VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

This post is fully dedicated to the bibliography I left at the end of the VI·VII·X core rules. I find honest to quote all the marvelous works here and provide with some details about the reasons of the ‘influence’ they have in the game. Let us start then: ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ (by D.Arneson and G.Gygax, any edition from the one of 1974 up to the Rules Cyclopedia): well there's not that much to add for D&D; it is the first, the most used and most known; the authors had a simple and genial idea (regardless to who in detail made what for the game); I’d also like to remember Dave Wesley, the man who provided with flint and tinder the two authors; there’s another detail worth to be mentioned about D&D: in some communities where I presented the game I was criticized by the fact that I made up a new RPG relying mainly on the knowledge of D&D or similar games… well, what I miss behind this thought is what would be the added value to know the largest possible number of RPGs:

Last week I found a very interesting topic on board of an RPG community: a very skilled guy, Vladar, managed to create a full adventure module with AI text generation. This is absolutely outstanding to my eyes! I will report nor the topic neither the tools used for such a great achievement. I left my congrats to the fellow in the topic where he wrote about his job. I find in any case fair and honest to link the final output so that everyone can assess the quality of the output:  Castle of GPT . This piece of news left me with opposing feelings: from one side there is regard towards Vladar for the success of his work; on the other side I feel uncomfortable with the development the AI is having. Let’s first talk about the ‘sunny’ side of the story. The great achievement is a fact, beyond any reasonable doubt: this work confirms that in the future the industry will benefit of this very advanced technology and this is, needless to say, a high-potential option for the whole community of GMs

While writing the quickstart, I came to a point where I had the need of a support in the creation of a character, be it playing or non-playing one! This need was simply a consequence of the module I am almost done for the quickstart: in it both PCs and NPCs should be prepared and the most effective solution was to build up a tool to generate a character 'on the fly'. Being quite skilled with Excel, I prepared first a tool for the generation of a single character. That helped me in preparing the 4 PCs for the adventure.  After that I modified it in order to have a group of NPCs (from 1 to 4) done with the same logic... the limit for this second version was that the group should have got the same career: that was in line with the adventure since I had to create a group of 4 men-at-arms and a group of 4 clerics... easy peasy! At that stage I found a good idea to provide the friend who is running the playtest with this file... he was happy to see such a support! But at that stage I

I am currently writing the adventure for the quickstart book and since I have no major updates, I just leave some thoughts on several topics I ran during the last two weeks. Needless to say, the first topic is Morality! Wow, another great finding: I have to thank my friend Catacomb Librarian who unearthed a post here : another fellow came to a very close concept and definition of Morality I had! Basically, Morality has to be a stat in order to have the proper importance within a framework of rules. In addition, it can modify according to the player's choices and it affects some rules in the game mechanics! This is really outstanding if I think to the solution I had in VI·VIII·X! Second point is that I started a topic in a community asking a very simple question: "What would you expect in terms of gaming materials and support to play a new RPG?" I got only a couple of answers but some brilliant point were outlined: the first one is that I should think to add to the setting

I don't remember actually if I have already mentioned a fact that made me think a lot... In the first weeks of January I sent some emails to pen pals just to let them know that I published my game: iirc I wrote to 5 fellows, not a large group but to those that I am really in touch for my hobby. I met them along my experiences of RPG collector and researcher. I got a nearly immediate answer from my friend Maarten! He said he would have bought the book and sent me a feedback... and so he did! About two weeks later, Maarten wrote me an extensive email with both congrats for my effort and (moreover!) hints, suggestions and comments on several ideas I developed. Some of the suggestions will be part for sure in the VIII·XII·XX book (the expanded rules of VI·VIII·X). Further details will be disclosed in the next update about this book! Some other comments made me consider that he had a very keen view on what I did: on at least 3 points he outlined, there was a single underlying concern. T

I am well aware of the fact that I have already posted here my thoughts on the explanation of D&D alignments by Gygax in “The Strategic Review” issue 6 (February 1976). I feel however not to be enough complete in my explanation, moreover, I think I should get more in detail about the contents of Gygax’s article and the concept of Morality in VI·VIII·X. I think it’d be wise to start from a comparison of the two “morality maps”: the D&D one on the left and the one of VI·VIII·X on the right side. One important detail for the reader: the graph on the left here below is not exactly the same of the one in the article, I changed the order of display the axes of the graph to make it comparable to the one I built. The framework is nearly the same, the main differences are the definitions and the fifth concept of “neutrality”. With reference to the later, I don’t support positions where a never-ending balance is the main driver for any decision; this is, in my view, neutrality: trying to

