August | 2013 | Skyland Games

Bending the Game: Shadowrun 4th Edition House Rules

August 26, 2013 Kevin Comments off

Please welcome our guest blogger, Brian Braddock:

No game is made perfect. Everyone hits a bump in the road in their gaming lives where the rules are getting in the way of the action. Maybe you’ve been in the middle of a major combat, have come up with a great improvised move that would be brilliant, but has no mechanical effect. Maybe you and your troupe find a great game with an amazing world, but the rules are just for the dogs. Maybe you’re happy playing your wizard, except for that one rule about conjuring that just doesn’t make sense. We’ve all been there.

When the rules get in the way of the fun, it’s time to reach in the GM toolkit and break out house rules. House rules are powerful tools that, if used correctly, can improve the flow of any game and tailor a system to meet your needs. For example, if your player has put in the time, energy, and engagement to come up with an inventive combat move, and there are no rules to back it up, make something up. Give them a penalty to do the amazing thing, but a bonus to damage if they pull it off. In some cases, it’s just that simple. Your player feels like their work is rewarded, and other players feed off the example and become more invested. When that happens, everyone has fun.

When creating house rules, however, you have to be careful. Most popular game systems are playtested rigorously and refined to maintain balance. When you create a rule that fundamentally changes the game, the balance can be changed as well. Let’s take the wizard as an example. Your player is running a Pathfinder Conjurer. Based on the style of play within the troupe, the Conjurer can’t summon anything without being interrupted. You could shorten the casting time from a full round action to a standard action. This fixes the first problem (interrupted casting), but opens a whole new can of worms, with the player able to exploit a host of loopholes. As a general rule, I’m conservative with the number of house rules I make, especially if I’m in a system I’m not familiar with. You pay people good money to refine the rules–change only what you need.

When you use house rules you learn more about the rules in general, which becomes a self-perpetuating process. Eventually you get a deep enough understanding of rules systems that you know what you can tinker with and what is best left alone. When you do this with multiple games, you start to recognize rules trends that can apply across systems. You may have a house rule for rewarding inventive combat, and then you see a better version of it in the Exalted system–which happens to be close to your system. This kind of house rule understanding ranges from intermediate to advanced, and prepares you for the biggest challenges.

Sometimes you find games that have great stories, great worlds, and rules that are tougher than a UFC fighter. This may be fun for troupes of rules lawyers, but not for the general group, and especially not for new players. This is when house rules take another step. If you like the world but not the rules, and you really want to play, then change the rules.

One of the most iconic examples of this is the Shadowrun system. Shadowrun has a detailed setting that is imaginative, inventive, and unique. It also has a rules system that is massive, ponderous, and daunting to new players. Even GMs with strong rules understanding have difficulty with Shadowrun. I’ve played every iteration of the game, and while it’s gotten easier, it is by no means user friendly. However, I love the game, and I want my troupe, a mix of drama gamers and old school dungeon crawlers, to play with me. So, in an effort to make things easy on them, I streamlined a rule here and there, over and over, just to keep the action running. One player even went so far as to talk about the ease of Matrix rules online, not realizing that the smooth rules weren’t the game makers, but mine. Eventually I created an entire set of house rules that presented different degrees of play for Shadowrun. One set works for newbies, one for intermediate players, and the advanced level is the core game as written. Since creating these rules we’ve told some great stories and had some great combats, all within the Sixth World.

All of this, however, came about for one reason alone: we wanted to have fun. Rules are there to give us structure and to keep fights from breaking out. Dice add that flavor of fate that keeps things interesting. But in the end, they’re all tools for you to tell stories and have fun with your friends. If the rules aren’t working towards this goal, then it’s up to you to make them work. Once you do, you’ll be working within a game system tailored to you—and frankly, there’s nothing quite like it.

Here are some House Rule suggestions for the Matrix 4.0 and more! ShadowRunHouseRules

Categories: Adventure, House Rules, RPGs, Shadowrun, Tips

Cthulhu Fthagn! Ia! Ia!

August 19, 2013 Michael Comments off

Tomorrow is H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday.

