RPG Notebook
From AdamWiki
This is my RPG notebook, wherein I share bits and pieces of ideas for things related to role-playing games. I plan to put up all kinds of things here eventually, including fantasy worlds, adventure ideas, concepts for classes and magic items for D&D, and maybe even seeds for role-playing games.
Contents |
Game Design
I design games!
Playable Games
These games are finished, more or less. They might not be perfect. Some aren't even playtested. But they're in a state that I think would allow you to print out the rules and play the game. If you do, please give me feedback on what works and what doesn't!
- Verge is a nearly-complete cyberpunk RPG. This is my pet project that I have chased for a couple years.
- Architects of Aztlan is a complete (18-page) RPG that I wrote during a two-week design contest. It's about time-traveling Atlantians trying to save human civilization.
- Hellball is a complete RPG that I wrote in two weeks for the Iron MACE Game Chef contest. You play pro football players who have to save the world by beating The Devil at "hellball," his own version of football that is free of all those pesky personal foul rules and other needless complications. Between games, you try to keep your real life from falling apart as The Devil tries to mess it up.
- Trapped is a complete game of comedic horror. I wrote it in 24 hours for the 24 Hour RPG Challenge. Maybe some day I'll go back and finish up the stuff I feel it needs: some examples of play, more setting information, art and a real cover.
Games in Progress
Here are some games that aren't finished, but aren't 'sad' like the unfinished games below. I'll finish these! (Or move them to the other category eventually...)
- I'm working on Towerlands, a fantasy game. I'll steal a bunch of stuff from Twenty (a 'dead' game) for it.
- Before January 1, 2007, I will write a short, two page game for The Undead Software Engineers in Alaska Challenge, as conceived by Jason Morningstar. I plan to title it Deadline.
Unfinished Games
This is a sad little collection of unfinished ideas. Someday, one of them will pan out. Most of them end abruptly when I run into some snag. Others die when I lose interest.
- I've wanted to create a Firan RPG for many years. I've started one several times. This one is loosely OGL based.
- Saberpunk is an idea I've been mulling over for a couple years but never really did anything with it. It's a fantasy game with cyberpunk ideas -- sorta Shadowrun turned on its head. I think it has huge potential as an OGL game or even its own thing if I get ambitious (and find free time).
- Pleiades is game of interstellar trading and smuggling in a mythically-rich universe.
- Parallax is a generic interstellar trading and smuggling game.
- Heroes is an idea in progress. Players guide young, unwilling heroes on their quest for courage. Will you be brave enough to go fight the dragon, even if it means dying? What does your Village and its people mean to you?
- Web of Deceit is a game of court politics and personal manipulation. Just ideas so far.
- Light is a quick and dirty role-playing framework. Dead.
- Stream is cinematic intellectual non-dystopian cyberpunk. Dead.
- Dark Prophets is corporate cyberpunk, or really more of an experiment in GM-less game design. Dead.
- Haze RPG is a vanilla Sim/Nar develop-in-play. Dead.
- Courts is a fantasy game with a political slant. Dead.
- Ron Edwards says every would-be designer should write his or her own Fantasy Heartbreaker, a fantasy game that tries to improve on Dungeons and Dragons. This are my notes about mine. In progress.
Game Tinkering
D20 Rules are little things I've done for the D20 System.
Game Worlds
Dolin's Tower is the working title for a new Towerlands campaign. I'm itching to run some D&D again, and expect to play 3.5 for a bit till 4.0 is available, then convert.
A Thousand Towers is an old fantasy setting project, a large scale world to last me a decade or two. Well, it lasted about a year. I started a master world project to serve as a "home base" for the rest of my unfinished ideas. I'll incorporate elements of my older ideas into this larger project. A Thousand Towers is an epic fantasy world where anyone who can build a three-story tower and hold it against all-comers can declare himself king of everything within 25 miles, and where Mother Nature bites back. I still mine this for ideas, all the time. It'll probably be the base setting for my Towerlands game.
I also keep a page of Thousand Towers Secrets, stuff that my players don't want to see accidentally.
The Vise is the D&D 3E campaign I've been running since August 2000. Caught between two advancing powers, human refugees attempt to survive in the harsh hinterland, where they discover ancient ruins that might hold the power to save them.
Elemental Bonds is the one-page proposal I sent to the Wizards of the Coast Fantasy Setting Search. There were over 11,000 submissions. Eleven were chosen for the next round, and their authors submitted ten-page world descriptions. Three of those were selected as finalists, and they were each paid $20,000 to write a 100-page fantasy setting "bible". The winner, Keith Baker, was paid $100,000 and his bible was used to create Eberron, a new fantasy setting for WotC.
Difinia is a dark fantasy version of 16th Century Venice. Imagine the movies Dangerous Liaisons, Elizabeth and Dangerous Beauty set in a world with magic and a pantheon of deities. Add flying ships, a few dragons, alchemy, and creatures like demons and angels, and you have a rich world for fantasy role-playing. Stories in Difinia focus on subterfuge and politics, romance and swashbuckling adventure, dark magic and costly pacts. Project aborted. Concepts from this world seeded A Thousand Towers.
Aonia is a world of senatorial politics, ring gates, and flying dragon ships. Project aborted. Concepts from this world seeded A Thousand Towers.
Darktide is a world in which the evil gods have won. Musings only. Project never went anywhere. I can't do that kind of dark for long.
