Chariot II

So, once the book versions of We Don't Go Back, On a Thousand Walls and Cult Cinema are finished, I'm going to do a second edition of Chariot.

Funny thing about Chariot. I wrote it nearly three years ago now, I crowdfunded it, I laid it out, and I played it with my friends for a while, and then I put it away and did some other stuff. And you do, that's what you do, isn't it? You put it to one side.

And about eighteen months after I last looked at it, I looked at it again. And it's full of typos, which it would be, because no matter how good you are at proofreading, you don't proofread your own work; and some of the art I'm still happy with, in an outsider art sort of way, and some of it I'm less happy with; and some of the rules need to be explained more clearly and given better examples. I came up with a better way to do the card mechanics.

But for all that, I read this, and I thought, by God, this is good.

The Shivering Circle: Charity Shop of the Damned

The Shivering Circle is now available to buy in digital format at DriveThruRPG.com (print is coming soon).

Part of the text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. What this means is that you can use the rules for The Shivering Circle in your own horror games (or even other sorts of games if you want), and that includes games you can sell, as long as you give due credit.

You can find a beta playtest of the game here, although the rules have changed slightly, and an excerpt here. But here's one more of the more whimsical horrors the village of Hoddesford has to offer you...

The Shivering Circle: Beta Playtest, part 1

It's been a while since I had a think about RPG design. In fact, I'd more or less decided a few months ago that I'd given up on it forever, but you know how it is.

Before That Hasty Decision, I'd started writing a folk horror themed game, and years before that I'd gotten maybe 10% of the way into making a horror game where player characters were almost certain to die.

When I thought, I know, I'll resurrect that horror game, I looked for my notes.

Errata: Alternative Boons for the Lover

I should first offer an apology for not having posted for a couple of days. Life got in the way, mainly and while I knew the pace of the blog wasn't going to be one I could keep up forever, I still hope to post if not daily, at least five times a week. I still have several essays about pop Atlantises and fractured histories to write, and a bunch of game stuff.

But today, I want to fix something in Chariot. 

Inner Worlds #6: Conflict and Agency

One of the biggest things that I'll probably change should I ever get to doing a second edition of Chariot is having dramatic scenes be called Conflicts. Which is a problem because it explicitly defines peacemaking as an act of conflict. And I mean, yeah, it's based around the idea of dramatic or narrative conflict, but the thing is, there has to be a better word for it.

Inner Worlds #4: In My Power

Mia Sara in Legend, when she gets turned evil (but only for a bit).

Today, my series about the mind and the heart in role-playing games moves outside of things that reflect the real world and into the realm of that sci-fi/fantasy/horror staple: mind control. Some of this I wrote before, in the mail list discussion that made me write these essays in the first place.

Inner Worlds #3: Mind and Body

sian: now 20% less empathic.

So this week I've been dealing with how you model the inner life of a character in a role-playing game, and I've talked about issues of right and wrong and come to no conclusion whatsoever, and I've talked about social interactions and how they get complex, with slightly more conclusion, and now it's time for mental health and trauma.

Inner Worlds #2: Rights and Wrongs

From my first edition Player's Handbook.

So in Dungeons & Dragons, there has always been this thing that annoys a lot of people –

Inner Worlds #1: Connections and Consequences

The skills list.

I decided that I'd talk about game design. Specifically, about the design of language, thought, morality, social interaction. This is the first of a short series.

Chariot: Actually Running the Thing

 (A guest post today by my friend Tim Groth. Tim has been one of Chariot's most enthusiastic supporters and cheerleaders and his account of running it was so fascinating that I asked to post it here. With his story of magickal AI and hijacked Atlantean propaganda, I think Tim completely gets the sort of atmosphere I wanted the game to have. And I think his game had heart, and heart is sorely what this sort of pastime needs.

You can find links to the various outlets that stock Chariot here.

Tim's words start after the cut.)

Worst Case Scenario, BETA 1.1

What's the Welsh for cyberpunk?

One answer is possibly WORST CASE SCENARIO, which is a full (beta) for a (complete) futuristic TTRPG with a uniquely Welsh flavour, that I just uploaded. Download the PDF (2.9 mb) here!

I have had it lying about for a while. Want to see the setting fleshed out? Want to see something more interesting? Comments box is down there.

Did you really like it? Well, it's totally for free, rhad ac am ddim, but if you click on this button by here, you can drop some pennies in my virtual tip jar. You don't have to have PayPal to do this, and there's no minimum and no obligation. Pay what you want. 

(Edit: you can also get the Beta as PWYW here on DriveThruRPG.)

Since I am being venal, my Patreon backers have had access to the first beta for a few weeks now, and occasionally get other goodies. If you thought about sticking a monthly dollar (so much more stable than pounds right now) in my Patreon, I'd be super grateful.

