Harbinger of Doom

D&D: What's Actually Wrong With High-Level Play

2012-02-21T01:29:00.000-05:00

This post is in reaction to the most recent Legends & Lore post by Monte Cook. This will be a serious test case for my rule against fulmination in this blog - but never mind that, go read Monte's post and come back.

I've run two D&D campaigns up to 13th level (one 3.0, one 4e) and I'm currently playing in AE at 14th level, and I can say with great certainty that the ideas and goals of high-end play don't enter into anyone's thinking when they say that gameplay breaks down at high level. Now, players and/or DMs may not prefer the power level in which they "create their own planes of existence and lay waste to planets," but that's just a matter of taste - the system doesn't push you to tell stories about those kinds of things at high level. Our AE game has discussed the concept of planar travel, but not as anything we'd ever for any reason want to do. It'll probably come up in that context a few more levels, and that's fine. The plot has gone from local to continental; we're solidly in the system's concept of "paragon" tier, if you will.

No, it's not the angels and devils that cause the problems of high-level play. No one would talk about "the game breaking down" because they're just uncomfortable with the change in style. When people say "the game breaks down," what they're talking about is that the rules aren't working. The rules break down for different reasons in each edition; it's not like designers haven't made a valiant attempt at improvement every decade-or-so. Not working may need more definition also: if odd corner-case tactics are your best bet, even though their chance of success is slim, the game is not working as designed, and characters aren't behaving according to any kind of archetypal guideline. Players can still have fun in these kinds of games, but I think everyone at the table is aware that things have gotten cheesy and walk away a little more dissatisfied.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition

This is the furthest back I can go with any experience of my own. My highest-level 2e campaigns each saw one character reach 9th level. Notable problems include:

Linear fighter, exponential wizard: The game was designed so that wizards would be hard to play at low levels, and would get a payoff for their survival at higher levels. The other side of that is that fighters, who theoretically start off strongest, stop really increasing in power. To be more precise: everyone's hit points hit a soft-cap, while a wizard's damage (and pretty much only a wizard's) keeps scaling up. Otiluke's freezing sphere is a great example of this; it scales up at 1d4+2/caster level, with no cap. By the time they can cast it, that's 12d4+24 damage on a failed save (save vs. spells negates); fail that save and an average damage roll means you're also saving against massive damage.
On the other hand, most of the new spells wizards are picking up at these levels don't deal direct damage; they're either wonderful and/or bizarre new utility effects, or they're save-or-die effects. The funny thing about save-or-die spells in 2e is that as the target becomes higher level, all save-or-die effects are decreasingly effective against it, since the target's saving throw difficulty ignores the potency of the effect in question (unless there's a specific modifier called out in the effect). I want to talk about spell scaling in more detail; see below.
Thieves reach a skill cap at 95%, and there's really no discussion in the core rules of what happens with their skills beyond that point - it's entirely a matter of houserule. This is a place where it was good to start off as a demihuman, but later on it's fine to be human.
But it doesn't matter, because at these levels, nonhuman characters can't advance any further anyway, unless the DM has opted for a rule to let them keep advancing more slowly. It's not really worth getting into how terrible this is; I know the OSR guys think it's fine because "we never played to that high of level anyway," but given that this is a discussion of high-level play, that just supports my argument.
A lot of high-end monsters have Magic Resistance, which in this edition is a flat and basically unmodifiable percentage chance of failure for absolutely any spell cast on that monster. This is necessary because the dragon needs an additional chance to not die instantly on the wizard's turn; on the other hand, there's no solution but to pick the one or two spells that target terrain, and thus get around Magic Resistance completely.
At 21st level and above, things change around a lot more, but I don't really want to re-familiarize myself with Dungeon Master Option: High-Level Campaigns nearly enough to speak about it in detail. I'll just note that the first half of the book is the book on how to be a good DM that the DMG really needed to be. Not all of the advice is really in keeping with best-practices DMing, but it's mostly excellent. Also, it introduces enough new class abilities and such that... yeah, the title of this book should have been AD&D 2.5 Edition. Someday if I feel really motivated, I might give it some deep analysis in this blog.

