После долго ожидания — очередная статья от создателей A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying

цитата

"Sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

--The Horned Lord

Magic has all but vanished from the world. The Children of the Forest are no more. Priests perform no miracles. The dark arts of necromancy no longer function, and even the pyromancers have lost much of their lore, reducing them to mere shadows of their past greatness. Magic has passed into legend and myth, alive only in the superstitious imaginings of the smallfolk . . . or has it?

From the opening pages of A Game of Thrones, it's clear magic has returned to Westeros. Its effects are subtle at first, but as the books march on, stranger and stranger events occur. The Red Woman gives birth to hideous black shadows. Dragons live in the world once more. The dead walk the snowy north, and ancient relics of power have been unearthed from the vaults of the dead. Old spells woven into ice and stone grow in strength, priests find new power in their gods, and pyromancers recover secrets and powers long since lost. Magic may have entered its decline with the Doom of Valyria, but it has returned to the world once more, perhaps as a trickle, but there can be no doubt that it will soon become a flood.

Magic and the Game

SIFRP recognizes that magic exists in the world, but at the time in which this game is set, it has yet to make its return in any significant way. Wights and the Others stalk the land beyond the Wall, but they are a problem for the wildlings. For the rest of Westeros, they are a tale used to frighten children, a disturbing ghost story told over the campfires on chill nights in the long summer. Priests go through the motions of their faith but are no more adept at working miracles than a smallfolk leech farmer. Even the maesters, who make a practice of examining the lost arts of magic, have had little luck in finding power in the old spells inscribed in ancient books and scrolls. So while magic does remain, it is elusive, mysterious, and lacking the power it once held.

Even though there are no wizards with spells, no magical artifacts of fabulous power, magic does exist. Instead of shimmering curtains of eldritch energy or lightning bolts flung from the fingertips of sorcerers, magic is a mysterious thing, a power bound up in history, laying across the land invisibly, unseen and unfelt until time and circumstance demand its revelation.

Magic serves as a narrative tool, a device to propel your stories, to add color to places of historical significance, or to weave into your stories to add an air of mystery and fear to the plots as they unfold. In this way, magic can serve whatever need you might have, whether it's to explain some unexpected flash of insight, a queer dream, or even a strangeness of architecture. As your campaign moves into the time of the novels, magic may return in greater force. Heirlooms may manifest great power. Characters may learn and master spells and rituals. Hideous demons and monsters of nightmares could stalk the lands once more. Whatever you decide, magic should always remain dangerous and mysterious, always beyond the reach of the common mortal to understand, let alone use.

Omens and Portents

One way in which the supernatural manifests in the world is through omens, portents, and dreams. Signs and warnings are everywhere for those who know where to look and what they're looking for. Easily the greatest example of these signs from the novels is when Jon Snow and Robb Stark find the direwolf pups in the snow. There was one for each scion of House Stark, five around the decaying carcass of their mother and one alone, separated from the rest. The appearance of these direwolves signaled the import of the Stark children but also warned of the fate that awaited House Stark in years to come.

Omens are excellent ways to introduce a chronicle's themes to your players. You need not create a circumstance identical to the one that affected House Stark, but some strange sight or unexplained event could encompass the challenges and threats arrayed against the players' house. By establishing the omen early, you can set the tone for the entire chronicle, setting up the plot in a way that gives it the same gravitas as the one faced by House Stark in the novels.

Greensight

The greensight is the ability once possessed by the children of the forest that allowed them to catch glimpses of the future. Called green dreams, the events witnessed in the mind's eye always come to pass, even if the circumstances of the dream are not immediately apparent. The ability of greensight is rare in Westeros, and if it exists beyond the lands of the Seven Kingdoms, it is known by other names.

Since the greensight is always accurate, and the actions undertaken by the players rarely so, adjudicating greensight can be challenging, so much so that you may be reluctant to use it at all. Unfortunately, not using greensight for a player that has invested in this quality deprives that character of a resource that might be better spent elsewhere. So if any player has this quality, you should make use of it at least once every story or two.

