Hmm. These questions can sometimes be a little cringe. BUT I am going to take it at face value.
I rather like my Ordinary World setting for NIGHT SHIFT. The supernatural is real, but it largely wants to be left alone. I just kinda like the idea that vampires work the morgue night shifts, werewolves are postal carriers, and the scary old lady down the street really is a witch.
Who knows. It might be fun!
When did I start Game Mastering? Right away to be honest.
It would have been with the D&D Basic Set edited by Tom Moldvay. I am sure I ran my younger brother and sister through some adventures. I know I had made my own dungeons then and still have a couple of the maps. One, in particular, had a red dragon in one room and a green dragon in another. No idea how they got through the doors.
I would like to think I got better.
Ok. This one is up for some debate.
D&D and its variants of the time were all my "First" RPG. I played them like they were all one game.
My Second RPG?
That one was a bit fuzzier. I know where I bought it though. It was from the Mail Order Hobby shop. I know this because I am sure I bought them both at the same time because they were not available at my local book store.
It was either Chill or Traveller.
For my "street cred" I will say Chill, but in my gut, I think it was Traveller. I do know that I did not get a chance to play either of them until much later in life.
I still rather enjoy both games.
That one is a little harder to figure out. I feel like that in the late 70s and early 80s D&D was all over the place. I knew of it as far back as 77 or 78. I didn't read any of it until 1979 though.
I borrowed the Monster Manual from my classmate Geordie Herald. I got a copy of Holmes' Basic from someone. My first real DM was Jon Cook.
In truth, there was this critical mass of D&D in my town in the late 70s. I DO remember I almost didn't get involved with it due to my interest in video games. But reading mythology and "The Hobbit" and watching all sorts of horror movies I think made my involvement in the game at the time rather inevitable.
All roads lead to the Keep on the Borderlands it seemed.
I have to admit, I am a big fan of the "Rule of 2" we use for NIGHT SHIFT.
From the rules:
The rule of 2: this is my name for a sub-system in D&D that has never been precisely codified, but is buried deep in the bones of the game. Any time a situation needs to be adjudicated in D&D for which there is not another system, throw a die, and on a result of 1 or 2, it happens. Listening at a door (and not a thief)? You hear noise on a 1 or 2. Looking to notice a secret door (and not a dwarf or elf)? Roll a d6 and you find it on a 1 or 2. Surprise? 1 or 2. The only thing that changes, for the most part, is the type of die--rangers, for example, use a d8 surprise die--and some character types may adjust the probability (elves noticing a secret door without searching is a 1 on a d6).
A nice simple rule that covers a bunch of situations.
In the past, I would have focused on the adventure, the excitement and the interactivity of it all. Today I would still do that, but I would also focus on the things that mean more to me these days; playing with family and friends.
I'd also point out how it is a great creative effort. Want to write an 11 backstory for your character? Sure! Go ahead. But keep in mind they might die at any point. What to do then? New character and new backstory!
There are so many reasons people get into RPGs now and so many different kinds to choose from. Getting people into RPGs may not be the right question. Instead, how do we help people find the right RPG for their needs and wants?
I guess this is continuing on from Day 3's choice.
Why will they like this game?
Well for Basic D&D you can get up and running really fast. Character creation is quick, you can be right into the action in under an hour.
I also use D&D Basic to sell people on the game by appealing to their sense of history, I talk about how many others have traveled the same paths they have. I appeal to their nostalgia. With "Stranger Things" so prominent in the media now this is a good hook.
"So many heroes have walked this path, but so many more are now forgotten. Which one will you be?"
This one is easy.
If it is the first game for people I don't know well and I am teaching them the game then I usually want to do it at my Favorite Local Game Store, Games Plus in Mount Prospect, IL. This way if they want to buy the game in question everything they need is right there. Plus it is a nice neutral environment.
If it is for people I know well then I prefer my game room here at my home. I always wanted my own game room and now I have one.
I just need to convince my kids they need to clean up when they are done using it.
I believe I have shared this story before, but it never hurts to re-share.
For me, it was the Winter of 1979. It was "quiet reading" time at school and I had already read everything in our school's small library on science and my new fascination, Mythology. So instead of picking up "D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths" for the 100th time, I borrowed a friend's book that also covered all the same monsters and creatures.