Dungeons &Dragons, Third Edition

The problems of high-level play in 3.x are considerably better documented than those of 2e, for the simple reason that XP tables were rescaled to make high levels attainable within just a few years of regular play.

The issue of scaling between classes was considerably improved, but I don't know that I think it was solved except within certain narrow bands of playstyles. There's a lot more room to argue about which class is strongest at any given level, though, and that at least is as it should be.
The scaling of higher-level spells is still a big problem, though. As in 2e, spells that deal plain ol' hit point damage become rarer, though meteor swarm is still out there. Again, see below for a more detailed discussion of spell scaling. The function of saving throws is a huge improvement, because not all spells have an equal chance of success against a target.
Death by massive damage becomes a chief threat of the campaign, because 50 hit points of damage (especially in post-power-creep 3.x) becomes pretty trivial and common; when it's less than a quarter of a fighter's hit points, why is he worrying about it? On the other hand, it's not difficult for any critical hit, a rogue's sneak attack, or a polar ray to deal that much damage. The game becomes focused on who rolls a 1 on their massive damage save (since they only fail on a 1 anyway).
Where 2e was really quite stingy with immunities for PCs (at least in its core rules - its splatbooks hide shamefacedly in the corner during this discussion), functional or actual immunities are relatively easy to come by in 3.x - against energy types, death magic, divinations, critical hits and sneak attacks... the list goes on. Immunities are also very common among high-level monsters, particularly immunity to sneak attacks and critical hits. Spells and abilities became problems, so the designers introduced things that simply negated those spells and abilities. This is bad for the game in a whole other list of ways; the game becomes focused on guessing which buffs your target is running, and/or a game of who rolls better on their dispel magic or greater dispelling caster level checks.
Spell resistance is a big improvement on Magic Resistance, but it's still problematic when it gets out of hand. It's another chance for one of those save-or-die spells to fail, so high-level creatures still need spell resistance or a similar mechanic.
A monster's Hit Dice, which at low levels are almost the same as reading its Challenge Rating, balloon out of control. This is necessary to give monsters the hit points, attack bonus, saving throws, or whatever else that the Monster Manual and/or the DM want them to have. (The hit point thing is especially problematic with undead, as they do not have a Con score.) The problem is that a number of rules (Turn Undead, holy word, and so on) are tied to Hit Dice or level rather than CR. Signature abilities that should be fun to throw around are irrelevant against a lot of monsters, but the only way the player could make that kind of judgment ahead of time is to know the monster's stat block - Hit Dice has even less of an in-character marker than CR does.
Ability score damage and drain, and negative levels, enter the field of gameplay and in many cases become common, as Monte notes. This is a major problem, though, because they stop the game for math with effects that cascade throughout the system.
Resurrection from death becomes readily available. This part is fine, even though it doesn't fit all campaigns. On the other hand, there's that level loss; short of taking away a favorite piece of gear, this is the best way I've ever seen the make players leave a session angry. Level loss as a consequence of a fight that the rest of the party goes on to win does some really odd things to the game, and the games I ran scrapped that penalty for death and replaced it with a random-draw system to keep a sense of risk attached to death.
Death effects are more common; the feel of the fantasy has changed so that it's appropriate for a character to die a few times and expect to come back. It's just, you know, how things are done. The problem that I have with this is that death kicks the player out of the game until the rest of the party achieves his resurrection. Don't get me wrong, I don't think death should be removed from the game; I just don't favor high-level play putting the Grim Reaper on speed-dial.

Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition

Once again, they made a lot of improvements. Problem adjusted!

