VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

This post is a direct consequence of the one about the presence/absence of artworks in an RPG book I have written some weeks ago. Let me say that the discussion I started on some boards did not helped me in a decision as I didn't find yet a good reason if not the one related either to the tradition born with the first books and kept along nearly 50 years of RPG history or to the expectations of the readers who find it "normal" to have a picture every 3/4 pages... Anyway, this is not the real subject of the topic. Due to this reason I did some search and found something really amazing: the application of AI to images/graphic. What I found is both exalting and worrying to my eyes. Let's start from the beginning: there are already many users of AI graphics. I found a website where this is possible to test it as a trial. The website is  Midjourney : you can join for free and test what it is possible to do with it. Now, follow me: I am not an IT guy, I know nothing about c...

During the summer break I wanted to analyse the aspect of the Alignments in D&D in order to understand what has been the rationale in the definition by the D&D authors. I started finding this very interesting post : in here I got the confirmation that beyond any different definition/label, the concept of morality was aiming to profile a character's sense of ethic. I'd like to outline that this sense is not only focusing towards third parties but even towards ourselves.  Or, this is at least my interpretation and rationale for the Morality concept and game mechanics. I was so intrigued by this topic that I started a discussion on the DF boards here : I wanted to enlarge the discussion to old gamers so that they could address me to other interesting readings or topics. I was hopefully right: I just wondered why this feature in an RPG had been always treated in a subtle way... It has never been approached in a "strong" way with clear and crisp game mechanics...  ...

In these days I am asking myself some questions about the art I should use within the VI·VIII·X project. The first result is that I revised all the pieces of art I plan on the covers of the books. The main outcome is that the Doré painting entitled "Enigma" will be the cover of the core rules instead of the PC notebook (I will manage this change along with the last revision of that book). Then I made my mind up for the remaining covers... I decided to go with masterpieces by Simone Martini, Giorgione, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. The reader won't be disappointed (or I hope so!). Secondly I am still in doubt if and how using internal artworks: it is not clear to me why the RPG industry needs internal artworks in its products... These are possibly the most creative games and I have the feeling that there is no need to add artworks to them (a map is another story though): the imagination of both GMs and players is able to do better than any artwork...

Today some insights on the setting which will be the second pillar of the KUP model after the core rules (I actually need to reorganize and prepare the expanded rulebook and I need to post some more info on that as well... Ok, that will be one of the next posts here, I took a note for that!). The setting is firmly tied to the cosmogony and it uses some parts of it as cornerstones. The first one is the presence of some characters called Eidolon: these are NPC (I will not explain in detail the reason for the time being but it is not possible to use them as playing character) and they are essential figures for the setting itself: around the Eidolon an important feature of the setting is built and without them there would not exist one of the "reason why" for the PCs (in an interesting post the author Robin D. Laws explains what is the "reason why": he calls it "core activity"... the post is  this one ). The Eidolon have a reason, a goal and a sense in the who...

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 ...

Well, another topic coming from a discussion in a very popular community: the starting point is (needless to say) the rules framework in a RPG. The debate is more or less between those who need a light set of rules... someone would love to have a 5-page rulebook (!!!), someone else is looking for a single page only... and on the other faction, those who want an as much as possible detailed set of rules... those kind of massive books where the authors have foreseen nearly every event could occur (and not only: every event has been combined among the many other features sorting out a vectorial product of huge size)... Looking from a mere external point of view, it is clear that a RPG is the outcome of someone's needs: it can be as vary as the number of people playing RPGs... this is not really the point though. What is interesting is trying to sort out the roots of this hobby: it started from a group of wargamers (at the end of the day, the Fantasy supplement in Chainmail is the embr...

I posted some questions on DF boards just to have the opinion of some educated fellows of that community: the questions where not about contents, it was all about form and layout. Useless to say, we have fallen in the trap and I found an interesting view on contents by a fellow who left some brilliant thoughts here:  Post on Dragonsfoot  . The first point is interesting and not too far from reality: experienced players and GMs looks for games where there are several degree of freedom... those "light-rules games". Maybe that it is not always true (I can imagine that a group of engineers would prefer a very complex rules framework, no offense intended at all!), but what this guy writes makes a lot of sense. After all, it ends up to the logic of the VI·VIII·X game: a set of rules to be born by the GM mainly, leaving more room for role-playing and for tasting the situation rather than worrying about the correct modifier to be applied. The second and more interesting point is ...

