Vision and Design II

So, CraftWork is submitted, and we are starting to work on promotion at a scale appropriate to the project! I wrote a little bit at the beginning about the design process and some of the thoughts for me given my low vision, and I wanted to return to them a little bit now that we are on the other end of the process.

One of these is the process of letting go of some decisions, elements, and aspects of design, where I cannot make a fully visually informed choice because I cannot see or visualize the options. There is a evolving and increasing degree of trust in my collaborators both on this project and others.

This hinges on communication, obviously, so having some longer discussions about the parameters and feel of the project were really important. They set a scope and range for the collaboration, and also set some starting points for enacting the design. These are obviously important in any project, but It is harder to say, 'that doesn't work,' when you cannot see 'that'! It was also helpful to provide examples of what does and does not work in a design, so there was, slightly, less backtracking. This was relevant to level of grays, contrast, amount of text on a page, font size etc

At the end of the day, I think the process worked well, and I am proud of what we accomplished. I can't wait for you all to see it!

Crafted Characters II

So, this was an interesting build! They not only stayed in SoulCraft for all five levels, but they stayed in the same branch (Tempest!) and then mustered out. They also rolled no additional combat skills and no blessings, so their clerical focus is on themselves really, not on aiding others. I made a nudge in the possession rolls (choosing a wind focused icon).

Aguella 

Officiant of Wind: Shield of Faith

Background: Potter, Gnome, Eldest

Level 5

Str 15

Dex 17

Con 10

Int 9

Wis 13

Cha 8

HP 31

Proficiency 3

Devotion 8

Skills

Simple Melee Weapons, Pottery, Oratory, Climbing, Cartwright, Cryptography, Survival (Land), Wayfinding, Arcana

Holy Abilities

Lighting Staff, Storm Cloak, and Cyclone Shield

Miracles

Miracles of Fog, Wind, And Thunder

Significant Possessions

Refuge Chest, Unbreakable Staff, Icon of the Dawn Wind, Polymorph Potion, Map

From all this, Aguella is an accomplished crafter, probably able to build or construct relatively complex objects out of wood, as needed. There is definitely an element of the wanderer in them, given the survival  skill, the wind focus, and the clerical abilities that aren't particularly geared towards others. They could be a spy, or involved in outdoor espionage, so maybe they are used by the temple on particular long range missions, delivering or retrieving holy items from desolate places.

Vision & Running a Game

A couple more notes and thoughts about playing with low vision. I have adapted a great deal over the years to managing and running a game, and my toolkit is now pared down both for visual accessibility, simplicity, ease of operation, fast play, and group storytelling.

What I Bring to the Table

A rollout dice mat with an incorporated zipped dice pouch. This serves as a physical, tactile space where my dice and active note cards live.

A wooden block with slots to hold note cards upright. These are cards that contain the beats or points that the players might hit in the session, NPC mood levels, and other critical information. Given that it's a note card, there are never more than 4 to 6 items on the card. I make a new card for every session. There is another slot that often holde a wandering monster that is 'on deck'. 

A short stack of cards containing creatures, NPCs, and other encounters that might enter the session. These are sorted and created ahead of time so I don't have to comb through a book or other references in order to find details. They are easily shuffled to randomize draws and very specific to the particulars of the session.

My notebook, with relevant pages clipped or marked for reference.

Copies of the following small volumes: Monsters & and Mazerats. The latter is for its wealth of tables, especially for NPC motivation, and the former is a quick go-to for creatures when the players go in an unanticipated direction.

A single sheet with character and party notes, timeline, significant treasure, usage dice notes, or other things that I am tracking that the players may or may not be aware of.

If the situation warrants, there may be a map, or my new individual room cards, to lay out in the center of the table for reference and orientation.

That's it! Visually there is very little to keep track of, so little to lose. If I had a lot of notes or reminders, I would not see them during the game anyway, so they have been eliminated or condensed to that single card. All hit point or other record-keeping is done directly on the creature cards. Any other notes go on the party record sheet. 

CraftWork Character Sampler I

Some days I just can't stop rolling up characters. I have a box of hundreds of note cards from my first days of Traveler in the mid '70s, when I would sit for hours and roll up characters until they died or mustered out. CraftWork is equally satisfying!

Here is one from the upcoming Zine!  

Ajest (Level 7)

Human Thief-Sorceror

Core Stats: Str 8 Dex 13 Con 15 Int 12 Wis 8  Cha 14

Proficiency = 3

Reputation Maximum = 3

Casts = 6

HP = 42

Skills: Sling, Pole Arm, Simple Melee Weapons, Dirty Tricks, Light Armor, Forgery, Find Secret Doors, Listen, Find Healing Plants, Nature, and Brewing

Spells: Pass Silently (1), Fiery Step (1), Incite Smoke (2), Fiery Effect (X), Conjure Insects (3), and Personal Cyclone (3)

Abilities: I Know a Guy, Double Double, and Cunning

Using Ajest right now as a leader of a underworld faction in the city of Lapis. Unassuming, blends right in, nothing to tell you that the older guy at the end of the bar is not what he appears.