Chances are high that something you’ve played has had a “Lovecraftian” influence. Whether it’s Chaosium’s “Call of Cthulhu” or Munchkin Cthulhu or even perhaps just an aberration like the aboleth in your local D&D game, you owe it to Mr. Lovecraft.

My personal favorite Lovecraft-influenced game was Living Death. Back when Living Greyhawk was the organized play opportunity of it’s time, two other properties were among the ones I played that were supported by Wizards of the Coast: Living Force, a Star Wars-themed worldwide campaign and Living Death. LD was unique in that it didn’t have a big bunch of sourcebooks that WotC was trying to sell. There were a few books, the Masque of the Red Death (Ravenloft) chief among them, but mostly it was a series of modules published by volunteers over the span of 10 years, run mostly at conventions from 1997 to 2007. It had a very defined beginning, middle and end. It was Victorian Horror at it’s finest: you started as your choice of character in 1890 and progressed until the year 1900. My character was Lady Cora, a septuagenarian nanny who had lost her latest charge under mysterious circumstances. Well… lost to everyone but Lady Cora, as his spirit lingered and only she could see him. During that campaign, she tangled with vampires, saved the Queen, was punched out by the evil Kaiser Wilhelm and once spent an uncomfortable weekend trapped in the coffin of a mummy.

Living Death and many others of it’s kind wouldn’t be possible without the imagination of Mr. Lovecraft. And his birthday would make an excellent excuse to grab your favorite plushy horrible monster and play some Call of Cthulhu. It’s only your sanity at stake, right?

Categories: Uncategorized

Role-Playing Repertoire: Building your game music library

August 12, 2013 Scott D Comments off

Creating the right mood for a game can be key to getting your players to enjoy that game to its fullest. While Black Sabbath will do for a beer and pretzels board game night, the perfect song can telegraph what you’re trying to establish with your game and transport your player into the world you’re trying to lure them into (so you can kill them).

By way of example, several weeks ago we did a conversion of the Slave Lords modules for Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) which went over pretty well. To start The Funnel (where you make 3-4 zero level characters and see who survives to first level), I started the players at a wedding of the beautiful Miller’s daughter to the tavern owner’s son. As the wedding reception got started, I played this old chestnut from the original Conan the Barbarian Soundtrack by Basil Poledouris (an absolute must have by the way).

When slaver pirates attack, the would-be heroes have to fight off the raiders to buy the other villagers time to escape. After being captured, they mutiny and wrest control of the Slavers’ ship as it drifts into the harbor of Highport. It was then I played this piece which, to me, perfectly captured what I was going for as they viewed the scenes on the streets and docks of the approaching slaver city (taken from the Borderlands video game soundtrack).

And with that, everyone was there. Right there with me as to what the world was going to feel like and the direction we were going.

Sometimes you can stumble across these sorts of things, but for the most part, it takes listening to a wide variety of instrumental music (soundtracks, mainly) and categorizing things into either specific scenes (somewhat challenging) or by building your repertoire for broader categories of music.

I’ve made, lost, changed, and remade numerous lists since my mix-tape days, but largely you can do whatever you think you need based on how much work you want to put into it. At a minimum, you should have Combat Music and Non-Combat Music. However, if you care to listen to and sort some songs, additional folders for Exploration, Chase scenes, Exposition, or downright Creepy music are good selections.

If you really want to go for broke, however, Spotify is your new best friend. It contains a vast collection of music, which is fully searchable. There are some downsides:

1) It links through Facebook, (Like us here BTW) so you’ll need to have a Facebook account to use it , even if it’s not one you use for anything other than Spotify.

2) The advanced features cost money, but allow streaming through other devices offline.

3) While it maintains a vast and ever growing catalog, there are limits to what’s available on it at this time.

In my opinion, the features and deep catalog greatly outweigh these shortcomings. You can search for other people’s playlists and share your own playlists, add music from your own hard drive that can’t be found in Spotify’s catalog, and you can play these lists on ipads and other devices, so you can take your game music out of the house.

Currently, I have playlists for sci-fi/shadowrun combat and downtime, as well as fantasy oriented playlists for town, creepy stuff, adventure, exposition, and combat. I then cull from there to make adventure specific playlists.

