The Joy of Failure

While there is no way to lose an RPG, since it has no inherent win conditions, it is possible to fail at your intended objective. And that's a good thing.

Failure teaches you things that you'd never learn by succeeding. How to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. How to look for alternate paths to success.

Video games can claim this benefit as well, but what makes an RPG unique is the lack of a reset switch. If you fail in a video game, your character generally dies (occasionally in a cool explosion) and the game resets to a point before you failed and lets you try again. So you try again from exactly the same initial condition.

One thing that amused me about the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was an early mission that took me a few tries to succeed at. Each time, I would get in the car with all my "homies" to do a driveby on a rival gang. Each time, they would fire back until my car and all my "peeps" exploded (though I was usually good enough to get out of the car before that point). Then I would go get the mission again and all those people who died in that car are miraculously alive as if nothing had happened. The exact same people.

But in an RPG, you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. If you fail to sneak past someone, they don't reset and let you try again. You have to find another way to accomplish your goal that doesn't involve sneaking.

Some Narrators may do something like this on accident. They'll tell you to make a roll but assume that you'll succeed. And the situation is set up in such a way that the only way to advance is with a successful skill roll. I've seen this called the "Mandatory Skill Roll Bug" though some of you might have your own name for it.

Video games also claim to support critical thinking. This is true, as player must figure out the solution to a problem in order to advance the plot of the game. Find the right weapon or find the right pattern to use in the boss battle. Find the key to access the new area. Which is good if there's only one solution to a given situation.

In an RPG, multiple solutions are possible, because your choices aren't limited by what a computer can anticipate, but by what a player and Narrator are willing to imagine. Instead of hunting all over the game world to find the one item that will accomplish a certain task, a player may decide to attempt the task with a similar item or look for a way to accomplish it without the item at all.

"The Jaded City of Oz", the sample adventure in the back of the Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, does this sort of thing very well. Each scene along the parade route does not have a preset solution that the players must stumble upon in order to advance the story. And since the parade goes on whether or not any of the scenes are fully resolved, players can even choose to avoid or ignore the encounters without "failing the mission" or cause the story to come to a crashing halt.

Why YOU Should Be Playing Adventures In Oz

If you're a gamer:

It's a refreshing break from all that traditional elves and orcs fantasy.

It's rules-light, making it great for beer & pretzels-style gaming.

The setting has surprising breadth, so if you wanted to turn your beer & pretzels game into a
campaign, it is certainly doable.

"Munchkin" is a perfectly valid character concept.

If you're an Oz fan:

"Scratch an Oz fan and you'll get an Oz story." And here's a great tool to help you get your story out. You can create nearly any Oz hero you can think of and take them on all new adventures. Or take the role of the Narrator and present your players with challenging scenarios of your own design or inspired by your favorite Oz book.

Even if you're not planning on playing, the setting material can be used by writers as a reference or source of inspiration.

If you're a Grognard (you know who you are):

It's based on the book. As a grognard, you are quite literate. Your old school gaming sessions were inspired by Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft, but we all know you slipped in an Oz book every now and again.

You want to pass on your gaming legacy. Some of you are doing this with your old red box or maybe one of the retroclones, and that's great. But for some of you, it's just not clicking for your kids. Why not try something with a little more whimsy? And as much as we want our kids to find non-violent solutions to their problems, why are we sending them to fight monsters? Why not try a game with rules for friendship that can turn into magic?

If you're gay:

You can actually put "Friend of Dorothy" on your character sheet and it will give you bonuses.

Right now Lulu is offering 25% off if you order this week with the coupon code COUNTDOWN. Order soon if you want it to arrive by Christmas.

I didn't think you guys would mind if I took a week off from the blog and spend time with my family for the Thanksgiving holiday. While I normally reserve the first post of the month for statting up something from the stories, I've got some stuff on my mind that I really want to get out right now.

By the time you read this, the Kickstarter for my setting supplement will likely have closed and failed. I've been watching the terribly slow rate of contributions for the last month, so Beyond the Deadly Desert has made equally slow progress.

It's hard not to be disappointed when things don't go the way you hoped. But I did learn a few things. Mainly that Adventures in Oz is not quite ready for prime time. Neither sales of the game itself nor the outpouring of fans was enough to bring another book our way.

So my next step is to get it there. Get it in stores (something I've wanted to do for a while, but have only somewhat managed) and get eyeballs on my game. Get people talking, get people playing. But I'm only one man with a very small budget. I'm gonna need some help.

A Few Updates

Still doing what I can on Adventures in Oz: Beyond the Deadly Desert, so I just have the time to post a couple of news bulletins.

Over at RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, it's Teach Your Kids to Game Week. Not only is AiO at the top of the list (alphabetical order, of course), it's also on sale. Save 10% if you buy this week.

