POSTMORTEM STUDIOS

Preview from the next TobyArt

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:03:44 GMT

A click should take you to the big version.
You can purchase the earlier set HERE.

Poll Game: Zombie. The Fight

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:21:19 GMT

You elbow your way through the crowd of smaller kids and see that a big fat kid with a shaven head has a little kid from year seven pinned under him, straddling his chest and is repeatedly punching him in the face. The little kid's nose is busted and there's blood all over his face, his hair's matted with it and there's blood on the tarmac as well but he's just not quitting and despite being well overpowered is still fighting, scrabbling and scratching with his nails and trying to lift his head and bite the fat kid that's beating the shit out of him. It's a bit sick, you like a fight as much as anyone but this is pointless and it's just weird that the little kid isn't crying or pleading for mercy yet. It's only a matter of time until a teacher comes to break this up, but maybe you should step in...

Poll Game: Zombie. The Beginning

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:57:25 GMT

The bell rings, thankfully, for the end of another school day and, even better, it's the weekend. The moment the bell rings, almost before the striker hits for the second time you're up out of your seat, throwing your hood up and slinging your bag, ignoring the protests of the teacher and shouted reminders about homework. You don't care, you've had enough and it's time to get the hell out.

It's been a quiet day, the flu has been ravaging the school lately and a lot of kids haven't been in, a lot of the ones who have been have been ill - many of them sent home rather than spread it to others. Others getting sick through the day. Fortunately for you, you don't seem to have caught it.

You run your hand along the lockers down the hallway, clang-clang-clang and step out into the dimming light of the evening. There'll be nobody home - not that your parents are working right now - but you're expected to go back. You could go out with your mates and get something to eat, get up to a little fun. As you stand there pondering, your mate Gareth smacks you on the back of the head as he darts past you, laughing and as you draw your head up again, frowning, you spot a couple of kids from the lower year in a scrum, with kids shouting 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' around them.

Poll Game: Zombie. Who you'll be...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:17:34 GMT

Worthless Little Scrote

Name: Wayne Corran

Profession: Uneducatable Hoodie

Blood Type: A-

Education: Secondary School

Background: You've never really seen much point in school, it's just a place to meet up with your mates before plotting some havoc and fun for the evening. The only class you ever liked was art, but the teachers didn't appreciate your grafitti and b-boy style of art so even that got soured. You can't wait to get out of the place, though you've no real idea how you're going to get on once you're out of school, maybe dealing weed or something or custom painting cars.

Strength 45 Stamina 43 Agility 56 Perception 89 Appearance 22 Intelligence 57 Willpower 12 Pain Threshold 48 Luck 58

Damage Bonus: -, Exert Strength: 15%, Shock Survival: 65%, Toxin Resistance: 65%, Hear/Sight/Smell/Taste/Touch: 75/80/40/40/40, Actions: 3, Initiative: +2, Parry: +10%, Movement: 2/4/7/12

Hit Points: 31, Blood Points: 38, Energy Points: 58, Mind Points: 35

Skills: Art/Craft (Drawing) 58%, Computer Games 41%, Computer Use 52%, Dodge 34%, Fast Talk 33%, Music (Guitar) 32%, School Subjects (Mathematics) 33%, School Subjects (Science) 36%, Tumble 33%.

Hand to Hand: 40, Melee: 25, Thrown: 23, Archaic: 25, Pistol: 25, Rifle: 25, Heavy: 10

Equipment: Schoolbag, cellphone, pocket knife, aerosol paint cans, chocolate bar, half a bottle of cola, mp3 player and headphones.

Poll game?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:42:47 GMT

So, if I start a community participation poll game, what'd you like beloved audience?

The Non-Gaming Gamer

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:14:04 GMT

The dreaded has happened, I've become a gamer who - largely - doesn't game, which is something I really, really never wanted to happen, especially as a designer. There's not a lot that can really be done about that at the moment, though I might try a Google Wave game or a Poll game again - on this blog (as I started but never finished with Patient Zero on my personal blog) to keep my hand in, but I really need to game more somehow.

This came to me at Indiecon as I was setting up to run Agents of SWING and I felt this unfamiliar sensation which I eventually nailed down as being panic and nervousness. These are sensations I am normally abundantly familiar with, but not usually in the context of gaming where I'm usually confident and sure of myself. It's particularly worrying as a designer since it means I'm only keeping up with things at a remove, what I read, not what I experience in play. Indiecon was reassuring on that score, but it was also a bit of a wakeup call that I need to get back on top of things and get some proper gaming in somehow, whatever way I can manage.

I'll take any ideas from you guys out there on that or ways that you've gotten around the issues of isolation, separation and lack of spare moolah.

Keep an eye on the blog for some sort of poll-based game and if you have wave, come find me grimstales@googlewave.com

Indiecon

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:56:06 GMT

I can't give you a full and shiny report on Indiecon because I've written up a full-on report for Polymancer magazine and it'd be bad form to say too much about it here in a professional reporting capacity - and the same's likely to get in the way for Dragonmeet! Still I can talk about what I did and my experiences there as Postmortem.

Last year the weather was pretty rough but this year we were right there as some of the worst weather for many years struck England with flooding and gales and all sorts of warnings and threats of doom. It was pretty rough, but also - in a pervere way - a lot of fun.

