The basic structure was inspired by Marks game (have players roll up fairly normal characters in the 'real world', give them access to money and weapons, and then have super powerful organizations be constantly trying to kill them for no clearly defined reason.  I was also inspired by Silence of the Lambs, and the idea of an FBI procedural game struck me as a novel approach.

(A year after the game wrapped-up, the X-Files premiered on FOX, and I realized I probably should have thinking more about screenplays then RPGs.)

At that time I was working as a DJ on the student run radio station WRFL, doing the early morning shift on Saturdays.  Back then the station had an AP machine (basically a dot-matrix printer hooked up to the AP's news wire network.  It was constantly printing out news updates, as they 'came off the wire'...) and so I had lots of time to read random news stories in the early morning while playing records.  So I for the game, I would look at the stories with an eye toward secret events happening in the world.  (I was deep into Foucault's Pendulum at the time, as well as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and a host of other Conspiracy books available over in the front room at Sqecial Media on S. Lime.)

Since I had been playing RPGs with some of the players since high-school, and we had shared interested, I was worried that they would figure out the conspiracy pretty quick.  So I decided to approach things a little differently- I wrote up 9 different secret organizations that were all (for the most part) un aware of each other's existence.  They were varying styles, ranging from a high tech corporation in Boston using computers to predict future history (ala Foundation) to an ancient order of Psychics based out of Europe, to Rasputin who was secretly still up to no good.  All of them would do anything to avoid being exposed, and all of them (with one exception) were absolutely convinced that they were heroes out to save the world from a threat only they could see.

Into this I dropped the players, and put them right on the spot when two of the powers would first encounter each other, and naturally each thought the PCs were working for the other guy and tried to kill them.  The original players were: 

• Chaz Haws as FBI Agent ???
• Trent Reid as FBI Agent Jack Keck
• Chad Martin as Timothy "Hopper" Morgan, typical liberal arts college student at UC Berkley
• Mark Tarter as Insurance Investigator Stone, generally known simply as Insurance man.

The Party's natural talent for mayhem, (particularly Insurance man's) meant that the more the powers tried to kill the party, the more additional powers were alerted to their existence.  Also they were labeled in the news outlets of the game world as the 'Reno Renegades' (no relation to the minor league hockey team.)

JJ, Chaz, Chad, Rebecca, Chrys, Ian, and TrentFor whatever reason the game really gelled, and took on a life of its own.  I think part of it was that I used a version of a set of streamlined rules vaguely based on GURPs, that Silver Gordon and I had worked out.  (the entire rule set fit on a single sheet or paper.)  So the rules were very minimalist, which kept the game moving along at a good clip.  The other element was that many of the people who joined the game later had not played RPGs before, and so they would being a different kind of thinking to the table.  And also, any player who joined the game after the initial session, had a secret agenda that was tied back to one of the powers, whether they knew it or not.  It took a surprising amount of time for the Player to realize that EVERYONE was a double agent.  JJ Haws' character Charley Holl was an acute case of a character whose position as an unwilling double agent resulted in some classic moments in the game.

Character death was pretty frequent, and I think Chad's character Hopper was the only one to make it all the way through the campaign in one piece.

The game generally varied between 4 and 10 players, and went on for about 2 and half years, happening almost every Thursday night.  I rarely knew what was going to happen in a particular game session, other then having an idea in my head about what the powers knew and were in the process of doing and a few news story printouts.  In my mind, I was playing the as much as any of the players- it was just that my character was 'the world'. I had a huge amount of fun, simply trying to keep track of the multitude of parallel threads going on in the game.  In most sessions, I would spend over half the game time in separate break-away discussions with different groups players, and they worked out their plans without being sure who in the group they could trust.

In the end, with graduation looming, I decided to end the game in a big finish, rather then let it die off like most other games.  So I ran a pretty epic final game session down at the Virtual Gallery that had me running from room to room GMing non-stop for 14 hours.  