A green dream does not need to map out exactly what will happen and when. Instead, it usually captures a particular scene, an important event related to the story that marks a turning point in its plot. So when using greensight, you should select a pivotal scene to appear in the dream sequence. Instead of describing in detail what will happen during the scene, you should couch the entire scene in symbols. Look at the scene's setting and establish it as the background for the dream. Then, look at the principle Narrator characters related to the scene. Use their blazons or geographical locations to symbolize their presence. Finally, look at what's at stake in the scene, and shape the dream's action to represent the most likely outcome of the scene.

A good example from the books is Jojen's dream about the deaths of Bran and Rickon Stark. Jojen was certain that the boys would die, but they didn't. Instead, the lands believed them dead when Theon Greyjoy murdered two smallfolk boys in their stead to conceal their escape and cement his rule over Winterfell. From this example, you can see that while the expected outcome did not come to pass, the dream was still true because of what was believed to have happened and also what Bran and Rickon both would have to face.

Greensight Fate Quality

Your dreams sometimes come true.

Requirements: Cunning 5, Will 4, Third Eye

Effects: You have prophetic dreams, powerful portents of what is to come. The dreams are filled with symbolic meaning, images, and metaphors. The meaning behind the dreams is not always clear, but once you have experienced one, you will see the fulfillment of your visions in the unfolding of the events around you.

The greensight is not something you can will to occur. It comes to you when events significant to you and your allies are about to happen. The Narrator will take you aside, describe the most important elements of the dream, and give you the pieces to put together in whatever way you will. Regardless, the events you foresee using the greensight always happen.

Skinchangers

Uncommon in the North, where the old gods still hold some sway, skinchangers are virtually unknown in the cultivated south. A skinchanger, sometimes known as a beastling or warg, is a rare individual capable of casting out his mind to fill the consciousness of an animal. At first, the link can only occur between the individual and an animal to which he or she is close, and even then, only with exceptional animals.

When a skinchanger first awakens this ability, confusion is the most likely result because the person experiences vivid dreams and impossible events. Such links are unconscious, and the skinchanger has no control over these sensations, though the effects on a skinchanger and the animal begin to manifest early, as they take on the mannerisms of the other. In time, with practice and often the training of another skinchanger, the skinchanger learns to control the experience, blending his consciousness with the animal at times of his own choosing.

Skinchanging is dangerous for numerous reasons. The beastling must ever resist the influence of the animal and must always fight to retain his own identity. As well, should the skinchanger be killed while inhabiting his host creature, he remains trapped in the mind of the beast, condemned to spend the remainder of his days lost in the mind of his linked animal.

There doesn't appear to be any limits on the types of creatures a skinchanger can inhabit. Wargs, skinchangers who bond with wolves, are relatively common enough to color the opinions of most Northmen, but there are examples of skinchangers who link with shadowcats, eagles, direwolves, and even bears. It's said that the greatest skinchangers were the greenseers, children of the forest who could wear the skins of any beast.

Skinchanger Fate Quality

You have mastered the method of skinchanging and can now freely leave your body for that of your Beastfriend.

Requirements: Will 5 (Dedication 2B), Animal Cohort, Third Eye, Third Eye Opened

Effect: When you sleep, you can wear the skin of your Animal Cohort. You use the animal's statistics but retain your own Cunning and Will. You may remain in this form as long as you wish, though be aware your true body's needs must be met, and extended trips into your Animal Cohort could cause you to starve to death if you remain out for a week or more. You can return to your body and awaken at will. If your Animal Cohort takes damage, you automatically return to your body as well.

In addition, you can now take the Animal Cohort benefit multiple times, thus allowing you the ability to wear the skins of multiple animals, though no more than one at a time.

by Steve Kenson

цитата

The rules in A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying are designed around a specific play style—but one that supports a broad range of tastes and interests. The noble house provides an excellent unifying element and offers opportunities for schemers and warriors alike, and can serve just about any kind of saga from warfare to intrigue and everything in between.

However, the world of Westeros is a big place, with many different stories to tell. The following alternate play styles are presented in the game as options for different kinds of stories, along with the necessary changes to facilitate these styles.

Adventurers

Although possessed of many unique characteristics, SIFRP is a fantasy roleplaying game—and one in which there is opportunity aplenty for the more traditional themes of exploration, high adventure, and quests employed by certain other games in this genre. Rather than explore the fortunes of a noble house, you can alter the tone of the game to support characters of a variety of origins, uniting them through some other common purpose, namely high adventure.

