But should that matter? In my Sword Noir fiction, the protagonists reside in a gritty world, and they are down there in the grit, but there are lines that they will not cross. There are lots of crimes that are pretty serious, but that most audiences can forgive if the criminal is honourable and has limits that we can understand. Who doesn’t sympathize with Tony Montana in Scarface? Even though he’s a murderer and a criminal, his downfall is pretty much predicated on the fact he doesn’t want to kill innocent people, especially children. Sure he’s a criminal, but what about bankers, money managers, and politicians? They’re criminals who are never prosecuted and don’t seem to have lines. No, Tony Montana is a criminal we can love. He might not be Robin Hood, but he’s loyal and honourable and we can cheer for him.

Calum in “Flotsam Jewel” does dirty deeds to support his kid brother. Caspan Trey in “For Simple Coin” almost gets killed trying to protect an innocent girl. Sure, both are criminals, but they are not bad people. Drust and Brude from “A Pound of Dead Flesh” seem pretty willing to commit petty crimes, but they aren’t out to hurt anyone who isn’t trying to hurt them.

“The Lost” works on the assumption that no one wants to play the kind of character that wouldn’t intervene to save a little girl taken from her father—who might be a scumbag loser, but who is still a loving father trying to do his best for his daughter. Maybe it’s because I’m a dad with two little girls of my own, whose greatest nightmare and fear would be to lose either one of them, but if my players turned their back on this guy, I’d be right pissed and I’d let them know it.

I just don’t think it’s fun to play real evil. I honestly wonder about people who believe otherwise.

You can find “The Lost” one-pager here.

You can find “Flotsam Jewel” and “For Simple Coin” in the short story collection For Simple Coin, here.

You can find “A Dead Pound of Flesh” in Black Gate #15, here.

If you aren’t comfortable improvising an adventure, the one-pager process really isn’t for you. You need to be able to let your players run with it. Because so little is specified, so much is open to chance and change. In the last one-pager I ran, the players threw me a loop deciding that they wanted their gang to be working out of a high class neighbourhood. However, since being open to player desires is one benefit of a one-pager, I just went with it.

For my one-pagers, I begin with a paragraph that outlines the adventure—what’s the challenge or conflict. Then I outline two or three plot points, beats that will be hit in the expected trajectory of the game. Then I include some special locations—places that would be cool or interesting. Finally there are the narrative characters, maybe four or five heroes and regulars that are linked to the plot. Minions are so easy to cook up on the fly, there is no incentive to stat them out.

And there you have your adventure. Now, when I do this, I usually have other material handy—for Sword Noir, I’ve compiled all the information on Everthorn into a single document that does a very good job of backing me up. It’s helpful, but not necessary, as creating places on the fly doesn’t intimidate me.

But names do. Names of characters, names of areas, names of streets, names of taverns, just names. I suck at coming up with good names on the fly. I usually have a page or two of name ideas, for characters, neighbourhoods, businesses etc. I can continue to use this resource by crossing off names I’ve used and adding more during downtimes.

So that’s my one-pager adventure concept. I’m going to throw one or two one-pagers up at SEP over the next few days. Head over there if this seems of interest to you.

You can find the SEP page here.

But what about gun pron and cool kit?

See, one of the things that I consider cool about special operations forces is weaponry. I actually do think that an HK53 short assault rifle with a sight (likely an Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) is cool. I imagine my character using an FN FAL battle rifle, cut down to carbine size, with a bunch SOPMOD gear.

Robust systems can actually model the differences between cartridges and weapons—even between an SIG Sauer P226 autoloader pistol and its NORINCO knock off. Lighter systems, by their very design, are not meant to do so. What happens to my beautiful, beautiful gun pron with a lighter system?

Well, one doesn’t actually have that weapon to adore even when playing a robust system. Just like everything else—from skills to physical attributes—it is merely a representative notation and statistics. So what is one actually missing? What about the differences between weapons? What point choosing a Mark 12 Mod 0 Special Purpose Rifle over an M16A4 assault rifle?

Here’s a question, would you prefer to be shot at by me with an Accuracy International Arctic Warfare sniper rifle, or by a Joint task Force 2 operator with a WWI-era Short Magazine Lee Enfield Mk III? Yeah, the weapon might be awesome, but I certainly am not. I’m a firm believer that the person using the weapon is much more important than the weapon itself, so I prefer a system that rewards skill in combat rather than a cool weapon, and light systems can—and SES does—base the damage of an attack on the success of that attack, meaning it rewards skill in combat.

Most robust systems do provide some differentiation between weapons, but only the most robust can deliver the kind of differences that would honestly replicate the level of differences between a Mark 12 Mod 0 Special Purpose Rifle and an M16A4 assault rifle. That level of detail is way beyond what I am willing to accept.

And there is nothing stopping one from listing a weapon with all its gear. And I think for a Spec Ops campaign, this is very important. For me, at least, the weapon of my character is an important component of that character. Gun pron can still happen even in a light system.

