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.

Oz Character of the Month: Tip

Before we tackle our main topic today, I just wanted to take some time for some announcements.

First of all, a number of you Oz fans are going to the Oz-Stravaganza over in Chittenango, New York. I wish I could be there, but the budget does not allow me significant travel (like across the country) at this point. However, the budget does allow for me to send a few books in that direction in the care of James C. Wallace II. So if you've gotten tired of reading me shill this book on the blog and want to see it for yourself, seek him out on the Author's Alley.

Second, there are only about 2 more weeks to take the poll over on the right. If you are a follower of the blog, or just keeping up with it, please post your answer. The more I know about my customers, the better I can take care of them. Once this poll wraps up, I plan on posting another to help me get more information on you guys.

And now for a new Oz character. As a number of you are aware, June is Pride Month. For some reason, Oz connects very strongly with the gay community. Quite a few of the Oz fans I have encountered on the internet are gay or otherwise queer. Many people point to Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman as a gay couple, especially when you see their relationship presented in The Tin Woodman of Oz (though how they are gay when they don't have a sex is a conundrum). But one thing that not everyone notices is that there was a transgendered Oz character.

In The Land of Oz, the main character is a young boy named Tippetarius, but the story ends with his transformation into a fairy princess.

Name: Tippetarius
First Appearance: The Land of Oz
Template: Child in Oz

Size: 2

Athletics: 2
Awareness: 3
Brains: 3
Presence: 2
Sneaking: 3
Wits: 3

Traits: Craftsman (Wood)

Friends List: Mombi

While Mombi may seem an odd choice for a friend, the appearance of the Wishing Pills later in the story seems to fit the plot device nature of how Oz Points work. And since he got them in something he took from Mombi, that kind of makes her his friend.

Sorry about the late (and 100% Content Free!) post this week. You see, I'm getting married tomorrow. So you can imagine how this last week has been for me. I love you guys, I really do. I just love her more.

It Lifts And Separates!

Not that kind of support. I'm here to talk about support in RPGs. You know, sourcebooks, setting books, and other material that adds on to what you get in the main rulebook of an RPG. In fact, some gamers won't even consider a game until it's got a few supplements out.

Publishers love supplements too. Because they are another chance to make money from the same customers. They also represent another chance to catch new customers by highlighting something really cool about your game that you were forced to skim over in the core book.

Which means I am very glad to announce that there is finally a supplement for AiO. It's the Adventures in Oz Characters Pack (Lulu/Paizo/RPGNow/DriveThruRPG). 15 characters from the Oz stories ready to play in your AiO campaign. You may have seen some of these on the blog already but there are also characters that I have statted especially for this product. And all characters have received special treatment, getting put on their own full page deluxe character sheet complete with an illustration of the character., including some that were commissioned specifically for this project from Oz artist S.P. Maldonado.

I'll be watching this supplement's sales with interest. For starters, sales of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road have been rather lackluster. 131 copies between print and PDF over the past year. Maybe it's just that my shoestring promotional budget is actually thin enough to count as fishing line and I haven't been able to get out as much to promote the game.

When I contributed AiO to the DriveThruRPG Pakistan Relief Bundle, around 2500 people downloaded the game. I got two (positive) reviews out of that and did experience an uptick in print sales at that time. But what if I had had a nice little app-priced bit of bonus material out then? And now that I do, are they still interested?

Also, I've started a poll off to the side there. I want to know who reads this blog and where they get their RPGs (my RPG at least.)

Confessions of an Oz/Gaming Snob

NOTE: This is the post that Blogger ate last week. They didn't get around to reposting it, so I am.

Just about any fandom has its share of snobs and elitists. This becomes especially problematic when the elitist attitudes drive off the n00bs, or even the more casual fans.

On the gaming side, this manifests as a sort of stigma against D&D. We deride its hack and slash focus and the excessive lengths some players will go through to "win" at RPGs. While we acknowledge that D&D is one of the most common introductions to RPGs, we wait for those players to branch out and start playing "real" RPGs.

