Resurrection (again)

I've been busy this past year finishing up my PhD work. There were few gaming thoughts to report during that time. That work is all behind me now, though, so hopefully I'll get back into things here.

In the past year, I've been working on zilch some more. It has split into two components now: a very lite simple nearly-boardgame core and then a number of cleanly modular optional rules to turn it into more of a lite RPG system. The core portion is pretty much done, though it hasn't been tested much yet. The RPG portion is fairly well sketched out but still largely in pieces.

Last month, B. and I sat down one night after a couple beers and whipped up a quick session. We only made it through a couple combats, but things went fairly smoothly there. I was also trying a card-based dungeon generation idea I had (which is also still largely in pieces). An hour or so wasn't enough to tell whether either zilch or the generation system are any good, but at least they didn't seem obvious broken. (We did have to fix the default zilch character generation rules a bit, though.)

B. and I have also been playing D&D by email. I've found this works out quite well. It takes about 1 hour per round/email. I always group his characters together in the initiative order (which is fine, as they only differ by +1 anyway). Once B. decides what Lacane and Gwulf are doing, the rest of the round is in my hands. The only thing I need to do is actually sit down and do this more often!

I have a couple stray backlog details I've been meaning to report, which I'll post soon. Then I'll report on some of my more recent endeavors.

z20 is now d20house

A couple weeks ago, Drudge became z20. As I mentioned then, it was still shrinking in scope as I realized more and more that I shouldn't be changing d20 as much as I was. To reflect this, I've changed the name of the project (again!) to d20house.

As the latest name implies, this is simply my collection of house rules to d20. While still pretty heavily tweaked, it is actually d20-compatible. I've been putting my time into consolidating what small changes I still do want to make (because I just can't help myself!), as well as making a personal digital DM Screen that links into the SRD. I think this will serve to speed play--which was really the whole point of the initial project.

While still not complete, the project is taking shape here: http://snarkdreams.com/d20house/

I hope to convert (nearly) all of my D&D campaigns to d20house (since most are currently weird hybrids with different options from 3.0 through 3.5), and then get back into playing again!

RPG Settings released

I just uploaded my RPG Settings page, which currently includes God's Dogs and Heavy Metal Atomic Wasteland.

B. and I played some Fluffy/HMAW last summer. I still have a vague hope of getting the play notes up here at some point.

The End of Drudge

Today I decided to end my work on Drudge.

Drudge was my attempt to simplify D&D. Frequently, while playing D&D, I despair at the slow rate of combat and tedium of tracking countless modifiers. In those campaigns that I DM, my players (all 2 of them) are not very familiar with the rules, and so I end up tracking every modifier currently in play. In the one campaign where I was only a player, a single battle would take a full 3-hour gaming session. Even though the group was large--about 8 players--this still seemed excessive.

So, thinking about how to streamline D&D, I turned to Zludge. Zludge is my own custom RPG system based primarily on Fudge, but also pulling ideas from a great number of other systems. I've been working on the Drudge rules for over 15 months now.

But last night, I started looking through Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds again. Today, I read through the True20 Quickstart again. This is really d20 simplified, complete with a d20-to-True20 conversion document.

I realized that Drudge had really gone too far from d20 to be useful. While everything still converted from d20 in an easy mapping, everything had to be touched. Essentially, conversion became as much work as just re-imagining the same content from scratch in a completely different system. It was a weird, hybrid bastard that no one was ever going to use (possibly not even me).

But still, the exercise was not without its value. It's like learning how to write an operating system: no one's ever really going to use what you produce instead of Windows or even Linux, but it's essential to learning what goes into an OS. I still believe that, in a generic RPG system of my own design, feat and spell lists are something to avoid. They are too constraining while also require too much effort to construct and record. Instead, I think general rules and a purely skill-based system are the way to go. But stripping these out of d20, along with hit points and various die shapes (including the d20 itself!), leaves something largely unrecognizable behind.

Instead, I've realized I need something that cleanly translates. That means, all the 3.0/3.5 feats, spells, monsters, etc, need to translate over with very little effort. It's just the gameplay that needs to be tweaked. So I'm taking a lot of my Drudge work and trying something called z20: a hybridization of d20, Pathfinder, and True20--possibly with a few other odds and ends thrown in (such as from Castles and Crusades). I'm also giving up any notion that this would ever be widely (or even narrowly!) adopted by others. It'll just be my own construction of excessive house rules. Maybe then I can easily convert my many d20 campaigns, and recapture the joy of just playing again!

Resurrection!

It's been a while. The hiatus was not due to a loss of interest in either RPGs or blogging. Instead, I've just been busy with other things, and so haven't had time for either.

This is a disappointing state of affairs. It seems each semester something gets neglected: usually either my research or my gaming. This semester, it was the latter (which, incidentally, had pretty good consequences for my research--I'm starting to implement Marlinspike now). Hopefully next semester it can be my TAing and grading job that's neglected--I could use some practice getting by with less time on that one.

RPGing has become part of my identity--a key feature of how I define myself. But this makes it all the sadder that I so rarely actually do it.

So it's time to get back to it all!

This evening during my run, I was thinking I might go back to the Monday gaming night at Ward Warehouse and rejoin my old D&D group there. It's been a year. Sometimes it was frustrating how slow things went, but at least it was playing. And lately I've been dragging my feet on things because I want more entertainment and less of the work involved with DMing and designing. I've even been pushing S. to try her hand at DMing.

Zludge still needs work. Getting back into D&D would be good just to index some of the irksome things that Drudge should strive to overcome. (Look for some Notion threads on those!)

But, if I just want to play, I do have a bunch of solitaire lying stagnant on scraps of papers and text files on my hard drive. Lately, I've been in a mood to play something, but RPGing just seems too daunting and time-consuming. Time to overcome that apathy.

So, in the spirit of revival, here are a few backlog posts from this summer that never made it up here.

Initial Description and Mission Statement

"A partial-suspension of fine and diverse RPG sediment"

Sludge:

• mud, mire, ooze, slime, slush or similar mixture
  
• fine, broken, half-formed sea ice
  
• the semisolid material precipitated by sewage treatment
  
• any thick, viscous matter
  

Pit:

• a naturally-occurring or excavated hollow, hole, well, or recess
  
• a sunken enclosure for staging fights, especially between animals
  
• the side of a racing track used for refueling and servicing cars
  
• the stone at the center of a fruit
  

The Sludge Pit shall contain the following info:

• Game play-session summaries/plots, especially for plot-lines that don't have a home of their own.
  
• Reflection on Zludge design issues, including play-testing notes
  
• Reviews of other RPGs, especially free and indie systems
  
• Jotted notes for game mechanic ideas that don't have a home yet
  
• Game-mastering lessons and reflections
  
• Discussion of RPG theory (with an eye to perhaps making this an academic endeavor someday)