This Year's Haul

As is my usual tradition, I'll be sharing my DunDraCon haul with you in this post. I do this for a couple of reasons. First of all, it gives me an opportunity to geek out (and who doesn't love an opportunity to geek out?). Also, since not all of my fans are gamers, I like to show them some of the options out there.

Starting from the top of the pile, we have:

Dungeon World:  This game uses the rules of another game (in this case Apocalypse World) and rebuilds them into a D&D style game. It's a pretty thick book that I haven't gotten entirely through, but the system works on the basis of "moves." Some moves are unique to a character, like a skill or power, but other moves can be made by anyone, and the GM even has moves. While it looks like a potentially fun fantasy game, I have a hard time seeing it handle the good ol' player vs. environment, dungeon crawling playstyle of old-school D&D.

Monsterhearts (not pictured): This game also uses the Apocalypse World engine. Since it's a smaller game with fewer moves, it's somewhat easier to grok. It aims to model the supernatural horror/teen drama genre made popular by shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and True Blood. As it encompasses sex and violence as well as angst, you might want to be careful who you play this with.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: The latest licensed game from Margaret Weis Productions. It uses a modified version of the Cortex+ system originally developed for their Smallville game, then modified even further for more action-oriented drama. Like most Marvel RPGs I've seen, they presume that you will be playing an existing Marvel character. This book provides a modest set of these, as well as tips for assigning stats and powers for existing characters. There is also a free download of random tables for creating original characters. (There are currently no rules for "point-based" or designed characters, but there's nothing stopping you from simply choosing on the random tables rather than rolling.)

Arduin Eternal: This one was actually something my wife bought. Many years ago, we found the two-volume Compleat Arduin set at a used bookstore. I thought it was a neat, if slightly kludgy system, but my wife fell in love with the plethora of exotic races. When she saw that there was a new, updated edition of the system, she did an impressive impersonation of Igor from the Dork Tower comic strip (catchphrase "IT MUST BE MINE!"). It looks much cleaner than the Compleat Arduin, though I have not yet looked to see if the critical hit charts still include the possibility of losing a buttock. (Yes, I just typed "losing a buttock." Meaning the character will sit lopsided for the rest of their days.)

Five Nations: A setting sourcebook for D&D's Eberron setting.

Stormwrack: A D&D environment sourcebook giving campaign options and adventure tips when sailing the seven seas (or however many seas there are in any given fantasy world).

Pathfinder Core Rulebook: Actually, we already have one of these. And all the other hardcover books that Paizo has published. But having an extra copy is always nice. That way, it takes two people looking up rules for all of the books to be taken up rather than just one.

Amazing Adventures: This is a pulp-style RPG using the SIEGE Engine, the same rules that power the Castles & Crusades fantasy RPG. Although it is a fun read and looks like it would be fun to play, I have a a hard time grasping the idea of a "level 1 pulp hero." When I think of pulp heroes, I think of people who are already at the top of their game.

Rifter #10: Due to a number of issues with Palladium's business practices, I prefer to buy their books on the secondary market. That is, used. In previous years, the Buyer's Bazaar has offered a decent selection, but this year, I only found one Palladium product. On the up side, the GM advice from Hugh King is worth its weight in gold for any Rifts GM.

Don't Rest Your Head (not pictured): A very surreal game about insomniacs who find themselves in the Mad City, a place of Neil Gaiman-esque nightmares.

Munchkin Deluxe: I already had Munchkin, but this was just too cool to pass up. The set includes not just the cards and die (just one die) from the original game, but a playboard with a very cool dungeon-style level tracker and Munchkin shaped pawns, more cards, color illustrations on all the cards, and two-sided cards for tracking a player's gender (which can change at the drop of a hat in this game).

Marshall the Troupes!

No, that's not a mis-spelling. This post is going to be talking about what is often called "troupe-style" roleplaying.

The most common style of play in RPGs involves a player playing a single character until that character dies or retires. Then they create another character and plays through their adventuring life and so on.

Troupe-style play gives each player multiple characters to choose from for any given adventure. So if you were playing a Star Trek RPG, you would play your Starfleet Marine for a combat mission, but bring your Diplomacy Corps officer for a diplomatic mission. Or maybe your pilot who just happens to speak Romulan, since the diplomatic mission takes place near Romulan space.

For those following Barking Alien's Muppet RPG as he's posting it on his blog, you might notice that each player begins play with multiple characters. While each player participates in every scene/sketch, they do so as different characters.

Old School gamers already did something like this back in the day, pulling out one from a binder of character sheets depending on the difficulty level of the dungeon and the specific roles that need to be filled. MMO gamers do something similar with their "alts," bringing in their "tank", "DPS", or "healer" into play as needed.

It can also be used on a short term basis in a regular game to give all the players something to do. For example, in a recent D&D session (a friend of mine is running the game, not me) 3 of the 6 characters were called on to serve as the prosecution, defense, and judge in a trial. Which left 3 players (including me) with nothing to do as this trial scene played out. So my friend gave us witnesses to play so that we could be part of that dramatic scene, even if our regular characters weren't there.

Troupe-style play is also very Ozzy. While some series maintain a consistent core cast, there is very little consistency in the cast of an Oz story. While everyone remembers the classic adventuring party of Dorothy, The Scarecrow, The Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, that grouping has never occurred since. In fact, no more than 2 of these characters have ever adventured together again in the Baum canon (typically the Tin Woodman adventures with the Scarecrow, or Dorothy teams up with the Lion).

Baum would even change up the cast in mid-story. In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, he trades out the Woozy and the Glass Cat for Dorothy and the Scarecrow (an odd exception to the pattern noted above). So if you've got a player who is having a hard time settling on one character, you might want to let them create two and let them play in alternate adventures or find points in the story where they can switch off.

And one of the cool things about doing this in AiO is that even if a character isn't present, they can still have an influence if they are on another character's Friends List.

Firing Characters (Out of a Canon!)

No, that's not a misspelling.

One thing I've always liked about RPGs is that you get to make your own character and have your own adventures and make your own mark on the game world. But when you're dealing with an RPG based on an established property (let's say, to pick a random example, Oz) you've already got a cast of protagonists who have all of the important adventures. Dorothy and company have melted Wicked Witches and saved Oz in a number of other ways throughout the stories. So if you wanted to roleplay in Oz, you've got to be Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman or Cowardly Lion, right?

Wrong!

When Wizards of the Coast launched their Star Wars RPG their ads featured stills from the Star Wars movies with multiple characters gathered. Even if a major character was in the frame, the ad instead drew a circle around the head of a minor character or an extra and asked the question "What's his story?" Sure, Luke Skywalker was the guy who blew up the Death Star, but he's not the only person in the Star Wars universe. And those other stories have the ability to be just as interesting and compelling as Luke's.