So, to get you started, here’s a few of my songs from Spotify. Feel free to share yours!

ADVENTURE – anything from dungeon crawling downtime to wilderness exploration

COMBAT – ‘Nuff Said

CREEPY

EXPOSITION

Horner, James – Main Title [Braveheart]
Midnight Syndicate – Soliloquy
Midnight Syndicate – Prelude
Midnight Syndicate – Troubled Times
Midnight Syndicate – Secret Chamber
Midnight Syndicate – Ruins of Bone Hill
Tyler Bates – Prologue
Harajuku Nation – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Sons of Skyrim
Inon Zur – Dragon Age: Origins
Inon Zur – Mages In Their Chantry
Inon Zur – The Dalish
Michael Hoenig – Night-on-the-Plains
Various Artists – 06 – John Whelan – Eileen Ivers – Trip to Skye
Sam Hulick – Wake Up
Sam Hulick – An End Once and For All – Extended Cut
Jeremy Soule – Poe’s Nightmare
Jeremy Soule – The Menagerie
Jamie Christopherson – The Beginning of Gracia
Bear McCreary – Da Vinci’s Demons Main Title Theme

TRAVEL – For those chase scenes or overland journeys, I’ve found this is more appropriate

Trevor Jones – Main Title
Trevor Jones – Top Of The World
Randy Edelman – The Courier
Horner, James – The Legend spreads [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Midnight Syndicate – Ride to Destiny
Midnight Syndicate – City of Sails
Cris Velasco – Legends
Cris Velasco – Our Hero
Klaus Badelt – The Medallion Calls
Klaus Badelt – One Last Shot
Hans Zimmer – What Shall We Die For – Score
Hans Zimmer – One Day – Score
The Last Samurai – Taken
The Last Samurai – Safe Passage
The Last Samurai – To Know My Enemy
Tyler Bates – Monastery Approach
Tyler Bates – A Kiss
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Wild Lands of Zelata
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Lure of Atali
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Waterworld
Inon Zur – Dragon Age: Origins
Inon Zur – The Dwarven Nobles
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Strength And Honor
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Alexander (Titans)
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Waterworld
Howard Shore – The Return Of The King (Featuring Sir James Galway, Viggo Mortensen, And Renée Fleming)
Various Artists – The Butterfly
Michael Kamen – The Cardinal’s Coach (Estampie)
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – Column of Sadness (Wheel of Pain)
Erich Kunzel: Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Jurassic Park – Main Themes
Jerry Goldsmith – The Sword Maker
Various Artists – The Butterfly
Various Artists – 06 – John Whelan – Eileen Ivers – Trip to Skye
Jeremy Soule – Elegant Plot Exposition Theme
Jeremy Soule – The Zodiac Islands
Bear McCreary – Theme from Dark Void
Bear McCreary – Defending the Ark

TOWN – Downtime, romance, etc.