Stories in this play style see the characters traveling to remote corners of the world, exploring old temples, lost fortresses, and perhaps even, say, "dungeons." The characters might set out to find fabled Valyria to learn what transpired there and recover ancient artifacts and relics from this lost civilization. Another possibility is for the characters to all be crewmembers on a sailing ship. They may be pirates raiding merchant and military ships, smugglers, or even explorers, sailing to far-flung ports throughout the world.

Another option is for the players to take the roles of questing knights. They might be hedge knights or heirs to a noble house, but they seek fame and fortune in the Seven Kingdoms, selling their swords or undertaking courageous quests to right wrongs and save damsels in distress. Between adventures, they could participate in tournaments and rub elbows with some of the greatest knights in the land, all while preserving the tone and flavor that makes SIFRP the exciting game that it is.

To run an Adventurers style campaign, consider making the following changes.

House Creation: Ignore the house creation rules defined in Chapter Six. If any players have characters of noble birth, they may use the house creation rules to define their family's heritage and background, but the mechanics of running the house are not used, as the assumption is the character do not control their house.

Rewards: Characters earn Experience and Coin in the course of their adventure. They do not earn Glory for their house, however.

Free Folk

Another interesting variant is for the players to take the roles of wildlings beyond the Wall. In this play style, the characters might be members of the same tribe, fighting to survive the perils of their unforgiving land and waging war against the Night's Watch and the darker horrors skulking about the land in the depths of Endless Winter. The characters could be raiders, crossing the Wall to hit settlements and holds throughout the North, or they might be part of a small tribe as warriors, mystics, or hunters. Given the scarce resources, conflict is common.

Free Folk games are excellent for groups hungry for more fantasy since the lands beyond the Wall are rife with supernatural agencies, monsters of legend, and more. While contending with the Others and wights, giants and savage wargs, the characters could participate in the search for the Horn of Winter and other relics they might find to save their people from the doom that hunts them in the cold light of the moon.

To run a Free Folk style campaign, consider making the following changes.

House Creation: Ignore the house creation rules defined in Chapter Six. You might consider extrapolating some of the rules to come up with a similar set of guidelines for constructing wildling tribes, giving the characters control over their tribe's fortune.

Rewards: Characters earn Experience and Coin. They only earn Glory if you are using a tribal system based on the house system.

Night's Watch

The Sworn Brothers of the Night's Watch broadens the game's scope to encompass characters from all origins, from smallfolk to former princes. These brave men vow to take no wives, and sever all ties to kin and friendship to join the Brotherhood in defending the Wall against the enemies of the Seven Kingdoms. Originally founded to protect Westeros from supernatural threats, the Night's Watch spends nearly all its time maintaining the Wall and fighting wildlings. A chronicle detailing the Night's Watch might explore rangings beyond the Wall, scouting missions, and intrigues within the Brotherhood. Alternatively, you might focus on events that unfold at the same time as the novels: the characters could be Sworn Brothers at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea or Shadow Tower, doing their part to fight wildlings and Others alike.

To run a Night's Watch style game, consider making the following changes.

House and Character Creation: Ignore the house creation rules. Instead, players are encouraged to come up with a history that culminates in their taking the black. If they come from a noble house, the player can choose an existing house or create one using the house creation rules. Otherwise, players are free to play whatever they like, from studious types that will become stewards or skilled warriors who might join the rangers.

Rewards: Characters earn Experience, but not Coin, as the Night's Watch is about service rather than wealth. They only earn Glory if you wish to allow them to apply it to their castle or stronghold of the Brotherhood, advancing its fortunes.

The Game of Thrones

One of the most interesting themes revisited in the novels is the game of thrones, the intrigues and treacheries that define the political arena of Westerosi lords. A skilled player of the game can reach the heady heights of the great houses, while a poor player might tumble from whatever his forbearers achieved to find all has been torn from him. The noble house rules presented in this book exist to engage this dynamic in a way that's not immediately destructive to the player characters and gives them at least the possibility of having a haven in the tumultuous arena of realpolitik as it applies to their house and those of their rivals.