If you're anywhere near Jacksonville, North Carolina, don't forget to check out JaxCon this weekend. Oz author Ron Baxley Jr. will be there with illustrator Gwendolyn Tenille Adams to promote his book Cabbages, Kings and Even (Odd) Queens. He'll also come with not just one but TWO copies of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road that he'll be giving away

And finally, the Kickstarter over to the side hasn't gotten any attention over the last week and is starting to think you don't love it. There are less than two weeks left to contribute.

Beyond the Deadly Desert Preview: The Wheelers

For everyone who lost sleep over these guys in Return to Oz, I give you a slightly more Ozzy (or Evian?) take on THE WHEELERS!

Wheelers

But she looked at each letter carefully, and finally discovered that these words were written in the sand:

"BEWARE THE WHEELERS!"

"That's rather strange," declared the hen, when Dorothy had read aloudthe words. "What do you suppose the Wheelers are?"

-- Ozma of Oz

The Wheelers try very hard to give themselves a very fierce reputation. They write warnings in the beach sand of their territory. They frighten everyone they meet with fierce yelling. Their clothes are brightly colored and elaborate.

It's all a show. Since the Wheelers have wheels instead of hands and feet, they cannot use weapons or other tools. While they can move swiftly on even ground, their wheels falter on rocky or uneven terrain. They only control a small territory in the land of Ev. Occasionally, they venture into other parts of the country, but their bullying nature makes them unwelcome guests.

[Box-Out]

A Revealing Question About Clothing

The simplest question is perhaps the one that could reveal the most about the Wheelers: How do they get dressed in the morning? Do they have servants or slaves of another race within their territory? Are they dressed by their mothers, who have developed hands or simply improved dexterity in their age? Or are they dressed by magic? Do they have magical clothes that go on by themselves, or a spell that every Wheeler learns to cast?

Their single appearance in the stories give us no answers to this question. Enterprising Narrators could come up with their own answer which could lead to any number of adventures.

[End Box-Out]

Wheeler Characters

The main thing to remember about building a Wheeler is their lack of arms. They should be required to take the No Arms trait. Playing up the bully aspect of a Wheeler would call for a high Presence skill, but low Wits. A Wheeler might choose to take a specialty in “wheeled speed”.

The Wheelers are unlikely to have Soldiers or Sorcerers, or else they would be taken more seriously by their neighbors.

Remember, if you want to see this book completed, please give to the Kickstarter. If I get the full amount, you can get access to Adventures in Oz: Beyond the Deadly Desert before anyone else. If not, you lose absolutely nothing.

Cast an Ozzy Spell: If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

Any game designer will tell you that coming up with rules for magic is one of the toughest parts of the process. And making those rules fit the mold established by an existing work is even tougher.

One part of the rules I've never been fully happy with is Transmutation, the magical practice of transforming objects. In the book, I use a 1-5 scale to estimate the severity of change with few real guidelines. But I haven't had anything better to go on. Until now.

My current idea rates a transmutation on four points: Form, Function, Size, and Substance. Whenever a transmutation would change one of those things, the Power of the spell goes up by 1. If a category is severely altered, the Power can go up by 2. Let's run a few examples to illustrate.

Hanky Camp: This spell will transform 3 handkerchiefs into tents to allow a group of travelers to camp comfortably. From hanky to tent is a definite change to Form (1) and Function (1), as well as a severe change to Size (2). Substance is still very much the same, as both hankies and tents are made of fabric. Power 4

Mrs. Yoop's Breakfast: To start her day, Mrs. Yoop transmutes a pot of water into coffee. Form, Function, and Size are not significantly affected by the change. The main factor to change is Substance, making this only a Power 1 effect. Her “Rocks into Fishballs” spell is similarly a simple change in Substance, with the other factors staying significantly the same.

Try this rule out and let me know how it works for you.

Also, keep those contributions coming on the Kickstarter. According to that little widget over on the right, I'm only 3% funded and I have only 27 days to get the rest. And remember, according to the Kickstarter rules, if I don't get everything, I get nothing.

A Swift Kick In The Pants!

A lot of people know November as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. While I may indeed have a novel in me, there's something else that I know you want more: Adventures in Oz: Beyond the Deadly Desert.

But publishing an RPG book isn't just a matter of writing it. Art, editing, layout and a number of other things are important as well. But all of those things cost money, and I don't have a whole heck of a lot of that. Sales aren't terribly strong in my little niche of a niche, so my motivation to complete the project has somewhat wavered.

Then I discovered Kickstarter. Rather than having to take out loans or owe my soul to family members, I can simply plead for the money I need in front of the entire Internet. My goal is to raise $3000 over the next 30 days. (Link Here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575175333/adventures-in-oz-beyond-the-deadly-desert)

There are a couple of particularly nifty things about Kickstarter. For one, if I don't make my entire amount, nobody pays anything. For another, creators are encouraged to offer prizes to their contributors. And I am. Smaller contributions will receive digital copies, while larger contributions will receive print copies. Some contributors can even receive a special thank-you in the book itself!

Hopefully, with these two powerful motivators, NaNoWriMo and Kickstarter, I can get Beyond the Deadly Desert into the hot little hands of my voracious fans.