A lot of people seem to agree with me, because RPGs that focus solely on the main characters of the franchise are generally unsuccessful. The original Indiana Jones RPG from TSR focused solely on Indiana Jones and his compatriots. An old Doctor Who RPG (namely Time Lord) has an astonishingly complete list of stats for every Doctor and every companion to enter the TARDIS with the assumption that you are going to be playing those established characters. Neither of these games were successful, especially compared to other RPGs based on those properties that did allow original characters (such as the new game Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space)

Another problem that comes up when dealing with established characters has to do with expectations. Once a character gets a certain body of lore built up, especially if it's written by different people. Suppose that in a superhero game, someone decides to play Batman. Not just some guy who's kind of like Batman, but Bruce Wayne Batman. As a character who's appeared in thousands (if not millions) of comic books, several films and a number of TV shows, he's got a lot of background. Which means that every time somebody says "Batman would never do that!" someone else can come up with some instance in some media where Batman did just that. Suddenly, you've got everyone at the gaming table telling you how to play your character and no one agrees on what to do and, most importantly, no one's having fun.

But what about those characters that I've been putting up on the blog for the last few months? Am I suggesting that you completely ignore them?

No. My primary motivation in posting them is to show you what a character looks like and to demonstrate that my system can handle the majority of Oz character types. If someone decides to use them as their character in a game, I don't mind. Sometimes, just starting out, it's useful to have a character you're already familiar with. But I think you'll have more fun by putting your imagination to work on creating your own characters.

The Importance of Being the Narrator

One thing that many newbies may not be familiar with when it comes to tabletop RPGs is the role of the Narrator, or Game Master.

One of the main things that a Narrator does is create the impetus for adventure. When I was first researching Oz RPGs (to see if anyone else had a similar idea), my Google searches turned up a lot of topics on various forums that were "Let's start a Wizard of Oz RPG!" The first few posts are where characters are decided (who's the Scarecrow, who's the Tin Woodman, etc.), then the next few posts are everyone saying hello in character. That's when the thread just dies. Without a Narrator, there's no one to say "And then the Winged Monkeys come flying in!" or "Glinda needs your help!" leaving the characters with nothing to do but exchange silly pleasantries. Some of these RPGs are able to go on longer if the players are willing to be proactive and create situations for their characters, but this seems to be fairly rare.

One thing that I found interesting was how some Internet-based RPGs will have "Stealth Narrators." That is, the moderators or other people-in-charge will have their own characters, just like the other players, but these characters are the movers and shakers in the setting. In an Oz RPG, this would be characters like Glinda, Ozma, or the Wizard. This allows them to guide the story (or stories) much like a typical Narrator in a tabletop game.

And of course, one trick that the Internet allows for is the assumption of multiple identities. So a Narrator can be signed in as Ozma and tell a player "Go talk to Glinda." Then the Narrator signs in on the Glinda screen name and lets the player interact with Glinda.

One downside of this approach is what is known as the "GMPC." This is where the Game Master has their own Player Character embedded with the rest of the party. Some GMs do this with the best of intentions, having someone there to provide a little boost to the group if they need a hint or a little backup. And since supporting cast characters are not limited to the same level/ number of points/etc. as the other players, this GMPC often winds up being more powerful than the other characters in the party. Often, the game devolves into "The GMPC Show" with this character providing most of the story potential and firepower, making the players feel like spectators instead of protagonists.

Another important function of the Narrator is the mediation of action. In a tabletop RPG, this involves handling usage of the rules as well as settling arguments and keeping everybody focused on the adventure. Because it is very possible for a discussion of the peace negotiations between the Flatheads and the Skeezers to derail into a debate about the physics of Robotech given the right group of people (All you gamers out there, tell me you haven't seen that happen).

Mighty, Mighty Munchkin!

This one was inspired by a couple of Christmas gifts I got for my nephews. I had sometimes brought over my copies of Munchkin and Munchkin Impossible to family gatherings, and they seemed to get a kick out of it, so I got them their own Munchkin games: Munchkin Fu and Star Munchkin.
Wait a second! These aren't the friendly Munchkins that Dorothy meets when she first arrives in the Land of Oz. What happened here?

While L. Frank Baum did certainly invent the term, Steve Jackson is actually having fun with a use of the word as it is used by gamers. It entered gaming slang as a quick way of saying "This is a character my kid brother would play" or "This guy plays like my kid brother." Who hasn't called one of their younger relations "the little Munchkin"?

Because when you're young, there are many aspects of an RPG that are hard to get. Especially since older versions of D&D could seem like they're played on a game board (remember that D&D started life as a miniatures wargame, so a grid-based map and miniatures were very common props), younger players would often import ideas from other board games, like the need to win or compete with other players, which would conflict with the new medium, which was much more cooperative. So these "munchkin" players focused on "winning" the game, which in those days meant killing the most monsters, gathering the most loot and trying to maximize their ability to do those things.

The word grew into a general insult, as people tended to refer to anyone who played in a manner they didn't like or weren't used to as a "munchkin".

So now that there's an upcoming Oz RPG, will there be munchkins in Munchkinland? It's possible. I actually designed the fighting rules to be rather unsatisfying to that sort of player. Nobody dies in Oz, so no amount of damage will result in a kill. You can inflict permanent consequences on an opponent by cutting off body parts, but once you cut off a fellows arms and one leg, he'll be hopping away as fast as his remaining leg will carry him. He might even head to the nearest tinsmith to obtain harder-to-damage replacements.

And the way to advance in the game is not by fighting, but by helping other people and making friends. While some fights might come up, they are not the focus of play. If there is such a thing as a "power build" character it would actually be a high Presence build, probably based on the Noble template. The ability to demand a surrender before an opponent has had their Wits score reduced is significant. High Presence skill means that you're fun at parties, too.

At one time, I thought it might be fun to come up with a community in the Munchkin Country to make fun of all the gaming cliches out there, but after over 30 years, there's simply too much. To get an idea, check out the webcomics Order of the Stick, DM of the Rings and Nodwick. All very funny stuff.

Making Gamers, part 2

I actually wanted to do this blog last week, but I felt that I was putting up too many gaming posts and losing my Oz "cred". I keep shooting for a balance, but that balance swings from one side to the other before it eventually (I hope) settles down.

I think one of the biggest obstacles to bringing more gamers into the hobby is, well, the gamers themselves.