An interesting variant that can explore some of the deeper tensions in the setting is to widen the scope so that instead of playing the part of a single character, each player takes the role of a house. Within the house are a number of characters—the lord, lady, heirs, sworn swords, maesters, and more—whom the player might use to interact with the setting. Any given story might feature characters from different houses, bound together by circumstance or design, and players might move their characters in and out of stories depending on their needs and the challenges presented by the story.

The benefit of this variant is that it allows you to tell a variety of stories, from intrigues in King's Landing to thrilling battles as two houses—each controlled by different players—who settle their disputes on the battlefield. If you want to shift the focus to the Night's Watch, the players simply have to come up with a character from their stable to participate. One might be a Sworn Brother, while two others might be visiting to inspect the Wall. Similarly, you could have the players unite for a time to face an external threat, pooling their resources to defeat an aggressive foe.

All of these advantages come with a price, however. The stories you would tell rapidly approach the epic, with numerous characters, plots, and developments. With the sheer number of characters present, it becomes much harder to keep everything straight, requiring a great deal more preparation and anticipation on your part. Finally, the game is always at risk of devolving into a war game rather than a roleplaying game, which can be very unattractive to players who would rather devote their time to developing one or two characters.

Therefore, before embarking on a grand game-of-thrones style chronicle, be sure to talk with your players to gauge their interests in such a game. While a challenging style of play, it does carry its rewards, so proceed with caution.

To run a game-of-thrones style campaign, consider making the following changes.

House Creation: Each player creates their own house. All houses should be in a realm of your choosing to avoid the inescapable contrivances bound to arise in games where the houses are on different sides of Westeros.

Character Creation: For every full 10 points of Influence, a player creates one character. At least one character must be of blood relation to the house. Other characters can be sworn swords, maesters, and so on, as normal.

Historical

A reasonable concern about playing in any setting based on a literary source is finding room for player characters to grow and develop while remaining true to canon. The closer you stay to the books, the less chance the characters' house has of attaining greatness, of reaching beyond the sea of minor houses to add their names alongside House Baratheon and House Lannister. In a way, cleaving too close to the source material creates a glass ceiling for the characters, tantalizing them with the possibility, but forever barring their access to the greater power and greater influence over the lands.

One way to remain true to the novels while not denying your players the possibility of achieving greatness is to change the era in which the game takes place. There's no reason why the stories you tell have to involve the reign of King Robert Baratheon; they might occur a century before, during the Targaryens' rule, and heroes like Ser Duncan the Tall roamed the land with a prince at his side. You could also go further back, perhaps to the time of Aegon's Conquest, the Rhoynar invasion, or even the Andal invasion. If you prefer more magic in the game, consider setting your stories in the time of the Dawn Age when the First Men carved the first human kingdoms out of the perfect wilderness of Westeros. The further back you set the games, the less chance you'll have of contradicting the events of the books, thus giving you a great deal of freedom to explore and develop the game in whatever way you'd like.

To run a historical style campaign, consider making the following changes.

House Creation: When determining the house's First Founding, ignore the examples. A chronicle set during the Andal Invasion could have ancient houses, as well as new houses. Simply modify the perspective of these houses to address the historical climate in which your game takes place.

Цитата из обзорной статьи Маккавити по ролевой игре "7th sea":

цитата

И, наконец, Уссура. Суровая Россия до петровских реформ, с боярами, тройками, цыганами и опричниками, управляемая бешеным Ильей Грозным. Впридачу страна находится под мистическим покровительством сущности, именуемой "матУшка" и являющей собой нечто среднее между бабой-ягой Дедом-Морозом и такой-то матерью. В результате известна еще и тем, что все попытки ее завоевать заканчивались тем, что через две недели вражеская армия замерзала — вне зависимости от времени года

Сама статья находится тут. Правила же ролевки, переведенные на русский язык, можно скачать тут, если кого заинтересует.

Обложка для основной книги правил по SIFRP.

Продолжаю транслировать блог дизайнера ролевого воплощения "Саги льда и пламени" Джорджа Мартина.

цитата

"Words are like arrows... Once loosed, you cannot call them back."