We were at the con for the full span and with the cost split between all of us Indiecon represents a fantastic deal, Thursday night to Monday morning in an excellent chalet - that's actually warm, snug and clean - for what came to around £50 a head for six of us. Unlike a lot of cons the accomodation is excellent and you can actually get a decent night's sleep.

On the plus side Indiecon is great for running demo games and getting a good buzz for your games. People are game to try just about anything and I was very, very pleased to see two of my games from the previous year being played independently by people, Invaderz and Blood!. We ran another demo game of Blood! that went pretty well, but only ran it once this time, we also ran two playtest sessions of Agents of SWING and the feedback was invaluable, as was the fun I had in the couple of instances that I did get to play. It's unfortunate that I was - and usually am - stuck minding the stall and so can't run more demos or get involved in more games, something I'll have to work on correcting for 2010 because, oh yeah, we're going again.

On the downside - and this was the problem last year as well - it's not a very good, yet, from a commercial point of view. Both years I've barely broken even on sales and while there was higher attendence this year I think the combination of the economy and the weather drove off what was, essentially, my profit margin in both people's reticence to buy and the walk-through attendence that could have been there. Hopefully we'll be lifted out of that a bit by next year.

The organisation was much better this year and I think an event of this nature can only continue to grow and grow and deserves to, a great showcase for UK games development in general and UK indie games in general.

Grim's Tales: Genre, Fantasy, High Fantasy

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:57:38 GMT

Fantasy

The fantasy genre is a hugely broad one, taking in many different themes and sprawling across time and space from cod-medieval mediocrity to modern worlds with fantasy elements lurking in the background and even taking in alternate histories, traditionally more the province of science fiction. The fantasy milieu is usually the one that gamers start with, growing familiar rather quickly with gaming’s take on elves, dwarves and the like, so much so that these things are a cliché and a shorthand for gaming as a whole.

High Fantasy

High or epic fantasy takes place within a world removed from our own where the rules are different, where magic is powerful and widespread, where fantastical monsters, creatures and races roam the land and it is a genre in which the stories are generally epic, sweeping and wide ranging and deal with grandiose and world-shaping plots of good against evil.

The classic example of the High Fantasy Epic is The Lord of the Rings.

High Fantasy is what a lot of RPGs aspire to be and there’s a lot in High Fantasy that lends itself to gaming well. The – relative – black and white of good and evil makes plotting easier and the physical and spiritual presence of evil makes for simpler way to introduce villains and to excuse their motivations. Fate and destiny can also be used to more explicitly manipulate characters in a way that might be inexcusable in other subgenres. High Fantasy is also very much suited to mid and long scale campaigns divided into significant sections or ‘chapters’ and where you have definite conditions of victory and an end to the plot.

On the downside expectations are high and the relatively slow rate of character advancement in many fantasy games can be frustrating when it comes to getting to the grand action. It’s also hard, given many fantasy RPG systems, to have truly mixed party levels of competence. Frodo and Aragorn in the same party can be hard to pull off well in many systems, especially those with mechanically heavy, encounter-oriented, carefully balanced systems. The nature of High Fantasy games doesn’t particularly lend itself to unending games, where you go on playing until things peter out, unless you play it generationally with new heroes rising in the same world time after time to face down the same evil, reincarnated or resurgent in each generation.

Running a successful High Fantasy game is a matter of managing to make every character shine in their own way – something that doesn’t happen so much in the genre fiction. Not everyone can be destined to be the High King but each character will need their moment to shine and their own great destiny, something tailored to the player and what they find inspiring and perfect for their character. The other big trick is to incorporate all the high-powered fantasy elements without slipping over into the land of cheese and pastiche. The secret of accomplishing that is to treat these elements with gravitas and seriousness and to ensure that they’re consistently treated within their own internal logic, even if you – as the Games Master – are the only one who knows or understands the rules you’ve made for yourself.

Agents of SWING character example

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:11:00 GMT

As you can see, the scrapped skill pyramid doesn't seem to have been too detrimental, though I suspect the characters for SWING may need more than the typical number of skill points. Some stunts can be decoupled from their governing abilities successfully, others are going to be more of a challenge, but this should be OK for a Playtest:

Player:

Character: James Ryde

Department: 12 (Espionage)

Past: Military Intelligence

Cover: City Businessman

Refresh: 6

Aspects:

Department: The notorious Spy, James Ryde.

Past: Won the Military Cross for bravery

Cover: I do love my expensive toys.

Impeccably dressed at all times.

Known for my dry, sarcastic wit.

I went to Eton with that chap.

A sophisticated English Gentleman

A refined (and expensive) palate.

Great (+3) Skills: Weapons, Social Standing.

Fair (+2) Skills: Driving, Fists, Guns, Investigation.

Average (+1) Skills: Alertness, Athletics, Burglary, Contacts, Pilot.

Stunts

Linguist: Knows French, German, Italian, Spanish and Latin.

Ready for Anything: Alertness counted one higher for initiative.

Danger Sense: When ambushed you may take a full defensive action at +2, whether surprised or not.

Close at Hand: Never takes a supplementary action penalty for drawing his weapon.

Gadgets:

Saville Row Suit: +1 Shift to appropriate interactions.

Sword-Brolly: +2, concealed weapon.

Bowler Hat: Counts as light armour (-1), Medium armour (-2) if used in a defensive actions, can be thrown one zone as a +1 weapon.