Reason #1) The Geek Social Fallacies. Everyone wants friends that accept you for who you are. But there is such a thing as taking it too far. The unwashed nerd is a pervasive stereotype and a tough one to beat. The good news is that I have only met 1, maybe 2, in my 10 years as a gamer. All of the other gamers I've known have been fairly normal people.

Reason #2) Gamers think they need gamers. It's a fairly common complaint on RPG forums and internet boards: "I can't find any gamers!" People seem to think that only people who play RPGs are going to be interested in playing RPGs. I'll admit that I fall into this to at least some degree. My last two gaming groups have consisted of people that I knew from previous gaming experience.

But remember that every gamer started out gaming sometime. Whether that was red box D&D at the age of 10 or finding the gaming club at your local university, before that point, you were just an ordinary non-gamer. Someone had to introduce you to the idea, plant the seed in your brain and run your first game.

I'd like to propose that any gamers out there reading this invite one of their non-gamer friends to their next game. And if you're a gamer who can't find enough gamers for a group, try gathering some friends and see what happens. And for those Oz fans out there, next time you have a meetup, rather than busting out Trivial Pursuit Wizard of Oz edition, try Adventures in Oz. The beta files are still available on my website until the official game is released, so you don't have to wait forever.

Making Gamers

It has been said that it is next to impossible to make gamers. You cannot just give people an RPG and expect them to go for it. That is one of the many things I picked up from the very experienced Aldo Ghiozzi and I have no reason to doubt him.

But the fact remains that it did happen. When Dungeons & Dragons debuted, there was no existing RPG market for them to draw off of. Vampire: The Masquerade also drew people into the hobby that might not have otherwise played. Several other games have tried this and failed. What did they do that worked?

Both games appealed to the non-roleplayer. D&D started life as a miniatures wargame with a few innovations. Vampire came out during the heyday of the goth subculture and gave players an opportunity to create a consistent world where they were all vampires and had plenty of reason to be goth and emo. Also, as we can see, they both connected with these groups when they were at their height.

With the 70th anniversary of the MGM movie this year, and the 100th anniversary of The Road to Oz for the Oz nerds, it seems like that is starting to happen. The third novel in The Wicked Years (A Lion Among Men) came out this year and Wicked is still going strong on Broadway with talk of a film adaptation. All of this sets a pretty fertile field for Oz activity of all sorts.

And I think an Oz RPG like Adventures in Oz has a lot to offer the Oz community. Oz gamers can finally have a rule system designed with Oz in mind. Oz scholars can enjoy picking apart the Oz reference material I have compiled for the book. Oz collectors can have one more item for their ever-growing collections. Oz art fans can bask in the new art that I have commissioned for the game. Oz writers and storytellers can have one more outlet for their imagination.

I think I can make some gamers. Are you going to be one of them?

My First Role-Playing Game

So you've decided to play your first RPG (preferably Adventures in Oz).

Your first step is to gather your play group and decide who will be the Narrator. You can play with as few as 2 people, one player with a character and the other as the Narrator, but the optimum group is about 4-6 people to get a good mix of personalities among the players and a good mix of abilities among the characters. Larger groups can be hard to manage and may not allow for each character to have a very unique niche.

If you're the one who bought the rulebook and gathered everyone together, you have likely stuck yourself in the position of Narrator. You might be able to talk someone else into taking it on, if they are more creative, more organized, more of a leader in general, or more of an Oz nerd than you are, but don't count on it.

Once you've established who's Narrator, it's time for everyone else to create their characters. Since a character is the player's "playing piece", don't skimp on this process. Try to make character creation a group process. Even if you have one copy of the rulebook, so only one person can reference at a given time, the rest of the players can still provide ideas, and make decisions about the characters they will create once they get the book.

Creating characters for Adventures in Oz is surprisingly quick compared to other systems I've played. I typically set up the first session of any game just for character creation, to let everyone have a chance to look at the book and make adjustments as needed (GURPS, although it is one of my favorite systems, sometimes requires 1 and a half sessions to get everyone to a point where they're satisfied with their characters). Even with all the other conversations and distractions, my AiO playtest group had their characters made within an hour or two.

If you do want to speed this up, there are a couple of things you can do. You can tell your players to make their characters before the meeting. Make sure they have access to you and the rulebook. Make sure there's communication and each player knows roughly what the other players are doing.

Another thing you can do is to make up characters in advance. That way, when your players show up, they can be ready to play very quickly. Make a few more characters than you have players. That way, each player has a choice to make and won't get stuck with a character they may not like.

Once everyone is situated and satisfied with their character, you're ready to begin playing. This consists of you, The Narrator, describing the situation that the characters find themselves in. Ideally, you also give them something fairly immediate to do. This doesn't have to be exciting, adventurous stuff, but it certainly can be.

For example, you decide to start the scenario with Ozma's birthday party. You might want to take a minute to describe the festivities and who is in attendance. Then something happens that at least one character has to respond to. Maybe one of the characters is called upon to give a toast to Princess Ozma. Or maybe the Winged Monkeys fly in to ruin the party.

Now let your players respond to the situation you've presented. What sort of toast do they come up with? How do they respond to the Winged Monkeys? Do they interact with any of the other party guests?

As they're responding to your scenario, think about the actions they are describing. Do any of them make you want to say "I don't know if he can do that" or "There's no way he can do that!"? If so, find the appropriate skill and tell the player to make a skill roll (make sure you've got dice handy!). If one of the players decided to pluck one of the Monkeys out of the air, call for an Athletics roll. If someone wants to frighten them off, it's a Presence roll. If the action seems difficult, give it a penalty. If the action is fairly easy or appropriate, a bonus is suggested.

Keep this cycle going, describing how the scenario changes as a result of the characters' actions, successes, and failures, and giving them things to respond to. By the time you're done, you've got yourself an Oz story that didn't exist before, created on the fly by your group.

That wasn't so hard, now was it?

Everyone Has An Agenda

Everyone should, anyway.

In a roleplaying game, the Narrator is the obvious example of someone with an agenda. If the Narrator doesn't have something to present to the players, then the game doesn't happen. Whether it's a villainous plot by the Nome King or some new corner of Oz to explore, the Narrator needs to have some kind of plan in order for the game to move forward.

In my experience, a lot of players come to the table without an agenda. I find this very frustrating as a Narrator, since that means I have to be not only the ringmaster, but the circus as well (how's that for a metaphor?). When I've brought this up, these players have waffled, claiming that they didn't know the rules or the world well enough to do that sort of thing. So perhaps it can be chalked up to comfort level.

Agendas don't have to be big, though. In fact, the best ones are small ones. No need to sign up your character for an epic quest for the one-armed man who stole your magic sword every time you play. Just find some small way to express your character in every scene.

