VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

Today I will present you one of the most important pieces within the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG project. Based on my readings I found (and totally agree on) the principle that a good setting for any intellectual product, be it a book, a game or a movie, is to build it up from the scratch. Therefore any RPG setting, in order to be sound and complete should always have a backbone story of the world. I am trying to have this job done in two steps: 1. A cosmogony which tells how the world was generated; this is more tied to mythology rather than the mere chronicles of a world 2. The history of the world as it is known by humans (which for the sake of simplification we can call it the vol.2 of the cosmogony) Let's focus on the first part for the time being: this will be a book where I leave the main pieces of info about the genesis and the characters that played a role in the creation of the world... This seems very "tolkienish" and, as a matter of fact, it is so! The book will not be ...

Before I get to the main points of this topic, I want to leave here an update which has impacts also on what I am going to write about purpose and targets of my project. I am ref to the topic of "meta-intelligence" vs intelligence: thanks also to the very constructive discussion on the DF boards (for those interested it is  here ), the final conclusion is that I will manage two stats of the game as "external" stats, belonging to the players and not affecting the game mechanics. This of course means a revision of the core rules in some points (I think I have identified where but I need to go through the whole text another time... This will happen by when I will correct it with the inputs from the proofread). Now, back to the purpose: actually there are more than one! One embedded in the rules and one in the setting. Both of them lead to the targets I would like to achieve. Please, forgive me if you find I am too ambitious to steer these concepts in a game. Being RPGs...

It all starts from the reading of a nice book (not essential but a good reading) of an Italian RPG author about how to create and develop an RPG. In there I find a recommendation which, by the way, was already as one of my topics of the chapter "How to run the VI·VIII·X game". The recommendation, in a nutshell, is that the GM needs to be careful to manage the intelligence of the player who moves his PC and the intelligence of the PC himself (as a stat). This was focused in particular to those moment where this appears outstanding, like when a riddle has to be worked out. I have this in mind since long time and I just wanted to treat this topic as a recommendation like I found in the book I read... However... for pure curiosity I posted this topic on the boards of ENworld, here: RPG Theory - Intelligence and meta-intelligence ...and I am very surprised that this topic did not attract such an interest! In those boards there are tons of users, authors, bloggers, all the main per...

  Four months have passed since I left my last version of the “status update” of the project and I believe it is time to leave a new update: Core rules: I asked 3 fellows to carry out a proofreading for both grammar/typos and contents (they’re all RPG veterans) and I got one of them that gave up (no blame or regrets at all from my side!); the remaining 2 are on the way to end the revision. I will then update the book and publish it in a “playtest edition”. Out of the core rules version, I was thinking to prepare a “Players’ primer”: a smaller text where a player can find all the piece of info he needs to play the VI·VIII·X game. This is a task to be tackled once I have done with the Core rules. PC notebook is done and thinking to how I described it, I have to precise something: it is a 24-page booklet useful both as the traditional PC char sheet and as a notebook to track down any useful piece of info the player deems it important; there are pages dedicated for each kind of info as...

This week has been definitely fruitful: I had the chance to work together with two persons which helped me to strongly focus on the project and this generated the so called "virtuous circle" effect. I will be happy to detail the two events on a separate post, however I do confirm here that these both helped me to move ahead and to foster the development of the setting for the game! A lot! Back to this positive momentum: while I was thinking to the contents and how to organize and deploy the mass of ideas within the books, I had a moment of reflexion on the proper order I should follow to be able to carry out all the sub-projects I have in mind with a consistent sequence. The first priority goes, useless to say, to the core rules. Once I will get the proofread, I need to concentrate all the energies over there so that I can launch a playtest edition and have time (while playtest takes place) to complete the other parts of the project. In this context I asked myself: is the GM ...