A week or so afterwards I was riding back from a concert (or something) in Louisville, and JJ was having me explain the hows and whys of what had been happening to the game.  So I was explaining who was working for who, why the Vatican was trying to kill the time-travelers, the secret behind the Tijuana shellacked frog, how the psychic storm in china was started by Rosenthal in the Swiss Evian bottling plant- all of it.  And after listening to this for a while, Mike Hager turned around from the front seat and declared that that was the "biggest wad of Role-playing shit" he had ever heard.  I took it as the highest form of complement.  :D

Anyway, I found some of the documents from the game, and am posting them here.  I think JJ wrote the Intro pieces, as well as the prison escape piece.  While I was running the game, I rarely had time to actually document what was happening.  I will post more when I dig them out of storage.

• Hopper's Intro
• Hopper's Character Sheet
• Hopper's Demands
• Charlie Holl's inial repoirt to the Annulate
• Charlie Holl's report on meeting the Renegades
• A transcript of Agent Lane and Insurance Man's escape from Prison
• Data request for Mandrake The future predicting super-computer
• Some random notes
• Epilog  In 1997, I was looking into running an online version of the game with the old players, and typed up some notes on what had happened in the game world in the years after the finale.

It's closer to being a description of a character's career- no matter what they are doing at the moment, it is a pithy explanation of what they are. A class write-up defined their powers and limitation, mechanically.  So a wizard can't fight well, (or pick up a sword even) but on the other hand has a large spellbook of power they can wield.  But the main thing is the ability to in one term sum up how the character works, and what they can do.  Saying Vang, son of Vland is a master of the 4th circle means nothing to other players- they just want to know if he can heal or throw fireballs.  So 'Class' is a kind of shorthand for how a character works.

Beyond that, the only other thing a class gets is its XP progression chart- a description of how much XP it takes them to advance their levels, and how they grow and become more powerful.

That seems like the key bit.  What that chart describes is the character's destiny.  It is the road of success and power that lies in front of them, assuming they persevere and don't get permanently killed.

So the idea I am mulling over is the idea that class is a bit like Nephilium, where there are certain 'great souls' that are reincarnated into mortal bodies every so often, and they are the souls of heroes.  Each soul has its own unique abilities and weaknesses.

The upshot of this is that there can only be one cleric in the world at any time.  there are priests, and other spiritual folk, but the "Cleric" is the only mortal alive with that particular destiny.  If he is killed then some other candidate inherits the soul, and now has the path of destiny ahead of them.  This means only one player can be a cleric, but another could choose to be a druid, or some other class devised for them.

Will have to think on this more...

I have been thinking about SF Sanboxes of late, since with the new year, Farscape has shown up on Netflix streaming.

Anyway the odd thing about sandbox games, is that you need a region of unexplored territory near a town or a home base.  The tricky part is the question of why hasn't anyone in the town gone and fully explored the region already.

The answer is usually either a barrier has recently gone away, or the home base was recently moved.  In fantasy, the barrier is frequently some sort literal magical barrier, or line that no one was able to cross.  but then around the time the heroes arrive, the barrier inexplicably weakens, and they are the first ones to explore what is on the far side.  They are able to go and fight monsters and gain treasure, but return to the safety of the town at regular intervals.  It occurred to me that this is what ST:Deep Space 9 perfectly encapsulate- a well established town that suddenly has a door to an unknown region appear on its doorstep.

But an even more common case is where the whole town is shifted into terra incognito, and the heroes are exploring their environment.  This is the shipwrecked genre, and the 'town' are the people the heroes are protecting.  Shows like Lost, Farscape, BSG, or ST: Voyager are more in this vein, where the heroes have to protect a group after then have been cast into a dangerous environment.