A good example of this would be Corbin the Bear from my Adventures in Oz playtest. His agenda was formality. Everything had to be done in the proper way. Exactly what this way was often wound up being very humorous and enriched play greatly.

In the game I'm currently running (not Oz, unfortunately) one of the characters is a mental patient who found himself in charge of the asylum. As he undertakes his adventures, he tries to psychoanalyze everyone he meets. When the group gets into fights, this character distracts opponents by asking them about their mothers and things like that.

Update on the poll: Adventures in Oz: Beyond the Deadly Desert was in the lead for a day or two, but now it's tied with Real Raw Wrestling. Just 7 days left to vote!

The Indie Jones

No, not that Indy Jones.

Just about everyone has heard of indie films, movies made on small budgets by unknown companies that manage to be a little more daring and avant-garde in their stories. But not many people know about the indie RPG scene. Like those indie filmmakers, indie RPG publishers push the boundaries of what makes a game.

While opinions differ (significantly in some cases, so be careful out there!), my understanding is that "traditional" games focus on representing the world, providing "reality models", much like the physics engine in a video game. They vary widely in how much resolution the system provides. Some of try to stay very close to reality, like GURPS, while most feature some level of "cinematic" or action movie-style realism, like the HERO system or Fuzion. The main advantage of a system like this is that it can be applied to a wide variety of worlds because the rules are generally applicable.

Indie games have rules that emphasize story and character over the world.

FATE and Burning Wheel are both excellent games that focus on characters. Both reward players for making decisions that are "in-character" even if it isn't the most practical or effective decision. While White Wolf is one of the major players in the RPG industry, it was one of the pioneers of this methodology, as characters in their game Vampire: The Masquerade had a Humanity score that would rise and fall based on the things that the character was forced to do to maintain their vampiric existence.

The games that focus on story tend toward telling a certain story with near-endless variation. My Life With Master gives players the roles of minions to a cruel and wicked Master (Suddenly, I'm thinking of running this game with the players being Winged Monkeys and the Master is the Wicked Witch of the West). The players then direct their characters through the process of discovering that not everyone is cruel and eventually overthrowing and escaping from the Master.

Adventures in Oz fits my definition of an indie game. For one, it is very much a one man show (me) with a minimal budget. For another, the game is designed from the ground up to tell Ozzy stories. If I had to define the archetypal Oz story in a sentence, it would be "Exploring Oz with your friends." The exploration aspect is covered in the extensive section on the Land of Oz, along with tips on making your own Ozzy locations to explore. The friendship angle is covered with the Oz Point/Friends List mechanic. Making new friends or helping friends that you already have earn Oz Points, which can then be used to get a favor from a friend on your list.

What's your definition of "indie"? What's you're favorite indie game?

What am I supposed to do with all of this?

Well, I've been blogging for over a year now but I haven't really answered one of the most basic questions my readers may have: What the heck is an RPG and how do you play one?

In a roleplaying game, each player controls a single character. This character is defined by a set of stats, traits, or abilities written down on a piece of paper. More modern games typically include personality traits of some kind, giving you an idea of not only how strong or fast a character is, but how they are likely to respond in given situations.

The Game Master (a generic term. Adventures in Oz uses "Narrator") presents the players with a scenario and adjudicates their responses. They do this with a mix of die rolls, judgment and common sense.

For example,

Game Master: Your house has just crashed down after being lifted away by a Kansas twister. You hear some voices outside. What do you do?

Player: I KILL THEM AND TAKE THEIR STUFF!!!!!

Okay, seriously now

Game Master: Your house has just crashed down after being lifted away by a Kansas twister. You hear some voices outside. What do you do?

Player: What are the voices saying?

GM: You can't really tell. Make an Awareness roll.

Player: Let's see. I've got Awareness 3. (rolls dice) 1 and 4. Looks like a regular success to me.

GM: You don't know exactly what they're saying, but there are a few very nervous male voices and a reassuring female voice. It sounds like she's in charge.

Player: Oh good. I'll step out and introduce myself.

GM: There are 3 men and one old woman. At least you think so. Even though two of the men have beards and the woman looks quite old, they're all only about as tall as you. As you approach, the old woman steps forward and says "You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage."

Player: Woah. First of all, my character's, like, maybe 10 years old, so these people have to be pretty short. And who did I kill? This isn't like the last game you ran where I woke up with amnesia and I found out I was some kind of CIA hitman, is it? I'll tell her, "You are very kind, but there must be some mistake. I have not killed anything."

GM: She replies "Your house did, anyway, and that is the same thing. See! There are her two feet, still sticking out from under a block of wood." She points at something under your house. Sure enough, there are two feet sticking out wearing silver shoes. And it looks like your house squashed the rest of her flat.

Player: Holy crap! So it's not like I can pick up the house and free her, huh?

GM: Nope. Since you're a little girl and only Size 2, and the house is Size 5, that's a -3 penalty to your Athletics skill.

Player: And I've only got Athletics 2. With that penalty, I'm at less than zero. Right, no chance.

(For an embellished Actual Play log of the rest of this session, check it out here.)

The Railroad and the Sandbox

One of the "swear words" of the gaming hobby is "railroading". In a game where any action should be possible, being forced to follow a specific path (a "train track", if you will) can be highly frustrating. Especially when freedom of action is a big selling point for the game and character-based decisions are viewed as just as valid as game-based ones.

I believe the computer game equivalent is called "pixel-bitching" or "pixel-hunting", in which a player has to execute a very specific sequence of events or locate an item in-game that is only a few pixels across and therefore very easy to miss.

A related issue in gaming is "illusionism". Since the GM isn't a computer and can change things to suit his moods, he will sometimes do this to the detriment of the story and the play experience. There are situations where this is valid. For example, the GM may design his story so that the players need some background on the Yip Country and makes Frogman available to provide this information. But one of the players decides that he or his character is repulsed by frogs and doesn't want to deal with Frogman. So the GM decides that Cayke the Cookie Cook is visiting the Emerald City right then and is able to fill them in on what they need.

Sounds like the GM just saved the story, right? In that case, yes. For an example of how this can go wrong, let's consider the classic dilemma of the lady and the tiger. The players are faced with two doors. They know that one of the doors has a prize for them (the lady in the metaphor) while the other has a horrible monster behind it (our tiger). The GM could decide that the lady is behind the door on the left and the tiger is behind the door on the right and let the dust fall where it may. The illusionist GM could decide that whichever door they open, the players will get the lady (because they worked so hard to get to this point in the story, they deserve something good) or the tiger (because they were all a bunch of jerks who didn't chip in for pizza this week, or maybe just because they love a big fight scene against impossible odds).