Magic Systems for CraftWork and Beyond

CraftWork is intended to be flexible and systems adjacent. This means that some hacking and adjustment will be needed to make it fit the way you want at your table.

Levels are a part of CraftWork, but they are also easily extracted in order to fit a levelless system such as Wonder and Wickedness or Knave. Levels make it super easy to adapt to 5e or OSE, since spell levels are baked into those magic systems.

However, for 5e you would need to convert casts into slots. You could do this per level, or you could just continue using the charts in the player's manual per level of MageCraft, ignoring the CraftWork notion of casts altogether. 

Some folks have asked, 'what about warlocks or what about specific schools of magic from 5e?' Within CraftWork, and at your table, just bake in one or two special rules to carve out space for these kinds of visions. Perhaps a character has more flexibility in casting closer to the Edge then is specified; that gets them closer to a 5e warlock. Whatever Being they have a pact with grants them an additional spell or ability, or a unique one. A Wizard accepted to the School of Evocation automatically gains the Sculpt Spell skill and a bonus to their fireballs or ice bolts.

You are folding things in, layering in specificity as it relates to the world that is growing at your table. Your game does not look like someone else's game, and your magic is your own.

My Gaming History to 1990

We were talking the other day about when we started playing particular games, so I started pitting memory against releases, gauging duration and intensity.

Personal RPG History

Dramatis Personae

Me: Will (1962 - Present)

Ted: my younger brother (1964-2017)

Dad: my father, Alan (1931-1996)

Mom: my mother, Anita (1939- 1975)

All the players: James, Bear, Mike, Tim, Randy, John, Rick, Tina, Bob, Natalie, Sho, and all my students.

Chainmail Dad purchased and gave Ted and I the copy, probably in '72, and we immediately transformed our train table into a fantasy battlefield.

D&D original brown books '74 Again, Dad purchased the box set, I don't remember where, and gave it to us in Urbana, Illinois. I was in a combined 7-8 grade at my HS. 

We played intensely with each other and with friends, filling graph and hex paper with our worlds.

Metamorphosis Alpha '76 I bought this at a record store (?) in C-U. We played this extensively, as it slowly supplanted D&D. We moved to the farm that year when my Dad remarried.

Traveller 77 I bought the original black box set that summer or fall and definitely moved away from D&D and MA, with D&D returning briefly in the 90's and then in 2018.

Little Wars came as a Christmas gift in 1977 and we adapted it to fantasy, using spring loaded cannons and a growing collection of miniature Fantasy figures (mostly Ral Partha), with Ted more involved than I, a trend that continued throughout our lives!

I bought Gamma World in '78, and played briefly, but Traveller was already my main campaign/game, since you could always have abandoned colony starships and devastated worlds inside Traveller, so MA & GW just became subsumed.

During this time Ted bought a number of board games including Dragon Pass ('77 or 78), SPI's Wizards ('78? though it came out in '75), and Magic Realms ('79). The latter two saw heavier play than the first.

RuneQuest in either 78 or 79. Ted ran this extensively for several years until he switched to Call of Cthulhu. He gave RQ to me in '80 or '81, and I have run my world for 30+ years; It slowly eclipsed Traveler.

Call of Cthulhu became Ted's RPG of choice to run and collect when it came out in '81, but he was always drawn to miniatures and board games more than running RPG's. 

By this time we were both in college. I was running RQ, and less and less Traveller, weekly through the late 80's and playing in Call of Cthulhu and a Morrow Project homebrew with friends in Madison and Urbana. Ted and I played on vacations, summers, etc through the 80's.

Takeaways

My first is that for all of its veneration and iconization, especially recently, we really didn't play D&D for that long, hopping quickly to the next iteration, combining, and then settling in, in a way, to a couple different games.

My second takeaway is that we played worlds, not systems. Games and campaigns took place in worlds we built, designed, and evolved. Traveler was not the Third Empire; RuneQuest to me was never Glorantha. The game systems were always just starting points, rough frameworks or sets of possibilities with which to build worlds, and then flesh them out, test them, cement the possible into reality through the play at the table. Over time each game became a large collection of notes, maps, index cards, and character sheets, associated with a handful of xeroxed charts, cropped and assembled to serve our purpose.

To be continued!

This Game

The following bears repeating...

This is a game about interacting with this world as if it were a place that exists.

Killing things is not the goal.

There is nothing that is "supposed" to happen.

Unknowability and consequence make everything interesting.

You play as your character, not as the screenwriter writing your character.

It's your job to make your character interesting and to make the game interesting for you.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

The answer is not on your character sheet.

Things are swingy.

You will die.

(By Gregory Blair, Brian Harbron, FM Geist, Zedeck Siew, Brian Murphy, Dirk Detweiler Leichty and Daniel Davis)

To which I would add...

Roles/Goals

Make the world seem real.

Play to see what happens.

Make the player's lives seem dangerous, interesting, and heroic.

Support player safety.