So, my cat Vivian and  I were talking about how Facebook, by becoming the Wal-Mart of the digital communications media(A convenient, one  stop shop for simplistic knockoffs of useful applications and games while simultaneously laying bare one’s own taste in just about everything by encouraging you to just put it out in public. Like in a shopping cart.) had in effect created a place where role playing a character entirely different from yourself is not only possible but probably a pretty responsible way to go. We were trying to decide if we could find a positive side of this media that matters to us, when with the most strikingly obvious observation I was struck. Facebook looks just like a character sheet. Facebook, at the end of the day, doesn’t actually require you to have a real name. Facebook has applications where one competes for coins, points, or privileges in certain groups of applications made by the same developer(Classes, professions, skills, experience, whatever). Facebook has applications that take a great deal of time to figure out, that the change shape of the user interface in agreed ways for the groups that  install them(RP/RL analogue? Religion.) Facebook has applications simply to  show your rank in a certain field compared to your friends(Loot/RP Rewards).
I’m really not sure at all where to go with this now. Vivian blew my mind.

Most of the people I know never want to GM. There seems to be an informal sort of etiquette, about it, even where someone who is sort of “Due” to GM is coerced in to running a game by having no one else agree to run them. It’s actually kind of depressing…

So, in my player-free(because I am a sucker) days I often wonder whether there is a way that the traditional style of RPG(Pencils, Character Sheets, Dice, Rulebooks) to which I have become accustomed can be adapted to work without a GM. I came up with a couple of solutions,which were:

• randomly determining the plotline on the fly.

• This worked OK if the game met 2 of these 4 criteria- it was simple with it’s types of encounters, had less than 4 players, was at low level, or used primarily shambling undead. It made a magnificent Savage Worlds zombie game, but the preparation process definitely requires an imagination, and probably requires an advanced course in statistics. The text of this is going to be made available once I figure out how to generate the map effectively as the game goes along. The Zombie game is 6 pages of typewritten tables detailing the- Contents of each possible area, The likelihood of finding a set of resources, likelihood of behaviors for each monster type and for randomly generating NPC’s and their behaviors, the rules for randomly generating buildings and their degree of repair, randomly determining dead-ends, and a system for tracking the in-game time using the adventure, and modifiers to each table based on the player’s actions.
• Pros: Requires absolutely no GM, quick and easy to play, TOTALLY REUSABLE
• Cons: Limited Circumstances where the system is practical, Entirely too complicated to set up, Outliers occur and break the action, Final product is disproportionately small compared to work involved
• Points: Almost all Roll-Playing, for good or ill. Also, probably will drive those who attempt to create it insane.

• Giving each participant 2 roles, and alternate the secondary role across each participant.

• The primary role, for all participants, is still the player character, but the secondary roles are Adjudicator, Storyteller, and GMPC. When the participant  is acting as the adjudicator, he is responsible for determining the difficulty of an action when it is provided by the storyteller, and for concealing that difficulty from the Storyteller and Players. The Storyteller is responsible for coming up with the action of the story. When the participant is the storyteller, he also controls all NPC actions and temporarily relinquishes control of his Player character to another participant. The Player who’s secondary role is the GMPC is responsible for playing the storyteller’s character when he is moving the action of the story along and controlling the NPC’s. These roles are rotated several times during the game when the Storyteller dictates thus.
• Pros: I don’t know. I haven’t tried it yet, but it is a cool hypothesis. I think the “pro” here is that it requires no real alteration of the pre-existing game system, but rather compartmentalizes the role of the GM.
• Cons: None forseen by me.
• Points: The Participants would have to agree on a general story concept before beginning the game. Certainly would require experienced, comfortable, and cooperative players. People who like eachother and want to role-play will probably find this fun. Kind of an homage to Lord Byron’s party game, who’s name I cannot remember, but supposedly was the game in which Mary Wollstonecraft came up with the beginning of Frankenstein. If anyone can remember what it is called, it would save me a trip to see the world’s worst poetry professor… Please?

Anyway. I thought they were good enough ideas to show folks. If you try them, please let me know what you think!

Related Post: Players Build the Dungeon, Sandbox Dungeon Master’s Tool Kit

I said I would, and I finally did. I made the Hogwarts RPG into a downloadable, printer friendly RTF Document, available here. This has, for the most part, been playtested, and should be a great quick pick-up-and-play game. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been working on this Harry Potter-themed tabletop RPG, and have  gone out of my way to emphasize both simulation and simplicity, no mean feat but I think I did it.