This really weakens the drama of the story once the players realize that the choice wasn't really theirs to make. They will lose faith in the GM, lose their respect for setting, and overall not enjoy the game all that much anymore.

Now we get to play in the "sandbox". Made popular by "open-world" video games like the Grand Theft Auto series, the "sandbox" RPG encourages the characters to define and pursue their own goals. The "traditional" model states that the plot typically flows from the GM to the players, who respond to events as they see fit. The "sandbox" style of play gives players more freedom to create their own objectives in the game and encourages the GM to give these goals a reasonable chance of happening.

The GM has to be on his toes as well, as players will feel much freer to try things they would not otherwise do. Also, players will be much more interested if the GM puts some of the supporting cast in the way of their goals, giving them a challenge to overcome. It also creates the feeling that the world "lives" in its own way, rather than simply being a place where plot happens.

Dying is easy, Comedy is hard

Last week's entry was a distillation of a good bit of research into the soul of comedy gaming.

It started with the ninjas. The jokes were flying fast and furious around the gaming table, some of them at my instigation. As I was browsing the forums on RPG.net, I found a thread which had people recount their funniest gaming moments. There were a few good ones, but then one fellow jumped in with something like "Comedy gaming is fun for a one-shot, but make sure to kill all the characters so you can do something serious next week." Which makes sense for Paranoia (which I placed in the "joke game" category last week), but not for what I was trying to do by incorporating comedic elements into the setting of a continuing game.

That's when I turned to GURPS Discworld, the officially licensed roleplaying game of Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories. For those of you familiar with GURPS, you might be thinking "Why is such a crunchy and realistic rules system being used for a comedic setting?" A couple reasons were mentioned in the book itself. What it generally boils down to is "Not everything is a joke." When someone stabs you with a sword, it hurts A LOT, which suits the realistic tone of GURPS quite well. While the fellow may be trying to stab you for a funny reason (explained only in footnotes), it still stands a very good chance of killing you (at which point, you get to meet Death, who's not a bad guy all 'round).

That was my first big realization: The only way for comedy to be sustained is if not everything is a joke. If the players of the game have a serious interest in what their characters are doing, they will want to continue to play. Most people didn't tune in to "Friends" because all the jokes were that funny, but to keep up with the character and relationship drama. The jokes were just icing on the cake, really.

The next step also came from RPG. net. On a thread regarding horrible experiences playing at a convention, one poster recounted a scenario he played in once that required the characters to re-enact the punchline to a scatological joke in order to "win."

Second big realization: No punchlines. For one thing, Baum didn't use them either. My thoughts of comedy in Oz always bring me back to Utensia (visited by Dorothy in "The Emerald City of Oz"). Nearly everything in Utensia was a pun of some sort. The whole scene was a collection of rapid fire puns and jokes with no build-up to a punchline whatsoever. And trying to steer a group of players into creating a specific conclusion for a set punchline smacks of railroading (I think I've just found next week's blog topic), which is generally considered a bad thing.

Comedy Gaming vs. Joke Gaming

People play games to have fun, right? And part of that is making jokes. But from what I've seen, most people don't seem to take comedy gaming seriously. It sounds funny, but it's true.

They seem to get comedy gaming confused with what I am calling "joke gaming." The big difference is that comedy gaming takes at least some part of itself seriously, be it the setting, the characters or the plot. Without taking some aspect seriously, the game is going to devolve into a series of bad punchlines and an unplayable plot.

Paranoia, although a lot of fun, is definitely a joke game. The setting is George Orwell's 1984 as an amusement park (where everything is wonderful OR ELSE!), the characters have no guarantee that they will be competent in their assigned task (though they generally are competent at something), and the plot is crazily convoluted (all of the characters are secretly traitors to the Computer and are often assigned missions by their traitorous friends to complete alongside the mission given to them by the all-seeing Computer, all while trying to score points with the Computer by turning in any traitors they discover).

Here are a few comedies I've seen and how they fit into the breakdown of Setting, Plot and Characters.

Red Dwarf: The setting and plots were actually rather serious science-fiction fare. What really made it funny were the characters (Dave Lister is the last man in the universe you'd pick to be the Last Man in the Universe).

Discworld: The only thing that got taken seriously in any consistent way was the plot. There are serious characters (Commander Vimes) and not-so serious characters (Captain Carrot). The setting is home to places like Bad Ass and the Place Where The Sun Does Not Shine. When Ankh-Morpork was ruled by a dragon in Guards! Guards! a few members of the City Watch tried to slay the dragon by making the odds against themselves 1,000,000:1 (because million to one chances turn up nine times out of ten). But the plots themselves are rather serious. Rincewind saves the Disc on numerous occasions, Vimes solves murders, and so on.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Here we come full circle. In the Hitchhiker's Trilogy (all 5 volumes!), it seems like the characters are the only serious element. The setting is (maybe) science-fictionally probable, but contains such ludicrous artifacts as the Infinite Improbability Drive, the Vogons, and God's Last Message To His Creation (We Apologize For The Inconvenience). The plots are more picaresque than anything, as the characters bounce around from one ridiculous planet to another. Douglas Adams is quite good at highlighting the silliness of his universe by having at least one character (typically Arthur Dent) notice it and comment on it.

It looks like all my examples are British, which may say something about my sense of humor, or just the fact that I haven't been exposed to the great American humorists (are there any?).

In an RPG scenario, it's oddly difficult to do a character based comedy. Since most players expect to be the heroes of their adventures, they will often be highly resistant to being the butt of very many jokes. Even the Red Dwarf RPG (yes, it exists and I own it) ascribes the typical character with a basic level of competence, even though the main joke of the series is the incompetence of the characters.

If a plot isn't interesting and at least somewhat serious, players will be very unlikely to go along with it. So most of the humor of comedy gaming will typically come from setting.

Another thing to be wary of in comedy gaming is punchlines. For starters, since the player-characters have free will, getting them to go along with a specific plan of action takes some doing. For another, you're basically setting up only one joke. This runs the risk of the players not appreciating your joke. If you plan for a number of small jokes, one-liners and such, the chance that the whole experience will be marred by one bad joke diminishes significantly. Also, by using multiple jokes, it allows you to "read the room" to see which jokes are appreciated and which ones aren't, allowing you to tailor the comedy experience.

What makes an RPG?

What is it that separates an RPG from other types of games? Please be warned that this is my own opinion on the subject. Other writers, many of them with much more education and experience than myself, have tried to tackle this with limited success.