And the same goes for kit. Having the right tool for the right job has been important part of the Spec Ops campaigns I’ve run. Kit can help define the character and the character’s capabilities. Unlike my usual approach to a light game, I’m going to deem it necessary to have a character’s kit listed, and if kit isn’t listed, it ain’t available. This is going to add some resource management to the game, and the planning phase is going to quite important—as it is in a real modern military operation.

Yes, I think I’m going to take a stab at a Sword’s Edge System game in the Covert Forces-style. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

You can find Sword’s Edge System here.

You can find Covert Forces Redux here.

Crunchy/robust or smooth/light? How do you like your peanut butter/RPG?

In order to answer this question, I need to decide what I am doing with this game. What is it going to be about it?

Here is the sequence of “scenes” in the initial session/adventure: mission planning; movement to area; movement to objective (which will require acquiring transport, and this may involve combat); infiltrate objective (which may include combat); acquisition of package which will include combat; exfiltration from objective (which may include combat); delivery of package.

While there is a lot of possible combat there, there is only one sequence of assured combat. The rest—the acquisition of transport, the infiltration and exfiltration—may be accomplished using other skills/talents/abilities. I’m thinking there could be a fair amount of stealth and/or social manipulation.

And for the use of skills/talents/abilities, I can’t say either is superior again—they are just very different. The crunchier games are about resource management and mechanical builds—optimization if you will. This can be extremely enjoyable, but I’m not sure it works for what I envision.

I’ve built a fair number of special operations force characters, and in systems like d20 Modern or Savage Worlds, the characters need to be relatively high level (10th level or Veteran) in order to be as competent in the general skills SOF personnel require. True20 and Modern20 were better, in that I could design relatively capable SOF characters at a medium level (6th level). High and medium level characters aren’t bad per se, but the time to build the characters is discouraging.

What I appreciate about lighter systems is that there is less concern about building it right. A general focus will work fine when it comes time to use the skills. In something like PDQ or SES, I can argue how the question applies to my character’s concept, and would likely be able to pile on other bonuses through the use of Qualities.

But what about combat? I had a general unease in approaching modern combat with abstract rules. I needed to quantify what it was I wanted when I ran combat. Was it lethality? Was is complexity? Was it tension?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: there is no way for RPG rules to replicate combat in any meaningful way. Even the most complex mechanical algorithms are not going to give the feel or sense of combat.

So what did I want? I looked to my inspirations for combat scenes: Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers. To a lesser degree, the movie Tears of the Sun and the TV series the Unit and Ultimate Force inspire me when I’m planning or running combat. So what do these shows and films present that is inspiring?

Competence and tension.

There are characters in these movies and series that have exceptional combat competence, and that is great for RPGing, because we want our characters to be competent. There is exceptional levels of tension, especially in Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers, as there is no guarantee that any given character will make it out alive.

As mentioned above, it is easier to build a competent with a lighter set of rules.

For tension, there needs to be a real threat that the characters could die, and that is frankly present in all the rules discussed. I have to say I found that d20 Modern’s Massive Damage Threshold instilled a lot of tension into combat, moreso than any other crunchy game I’ve ran. They all do it, but MDT seemed to do it best. One shot kill is not always a part of lighter rules, but I know one set of rules in which it does play a part—my own! Probably because the tension that lethality creates is so important to me when I rune combats.

So I think I can go with a lighter system to run this campaign. I think I just might be able to pull it off.

But there are two further factors that concern me with using a lighter system, especially my own: gun pron and cool kit.

But that’s another story. Stay tuned.

Here are links to the games mentioned:
d20 Modern
Modern20
True20
Savage Worlds
PDQ
And, of course, SES.

Don’t get me wrong, d20 Modern was my favourite Wizards of the Coast d20 product. I liked it better than D&D 3/3.5, even for fantasy. The thing is, I am now interested in decidedly un-crunchy systems. Just a perusal of my free RPG, SES, will reveal that. But for a modern, covert military game, will rules-light work? Will the abstract combat system scratch the itch?

Part of me still thinks I need a crunchy system to run modern military. Although it was what I chose to run my Spec Ops game for Games on Demand at Gen Con 2011—which never did get played—I’m left concerned that even True20 is too light. When I started thinking up this campaign—and no, I won’t be getting into the specifics of this new campaign in this post—I was thinking about using Spycraft 2.0. I would, of course, use a hacked version . . . because that’s what I do. Covertcraft, if you will.

But why does modern military need to be crunchy? I used to be the same way with historical games. My initial thought for Kiss My Axe—my soon to be released RPG of Viking mayhem—was to go somewhat crunchy, something on the level of True20. For some reason which I have been unable to elucidate, robust rules seemed necessary for a historical game. Chris Groff—the man whose superpower is to break games—challenged me on that, saying a hack of Sword Noir would work fine.

That made me ask myself what I was trying to accomplish with KMA, and how I could meet that goal. It made me list my inspirations. That led me to the realization that what I really wanted was a game that delivered cinematic excitement, and that led me to realize I didn’t need robust rules at all. A hack of Sword Noir it is!