Very quick description of the book I'm currently working on. The origin of this book (unforseen in the original project) is a comment I gathered from several communities about the fact that an approach to an RPG with a non-light set of rules like VI·VIII·X is difficult nowadays. A kind of introductory book would smooth the difficulty to approach to such a game and allow more people to know it. Therefore... here we go! The book, is now under construction! I have not yet clear the complete table of contents as I am building it along the way... this means that it is not yet clear what I will include in it. My overall goal is to add in there only pieces of the core book that allows players to have a quick approach (i.e. fast and simple) and avoid the more complex ones... This will be done for the sake of the players. For the GMs I will at least leave them a summary of the more complex rules in order to foster their curiosity and if they want to dig further on them. How I am going to do

While before VI·VIII·X Core Rules publication I had a pretty clear picture in my head, after the publication I had the chance to hear the suggestions that many kind people left me on the various RPG communities where I wrote about the game. This led me to revise the plan for this year: the proper sequence of works I had in mind was 1.Expanded rules, 2.Setting, 3.Cosmogony (and, btw, this was a really challenging plan! Two 'big' goals like the expanded rules and the setting were really a hard task to achieve!). What I got as the main takeaway from the several discussions on the boards is that I need to better steer the communication for the playtest! I am not a marketing guy and I found a really single feedback form the market: I've already written about that in a previous post but I can't avoid to outline these aspects, in particular the second one. I am impressed by how standardized is the customers' approach: the questions are the same and the reactions as well. T

I think I have already written more than once that I was almost sure that my idea was not original and it was nearly impossible that no one had already come to my conlcusion! What is surprising is that this happened nearly 50 years ago, more exactly in April 1975! The fundamental concept underlying the KUP model has already been discussed by Sandy Eisen with Gygax himself! That is absolutely outstanding! Ok, let's explain this with more details and order. On the RPGGeek boards, Chris B (kudos to Chris!) pointed me out that this is not the first time someone has though about a game 'veiled' to the players. He kindly provided me with the post of a fellow who is working on a game with rules completely hidden to the players (if I understood correctly). I have left him a request to get in touch with me and exchange our opinions about this 'model'. Mine is definitely a less radical view than his one (at least from what I got reading his post...) but I believe we have the

In this deep dive some insights about how a character can suffer damages, what is the kind of injuries from damage and what is the game mechanic which rule the death of a character. Let’s start from the first topic: damage! A damage is anything affecting negatively a character, be it caused by either a weapon or a different cause like a poison or magic. In VI·VIII·X any damage is defined as a negative impact on a character’s stats. When a character suffers a damage, this means that one or more stats decrease and the character is in the position to act with a reduced score in that stat from the following turn; as a consequence the character gains the state of ‘injured’. Now, let’s better focus on what an injury is in the VI·VIII·X game. According to the damage suffered, the GM defines what are the affected stats of the character (this happens only when it is not already defined in a rule, needless to say). The damage is exactly the same amount of the decrease in the related stats, the r

This deep dive aims to provide an overview on the base game mechanic of VI·VIII·X the action resolution check, or ARC. This is used in most of the rules, whenever a character is asked to carry out an action: for combat, both melee and ranged, for non-combat actions (e.g. hide, ride, swim and so forth) and for spellcasting, both arcane and divine magic. In order to perform an action, the character uses one of his skills, the used skill is tied to an ‘unknown stat’ (or US) and the later is tied to a ‘known stat’ (or KS). Therefore, the starting point for the application of this mechanic is the 3-level stat framework of the character (in case here is a deep dive on this topic). Whenever a character needs to succeed a test, the player has to perform an ARC. The ARC is the result of 4 addends: The score of the KS (a value between 1 and 10) The score of the US (a value between 1 and 10) A modifier which is the outcome of the player’s roll for the ARC a value between -3 and +10) Additional (a