A troubled question is waving in my mind since a couple of days... firstly it is necessary to explain the background: from a proofread I got a feedback that the acronym KUP is not technically correct. "Keep uneducated players" has a different meaning than "Keep players uneducated": the difference is subtle but there is! The expression "Keep uneducated players" refers to the GM's willingness to retain "uneducated" players and to ensure that others leave the game table by means of the game model. The other expression, "Keep players uneducated", means that the GM, thanks to the game model, is able to keep the players not completely "educated" and makes sure to preserve the "astonishment of ignorance" that I mentioned in an earlier post. Now let's get to the point: on one hand I should stick to the grammar and replace KUP with KPU... at the end of the day that is the correct expression! On the other hand I really...

I am back after more than 1 month from my last post... what a shame! I had several other businesses to follow in the recent past and I dedicated only few days to my project (d'oh!). I will make a status update just to have a picture at the end of May: the proofreading is still on progress; I didn't get the texts from my friends but only short feedbacks; the worst one is that one of them withdrew... too bad! I still have 3 friends helping me! I will hopefully get their works in June and do the editing between July and August. I'd like to have the playtest edition with all the amendments coming from the proofread, with the original "highlighting style" I had at the beginning and with some few (good) artworks to make it a little bit "sexy". I didn't make any progress on the optional rules; I just wrote some other good notes on my notebook but I didn't work on the book itself. I started the book of the cosmogony, I revised the "backbone" of...

Welcome to the last deep dive I planned (actually there are some other topics to cover... let's see if this is really the last one...). This is dedicated to the State of Mind. This is a feature that traditional RPGs have not taken in consideration. I have always played with FRPG (with one exception: a campaign of RIFT) but I've been told about the concept of sanity in Call of Cthulhu. This might be considered as an equivalent concept translated to traditional FRPGs. Before any further description, some thoughts that led me to add SoM in my game: Characters are never subject to a peculiar moment, with their fixed stats they are always "steady" and seems they have never met moments down (or up!)... or better, while a good role-player can act in order to show this through his character's behavior, there is no rule which includes it. Whenever there is an interaction with other characters, it is clear that the gap in the previous point is showing a hole in the overall ...

New post on the core rules "deep dive": this time I will focus on the progression of the characters. In order to make it compatible with traditional RPGs, this is in other words the game mechanics about the experience.  As a foreword, I have to admit that I have never been satisfied of the various solutions that were proposed in the several editions of the first and most famous RPG. The XP system had always some drawback or gaps. Nothing extremely important but any of them led me to do some amendments with a homebrew system which was basically closer to the approach of the tournament adventures than the one in the rulebook. Now, given the fact that even with my homebrew solution I was not fully satisfied, I came to the conclusion that there was something to change at a deeper level... and at the same time I felt very important to keep and stress out the improvement of a character in case he uses in the correct way his skills. This brought me to build a 2-way progression syste...

Yesterday I found in the mailbox the first items ever printed for the VI·VIII·X game! They are the PC Notebook and the GM notebook. In a previous post I wrote about them: they are conceived instead of the flying sheets of paper that usually both players and master have around the table. These are namely notebook where everyone playing at VI·VIII·X KUP RPG has and where it is supposedly room for any note. Here we go... front and back of the booklets: First and last page of the PC Notebook: ...and first and last page of the GM Notebook: As I have already written the artworks on the cover are based on a teal color range just to point out that these are the "Playtest edition"... if hopefully I will ever be able to publish a final version of the game, I will use the original colors of these wonderful pieces of art! I am really satisfied with the outcome (I only need to fix the page count, but this is a detail!). 

Fourth post with an insight on the VI·VIII·X core rules: this time I will focus on the background. Let me have a foreword before.  I am not sure if my experience in traditional RPGs is a common case or not but I always found myself (as well as any other player in the party I had) to build up a character from the stats. This means that I never though beforehand to who was the character; first it used to come how this was and afterwards I started building his history. This is regardless of the GM: that way was accepted by almost all the GMs I met in my life. The odd part of this thought is that the background used to be created according to the needs... I mean: if my character's parents were not an useful detail in the campaign (doesn't matter the reason), then my character had a huge "?" on this piece of info... I could have been the son of either the ruler of that land or of a slave and this was not necessary and known. Then, when I ran into a situation where I needed...

