Kuro   that was released some time back. It's a futuristic posthuman J-Horror game. It's got cybernetics, genetic engineering, and the kind of horror you can only get from Japanese films. It was a very interesting setting for a tabletop roleplaying game. And it stopped at three books, because 'the story had been told'. Except it hadn't. It ended the story when the PCs came into their full capabilities, and then stopped. It told the game master about how the event could have spread to other countries -- but didn't go into any detail.  Sure, you know what Japan is like within this time frame and setting, but it tells you nothing about what the rest of the world is like. This has often been my beef with RPGs that focus on a culture or country and tweak it into something new. They either ignore the rest of the world, or simply allude to it and leave it alone, so that if you want to have the characters go elsewhere, it's up to the GM to ...

A group rides down a road.  On either side is farmland, peasants working the fields. There's an inn near the village, and in the distance is a walled city, with a castle in the centre. The group sees wagons with barrels, or hay, there's carriages carrying those of status, and people lug around wheelbarrows, ploughs, and farming tools. Yep.  That's medieval fantasy. But where's the fantasy part? A lot of world building for fantasy games completely ignore the fantasy aspect when it comes to actual civilization. Sure, there's elves, and dwarves, and dragons, and orcs, and wizards and priests. But ... civilization doesn't seem to acknowledge that the very presence of magic and monsters would fundamentally alter how civilization would be changed. Some anime are taking this into account now -- magic items to mimic things we'd see in the modern day and age (the 'magic microphone to broadcast in arenas' being a good example, flying podiums, teleportation gat...

Let's talk Superman. And as part of this discussion, let's look at it through the lense of roleplaying as well. Because I think that the issues people have writing for Superman are possibly the same issues game masters have with powerful characters. A bit over a decade ago, I wrote a piece concerning Superman on io9 (back when it existed), and I think it's still relevant in this day and age -- and especially when it has to do with gaming. Which any number of game masters complain about power gamers and min-maxers, and yeah, it's the same issue.  First, I'll post the article (with a little editing), and then I'll get back to this.