After long time I am back to complete the ‘deep dive’ posts with a new topic to be analyzed: the stats of a character. The overall concept of stats is not far from the one used in the most famous FRPG: a character is described by scores according to certain definitions. In VI·VIII·X any character is defined through 3 levels (or layers) of stats: the first level has a broad definition, the second level shows a more detailed definition up to the third level where a precise activity is defined. The 3-level framework is built by means of relationships between the stats of each level: a 1st level stat is linked with two 2nd level stats and every 2nd level stat is tied to several 3rd level stats. This framework helps to explain that the level of granularity of the definitions for each level goes from a general one (for 1st level) up to a detailed one (for 3rd level). This explanation helps to outline the framework where the 1st level stats are called ‘Known stats’ or KS (because they are kno

I'm probably overwhelmed with too many to-dos and topics to follow and I'm getting stuck in the mud in too many topics and activities. I have to review priorities to try to refocus on my project and avoid getting lost in a thousand streams of discussions or thoughts. During these weeks, the most tiring ones for me, I had to spend nearly all my efforts on  'marketing' the game... As a summary, I had a wide range of feedback, from purposely destructive (hopefully for no reason since I don't know the people who wrote me) to truly encouraging. Among all, I feel like leaving a tip to Jamie Hardy, a veteran of this industry who has provided me with his invaluable advice. Jamie wasn't artificially positive, far from it: he wrote in a serious and straightforward way what's wrong with my marketing approach. I sincerely thank him and now I will try to put into practice everything Jamie suggested. Now, what is making me stuck is my natural marketing ineptitude: althoug

First day of 2023! This post to wish all of you my most sincere wishes for a great year! As a first day, I need now to focus on two sides: manage the playtest and develop the remaining part of the project. I have to be grateful to anyone who helped me with suggestions for my game in the last weeks. Since I published it, I got several comments and one of the things I need is to rationalize all the info and interactions I had so far. Therefore, I will review the current proposal for the playtest and try to be more 'market oriented'! In addition, I will take up again all the works and give them a go... the upcoming task will likely be the 'How to run a VI·VIII·X KUP RPG' series here on these pages! I hope that this year will bring to the light at least one or both books: the expanded rules and the setting! Thanks to all of the friendly fellows who bought, downloaded, read and joined the playtest! ...and thanks to those who will come as well!  

We're quickly approaching to Christmas. We're living in a troubled period, sometimes we are 'running' so fast we're not even able to completely perceive our context. I sincerely wish to all of you a peaceful and serenity-paced Christmas! I hope this time will provide us the opportunity not to 'run' faster and faster, rather to enjoy the most positive experiences all of us have (and often we do not seize them)! Merry Christmas

Despite I have not a clear idea of the interest my game has produced, I have to settle down few, basic and simple concepts for the playtest I would like to carry out with the 'teal edition' of the core rules of VI·VIII·X. So, here we go: Any playing group can join the ' playtest circuit '; this is where all the 'playtesting groups' meet and actively provide with feedbacks from their gaming sessions In order to be part of the 'playtest circuit' an mail to the VI·VIII·X address 6.8.10.kup.rpg@gmail.com is requested; one request per group, it is better to keep one touch point only (likely the GM of the group); the requester can choose if being anonymous, using a nickname, a group name or the full name; this choice can be amended later at any time with a specific email On the  playtest page  I will record the group with a number, the nick or the full name according to the choice of the requester; the other relevant pieces of info I would need are 3: the cou

One of the main takeaways of my very short experience in the publishing industry is at the same time charming and awful: the communication of and idea seems to be even more important that the idea itself... maybe I am ingenuous but I find it surprising! After some discussions on the main RPG boards I came with the conclusion that I had to try to make some 'marketing' by writing a blurb on DriveThru to attract more interest from a potential customer... Here below you will find two texts: the first one is 'my version', it is what I produced by myself... it is long and likely boring. The second one is 'true marketing version': this is a text by a really friendly fellow of RPGGeek made up based on the contents of 'my version'... it is definitely like night and day. They're not even comparable! I will never be able to do such a masterpiece in terms of communication! So, my most appreciated kudos and thanks go to Jamie Hardy who forged the 'perfection&