Fate Points: 6

Physical Stress: OOOOO

Composure Stress: OOOOO

Social Stress: OOOOOOO

November Newsletter

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:54:05 GMT

It's November and in England that means two things. Fireworks and conventions! (Hopefully not at the same time).

***

We'll be at Indiecon and Dragonmeet in November, running a few demo games and selling lots of hardcopies of our products just in time for Christmas. Leftover convention stock will be available for those who want to order it directly from me after these conventions and details will be forthcoming on our website. You'll also, soon, be able to get an updated and art-infested version of 100 Science Fiction Adventure Seeds, published in partnership with Cubicle 7 Entertainment. While you're checking out print products, be sure to look up Origins of the Specious, a gamer's humour book and compilation published under the Flaming Cobra imprint with Mongoose Publishing.

***

This last month was 'Schlocktoberfest' for Postmortem Studios and saw discounted PDF products across our horror and other 'gross out' and B-movie type products. We also released a number of new items including:

Several Freakshow products for Blood! OGL Modern and MRQ (BloodQuest) as well as the demo adventure from last year's Indiecon, Blood Tales: The End.

The Art of Hentacle (Adult product!)

The Art of Final Straw (Violent product!)

And some new ZelArt.

If you're looking for images to spice up your games or to publish your own, be sure and check out our extensive library of stock art by Industry Veteran Brad McDevitt and by newcomers Zel and Toby.

This month will be concentrated largely on freelancing and preparation for the two conventions, but we hope to start work on Agents of SWING, a FATE powered mash-up of 1960s and 1970s spy TV and films. If there's time a rough draft and a demo adventure may be ready for Indiecon and - if so - will be turned into a special preview product that you'll be able to download in Christmas or the new year. Otherwise you can expect more Freakshows, more stock art and - perhaps - the companion volume to 100 Conspiracies, 100 Conspirators.

***

We appreciate feedback and friendship here at Postmortem Studios, so if you want to follow us or communicate here are some of the many ways you can do so:

E-mail
Website
Twitter
Myspace
Facebook
Moblog
Roleplaymedia

***

Lastly I'd like to make you aware of a couple of opportunities we have going. These are strictly volunteer positions but we're looking for people to help with raising awareness of our products online and with running demo games at conventions. There's no money, unfortunately, but there would be free products, PDF and print, and possibly t-shirts once a helper-monkey design has been settled upon. Please e-mail to above link if you're interested in helping out in either capacity. We're particularly interested in talking to people about running games at US, Australian and Irish conventions.

Thanks for your patronage in the past and hopefully more of it going into the future. Let us know what YOU want to see more of or what you'd like to see us develop. You never know, it might actually happen!

[Postmortem Studios] Last day of Schlocktoberfest!

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:54:12 GMT

Today is the last day of Schlocktoberfest where you can get many of our PDF products half price! If you want to grab yourself a bargain before things go back to normal on Novermber the 1st then hurry along to our RPGNOW store and buy up everything you can, including this month's new releases, card game art books and new Freakshow monsters statted for Blood! Modern OGL and MRQ.

Spend your moneys HERE

Grim's Tales: What to Play

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:15:02 GMT

So, now you’ve got a group and a place to play you just need something to play. Quite a lot of people, surprisingly, are system monogamous (or bigamous), while that means you’re not going to have this challenge, per se, it can still be a problem all of its own in a group that includes people that like other games and you still need to keep these things in mind in deciding what spin to give your game. If your players are all over the place on their favourite systems, games and themes then you’re going to get a clash that needs to be resolved somehow.

How to Choose
There’s a few different ways you can settle the argument of what game to play, none of them are entirely satisfactory but they should let you come to an acceptable compromise, or at least to shut the whiners up one way or the other.

GM Fiat
You’re the one running the bloody game; you’re the one that gets to choose. If the Games Master isn’t happy then nobody’s happy and if they want to play a game at all, then they’re going to have to do what you say and play what you want and tough titty if they want to do otherwise. One the plus side this establishes the Games Master’s authority right from the start and sorts out what you’re going to play with no quibbling. On the minus side, people who really, genuinely, don’t want to play a game are going to pout and possibly spoil it for everyone else.

Votes
Work out what all the different games are that people might want to play, each list them on a different piece of paper and then give each of them a score based on how much you want to play them, 1-5 or 1-10 works well. The Games Master then tots up all the scores and the one with the highest score is the one that you play. This only works if everyone’s honest and it tends to mean the same games dominate session to session unless something new really takes everyone’s fancy, but it does also tend to mean that everyone can at least tolerate whatever game it is you do end up playing.

Lucky Dip
Everyone writes down one game that they want to play and drops it into a ‘hat’ (or a dice bag, or a box or whatever). Then the Games Master draws one of the notes out of the hat and that’s what you’re going to play. This puts everyone on equal footing, gives everyone an equal chance but it can result in very unpopular choices that one person likes and everyone else doesn’t, a group predominantly of gritty horror fans playing Furry Pirates or something. Not good.

Round Robin
Use one of the methods above but only to determine what order each of the games should be played in. That gives people more time to get used to the less popular choices and makes sure that everyone gets their crack of the whip. On the downside the unpopular choice may loom over all the other games like a black cloud and motivate people to keep these other games going on longer than they should, simply to hold off the inevitable terror of Bunnies and Burrows.

