| tierra de goticos interview |
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| Written by i j |
| Friday, 27 January 2012 09:37 |
Greetings!! Today i come with a very special (and long) article, first because I have to announce that the Spanish version of my new gothic role playing game is released. If you understand Spanish or want to take it a look, you can download it for free from here: www.penumbra-rpg.com. Then I have to introduce you to Tierra de Goticos, a Spanish Web site devoted to goth music that has helped me with this project. They have had problems with SOPA and MEGAUPLOAD closure, they deleted their Website too. Being Spanish didn’t helped. And then you will be able to read the translation on the interview they made me about The project Penumbra. You will be able to learn about that role playing game. If you want to know the details… ¡¡keep reading!!. Today we talk about…
Tierra de Goticos Interviews… Penumbra.
Let’s start from the beginning, if any of you already knew the old website of Tierra de Góticos and tried to enter their website recently, they’ll probably found an error message. The reason? Well, nothing to do with their will of closing it but with some events that happened last week. We all have heard about MEGAUPLOAD closure and we have seen on TV about the incredible enhance on selling that had just the following weekend, at least that was said in Spanish TV (I’m not sure if anyone believed those news reports). What most people don’t know about that history is that a day before MEGAUPLOAD closure something was happening in the net. Some blogs that links to content of those that SOPA (or the Spanish version SINDE) consider of doubtful precedence started to get closed. One of those Website was Tierra de góticos. Luckily for them they had a recent backup so almost no damage was done and now the website is happily on inet again. That demonstrate once more the absolutely no usefulness of the closure of blogs that links to content… but that’s another history… All this for what? Well just for me posting the link to their new Website. http://tierradegoticos2.blogspot.com/ (note the “2” on their website name… maybe this way we can keep track on how many times liberty of expression has been censored). For ending my talk about Tierra de góticos I have to say that nowadays they are working on the launch of another website that will completely end their problems with BlogSpot, probably hiring a less troublesome hosting. The second thing that i have to tell you is that Penumbra: The Postapocalyptic gothic roleplaying game is completed and released… at least in its spanish version. My inmediate plans are to start working on its translation into English but that will require some work and it will probably take some time. If you know Spanish feel free to download the game and play with it. Although the game is not free you can download it for free at www.penumbra-rpg.com , the idea is that people is able to check the game and test if and in the event they consider the game worths it, I ask them to pay the only 1.99€ im charging for it. If not, everything is ok. More details on this on the interview. Also I´m looking for people to help me translate the book into English. If you want to help me with that and you have a high understanding on both English and Spanish written language. Please let me know. And finally here is the interview that tierra de góticos made me about Penumbra. With this you should be able to learn something about the game and it´s project. {mosimage} - (Tierra de góticos) tell us, Whats Penumbra? (Penumbra) Well, Penumbra is a role playing game, a traditional one, one of those in wich you sit around a table and you tell tales. If people don´t know whats that exactly you can find an excellent example on those game dinamics on page 51 of the book (although is in Spanish). Roleplaying games unfold themselves around certain settings, one of the things that make Penumbra unique is that it describes a completely gothic atmosphere in a world created from the beginning to the end by my insane mind. But Penumbra is also a project and a clam. Project because I want this game to have a continuity and an interaction with its player base as no role playing game had before in the past. And a claim because I want to run this project in a completely new fashion far from the standard distribution channels. - (TDG) Let us know about Penumbra.
(P) Well, as I was saying, I want to get the lvl of interaction with player base to a new degree. The idea is what I have called “the history line”.
Penumbra core rule book describes a setting for a devastated world, and all descriptions are referred to the present time. Very little is said about the past and even less about the future. There is no clue on where we came from or where we are going.
That’s done on purpose. The idea is that we all together discover where are we coming from and where are we going. For that I´m going to make some modules that will include the official adventures for calling them somehow. People will be able to play them and then they are free to send me their results, I’ll make an analysis of what happened in their games and extract what’s the most favored result by all player groups around the world. Then we will write a short story on what really happened and from there keep building Penumbra history line.
Those modules will affect Penumbra rules as well. For example in the rule core book you can foresee the existence of mysticism, in those modules people will be able, with their actions, find an explanation to those “strange things” and depending on the explanation or on their interaction with those events they will make the mysticism exists in Penumbra world (creating a new rulebook for them and enhancing character creation and options) or extinguish it completely.
- (TDG) What can you tell us about Penumbra as a game? (P) what I wanted to to with penumbra is to return to the origin of Role playing games, keeping the simplicity of modern games but recovering what it used to work on old ones, things that we, the people who has been playing role playing games for years (decades) remember that worked.
And well, at game level, penumbra is a game that unfolds on a devastated, hostile and rude world. In most cases the biggest objective is just to survive. Natural resources are scarce and there are a huge amount of social inequalities and a large amount of difficulties to overcome.