The linear fighter/exponential wizard problem is actually pretty much put to bed in this edition. Congratulations! The only problem is that this homogenized gameplay too much, but that's a totally separate issue.
The main problem that I saw in 4e was tracking all of the different stacking/non-stacking bonuses and penalties to attack and damage. Every die roll was a small conversation in itself; when a lot of attacks include if/then situations that you can't determine until after you're several die rolls in, it becomes a real headache. I don't remember what it was, but the wizard in the game I ran had some truly godawful-to-track feat that dealt +2 damage if he hit more than one target... so I couldn't start recording damage until after he'd made most of his attack rolls. This was only a problem because with AoEs, you always roll damage first and attacks second.
The secondary problem was the huge variety of increasingly complex minor and immediate actions. These are super cool when each character has up to two of them; past that, every character's turn gets slower, because the character with all the interrupts needs a few moments to decide whether or not to use her ability.
The increasingly prolific use of the stunned and dazed conditions by both sides is just frustrating, and mechanics intended to patch that frustration feel obtrusively artificial - and they're just more numbers to track.
Tracking auras is fine when there's one on the field, but when monsters meant to be used in multiples are given auras, the DM has his work cut out for him.
It's not a primary concern by any means, but PCs can pile up a lot of minor-to-middling magic items that do weird things the DM needs to keep in mind. This is a problem in any game where the PCs accumulate Stuff, but 4e's magic items are especially specific and obscure in their applications, so it's more of a problem here.

The Spell Scaling Problem

As advertised, I want to explain what I see as the central problem of 2e and 3.x, and any game with a certain approach to scaling.

A first-level wizard can cast a first-level spell to moderately injure a level-appropriate opponent (magic missile).
A third-level wizard can injure a level-appropriate opponent a little bit more, or completely freaking murder a first-level opponent (I'm thinking of scorching ray here).
A fifth-level wizard can injure a large group of level-appropriate opponents, or completely freaking murder a large group of first-level opponents (fireball, lightning bolt). (Rarely used side note: hold person is great for single-target murder at this level.)
A seventh-level wizard can inconvenience a large number of level-appropriate opponents (ice storm, wall of fire, whatevah) or slay outright one level-appropriate opponent who fails two saves. (phantasmal killer).
A ninth-level wizard can significantly injure a large group of level-appropriate opponents (cone of cold), instantly kill a huge swath of low-level opponents (cloudkill), or slay outright one level-appropriate opponent who fails one save (hold monster - okay, maybe technically two, depending on how the coup de grace works out for you). Baleful polymorph also gets a mention here - while they're not dead, a beached carp is not much of a threat, and you can whittle down their unaltered hit point total at your leisure.
An eleventh-level wizard can kill a level-appropriate target with one failed save (flesh to stone), and instantly kill a potentially very large number of almost-level-appropriate targets (circle of death). Note that we've left hit point damage behind. I regard this as bad, because a fighter and a wizard no longer really contribute to the other's attempt to kill a target. The wizard could keep slinging big evocations, of course, and these will continue to be a big problem for level-appropriate targets, but never really enough to kill an uninjured opponent outright.
A thirteenth-level wizard can kill a level-appropriate target in a variety of unusual ways, mostly based on spells specific to the creature's Type (banishment, mass hold person) or... kind of whatever. Reverse gravity is always good for a laugh. So is finger of death - it's like disintegrate, but without that pesky ranged touch attack.
Wizards of fifteenth and seventeenth levels do commensurately more awful things to their opponents. Almost nothing in the ninth-level spell list deals hit point damage, other than meteor swarm, Bigby's crushing hand, and sometimes prismatic wall.

The tl;dr version is that wizards are only mildly useful against opponents at the start of play, but they had to improve on that relative status eight times. By the third step of improvement (fourth-level spells) things are starting to get out of hand, but at least you get multiple saves. After that point, though, the game gradually pares down the target's possible defenses, because how else do you improve upon "one spell, one kill"?

Monster abilities scale upward to keep up with the things wizards can do. Maybe you see that the other way around, but I think monsters could stay about the same and just use bigger numbers if all they had to worry about were characters attacking their hit point totals.

And that is how, and why, D&D (and every other game) breaks down at high level. Judging by other games, we should just be glad D&D takes as many levels as it does to have these problems. The solution to all of this, as I see it, is to completely change the game's concept of spell levels six and up, if you're going with 3.x-style Vancian magic.

LARP Thought Experiment: Alternate Cybernetics System

2012-02-18T18:07:00.000-05:00

In the Eclipse campaign, I play a human who has been heavily modified with cybernetics. I've been playing this character since the start of the campaign, so I've had a lot of time to think about theoretical alternate implementations of cybernetics. I want to be very clear that this is not intended as a critique of Eclipse's rules - this is a thought experiment and nothing more, based around fusing two rules concepts that have worked out pretty well so far in Dust to Dust.

