One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
Gamer ADD (not AD&D)
If you haven’t guessed, I’ve got
gamer ADD (attention deficit
disorder). I keep coming up with
more games to run than I can
conceivably play anytime soon, so I
make notes so I can run them at a
moments notice. And, yes, you
wouldn’t believe the opportunities
that those notes help out with. My
current group, the Corvis Monkey
Troupe, has the next six months or
so already planned out for games and who’s
running them. The common joke in the CMT is
that I’ve got 30 to 40 games ready to run. That’s
really not far from the truth, since all I’ve got to
do is pick up my copies of this ’zine and go
gaming! I hope that if you are in a similar spot,
you’ll use these issues the same way! I’d love to
hear about any games you might run using this
’zine. Drop me an email and let me know!
Seven Leagues was all She Wrote
A kind of ultimatum note, she
gave to me. I picked up Seven
Leagues (Malcontent Games)
by Heironymous a month or so
ago and on a recent trip to
Canada I had the opportunity
to read through part of it while waiting to cross
the Border. It seemed appropriate somehow.
It’s a faerie tale game packaged into a pretty
neat concept – Language, rather than
statistics, is the underlying rule for the game.
Each character, PCs (“protagonists”) and NPCs
(“antagonists”), are described by a three word
description called an Aspect, for example “an
Inferno Spider.”From there, three attributes
called Virtues (Heart, Hand and Head) are
defined by point values totaling 13. Heart
represents wisdom, charisma and courage.
Hand is strength and dexterity, but also
“resistance to poisoned apples,” very important
in Faerie Tales. Head is smarts, wit and
knowledge. For my Spider example, I chose
(continued on Page 2, Second Column)
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Vol.: 1, Issue: 18, December 1, 2007
That Bright Spot in the Sky
I ran a game for the CMT a few years ago in a
hard SF setting, Albedo (Chessex), based on the
Erma Felna EDF stories
by Steve Gallacci, which
he published in Albedo
Anthropomorphics
(Thoughts & Images) and
compiled in Command
Review #1 - #3 (Thoughts
& Images), #4 (Antartic
Press). The story takes
place across a large
federation peopled by humanoid versions of
Earth mammals and birds. Humans do not
exist in this universe (though there is a story on
that later in the series).
In the Erma Felna storyline, a young catgirl
(the title character) is a military pilot who is
thrust into dangerous combat situations where
she kicks some butt and takes names. It’s well
done and I own them all, so the source material
is very accessible. The comic begins (issue #1)
with a small outer colony being invaded by an
army from the Independent Lapine Republic
(yes, rabbits). The Extraplanetary Defense
Force (EDF), the military arm of the
Federation, take back the colony, causing lots of
collateral damage in the process. I started the
PCs out right before the invasion.
MW played Niklas, a Mouse aerodyne pilot,
with PP as Yusev, a Dog soldier and BC as Ziget,
a Panda soldier. Niklas was shot
down during the battle while
trying to land the PC’s squad.
Most of the squad died and the
survivors fought off an assault
from a rabbit patrol. They
communicated with the base
station and were sent into the
city to link–up with another
unit. They fought another bunch
of rabbits with a light armored vehicle. After
the battle, Niklas was blamed for getting shot
down and over the course of the game, his
career was close to being over.
(continued on Page 2, First Column)
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works
One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine Vol.: 1, Issue: 18, December 1, 2007
That Bright Spot (cont.)
His only option was to jump on the next
transport and beat the report back to the local
HQ and plead his case. He and Yusef got
onboard but Ziget was
transferred to another unit.
BC quickly made another
character named Qin, a
Goat Engineer who liked to
dance (BC again made a
memorable PC). The cruiser
had to detour into a
Sargasso–like area of space
to investigate strange
goings–on and got attacked by a pirate vessel.
With extreme damage, the PCs lead the vessel
to a nearby asteroid field called The Drift where
they started to repair the ship.
This was a very difficult game for me to run. As
I mentioned, it’s a hard SF setting. And my
style, as you’ve probably guessed, is more wild
and wahoo! There came a point about four
sessions in that I realized I wasn’t having fun,
so I pulled the plug. I think it went OK and the
players had a good time, but I felt that I had to
stop myself from throwing in the weird, over
and over again. Thoughts like “Hey, I can have
a psionic … er, nope! Doesn’t fit the setting,”
and “This scene needs a giant space zonko-
hamster!” kept running through my head. So it
was probably a good idea that I pulled the plug
before I got too crazy.
Gaming Podcast Review #1
I’ve been listening to several different gaming
podcasts over the past month and one that I’ve
been enjoying is All Games Considered
(allgamesconsidered.blogspot.com). I’ve only
listened to a few at this point (some of the late
60s episodes) but they have a good format, they
speak clearly and are definitely excited about
games. I especially enjoy the “Gaming for
Cheap Bastards” segment. It’s got a cool song
and they talk about cheap (or free) games that
I’ve never heard about. I suggest you give them
a try. I will certainly be listening to their earlier
episodes.
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Page 2
Seven Leagues (cont.)
Head 3, Heart 4 and Hand 6. Virtue maximum
for PCs is 7 and minimum is 1, with average folk
having 2–3 in each. So my Inferno Spider is
average smarts, but has a pretty good heart (a 4
is considered “high”) and very strong (a 6 is
“extraordinary”).
Charms are special abilities of the character,
whether it is fly tirelessly for
Raven or puts you to sleep
for the Sand Merchant (Two
example characters in the
book). Each character is
initially allowed their lowest
Virtue number of Charms, so for my Spider
that’s three: Burns with a bright flame, a
gigantic beast, and skilled at spinning.
Opposite of Charms are Taboos, “extraordinary
limitations or supernatural hindrances” that
the character must abide. A djinn might have
bound to a bottle or a giant armored dragon
might have a gap in scales that penetrates his
defenses. Normally, characters don’t start with
Taboos, but can take two in order to get one
additional Charm. I don’t want two Taboos for
the Spider but think one would be interesting,
so I chose likes to talk before eating victims.
Then a short Legend is written that describes
the character, with keywords that help in his
adventures, and the character is Named. I don’t
have space for a Legend for my Spider so I’ll
just name him Fireweb. Can’t wait to play!
To Donate or Not Donate
I received an email recently from reader RB in
Maryland who wanted to know about how to
donate to this ’zine. Wow! I hadn’t thought
about that before. This is a free PDF, doesn’t
cost me much of anything to make, and I’m
happy, nay, compelled to do it.
That said, I thought hard about it
and realized that I would be flattered to receive
any sort of donation from fans. So I set up a
PayPal donation button on my site. Feel free to
donate or not. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing
and I hope that you’ll keep reading.
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works