tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83218925588828559682024-03-05T05:37:34.032+01:00RED MOOSE GAMESGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.comBlogger315125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-61705748978044998852019-02-13T02:08:00.000+01:002019-02-13T02:14:55.909+01:00Thank you, Mandy(Two days ago, I reshared this post by Mandy on G+. In case you haven't read it yet, please do so first.)
After I saw the post, I just knew. I read it, confirmed my gut instinct, and reshared it. I had many thoughts to go along with it, but I withheld them. I also disabled the comments on the reshare, because I wanted the post to be about Mandy's courageous act and her and her alone.&Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-4346624563350681382019-01-02T14:14:00.000+01:002019-01-02T14:16:20.253+01:00Plans for the year of the pigWith 2018 dead and buried, I've started thinking about my gaming plans for this new cycle around the sun.
First, when it comes to published stuff I'm interested in running Reign 2E when the kickstarter delivers. I'll probably use it to run either Warhammer (using Joseph's interpretation) or Runequest/Glorantha, because it feels like it has a lot of the mechanical aspects of those games, but Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-3141424435105124142018-12-27T15:08:00.001+01:002018-12-27T15:11:50.870+01:00Murder by any other nameThis post lacks some context, but it's been weighing on my mind for a while now. I'm writing a fantasy game and against my better judgement, I've been trying to come up with a "realistic" combat and weapon mechanics for it. This is, generally speaking, a fool's errand, and a silly goal. If someone else were to say they were doing it for their game, I'd roll my eyes. To begin with, there are just Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-71210661928974505852018-12-12T15:50:00.001+01:002018-12-12T15:50:34.684+01:00On the fantasy genre II: An attempt at a personal taxonomyThis is a follow-up to this post (I finally have time to write again).If you frequent internet fora related to nerdy stuff at all, you'll be familiar with the cyclical debates about sub-categories of fantasy. A typical one is about what constitutes High Fantasy as opposed to Low Fantasy. The official definitions deal with the divisions between a primary (ie. real) world and a secondary (ie. Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-14549097586357654242018-12-12T12:13:00.001+01:002018-12-12T12:17:55.108+01:00[G+ throwback] The Clay that Woke[With the incoming demise of G+, I've decided to rescue some posts from there. This one is a heavily edited selection of posts about playing Paul Czege's The Clay that Woke that we played back in May of 2018. You might call it a review of sorts.]
When I crack open a new game, I try to absorb as much of it as I can in one go, trying to get a big-picture view of what the game functions, what it Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-46477988387037002072018-11-12T16:35:00.000+01:002018-11-12T16:35:28.131+01:0030 movies that had an impact on meGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-22191440695359301282018-11-01T13:31:00.002+01:002019-01-02T11:43:04.516+01:00Halloween session: Ravenloft ThingsA few months ago I asked my group if they wanted to do a Halloween one-shot session and they enthusiastically agreed. I threw out some ideas to the wall to see what would stick. I knew from the start I wanted to do something inspired by Castlevania and Ravenloft and eventually I settled on "Stranger Things but replace the Down Under with Castlevania/Ravenloft and the Demogorgon with Strahd/Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-28412433089510131882018-10-30T17:56:00.001+01:002018-10-30T17:56:18.725+01:00On the fantasy genre, Part I: The (un)importance of tropesOver on G+ (memento mori), +Brendan S was asking what made classic fantasy work for people. This post is largely a reaction to that thread. I wasn't the only one who felt compelled to blog about it, Richard G also decided to tackle it in a way that eruditely answers the implied antecedent question "what is fantasy?". I'm not going to formulate my own definition of fantasy here (although thatGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-26305885924304583452018-10-12T17:52:00.000+02:002018-10-12T18:17:35.348+02:00A decade of theory, a sort of recapThis post is more a note to myself than a public statement but I'm prepared to discuss any of the points below if someone disagrees with them. I'm not laying down dogma, I'm trying to organise my thoughts. It's a summary of my current ideas about roleplaying game theory.
1. What is roleplaying?
It is a form of play whose primary medium is a shared fiction.
By play I mean a non-serious, Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-61808055525331514152017-04-25T14:41:00.000+02:002017-04-25T14:41:50.413+02:00The Elven LifecycleElves are functionally immortal. That is: if they don't get shanked by a rusty goblin knife, burned by dragonfire, torn limb from limb by a troll or meet some other sticky end, they have the capacity to live more or less indefinitely (at least until the world itself turns to cinder).Like the natural world to which they are intrinsically linked through their fey blood, elves go through cycles of Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-19391042992612540152017-03-27T19:10:00.000+02:002017-03-27T19:10:00.156+02:00Towards new horizonsI've been on a prolonged hiatus for the last couple of years, shuffling things around, dealing with stuff. Now I want to start making games again, and the first step was creating a Patreon.You can check it out here.There will be more stuff in the coming weeks, but for now I'll just keep it at that.Cheers!Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-33901822526553430182017-03-10T00:41:00.004+01:002017-03-10T00:43:48.762+01:00Comparative literature and philosophy club I+John Aegard made a post here which is a topic I like a lot so I started to write a reply but because my brain is stupid and works in unmanageable fractal patterns the reply started growing well beyond what I felt comfortable posting on G+, so I barfed it up here. No editing was done. You can see Part I in John's thread linked above, Part II was written later and posted only here. Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-49827453992316746352015-07-23T16:56:00.001+02:002015-07-24T14:48:36.948+02:00Pale IndifferenceThe Pale Indifference cares for nothing, it has no hiearchy of needs or objects of desire. If left to its own devices it will lounge in eternal darkness beneath the earth, its heart as void as the farthest reaches between the stars. It will only move with annoyance and resentment when the funerary quiet of its existence is disturbed by light & sound. In those cases it wishes for nothing but Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-48261449915955647292014-10-11T21:45:00.002+02:002019-01-02T11:45:05.085+01:00Couple more AW probability graphs
The following depicts the probabilities of individual results after you've expanded a move in AW and unlocked the 12+ results.