The quick summary of the structure is a mana-based system with a variable spell list based on opportunity cost. I like using a mana-based (well, obviously it's actually Bio-Energy) system because when I imagine the cybernetic mechanics as a whole, I envision a single internal energy source rather than one battery per module. Things can be justified in-play either way - that's just what makes the most sense to me, especially given that the reason you have to spend CP (as a stand-in for time and effort) to add new modules, other than game balance, is that you're increasing your personal reserves of Bio-Energy. I like the idea that I could re-route power from one module to another if I'm not going to have a chance to use something, or it seems lower-priority. With characters in general, I like having that feeling of adaptability and fluidity; it's what I loved about druids in both WoW and D&D 4e.

As for the variable spell list and opportunity cost, what I'm imagining is that your modules form your "spell list," but you can just go get a cyberdoc to change out your modules if what you've got isn't what you need. I think that one possible criticism of this approach is that one cyborg can be any cyborg - the sense of personal differentiation is lost - but I would counter that by pointing out that we haven't worried too much about differentiating one spellcaster of a given type from another spellcaster of the same type, at least not in terms of CP expenditure. There are also other ways to introduce personal differentiation, which I'll get into in a bit.

In exchange for some loss of differentiation, this structure offers a thematic expression of transhumanism, as the body becomes an infinitely adaptable tool with which to solve problems; while Eclipse's current system does include this theme, I think it is taken to a new height if modification to solve one problem doesn't lock the character into that kind of modification for the rest of his life. It also intensifies the contrast between mutation (involuntary genetic adaptation to suit one environment or set of challenges) and cybernetics (voluntary scientific adaptation to suit any environment), and incidentally also psionics (voluntary mental and mystical adaptation to surpass limitation). Now, I'm hardly recommending that cybernetics should be inherently better than the other two paths; as it stands, mutation reaches heights of adaptation to niches that cybernetics does not.

The systemic limitation of this idea, as in the existing system for cybernetics, is connected to "slots" of the body, each of which can be upgraded from Consumer-grade to Commercial-grade to Military-grade. These can be reconfigured, of course, to possibly narrow down the number of "spells" a character can access at a time. It is an open question, to me, as to whether I'd want to require a character to have the prereqs for something installed in order to use it - that is, would the Skin 4 module require that you also had the Skin 2 module? It could really go either way, but if it doesn't, the game's balance becomes much more delicate, simply because some of the progressions are at their best at Military-grade, while some others are good enough for 99% of all cases at Commercial-grade.

I also want to go over some of the apparent problems with this approach. The first is that it's very difficult to assign mana costs to some of these abilities in a coherent way - for example, we've never been faced with the situation posed by the cybernetic Stealth progression of a night-only Meld, night-only Invisibility, and anytime Meld in a mana-based system. How would you price an anytime Meld, when it's sometimes the same effect as a night-only Meld? In the existing system based on purchasing per-day usage, this is a non-issue; anytime-Melds are useful at night when you've otherwise exhausted your daily usage of night-only Melds. The immediate answer is to say that you can now activate Melds during the day, presumably at the same Bio-Energy cost as you had been using for your night-only Melds. Is that enough, though? If you can just go get a cyber-doc to replace it with something else at nightfall, it becomes a lot less desirable. For that matter, the only reason you still want a night-only Meld once you have a night-only Invisibility is that the mana cost of the former is presumably much lower - and perhaps you would also slap a small casting time on Invisibility, to leave Melds as the ideal panic-button effect.

My preferred answer here is to give the anytime-Meld module a secondary effect, perhaps modifying the mana cost of any Melds you cast on yourself at night, or allowing you to extend your Meld effect to another character at night, as long as that character remains in near-contact with you. Even a minor situational benefit is probably enough of a lure to keep me from feeling like it's a waste. Come to think of it, though, night-only abilities are either the selling point or the bane of this system, depending on whether you think it's okay for every cyborg to go under the knife twice a day. If you regard this as a problem, I'd suggest that such modules could still function during the day, perhaps at a greatly heightened mana cost.