Trevor Jones – The Kiss
Trevor Jones – The Glade Part II
Trevor Jones – Promentory
Randy Edelman – Cora
Randy Edelman – Rival Walk and Discovery
Randy Edelman – Parlay
Randy Edelman – The British Arrival
Horner, James – Main Title [Braveheart]
Horner, James – Horner: A Gift of a Thistle – A Gift of a Thistle [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: Wallace Courts Murron [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: The Secret Wedding – The Secret Wedding [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: Murron’s Burial – Murron’s Burial [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: Making Plans/Gathering the Clans [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: For The Love Of A Princess
Horner, James – The Legend spreads [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Horner, James – Horner: The Princess pleads for Wallace’s Life [Braveheart – Original Sound Track]
Midnight Syndicate – City of Sails
Midnight Syndicate – Ancient Tomes
Cris Velasco – Respite
Cris Velasco – Remember The Dead
Cris Velasco – Stepping Through The Wardrobe
Cris Velasco – Perfect Neighbors
Klaus Badelt – Fog Bound
Klaus Badelt – The Medallion Calls
Klaus Badelt – Moonlight Serenade
Klaus Badelt – Underwater March
Klaus Badelt – One Last Shot
Hans Zimmer – Two Hornpipes (Tortuga) – Score
Hans Zimmer – You Look Good Jack – Score
Hans Zimmer – Singapore – Score
Hans Zimmer – Up Is Down – Score
Hans Zimmer – I See Dead People in Boats – Score
Hans Zimmer – The Brethren Court – Score
Hans Zimmer – Parlay – Score
Hans Zimmer – What Shall We Die For – Score
Hans Zimmer – Guilty of Being Innocent of Being Jack Sparrow
The Last Samurai – A Way of Life
The Last Samurai – A Small Measure of Peace
The Last Samurai – Idyll’s End
The Last Samurai – A Hard Teacher
The Last Samurai – Taken
The Last Samurai – A Way of Life
Tyler Bates – His Name Is Conan
Tyler Bates – Fire And Ice
Tyler Bates – Victory
Tyler Bates – A Kiss
Tyler Bates – Conan Returns Home
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Wild Lands of Zelata
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – Night of the Serpent
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Lure of Atali
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Sands of Forgetfulnes – Tortage Beach
Knut Avenstroup Haugen – The Damp Barachan Nights
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Waterworld
Jason Hayes – World of Warcraft: Seasons of War
Video Games Live – World of Warcraft: Lament of the Highborne
The Stereoscopic Orchestra – World of Warcraft – Son of Arthas
Inon Zur – Dragon Age: Origins
Inon Zur – Elves At The Mercy Of Man
Inon Zur – The Dwarven Nobles
Inon Zur – The Common Dwarf
Inon Zur – The Dalish
Inon Zur – Human Nobility
Yvonne S. Moriarty – The Wheat
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Sorrow
Yvonne S. Moriarty – To Zuccabar
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Patricide
Yvonne S. Moriarty – The Emperor Is Dead
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Reunion
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Slaves To Rome
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Am I Not Merciful?
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Elysium
Yvonne S. Moriarty – Honor Him
Lisa Gerrard – Now We Are Free
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Exodus
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Excalibur
Soundtrack & Theme Orchestra – Theme From Black Robe
Alasdair Fraser – Calliope House / The Cowboy Jig Medley
– Hommlet_Level_loop — This is from Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil available on GOG.Com
– good_vignette This is from Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil available on GOG.Com
Michael Hoenig – Streets-of-the-City
Michael Hoenig – The-Beregost-Night
Michael Hoenig – The-Dream
Michael Hoenig – The-Friendly-Arms-Inn
Michael Hoenig – The-Ladys-House
Various Artists – Carolan’s Ramble To Cashel
Various Artists – Christina
Various Artists – Wayfarer
Various Artists – Simon Wynberg – Strathgarry /
Michael Hoenig – Helms-Temple
Erich Kunzel: Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – The Princess Bride – Main Titles
Howard Shore – The Breaking Of The Fellowship
Howard Shore – The Return Of The King (Featuring Sir James Galway, Viggo Mortensen, And Renée Fleming)
Michael Hoenig – Night-on-the-Plains
Michael Hoenig – Safe-in-Beregost
James Galway – Slievenamon
James Galway – The Dark Island (With The Chieftains)
Michael Hoenig – Cloakwood-Forest
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – The Gift of Fury
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – Theology (Civilisation)
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – Love Theme
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – Mountain of Power Procession
Basil Pouledoris – Conan the Barbarian – Recovery
Erich Kunzel: Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – El Cid – Fanfare & Entry Of The Nobles
Howard Shore – Brooklyn Heights Part 1
Howard Shore – Evenstar (Featuring Isabel Bayrakdarian)
Howard Shore – The Steward of Gondor
Howard Shore – Twilight and Shadow
Jerry Goldsmith – Old Bagdad
Mychael Danna & Jeff Danna – The Blood Of Cu Chulainn
Peter Gabriel – The Feeling Begins – 2002 Digital Remaster
Peter Gabriel – Lazarus Raised
Peter Gabriel – Before Night Falls
Peter Gabriel – Passion
Peter Gabriel – With This Love – Choir
Peter Gabriel – Wall Of Breath
Peter Gabriel – Disturbed
Various Artists – The Butterfly
Various Artists – 06 – John Whelan – Eileen Ivers – Trip to Skye
Various Artists – 07 – Alasdair Frasier – Are Ye Sleeping, Maggie
Various Artists – Moving Hearts – Tribute To Pea
Various Artists – Relativity – Siun Ni Dhuibhir
Various Artists – Simon Wynberg – Strathgarry /
Jeremy Soule – Frontier Home
John Ottman – Goodbyes
Cris Velasco – Borderlands
Bear McCreary – Tesla’s Laboratory