And this one is a simple representation of probabilities of rolling just a basic "hit" (any result of 7 or more), versus a "miss" (any result of 6 or less).
Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-28887358025940629372014-10-10T10:41:00.000+02:002019-01-02T11:44:43.683+01:00Probabilities of 2d6 with common PbtA modifiers
Update: Here's all the data in a pretty graph.
Original:
Anydice.com crunching:
2d6-2
6-: 72,22%
7-9: 25%
10+: 2,78%
2d6-1
6-: 58,33%
7-9: 33,33%
10+: 8,34%
2d6+0
6-: 41,66%
7-9: 41,67%
10+: 16,67%
2d6+1
6-: 27,77%
7-9: 44,45%
10+: 27,78%
2d6+2
6-: 16,66%
7-9: 41,67%
10+: 41,67%
2d6+3
6-: 8,33%
7-9: 33,33%
10+: 58,34%
Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-29522228724221951852014-09-10T16:35:00.000+02:002014-09-10T16:35:02.927+02:00The Shrouded LandsIf you were to sail south through the Ruined sea, navigating between the numerous islands of Eusebes, past even the shores of the Lion Empire, hugging the coast as to avoid the perils of Drowned Calaus, you would eventually reach the dour coasts of Oschei. Although still pleasant in the summer months, these lands and waters are noticeably colder than the warm seas of Eusebes.
MovingGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-59976166219168301812014-09-10T12:55:00.000+02:002014-09-10T12:55:49.195+02:00The mazes of PakmanethetIn the far western reaches of the continent, a small cluster of peoples speak of a god that came to them across the outer oceans. It is a foreign god, not born of their soil. The theology they preach is that of Man-Pac. On the opposite side of the urth, by the coasts of the Ruined Sea and the banks of the river Tanaquis, people worship a god, whose rituals and tenets resemble greatly those of Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-88386727282968387132014-09-01T17:19:00.000+02:002014-09-10T12:56:01.115+02:00Sardonic cults of the Ruined SeaIn the early days, before people knew how to work bronze and the children of Erache still ruled the world, it was customary amongst the peoples of Eusebes to exalt the finest amongst them through funerary worship. Feeding on sacrifice, the exalted dead did not fade into the grey anonymity of the underworld, but continued to impart their blessings upon the living. A number of them continues to be Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-38908597143372543782014-08-05T15:35:00.002+02:002019-01-02T11:45:20.498+01:00Sagas of the Icelanders reprintI've been teasing this for a while, and here's a rather tardy
announcement: Sagas has been reprinted and will be available in print
format again. It's not a huge deal: it's not a second edition or
revision, just a straight up reprint, because there has been a lot of
interest in getting printed copies after I ran out.
The second
part of the announcement is that IPR will be taking over the Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-17971556994020544392014-07-30T15:15:00.003+02:002014-07-30T17:03:20.631+02:00Adjudicating tone and genre through moves in PbtA games[Edit: Jonathan Walton reminded me that in this blog post I was actually
talking about a subset of moves, which was not made explicit in the
original text. There are many moves that cannot be simply reduced to a
"Defy Danger" equivalent and there are even moves that don't have a
fictional trigger which I implied in the starting paragraph. "Increase
your hot by +1" is a legit move and doesn'tGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-3329498383347873502014-07-02T16:20:00.001+02:002014-07-02T16:25:38.662+02:00Report from the 'hoodIn the past weeks I've been thinking about starting to blog again and yesterday a number of people asked me me on g+ how our game of James Mullen's The Hood went after I posted a photo of our gaming table. So it seemed like a good opportunity.
Preliminary info: we played one session, about 3 hours long. I was MCing, three people played the Mover, Ice and Scheemer. We are going to play again. Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-4075913358147831082012-10-28T19:35:00.002+01:002019-01-02T11:46:04.432+01:00Sagas of the Icelanders IndieGoGo CampaignSince I have grown to use Google+ for all my RPG-related jabberings, I've completely forgotten to post this here.
I have launched a crowdfunding campaign for Sagas of the Icelanders, my historical viking-themed Apocalypse World hack. You can find it here.
It has funded on the first day and has already passed a number of stretch goals. It now also supports PayPal.
If you don't already know Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-47333799000251719722012-09-10T17:12:00.001+02:002012-09-10T17:12:32.357+02:00Options for level/energy drainTraditional energy drain is a pain in the ass, especially with all of D&D's derive values. Get hit by a wight and you basically have to rewrite your whole sheet.
There are far kinder (but still scary) alternatives.
1. I think James Raggi suggested this once. Instead of losing a level, you loose all xp for that level. Easy math and it means it takes that much longer to level up again. This canGregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-12959018340863324862012-09-08T11:02:00.000+02:002012-09-08T11:02:05.774+02:00Climbing the faction ladderSomeone on RPGnet was asking for oldschool rules that they could use for the PCs trying to climb in rank in a guild and some inter-faction intrigue. So I wrote this. It's quick and dirty, so it may need work. I've been thinking a lot about Sigil lately, so this can come in handy.
Faction rulesEach faction has a "philosophy"/outlook and one or more goals. Factions have relationships to one or Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8321892558882855968.post-49271405939617552312012-08-13T22:13:00.000+02:002012-08-13T22:14:16.299+02:00Thinking, planning...
"America is not a young land; it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting."
-W. Burroughs
"Your poetry will now be written with blood."
-Dead Man
"Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."
-Blood Meridian
Gregor Vugahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10290626264301416468noreply@blogger.com0