Roleplaying happens when players go beyond the concept of "position identification" (i.e "This is my playing piece" becomes "This is my guy"). Roleplaying is encouraged when this works to the player's advantage. For example, Monpoly isn't an RPG because imagining yourself in the place of a top hat or shoe does not give you an advantage in the game.

The original Dungeons & Dragons game became one of the first games to offer this kind of advantage. Unlike many other wargames available at the time, D&D gave each player control of a single character, rather than a squad or army. And there's also the fact that first level sucked.

I really discovered that last for myself rather recently at the hands of OSRIC. My friend Fishgod had discovered this, dug out an old D&D module, and tried to run it for my gaming group. There was only one survivor. Mostly because we expected the rules to be more forgiving, like more modern games.

On reflection, it was this unforgiving nature that led to roleplaying in the first place. When you've got a visibly non-zero chance to enter play with only 1 hit point, you don't charge up to things with your sword. You get creative. You distract your opponents with changes to the environment. You lead them into the dungeon's traps. By visualizing the situation and putting yourself in your character's shoes, your character's survivability increased dramatically, making it more likely that you'll reach second level, at which point things get slightly less sucky.

Modern roleplayers (including some in my group) have complained that there is little room for roleplaying in classic D&D. The alignment system was not yet fully formed, so there's no real support for characterization and drama. Every adventure published for the system is a dungeon full of monsters to be killed.

By my definition, most of the video and computer games that are labeled as RPGs are not RPGs. They remove the player's ability to improvise solutions, reducing the game to the combat simulation that modern roleplayers decry. A well written story makes the game much more fun, certainly, but it doesn't really replace the flexibility of making your own decisions.

A couple of entertaining examples of what is possible when a person (as opposed to a computer) is mediating the action:

For those who have been following the Actual Play thread I have on wonderfulwizardofoz.net, I give you Corbin. In his first adventure, he managed to extend a war that otherwise would have been ended. Rather than tell him his action failed, and that his actions would continue to fail until he convinced the two sides to interact peacably, I allowed his actions to succeed and to let him deal with the consequences of his actions. It will be interesting to see him win over Ozma after that sort of incident.

Last night, Fishgod got us to try Paranoia. As a comedy game, one of it's many schticks that the characters are issued useless items and highly experimental items and are ordered to find uses for them. My character was issued a freeze-dried bagel and another character was issued a briefcase full of expanding monomolecular razorwire. After several characters fell victim to the razorwire, my character got creative and devised a shield made of the densest substance known to man: A freeze dried bagel. A computer would have to have planned rather far ahead to expect that move in order to allow it to work. Fishgod, seeing that it enhanced the fun of the game, allowed the unorthodox defense to take place and much fun was had by all.

My gaming history

One of the reasons you got the "Googling" blog on Monday is because I wanted to make sure that this blog didn't get pushed back too far after my "Yes, You Can!" blog. After I posted that one, I realized that you guys might be interested in what got me into gaming in the first place. So here it is.

I didn't start gaming until after high school. I didn't start doing much of anything until after high school, but that's a different therapy session.

It was actually my girl who got me started, in a way. When we were still feeling each other out (we didn't really date, we just hung out a lot) she brought along her copy of GURPS Wild Cards. She was a fan of the Wild Cards novels and the book was a convenient reference work on the series. She had played a little D&D in high school, but had no experience with GURPS at that time.

At the local game store, I would browse the used books section, because I didn't have the money to buy any new stuff. That was where I first saw the Dream Park RPG. Looking throught it's "What is roleplaying?" section, I had to shake my head. There was no way that roleplaying was as simple as it was described there. There had to be charts and tables and miniature figures that take days to paint! All those things that hurt my brain and cost too much money! (Turns out I was wrong on every single count, but I wasn't there yet.)

Remembering her GURPS book, I picked up a used copy of GURPS Horror (first edition) as something of a present. It might still be around here somewhere, but I haven't seen it for a while.

When she left for college in LA, I went with her. She got a job on campus and I discovered the joys of the internet on the campus library computers. We started picking up the GURPS core books, mainly to figure out what the supplements were talking about (being supplements, they had lots of things with ST scores, for example, but no explanation of what an ST score was and how to tell if you had a good one) and partly to see what other options were available (lots, it turned out).

Via the internet, I discovered a variety of other roleplaying games as well. The main one that I still recall from this period is Forgotten Futures, which is still being supported after all this time. (Thanks for making me feel old, guys.) I also connected with a roleplaying group in Culver City (still part of the Los Angeles metroplex) and got my first taste of roleplaying with the RoleMaster system and the old D&D Temple of Elemental Evil. My human paladin was built for me via a computer spreadsheet. I heard some muttering about how hard it was to build a character in the rules. I didn't discover exactly how hard until I tried to build a character under those rules myself many years later. After two hours, I gave up.

It was during this time that I started development of my own roleplaying game. Me and the girl had the idea of a comic book, with me writing and her drawing. I thought it would be fun to put a simple RPG in the back of the comic. Each issue would contain the basic rules of the game, plus a little more information on the world or stats on a certain character. Nothing ever really came of it, unfortunately. I still have the RPG rules somewhere, but it would take quite a bit of work to make them really usable.

Fast forward now to the wondrous Year 2000. Although the flying car did not debut in that year, the third edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules did. Even though myths about roleplaying games had been shattering right and left, I was still intimidated by the granddaddy of them all: D&D. One more myth shattered when I picked up the Player's Handbook. Here was a version of D&D that was comprehensible.

Not long after, I joined a group and created my first D&D character: Konrad the Barbarian. It's more like he was a Barbarian named Konrad, but some people have no sense of subtlety. He wound up being the only character that I played for any significant length of time.

Because another role was forcing itself on me. The role of Dungeon Master. At the same time I was playing in that group, Another group of friends thought it would be fun to play our own game, and the role of DM fell to me. So I picked up a Dungeon magazine and picked an adventure out of it to run. I can't say I did the best job. Heck, there are times even now when I feel I could be a better Game Master.

But it was a role I've been kind of stuck with. A few years after that, I discovered the Fantasy Gamers Guild at the local university. I wound up joining a group with a DM who was the worst stereotype of the D&D gamer. Fat and smelly and no sense of story. Our characters woke up in the dungeon (an old game board) with no idea how we had gotten there and no real memory of what brought us there. All we knew is that there were monsters.

I wound up hijacking the game out from under him by bringing in games from my growing collection and trying to tempt the other players with them. I finally found a winner with IronClaw. The DM wound up making a character with the Smuggler career, but was disappointed that I didn't give him much to smuggle. He dropped out after a few sessions. On the one hand, it could be considered not much of a loss, and I really didn't miss him much at the time. In retrospect, however, it could be seen as my first big GMing failure. By failing to reach out and accomodate players, I basically drove him off.

