By the time you read this Ronin Roundtable, I should be attending the Origins Game Fair in downtown Columbus, OH, as a guest of honor, since the convention's theme this year is "Superheroes" (if they don't find a way to work the phrase "Secret Origins" into it, that's an opportunity lost, if you ask me). So, I figured I'd take the opportunity to talk a bit about Origins and my experiences with it, as both a fan and game industry professional.

I didn't make it to Origins again until the convention had settled into its new permanent home in Columbus. By that point, I was making forays into the freelancing scene, and I discovered something about Origins: It was a better "hangout" convention than GenCon. Smaller and not quite so heavily attended, Origins afforded professional attendees a bit more down-time, as well as better opportunities to slip away from their booths for a meeting, as well as drinks or dinner in the evenings. I was able to make a lot of freelance contacts at Origins, and then follow up on them at GenCon, since, for many years, I attended both conventions, particularly once I signed on to work full time for Green Ronin.

Then, a few years ago, Green Ronin, like a number of companies, cut back on convention expenses, and that included no longer attending Origins, since it took place so close to GenCon in August: the two almost back-to-back conventions were a lot of work, a big expense (especially for travel, lodging, and food), and a long haul for the summer season. It was staff hours that could be devoted to getting product finished, especially if you wanted to have something out at GenCon! So once Green Ronin stopped going to Origins, so did I. The company eventually brought back a smaller presence to the con, but this year will be my first at Origins in several years now.

Naturally, I'm looking forward to walking familiar ground again, not just the halls of the convention center itself, but also the streets of Columbus, including the boutiques and galleries of the Short North and sampling the foods of the North Market. I'm also looking forward to seeing how the convention (and the city) have changed in the years I've been away. Origins always struck me very much as a con where people came to play games and to spend time with friends both new and old. While that's true of most game conventions, it has always seemed particularly true for Origins, and I'm looking forward to renewing our acquaintance. If you happen to be at the con yourself this week, why not find me at one of my events and say hello?

Mutants & Masterminds Gadget Guide: Armor

As will surprise probably nobody, I've been thinking a lot about adapting licensed media and non-RPG settings in general to games. Specifically, I've been considering the challenges each type of media presents when adapting it for a roleplaying game. So I figured I'd use today's Ronin Round Table to share those thoughts and maybe give some insight into the strange and wonderful world of adapting licensed properties to tabletop RPGs.

This means licensed RPGs need to invent the math/mechanics to make the system run because it's not there otherwise. Math that needs to do its job and then get the heck out of the way as much as possible while still feeling "right" for the game, setting, and source material. This is the main task of folks working on games like DC Adventures, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, and various other licensed RPGs from around the game industry, from Amber to … some licensed game that begins with a Z. You need to make sure the mechanics feel right and avoid bogging down the fun and flow. It's a little bit of art, some craft, and a bunch of effort. When it works the effect is great, because it gives the feeling of being in a established setting or story that the PCs and GM can use as a powerful bit of shared context to drive their fun.

The same challenge exists for GMs who just want to run their favorite media around the gaming table. Systems choice can often do most of the heavy lifting here, for example it would be pretty easy to run a game in Robert Kirkman's Invincible comic series using Mutants & Masterminds. But hacking a system, borrowing from other systems, or even altering existing stats and rules simply due to the preferences of an existing group can be a real challenge. It can also be a lot of fun, which is why so many of us gamers love to muse about how we'd use Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to properly capture to feel of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or decide our next game will be use Blue Rose to run Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

But what about video games like Dragon Age? They're already games with mechanics and math. In fact, they have tons of mechanics and math, and therein lies the challenge. Because while other licensed products need to have mechanics and math inserted, video games need to have existing math and mechanics of incredible complexity adapted and reduced. Unless one is gaming with cyborgs, video game math and mechanics are too long, involved, and complex to use at a gaming table. What a PC or console can do in seconds would take many of us hours. Depending on the game and individual, calculating all the variables and mechanical factors that go into even running across the room to deliver a single magic sword strike to a bad guy's face before his minions can attack you might reduce a seemingly normal and intelligent person to a frustrated gibbering mass, which isn't fun. It also wouldn't be nearly as pretty, well-paced, and dramatic as it is when you're pushing buttons or keys to make it happen instantly in a video game.