Gauging the Mood
The easiest way to work out what mood people are in and what sort of game they want to play is to ask them. People aren’t always honest though and don’t always answer truthfully about how they feel or what they’re really in the mood for, plus you need to somehow collectivise everyone’s mood together and figure out a game that either makes the best of the overall mood or that hits several different emotional notes as you’re going along. That’s also difficult.

This isn’t really the sort of thing you can be advised on, empathy is something you have or you don’t have and you don’t always have the option to shift the feel of a game session from comedy to tragedy or vice versa. Just be aware of the cues going on as you play, the way people react, how ‘intense’ or ‘shallow’ they’re playing as you go along, be responsive and don’t try to force something that isn’t really working.

Dev Diary: Agents of SWING

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:43:03 GMT

This is, obviously, on the back burner as I need to get various projects out of the door swiftly, but I hope to have some sort of playable, demo scenario and rules set cobbled together with duct tape and rubber bands by Indiecon. Meanwhile, here's some preliminary thoughts from going through Starblazer Adventures, whose version of FATE I'll be using as my jumping off point as it has all sorts of bells and whistles that will be terribly useful and translate over to Agents of SWING nicely.

1. Savagely Edit the Rules Descriptions.
Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures are both weighty, weighty tomes in their respective sizes and while FATE is - ostensibly - a simple, narrative oriented system but sprawls like a demented monster over a huge number of pages. I'm a guy that likes to concentrate on background and feel and rules bogging down a book too much just isn't on. I'm going to assume that my readers have a passing familiarity with RPGs and so won't be quite so explicit and long-winded in explanations. I'll also try to avoid repetition.

2. Less Illustration, More Typography
I want Agents of SWING to be a stylish product, but also quite minimalist, a wipe-clean, plastic-fantastic, white formica, 60s future-vision. So I'm going to cut back on the illustration and use a lot of silhouette/flag/pop art imagery and work harder on the presentation and layout of the text, using that to greater effect. There will be illustrations for the example character dossiers though.

3. Streamline Character Creation
I think there'll be less emphasis on character advancement and characters need to be reasonable powerful at the start, roughly equivalent to the Standard Campaign level in Starblazer Adventures. I'll also drag some of the character generation options back towards a more traditional RPG role, less group creation, we already have our group-hook in the game setting and other than a few teams and partnerships, many of the heroes in the source material were skilled loners. If people want to play the IM Force or The Champions or whatever, players can do that anyway. It doesn't need to be worked into character generation here.

Important elements of a character would be:

Career - Prior to joining SWING
Cover - Their cover identity
Section - The section of SWING they're attached to.

4. Decouple Stunts from Skills
At least as much as possible. The cross referencing in SOTC and SB can be a bit of a son of a bitch, a few stunts - obviously - need to be related to a skill, but others don't necessarily and getting rid of the need would free things up and make referencing easier.

5. More Stress?
You've got physical stress and composure, but perhaps add something in for social standing? 60s Britain (the default) is still a class concious society, more so than today, and scandals had more power then to harm than they do now. An ill regarded agent could be in trouble in many situations and this is distinct enough from composure to warrant its own treatment I think.

6. Gadgets
These need a big treatment, both for Bondian style gadgets and for the potential widgetry of villains.

7. Rationalise Skill Descriptions
Slim them down, they're very long right now and could be covered in much less space IMO.

8. Separate Out Special Rules
Special rules for car chases etc need to be in their own sections, not intermingled, muddling things up a bit.

9. Allow the Attacker to Choose Consequences?
Might be a little harsh, but allowing the victim to choose the type of consequence and the attacker to choose the actual consequence pushes narrative control more interestingly I think.

10. Skills Pyramid?
I don't particularly see the need to stick to the Pyramid arrangement for skills, it kind of got in the way of making Doc Savage-alikes and I don't particularly see why it should be kept.

11. Psi/Super Abilities
Essential to replicate some of the material from the time but I don't want to overemphasise it. Perhaps a few examples and expand on the material later in another book? Same could be done with gadgets.

12. Organisations?
Villainous organisations need to be detailed as do the various sections of SWING and the rest of the conventional intelligence community, a few examples perhaps and then expand on the rules in a separate book.

13. Clue Based Plot Structure?
I'd like to mix in some of the plot stress ideas in SB with some of the ideas from Gumshoe, perhaps plot stress advancement from section to section, splitting up adventures into investigative sections, interrogations etc which yield points of 'plot stress' that advance the game towards its conclusion.

14. Profit.

Neverwhere 3rd Edition Released!

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:50:26 GMT

The third - and probably final - edition of the Neverwhere RPG, produced with permission and available for PDF only. This is the final, comprehensive edition of the game with an improved system, more detail an expanded A-Z and advice for running the game in tabletop, online or as a LARP.

Download it HERE

Make sure to buy something that actually gives me money while you're there too, don't forget Schlocktoberfest is still going!

Helper Monkey Required: Publicity

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:40:09 GMT

I tweeted something about this as a bit of a joke but got a couple of semi-serious enquiries, believe it or not... so what the hell, let's see if anyone's a big enough mug.

Job Title: Publicity/Sales Helper Monkey

Job Description: As my publicity/sales helper monkey you would make the world aware of new Postmortem Studios products, sales, convention appearances and other information thereby boosting the profile of the company and increasing sales. You would be a presence in social media and forums and provide feedback to me about discussions etc as well.

