ANNOUNCEMENT - Farsight Blogger closing down... well, sort of...

This won't make too much of a difference to the world at large but I do get the odd email every now and then about content or review material for Farsight Blogger so I thought I'd just put this out in the open.

I've been doing this blog since June 19th 2009 and I've had a great time with it. I originally started writing articles, doing reviews and creating stories for a Star Wars fansite called Lightsabre (now www.jedinews.co.uk), and after a while I had a go at a small e-zine called ODDS, which I edited for nine issues and enjoyed very much. It was only natural that I created a blog and, after seven years, I've decided to take a deep breath and let Farsight Blogger go... of a sorts.

I've been gaming a lot recently and not for any other reason than I enjoy to game with friends. I've not been analysing a system, or seeing how it works for me and my group, or examining the setting. I've simply played the game and had a hell of a lot of fun, and I realised that I spend so much time writing about games that I'd drifted away from simply enjoying them.

This rush of creativity has stimulated several other areas of my brain and I also realise that I miss other things - writing for the joy of writing, creating stories and simply working on my own projects. I feel the need to write again, to create and get my jumbled thoughts on paper, and maybe even look to getting some more work in print. It's been eleven years since I was published by the British Science Fiction Association, and ten since I wrote that Battlestar Galactica computer game. I need to flex my mind again and to allow my brain the freedom to do that something else has to go, and that something else is Farsight Blogger.

I'm not blaming the blog for my lack of creativity - far from it. This blog has opened so many doors and given me so many avenues to walk down that I've experienced a whole new arena of gaming. I've reviewed amazing games and books, I've interviewed some of the tabletop industry greats, I've met all kinds of wonderful people and I've made plenty of amazing new friends. This blog has done wonders for me and my hobby, and I've gathered so many experience points that I should be levelling up several times over. Thanks to everyone who has been involved.

The blog won't completely die; there'll still be my monthly 'Hints and Tips' articles that have been queued up and will last for a couple of years yet. I'll also be carrying on with the interviews as I do love to hear from those-in-the-know and I enjoy sharing their thoughts and views. In fact, if you're in the industry then drop me a line - not only do the interviews appear on Farsight Blogger they'll also appear on WWW.RPG.NET for the whole world to see.

I've had a great time with this blog, and I still will in an incredibly reduced sense. As much as we all like talking about our love of gaming on the internet, I've realised that, for me, the best way to share that love is to actually play some games!

Cheers, all. 'Tis been a blast!

Another D6 character sheet

Here's another D6 sheet I made a draft of - I wanted to do a generic action-adventure sci-fi game and use the Star Wars rules, but knew that if I just used the Star Wars character sheet the players might get distracted and we'd end up just doing Star Wars.

I figured I could use this for pulp action sci-fi, with rocketships and Martians, as well as for more gritty or militaristic sci-fi adventures.

High adventure D6 game

I've been having some amazing fun recently with Call of Cthulhu - the Friday night campaign we have on the go at the Lunar Games Society in Lichfield is going at full steam and, as the GM, I'm doing all I can to keep the story moving while at the same time making sure that the players are having fun. As this is a new group and this is our first campaign together, there's also a large part of me trying to impress them all with what I've learned over my many years of gaming. Hopefully they're having as much fun as I am.

I'm a massive fan of the Call of Cthulhu RPG - we're using 4th Edition right now - but there's always going to be a little voice in my head pushing for adventure and pulp-action excitement. I try to reign myself in when I hear the Indiana Jones march raging in my head, and as much as I'd love to have the group get into running gun battles or punch Nazis in the face, I've got to try and keep it in the reality of the setting.

It's not just that - the rules of Call of Cthulhu don't lend themselves well to cinematic action. So, I've gone back to the games system that I know will serve me well; the D6 System.

The one I use is from the first edition Star Wars RPG rules; it's fast, intuitive and easy to run. As well as being player friendly it's simple enough to grasp quickly yet detailed enough to create some properly fleshed-out characters. I ran a successful Star Wars campaign with it from 1987 to 1996, so that's a win in my book.

I want to do the action adventure thing, with treasure hunting, tomb raiding and villain bashing, and after playing the PS3 'Uncharted' games and having a blast with Nathan Drake, as well as the new 'Tomb Raider' games and getting into some serious shit with Lara Croft, I'd like to set it modern day and include secret societies, government agencies, criminal organisations and rogue military nutjobs, all taking place in the far corners of world. There's a shadowy world of secrets and lies, and history can make people very rich and powerful...