So where nearly every other adaptation of media needs to be inclusive, video game adaptation to RPGs needs to be reductive. But since video games are games, you can't just throw out the mechanics entirely because they're part of the whole original experience. So you need to pare down all the programming and math to sleek, fun, simple mechanics that nevertheless feel appropriate to the source material. Hence, Dragon Age the tabletop RPG keeps the classes, stunts, spells, and such of the video game to keep that Dragon Age flavor and feel, but uses a resolution system catered to the tabletop. This is a fairly transformative and reductive process. When recently working up rules on running organizations and PC holdings in Dragon Age Set 3 I definitely was thinking about allowing the PCs to do something like running the keep from Dragon Age: Awakenings. But at the same time, I also wasn't trying to simply copy that mass of coding, graphics, and audio that was that experience because that stuff doesn't map directly to tabletop play. So instead, I tried to use the tabletop rules to give a bit of that feel. That's the philosophy I'll be carrying with me as Dragon Age moves forward.

Of course, adapting a video game to a tabletop RPG is also an additive process. Yeah, yeah, I know … after all that, here I am with that little contradiction, but it happens to be true. Even rich and involved RPGs like Dragon Age can't cover the myriad of things PCs will get up to around the gaming table. So you need to cover not just spearing Ogres or shooting Darkspawn with arrows or lighting Templars on fire with your magic, but a bunch of things that the video games don't cover, but which logically exist in a setting like Thedas and which a gaming group might have a ton of fun exploring. So in addition to the mechanics derived and reduced from the original material, you then add more things to that new system to cover various concepts and ideas. Again, I'll point to developing the PC organizations and holdings rules. Because making rules that just let you run a castle and some followers would have been enough to emulate the video games treatment of that concept. However, what if PCs in a given game want to start a thieves' guild, or a renegade apostate circle, or something really challenging like a dwarven bakery? So the challenge became to mix speed, fun, and flavor to create a system PCs and GMs could use for those concepts that didn't clash with the existing mechanics or feel of the source material? How'd I do it? Well, that's a conversation for next time, when I talk about cross-pollination in game design and how this stuff usually gets made.

The Green Ronin team is happy to announce we're launching our volunteer GM team, aka The Freebooter Program. We're especially excited to offer this for our players, and we hope that many will step up to the challenge.

We believe there are many amazing Green Ronin games being run, and we believe our players would love to find more people to play them. The Freebooter Program is a great way to get more games in conventions and games stores. By joining the program, you'll be able to share your favorite settings with brand new people, and help build a better community.

Many companies require you to partner with a particular store, but we've decided not to go that route. We want people in our program to run the games that fit in their schedule and locations. As example, in Seattle, we're lucky enough to have game stores & cafes support each other. Many local players run games in pubs, coffee houses, and more. Want to run an open "Green Ronin RPG Day" at a coffee shop instead of a games store? We want to support that!

Of course, this doesn't mean move your regular game to a coffee house to earn XP in our program. We hope that you'll be setting up demos for new people! We also want to support players who wish to do both small and large conventions. We're already planning on having quite a few volunteer run games at Gen Con. Heck; I'm running five Dragon Age RPG intro games at Gen Con! Obviously, you don't have to run that many. We do want you to experience the whole show. That being said, we would like to give you XP rewards for a higher commitment. Yep, I said XP. That's how we'll calculate rewards. No ranks are involved; everyone is equally important.

It was also important for us to establish a Harassment Policy and standards of behavior while representing Green Ronin. We're pretty clear about fostering an inclusive community, no matter where we go. This is why we require you to fill out an application to join. If you're wearing a Freebooter T-shirt representing us at an event, we want you to feel comfortable. We also want people to feel comfortable when they are interacting with a Freebooter.

If you're interested in knowing more of the program, or signing right up, you can read a quick overview here on our site. Once you've read that and want to join, you'll head to the Freebooter Forum for the application and further information.

I'm extremely excited about this program. I've been a fan of Green Ronin and the staff, for far longer than I've been an employee. I believe in this company, the community, and the program.

Game on!

Donna Prior