Categories: Adventure, DCCRPG, DnD, Lore, RPGs, Technology, Tips, Uncategorized Tags: Music

Edge of the Empire – Star Wars RPG Review

August 5, 2013 Kevin Comments off

I recently picked up the Core Rulebook for Edge of the Empire, just minutes before a game session being held at our Friendly Local Gaming Store, the Wyvern’s Tale. I wasn’t completely new to the rules, having picked up the beginner game a few months ago. I had really enjoyed running the beginner game for some friends, and so I had high hopes for the big book. It did not disappoint.

Weighing in at 448 pages, the book contains everything you need to run an Edge of the Empire game, other than the dice (more on that later). It is filled with rich full-color illustrations and is very nicely laid out with relevant sidebars and examples for different aspects of the game.

Edge of the Empire focuses on worlds around the “outer rim” of known space. The character careers and specializations reflect this Space-Opera meets Wild-west sort of feel. Each career has 3 specializations. When combined with the different race options, there is a huge variety of character options in this book. Careers include: Bounty Hunter, Colonist, Explorer, Hired Gun, Smuggler, and Technician. Each have three specializations which allow access to skill-trees that reflect that specialization. For instance, the three specializations for Technician are Mechanic, Outlaw Tech, and Slicer. A mechanic is mostly going to focus on skills that keep ships operating smoothly, An outlaw tech focuses on improving and modifying equipment and droids, sometimes with less-than-legal components! A slicer is unmatched in computer skills and accessing systems to gain advantages through information, or control over those systems. That is a LOT of variation in one career!

The system itself is a unique balance of rules-light improv, and rules-heavy tables and mechanics. My favorite aspect of both the combat and skill system is that it isn’t as simple as hit or miss. When you roll a check you assemble a dice pool. The dice pool is made up of positive dice from your skill and proficiency dice, as well as boost dice that represent any factors that may be in your favor, and the negative dice made up from difficulty dice, challenge dice, and setback dice representing everything that is working against the action you are trying to accomplish. For a very difficult task, you add more negative dice to the dice pool. Rather than just being numbers on the dice, there are several symbols that can come up. On the positive dice you have symbols representing successes, advantages, and triumphs. On the negative dice you have symbols for failure, threat, and despair. For an action to succeed, you need to roll more successes than failures, but here is where it gets interesting: whether or not you succeed you can create an advantage or a setback. For instance, if you try and shoot a storm-trooper with your blaster, you may not roll enough more successes than you do failures, meaning your shot missed. However, if you roll more advantages than you do threats, your shot has had some advantageous effect. What that is is up to you and the GM to make up. Maybe your shot hits a coolant pipe near the storm-trooper, reducing their visibility which makes it harder for them to attack you! Mechanically this adds negative dice to their die pool on the next attack, but you decide the flavor to make the action awesome! Conversely, you may get enough successes to hit, but you may also generate a threat. This could be shooting the storm-trooper in the chest, but the force of the hit backing his body into an alarm button on the wall! Your imagination is the limit, just like what every good RPG should strive to be.

Ship to ship combat is done in much the same way, and in my experience moves quickly and is action-packed. There is a conversion table for regular dice (d6, d8 and d12) but looking up all of those and figuring out which is cancelling what would bog down the action to the point where the dice really become worth it. There is also an application for the dice for iOS, Android, and Kindle, for $5.00, but if your interest is piqued, I would recommend the Beginner Game, which includes a set of dice, a two-sided map, character and baddy markers, and an excellent adventure that throws you in to the action right away. I’m looking forward to running this for the guys, hopefully for many sessions to come!