Hello, readers! A brief introduction is in order: my name is Timothy Schoeneberg and I am the mind behind RPG Games and RPG Comics. I am 26 years old, married, I have a child on the way and my life is in total chaos! But, what more could adding a blog, a website, and
a business do to my hectic life?
From a young age, I have had an active imagination. My head was full of stories and fairy tales with no end in sight. Much of my inspiration came from the stories I saw on the television, from video games, and from the books I read, but for a long time now, I have been dissatisfied with the stories being told in modern media and Hollywood. There used to be such imagination and joy in telling stories with good morals featuring noble heroes and great rewards, but now it feels like all the old streams have become polluted with some ulterior motivations and postmodern, existentialist morals that leave a sick feeling in my stomach. Heroes are torn down, villains are raised up, and everything falls apart. This experience has pushed me to create the content that I want to see at theaters, on book shelves, and in video games.
One of my earliest experiences telling my own stories started in high school among my friends. Every so often, the four of us assembled in my basement or elsewhere to play games and have a good time of it. We regularly played a beta version of a role playing game called Brightsword by DGS Games. It was extremely satisfying to imagine our way through a fantasy world, fighting monsters and outwitting pirates, but fantasy was not our preferred genre. As complete nerds, we wanted to be superheroes, saving citizens, fighting muggers and ne'er-do-wells in order to rid a fictional metropolis of crime! So, I designed a new game (since superhero roleplaying games were not readily available). Thus, Vigilance was born!
What is your favorite Tabletop Role Playing Game?
DND 5e
Pathfinder
Other
Vigilance is based on a tiered dice system where the more level of skill you attain, the bigger dice you roll. You use your primary attributes like in DnD and your specific skills add to your rolls. You also have talents that enable you to take certain actions which can be useful in combat or in social encounters. When we played the game, we treated it as a sandbox where your character would enter a different part of the city and roll to find crime. The players would fight low level thugs and stop muggings and that sort of thing. We only made it to a few villains, but the most fun was the spontaneous element where anything could happen anywhere!
There were street performance checks, courtroom trials, prison escapes, resulting power outages, you name it! We had so many laughs and fights that we just wanted to keep playing for hours. Since none of us had any experience outside of home brew games, the storylines were haphazard, the quips were spontaneous, and no two sessions were the same. I wanted to take our fun sessions, turn them into comic books, and keep the good times alive in our memories! This brought on my plan for RPG Comics.
My first priority was to make a game that enabled players to practice Heroism, to make a way for people to immerse their minds in another story, world, and person. Where better to practice being brave and heroic than at home, around the table with your best friends? The practice isn't necessarily the end goal, but you can take these situations and apply them to your life; facing bullies, conquering your weaknesses, standing up to tyranny and evil wherever you find it. Role playing is an essential tool to use if you need to face the real world. It's a safe place to learn how to face hardship and to be a hero. Although it might be fun to turn into murder hobos, running around and stealing from NPC's and other nefarious things, it doesn't satisfy anyone in the real world; it is only temporary relief of emotions that would ruin your life in reality. Heroism is more than that. We can all live up to the integrity of our favorite heroes like Captain America and Superman. It just takes some practice. And what better way to practice than to have fun around the gaming table!
If you like role playing games and superheroes, the rules for Vigilance are below. Join the World of the Vigilant and become the hero you were meant to be!
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