Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

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Regarding playing scenes with friends:

What's the genre of your book? I have a couple lighter-weight RPGs to offer as suggestions.

FATE - you have skills ranked as things like mediocre, expert, poor, etc. (don't recall exact terms). You roll dice to determine how well you do as modifiers (+/-/0) to your skill or attribute when appropriate. Fairly freeform character creation and play. Genreless. You can make it fit almost any genre.

Dread - This is horror focused. The mechanic is a Jenga tower. If a player wants to do a non-mundane task, they pull a block, if the tower falls, that character is out of the game (dead, went mad, whatever, you choose). Tension develops as the tower gets harder to pull from. Ebook is $10-20, can't recall, got it for free for buying the print book at a convention. Very lightweight, while horror focused it is otherwise independent from your setting. Create character sheets describing their history, their skills then are "what does it make sense for them to know". Does it make sense for the programmer to be a sharpshooter? Maybe not, maybe a difficult shot requires two pulls for them. OTOH, a soldier character may only need to pull if the shot effects the story more significantly. You can wing it, but be consistent with your players.

A word of warning about RPGs; basing a book around a role-playing campaign can lead to books which read just like they're based around role-playing campaigns...

The classic example is Raymond Feist's Magician. There's a scene near the beginning where our characters choose what class they're playing, and then you can watch them level up throughout the rest of the book.

(Not that it's a bad book; I like it a great deal. But once you know what to look for, the signs are everywhere. It is fascinating to see his writing skill get better throughout. It's also interesting to read the original version with the Author's Preferred Edition, where he put back all the bits that his editor cut out, and realise exactly what editors are paid for. The original is so much better.)

I agree and would point to the same book. It can offer an interesting way to explore characters and ideas, however. Flesh out the world, for instance, if the book is less based on the RPG but happens to exist in the same world. An opportunity to explore different areas that may impact others. Or just play and don't base the book on it in a literal sense. Make a scenario to see what the characters might do and discuss what they should actually be like, then use that to inform their story decisions in other scenarios.

Also a benefit of the lightweight systems for this as they usually don't have a notion of classes. Maybe an idea of competency in some fields instead.

> basing a book around a role-playing campaign can lead to books which read just like they're based around role-playing campaigns...

Like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars?

Guilty pleasures, they are two webcomics that re-imagine those two works as role-playing campaigns. The Star Wars prequels actually make more sense that way.

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14

On the other hand the triology he co-wrote with Wurst (starting with daughter of the empire) reads less like a ad&d campaign run by an inexperienced gm...

And I also think the Greyhawk books started as a setting for a private game, then became books, and finally a published rpg setting?

Great, thanks for the references! There is a whole genre of tabletop RPGs that I had no idea existed out there. Dread seems like it might be a good fit. The story is still taking shape, but it's basically about a hard-case who finds redemption by helping a young family find safety in a collapsing world. Maybe similar in feel to "The Road" but with a more positive outcome.

Take a look at a system called Fiasco. It's a gm-less system designed around chaotic stories (not what you've got, but go with me). The concept is that you have playsets (objects, locations, types of relationships). You play out a game in the style of a movie like Fargo, where everything goes wrong. Players work together to generate the story. Each taking turns to setup or resolve scenes. Very character interaction and relationship focused.

Now, I haven't done this yet, but I want to take Fiasco and create less hostile games. The format is good for this. In your case, you could give people the characters from your story, give them a location and known relationships. Give them a goal (escape the cannibals, reach the town within a week before running out of food, etc.). Then let them play with the scenario. Your players would then be bringing the characters to life. Perhaps not directly mimicking the story that you had intended, because it's more freeform and player driven, but you can maybe get an idea for how your characters actually are as people.

Fiasco = Improv RPG. That's my way of describing it, at least. The rules as written are around tragic, horrible things happening to flawed people (literally, at the end of the game you roll your dice to determine your fate: worse than death, dead, in prison or similar, etc.; then you create a story to explain that fate, maybe you died in the game, maybe you died after when someone else came after you for revenge).

But I have a strong feeling that this could be converted into something less tragedy focused, if you can get player buy-in.

I absolutely love "The Road", it's one of my favorite post-apocalyptic movies (I haven't read the book yet).

I love that book. It's the reason I got back into writing as an adult. My wife gave it to me and I read it almost straight through and I couldn't believe that such interesting stuff was "Oprah" popular and marketable. I was heartened and started writing again. If you like it, Blood Meridian is even more harrowing.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out!

Blood Meridian is terrific and terrifying. Now there's some source material for a gritty Western...

Also, be sure to check out Microscope: it's terrific fun and great for building settings (for books, rpgs or other games):

http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/

(we built a crazy setting somewhat reminiscent of "The Expanse" (independently) which we used for a bit of swashbuckling sci-fi - sort of "Firefly" meets "The Martian" meets "Ex Machina").

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