Now I dig the great sector maps of traveller as much as anyone- especially the ones Judges Guild put out.  But I am now thinking about how a sandbox SF game could work.  Here is what I am thinking:

1. The GM rolls up a bunch of systems using the Traveller system generation rules, on some 5x8 index cards.  for inhabited worlds, he gives it a little flavor text, but leaves most of the back of the card clear.  Each card should have an Index Number.
2. He gets a sheet of Hex Gaming Paper, and marks a hex near the middle of the paper as the starting point.
3. For the new campaign, he has players roll up characters for the SF game they are using (Traveller, Stars w/out Number, 2300AD, Star Frontiers, etc) and provides them with a sector map, such as the Spinward Marches, and points to one of their stars as their current location.
4. Somehow (either following up on a legend, or a quest given to them) they go to explore a nearby region of space that is reported to have strange properties, and is a sort of Bermuda Triangle for ships.  There they find a Stable Wormhole, that via Deus Ex Machina they are pulled through.  
5. Now they get the big blank sheet of gaming hex paper, and find they are surrounded by unfamiliar stars, and can choose their direction to explore.  Its too dangerous to jump blind into an uncharted hex, so no matter their ship's normal jump rating, can only explore at Jump-1, but when going back to already explored hexes, they can move at their normal Jump rating.
6. Every time they enter a new Hex, the DM rolls on a chart* and if it comes up that there is a system in any of the neighboring unexplored hexes, and he draws a card from his deck for any that have systems.  He then marks on the Gaming paper with that card's index number.  The party can then choose to land on that planet have have an adventure there for the week, or keep on exploring.  They can mark their path on the map, to keep track of their explorations, or at least mark empty hexes somehow to show they have already been visited.

Over time, they should have a pretty detailed map of this new area of space.  The DM can decide whether they have the option to pass back through the wormhole anytime they need supplies, or sell their accumulated loot- or if they are stuck here (like John Crichton ) and their story arc involves finding a way to open the wormhole in the other direction.

*A chart for what is in a hex still needs to be created.  It could be a simple as a D12 (or a D20 if you want a less dense region of space) with a 1 chance on there being a system in any given hex, or it could be a more detailed percentage where other random space phenomena could be encountered.  

The party should be required to manage supplies- i.e. each jump is a set amount of time, and their ship can only jump so many times before they run low on food, air, and fuel.    

Now the limit of information the party has, is another issue.  In a wilderness sandbox, you can only see as far as you have line of sight, so you really only can see into the next 5 mile hex at any time.  But in space, you theoretically can see everything, so filling in the map one hex at a time seems odd.  Here are my initial thoughts on how to address this:

You are in a totally new space, so you don't have millennia of stellar observation to refer to.  A small near star, and a big distant star look pretty much the same.  And if you take the time to try and map all the visible stars looking for the nearest ones, you will run out of air long before you have anything useful.

or you happen to be in a nebula or cluster, and the sensors are too confused to make accurate readings.

Star maps in this region should be super rare and highly guarded, or most of the worlds are pre-spacefaring.  Allowing them to go to the local Astrogator's guild and fill in big chunks of the map seems like it would kill the fun in the game.  (but if the party is getting frustrated with the pace of exploration you let them find a fragment of the map as a reward.  (They find an ancient derelict ship, and its astronavigation computer holds the data for a region of space... of course it may be on the far side of the map from the party, and be centuries out of date...)

If the DM is interested in having bigger arcs to his campaign, then Random Planet of the week, he could in secret come up with the bigger interplanetary forces at play in this region of space, and sketch out on a separate hex map the rough areas they are active.  then when the Players reach one of those areas, any system cards drawn there should have a bit of that larger story added to them.  (i.e. the card might be for the planet of happy woodchuck people, but the DM drew it in a hex that falls in a region that is home to the evil overlord, then he can update the flavor on the back of the cart to the effect that the woodchuck people are being cruely oppressed by the overlord's forces.)  The idea is that some interesting scenarios should emerge.

Also if the PCs are able to travel back through the wormhole reliably (Perhaps once they have found the wormhole regulator maguffin) then a different region of play happens, as they decide what to do with this knowledge.  Is the evil overlord on the other side also able to come through the wormhole to invade the Spinward Marches?  Can the PCs rally the planetary governments in time?  As the holders of the only map of the other side, can they use that for wealth and power, or will they be hunted by all those that want to know the secret of the wormhole?