Requirements: Knowledge and enthusiasm for most - if not all - Postmortem Studios products, involvement in social media and understanding of the technology, preferably UK or US, good command of English, basic HTML and BBCode. Preferably already using Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and with forum accounts at major RPG forums - or be willing to make them.

Duties: Take announcements, work them into nice posts and spread them around the internet, provide feedback and promote the company. This should take a handful of hours every week during busy weeks, otherwise it might be much less, depending on workload and output here.

Payment: Hahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahaha. No, even if things weren't as tight as they are lately this would still be a volunteer position. However, you can have free PDF product and if you do well and stick at it, after a couple of months we can see if something more might be offered, done.

Apply HERE

Grim's Tales: Where to Play

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:32:21 GMT

Once you’ve gotten a group together you need somewhere to actually play the games. You don’t need a huge amount of space, just a table with room for a fistful of people, enough space to roll some dice and a bit of peace and quiet for a handful of hours. Can’t be too difficult to get, can it?

Home
The obvious place to choose to play is at home, either in your home or that of another member of your group. You’ve got the advantages of comfort, familiarity and you – or whoever else it is – doesn’t have to lug their entire gaming library to the new location. On the downside there might be a lot of non-gaming people around, interrupting, getting under your feet and otherwise causing all sorts of mayhem and mishaps. Sometimes spouses and house sharers can be less than understanding about tramping hordes of gamers descending upon the house and messing up the place and that’s another disadvantage, you might have to tidy up. It can also be a little difficult to get people to leave once the gaming is over, releasing the hounds can be helpful in this regard.

School
Schools often offer rooms for hire or for after-school activities and you can use these to game in. Schools are often central to areas and can help you get a bit of publicity for your gaming group, plus you can recruit some new gamers from the fledgling hordes of acne-ridden adolescents in need of some power fantasies. On the minus side you might have to include students in the club, be attending, or have a kid going there in order to use the facilities, plus other after school groups may well interrupt or cause problems for you by running up and down the corridors or – badly – practising the trombone in the next toom.

Pub
Pubs often have rooms for rent that you and your group can use, like schoolrooms. The disadvantage here, as with the schoolrooms is that this costs money, but with a big enough group – or a couple of groups – you can spread the cost and then it’s not going to be so much. You’re also going to be restricted on time, usually the rooms are paid for by the hour and the pub does, eventually, close. Another drawback is that pubs sell booze, that means no underage players and it also often means that your players get plastered which, while occasionally funny, can also be a bloody nuisance when someone vomits on their character sheet or starts telling you why they love you in the middle of a scene.

Shop
Gaming shops often have play spaces that you can use to meet up at. Some of these are only open after hours and some of these are only open during hours, each approach has its own issues. If they’re only open during shop hours then that’s no use to you if you work, if they’re only open after hours then time may be restricted and the shop gaming room is more likely to be oversubscribed. In either case there’s likely to be a lot of interruptions and, being surrounded by all that swag, you might be tempted to spend a lot of money on gaming stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise buy; a boon for the shop owner, but not necessarily for you.

Room Sharing Issues
Sharing rooms with multiple role-playing groups has its good and bad sides, on the plus side you get a nice, vibrant feel to a room with lots of people in it and you get to mix with and meet a lot of other gamers, whether you know them already or not. On the minus side the noise makes it difficult to play and if you’re trying to have an intense and serious session of one game while someone else is having a boisterous game of Paranoia or Sea Dracula then you’re shit out of luck. It also tends to be the case that some people don’t take such good care of rooms as the rest of you, but you all end up carrying the can for one person’s bad behaviour.

Burn them in effigy and they might get the hint.

Teh Interwubz
There’s some other possibilities but one that’s really worth mentioning is the use of the Internet. You can use e-mail lists, IRC, chatrooms or potentially Google Wave to coordinate a game. If so inclined you could also spend a small fortune setting up a Second Life area to play in, but that’s not really going to conform to the rules of the game. The Internet is great for all sorts of communication and you can play across it but there’s disadvantages as well. If you’re using a dice-rolling program then all your rolls will be open, making ‘fudging’ the rolls towards a certain outcome more difficult. Not everyone can type quickly either and this can really slow things down no end, even more so if they’re dyslexic or just relatively illiterate and that makes it no fun for people to play at their end either. Playing online tends to really slow things down unless the system you’re using is really abstract, so reckon on things like combat taking even longer.

There’s some nice tools out there that can give you virtual tabletops and tools to help you with the rule of the game but these tend to be amateurish, complicated and not very intuitive to use and they also tend to only cater to a few of the major systems on the market. At the time of writing Wizards of the Coast still haven’t brought out their 3D virtual tabletop and it’s become something of a joke in any case. It remains to be seen if that – or some similar software – can truly provide a real, full suite of online role-playing options that works, is adaptable and is user friendly. Don’t hold you breath!

Grim's Tales: Getting the Band Together

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:02:23 GMT

Forming a Group
These days this is probably about the biggest obstacle to any successful game, getting people to play. It's possibly a downer to go over all the problems but if you're aware of them you can either give up without trying and save yourself the trouble, or be aware of the issues as you're going into them.