So, I've knocked  up a basic character sheet, I'm going to flesh out the background a bit more and I'm going to suggest that the players play as fortune seekers - mercenary treasure hunters who fall foul of organisations both official and unofficial in their search for that big score. Mix some modern-day dungeon bashing with some grudging heroics and I think we've got ourselves a campaign.

Frostgrave, and why it's a fantastic game and setting

The game Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City is one of my favourite games. I'm not a huge tabletop wargamer - in fact, I haven't played a wargame for a long time, as RPGs are my bag - but this is one of the very few wargames that I've played that has left a lasting impression on me.

First of all, it's just so accessible. It's quick and easy to learn, you don't need hours to play it and with just ten figures per side you can set up a warband and be ready to go with very little expenditure. If you've already got a bunch of 28mm fantasy or medieval miniatures from other games then you're pretty much ready to go. Small groups means a lot less time collecting and painting, and just getting on with the game.

The game also has a brilliant, enigmatic setting that's great for a roleplaying campaign. This is from the 'Frostgrave – Tales of the Frozen City' short story collection blurb:

"Long ago, the great city of Felstad sat at the centre of a magical empire. Its towering spires, labyrinthine catacombs and immense libraries were the wonder of the age, and potions, scrolls and mystical items of all descriptions poured from its workshops. 

Then, one cataclysmic night, a mistake was made. In some lofty tower or dark chamber, a foolish wizard unleashed a magic too powerful to control. A storm rose up, an epic blizzard that swallowed the city whole, burying it deep and leaving the empire as nothing more than a vast, frozen wasteland. The empire shattered, and the magic of the world faded. As the centuries came and went, Felstad passed from history to legend and on into myth. Only a few wizards, clinging to the last remnants of magical knowledge, still believed that the lost city had ever actually existed. But their faith was rewarded.

After a thousand years, the fell winter has passed. The snows have receded, and Felstad has been uncovered. Its buildings lie in ruins, overrun by undead creatures and magical constructs, the legacy of the empire's experiments. It is an evil, dangerous place. To the few hardy souls who inhabit the nearby villages, the city has acquired a new name, ‘Frostgrave', and it is shunned by all right-thinking people. For those who seek power and riches, however, it is an unparalleled opportunity, a deadly maze concealing secrets of knowledge long forgotten..."

How awesome is that? How is that not screaming out for some incredible dungeon-delving, ruin-searching, crazy madcap magical gonzo insane exploration escapades? The actual Frostgrave game and system can be easily converted into a quick and easy RPG, so that you can game your way through the city and still have those wargame sessions you love so much. I added a basic skill roll, which is simply roll 1D20 and beat a target number; easy 5, average 10, difficult 15, impossible 20. That's it - instant roleplaying game.

The enigmatic setting is also open to interpretation, as the author Joseph A. McCullough has purposefully left the setting and history vague. This means you can add all kinds of monsters, races and personalities and just go crazy with the city. High fantasy bad-guy blasting? No worries. Gritty medieval dungeon grinding? Take your best shot. Frostgrave welcomes all kinds of approaches, and there's almost nothing you can't do - the Frostgrave Facebook page is proof of that.

This a great game and a great place to adventure, and even though the wargame gives you a chance to create some real personalities and get attached to the magician you've created, it really deserves a dedicated roleplaying game to really get into the meat of the setting.

I've looked into it further, and to set myself up with the game from scratch (based on North Star Military Figures, who supply the official miniatures and stuff) it would cost:

£14.99 for the rulebook

£6.00 for a wizard and an apprentice

£20.00 for a box of 20 modifiable soldiers

£8.99 for a modelling equipment starter set

£2.00 per pot of paint (for argument's sake, let's say I'd need 5 pots for a decent mix, so that's £10.00)

£3.00 for a tape measure

£2.50 for s selection of D20s

So, that's £65.48 to not only get started in the game, but stay involved for a very long time without having to make constant purchases.

Of course, the cracking thing is that I've already got 28mm miniatures, dice and a tape measure, so even to dabble in the game will only cost me the rulebook.

Other than the game and setting, I really see the appeal of this!

Hints & Tips - THREAT ASSESSMENT

On the first Monday of every month, read a new hint or tip from Jonathan Hicks, as featured on www.rpg.net and available on Kindle as 'The Book of Roleplaying Hints, Tips and Ideas'.

How to make your bad guys more realistic.

The last thing you want is to make your chief NPC protagonist two-dimensional, for your players to turn round and say 'well, that's another power crazy megalomaniac dealt with - who’s next?'

The difficult question is how can the players find out about the past of the bad guy? Unless they knew the nasty before they went bad, which can be a brilliant plot hook, the players don't have many chances to get to know them, what with dodging their blasters and bombs.

