I’m not trying to be combative, but I really, really want to try a real mystery game or something where the game isn’t so combat driven. I just lack the talent for it, I think. Or maybe I am not attentive enough. Or maybe it’s the players thinking of stuff I don’t. Whatever. I’ll just have to draw it from every angle or something. I’ve done crazier stuff. That will have to be in the summer. Just rolling dice to kill Orcs is just bumming me out. Maybe a detective game that can be played as a campaign.

So is this a microblog?

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.

An unknown group of thugs was directed to attack the Rainbow Connection, a nightclub belonging to Cade Nosi(I can’t always help my players, dude. Just let it be.) Apparently money was not the objective of the attack, since the club was destroyed and none of the attackers survived. Mr. Nosi, the nightclub owner, heir, and magician, apparently has less sense than a box of hair, so thankfully his loyal bodyguard had the stones to get him out of the building before the vandals destroyed the club.

Shortly after the attack began, Karmen Lanka, a mob boss, was informed by her assistant. The police were dispatched to take care of the situation, but were largely deadlocked due to the hostage situation and eventual blast. She was able to ascertain that this attack was an independent act of aggression by this gang, and that no agency or syndicate known to have a presence in the city ordered it.

Benny, a petty thief and anarchist, was on his way to a shopping mall during the attack and stopped because of the massive police blockade. He was able to investigate, and when he noticed the blast occurring he moved the van containing the explosives to the bank next door and waited for the explosion to come. When the blast occurred, he was affected by some sort of spell and used the former patrons of the nightclub as ink for some kind of insane scribbling on the wall.

After the thug’s bosses take care of disciplining their surviving relatives, Cade and Karmen were shown the ringleader’s secret dungeon, where he has been enacting his fantasies in a homemade room modeled after the infamous Nazi Easter Egg from Super Mario Brothers. No one expected to find a covered up well in the center of the room, but hindsight being 20/20, it was the only thing that really made any sense to be there at all. After following the well down to a cavern beneath the city, Karmen and Cade and her bodyguards captured a mysterious occultist.

Meanwhile, Benny was attacked by two gangsters sent to neutralize him. After taking them out, he answered one of their cell phones and was told to go to an old farmhouse, where he met and interrogated his own mysterious occultist, and caught a brief glimpse of a summoned demon before it accidentally chased him into sunlight and crumbled into dust.

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.