There's a lot of competitors for gamer's time these days. Computer games, MMORPGs, card games, all sorts. Even if you get people who want to play, they're going to want to do a lot of other things as well, leaving less time for gaming.
Gamers are an aging demographic, that means we're shrinking in size and there's even more demands on a lot of gamers' time, partners, kids, work, all takes its toll.
Game shops aren't as common as they used to be, eliminating a major meeting place for gamers.
Gaming has gone from being Satanic (which is kind of cool) to nerdy, which isn't. While there's some 'geek chic' going on it seems to only really exist/persist within existing geek culture.
These are problems, but they're not insurmountable with the right approach and some can even be turned into positives.

Friends with Benefits
It's pretty likely that when you started gaming (or if you are starting now) that the first people you gamed with were your friends. They're the ones you could rope into trying it and if anyone stuck with it it's likely some of those original friends that you played with. Friends make some of the best members of your gaming group, you know each other, know what you like, have a rapport and are likely to be fairly forgiving with each other and you'll be more likely to find some time to spend together, for whatever reason, not just for gaming but for any other reason. Friends are also more likely to offer up somewhere to play and spouses are more likely to be understanding about you spending time with your friends.

Perfect Strangers
Meeting new people to game with can be a bit of a bind. Where are you going to meet? Sure, there’s some RPG clubs dotted about here and there and a few shops, but probably your best bet is running into people at conventions or the occasional serendipitous encounter.* It can be hard to suss out whether you’re going to get on with someone from such a brief meeting and a chat, but it’s better than nothing. As with dating, go with your instinct to start with and don’t be afraid to run, screaming for the hills if they turn out to be a creepy psycho.

*I met some of my best friends and lifelong gaming friends only because another gaming friend mentioned monowire while playing laser tag. That’s serendipitous.

Blind Dates
Another way of hooking up with new gamers is to answer ads in magazines or on the Internet and to find people near you in that way. This way of hooking up with people is even more random and unpredictable than chance encounters or stalking gamers in stores or conventions. You’ve really got nothing to go on other than the way they write, what they say and maybe a picture, if you’re lucky. Again, there’s no harm in going and meeting up, but it might be a good idea to take a friend with you. People aren’t likely to be killer psychos, but things might be weird or uncomfortable and it’s always good to have backup when you’re meeting any strangers. As with the random encounters mentioned before you shouldn’t be afraid to cut and run or to break off contact if it just isn’t working. Sometimes things don’t work out, even with other gamers.

Conventions
For your part, when you’re at a convention you and your existing group can do things to maximise your opportunities to meet new people, there’s little point all just playing together like you were at home after all! Split up, maybe in pairs so you can feel a little comfortable and then mix it up in as many events and games – or running games – as you can. That gives you your best chance of meeting new people, making new friends, getting new gaming partners and scoring! Bonus!

The Internet
There’s plenty of forums out there, plenty of social networking sites, blogs, e-mail lists, twitter and so on that can get you together with other gamers. Getting you together with other gamers in striking distance of yourself is a little more difficult. Many clubs and groups do make their own websites as well and you can do the same thing. Make sure you’re easy to find via e-mail and that your general location is listed on such a site so that potential players can find you and get in touch with you. The real problem is that the role-playing scene is completely fractured across many, many, many different sites and there’s no real, universal, central point for you to find people and to communicate. Because of this you’ll need to spread your efforts as far and wide as you can. Some ideas to draw interest might include…

Lots of pictures – people pay more attention to pictures than text.
Podcasting – You could record some of your sessions on audio, or discuss them, or products you’ve bought that you like. Gamers do value each other’s opinions and that can draw an audience.
Play reports – Summaries of your sessions and some of the ‘war stories’ from them can give people an idea what your sessions are like and whether they’ll fit in as well as giving clues to the game systems and types of games you like to run.

Schools & Colleges
Schools have a lot of activities after their official hours are over. Community schools may have rooms for hire for clubs and groups to use as well. It’s potentially creepy to play across a big age gap and some games might not be suitable but schools are often the hubs of communities and good places to get the word out about your group and your games.

College or university is also a great place to put gaming groups together, lots of people packed into one institution, away from home and looking to socialise and find new friends. There’s usually plenty of rooms and facilities to host games and directories and notice boards upon which you can advertise. The gaming friends you make there might well be friends for life and universities might well be the hubs of any local gaming clubs in any case, whether you attend or not.

Hobby Shops
While there are less hobby shops around these days, that does mean that the ones that remain are good hubs for meeting other gamers. You can also find out who plays what by seeing what they buy and what they look at, many stores also host games and tournaments during or after hours and most will also have a notice board or let you set out some poorly photocopied fliers for your gaming group. They’re an excellent place to be a stalker and you can lurk behind the miniatures racks ready to pounce out on whoever looks like they might play something you like. Games Workshop stores don’t work so well, they don’t like anyone talking about anything that isn’t one of their games and you can get thrown out, so take it easier there or lurk outside and pounce people as they leave.

Update

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:10:31 GMT

Today I have:

Finished and uploaded Blood Tales: The End.
I finished writing about 2/3rd of a new Freakshow, a modern horror take on the Banshee. Out of practice with the OGL Modern rules writing!
Submitted test pieces for a couple of potential pieces of work.
Pursued some potential magazine work.
Made some further notes from Starblazers towards Agents of S.W.I.N.G. - I'll do a more proper dev diary on that project as and when it actually gets into gear.
Tryed to decide whether I can put any time and energy into Nanowrimo this year with everything else going on. No conclusion on that yet...

