Tag: Writing

#RPGaDay2020 + Street Fighter RPG

This year I’ve committed myself to the idea of posting for #RPGaDay in both English and Portuguese BR, specifically about Street Fighter RPG. I may make an extra post about other RPGs. This was inspired by the SFRPG Brazilian community’s level of activity and the all the numerous people that help make the fanzine Punho do Guerreiro (Warrior’s Fist) a reality! Extra thanks to Eric, my translation sensei 🙂

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfrpgbr

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfstg/

My health has improved a lot this year, so I am optimistic about the workload, but my dad’s health is poor so I might not have the time each day. Still, better to try and fail, then to not try at all. Now to finalise my ideas for the numerous prompts 😉

For the prompts, plus hex map and dungeon artwork go to Dave Chapman’s blog 😀

https://www.autocratik.com/2020/06/announcing-rpgaday2020.html

Portuguese BR

OlĂĄ,

O RPGaDay Ă© um evento que acontece todos os anos durante o mĂȘs de agosto. Em cada dia, postamos algo sobre o RPG, acrescentando a hashtag #RPGaDay2020. Algumas pessoas esquecem o ano e sĂł usam o #RPGaDay, eu uso ambos. A maioria das pessoas twita alguma coisa. Algumas pessoas fazem vĂ­deos, escrevem posts em blogs, e/ou desenham imagens; algumas atĂ© fazem todas essas coisas. O objetivo Ă© permanecer positivo; temos o resto do ano para fazer comentĂĄrios negativos. Participam pessoas de todas as partes do mundo. Acho interessante e divertido ler sobre as anedotas e ideias de outras pessoas. É geralmente fĂĄcil escrever um Tweet curto de 280 caracteres, e Ă s vezes difĂ­cil nĂŁo escrever muitos Tweets em resposta.

Este ano estamos usando uma Ășnica palavra, os participantes sĂŁo bem-vindos para interpretar a palavra da maneira que quiserem. HĂĄ um mapa hexadecimal e tambĂ©m um mapa de masmorra, para tornar o evento mais parecido com um jogo.

Enquanto um post pode ser sobre qualquer RPG, eu estou pensando em ideias relacionadas a Street Fighter. Eu poderia fazer dois Tweets, um especificamente sobre o SFRPG e outro sobre outros RPGs.

Como exemplo, estes sĂŁo meus Tweets para 2019: https://twitter.com/Batjutsu/status/1157276746800082949. Para os anos anteriores, eu comecei em 2017 e houve longas perguntas, eu normalmente escrevia demais https://batjutsu.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/rpgaday/

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Pensando especificamente neste grupo SFRPG do Facebook, alĂ©m de ser divertido, talvez algumas respostas possam ajudar a gerar ideias e conteĂșdo para futuras publicaçÔes do Punho do Guerreiro. A sugestĂŁo diĂĄria poderia inspirar idĂ©ias sobre Manobras Especiais, aventuras, torneios, locais, personagens, Itens de Poder, e muito mais!

A vida Ă© cheia de ocupaçÔes, portanto, se vocĂȘ perder um dia, nĂŁo se preocupe, talvez poste em uma data posterior. Talvez vocĂȘ prefira trabalhar um pouco todos os dias em um projeto de Street Fighter, possivelmente apenas postando a ideia completa no Ășltimo dia de agosto. Se vocĂȘ estiver muito ocupado agora, talvez poste suas ideias mais tarde, no final do ano.

Para nĂŁo sobrecarregar este grupo, sugiro que para cada dia tenhamos um post central, em que todos possamos colocar nossas respostas. Depois, no dia seguinte, outro posto principal, e assim por diante. Para os participantes, porque hĂĄ tanto conteĂșdo gerado, acho que Ă© melhor manter as respostas curtas. Mas, se vocĂȘ quiser escrever muito, nem que seja apenas para seu prĂłprio prazer, vĂĄ em frente. Divirta-se.

Eric “Musashi” Souza e Richard “Bat” Brewster

English

Hello,

RPGaDay is an event that runs each year during August. Each day we post something about RPG, adding the hashtag #RPGaDay2020; some people forget the year and only use #RPGaDay, I use both. Most people Tweet something. Some people make videos, write blog posts, and/or draw images; a few even do all. The aim is stay positive; we have the rest of the year to make negative comments. People from all over the world participate. I find it interesting and fun to read about other people’s anecdotes and ideas. It is generally easy to write a short Tweet of 280 characters, sometimes hard not to write lots of Tweets in response.

This year we are using a single word, participants are welcome to interpret the word anyway they want. There is a hex map and also a dungeon map, to make the event more like a game.

Whilst a post can be about any RPG, I am thinking about ideas relating to Street Fighter. I might do two Tweets, one specifically about SFRPG and one on other RPGs.

