Predator, Columbia: Session 0

We just had our session 0 for our Predator, Columbia game. It was pretty cool and we collaboratively built out the feel for the game. 

This is the first game in a series (campaign?) we are calling 80s Hero Action.

Attached is the PDF of our session after we exported it from MURAL. Pro Tip: We noticed that downloading it gives it a much better resolution than viewing in a browser. 

Session 0 Mural

Mural is an awesome collaboration tool that I use for teaching online courses and in facilitating everyday work. You can check it out at https://www.mural.co/ 

Tom Clancy's The Division for Savage Worlds

Here is our latest pass at Tom Clancy's The Division as a Savage Worlds Setting.

The Division Setting

Weird Wars: Greece for Savage Worlds

Our most recent game is set in ancient Greece and we are playing Spartans. I thought I would set this during the Peloponnesian war. I really liked this time period as a setting. We are slipping in some historical content for the kids. Combining this with content from Weird Wars: Rome made for an awesome game.

The Peloponnesian War

Warhammer 40k for Genesys Redesign New Characters

After taking feedback from T3mpe5t_1140 on reddit, we added a few new characters. This led us to adding some wargear also. The full file is updated too. It can be found here.

Set 01

Set 02

Warhammer 40k for Genesys Redesign

A couple of years ago my oldest son renewed my interest in Warhammer. We started reading the Horus Heresy books and are pretty far in. We loved the world setting but every game that seems to come out for this setting is super heavy. For us, there was so much learning the rules that we never got to feel the game.

Genesys is by no means rules light, however, we already knew it and loved playing with the system. We created a bunch of tiny settings and have been posting them. Warhammer was one of our favorites.

Technically we created the first content on paper then transferred it to OmniGraffle to make it look cool. This original content can be found here. A community member named Drainsmith stated that he used Adobe InDesign on a podcast about Genesys and so I picked it up. Working with my older son, we recreated our Warhammer content. We added a few playable starter characters. We simplified our character sheets. Our original idea towards simple character sheets can be found here. In this version we made it so it can be printed front and back. You get to see your narrative side of your character on one side of your sheet and your action/combat/skills side on the other. The entire file is designed to be saddlestitch printed. We focused on balancing it inside its setting and not making Space Marines roll a ton of dice. We also wanted to make sure that players could chose to not play a Space Marine and still function in the game. While most of this is narrative, (it is not always best to be an unstoppable killing machine) some of it is in the setting mechanics. This has been fun for us and is A way to approach it. We by no means assume it is THE way. We also know that there are other setting that have far more detail and content. This one is ours. Its fairly small. We enjoyed it.

Another great tool that we found useful was this Warhammer 40k wiki.

The Villagers Setting (No More Heroes)

After discussing some fantasy tropes with my sister and watching a live play of Crash Pandas on Critical Role's YouTube channel, I decided to create a setting.

I used a background that fellow games and I speak about pretty frequently. How in the heck would normal people make it a day in our fantasy worlds? Playing a comedic or survival mode game with normal people in a fantastic would be great.

So I created The Villagers. It is still in progress as of this posting but mostly there and playable. Enjoy.

Note: Below is a link to the content. It is still a work in progress. Comments are welcome.

Turning the Setting Sheet into a Online Collaborative Google Document

My sister and I wanted to work together on converting a setting from a book we had both read to Genesys. This is in preparation for her first time running a game. We started with just a conversation on how cool it would be to see some of the things we experienced in the book at the table. We spoke about how those things would work in Genesys.

We have used Google apps for a few other things and decided to make the setting using Google Docs. We knew that we could probably just start playing and wing it. We also wanted the practice so we did it this way. It worked great when I was traveling and we could collaborate online.

After making the better part of the setting, I made a generic version. I hope this helps.

Additional Magic Effects

Another creation to simplify and group stuff we seem to use frequently in our games. My sister plays a Night Elf Druid in our World of Warcraft family game. She is always trying to figure what she can do with her magic. She usually just casts lighting. :-\

So I created this grouping of all the magic or paranormal additional effects. Hoping this helps!

And I hope my sister at least tries chain lightning... :-)

A bit ago I also created a spell list that supported a Psychic skill we put in our games. Check it out here. 

Character Sheet in Use

This is my sister's actual character from our World of Warcraft family game using the simple character sheet.

A Simple Character Sheet We Have Been Working On

My oldest son and I have been working on a simple character sheet.

We removed a lot of stuff that people who were new to the game struggled with.

Space Combat Cards - Originally Made for FFG Star Wars RPG

We struggled with the complexity of FFG Star Wars Space Combat when we first used the system. I created these cards to help. We just print them out and put them in sleeves and people can have in front of them all the maneuvers and coolness that they can do.

We hope these help someone!

Simple Fantasy Game Flow Example

When we were experimenting with the adventure creation flows first shown in FFG Star Wars for Genesys, we came up with this simple adventure flow. We hope it helps someone who is looking to simply try out something like this.

WWII Characters for the Marvel Cinematic Universe

These are characters we created for a game that we were planning on running as a spy and special forces campaign set in WWII in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately we have not found the opportunity actually play it or even create a storyline around it.

World of Warcraft for Genesys Alliance Archetypes and Species

We usually just sit down and start playing a game. We don't take a ton of time to flesh everything out for the entire setting. This has served us well. When we decided to do a game in World of Warcraft we simply tried to figure out the Archetypes. We knew the careers would work out easy with the core book.