So I made a sort of Venn Diagram to show the breakdown, and also not have any monster's name appear more the once.  Let me know if this is more or less confusing.

http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

Spell points aren't much different, except that they are more flexible.  Now the spells are like guns, and the magic user has to decide which gun to fire his limited supply of bullets through.  More flexible and easier to grasp, (especially if you have played a fantasy video game or MMORPG) but also kind of generic.

Magic is in essence a mage hacking reality (According to White Wolf anyway) so each spell should be a fundimentally different tacktic.  But why should the mage not be able to repeat that trick again.  But if a magic user is able to bend reality to his will anytime he wants, then why wouldn't he?

Call of Cthulhu (which used the spell point system) had the additional counter balance of sanity loss when fiddling around with magic.  And there have been systems that have significant risks from spells backfiring, although I am not thinking of any titles off hand.

One option would be a modified Vancian system where a mage has to roll a saving throw after every time they cast a spell a day.  They throw a d6 for how many times they have cast it that day, (including the current casting) and then if they get a total of 6 or more then they 'hit the wall' and cant' cast it again till they rest.  Either mental exhaustion, or some sort of abstract power is used up... or maybe the tiny demons on the other side have noticed this activity and are tearing at the mage's soul.

Example: the first time a mage casts fireball, they roll 1d6, and will succeed on a 5 or less.  The next time they cast it the same day, they roll 2d6, which will statistically fail (7 being the mean).  The third time, they roll 3D6, etc...  

One option might be to allow the mage to add the difference between their level and the spell's level to limit. (so a 5th level mage casting a 1st level spell for the 3rd time would roll 3d6 and try to get a 9 (5+4) or less.

What is interesting is that Vancian magic is a form of imposed scarcity, where the MU is limited to a certain number of spells per day.  That way keeping the Magic user from becoming a fireball turret.  Spell components are a different scarcity mechanic, in that there is a limit to carrying capacity or wealth when it comes to getting these rare ingredients.

Imposing both systems on a magic user is pretty painful, so most players seem to ignore the component rules.  In 4th edition, they split into two types of magic- spells that are cast and are still pretty vancian (at least the daily powers) and then ritual magic that happens outside of combat, frequently takes days to complete, and is where the really big magic is used.  For the latter, the spell components are partially a 'magic tax' on the magic user, but also offers the DM adventure hooks, if he wants to make the quest for a particular rare component a requirement to complete the ritual. 

Other games approached this whole problem using spell/mana points (a more abstract form of scarcity) or Sanity loss/Darkside points (basically turning it into a gambling system, where the magic user had to gauge how far they could push their luck.)

But I do think there is something interesting in using strict spell component system, where a magic user could cast as many spells as they have the correct components.  The magic user could spend money/time to gather what they will need ahead of time, but they also might be able to scavenge what they need while in the dungeon.  (enemy Magic users would also need to carry many of the same components.)  Thus there would be more challenge to the player to think of ways of getting what their character needed.  Especially if the component is defined more generally for lower level spells, and the more powerful the spell, the more specific the requirement.  (like a spell that may call for dragons blood to work at 100%, can still work at 40% power with human blood, and at 5% power if you just have something red, like wine.)

It would be on the DM to keep them in check, else you might have a Magic User with a mule carrying sacks of Fireball components into the dungeon, but mules can run off at the most in opportune moments...

While enlightening, the fact that it was for AD&D made it not an off the shelf solution for OD&D.  Also there were some guns mentioned in the Blackmoor supplement, but  (spoiler) those were ray guns from amphibious aliens hiding under a swamp.  Plus many people have taken their stab at how to come up with the rules- I still need to read the rules that were published in Oubliette Magazine).  Most of this focuses on the greater damage guns do, and also the possibility of the gun blowing up in the firer's face.  (Something for the player, and something for the DM, if you will.)  Many of the solutions also come up with rules to govern range, reload time, and armor penetration.

