Thursday, April 28, 2011

Skills in Castles & Crusades: Take 2

Readers of this blog and my Twitter stream know that I've become a fan of Troll Lord Games' Castles & Crusades. Just today on Twitter I mentioned wanting to see GammaSIEGE, a Castles & Crusades take on post-apocalyptic gaming that would combine the best elements of things like Gamma World and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and bring it together under the mechanics of Castles & Crusades. That tweet got me thinking about the game and tweaks to it I would like. I know I am in a minority, it seems, but I would like a skill system for Castles & Crusades. It's just the way that I role.

This is actually my second attempt at a skill system. My first (found here) was based off of the StarSIEGE game and hewed closer to the Siege Engine. This version is (to me) a bit simpler and is influenced by skill systems in more old school games.

I've uploaded a PDF to Google Docs that you can find here. I'm curious to hear comments and feedback, either in the comments for this post or in my Twitter or Facebook feeds.

Enjoy.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

MASHURRECTED 2011 :: m i x t a p e

MASHURRECTED 2011 :: m i x t a p e by madmixmustang

01. Mashup-Germany - Everybody speaks no Americano [Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP vs. Backstreet Boys vs. Phantom of the Opera vs. Bob Sinclair vs. Benny Benassi]
02. A Plus D - Don't You Want My Bad Romance [The Human League vs. Lady Gaga]
03. DJ Morgoth - Carry On My Wayward Island [Pendulum vs. Kansas]
04. Pheugoo & Bo the MAN - TwilightBack (Pheugoo 2011 RMT Edit) [2 Unlimited vs. Justin Timberlake]
05. Dr.Waumiau - Let Me Think About Losing Control [Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand vs. Missy Elliott]
06. mash2mix - Beat Rio In The Material World [The Police vs. Duran Duran vs. Michael Jackson vs. Black Eyed Peas]
07. Dylan Vasey - Blind Faith (One Day Bootleg) [Chase & Status vs. Matisyahu]
08. DJ Schmolli - Give It Away Bitch [The Prodigy & Sub Focus vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. Bob Marley]
09. G3RSt - Kennys Last Rhythm [Mint Royale vs. Johnny Cash]
10. [MMM] MadMixMustang - The Double Dutch Jump [Malcolm McLaren vs. Van Halen]
11. Simon Iddol - Malibu Scene [Troels Abrahamsen vs. Good Luck at the Gunfight]

Compiled and mixed by DJ Morgoth

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Inspirations and Game Design: Part One

Inspiration for a game designer comes in many places: books, movies, music, overheard snippets of conversation, the internet. In that way, game design is just like any other creative field. Inspiration comes in strange places.

For this post, I'm going to do something a little different than usual. Hopefully this works.

I am going to start with an inspiration, in this case a video that I saw linked in an RPGNet thread. This video is from Liquid Televsion, an old MTV experiment in animation that brought us Aeon Flux and the animated version of The Maxx. Here's the video:




Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in myths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

- Radiohead, Karma Police

An interesting video and I have to admit that I don't remember it, but with my memory that doesn't mean a lot. To the contemporary me, I see this as something that can be given a bit of Grant Morrison-esque strangeness with the backdrop of Hindu religion superimposed against the Noirness of the main character.
Dharma, voiced by Dick Rodstein, was a private detective who lived in Timbuktu sometime in the near future. The city is very heavily populated (with a population of 30 million people) and apparently ruled by an elite called the "Hipster Elders". Dharma is depicted as a trenchcoat- and fedora-wearing man with long, stringy hair and eyes that appear, like Little Orphan Annie's, to have no pupils. He seems to have psychic abilities. The plotline pits Dharma against corrupt public officials (including what appears to be the French Foreign Legion) and a mysterious organization called The Beelzebub Brotherhood.
From the Wikipedia page.

Now, since this post is named inspirations rather than adaptations, the idea isn't to directly convert the setting and characters of the video into a game, but to rather build a flavor of this setting and turn it into something that is interesting and playable.

The first step is to talk about system. For the purposes of this post I am going to pick something released under the OGL (which for those few who still may not realize this is more than just the old d20 System) because for a blog post I don't want to have to worry about licensing or anything like that. A good free license suits my purposes just fine.

As a game designer my primary goal these days is KISS. Not that band but the principal of Keep It Simple, Stupid. I prefer to err on the side of simplicity anymore in my game design. I just don't have the time for endless hours of gaming like I did, so a game that gets to the point and gets to the gaming is what I want and need. This desire spills over into my game design. As a game designer, if you don't design the game you like you won't like the game you design.

So, while I ponder the bits and pieces of how I want to take the next step (i.e. the system design) I leave you with this first post. If you want to make system suggestions (please don't just list a system if you make a suggestion, tell me why it would be a good fit for the idea of the setting) go ahead, in the comments, but just make sure they are a system available under the OGL.

I'm not sure if my next posting in this series will be about setting or system. I guess it depends on which comes up in my head first.