Sincerely I have huge problems for describing the world of penumbra without writing pages and pages of text, so I think that best you can do is just to take a look to the book, anyway, the download is free, just go to the website and download it.
- (TDG) What about the rules?
(P) well the following text is a little bit aimed for people that like me has a previous experience on role playing games.
I will start saying that I have tried to keep Penumbra as simple as possible. In that way Penumbra get divided in what we would call basic rules ( that are resumed in that for solving actions you add an attribute a skill and 1D10) and some advanced rules that you can add for giving the game a little bit more colour.
Anyone who was played roleplaying games knows that attribute plus skill plus 1D10 offer some weak statistical chances and in long term it doesn’t work quite well. But in Penumbra I introduced a twist that solve that. Each character has a certain amount of additional dices that they can use for some rolls. In that way a character with a value of stamina 6 has 3 extra physical dices that he can use as he wants.
He can use all 3 dices in a single epic roll or use them one by one for overcome difficulties. It might seem simple but that change offers a huge amount of possibilities to the game. For example, scoring a critical hit is no longer made by luck (although it can still happen by luck), any character can make an effort for getting a huge succeed on certain actions.
I also worked on covering aspects that in my opinion are a little weak in most role playing games. For example, in Penumbra equipment and supplies are critical for survival. I therefore made a system that allow players to (if they want) give a deeper relevance on commercial interactions.
Following with the example: In D&D we all know that a long sword costs 15 gp, and that all sword are exactly the same. You buy one on your character creation and unless it gets lost, broken or you find something better you are going with that sword to the end of the world. In the end even epic magic items become something “standard”
In Penumbra things are not like that, for example bolt action rifle (I had to search that on google, hope is well translated) have 2 versions, the old one that can only hold 1 bullet and the new one that can hold from 4 to 6. Curiously according to the rule book both costs the same.
All items have a quality too that coverd 4 degrees and they get degradated with their use. In that way when someone buys a bolt action rifle, the game director can show him 6 different options, all with different bullet capacities and prizes. Each of them will have a quality at first unknown by the player.
Now the player has several options with some information shown and other hidden, he might try to learn more about the riffles or not, the seller might be trying to fool him in some of them… suddenly you have tools for creating a role playing scene. And that’s what we are talking about in role playing games.
- (TDG) ¿What about the character creation?
(P) We all know that character creation and progression in role playing games form a fundamental part on the player fun. So I made an effort on creating a system that would favor the existence of unique characters in the form of some short of needed profiles.
For example, Penumbra is a devastated world, you are going to need someone who knows how to survive in there. But sooner or later you are going to get hurt, you’ll need a medic. Your equipment gets broken so you are going to need a mechanic of some short. Needless to say this is a violent world, so you are going to need someone who knows how to solve those situations. But when you get deeper and powerful you will notice that in the end is people in the shadows who rules the world, so you will need someone who knows how to walk in those slippery terrains… just for naming a few.
The character creation is made by the assignment of certain points. Each character has a certain points to distribute in attributes, abilities and then some custom points.
The attributes defines those extra dices we named previously for making efforts and abilities add their score to the rolls made, in some special cases (like science) they give you special competences like being able to understand how items work and therefore being able to use them.
Then you have some custom points for buying special features or more points to distribute in attributes or skills.
Special features are elements that define your character and make it different from other mortals, not all are “good” and most are designed to create character concepts on their own.
Finaly say that in Penumbra characters aren´t “balanced”, there are going to be characters that are able to defend themselves pretty well, other that are real killing machines and others that don´t know where is the size of a gun that you have to aim to your opponent (literally). Logically that’s not random, if your character don´t know how a gun work is because you wanted it to be in that way. The idea is that the characters aren’t equally “powerfull” (define power in the way you want) but they to offer chances to roleplay.
- (TDG) anything else you want to tell us about your project?
(P) well the fact is that I do, as I said before the game can be downloaded from the website www.penumbra-rpg.com, just go to “juego” then “descargas” and there it is. The game is not free though. The idea is that people download it, check it and decide if the work deserves a payment or not. If the answer is yes I only ask 1.99 for each digital copy of the book. If the answer is no, it´s ok too.
My idea is to get out of the traditional distribution channels, I think that nowadays it´s a crime to charge for a digital book the same amount than for a printed book. I also think that it´s absurd in digital times to worry about if something is copied or not so I give everyone permission to copy and pass the book to their friends, they will later decide if they like the project or not and if they want to support the project or not. That’s why I’m doing things like I’m doing them.
Little more to add, just wanted to forward my thankfulness to Tierra de góticos for this opportunity and asked a favor to you all: ¡¡please copy the book and forward it to anyone you think might be interested on it!!.
Website: www.penumbra-rpg.com Facebook: HERE
Tierra de góticos Website: http://tierradegoticos2.blogspot.com/
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| Last Updated on Friday, 27 January 2012 09:48 |
