Going through some old CD archives the other day, and I found an honest to goodness Zen RPG. This has been of some contention here in the lab, people proposing RPGs based on Zen or old School (Chuang Tsu style) Taoist philosophy, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's called Unitstat, and the website that used to have it for download is currently defunct, but may achieve a positive reincarnation for the good karma it accrued hosting this ingenious little game.

I'll explain the rules. Get all your friend's dice and put them together. Pick a pile of dice such that if every die showed it's maximum result, the sum would be 60. If you're going to have a GM, he gets to pick enough dice to add up to 60 for each player.

I'm a big fan of games that tie character effectiveness directly to the player's narrative flourish, games like Wu Shu or my Play it Cool. They allow GMs to scale villains in the middle of an encounter. While the fight is exciting, everyone can mention cool, exciting details to make their moves more effective. When the fight starts to drag, the GM can describe the villain's actions in boring, uninspired ways, so the PCs can quickly trounce him. Mook rules are built into it, since mooks don't have much style and are this quickly dispatched.

Ridiculously overbearing posting rules, administrators' manipulation of my threads, the inability to edit my posts, and whiny nerds who love to criticize but can't handle it themselves makes for a terrible experience.

I wish this site was more active because it's the most user-friendly format I've seen so far.

Can anyone else provide alternative sites where I can share my ideas without furfags and teh interweb police?

Fucking Microsoft Works for Windows 7. I was working on a table of contents for the Nevercast manual, but the program resists my every attempt to do something as simple as a branching numbering scheme. Here's what the previous version let me do:

I. Mechanics
((indented)) A) Combat Mechanics
((indented 2x)) 1. Close-Quarters Combat

Here's what Microsoft Works keeps insisting that I do instead:

I. Mechanics
II. Combat Mechanics
III. Close-Quarters Combat

Clearly, Bill Gates knows better. Let's all email him and tell him how much of an asshole he is for dashing the dream

So I've fiddled around with three of the however many possible origin stories there are (I think some are practically the same, whilst others differ wildly)I've got a good grasp of what Dragon Age: Origins is like. A little dissapointing.

It might of been all the hype, good reviews and I expected a little more from the 'Spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' but the game is filled with lots of little things that seriously bug me.

1) Camera: You can move around using Right click on location or WASD (+ Q and E) the right click method is far too slow for exploring (perfect for tactical desicions, but running around not so good) but the WASD set up is horribly twitchy, you can't turn the camera just 10 degrees, no you have choices of around 45, 90 or 180. Also without any quest compass (there are markers, but you have to find them before they show up) it makes getting to where you need to go quite difficult.

Is it me, or we are not as entutiastic as we were 20 years ago?

In the hey day of RPGs we coulnd't get enough of it. We had conventions on a regular basis, our own adventures writen and played, our own magazine that was supported by local businesses which would advertise... It was awesome.

Now?... well, now is not the same.

I started the main mailing list in the town where I live about 6 years ago. It has worked really well, we have over 90 members. That list has worked really well to make sure we have quite a few active groups playing lots of games and at a good range of ages.

So far so good...

so anyway last night I was in town and I got some renewed motivation for working on my game. the one I mentioned in my last post which got cut off because I used that symbol for greater than. Well the idea is that you use your hand, the three stats are written on the backs of your pointer, middle and ring finger, it doesn't matter which finger you write each stat on and it might be a good idea for each character to choose a different finger to write each stat.
the game works like rock, paper, scissors with strength beating skill, skill beating magic and magic beating strength. the number for the stat determines how successful what ever the player was doing. character info and equipment is written on the back of the players hand.

I'd like to begin this setting as a series of rants, so I can receive some feedback before writing an actual book. This idea has been around my mind for some time, and I'll use the discovery of this site as an excuse to plasm it somewhere ^_^.

The idea is creating an RPG where the rewards come not for what the players do, but how and why they do it. The game has 8 ideals (subject to feedback), which are opposed by pairs:

Light: represents all that is honest, open and truthful. A "Light" action would be uncovering a con, telling your enemy of your plans before using against them, or telling a person that he has cancer without roundabouts. Opposed to Shadow.

The premise

There are three things that count when trying to determine if a certain task is done:

+ The skill on such area
+ The difficulty of the task
+ The degree of success

While making a Dice/Cards/Whatever mechanic to settle the result of an attempt, what we do is assigning this 3 values as the numeric variables of the draw/roll/whatever.

For example:

d20:

+ Skill: a numeric bonus (higher = better).
+ Difficulty: a numeric threshold (higher = more difficult).
+ Degree of success: difference between 1d20+skill and difficulty.

WoD (pre Requiem):

Trying to make a new RPG that doesnt use dice but the page count i keep seeing head is rediculous...too much information...too many variables...not enough space.
Makes my head hurt...