I actually found myself harboring this attitude. When I met Kevin Andrew Murphy at DunDraCon, I discovered that he had been working for Paizo Publishing (home of the Pathfinder RPG, a successor to 3rd edition D&D) and made some comment about how I had "grown up" out of D&D some time ago (no offense).

He then proceeded to explain to me that D&D isn't just a stepping stone, but should in fact be viewed as a lingua franca, a common experience that unites all gamers. Even if D&D wasn't your first game, you've likely played it at some point in your gaming career.

So I try to keep an open mind on this, especially since I am playing in one D&D game and have recently launched an exploration of The Castle of the Mad Archmage using OSRIC. It can be hard at times, though.

When I first saw this video, I was initially unimpressed. The tune was catchy and the visuals were good, but the lyrics were all about hack& slash play (including the oft-repeated line "hackin' them all up"). While I try to avoid telling people that they're doing it wrong, the lack of context was bothersome to me. They seemed to be fighting monsters for the sole reason that the Dungeon Master put them there to be killed. We don't see what this fighting accomplished or why they were fighting in the first place.

On the Oz side, we have The Movie. The 1939 MGM musical with Judy Garland. It's been broadcast on TV regularly through the years and has sustained several DVD releases. But, like D&D, it's got that reputation as the "Lowest Common Denominator" of the fandom. We keep waiting for people to eventually pick up the books that made Oz into a delightful and rich fairyland.

I have no problem with this. It was a good movie and I enjoy it myself (Though it has been a while since I've seen it). But I will say that a rich fairyland will make for more interesting gaming. That said, you certainly don't need to restrict your adventures in Oz to L. Frank Baum's work. If you want to adventure in Movie-verse Oz or Wicked Oz, go right ahead. But you will have to put some of the meat on those bones yourself. Thankfully, AiO gives you the tools to do just that.

Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum!

For those who don't know, today is the 155th birthday of L. Frank Baum, the creator of Oz. And Oz fans everywhere are celebrating.

Jane Albright of the International Wizard of Oz Club, is putting together a video composed of contributed photos of Oz fans doing Ozzy things today. Here's my contribution, a photo of my with my book, Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. I also decided to highlight my geek side by wearing a nerdy t-shirt and posing in front of my D&D shelf. If you want to contribute a photo of you doing something Ozzy today (like playing AiO), you can email it to IWOCEvent@aol.com

Also, I contributed a voice to Jared Davis' latest Royal Podcast of Oz, as the Wizard in the Little Wizard Story "Tik-Tok and the Nome King."

Cast An Ozzy Spell: Out of Oogaboo

This is a fun one, because it touches on the interesting space between spells and magic items. The Travel power is generally limited to magic items, but this was clearly a one-time effect. Another reason one-shot items like this are useful is that manufacturing them doesn't require a roll. So if your Brains skill isn't what you need it to be to achieve a certain magical effect, maybe you should look into making it a single use item.

It's easy to imagine that characters like Dr. Pipt are on the low end of the Brains spectrum for Sorcerers and so rely on items rather than spells in order to avoid the risk of failure.

Power: Travel (3)
Scope: City/Race (2)
Ritual: No Ritual (0)
Item: Single Use (-3)
Effect Power: 2

This is the spell Glinda used on Queen Ann Soforth and the Army of Oogaboo to transport them out of Oz into the unknown lands beyond the Deadly Desert, kicking off the story of Tik-Tok of Oz.

Those of you following along with your book at home, you'll notice that I didn't include a Ritual modifier to drop the Effect Power down to 1. While this would have been more efficient choice, I felt that a magical effect of this magnitude should have a more significant cost. 2 Oz Points/exotic ingredients sounds about right.

Baum Proliferation Sale!

In celebration of L. Frank Baum's birthday on May 15, I'm offering a 15% discount on Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. Pick it up at Lulu.com in print or PDF, RPGNow, (print, PDF and bundle) and DriveThruRPG (print, PDF and bundle) through the links over on the right. (Use these links when ordering from RPGNow or DriveThruRPG, or else you won't get the discount.)