As an example, these are my Tweets for 2019: https://twitter.com/Batjutsu/status/1157276746800082949. For the previous years, I started in 2017 and there were long questions, I typically wrote way too much https://batjutsu.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/rpgaday/

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Thinking specifically about this Facebook SFRPG group, in addition to this being fun, maybe some answers could help generate ideas and content for future Punho do Guerreiro publications. The daily suggestion could inspire ideas about Special Maneuvers, adventures, tournaments, locations, characters, Items of Power, and more!

Life is busy, so if you miss a day, don’t worry, maybe post at a later date. Maybe you’d prefer to work a little bit each day on a Street Fighter project, possibly only posting the completed idea on the final day of August. If you are too busy now, maybe you post your ideas later in the year.

To not overwhelm this group, I suggest that for each day we have one central post, that we can all put our answers in. Then the next day another main post, and so on. For those participating, because there is such much content generated, I find it is best to keep answers short. But, if you want to write lots, if only for your own enjoyment, go right ahead. Have fun.

Eric “Musashi” Souza and Richard “Bat” Brewster

 

 

#RPGaDAY2020 Has Been Announced

This year’s #RPGaDay has been announced, another inspiring collection of prompts, once again presented in a fun graphic by the great Will Brooks. I look forward to the event each year; I strive to read as many tweets and watch as many videos as possible, plus try to reply and encourage others to keep going. There are always interesting stories and ideas about role-playing, a treasure trove of anecdotes and wisdom.

I have thought about the various ways I could answer the prompts. I am tempted to be more creative this year, inspired by many previous participants, but in particular @Catrinity and @CoronaTinoF, who I wrote about in my summary of #RPGaDAY2019. Although this may cause me to have less time to read and respond to other people’s posts; I already know I will have a busier August than the last few years.

I have a few tabletop and play-by-email (PBEM) games on the go, plus I have started my #Lynchcraftian PBEM game, so I’m pondering whether to focus my answers for this year on something more IC, maybe Flash Fiction fiction. Or should I go with something relating to the Street Fighter RPG, since I’ve spent a lot of time recently translating the Brazilian issues for Punho do Guerreiro, plus I am planning a SFRPG PBEM.

For more information, check out David F. Chapman’s blog, plus watch the video of Dave (Autocratik) and Anthony (Runeslinger) discussing this year’s event.

https://www.autocratik.com/2020/06/announcing-rpgaday2020.html

#RPGaDAY2020

1    Beginning

2    Change

3    Thread

4    Vision

5    Tribute

6    Forest

7    Couple

8    Shade

9    Light

10    Want

11    Stack

12    Message

13    Rest

14    Banner

15    Frame

16    Dramatic

17    Comfort

18    Meet

19    Tower

20    Investigate

21    Push

22    Rare

23    Edge

24    Humour

25    Lever

26    Strange

27    Flavour

28    Close

29    Ride

30    Portal

31    Experience

Treasure & Speculation Street Fighter RPG

There have several interesting Street Fighter RPG posts recently. Firstly, a fun cover by Benjamin Terry fusing the Chicago By Night cover (Vampire: the Masquerade) with a brick border design to give a great street tone; hidden reference to brick destroying bonus rounds? 😉 Chat here.

Update: A link to the commissioned picture has been added below 🙂

Secondly, an interesting discussion about: “What would you like to see in street fighter second edition?” Sadly there won’t be a 2nd edition due to licensing issues, but still fun to discuss ideas, to read the many interesting responses, as well as see what topics others prioritise; definitely worth a read 🙂 Wonderfully Andrew J Lucas joined in the conversation 🙂 Andrew is the creator of Street Fighter Player’s Guide, as well writing the Spirits of the Forest adventure (Adventures Unlimited), and he is also a contributor to Contenders. Andrew generously offered to look for some old files, which he then shared!

Andrew’s proposal for The Duelist https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfstg/permalink/1251147298422607

Andrew’s proposal for an expansion: Walking in Shadow https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfstg/permalink/1251147931755877/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfstg/files

The files are in Word 6.0 format, another reminder of what ancient treasures these are 😉 They proved to be an enjoyable read, thanks again to Andrew for sharing them. Andrew gave an interview in 2016 discussing the old Street Fighter design days, which can be read here.

Thirdly, Ingo Muller wrote a new SFRPG adventure. Ingo is working on an English translation; read about it here 😀 As normal the Brazilian SFRPG group is always active and worth checking out https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfrpgbr/

Lastly, an interesting review that I think nicely summarises SFRPG. The article covers the zany, the bad, but crucially also the effective aspects of the game.

https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2020/05/thoughts-on-street-fighter-storytelling.html

Update https://www.facebook.com/groups/sfstg/permalink/1254024961468174

RPG Impact 10

Continuing with RPG Impact. For my tenth RPG, I’ve chosen Pendragon. I recall seeing this game at my local games shop when I was still at school. No one I knew played Pendragon, and I thought the idea of King Arthur was boring compared to all the other games, so I didn’t discover this gem for a few years. As I mentioned in my Call of Cthulhu post for RPG Impact 6, I finally played some Chaosium when I was 18, and then was taught a bit about the company and Greg Stafford in particular.