The book was the AD&D Monster Manual.
The rest is history. I tried to figure out to play on my own, made up a bunch of stuff, and then finally got a copy of the Holmes Basic book. A poorly Xeroxed copy to be exact. Until I got my hands on the Moldvay Basic set this was how I tried to play D&D.
There are a lot of great choices out there, but I am still rather partial to the 1981 Moldvay Basic Set. Starts you out simple and lets you build as you go on. While the Mentzer Red Box Basic for the BECMI line gets a lot of kudos (and got the sales to be sure) I am still more in the camp of Moldvay.
I suppose it follows then that Old-School Essentials is also a good choice as is Basic Fantasy.
Hmm. I have already introduced RPGs to so many people. My kids and through them more people.
I think there are is an untapped market in appealing to other creatives I know; artists, writers, and the like. I think many of them would naturally take to RPGs.
Though it is still many, many years down the road, maybe I can introduce RPGs to my grandkids!
Tomorrow is the first of August and that means #RPGaDAY for 2022!
Started and maintained by Dave Chapman at AUTOCRATIK, this has been a yearly thing for the last nine years. My first was in 2014. I took 2017 off, and didn't finish 2018s. But I am here for it all in 2022!
Here is the list of post prompts I will be doing all month. They follow the questions of Who, What When, Where, Why, and How. With bonus questions on Sunday.
As well as text ones for anyone using a screen reader.
#RPGaDAY2022 Prompts:
1 - Who would you like to introduce to RPGs?
2 - What is a great introductory RPG?
3 - When were you first introduced to RPGs?
4 - Where would you host a first game?
5 - Why will they like this game?
6 - How would you get more people playing RPGs?
7 - System Sunday: Describe a cool part of a system that you love.
8 - Who introduced you to RPGs?
9 - What is the 2nd RPG you bought?
10 - When did/will you start Gamemastering?
11 - If you could live in a game setting, where would it be?
12 - Why did you start RPGing?
13 - How would you change the way you started RPGing?
14 - Suggestion Sunday: Roll 1d8+1, and tag that many friends and suggest a new RPG to try.
15 - Who would you like to Gamemaster for you?
16 - What would be your perfect game?
17 - Past, Present, or Future? When is your favorite game set?
18 - Where is your favorite place to play?
19 - Why has your favorite game stayed with you?
20 - How long do your games last?
21 - Setting Sunday: Share an intriguing detail from a game setting you enjoy.
22 - Who is your current character?
23 - What situation are they currently in?
24 - When did you start playing this character?
25 - Where has the character been?
26 - Why does your character do what they do?
27 - How has the character changed?
28 - Style Sunday: Roll 1d8+1, tag that many friends with your favorite RPG cover art.
29 - Who would you like to see take part in #RPGaDAY?
30 - What should #RPGaDAY do for its 10th anniversary next year?
31 - When did you first take part in #RPGaDAY?
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Follow along here and on Twitter.
This one might be the easiest one in the series.
Day 31 Thank
I want to thank everyone that read my posts, posted replies, and interacted with me on Social Media.
I also want to thank Dave Chapman for doing this every year.
Thank everyone. Now I turn my sights to October and Halloween!
Almost to the end!
Day 30 Mention
I thought I might mention some D&D-related content I am looking forward to.
From Wizards of the Coast
Some great-looking books coming up.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight reminds me a bit of the Ravenloft Carnival product for 2e. Likely that is how I am going to use it. Love the idea of a traveling carnival from the Feywild. Plus the chance for the return of Warduke, Kelek, and Skylla? Yeah, sign me up!
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Ok, I am not looking forward to this one per se, but I am looking forward to seeing my oldest, dragon-loving, son get it. Though it does look like it has a lot of cool things in it.
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos. Seriously. How could I know be excited about this one?
From Goodman Games
Original Adventures Reincarnated #6: Temple of Elemental Evil. I never played or ran the ToEE back in the day. I have planned on using it as the penultimate adventure for my D&D campaigns when they all end. This two-volume set looks fantastic is exactly what I need for my campaign.
So yeah. I am sure there is more, but these are the ones on my mind right now.
Don't forget NIGHT SHIFT The Night Companion is nearing its last few days. Give us some support. If we hit the stretch goal I will give a new Night World and this will keep me out of trouble for a while.