So now I’m wondering what I want to do with this modern campaign. Knowing that no game I would wish to run can provide any level of “realism”—whatever the heck that actually means when applied to an RPG—and knowing that I’m not really seeking “realism” anyway, I’m forced to once again reconsider my intentions.

What the heck am I trying to achieve in this campaign?

Stay tuned as I try to figure that out.

You can find Covert Forces Redux here.

You can find lots of other modern military stuff here.

You can still have a gander at d20 Modern, if you have not yet examined it.

And you can find SES for free here.

I posted the pre-gens for the Games on Demand Spec Ops game at SEP.

Both True20 and Spycraft 2.0 are excellent games, just no longer the kind of games I want to run.

Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death should be out soon. You can find more information here.

Go buy Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery here.

For those of you not in the know–and I have a hard time believing anyone who reads this blog is not in the know–Gen Con is a convention for role-playing, boardgames, and general geekery. I was lucky enough to attend in 2008 and will be doing so in 2011 as well.

One of the projects I was working on was the Quick and Dirty Gen Con Edition of Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death, a Viking role-playing game which uses a version of the Sword’s Edge System, also used for Sword Noir: a Role-Playing game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery. The other two projects are one-shot adventures to run at Gen Con.

Just in case you aren’t keeping up with my Gen Con 2011 schedule posted at Sword’s Edge Publishing, I plan to be at Games On Demand, which one can find at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Pennsylvania Station C (which is a ballroom set aside for Gen Con gaming). Look for me on Thursday August 4 at 10:00 to 14:00 and Saturday August 6 at 10:00 to 14:00. I’ll have one-shots for both Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe. If I get a couple of people, I’ll be running a game, but I max out at 6.

You can find more information about Gen Con here.

My Gen Con schedule is here.

You can find Sword Noir: a Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery here.

You can find the Sword’s Edge System and lots of other awesome products here.

Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death will be debuting at Gen Con with print copies of the “Quick and Dirty Gen Con” edition.

-ahem- This post is going to have language which may offend some. You have been warned.

Can you fucking believe it? One of my RPG products was plagiarized. For those of you who know me from my RPG stuff, you’ll like know Sword Noir. If you know me through my fiction, Sword Noir is an RPG based on a genre I try to write to, the same genre as “A Pound of Dead Flesh” in Black Gate #15.

Some jackhole plagiarized basically the entire text, threw in a few new paragraphs, wrapped it up in a shittily designed package, and had people pay him real cash money to own it.

People do this? There are seriously people who can sleep at night by stealing creative ideas and the expression of those ideas and passing them off as one’s own?

I rant about this to a greater extent over at the SEP website.

Still kind of in shock. Time to eat some apple cake and have an evening coffee.

You can buy Sword Noir here.

You can buy Black Gate # 15 here.

The Kheufer Scrolls is a 34 page PDF including 5 maps and 10 pages of narrative characters. It is designed for up to six starting characters. While the adventure does not require the use of Sword Noir, the narrative characters and some situations are based on that system and would require modification to use with another system.

You can expect a second Sword Noir adventure in September 2011. This is going to be a version of the one-shot which I will be running for various people at Gen Con. Also in August or September, Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death will be available. An adventure for KMA will soon follow in October or November 2011.

You can buy the Kheufer Scrolls here.

You can buy Sword Noir here.

So, yeah, things will likely continue to be quiet until those projects are all wrapped up. On the up side, there’ll be Sword’s Edge Publishing stuff to buy. Great, eh?

Sarcasm? Maybe.

Buy stuff here.

Listen, there are very few professional venues for heroic fiction, let alone something like Sword Noir fiction, so when John O’Neill—Black Gate’s editor—bought one of my stories, I was thrilled. Now that story has seen the light of day in Black Gate 15, a copy of which arrived in my mailbox today.

Here’s the thing about Black Gate—it’s much more a short story collection or anthology than a fiction journal. By that I mean it’s big, huge in fact—issue 15 clocks in at 384 pages and boasts 21 stories plus regular features. That’s a lot of heroic fiction. Unfortunately, it looks like Black Gate might be moving to an annual format, as the note with issue 15 indicated the next issue would be Spring 2012. Issue 15, as one might guess, is the Spring 2011 issue.

Still, annual is better than never! And that just gives all of you a little extra time to go buy Black Gate 15. The story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” was consciously a Sword Noir story, so pretty cool that it’s coming out a couple of months after the game it helped to inspire.

By way of introduction to the story, imagine Vorenus and Pullo from HBO’s Rome caught up in criminal machinations in my version of the Roman Empire—let’s call it the Aeolean Empire. An old “friend” hooks them into an easy gig that turns out—surprise surprise—to be not so easy.

I guess you could call it Sword & Sandal Noir. And yet a new genre emerges!

—

Check out Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery.

Go buy more Sword Noir fiction with For Simple Coin: Four Tales of Sword Noir.

You really should watch HBO’s Rome.

Oh, and in case you didn’t get the hint up there . . . go buy Black Gate 15.