Let's go through this peculiar aspect of the VI·VIII·X core rules. Time is a very "traditional" concept, it is turn-based, so any RPGer will find himself comfortable with it. What it is not "traditional" is that any effect occurring in a turn will take place at the end it only. Conventionally, every action/event/situation which provokes an effect has to be considered simultaneosly at the end of the turn. This seems odd but given the fact that the sequence and other game mechanics are developed in a certain way, this is the most rationale solution. Realistically this could also have an explanation: if a PC suffers a mortal hit in a turn, is it really possible that in the last seconds of his life (i.e. the time till the end of the turn) is not able to try a last blow or action? This question may raise some concerns or, even worse, a lot of criticms... therefore I will simply state that, even if this is not the best solution, I adopted for several reasons, some of ...

This is the second topic I wanted to cover in my deep dives: really, I love to transmit the message to the reader about how it is structured the magic system in the VI·VIII·X game. Firstly the way I call magic in the game: SS or Secret Sorcery and CC or Clerical Canons. These are 2 ways rather different to have a magic effect. Hopefully I had been enough skilled to use the same mechanics despite the difference in concepts. SS is the eldritch magic, the arcane powers, what is used by high wizards. It is secret for a precise reason, this is not disclosed in the rule book (it will be part of the setting and it has origin from the cosmogony to be more precise). SS casters know words of power, every word is one of the two parts which a spell is composed. The caster needs to use 2 different words of power: an element and a principle. These two are then enough to create the effect wanted by the caster. This means the SS is completely open! There are no constraints in the spell definition. The...

I stick to the notes I have on the desk and as promised I will try to provide you with some insight of the "new" game mechanics that I introduced in my  VI·VIII·X game. Let us start with Morality: it is a concept similar to alignment and to my eyes this is one of the weakest features in rules of "traditional" RPGs... I am well aware the topic is extremely "slippery" as you may find yourself with accusations of Satanism and media campaigns ruining your reputation if you push too much into a strong direction. However this reason is not enough to give up and make up a solution to preserve the detail of the character's alignment however completely empty of contents. If you think for a while what is the meaning of a chaotic-good alignment, for instance, you will soon realize that you can do whatever you want in the game and nothing will be affected by the fact that you have an alignment and you can follow this or not without any consequence. IMPORTANT: plea...

After some days spent on DriveThru in order to understand how tricky is the preparation of a title over there, I am back to the real matter, the game. Let me only say: yes, I will likely put on DriveThru my stuff and as soon as the Core Rules will be ready, I will start a communication campaign. Now, what is in the rulebook: this book has 9 chapters, I will provide you with a summary of each of them here below. Ch.I - Introduction to the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG game; here you will read what is the KUP concept, what is the underlying rationale and how the rulebook is built. Let me add a detail: for this book I decided to write the rules in a (hopefully) easy to read way; short explanations, some examples and many many links to other related or recalled rules; in order to help the reader I outlined keyword or concepts in bold (now, with the formatting, I lost this feature but I will insert it in the printed version).  Ch.II - Character's definition: in this chapter all the main stats ...

It took me more than planned but I finalized the first two supplements for the VI·VIII·X game. These are called "Notebook". The first one is for PCs, it is a 20-page booklet where the player can record any info he likes about the campaign; in terms of contents there are some pages which replaces the traditional PC sheet, some other pages dedicated to any info about the campaign and lastly some useful ref charts which can be used "on the fly" by the player. Hereby the cover of the PC Notebook. The artwork is by G.Doré, it is entitled "Enigma" and it is, to my eyes, very charming. For the playtest version I purposely decided to swap the artwork to a scale of teal in order to make a clear distinction between this "beta" version and the final one.  The concept for this product is that I find a small booklet more useful instead of a single-page sheet which is always added to other loose sheets (one for magic, another for notes and so forth). In this c...

Once it is clear the background, my vision and the main idea, let us try to figure out some more details of the KUP model. The first main feature is that the rules are for GMs only. They need to learn and use them: I wrote "use" and not "apply"; despite the fact that in the majority of the traditional RPGs the "rule 0" is invoked (i.e. the rules in the book are subject to changes upon decision of the GM), I have tried to leave the rules open to the application of the GM (whenever it is possible of course). Therefore the GM has to learn the rules and then define how he wants to use them. The players do not need (or better have not to) read the rules, in particular those referred to the game mechanics. The second main feature is that some rules work on pieces of information that are known to the GM only; among these you can find that even some PC stats are not known to the players, they do not need to know these info (I called these unknown stats US, the acr...