For 0ed/1ed/S&W/LL I am not too interested in adding additional rules, since the streamlined-ness of the original rule set is one of its attractions.  So no additional rules unless absolutely necessary.  

Option 1: Pure flavor

The simplest option is to simply take the rules for crossbows and keep them intact, and simple let the player go 'bang' instead of 'twang'.  Heavy crossbow is the same as a musket, and a light crossbow is the same as a pistol.  Easy, but makes me ask 'why bother?'

Option 2: some new contingencies

Since on the original rules, the damage dice don't change between different weapons, having the bullet do more damage then the crossbow is a little suspect.  Anyway, I think the advantage of the gun wasn't its damage over range capability, but instead its armor piercing capability.  Which in these rules is governed by the to Hit rules. (since a higher to hit counteracts the defender's AC better)  So perhaps a firearm is simply a +1 or +2 version of the crossbow mechanically that is also non-magical.  

In addition to that, perhaps we can allow an optional rule where if the player rolls a '1' on their to hit roll, there is a hang fire, with a possibility of it blowing up in the firer's face.  (roll a d6 and on a 1 it backfires. on a 2-6 it is simply jammed and can't be fixed while in combat unless the DM decides otherwise.)

As far as rate of fire, I am inclined to think that it is like an encounter power in 4E- that combat is usually too fast and furious to bother with reloading, so you fire once and then switch to the trusty sword or axe.  that avoids the whole reload issue.  But the rule that it takes one turn to reload, and one turn to aim and fire, might work.  Or maybe it needs to be slower.  (not sure if reloading & cocking a heavy crossbow is faster or slower then reloading a long arm.)

Option 3: Exploding die

So on the other hand, lets say that we really want the possibility of a headshot with the old gun.  Its just cool when you pull it off.  A head shot is typically an instant kill mechanic.  Some of the solutions I have seen use a hit location table mechanic, (but simple, such as roll a d6 with 1=left leg, 2=right leg, 3=torso, 4=left arm, 5=right arm, 6=head)  and then based on which of those you roll, the damage is multiplied based on some rule (limbs are 1x, torso is 2x, and head is 3x your damage roll)

But all of this is a way of saying that sometimes you get bonus damage, since enemies are not homogenous lumps of flesh (except the oozes, gelatinous cubes, shoggoths, etc.)  A simpler mechanic is the exploding die, where if you roll your max, you get to roll it again. some rules even let you keep going as long as you keep rolling the max damage on the die.

So by using something like that, the DM can then look at the total damage done, and then describe what happened appropriately.  (if someone does enough points of damage to instantly kill a foe, then the DM probably would say you got them right between the eyes.)

Option 4: Divided Rolls

Statistical roll probability for a d20/d4A more math nerd approach then that would be to use a 'Divided Roll'.  I came across a very interesting article in Dragon issue #94 about divided die rolls by David G. Weeks called Same Dice, Different Odds which explained this approach.  He basically shows that by using two dice where one is divided by the other you can get a asymmetrical probability curve.  Depending on the dice you use you can get a very long tail profile.  A simple application of this could be where rather then using a hit location table, you simply have the damage roll be a d20/d4.  He shows that the average damage of such a roll is 5.6, which is pretty close to that of a regular 1d10.  But if the player rolls a 20 on the d20, and a 1 on the d4, then they do 20 points of damage. (20/1=20)

To simulate a d6 damage with a nice log tail for the possible headshot for the gun, a d20/d8 comes pretty close.  It averages 3.6 damage, but can go up to 20.  That seems like a lot, however 95% of the time it will be a 12 or less, so those 20 point headshots are only about a 1 in 80 occurrence.

Anyway, it is worth it to track down the full article written by David G. Weeks, he does an excellent job of breaking down how the math works.  But here is the table of the various combinations of dice he mapped out, that may be of use playing around with divided rolls.

