CAKE RPG

CAKE RPG is an amalgamation of various Dungeons and Dragons universes driven by user generated lore.

Summary of CAKE ideology

 * New material may not conflict or remove old material.


 * There is no gamemaster.


 * All players have at least one player character with which they influence the world.


 * Any event that needs to be retconned is first dicussed by all the players.

Ideology
Here are relevant parts of a conversation which spawned the ideas behind the CAKE RPG - was copied striaght from the conversation so spelling is bad:


 * One thing I notice about all the locations in D20 campaigns is they're often very isolated


 * Either that or they FEEL isolated.


 * I think that's probably because we all want, as GMs, to get players to follow a linear direction rather than interacting with obscure NPCs that have no effect on you findind the M'jigger of Albion that you need to stop Nerfarious the Opaque from destroying the microverse...etc.


 * its impossible for a DM to come up with a world on the fly and still run some sort of coherent storyline


 * it'd be interesting to watch an exceptional DM come up wth a world based on the interactions of the players, with no storyline at all


 * Perhaps we go about it the wrong way...maybe the reason Oblvivion is considered good is because it has a storyline that is good but hardly inviting and a massive open world full of NPCs you can pickpocket?


 * I reckon if we alll banded together in terms of thinking and just made worlds, then we can interact in them. Say each session is one of our worlds that we are exploring and there may be some plot, but it is not obvious or introduced by the GM overtly.


 * i think there should only be one world, but it morphs itdelf artound the players,as in every backstory is fact, and the world is the culmination of all of them


 * So say, a background of "my parents were killed by Nerfarious the Opaque, who now wanders the land is search of the great King of Methaphysicallity". That is now fact. There's two NPCs and the elluding to of land, thus the land must be fleshed out.


 * and if i add "I ran away from home at the generic age to do so and became a sky pirate under the employ of captain Kydd, then, after his execution struck out on my own and am trying to find a crew and ship", then more NPCs are added and sky pirates become part of the world and another past event becomes fact, then if you say "ive never heard of sky pirates." then there must exist at least 2 areas, one where there are sky pirates, oe where there are people who have never heard of sky pirates. so i could decide to add that i came to this new land in an attempt to create the first sky pirates of this land, or that i ended up here after crashing my small airshp - a skyff, on this land after a nightfull of heavy drinking. You could then decide 'ahh thats something my guy is familliar with - theres lots of alcohol on this land' so i decide 'thats what lead me here in my subconscious then.', and your world develops alongside the characters.


 * idealy you would try to set it in a place all the characters feel most confortable, but, as in the example above, my character seems to take his world with him, so its easier for him to be in an 'alien' environment


 * But what about the gameplay? How do we intergrate what is essentially a massive cohesion of various source books? Do we stick with 3.5 and simply use all the resources we can whenever they are needed? Or do we make our on gameplay?


 * making our own will take too long and be unrefined as opposed to if we use 3.5 as a base


 * I look at this way. What we're now doing is tipping the balance from rules to immersion further. Anything we don't have we make, but anything that has already been made or established the rules stand.


 * So we have SWd20 and D&D 3.5, essentially the same system, D20 modern rules,


 * I can guarentee that people will become disillusioned with the game if there are no objectives of whatever sort... What we're suggesting is a Sandbox RPG. Unfortunately they are difficult to maintain.


 * thats down to character creation, once everyone has come up with a character and the world is shaped around them I figure we create the objective within that


 * whithin the background, each chatacter needs to have their own objectives, such as "acrew money" "sleep with 2000 women" "build a techno fort" "successfully create a clone of self"


 * That fleshes things out a lot in terms of direction, though I agree with oscar about having short term goals too. I suppose whoever is GMing can provide obvious short term goals that appeal to certain characters, and other characters may work on finding other objectives etc.


 * So the environment is a persistent world that is not in flux, but is constantly being added to, with no limitations of technology, philosophy or society. The gameplay reflects the mechanics of the role playing Dungeons and Dragons (Ver. 3.5). Character creation defines the goals of the campaign and character backgrounds define what the world is.


 * Anything else?


 * there is cake


 * woop cake!!!


 * CURRENCY!


 * Cake is the established universal measure of wealth.


 * We should have a name at least... Something we can relate to.


 * Huge Extensible Role Playing Experience of Superness


 * erm


 * that could cayse some problems


 * A good acronym, but might return less than we want.


 * Consolidation and Amalgamation of Key Easter fun


 * If you want CAKE, I will generate a phrase.


 * I don't mind. CAKE is fine, just HERPES doesn't do it justice.


 * I have the letter K. - KLATSCH! - It means a group, specifically a group coming together for casual conversation, a word that gained prominence int he mid 1950s and is orginated in German.


 * co-ordinated actualization of klatch entertainment. I.E. The making up of stuff for group fun. eh whatever, it is called cakerpg for now.


 * If a conflict arrises in mechanics, say for a fact that SWd20 armours do not at to defense whereas those in D&D do, which game takes presedence?


 * which would work best with a variety of new ideas??? If we're introducing new armour for example, would it be easier to modify the rules or simply take all the rules from existing armour from within an existing rule book? which would best accomodate this???


 * perhaps an amalgamation


 * for things that affect character attributes we could wait until the character ideas are designed, then manufacture the rules around them for things such as armour


 * Well the way I see it, outside of world lore, we need to have a consise database of characters, weapons, armours, feats, skills, creatures, vehicles and possibly other things. It means also we can then build up the lore in a searchable manner rather than having it floating about in our heads. Therefore, whatever we say is fact STAYS fact. Get me?


 * Perhaps a wiki would make more sense actually.


 * Put it this way, we start with characters, From there we list what equipment they have for balancing issues if any, as well as begin entries for their backgrounds. Perhaps some criteria would be good. I.e. Birthplace, physical features, personal traits, family, anything else I can't think of.

And that's how babies are made.