I was impressed when I first read the book, but due to all the other games I was playing, it got put on to a list of games, and for years it was never chosen. When I did return to Pendragon was I surprised at myself, how had I not prioritised this game?

Like many growing up in the UK I’d read and seen lots of Arthurian legends over the years, so I had a basic grasp of variation on the tales. Whilst I still thought as the Knights of Camelot as interesting, but I’d mostly been playing games about super powered entities (Vampires, Changelings, Mages, Supes, Cyborgs, mystic Samurai, etc.), in some cases radically changing society or even reality. I recognise that so many games, such as Middle Earth or Changeling the Dreaming, have Arthurian legends at their core, so to an extent I did get to explore some common themes and character arcs. When we played something more mundane, it was modern day or near future.

I’m one of the many role-players that enjoy research, experimentation, buying new games just to read them. The indie scene is fabulous and rich with new ideas and tweaks. With Chaosium I am reminded of the old games company Looking Glass Studios, makers of many amazing and innovative games, in particular System Shock, which led to the epic Deus Ex and also less impressive but still great Bioshock, as well as the fabulous Thief series. Another quick PC game comparison, Planescape: Torment, which for years was a niche gem, but reviews by the likes of PC Gamer had the score go up every few years. For me Pendragon is like this. An RPG gem that many know about, but sadly most role-players don’t.

Pendragon had a big impact upon me for a few reasons. One being the winter season downtime system, not only is it different from most role-playing games, it is also something that easily fits a Play-by-Email style. The game’s focus on family and lineage is great, plus ties in with the game’s troupe style play. After completing my psychology and writing degree, I also gained a new perspective on the brilliance of Pendragon, specifically in regards to the personality mechanics. It is common for games to build upon the ideas of Freud or Jung, but less common to build upon the more complex science like the Big 5 personality traits, I think Pendragon’s personality traits are sublime. I appreciate that some players hate those sorts of things, feeling they are the tools of punishment by bad GMs, etc., but for any doubters, trust me with Pendragon it works wonderfully, empowering characters, supporting the themes.

There are a few videos about this RPG, such as:

#SecretRage Comic

Huzzah, I’ve just submitted a story for another writing competition; this one was for New Writers North. During my writing breaks I chatted with a few players about game ideas. Some more Play-By-eMail games have been preliminarily arranged. Besides tabletop games, I am currently running PBEM:

  • #FatefulMemories this is a fusion of Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and the World of Darkness; plus bits from other games. This game has been slow but steady, so far it has been ‘mostly’ set in the Forgotten Realms, but is likely to go full Planescape soon 😀 If the player agrees, maybe in the future I will publish some of the game turns.
  • A Mage the Ascension freeform discovery game.
  • One of the World of Darkness games I had started in 2017 was #SecretRage; I had previously blogged about this as Prelude – Secret Rage PBM 6. This game led to a spin off game, set in modern days, which then metamorphised in World of Darkness Sliders. I am running Sliders primarily as a tabletop, but it still involves PBEM 🙂

I might now also be running

  • A Twin Peaks game, likely another freeform game. Probably using Esoterrorists, Mage and Cosmicism. I saw some recommendations for other games to look at, which focus on providing a Twin Peaks like experience #Lynchcraftian
  • I’ve touched on Satyros’s: Powerchords with a music friend.
  • I have big plans for an epic Reality War game. Sadly I’d need a lot of infrastructure to do that, I’m not healthy enough to tackle so much coding; speech recognition is so annoying with code.

I had put a lot into the primary #SecretRage chronicle. Originally it focused on Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The idea changed to allow the PC to be a spirit, and I also incorporated some of my designs and code from old PBM games. The game would span the whole World of Darkness, allowing for any time or place to be explored. Despite being quite ill at the time of planning this, I managed to do a lot of preparation. I even made a comic; not bad for a rubbish artist with hand problems. Sadly, #SecretRage faded away, but I kept tinkering with it, making new scenes, hoping it would get going again.