It's pretty clear that all RPGs fall on a continuum of how many rules the designer thinks are necessary.  And over time there is a clear tendency for more rules to be created and added onto a game.  No surprises there.

So we can look at the inital rule set for a game (before it has begun to be 'patched' with additional rules) as what the designer originally thought was needed for the game to function.  I suspect that a lot of self published games start off as the GM's own set of house rules, that he decides work better then what is already out there and so chooses to publish them as a new game.  So I think that those initial rules are a pretty good picture of how they RAN their own game- the rules they decided were necessary based on their own gaming group's dynamic.  (there are alot of problems with this though, since I am sure many game designers look at what other games include as 'required' rules when creating their own game.  But the gist of my thought is that the areas they chose to expand the rules were the most contentious areas in their own game.)

If you look at RPGs without rules have no constraints, and can devolve into squabbaling along the lines of every game of Cowboys and Indians ever played for more then 10 minutes.  But I am sure there are Master GMs who can make it work- they have the player's complete trust and are able to act as master storytellers who keep the game flowing without dice or rules.

But they are a rare and mythological breed.  For us mortal GMs, at the very least we need a combat/task resolution system.  Something that impartially answers the question of 'Did I succeed?'.  Again there are many talented and experienced GMs who can create multi-year campaigns where the players have epic adventures, all with that one simple mechanic agreed upon.

But again, players are sneaky folk, and they might realize that they can redefine their character to succeed more often, annoying the other players.  So the character sheet is created as a social contract between the players that they will keep their character consistent and not make unfair changes.  Now we have a level playing field and some rules- this is looking less like a story and more like an actual game.

Of course a game can also be won, if you figure out the constraints and find the spots to exploit.

From here the options explode into a multitude of directions, with various rules being added to patch the weak spots, which them themselves later need more patching.  Eventually you end up with one of those games with a encyclopedia of rules that aims to account for every eventuality.

My point to all of this, is that rules are a crutch to overcome a GM's fallibility.  Now, no GM is infallible (certainly not me,) so this is not a statement of me saying we need more freeform gaming.  Its more the idea that whenever contemplating adding a new rule to a game system, one should think of it as adding a crutch to fix something the GM is having a hard time handling by fiat.  

Is it easier to create another rule that needs to be remembered, or use your GM skills to simply handle it in game?

These links got me thinking about what that would entail:

• Bat in the Attic's Musings on Sandboxes (initial post)
• Bat in the Attic's Musings on Sandboxes (hex size)
• PA Gabe's Sandbox House Rules
• Gothridge Manors's Building a Wilderness Hex

...And others.

The Book I am envisioning is not a detailed area in hex map form for the players to explore, but instead a set of rules and random tables for creating and running your own.  I am kind if enamored with the idea that the DM does not try to detail the whole map at once, but instead has the rules and tables for generating logical terrain one hex at a time. That way he or she details the DMs map the night before each game session.  They lay track in from of the train, if you will, and simply look at the sheet of Gamer Paper (Hex map) that the party has been filling in, and figures out what is the hexes within range that can be explored in the next session.  (using something like Gabe's Resolve points makes that a clear radius)  If the party makes it to a blank space in the DMs map, then he can pull out the book and quickly roll on the tables to see what they find, or (more likely) just wing it.

Update

Found this nice series of posts while digging around on Bat in the Attic.  Rob is walking though the process of making a sandbox setting from scratch, so these posts more focused on creating the whole sandbox from the get go, then the 'just in time' style I was talking about.  But a great set of guidelines, and certainly something that the LBB idea should cover.  (Frankly, he could probably compile all 34 posts when he is done and publish it as a How-to book on Lulu.)

• How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail I
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail II
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail III
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail IV
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail V
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail VI
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail VII
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail VIII
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail IX
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail X
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail XI
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail XII
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail XIII
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail XIV
• A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail XV