Some highlights of this game-

• Small numbers, simple arithmetic. If you want to play this with small children the math is very, very easy to understand. This doesn’t have to be a children’s game, but it certainly can be and I think that is it’s greatest strength.
• Classes and personal experiences make up your character’s skillset, rather than a profession-like system or a strictly skill-based game. The classes themselves are designed so that they simulate Hogwarts classes by progressing from easy spells to more difficult ones along basically a linear curriculum. The Experiences are a two-way roll, a chance in six or a skill that can be advanced like a class, and can be customized for different needs very easily(I even wrote guidelines! I usually am HORRIBLE at writing documentation)
• The Yield System. Instead of making a combat-oriented game, any in-game aggression can be handled via the yield system where winners and losers are determined without threat of lethality in the controlled environment of Hogwarts, and where roleplaying the after-effects of such situations is much more important to the game over all because the aggression doesn’t actually matter. Kind of like high school.
• Two playable species for the Hogwarts school, Humans and Centaurs, House Elves and Goblins  forthcoming.
• Also, the rules for creating demihumans and half-breeds are available here at the website

Currently it has the Character Creation, Classes/Skills/Experiences, Gameplay, and Creatures, but it does not have specific equipment or locations.

*Edit-Apparently the harassment that triggered my writing this was not, in fact, Blizzard. Just a Phisherman. Nonetheless, my criticisms still stand.

Two days ago, I got an e-mail from Blizzard Entertainment accusing me of trying to sell my World Of Warcraft account. Regardless of the fact that the e-mail is fraudulent, I feel offended by this because of the fact that I decided the game was lame and stopped playing shortly after level 25, feeling very cheated(and angry for having given in to peer pressure), and now am being harassed for by somebody who can’t even make a legitimate hack to steal my account with, I figured I would list, plainly, for the next company to develop one of these games, what would make it not suck, like World Of Warcraft does. All that unadulterated disgust I feel for MMORPG’s does nothing constructive. Instead, I’m going to list what I think would make a fantasy MMORPG not suck.

• Persistent worlds should have persistent characters. The player characters should become AI controlled(See Below) when the player logs out. All experience based penalties for player character death should be removed. This will also make it easier for those of use who go outside in the real world, too.

• AI control should have a list of player-like algorithms a la the Infinity Engine games, plus a slider system detailing attributes such as aggressive-passive,  courageous-cowardly, et cetera.
• Real Estate. Players should be given the option of purchasing an in-game home where they can store stuff, and where other players can break in. Also, sneak attack does not a rogue make. Burglary should be possible, as should beefing up security with technology, magic, animal companions, and the like.

• There should be no player factions at the start of the game. The fact that you are a night elf doesn’t mean you’re necessarily a benevolent tree-hugger. Maybe that works in a RTS, but in an RPG restricted alignments based on race are RETARDED. It denies an important part of the decision making process. NO STARTING FACTIONS!
• Don’t make everything a matter of going to a questgiver, accepting the quest, performing the task, repeat. Even the raids follow this basic format. If you keep doing this, you may as well make a single player game.
  • Make things interesting! Here’s an idea: Random zombie apocalypse! 24 in game hours where, if you die, intead of going to the graveyard you turn into a zombie for 1 hour first and fight against other players. For those who do not want to play a zombie, have 3 zombie AI’s. Slow Shambler, Rotting Quick, and Speedy Infected. Have some similarly wild and crazy extreme event happen once every month on a random day.
  • Here’s another! OMG that NPC kid said “The best item in the game is on top of that hill,” everybody fight over it! Why the hell not? It’s an MMO, give the players a reason to interact!
  • See if you can allow guilds to create their own quests.  An initiation rite that involves a custom in-game magic item specifically linked to the guild and it’s membership, for starters, would make joining a guild seem a lot less like a lame excuse for friends that eventually turns into an over-regulated raid obligation. I know this might be difficult to implement, but just give it a thought.
  • That took me what, like 20 seconds? People get paid the big bucks to think of  less cool stuff than this.
• Get rid of the class/level system. Instead, go rank-advancement based, and make the differences smaller. I mean for everything. Skills. Hit Points. Magic spells. Hypothetically – Each enemy is now worth from 1-5 XP and you spend from 1-100 XP to advance a skill. Each skill becomes more difficult to advance as it increases. The player can choose a set number of skills that start at a considerable advantage, 45,40,30,25,20. Skill resolution becomes percentile based, and anybody can get any skill, with a limit of 1/12 the total number of skills. Now all the characters have ceased to have identical skills and levels of power. People can actually play a different role than every other player of their class and level.
• Make creating/enchanting items not boring, tedious, and inflexible. Give people a chance to put more than one enchantment on an item if they have sufficient levels in the enchantment skill. That way, they can elect to not just build up to the epic items and be another cookie-cutter level80. Also, Don’t make it a new design to dye a shirt a different color. I can tie-dye in my kitchen.

Make the MMOS different from the single player games in any way you can, PLEASE! I hate the cookie cutter characters, the silly, stupid quest format, the fact that people disappear when they log out, the lack of customizability, and the frankly racist alignment system. It drives me crazy when a game has potential but rejects that in favor of more of the same, safe, monotonous gameplay.  Make it worth paying monthly. Make having other players a meaningful part of the game. And most of all, allow the characters to be DIFFERENT!