—Doran Martell

Taking on A Song of Ice and Fire was tough. Obviously, there's the challenges of meeting fans' expectations, covering the world in enough detail to run campaigns, and all the other difficulties in game design, but, like other adaptations, an RPG based on a series of books brings to the table its own challenges. We've already chatted about dice and their myriad uses, but I thought I'd also spend some time talking about the why behind the dice, and, specifically, how you resolve conflict in the game.

By "conflict", I don't just mean two people swinging sticks at each other until one falls down; conflict also includes arguments, discussions, research, and just about any other thorny challenge arising in the game. Conflict, in my mind, is a key method for characters to grow and evolve in the game, the way for the plot to move forward, and the necessary ingredient to telling interesting and engaging stories. Conflict puts characters (and players) in difficult positions and how they respond to those challenges informs the Narrator and other players about the character's personality, values, goals, objectives, and all the other interesting bits that make roleplaying games so much fun.

There are lots of RPGs out there and each deals with conflict in its own way, so coming up with "yet another" system to drive this seemed a bit daunting. Resolving conflict in the game also needed more than just a die mechanism, some clever twist that would make the game stand up and scream. What we needed was a game that allowed conflict resolution to flow as much from roleplaying and character portrayal as it does from whatever shows on the face of the dice you just threw across the table.

As these thoughts crowded my attic, I spent a lot of time thinking about the primary modes of conflict presented in the novels, since my primary objective was to provide a system capable of emulating the books' various scenes. Combat, of course, came first. Westeros chokes on violence and battle. Armies clash with the slightest provocation, cruel killers stalk the streets, and roving brigands prey on the weak. It's a violent and nasty place. So, since we have combat, we also have war. Really, we can't punt on war, so it had to be in the RPG. Treachery and intrigues are important too since the events in A Game of Thrones and A Feast for Crows all rest on a complex web of alliances and betrayals, of deals and treacheries every bit as shocking and engaging as the battle scenes.

But there's more than kicking ass and telling isn't there? What about internal conflicts, such as Jon's struggle between his vows to the Night's Watch and his loyalties to his family? Or, what about digging into the past, such as when Sam scoured the tomes held in the vaults beneath Castle Black? There's also the supernatural conflict of Bran fighting to learn to control the budding powers and apprehend the new gifts that manifest with the opening of his third eye. Aren't these all conflicts? I'd say so.

With a pile of examples staring at me from my monitor, I knew I had to make some hard decisions about what needed mechanical expression in the game and what could be resolved through character portrayal and roleplaying. What we didn't want, and we all agreed, was an overly complex game shackling every aspect of the imagination to some dice roll or a corner-case rule; only the most diehard gamers enjoy complex rules systems (and before I'm burned in effigy on RPGnet or somewhere else, I'll say that I like my crunchy games, but not for SIFRP). Challenges needed some method for resolution, some way to deal with all the unpredictable elements that crop up during game play, so I settled on three major methods.

First comes roleplaying. This is how we deal with the inner challenges, the personal struggles, the agony of decision that comes from exploring the game world. These challenges might represent the tough choices of allocating experience, tracking injuries, and the like. They can also come from the tough personal conflict that arises from finding oneself in a difficult situation, where every outcome is uncertain and with disastrous consequences. These sorts of challenges shouldn't be reduced to dice rolls since they are best experienced as a natural outgrowth of just being true to your character. You don't need to roll dice to see if your character is sad or angry or frightened; these emotions arise through normal game play. This may seem elementary, but formulating my thoughts in this way led to a few other realizations dissolved some of my game preferences and made manifest some of the ridiculous elements that act as barriers to having fun.

Since I obviously wasn't going to let rules dictate emotions, I started really thinking about how this same freedom might apply to other game mechanics. At first, I had planned to put in the usual suspects: rules for climbing walls, some nightmare formula for jumping, riding, and all the other crunchy bits found in many games, but after some reflection (sitting in a bar, thick with a dozen beers, and a thicker bar tab), I realized most dice rolls involving basic checks/tests/etc. are really just opportunities to frustrate the plot. They create, in effect, roadblocks preventing access to the juiciest bits in the game. For example, if a character wants to climb a wall and they have a reasonable chance of doing so, why call a test? Because the rules tell you too? Because, you, as Narrator, want the character to fail? Is there some other reason? What I found, the more I thought about it, was that endless checks for every little task just paralyzes the player. Players are less likely to take risks or do things that lay outside the bounds of their character sheet if they have less than a 50% chance of success. If the player won't risk his character, the game dissolves into a bunch of people waiting for the chance to do something inside their areas of expertise.