Another part of it was that I was still going from prebuilt adventures. I ran D&D using scenarios from Dungeon Magazine (The encounter and treasure building system still intimidates me, so I would use published scenarios if I ran D&D today). The IronClaw adventures were from the scenarios printed in their supplements. When I ran GURPS Prime Directive shortly thereafter, I dug through my collection of Star Trek RPGs for scenarios.

I didn't create my own adventures until I started running Exalted. I had every supplement, but there were no real published adventures for it. One of the players suggested that something had been stolen from each of the characters and they joined up when they realized that it was the same thief. This led to a pretty epic and awesome storyline. But then, Exalted really is an epic and awesome game.

I ran several games over the course of my involvement with the Guild, including GURPS Wild Cards (the game that somewhat started it all), and my little comic book RPG (which did not go well and convinced me that I couldn't design settings at all).

I never really got much of a chance to play a character, though. Once I started going to DunDraCon, I got to play a few games there. Occassionally, my girl would run D&D for varying lengths of time. Every so often, Fishgod (one of my regular players whose name I'm not going to drop without his permission. Plus, it's a funny nickname) would change things up by offering to run something to help me recharge my GM batteries. I have mentioned this to him at least once, but Fishgod is the kind of GM I want to be when I grow up.

More recently, my confidence in my ability to design settings has been restored as I built a setting for a pulp fantasy game. It started as an experiment to try out the D6 System, but my play group decided that the system was not working out well for us. We wound up converting the game over to the Cartoon Action Hour rules and we had much more fun that way.

Now I'm on my second attempt at running a game that I've designed and it's going much better than the last time. Probably because it's a much stronger idea than the previous one. A system tailored to a specific setting and set of ideas. Fishgod has even offered to run a session of it himself to see how it stands up to a devious mind like his.

Yes, you can!

I can't help but noticing that most of my readership is from the Oz side of the fence, rather than the gaming side. To which I say: What's keeping you from gaming?

You might be thinking that gaming is too complicated, with all the rules and dice and charts and tables. It isn't that complicated, really. It's basically like all the pretending games you played as a child, but with a layer of rules to prevent the "I shot you!" "No you didn't" arguments. Some rules systems are more complex, such as Burning Wheel or GURPS, while others are intended to be quite simple and intuitive, like my own Adventures in Oz or Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system. Many systems, simple or complex, offer an explanation of the process of roleplaying in the book itself.

You might be thinking that it's too expensive, with so many books to buy. You have something of a point there, as Dungeons & Dragons, the most popular RPG in the world, requires 3 rulebooks for play, with each one right around $35 a pop. Exalted, a popular anime-style game, requires only one book for play, but that one book costs around $40. And both games have supplementary materials available to enhance play at an additional cost.

This is not always the case, however. The Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition retails for only $10. And let's not forget the burgeoning PDF market. At sites like e23 and DriveThruRPG, you can purchase electronic copies of these games for much less than the price of the print version. And I am intending the retail price of Adventures in Oz to be $19.95.

You might be worried that you don't know enough people that can get together. I have heard stories of people who play with only 1 other person, with one of them as Game Master and the other as a character. The campaign that spawned Zorcerer of Zo consisted of only 2 players and the Game Master. Also, it is increasingly possible to play over the internet, connecting people with text or voice chat, or even emailing or posting "moves" onto a forum. Distance or timing issues are becoming irrelevant in this age of modern technology.

You might be worried that you wouldn't be an entertaining Game Master or that your ideas for stories might not be all that fun. Well, for one thing, if these guys are your friends, they'll accept at least a little oddity from you.

Also on that note, RPG author William H. Stoddard once compared roleplaying to music. You have the performance that is polished and rehearsed, and then you have the "jam session." In music, a jam session is where the musicians perform for their own entertainment and the entertainment of their peers. It is informal, noisy, decidedly imperfect, and most of all, fun for all involved. This is your roleplaying session. No need for perfection, just a group of people having fun, riffing off of what the others are doing.

If you're still intimidated, try listening to the Sqaure One podcast by Sam Chupp. I know that I mentioned it a while ago, and misattributed it to Bill Walton, but this time it's relevant and I got it right. Also, the latest episode was uploaded last week.

For those of you on my playtest mailing list, I probably will not have all that I promised by the end of the month. The redesign of the magic system is taking some time. There will be a new playtest kit emailed soon, but it will not be as complete and polished as I'd like. I am still dedicated to making sure that every bit of the game gets a good going over before the playtest closes at the end of June.

Goodbye and hello

Another death to comment on this week. Thankfully, it's not a new one, just the anniversary of an old one. One year ago yesterday, on March 4, 2008, E. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away. All modern role-playing games are due to the example that he created. Even though "Adventures in Oz" is very different from the Dungeons & Dragons game that Gary designed, or as it is played now, it still traces it's roots back to good ol' D&D.

I finally managed to talk my gaming group into trying out "Adventures in Oz". So on Saturday night, we got everybody's character's made and started out a simple scenario. You can read the results of the session over here. (Check out the rest of the site while you're there. Jared could use the traffic.)

A few things of note: Character creation was a small challenge. One player commented that the Child in Oz template had a higher base Wits rating than the Soldier, which makes little sense in any kind of real world context. But once you start accepting that this is Oz, it makes much more sense.

The big challenge was coming up with starting friends for the characters. According to the rules, every character has one friend of their choice on their Friends List. For the Sorcerer, we decided that he wanted to practice magic legally, so we made his friend the Good Witch of the North. Our sand-man has a wind-fairy as a friend. I think our anime-inspired character is still working on a friend. We'll see how that develops.

Instead of the Winged Monkeys, I was originally going to use Nomes. I was thinking that General Guph was trying to conquer Oz by making sure that Ozma was so busy dealing with all sorts of small troubles that his army could invade with little opposition. I scratched that idea after I realized that our last campaign revolved around a plot by an outsider general to conquer the world. Even if it was a different general with a different master plan, I didn't want to get stuck in a rut.

The rules mechanics worked out just fine. Everyone got the hang of how to roll the dice rather quickly. Our sorcerer had little problem casting spells, but that may simply have been because I have the spell-building rules memorized (I did design them, after all). He was quick to use poetry, meaning he wasn't too ready to risk failure. I probably should have mentioned the Terminal Condition rules to him, because now the spaghetti fields will be permanently illuminated.

Nobody has spent any Oz Points, either for bonuses or for plot devices. We'll see how those mechanics work out.