Another problem to tackle is the always-active effect - really anything that the current system sells at a fixed CP cost rather than a per-day cost, such as claws, Security Countermeasures, or secret compartments. The clear answer here is to assign a mana total that is "tied off" in sustaining the module, presumably priced according to perceived utility - it'd be tough to argue that any grade of Security Countermeasures is worth as much mana as Short Claws. Such prices are difficult to assign, but the same could be said of CP costs for the abilities in the current system, so I don't regard it as a weakness of the design.

Miscellaneous modules, as "slotless" modules, are just as "free" here as they are in the current design, but giving each of them a Bio-Energy cost as suggested above sets a soft cap on their usage. If this came to grant too many desirable passive abilities, I'd recommend including a hard cap by fixing a number of Misc Module slots that each grade of neural interface can support. In the existing system, cybernetics is the king of passive abilities, especially at Military-grade.

I'm envisioning a system in which a mission that requires environmental adaptation is open to all cyborg characters, as long as they're willing to temporarily dump their existing full-conversion modules. It's another way to make sure that no one on the module is using cybernetic stealth, without requiring NPCs with True Sight to be part of the mission. Because they are getting some other kind of functionality out of their cybernetics, I think the cyborgs who would normally use stealth modules will feel less like the game has solved for their build. After all, they spent CP on Bio-Energy, not on their stealth modules.

If one wanted to add personal differentiation back into the system, there are a few different ways to handle it. Some modules can be permanent installs, such as archaeotech, or even black-market modules that have a few corrupted files. For that matter, "one module is no longer removable" would be a valid flaw to pull from a Deck of Possibilities. Finally, the cyborg's neural interface is the one thing that can never be removed, only upgraded; Commercial-grade and Military-grade neural interfaces could include branching options with various strengths. (This last idea somewhat parallels the Ebon Aspect's sixth- and tenth-mystery abilities in DtD.)

Anyway, these are just some ideas I had - difference for the sake of difference, trading one set of design strengths for another. I hope you've enjoyed my idle brainstorming. I am amused to note that in the time it took me to write this, Kainenchen started playing with her Valentine's Day present: Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

D&D 5th Edition: OGL, GSL, SRD, DDI, and so on

2012-02-11T22:38:00.000-05:00

I have, from time to time, done some freelance design and writing in the general area of D&D (starting in 3.0 and continuing through d20 Modern and 4e), so while I am far from an authority on matters of the Open Gaming License and its hollow look-alike, the Game System License of 4e, these are things that have affected me directly. Now that 5e has been announced, there might be room for hope for a shift back toward the robustness of the OGL; I'll explain the lessons that I think can be learned from the history of this topic. If you've been deeply invested in D&D for the past twelve years or more, this will be little more than a rehash of things you already know - and if I'm just flat wrong about this history, you're welcome to tell me.

It's like this. Back in days of yore, a guy named Ryan Dancey convinced the necessary set of people that the D&D Third Edition rules could be the foundation of a much broader base of gaming if the use of the rule set were opened up to absolutely anyone who wanted to work with it. In theory, this would serve WotC's interests by getting more people than ever before to buy the core rulebooks and any later rulebooks that WotC added to the SRD. Much like other Open Licenses, innovation benefits even the originator of the product, since they might be able to lift ideas from other products to improve or inspire their own work.

This caused a staggering boom in third-party publishing. I would guess, though I couldn't begin to prove it, that there were more people actively publishing game material in the first several years of the OGL than at any other time in the history of tabletop gaming. There were really very few rules on what you could or couldn't do in your work during that time. Just judging from the way things developed, though, I'd guess that (in WotC's eyes) a lot of that freedom led to undesirable consequences. First of all, there were companies that republished the core rulebooks in new formats, such as smaller perfect-bound books; this meant that WotC wasn't earning money for their core rules the way they'd expected. Though I could be wrong, I don't think they worried quite as much about companies that were actually doing their own thing in creating new classes. The other big thing was that not everyone operates on the same standards of taste - the Book of Erotic Fantasy caused a shitstorm, and I would guess that it was the direct cause for the 4e GSL to impose strict controls on what kinds of content people could create.