We can see the end from here!
Day 29 System
I feel today is going to be a lot about what sort of game system people prefer. Things like "d20" or "BRP" or a favorite of mine, "Unisystem."
Those are all good choices. But today I want to talk about one that might not yet be yours or anyone's favorite. Not yet anyway.
Today I am going to talk about O.G.R.E.S. and a little bit about O.R.C.S.
The "S" in both stands for "System," so it is redundant to say "O.G.R.E.S. System" or "O.R.C.S. System" just O.G.R.E.S. and O.R.C.S. is fine.
O.G.R.E.S.
O.G.R.E.S. stands for Oldschool Generic Roleplaying Engine System. It is the system that powers NIGHT SHIFT. It sits somewhere between the "rulings not rules" freeform of OD&D and the simple mechanics of d20. The end result is something that feels very familiar and new at the same time.
O.G.R.E.S. features three main subsystems as described by my co-author and designer Jason Vey. They are:
The first two are likely self-explanatory, but here is Jason explaining all three in detail.
Percentile checks are used to check anything that requires a straight probability. Some class abilities use percentile checks (thief skills, for example, and the ranger's tracking). Other class abilities (the druid's nature lore ability) simply work. For the most part, however, any class ability requiring a check will use percentile dice. Also, just about every table in the game (with a few exceptions) uses a percentile roll.
d20 checks are used for anything combat-related. To hit rolls, saving throws, and turning undead are rolled on a d20.
The rule of 2: this is my name for a sub-system in D&D that has never been precisely codified, but is buried deep in the bones of the game. Any time a situation needs to be adjudicated in D&D for which there is not another system, throw a die, and on a result of 1 or 2, it happens. Listening at a door (and not a thief)? You hear noise on a 1 or 2. Looking to notice a secret door (and not a dwarf or elf)? Roll a d6 and you find it on a 1 or 2. Surprise? 1 or 2. The only thing that changes, for the most part, is the type of die--rangers, for example, use a d8 surprise die--and some character types may adjust the probability (elves noticing a secret door without searching is a 1 on a d6).
Three very simple subsystems. Of course, all of these can be reduced to d% rolls. But really it is all simple. That is the point. In a game like NIGHT SHIFT action can happen very fast and you don't want a system of dice rolling to get in the way.
There is a hierarchy here of sorts. Most things will be a d%, followed by combat-related actions with a d20, and finally the Rule of 2. For everything else.
The Night Companion will expand on this and give you more options for play.
O.R.C.S.
O.R.C.S., or Optimized Roleplaying Core System, is the new version of the system that powers Spellcraft & Swordplay. This system is heavily inspired by OD&D and other old-school play styles.
The core of O.R.C.S. is the 2d6 task resolution. Much like the earliest form of D&D BEFORE the d20 was introduced.
Everyone talks about how Swords & Wizardry is the closest thing to OD&D, but they obviously have never played Spellcraft & Swordplay!
I am hoping we will see a lot more of O.G.R.E.S. and O.R.C.S. in the future.
Don't forget NIGHT SHIFT The Night Companion is nearing its last few days. Give us some support. If we hit the stretch goal I will give a new Night World and this will keep me out of trouble for a while.
One of the things I have never really been able to do to my own satisfaction is Solo play.
Day 28 Solo
The idea of solo play is one that does go back to the earliest days of RPGS. For example, there are plenty of Tunnels & Trolls adventures that are for solo play. The infamous introductory adventure with Aleena in the Mentzer version of the D&D Basic Red Box is another example.
I had a few of the Endless Quest books, but mostly I got bored with them very quickly. I tried playing the various Zork games from Infocom (yes including "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" game. No. I never got the Babel fish.)
Back in the 80s my High School DM and I spent a lot of time programming a BASIC (as in the computer language) AD&D combat simulator. We could load up to 10 characters and 10 monsters (of an unlimited number on disk) to fight. It worked out rather nicely.
There are now much better D&D experiences in terms of software that can be enjoyed as a solo player but for me they suffer from the same issue that Tunnels & Trolls did/does. Nothing can beat the interaction of others.