Blood Tales: The End

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:26:40 GMT

The End is set in the immediate aftermath of a zombie rising. The characters are a mismatched band of survivors, trapped in a fortified house on a housing estate in rural England. This is a small market town, not a metropolis and not somewhere where it might be easy to tool up with weapons and take on the zombie hordes.

With food and water running out the radio finally crackles into life, an army signal, looking for survivors but camped out at the church, the church on the other side of town...

Written for Blood! but comes bundled with Freakshow: Zombies to make conversion to modern OGL or the RuneQuest OGL easier.

If you buy before the end of the month it's half price as part of Schlocktoberfest!

Love and bunnies,

Grim

Grim's Tales: Balancing Act

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:46:31 GMT

A great deal of being a successful GM is in successfully balancing your needs from the game and those of each of your players. This is not an easy prospect, especially with a group of practised and experienced gamers. Some people's desires from a game are virtually incompatible and the only way you can achieve any sort of balance there is by switching from one style or focus to another either within a game or from session to session. This isn't a perfect solution either as it can make games become a little schizophrenic. Here's how you deal with it...

A game doesn't have to be perfect.

So long as you're all having fun most of the time you can let go of the 'need' to run a perfect game. After all, we can't all be Spielbergs and so long as you're not being Uwe Boll, everything's going to be just fine. Games can be pretty forgiving; they're played over longer periods. People don't remember everything session to session, even if they make notes. You can shift the game as you go along to find the 'sweet spot' for your group and you can get feedback from your players to make everything better over time.

So long as you all make a bit of an effort, together, to make for a good game, everything will be fine, really.

Update

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:26:16 GMT

Today I have:

Started reading through STARBLAZER ADVENTURES (my preferred implementation of FATE) with an eye to simplifying things a little, slimming it down and using it as the rules for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. (The 60s - 70s mash-up action game).
Uploaded more Clipart Critters which will be coming out over the rest of the month. If you want to get some very good, and very chea, art to support your games or for your gaming projects, be sure and check it out HERE.
Half finished writing up the zombie apocalypse demo scenario for Blood! which I wrote for Indiecon last year.
Proofread the next installment in The Life of Angst, Chav: The Knifing, and commissioned the art.

Looking for supplementary work again

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:06:49 GMT

Times are tough all round and things have gotten decidedly tougher at Postmortem today as my lovely missus has discovered she's soon going to be out of work. As such I need to pick up some of the slack and that's where my dear readers come in. A lot of you are involved in RPG - and related - companies of many kinds, so I'm coming begging, cap in hand, for any extra work that you might have going.

If you've got editing that needs doing.
If you've got writing that needs doing.
If you've got design that needs doing - pretty much any system.

Let me know, you'll get my devious mind at your disposal and I'll rush around like a blue-arsed fly to get it done.

SCHLOCKTOBERFEST!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:05:08 GMT

All October if we sell it and it's cheesy, sleazy or makes you queasy it's half price, all month.

The products on sale include:

'45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse
100 Conspiracies
100 Dark Places
100 Horror Adventure Seeds
Autopsy 1
Autopsy 2
Blood!
Cthentacle
Final Straw: Highschool Revenge
Hentacle
Invaderz
Urban Faerie

So if you're looking for some naughty, bloody or puerile fun then Postmortem Studios is for you this month!

Buy HERE!

Grim's Tales: Problem Players

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:20:13 GMT

Knowing what kind of players you have in your game is helpful and lets you tailor things to suit the group that you have. Different players with different needs can lead to problems in the group but actual problem players are a breed apart. Any player can be a problem player in combination with whatever other kinds of player they are, but that doesn't mean they have to stay a problem, you can either fix it or, provided there aren't other issues in the way, you can exclude them from the group. You shouldn't be afraid of being selective over who you play with, even when it can be troublesome getting a group together. If someone consistently ruins games and can't be 'tamed' or moderated, then, frankly, you can be better off without them.

Other issues can be tackled...

The Centre of Attention
Problem: This player constantly wants to be at the lead of the action, always wants to be the one moving and shaking and getting things done and resents it when other players are in the spotlight, practically vibrating in frustration and pent up need to be leading the action. If allowed to indulge this they'll marginalise the other players, if not their presence can exasperate and upset the other players since their disquiet is obvious.
Solution: If they can be made to recognise that they're having an issue then maybe they'll moderate their behaviour. You can also deliberately play up the roles of the other players by emphasising the skills and abilities that their characters have so that everyone gets their time in the spotlight.

The Cheat
Problem: OK, so RPGs aren't competetive, they're storytelling exercises, even so, without risk, without the role of randomness in the game you might as well just be sitting around telling stories. Risk, the chance of failure, adds spice to the game and so when people cheat, lie about their die rolls, alter their character sheets, they rob the game of some of its appeal and their in-character accomplishments of worth. They also marginalise and sideline the more honest players, who can't match their 'success'.
Solution: As the Games Master you can do some things to moderate cheating behaviour. You can insist on public rolls in a box or through a die-rolling tower, you can insist on making all the rolls yourself or you could even institute a mert/demerit system within the game, rewarding people for paying attention and playing nice and punishing people for being disruptive and cheating. You could also shift to playing more indie/story games, where there's less emphasis on the vagueries of random chance and more on the story, less chance to cheat.