PC's turning bad is a great idea, and roleplaying games are brilliant for this. If or when a player character turns to evil, the character sheet can be handed over to the GM and then played as an evil NPC. Isn't that a great idea? The character that the players have been adventuring with and getting to know over the past few sessions is now one of the opposite side, adding a fresh new perspective to the game. Maybe the story will follow the same lines as the Star Wars movie Return Of The Jedi, with the PC's trying to convert the evil NPC back to the good side. Talk about high drama. If the players really take to the story well, then the roleplaying opportunities are enormous. This need not only apply to that particular genre. Lets say a player has gotten tired of playing a particular PC, and wishes to retire them or have them killed in a glorious end battle. Why get rid of the character when they can suit a better purpose as an NPC, an evil one at that? This way, the personality of the character has already been defined by the player who controlled it, and if the referee plays that character with the same traits, but with a little more hint of nastiness, the players will respond in a much more eager manner than if they were up against another NPC nasty.

Alternatively, and easier to pull off, the bad guy can be an old friend of the PC's, an NPC who turned nasty, as simple as that. A good plot twist is to have the NPC act like a really good friend to the characters for many sessions, and then the final twist is to find that the NPC is the chief behind all the problems the PC's have been investigating, and didn't want to directly hurt the PC's because he really did get on with them. Nice twist, huh? Bad guys, or at least the characters on the opposite side, can suddenly take to new depths with this kind of personality input.

Why should the chief protagonist be evil? It's pretty much assumed that any NPC who tries to thwart the ultimate goal of the PC's is a nasty. It need not be that way. The NPC who is trying to stop the PC's from finding the sacred diamonds of Lutz, for example, may be doing so out of a religious or belief-driven motivation. Look at the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That group attacked the heroes straight away, and you immediately think that they are on the wrong side, but it turns out that all they are trying to do is protect the secret of the Holy Grail. Fair enough. They think they're doing the right thing, and maybe they are, but all it was, was a difference of opinion on what the goal of the story meant to each participant. Maybe you could generate that kind of opposition between the player characters. One could be out for the money, another for the glory, and yet another could be thinking 'maybe we should leave these diamonds of Lutz where they are'. It's quite simple to have that escalate into heavy in-party rivalries, but this should be stopped if it seems to be going too far. The main reason why a group plays together is to co-operate and perform as a team, anyway. Unless you’re paranoid.

The bad guy could even take the form of an animal. Yes, it can be done, and if it goes according to plan it can be quite effective. If it doesn't go as well as expected, then it could turn into a cheap re-hash of the Alien movies.

What am I talking about? Well, lets take Ridley Scott’s movie Alien as an example. The film was about an alien life form, which gets on board a spaceship and proceeds to eat the crew, moving and hunting as a predator and running circles around everyone. The creature killed in a nasty way and had a real dark, evil look to it. When it finally gets vaped, everyone cheers and the evil alien is defeated.

But, it wasn't necessarily evil. It wasn't necessarily malevolent. It did what came naturally to it, it fed and reproduced. That is the basic requirement of any life form (unless your playing a totally whacked-out game), and, if you want to look at it simply, the alien was doing what it did.

But that's not how you would see it if you were on the receiving end. This creature would be doing things that would abhor you, eat things that would make you feel sick, move around and kill in a fashion that would scare the hell out of you. Basically, you would think that what the creature was doing was evil. Evil if it was human, maybe, but we can't judge other life forms by our own standards, be they ones from outer space or ones we share our planet with.

Before I get too heavy, I'll get to the point of all this. The protagonist of a game could be such a creature. You can get a very entertaining game if you keep the players on their toes wondering what to do next. You see, they can't guess what a creature is going to do like they can guess the next move of an intelligent being, and that is what makes the game entertaining. They are continuously looking over their shoulders and watching each other's backs. It need not be done with an alien. You can get the same effect with a large predatory lizard, and an even more effective way is to have a swarm attack the PC's in the form insects or some other lifeform, making defeating them much more difficult. The point is, creatures have no qualms about doing what they do. Where the more intelligent bad guys would observe and calculate, the creature would get stuck in. Simple as that.

Well, I think that about wraps it up. I hope that this little piece has given you a few ideas on how to improve what threats the players will face. Remember- if you make notes about what your head bad guy is like, and stick to those traits, then it will make for a more believable NPC. Not only that, when you come to create a new protagonist, you can see what has come before and create an original one to keep the game fresh. Another key thing to remember- don't be too proud of the bad guy you create. Ultimately, they'll be defeated, and after all, you're not in contention with the players.

Of course, you don't let the players know that.