I suppose if given the choice of an online game with others using just web meeting software (like Zoom) vs a really interactive video game that is as close to D&D as you can get. I'll take the online game. Not that I don't like video games, they are just not the experience I want when I want to play an RPG. DragonAge and Skyrim feel the closest to me.
This one took a lot longer to write than expected, and sadly, not one I really wanted to write.
Day 27 Fraction
I love doing blog challenges, blog hops, and themed posts. It gives me something to look forward to, something new to write about, and it lets me interact with others that I might not be interacting with or even knew before.
Sadly. I am also only getting a Fraction of the interaction here.
My Twitter posting is way up and my interactions there have increased by about x3 to x4 in this month. But here? Sadly crickets.
I am not sure why that is, to be honest. I know there is a faction among the RPG bloggers that hated the April A to Z. Again it was something I enjoyed, but I saw the drop in interactions and in daily visits.
It is disappointing. I want to keep my regular readers happy. I also want to expand my reader base. Interactions from both help me write more and maybe cover topics I might not otherwise cover.
So help me out here.
Do you like these social-media-wide themed months like this and the April AtoZ?
Do you like my other themed months or weeks like I did with BECMI in June 2020 or Troll Week or my week with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft?
Let me know!
I had some ideas for Theory, but none of them really took shape. So instead I want to talk about Origin. In particular the Origin of NIGHT SHIFT.
Day 26 Origin
Come back with me if you will all the way to 1995-1997. I had just gotten married, moved into a new house, and was working on my first Ph.D. Life was pretty good.
That is except on the RPG front. I was so burned out of AD&D and D&D, approaching my 20th year of gaming with something akin to apathy really. I had been enjoying all the things the Internet had to offer me in terms of connecting with other gamers, but the games themselves had left me a bit less than thrilled. TSR was busy at the time going after any website or group that even mentioned "D&D" so my tastes were beginning to sour.
By 1999 I was more or less ready to give up on D&D, plus I had a kid on the way and thought that I would never get the chance to play much (hahahaha!). Then along came C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG. I have recounted that tale before, but something in that book reignited the spark that had been dying. WotC and the OGL would further fan those flames, but that is still a bit off from here.
WitchCraft was the perfect game for me. It did everything I wanted and it did them perfectly. That is except for the things that D&D did perfectly. I hung out on the Eden Boards and there I met Jason Vey. He was coming from a similar background as me; we both loved WitchCraft and old-style D&D. But we also enjoyed a lot of new games too. From here we worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer together. Jason would go on to do a bunch fan-created works for both Unisystem and D&D and later d20 and then go on to work on All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Castles & Crusades. I'd go on to do my various witch books, a lot of Unisystem conversions, and move on to working on Ghosts of Albion.
A look over our fan-made and published works it would seem that NIGHT SHIFT was fairly inevitable.
I recall working on a "Monster Manual" that I still have on my hard drive where I took all the creatures from the AD&D 1 Monster Manual and converted them to Unisystem. Both Classic and Cinematic. If you are thinking that the seeds of my current "Basic Bestiaries" also began here you would be correct.
NIGHT SHIFT began as a conversation. One according to Jason, but I recall a few different threads that came together. The first was Jason pointing out that Level/Class builds, like in D&D, can be every bit as flexible as point-buy ones, like in Unisystem. He was mostly talking about his own Amazing Adventures, but I was also thinking about in terms of the various OSR games. BTW, you can do both now in NIGHT SHIFT thanks to the Night Companion.
The next conversation was the two of us talking about all these ideas we still had for various games, regardless of, or divorced from, their systems. Eventually, we decided that we should be making this game with these ideas.
For me, the origin was one of pragmatism. I wanted something to fit the "Buffy-shaped" hole in my life. Not just in terms of fandom, but yes that, but also in terms of system. The same can be said of "Ghosts of Albion." I LOVE the work I did on both of those games and I am proud of it. But neither game is completely "mine." Buffy has also sorts of baggage attached to it now that people are finally seeing what a douchebag Whedon was and is. "Ghosts" for as much as I love it will never see another printing, no supplements, no new material.
NIGHT SHIFT is my game. It is Jason's too. And as I always say, once YOU buy it then it is YOUR game too. But it is a game I can love unconditionally and support without worry or feel like I am investing in a sunk cost. I have D&D 4th Edition for that.