These Long-Lost People

Rhadamanthes the Pacifist, who gets a write-up in Cosmic Memory.

It has been an interesting week. 

Magic: a Few Examples

I. The Magician

Before I start!

OK, listen. Chariot's crowdfunder has fewer than 72 hours to run. At the time of writing, it's only £12 short of its first stretch goal (which would mean my being able to pay Malcolm Sheppard to write more material for the game, a catalogue of supporting cast members for your games) and therefore £1012 short of making its second stretch goal (rich background on the science and society of Atlantis, as written by Stew Wilson). Let's be honest: I don't think somehow I'm going to make it on the second goal at this stage, but stranger things have happened, and Stew deserves your love as much as Malcolm. If you've supported Chariot already, please share, support, tell folks. Because you never know.

[Edit: OK, so it made its stretch goal a half hour later and Malcolm's already been told he's good to go.]

It's still at http://igg.me/at/ChariotRoleplay  

So the magic system I wrote about here and here is pretty simple. You spend the points, you do the magic, and there are some things you just can't do, but pretty much anything else you can. But what can you do? Sometimes "anything" just doesn't tell you quite enough. So here are some examples...

Magic: Mechanics

Three of Wands

Magic rules are the fiddliest thing of any fantasy game, and how your magic rules work are a major part of the flavour of the game, and so they were the biggest headache for me in all sorts of ways. In the end, though, this is what I came up with and I'm pretty happy with it. It's going to make more sense if read in conjunction with my previous post on magic systems.

Of course, there's only a few days to go of the Chariot Crowdfunder! You can still support me and I would really like it if you did.

The Theory of Magic

Chariot's crowdfunder now stands only about £92 short of its first stretch goal, with 15 days to go. Please tell your friends about the game, share my posts and contribute if you like my writing. 

Anyway, after all that painful family history and difficult words about rape, it's business as usual, as today, we have another excerpt from the magic rules of Chariot. Tomorrow, some explanation on how this goes together, but today, the structure of a magic system based upon a theosophical Atlantis. People knowledgeable in Western occultism will probably recognise bits. That's not a bad thing. 

What Magic Can't Do

Seven of Wands

An excerpt from Chariot's magic section. It might seem unduly negative, but the way that the magic of Chariot works, it's actually easier to define what magic can't do rather than what it can. These limits on magic, by the way, are the ones codified by early Theosophist William Quan Judge in Occult Arts, which you can read here, here and here. Judge was responsible for the US branch of the Theosophical Society, still based in Pasadena, making a decisive break with the Indian/UK branch shortly after Madame Blavatsky's death, leading to there being, now, two Theosophical Societies. Why? Leadbeater, basically. 

And don't forget: I'm still funding! Help us get to our stretch goals at http://igg.me/at/ChariotRoleplay
  VII.CHA.BE.CHA

The Hat Club Playtest, Part One

Edit: The names have now been changed to protect... something.

Every week, more or less, since 2003, I've met with a small group of friends to play games. When I was writing regularly for White Wolf, they got to playtest with me, too. For Reasons Lost in the Antediluvian Aeons, we call our group Hat Club.

(Note: these reasons predate the filming of Chuck Palahniuk's most famous novel, so we don't have any actual rules, comedy or otherwise.)

So, of course they were going to do Chariot. No choice, see. For reasons tied to family and jobs and stuff these games aren't very long. A couple of hours. Therefore, it's become tradition for the person running the game to generate all the characters and hand them out in advance.

We can't generally be having with wasting a whole session on character generation, see.

Except, Chariot being a) what it is and b) something I wrote, I sort of felt that for the first time in well over a decade it was time to break tradition and do a Character Generation session.

CHARIOT Indiegogo Launches Monday

It has been the best part of a year but the CHARIOT crowdfunding campaign finally launches this coming Monday. The game's written, so basically this is a means of both getting people to preorder and also to see if there is enough demand out there to have more material written - the more people who contribute, the more supplemental material that everyone who buys the game will receive.

In the meantime, I thought I'd tease... the character sheet.  Because you have to have a character sheet.

That Relationship Mechanic

Ok, so I've wanted to include a relationship mechanic in Chariot from the beginning. I like relationship mechanics. The question is, how do you do them? Dogs in the Vineyard, which is still one of my favourite games, gives you dice for doing things if you can bring in a relationship, as does Monsters and Other Childish Things, in a slightly different manner. I wasn't sure that I wanted it to work exactly like that. Vampire and its siblings, for which I wrote, well, quite a lot have a set of optional "people you know" stats, Allies, Contacts, Retainers and so on. I felt that was a little too vague, too easy to drop.

This is what I settled on. Feedback is welcome.

Fated

In Chariot, you play the role of one of the twenty individuals in the world whose destiny is to carry the psychic weight of the human race on your shoulders.