As promised, let us focus on an oustanding detail of my project: the KUP RPG.  Several years ago I started thinking of a game model where only the GM uses the dice and makes any action required to determine the events of the game. I talked about this idea with a friend who convinced me that this would have been a failure for sure in terms of interest and playability. I must admit that the discussion didn't last so much: the explanation he gave was solid... Gamers want to toss dice and ideally make 20! That's one of the keys for the success of the RPGs! I then set aside this idea and tried to elaborate something different which brings to the same result and found a solution that now I call KUP: Keep Uneducated Players. Before any further detail I need to explain the reasons that led me to rethink the current game model: one (and it is not the only!) aspect I dislike is the complete disclosure of any detail of the game mechanics to the players. First of all if you look at a moder...

Talking about the great picture, let us focus on what is planned and what is currently on work... This is a summary of the books/subprojects as of today: Core rule book, it is complete, the title is "VI·VIII·X"; it is about 220 pages in A5 format; it has 9 chapters (and in a dedicated post i will detail them) Optional rule book, the title for the time being is "VIII·XII·XX"; it is in a raw status: partially on a word document (say about 20%) and the remaining part on my handwritten notes (about 20 pages); I would say that I am at approx 10% of that work: the core rules were on approx 20 handwritten pages as well at the beginning and now that book is more than 200 pages; the real missing part which is on a very embrional status is a chapter I want to add at the end, "Running a VI·VIII·X game" where I look forward to explain my point on how this game should be managed by the GM PC Notebook: done and ready for the print; this is a matter of fact a booklet of ...

Well, I had a couple of busy days: I had to manage my first proofreading process... It's likely that I didn't do the perfect job but it seems that I worked it out. 3 friends will look after my text... I could still extend it to a fourth one, I am not sure... For the time being I am really happy of what I have in my hands! It's something completely mine and this is a great achievement for me. I even took a pic like if it was a baby: That said, let's move to serious topics: I am still trying to figure out what could be the best steps once I have completed the proofreading revision. I will have a book and my idea is to launch a voluntary playtest. At the same time I need to do some fund raising in order to cover the expenses of such a print run. So the overall idea is to print a very limited number of books and then distribute them for a playtest. The first question is: how to carry out this wishful thinking?!? In the meanwhile, while I am working on other products for thi...

Today I have not so much time, therefore a very short post! I'm happy as I finished my last review of the full text of the Core Rules! It's done! Next step is to have a third party proofread... no clue how long this will take... but as soon as it has done, I will be ready to launch a limited print run of the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG Core Rules for a playtest! Next step is starting to work out how I will manage this step, both in terms of time, of people and of money... Let's see... for the time being, I am happy!

Let's see what is under the hood... So far here is what I have in mind: A core rule book; this is not the traditional "player's handbook", it is rather a DM guide; from all the rules I have drawn, I took the ones for a "basic" game. The idea is that this book is for GMs only since they are the cornerstone figure in the game (I will eventually develop this concept, for the time being it is sufficient to say that GM are more important than in traditional RPGs). An optional rules handbook; in here I have all the rules that I removed from the core rulebook and make them available to be used once the GM and the players are acquainted with the game. In a nutshell, in here there are some additional features that could be selectively used in the game to improve the game experience at the cost of a more sophisticated game mechanics. A character sheet, it seems silly but even for this item I have in mind something different than the usual 1-page sheet. A GM log where ...

It all started in 2003, I used to attend an Italian forum of RPG players and got the idea to start to draw a setting done with my features: a strong religious framework, a new magic system and a new world where myths and lore brought to these features. Then it came to my mind that there was something more to add, something that in traditional fantasy RPGs is often latent (this doesn't mean it is absent!): it was necessary to start from the baseline and build a culture which brings also values and principles. At those time, we were living the boom of the D&D 3rd Edition... a great game but based on game mechanics and nothing more. So I started thinking to many ideas which should factor in a "new approach": as I said, religion was a milestone, therefore it was necessary to build a sound hagiography. Along with that I felt the need to have a deeper concept of magic, it was not enough to have a good number of spells; paradoxically I didn't care (and still I don't!...

Well, it's a boring Sunday (I am jammed at home). I really have no clue how I should start here. Never posted anything... My first thought goes to Max and Nikola, 2 wonderful fellows: these guys are known for the RPG "Against the Darkmaster"  ( https://www.vsdarkmaster.com/ ). I got in touch with them and they filled me with many wise advices... the first one was: "Open a web page to start telling the world your game". Here I am, thank you Max and Nikola!