Method to the Madness

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.” – Anne Rice, The Witching Hour.

I have sat here and stared at this part of the screen for what is probably hours deciding if I should include this with Obsidian Dragon Slayer or just post it somewhere else. I eventually decided that I would include it with the game and here we are.

This project is something that has been a few years in the works and has moved from backburner to forefront and back again. I was inspired by various rules lite games such as The Trollish Delver’s Heartseeker, Nate Tremere’s Tunnel Goons, Yochai Gal’s Cairn, Emiel Boven’s DURF, and countless others. I wanted something that mirrored how I want to play as well as something that would be easy to run online or in a quick game situation.

The aspect of the design that extended the process to years was the base mechanics, as in my mind the rest of the game was going to be built around it. There was a lot of sweat, blood, and tears spent trying to get it to use a d20 in the way I wanted. There were times when I had it dialed in then I hit snags when dealing with how to handle “hit protection” and these snags caused an entire rewrite. I eventually gave up with the d20 and experimented with a d12,

One night when I was working on a blog post I was looking for a book and a printed out copy of Maze Rats fell out of my bookshelf. I picked it up and flipped through it and I had a “Eureka” moment as the answer was in front of me the whole time even though I did tweak a few things.

Now that the hard part was done, I needed to decide what type of implied setting I wanted to bring to the table. I am eternally deeply inspired because of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and Ray Otus who wrote a game called There and Back Again. Mr. Otus based his game on the idea that The Hobbit existed without the expanded universe, with the base principle, “You are an adventurer in the world of The Hobbit. Specifically, the world as it appeared in the 1937 edition of that book. Anyone can be a wizard with the right knowledge, trolls turn to stone in the sunlight, animals or magical objects can speak, elves aren't always nice, and the wild is full of terrible creatures like goblins, giant spiders, and even dragons!” I wanted to emulate this philosophy in the game with my own personal flavor as this is not a game about playing in Middle Earth.

This led me to decide to use the term “Callings” for the player's choice of traditional classes and ancestry. I usually do not like ancestry as a “class” but for players who want to play a non-human character, I wanted to encourage them to double down on the history and culture of a being from an entirely different area with the possibility of little to no knowledge of humans and their settlements.

I also included Goblins as a choice because I strongly believe that Goblins, Orcs, Trolls, Giants, Ratkin, etc. should not automatically translate to evil, vile, or bad. I also really vibe with goblins in general and if you want to blame World of Warcraft, Pathfinder, or more nontraditional fantasy media/anime on that fact then go right ahead. I also decided to include some talking animals that players could choose from because as James George from Olde House Rules stated, “are cool and add a little much-needed whimsy into a game normally lacking it. Also, it's medieval as hell.” 

I also wanted to reinforce the idea that adventurers are not born but made, or decided to live the dangerous life of an adventurer on their own. This idea implies that most people did something to make a living beforehand and I wanted to include the idea of failed careers from Bastionland, or past professions without making it overly complicated. So, I decided on vocations that will add dimension to a character and add more story driven avenues to the play experience. This links into money and equipment. I feel like having lots of starting money and pages of shopping lists creates a slog in character creation and in game (as well as turning the game into coin counting adventure). So, I adopted the idea of base gear that everyone has collected to set out on the adventuring life as well as their Callings provide them with a starting package to do their job effectively. 

I consider starting characters to be at the point where they have had some life experience, went to a trade school (for lack of a better term), graduated, and just passed their probation period.

This brings me to my decisions regarding magic and how it works. I wanted to reinforce the idea that everyone could learn some magic if they put in the effort, and I did not want long spell lists or complicated formulas. In addition, I wanted magic users more involved with the process of having their own spell books and wanted to give spells more of an active roleplay aspect than the usual “I cast x spell and it does this” dialog (hence requiring the players to create their own magic words and movements to be acted out). 

I also knew I wanted magic to be taxing, slightly dangerous, and keeping control of the power curve without handicapping any characters who wanted to make magic a focus. Even without magic being locked behind a calling, I still wanted to have a calling focused on magic and I love the idea of the classic wizards like Gandalf and Merlin. The whole cliché of robes, books, familiars, parlor tricks, and pointy hats entertains me to no end and thus, the Sorcerer calling was designed with these ideas in mind. With all these aspects, I threw them in a pot, and I like to think it resulted in a smooth outcome.

The final aspect worth talking about is there are hints of science fiction scattered throughout the book such as (the Android Calling, advice about high tech equipment, etc.). I wanted to include these frameworks because I love the idea of being able to run space adventures, sword and planet stuff, or transporting the characters to a world akin to Dune without any extra work. That and Spelljammer is one of my favorite settings which I felt like I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not include an easy outlet for some jammin’.

With all of that being said, I think I have said enough to hopefully bring some insight into my gaming philosophy and my design theory for Obsidian Dragon Slayer.