Reignition

Post date: Jun 2, 2018 12:47:23 PM

Alright, I've got my moving and work sorted out, so now I can get back to important stuff like writing up rules for using flying laser lolis in D&D.

I've been busy over the past few months with moving out, getting a new job, writing, drawing, and both running and playing my own, non-Touhou D&D games.

Well, not entirely Touhou, anyway. It's a sci-fi setting with Touhous, where Myouren, Moriya and the Royal Clan are having a massive religious space war, but the players have found out that the Lunarians are invading, so they have to gather allies and unite the system to fight them off.

Anyway, now I'm finding some time for getting back to writing up stuff for this site. I want to focus more on making the setting of Gensokyo playable for players and DMs before I get back to doing the character statblocks. I may do some from time to time, but the main focus for now is sorting out how things like races, backgrounds and duels work.

A quick note on spell card duels. I've tried a few versions of doing them, but they don't really work too well when converted to D&D. So, attacks that would typically be a spell card attack are simply abilities of the people that use them now.

I've tried doing them like in the main games, where you would get temporary HP when you activated one, and it would last until you ran out of those temporary HP. Some of that has made it into Raiko's design on this site, but it does result in rather long and often dull fights. As cool as spell cards are, in D&D they often boil down to "Creatures in X area must make a DC Y Dexterity saving throw or take Zd6 damage", which was really boring.

Another had the spell cards work like in HM, ULiL and AoCF, where they were an ability you could activate once per fight. One version had them heal you and give invulnerability until next turn, which made fights go on too long again, and the other didn't, which worked more smoothly but still took some effort to work out as a DM, and aren't really things I can use for a rules set that I want to be consistent.

That leads to the most recent version, where spell cards are basically represented by abilities and features. It doesn't feel as cool without the players and DM putting some effort into making them sound flashy, but it works the best so far. Things like Rage, Action Surge and Fireball all work pretty well as spell cards. And while I can't anticipate what players might want, I've got a page where I've added some of the spells of Touhou such as Master Spark.

This all comes about because I've been gaining experience as a DM. An important thing I've found is that in order to improve player engagement, they will want to have backstories, concepts and stories for their characters that are recognised during a game by the world around them. However, many players will be too meek about doing so, meaning that their stories are ones that don't affect the world, because they don't want to get in the way of the DM's story. This can only be improved by the DM working with the players to make their stories, but having good resources for a player to draw upon can help immensely.

Often, the better games I've played will be ones that are in a setting that the DM ran a short campaign for previously, so the players know the world and can work themselves into it well. So, that's why I want to work on the Background, DM's Guide and Player's Material sections of this site before doing much more on the Character Pages. As fun as they are to do, a game should focus on the stories of the players, with the stories of NPCs being secondary or supporting. I personally still have trouble introducing NPCs in a smooth way, working them into the game so that they players acknowledge that they are there, but don't feel displaced by them.

It's particularly problematic in Touhou because most of the established characters are combatants who can easily upstage low and mid level PCs. However, you also want to let the PCs know that these characters can fight. Strangely, exposition seems to have been the best way to do this so far; I come from an acting, comic and animation background, so the idea of telling rather than showing is a bit difficult to wrap my head around, but it's really all you have in RPGs.

TLDR, stuff happened, spell cards don't transition well into D&D, I'll be working on player/DM/setting material, players suck, exposition is good(?).