Motivated by various chats, as well as discussion tonight in the Mage the Podcast Discord server, I have tweaked the comic that I made and uploaded as a complete PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZKGqsu4Q6q42dvoNlUV7RjzxsI7U9fCH/view?usp=sharing

#SecretRage 0

Batjutsu Secret Rage p1

#RPGaDay2019 prompts 25 to 31

Continuing on with my video summary of #RPGaDay2019 tweets, prompts 25 to 31. Previous prompts 1 to 8

I badly explain a point in the video about RPG and suspension, using the example of how big breaks in music can really add to a song, adding suspension. I also couldn’t remember any tracks in that moment, so:

The Beach Boys – Good Vibrations, Nine Inch Nails – March of the Pigs, Metallica – Sad But True, Beastie Boys – Sabotage, Garbage – Supervixen, Alanis Morissette – All I Really Want, Scissor Sisters – I Can’t Decide, Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well, Tool – The Patient, Portishead – Only You, Foo Fighters – Monkey Wrench, Queens Of The Stone Age – The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret, Tool the patient, Sigur Ros – Staralfur, Queen – Fat Bottomed Girls, Rage Against The Machine – Freedom, Kavinsky – Nightcall, plus so many more.

Maybe I need to return to this and explain myself clearer one day?

#RPGaDAY2019 ~ Suspense (day 27)

So far this month there have been a lot of great tweets, videos and blog posts, sadly I cannot link them all. So, it feels weird singling out the following links, as well as reblogging IvanMike1968 great article. After checking out these links I highly recommend reading IvanMike1968’s blog, because I think he wonderfully sumarises why so many RPers not just enjoy but need to discuss rules and settings.

https://twitter.com/Catrinity/status/1166438752975314949

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rb10rWaNM0

http://autocratik.blogspot.com/2019/08/rpgaday-2019-day-25-calamity-day-26.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krOVBq41TCc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOa1KyB7KY

IvanMike1968

If you’re reading this instead of watching my video, congratulations. You get more content today. Taking the time to read ought to be rewarded every once in a while. But don’t get excited , it’s only a little bit more content.

The first thing I thought about when the topic of suspense came up were the dice. There’s nothing like crowding around the plastic gods seeing what will happen. I’m not super big on complicated and detailed systems but very often building a dice pool for ubiquity or FFG Star Wars can be a lot of fun and the suspense starts to build. Not that those systems are complicated but it’s a little bit different than just rolling a D20. No matter what system, the suspense starts to escalate once an action is declared and it’s obvious that the outcome depends upon the roll of the bones. When the dice


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G is for Granny Weatherwax

Thinking about characters, for both fiction and role-playing games, and in particular Mage: the Ascension. A chat on facebook linked the article below, plus:

Dustin Daugherty: I consider Granny Weatherwax a Kami, a static magician possessed by the Spirit of No Nonsense.

Saucy Dryad

Esmerelda “Esme” Weatherwax, most commonly known as Granny, is one of the most compelling characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
granny

More than that, she’s one of my favorite characters in all of fiction*.

While there are a multitude of witches in Discworld, Granny is known to be the best, the most powerful, the one everyone else looks to. Not that she’d lay such a claim.

“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?’
‘Oh no!’ said Miss Level, looking shocked. ‘Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany.
‘Besides,’ Miss Level added, ‘Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.” 

She’s strong and forthright and comfortable in her heavy, hobnailed boots.

“She strode across the moors as if distance was a personal insult.” 

In a religious debate, she cuts to the heart of it.

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RPGaDay – In Preparation for 2019

Casting Shadows

#RPGaDay is returning for its sixth year, but in a whole new way that embraces the flexibility and creativity that make roleplaying games great.

The Infographic

Share this wherever people discuss roleplaying games~

Each day in August, RPGaDay invites gamers to share a positive example of the fun of RPGs. This year, the prompts have been presented as single word entries that participants can work with in any way that inspires them, both in terms of content and in terms of form. In the past most responses have been Tweets, YouTube videos, and Facebook comments. This does not begin to address all the different ways that gamers experience and express their creativity. The prompts invite participants to respond to them in any creative and positive way that suits and inspires them. Write, Draw, Act, Design, Dance, Compose, or
 whatever comes to mind!

Despite a terribly busy schedule doing paid graphic


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A Public Declaration

The ever writing and questing Mark Stay, co-founder of the Bestseller Experiment.

Mark Stay Writes

We had a pivotal episode of the Bestseller Experiment podcast this week. We finally revealed if we made our target of ten thousand copies sold of Back To Reality by the end of Glastonbury weekend. You can listen here


EP208: Glastonbury Or Bust – Did We Make It?

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that we didn’t make it. However, if failure is a teacher then we learned an awful lot. Here were the big lessons for me


  • Write a series – It’s much more difficult to sell a standalone book using advertising tools (Amazon Merchandising Services, Facebook Ads, Bookbub, Publisher Rocket) that are best designed to sell more than one product. So guess what I’m writing next
?
  • Not being able to use AMS in the UK hurt our chances of success. Yes, I know some authors have managed to use loopholes to run ads in the UK


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