This post to wrap up some highlights I got after nearly one week from the go-live of my books on DritveThru. Here below the main outcomes of what I experienced in such a short timeframe. Pricing of the books: I got nearly all the purchases done for the books with a PWYW price and all of these had a price at zero; since all the digital books but the core rules have this option, this means that many customers are somehow ‘pushed’ to grab whatever they find for free on DriveThru regardless of the effective use; if someone downloads four supplements of a game for free without the main book, I wonder what would be the use of these books… Marketing: the most common point raised by the members of those communities where I posted about the launch of the game is the complete lack of a communication plan. This seems more important than everything else: under this aspect I completely failed. I should have prepared a communication plan in order to make any reader a potential buyer… Well, I thought

Well, I can say that my first stop of my journey has come to a destination! Yesterday evening I got a message from DriveThruRPG that all my titles are up and running! For a quick reference of all what is on sale, you can easily have an overview on my Products page . I listed basically 5 books for the playtest: the core rules the animal roster 'Ferae' the PC notebook (an evolved char sheet) the GM notebook (the PC sheet for the GM, veeeery KUP!) the NPC roster 'Personae' For each of them there is a digital and a printed version, in particular every digital version (but the core rules) are 'pay what you want' (PWYW).  With ref to the Core Rules, it is important to stress out that the printed version (hardback, A5 size) has approx 30 pages more than the digital version: in that book I added some (hopefully) useful design notes. Now, I will start my communication on the web, mainly on the most relevant forums and communities. I will use this simple banner to redirec

Back from the mountain, I found two parcels in my mailbox! That was totally unexpected as the postal provider sent me a notice these would have been dispatched next Tue (and it was on Sat!)... So, the wait has ended, it is time to open the presents I asked to Santa with a couple of weeks in advance! I can't wait a second more! Let's start with the thin parcel... So, here we have the 3 softbacks all together: PC Notebook, GM Notebook and NPC Roster... some more details for each of them... Now, the thick parcel, the one with the hardbackssss... Ho-ho-ho!!! Let's open it with the due time and trying to 'taste' the moment... Here we gooo... They are both beautiful! Needless to say I have already found something I would have made different if I were aware of... anyway, this is another lesson learnt! Now a close-up on the core rules: And the same room on the stage also for the second 'baby', I know it is thinner than the firs tone but it is not less important as i

While waiting this endless period for the delivery of the playtest books, I am thinking on the expanded rules I have already written (to be precise, more than 80% are still on my pad and only some of them are already present in the word document on my PC...). My concern is related to the outcome of the playtest: it'd be wise to wait how the playtest goes before thinking how to further develop the core rules. As a matter of fact this is only in part true: some rules have been written as core rules and in a 'streamlining' process I decided to keep them on-hold to keep the game not too complex. These were part of the original design of the VI·VIII·X core rules but after some thoughts (and recommendations of friends!), they were converted as optional rules. In a first stage of the writing process I had in mind to keep the optional rules within the core rules. This would have made the set of rules maybe too heavy or blurry (it is hard to remind what is core and what is optional

I probably took too much time for the final revision of the Core Rules and now I deserve an unpleasant surprise. I did finish the book with layout and artworks and uploaded it on the DrivethruRPG platform on Nov.11th. I previously did this operation for the other supplements and this step used to take a couple of days only... This time, likely due to external reasons (don't know why exactly), the approval process lasted more than 10 days. If we consider that the overall process is not ended as it is necessary to order a proof of print before going live, this definitely means one month more or less (printing and shipping usually take 3 weeks). Yesterday I got the feedback after more than 10 days on the Core Rules: the book was rejected as there was a part of text exceeding safety printing margins on the cover... Two comments on this: firstly, I was contrary on placing the usual 'blurb' on the back cover until the very end but a couple of days before the conclusion of the rev

I thought during the last week how a playtest should be managed, being a complete neophyte on this topic. I made the usual error: I started searching the web… then I got to the point that I do not need to worry if and what are the standards. I only have to keep in mind these golden rules to be constantly applied to every phase of the playtest: Any activity should be useful, if not enjoyable, to the eyes of the GM who actively participate to the playtest I need to make any experience of the playtesters somehow interesting so that they can join the playtest I want to keep a KISS approach and not invent any complicate solution which could bring to a complicate failure In this sense, the first question is the effort required to any playtester. Then, the way to communicate and to let any other playtester to be aware of these inputs. Lastly the ‘reason why’ a GM should have in order to join the playtesters group. The answer to the first question is as few as possible with a minimum of a mont