The only real flaw or gap I found in the system is that Oz Points, while helping to drive play, are not the only kind of reward the system should have. I'd like to be able to reward the players for making me laugh without weakening Oz Points.

Oz and Ends

Now that I've covered all of the major subsystems, let's get into some of the smaller details.

The basic mechanic: Why have 2 6-siders counted separately? Once I had divined the "size matters" principle for the combat system, the 1-5 size scale suggested itself almost immediately, along with the 1d6-low mechanic. The second die came in as I decided that I wanted to make success easier for younger players with fragile, developing egos. Patronizing of me, I know. It wound up correcting for itself, anyway. Now, if I want to give a character a roughly 30% chance of success, I set the skill level to 1 instead of 2. a 50% chance comes at skill level 2, not 3.

The contest and simple contest mechanics were in place before the 2 die system, but they converted over fairly easily. I originally used a "lower is better" style for contested actions, but it was pointed out to me that a "blackjack" (as high as you can without going over) method would require less math, which made it immediately more desirable.

It also created a viable "crit" mechanic in the form of double successes. I am rather fond of those "woohoo!" moments in a game where the dice let you "bat it out of the park." I had toyed with a few ideas for such a system with the one die, including something akin to the "confirm the crit" technique from D&D. The two die system allows the crit to be established with a single roll, speeding up play.

Templates: One thing that I wrestled with for some time was how to construct characters.
Not just a trait scheme, but how to populate that scheme. Combining attributes and skills was simply not viable with the scale of game that I had. So I looked to a couple of games already on my shelf. Notably "Dream Park" and "Pokethulhu", both of which featured traits that were not quite attributes, but were a bit more than skills. I came up with the final list by averaging out the lists of the two games and removing the fighting abilities (Remember a few posts back? "Not everyone is a fighter." I knew you could).

I decided rather quickly that I wanted a fairly closed character creation system. If I went too open, players were just as likely to recreate characters from their D&D game as they were to try something Ozzy. As I read the stories, I realized that the protagonists of the stories fell into a few major categories. These became the concepts that I would build templates around. Another upshot is that Dorothy becomes much more viable, if only to create party variety. Also, since the Dorothy template (Child in Oz) is based on the same number of skill points as any of the other templates, she should have just about as much to contribute. Especially with the high Wits rating that the template provides (Dorothy had quite a lot of perseverance and Trot was nearly fearless), a Child can stand up to just about anybody.

The Scholar template was one of the last additions. A commentator on RPG.net noted that a number of my templates were "skill paragons", such as the Child in Oz template
being the "Wits paragon." But I didn't have a "Brains paragon." Reviewing my source material, I realized that a Brains paragon was highly appropriate. There was the Woggle-bug, who participated in the adventures in "The Land of Oz" and the Frogman who was featured in "The Lost Princess of Oz." Although both of these characters were very unusual, there was nothing so strange that a standard template wouldn't suit for either of them.

Character Advancement: There really isn't any. Dorothy is much the same character she was when she first arrived in Oz. While she doesn't accumulate powers and skills, she does accumulate friends. Thus the Friends List becomes an implicit means of character improvement. There are some exceptions, though. The Wizard of Oz began as a humbug wizard, but later began to study under Glinda and learned real magic. Since he doesn't use the stage magic after this, it could be argued that he "traded in" his Humbug Magic skill for true Magic skill. A more final version of the rules will mention this option a bit more explicitly.

Do you believe in magic?

This was actually the primary aspect that convinced me that Oz needed it's own system. Just about every ruleset that I was familiar with (which is quite a few, I'll warn you now), had battle magic, such as the obligatory fireball spell. While it's cool to allow wizards to be useful in combat situations, that's not how the Oz stories worked. Magic was very much a plot device.

The first question I faced was whether to use a freeform magic system, with no set spells, or a more structured system. Faced with the plot device magic of the stories, I chose to go with a freeform system, since all the magic users seemed to have the right spell at the right time. Unless they didn't, of course.

Now to give it some structure. One of the first things I knew was that there was no fireballs. While it's certainly possible for a wizard to make an opponent uncomfortable in a number of ways, there are no direct damage effects. That just left me to dig up exactly what kind of effects were appropriate.

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" had quite a lot of magic in it. The Silver Shoes which enabled Dorothy to return home at the end. The Magic Cap which allowed the Wicked Witch of the West (and later Dorothy) to command the Winged Monkeys. The Witch's Silver Whistle which summoned wolves, jackdaws, and wasps. The Witch's plot to make an iron bar invisible so that Dorothy would trip over it.

Then there was the Powder of Life and the Wishing Pills from "The Marvelous Land of Oz." The Magic Belt from "Ozma of Oz." Are we detecting a pattern yet?

Most of the early magic was in the form of items with very little spell-casting. It wasn't until much later in the series that spells and such came to the fore. It's a fairly safe bet that the Wizard making a camp out of handkerchiefs in "The Emerald City of Oz" was the first onstage spell-casting in the series.

A case could be made that most of the magical items were used by wicked spell-casters, while good spell-casters were able to pull out whatever spell they needed. This tied neatly into my concept of friends and their relationship to Oz Points. Since wicked characters don't have friends, they don't have pools of Oz Points, and so must resort to other methods. Magic items are reliable, and the exotic ingredients required to make potions and notions help offset the lack of Oz Points.

And then there's the use of cute little poems. Many characters used poems and songs to some degree, but the Wizard used them a few times to use his magic. This led to the Rhyming skill and the means to use it to make magic easier. The Rhyming skill also made sense for a character like Scraps, the Patchwork Girl with all of her silly rhymes.

I still have one hurdle left. I need to figure out how to cancel spells. When Ozma reversed Mrs. Yoops transformations in "The Tin Woodman of Oz", she was unable to completely undo Woot's shapechange. A portion of the plot of "The Magic of Oz" revolved around the Wizard's attempts to free Trot and Cap'n Bill from a magical trap. In "Glinda of Oz", Glinda is completely unsuccessful in using her magic to control the Skeezer island and must resort to figuring out Queen Coo-ee-oh's magic to raise the island.

"The Magic of Oz" also brings up an interesting case. Before he can attempt to free Trot and Cap'n Bill, the Wizard must recover his Magic Bag, which has become lost. This bag also goes missing when Ugu the Shoemaker steals all of the magic in Oz in "The Lost Princess of Oz." Even the potent Yookoohoos may require magical tools of some sort. Mrs. Yoop needed none when she transformed the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow and Woot the Wanderer in "The Tin Woodman of Oz", but Red Reera used a magic powder for her transformations in "Glinda of Oz". That is why both of the magical character templates include the Magical Toolkit trait, but may buy it off.