I recognized (and still do) that certain types of tests have a place in the game, but only if those tests have dramatic consequences. Going back to the above example, a character who wants to climb a wall to look out over the city and can take his time doing so probably ought to be able to, especially if what the character sees from the top grants information to help move along the story. However, if the same character wanted to scramble up a wall to gain an advantage of some kind over his enemies in the thick of battle, a test is a good barrier. In order for that player to get the "edge," say a +1 bonus die on a Marksmanship test, the player must risk his resources against the consequences of failure, which, in this case, is a fall resulting in damage.

This sort of thinking liberates Narrators from having to micromanage each element while loosening the constraints on what players can do and how often they can do it. I think this goes a long way toward making folks feel like they are the true protagonists of the plot. Therefore, SIFRP embraces the notion that you only ever have to test your abilities when the outcome of that test has significant consequences. Does this mean that impossible stunts automatically happen? No, because doing something stupid, like balancing on a tightrope while playing a cello, could and should have dramatic consequences. What this does mean is ordinary tasks are possible without dragging the game into an exercise of dice-rolling.

Growing out of this madness was the realization that the next step above the narrative looseness was the simple challenge. A simple challenge has consequences but its resolution is binary: Yes or No, Success of Failure, Victory or Defeat. In general, I don't particularly like these challenges because pure success versus pure failure isn't altogether interesting or satisfying. I recognize there are instances in the game where these sorts of tests are important and so you'll see them.

Of far more interest to me (and hopefully to you) are complex challenges. Simply put, a complex challenge is like any other challenge, but it involves grades of success and grades of failure. When you engage in complex challenge, you test the ability as normal--and there is a threshold of success/failure, but you get to measure how well you succeed, or, in game speak, the margin of your success. Complex challenges come into play in three of the major conflicts: intrigue, combat, and war, those times when you pit your talents against those of an enemy and vice versa, but they can also appear when a character is researching some plot element, riding a horse through a hailstorm to warn the outpost of wildlings, and so on. When your character's life is on the line, it's nice to be rewarded for a good roll aside from a simple success. So, the game rewards good rolls (and sometimes sticks it too you for bad rolls), by giving you greater success for rolling high. Since the maximum roll is determined by how many dice you can roll, and since the number of dice you can roll is directly affected by how good you are at something, the game system recognizes characters who are superior in an ability (or specialty) often perform better than those who aren't. Again, this is pretty basic, but it does take the game a step further than one finds when your training and talent are outweighed by your luck.

So here we are, out of words again. I could go on about the psychology of conflict in the game, but I fear attention spans are withering. So, next time, we'll look at intrigues and how all three methods I've described find homes in an easy-to-learn system designed to support roleplaying. Before we go, however, here's a look at Jaime Lannister.

Ser Jaime Lannister Adult Fighter

Abilities and Specialties

Agility 4 —

Animal Handling 4 1B Ride

Athletics 4 —

Endurance 4 1B Resilience, 1B Stamina

Fighting 5 2B Long Blades, 2B Spears

Language (Common) 3 —

Persuasion 3 1B Taunt

Status 4 1B Breeding, 1B Tournaments

Warfare 3 1B Command

Base Attributes

Combat Defense 10

Intrigue Defense 8

Health 12

Composure 6

Superior Full Plate: AR 11; AP –2; Bulk 2 (Move 3 yds)

Excellent Longsword: 5T+1+2B (5 damage)

War Lance: 5T+1B (8 damage; bulk 2, impale, mounted, powerful, slow, vicious)

Large Shield: 5T–1P (2 damage; bulk 1, defensive +4)

Destiny 2 Points

Benefits: Blood of the Andals, Long Blade Fighter I, Long Blade Fighter II, Man of the Kingsguard, Talented (Fighting), Tourney Knight

Drawbacks: Ignoble, Reviled

Источник.