The Deviant
Problem: It's a great strength of the role-playing community that we're so welcoming and so non-judgemental. However, it's also a great weakness since we allow in and tolerate people that would be thrown out of a furry swinger's club. If you've got a greasy-haired living-potato at your gaming table, in semen-encrusted jogging bottoms, reeking of cabbage and stale sweat and gently massaging their genitals over hermaphroditic ocelot porn between turns, you have a problem.
Solution: Kill it with fire.

The Disinterested Tagalong
Problem: It's all very well when friends and loved ones take an interest in your hobby but not everyone likes roleplaying and when someone is playing who isn't really interested and is acting like a martyr, only because they want to show an interest in their friend/partner, it drags the whole game down into a hole.
Solution: "You know, you really don't have to be here if you don't enjoy it. Not everything is for everyone."

The Frustrated Gamesmaster
Problem: Some people just aren't happy unless they're in control. Every Games Master is different and many have very different playing styles to each other. The way one Games Master does something can drive another Games Master crazy and some have a bit of an issue letting go of control and relaxing in order to enjoy playing.
Solution: The best way to solve this problem is to remind the player how they'd feel if someone was second guessing them in one of their own games. If they're a half decent Games Master that should be all it takes to get them back on the straight and narrow. Another possible way to get around these problems is to share the Games Mastering duties and work together.

The Kid
Problem: A big age difference in a group can lead to a little bit of disomfort and a disconnect. This might be because you're at a gaming club where there's little or no control over who joins the group, it might be because you're at a convention or it might be because a younger sibling is foisted upon you by a well meaning but ignorant parent.
Solution: Frankly, we should do all we can to encourage younger players to game and maintain an interest. If that means moderating your language and playing slightly less adult game themes, then so be it, so long as it's not forever. If you're playing a more mature game then a frank explanation to the parent, or even the kid, might do the trick. If need be you can always organise kids games seperately.

The Munchkin
Problem: The munchkin issue has been satirised and played out in a huge number of ways and the munchkin has almost become a figure of affection. Games like 4th Edition D&D even seem to go out of their way to acknowledge and encourage the munchkin, legitimising 'character builds', optimised for specific purposes and exploitation of the rules. Regardless, munchkins are an issue for games, overpowered, playing the rules rather than the game and tending to drag other players along in their wake, simply so that they can compete and feel useful.
Solution: More of an emphasis on story and roleplay will disarm the munchkin a little, as will using puzzles and other non-rules oriented game problems. Munchkinism can often be a 'stage' that a player will grow out of. Even so, it can be fun to engage with munchkinism sometimes and to play a game where it doesn't matter so much, just so you can all get it out of your system.

The Ninja
Problem: It needn't actually be a ninja, but there's something that this player is obsessed with and seeks to play some version of in every, single game they ever play, even where it's completely inappropriate. Needless to say this can get annoying for Games Masters and for other players as yet another ninja makes their presence felt in a game that's supposed to be about sentient clams, or whatever...
Solution: Gentle encouragement to try other things might work, so long as they get to indulge their fantasy once in a while. Wish fulfilment and fantasy is, after all, a large part of what gaming is about. They just need to learn to accept that they need to moderate their needs with that of others.

The Non-Player
Problem: Having someone in the room who isn't playing the game can be distracting, disruptive or embarassing. Let's face it, gaming is a strange passtime and we can all be a little self-concious about it. Someone who isn't playing is a disruptive presence, especially if they're bored out of their mind and watching TV, playing on their DS, reading or constantly interrupting the game. This usually happens when it's one of the player's girlfriend or boyfriend.
Solution: Whoever is bringing along the person who doesn't play is the person you need to talk to, though the issue can also be with flatmates and others who don't play. In that case you can possibly trade favours to be left alone while you're gaming.

The Sponge
Problem: Some people just turn up to games, munch all the snacks, drink all the drinks, crash over without properly asking and make a big mess. They're basically taking advantage of hospitality and that eventually breeds resentment, no matter how generous and good natured you all are.
Solution: Even if they're dirt poor, some sort of contribution to munchies should be possible, however small. The rest of it's just down to politeness and it's better to take a firm hand on sooner rather than later, before it becomes habitual.

100 Conspiracies!

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:21:41 GMT

100 Conspiracies presents a hundred different conspiracy theories for use in modern investigative/spy/horror games. Each conspiracy is outlined and explored and comes with several adventure seeds to get you started. Perfect inspiration for the beleaguered Games Master in need of a little kickstart to their creativity!

You can purchase it HERE

What do you do?
	Pull the fat kid off the little kid and give him a kicking.
	Break the two of them up.
	Go and find a teacher.
	Leave 'em to it and head home.

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What do you do?
	Chase after Gareth and smack him back.
	Head home and make yourself something to eat.
	Text your mates and meet up at the chippy.
	Go and watch the fight.
	Something else... comment and say why.

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What should I base a regular poll game on?
	Zombie Horror (Blood!)
	Spy-Fi (Agents of SWING)
	Crime Caper (Future project idea)
	B-Movie Weirdness ('45)
	Other - Leave a comment and I'll re-poll if something grabs me.

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