If you go through NIGHT SHIFT and have been reading this blog then you will see where things in the game got their origins. Read Jason's blogs and you will see where other things in the game got their origins as well.
NIGHT SHIFT is a new game, but its origins go all the way back to the turn of the Millenium and before.
Don't forget NIGHT SHIFT The Night Companion is nearing its last few days. Give us some support. If we hit the stretch goal I will give a new Night World and this will keep me out of trouble for a while.
I thought it might be nice to Welcome new readers to the NIGHT SHIFT.
Day 25 Welcome
I have picked up a few new readers so I thought it might be nice to welcome them to my blog and to my game NIGHT SHIFT.
Right now NIGHT SHIFT has a Kickstarter for the first supplement, The Night Companion. This book adds new classes, monsters, magic, species, point-buy characters, and more.
But what is NIGHT SHIFT?
NIGHT SHIFT is a modern supernatural/horror RPG. The system running the game is called O.G.R.E.S., or the Oldschool Generic Roleplaying Engine System. It is a system that should be familiar to many since it is derived from the d20 SRD in an old-school, or even OSR, fashion. So if you played D&D in the 70s or 80s you will find a lot here that feels familiar. But the system is only half the picture.
The genre of NIGHT SHIFT is modern supernatural horror. Written by myself and Jason Vey, this RPG combines everything we know and have worked on over the 30+ years we each have in the RPG writing industry and 20+ each writing professionally. Games on our collective CVs include, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Army of Darkness, Night Bane, Ghosts of Albion, Amazing Adventures, Spellcraft & Swordplay, the Witch, Castles & Crusades, Ravenloft, and more. NIGHT SHIFT takes all these experiences and distills them down to what we hope is the most enjoyable RPG we have ever worked on.
NIGHT SHIFT has a genre but no default setting. This way you can create your own world to play in. We DO however provide you with four different "Night Worlds." These are places to set your game in an move on from there. These include Jason's "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars" (the closest we get to a default setting) and "The Nocturnumverse" based on his campaign of something like 20 years or more. I also provide my "Generation HEX" a world where magic has come back and it only rests in the hands of tweens and teenagers, to "Ordinary World" where everyone is some sort of supernatural creature trying to get by in a world full of humans that would rather seem them all dead.
So give our game a try. We think you will enjoy it.
Heading into the back end of the challenge. What do we have for today and how does it relate to NIGHT SHIFT?
Day 24 Translate
Continuing on the ideas in Simplicity and Substitute, I often try to Translate material from one game system to another for different sorts of experiences.
In many ways, the ultimate representation of this is NIGHT SHIFT.
NIGHT SHIFT began as a way to take something my co-author Jason and I loved; the games we worked on and played back in the 1990s and early 2000s and translate it to a rule system we also loved.
The simplest way to describe NIGHT SHIFT is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Basic D&D rules" but that doesn't really capture all of it.
In the 1990s my game world of choice for AD&D 2nd Ed was Ravenloft. I loved the horror elements, I loved the trappings of Gothic Horror, and I loved that I could bring in characters I have been playing for years over to it. The Masque of the Red Death Gothic Earth supplement was a dream come true since it also brought in my beloved Victorian era. It was perfect...almost.
Near the end of the 90s I was getting really burned out on D&D. Thankfully I had discovered C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG. Here was yet another "Gothic Earth" only this time coming at from a different angle. I loved it. Of course, as the supplements for WitchCraft were released I thought of many ways to "translate" Ravenloft over to WitchCraft. In a way, I got my wish and wrote Ghosts of Albion. A horror-soaked Earth, in a Victorian setting.
Still as perfect as I think WitchCraft and Ghosts of Albion are, they still didn't give me something. Sure it was a minor thing, but there was still something I was looking for.
Jason did something similar. While I went for the themes I wanted, he took the Unisystem rules found in WitchCraft and went a different direction with Dungeons & Zombies; a way to translate D&D experiences and adventures into Unisystem. Like myself, he also had a few "fan" based products.
We really have been dancing around NIGHT SHIFT for decades.
I wanted a game where I could translate anything I have done over the last 30+ years to a single game system. I feel NIGHT SHIFT does this.
Don't forget our Kickstarter going on right now for The Night Companion.
