I would like to announce a partnership and the creation of a small RPG design team, Viking Games. This team will be mainly focused on Legion: Hell on Earth but will also work on other projects such as Project Humanity and Oversight. We would be happy to accept devoted RPG players and designers onto our small team. Hopefully as a group, we will be able to create better games quicker. So wish us luck.

The current Viking Games design team consists of:

1. xDungeonMasterx
2. judgmentsrpg

I am happy to announce that work on Legion: Hell on Earth has resumed. I have completed rough draft work on the Vindicator class and have begun on the Reaper class.

I have decided to cut the Zealot and Avatar classes from the game because of time restrictions. I want to be able to focus on the five classes that I have already envisioned. The Zealot and the Avatar just seemed a little tacked on. So the five classes that will be available in the first edition will be the Templar, the Vindicator, the Reaper, the Disciple, and the Heretic.

I hope to be able to finalize the details on character creation soon and post it on the site. So thanks for your continued support, RPG Laboratory.

I must voice my agreement now with Evil1. Lately, there haven't been a lot RPG posts. Instead we have been receiving plenty of "crap" posts. I used to enjoy them, laughing at the stupidity of them. But now they're growing to be an annoyance and hindrance. I hope we can do something to remedy this.

Perhaps, we can all out-post them!

This is a departure for me, because this is more of a turn-based strategy than an RPG, but it does use some role-playing elements. I thought you guys would appreciate this.

I was inspired by games like Sid Meier's Civilization and the new Sins of a Solar Empire. So I created: Solar Dynasty.

Just discovered that someone already made this...

Of course, that means I'm killing the project or at least salvaging what I can for a different project entirely.

I need some ideas for some spy gadgetry. So far I've got all kinds of explosives (grenades, C4 charges, etc.), grappling hook launcher, silencer, night vision goggles, laser sight attachments, etc. But I feel like I'm missing some gadgetry that a spy always has.

Any suggestions?

Statistics

• Strength: physical power
• Toughness: physical resilience
• Reflexes: agility and speed
• Intellect: intelligence and reason
• Willpower: strength of mind and resolve
• Charisman: persuasive ability

Players will have 18 points to spend on statistics.

Skills

• Hand-to-Hand Combat
• Gunfighting (light)
• Gunfighting (assault)
• Drive
• Computer Use
• Stealth
• Perception
• Demolitions
• Pilot
• Avoid
• Athletics
• Diplomacy
• Linguistics
• Repair/Modify

Players will have 10 points to spend on skills. Skills cap at 5. No skill may be raised higher than 4 during character creation.

Resilience Values

• Wounds (Critical): Used in mortal combat; Wound boxes equal to Toughness, Critical boxes equal to half Toughness rounded up
• Resolve (Non-critical): Used in social combat; Resolve boxes equal to Willpower
• Spend 12 health points enhancing Wounds, Critical Wounds, and Resolve
• Wound boxes cost 2 hp, Critical Wounds and Resolve boxes cost 1 hp

SFXs

• Mortal Combat
• Social Combat
• Driving

Players will have 5 points to spend on SFXs.

Boons and Flaws

• Spend 6 general points on improving your character
• Boons cost x amount of gp
• Flaws give x amount of gp
• Statistic points cost 3 gp
• SFX points cost 2 gp
• Skill or health points cost 1 gp

Gradual Progression
Fueled by experience points (XP). At any time during the session, the player can spend his XP to improve aspects, if that aspect has been used during that session. The cost of increasing an aspect rises depending on how high the aspect is. Players may only increase an aspect by 1 level at a time, regardless of how much XP you have.

• Statistics cost a number of points equal to 5 multiplied by the level it was raised to
• Skills cost a number of points equal to 3 multiplied by the level it was raised to
• New skills may be purchased for 3 points each, and start at level 1
• New SFX cost 5 points plus double the number of SFXs that you have already

The goal of this character creation and progression is to give the players complete freedom and control over their characters. If they want their agent to be very Sam Fisher-esque they can possess high Stealth and snap necks at their leisure. If they want to be a deadly hand-to-hand combatant with a penchant for persuasion and demolitions, they can be.

The Oversight Code
National security is no longer a concern

After reading this month's Game Informer about Obsidian's espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol, I've been inspired to make my own spy RPG. Thats how The Oversight Code was born.

The Oversight Code uses the Myriad system by Ashok Desai, which I am quite fond of. And, quite uniquely for me, I've already finished a majority of the game's mechanics. I think it may be because I've studied the Myriad RPG system so much and started (and did not complete) several projects using the system.

But that's beside the point.

I want The Oversight Code to be very story-driven and have the same thrilling, edge-of-your-seat effect of movies like the Bourne Identity (Conspiracy, Ultimatum, etc.) and games like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.

Because of this, I want to design a main storyline that will be used during the course of the game (Guides can always make their own stories, but this will be the story that is "packaged" with the game). That's what inspired the title.

During a session of Excalibur, I encountered a problem and would like the opinions of my peers on RPG Lab.

There were more players there than I usually had and so I thought to myself, "Hmm... I'll increase the monsters proportionately to the number of players."

It went from a group of five orcs to fifteen. Needless to say, keeping track of where each orc was and which orc had which health with little less than a scrap sheet of paper and some scribbled digits. This frustrated me and the players. Many players had to wait for several minutes before they could even act.

In retrospect I believe increasing the numbers of enemies wasn't a smart move. Perhaps if I had just increased their health instead.

I was just wondering what you guys would recommend. The mathematics and numbers of the gameplay is what I most dislike. I would much rather feed it through a computer that would do all of the mechanics for me and allow me to concentrate my efforts on immersing the players into the game. Perhaps a program of some kind? I don't know.

I would like to hear what everyone here recommends.

I like to classify styles of gameplay for swords and sorcery fantasy RPGs into 2 types: Warhammer-style, or Warcraft-style. Both styles are similar but have crucial differences.

The Warhammer-style requires deeper storytelling, with darker, more dangerous evils to contend with. The evil usually tempts the characters and more often than not, one of the characters will succumb to the temptation. The battles are usually more deadly, with little or no chance of resurrection upon death (except for some sort of divine intervention) and even good deeds are usually not answered kindly. The NPCs usually distrust the PCs and may even be completely hostile.