We decided on using some of the storyline for the current expansion and began a game in Stormwind. We had fun with the concept of guilds. They were more like companies. Some large and powerful. Some small and scrappy. Contracts and Reputation became a big focus. Reputation is right out of the online game. Low reputation doesn't get you treated as bad as it would in a table top rpg though. Contracts were like taking on quests.

So far it has been a blast.

This is pretty much all we had to start with.

Don't try to get it all right. Play it to prove it was the right thing to do. Fix whats broken later. 

World of Warcraft Family Game

Our latest family game is set in World of Warcraft. We were inspired by watching Terry Crews play in a CelebriD&D game. See it here.

We loved the way their game went and wanted to capture some of that in ours. We want to alter the system as little as possible and keep our dice pools small. 

We have found a really awesome and large setting translation online. See it here. When we have an idea we just want to get started and not have to study to play it. So we used the generic fantasy rules in base game and looked to The Realms of Terrinoth for a few things.

Paul wanted to play a Gnome Warrior who looked like he was out of some anime with a gigantic weapon. He really enjoyed the irony of huge weapon and tiny fighter. He was easy to make after using the Gnomes from Terrinoth.

Amon wanted to play a Death Knight. He ended up with a mounted warrior theme. He was a perfect fit for the Revenant in the core book. He wanted to reflect his Night Elf origins but did not purchase any talents to do so at the start of the game. He plans to do so later.

My sister wanted to play a Night Elf Druid. This is her first time playing and she had not played an RPG since she was in high school and I got her to play D&D with us. She pays particular attention to the background and personality of the characters are and what situations they find themselves in. She is secondarily focused on learning the rules as she wants to run a game in the future.

My wife actually joined us in this one and also played a Gnome. A mage for her which was perfect for a simple Arcana skill.

So far things are great.

I like to share some of the tools that we use. Here is a few of the NPCs from our game where Gnomergan disappeared.

World of Warcraft for Genesys Talents

Our most recent family game has been set in World of Warcraft. It was inspired by the CelebriD&D game with Terry Crews set in World of Warcraft. If you are not familiar check it out here.

We have added some talents to the game to support a few extra features. Amon is playing a Night Elf Death Knight. He wanted to represent his taunt ability as a Tank. We just figured it out the first game, in the middle we decided to work out a talent to represent this.

My sister is playing a Night Elf Druid. She really enjoyed the talent Knack for It. She wanted a version that worked when she was casting spells in combat. She was willing to pay more experience for it and have it be less powerful. This felt a bit balanced so we did it.

See below.

Warhammer 40k Genesys

This is an updated version of the Warhammer game that we were running before. We were inspired by a demo of Wrath and Glory at Gencon. We already dig the Genesys system. We wanted to make us roll less dice and still investigate the Warhammer 40k setting.

The blog has a lot of this content published earlier, but we found it to get a bit out of hand quickly and we had to house rule a good deal of things. This conversion did a better job of bringing it in line with the common Genesys content.

Hopefully more to come in the future.

Click here for the PDF

Table Mat for Genesys RPG

We decided to post a table mat that we use in our Genesys RPG games. These are especially helpful for new players. My sister recently started playing in our World of Warcraft Genesys game and was the inspiration for this. She was constantly using a hand drawn reference sheet on index cards. It worked and was sufficient but we decided to geek out and create this for her and our table.

Enjoy!

And another variation based on the input from William King

For higher resolution you can click here or the image above

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for FFGs Genesys RPG

This is a game that me and my dad made for TMNT. We made it cause I wanted to GM my first game. I thought it would be a cool game to run.

Making the characters was hard because all their differences. I liked searching for the pictures the most.

We made the Foot ninjas easier to beat, but the Shredder is very powerful.

The turtles are all starting characters made with the Genesys book. They are not epic level heroes.

TMNT Archetypes, Careers, Equipment, Weapons

Mutant Turtle Archetype

3 Brawn
3 Agility
2 Intelligence
1 Cunning
2 Willpower
1 Presence

Starting Wound  Threshold: 12 + Brawn
Starting Strain  Threshold: 8 + Willpower
Starting Experience: 100

Mutant Turtles gain 1 rank in the Resilience skill without spending experience.
Shell Shield: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are tough and have very durable shells. They start with a melee and ranged defense of 1.

Ninja Career

A Ninja (忍者; plural ninja or ninjas) is one who trains in the art of ninjutsu. They were originally assassins and spies in feudal Japan.  A male ninja is called a shinobi (忍び), while a female ninja is called a kunoichi (くノ一).

The Ninja counts the following skills as career skills: Athletics, Brawl, Cool, Coordination, Deception, Melee, Ranged, and Stealth. Before spending experience during character creation, a Ninja may choose four of their career skills and gain one rank in each of them.

(If you’re playing where this skill is available, switch Ranged for Ranged [Light] to better represent a Ninja's preference for smaller archery and thrown weapons.)

Weapons

Nunchaku: Damage +1, Crit 4, 1 hp, Engaged Range, Unwieldy 3, uses Melee skill
Bo Staff: Damage +2, Crit 4, Engaged Range, uses Melee skill
Katanas: Damage +3, Crit 2, Engaged Range, Defensive 1, uses Melee skill
Sai: Damage +1, Crit 2, Engaged Range, uses Melee skill

Here is all the stuff

Here is a higher quality version

Orks NPCs for Warhammer 40k played in FFGs Genesys RPG

Our next game involves the mutant...

We started originally with a something I simply called Ork Toughness to give them a +1 Soak. We took the books advice and removed it. Favoring the Adversary talent to deal with defense.

Ork stats we will be play testing in our next game are here

For a higher quality version click here.