Why did WotC even care about this product? Well, part of the whole deal with the OGL was that if you followed their rules, which wasn't all that hard (though there were some irritating minor cases that I'll get to in a minute), you could put a "d20 System" trademark on your book. This gave fans useful information about the book, and confidence that it played within the sandbox that they understood. But WotC didn't like the idea of this product, labeled "For Mature Audiences," showing their trademark - let's skate calmly by the irony of that same company publishing the Book of Vile Darkness. They expressed that displeasure in the short term by requiring the BEF to remove the d20 System symbol and present only the OGL symbol. In the longer term, they put much stricter rules in place when they created the GSL for 4e.

The other thing you couldn't do with the OGL was publishing products that used character-specific names, such as Mordenkainen or Bigby. On the surface, this seems fine: just change the names, right? I mean, as a third-party publisher, I definitely don't plan to write adventures about Leomund, Otiluke, or Rary. Except that 3.0 and 3.5 were published with these names attached to numerous spells in the spell list, and adventure writers needed to be able to refer to those spells in stat blocks, treasure hoards, and so on. For a long time, third-party writers fumbled with a standardized way to refer to those spells, since just cutting out the forbidden name sometimes creates names that don't have enough information to clue readers in to what they came from, such as the sword spell (formerly Mordenkainen's sword). When publishing class spell lists, it was even worse, because changing the initial word changed the spell's position in alphabetical order.

Still, times were good for a lot of companies, and times were enough-to-survive-on for a much larger number of publishers. A lot of that third-party material wasn't great, in keeping with Sturgeon's Law, but that's not really a problem in itself. Cream rose to the top; people made money, lost money, learned through mistakes, and so on. I don't really buy arguments that shoddy third-party products damaged WotC in any way.

After the cut: the GSL, DDI, and what I'd like to see in the future.

WotC announced that 4e, and shortly after announced the GSL. This much-maligned license was, as I've suggested above, much stricter in what third-party publishers could and couldn't use. Initially, it also cost $5,000 to use, sort of like devkits for game consoles. This fee was roundly lambasted, and rightly so; such a fee would be an insurmountable barrier to entry for a great many third-party publishers, who were writing more for the love of doing so than because of the great profit margins. Charging that much money and offering a much more restrictive license than the OGL might have been reasonable from WotC's perspective, somehow, but a lot of big fish in the small third-party-publishing pond balked at this. Their expectations had been set in the era of the free-for-all OGL. The horse, as they say, was out of that stable.

Before too long, WotC reversed course and removed the price tag from the GSL, but the other restrictions on use were severe. A relatively small portion of the Monster Manual was open to third-party use. Any question of cosmology that was answered in the core books couldn't be contradicted - a kind of boundary on the imaginative sandbox that hadn't previously existed. These and other restrictions convinced publishers (sooner or later) to look elsewhere - such as sticking with the OGL and Paizo's Pathfinder, or going still further back and publishing retroclones.

There was one more thing that WotC did to make it clear that third-party publishers weren't welcome. They released DDI, with its Character Builder and Adventure Builder. These were designed in a way that made homebrewed material difficult to implement and clumsy once it was entered, and third-party material was not available. DDI was the solution to the complex choices of character creation and character advancement, because it compiled all WotC-issued choices in a single list. At the same time, though, it was a painfully efficient means of stifling third-party and fan innovation. Once my players were relying on DDI for their characters, that was that - but I've noted my problems with DDI in this blog before.

I do think it reasonable for WotC to want to make money off of every hard-copy and electronic copy of their core rulebooks. There has to be a workable legal middle ground between "you can print your own Player's Handbook if you want" and "you can't change any significant part of the system." Obviously, though, a company has to be able to reprint some rules if they can change any rules, if only to be clear about what they're not changing (without the rulebook reading like a change log). One of the best ways to stop third-party publishers from even wanting to create their own reprintings of the Player's Handbook is to beat them to the punch - that is, for WotC to offer alternate bindings of the same document. It's kind of like fighting IP piracy: if you make it easy for people to buy what they want from you, most of them will do that rather than going hunting for that item through alternate channels.

Getting some of the big names in third-party publishing on-board with 5e needs to be a top priority for WotC. Regardless of sales numbers, the D&D community listens to people whose names they've read on the covers of their favorite gaming books, especially when they don't think that person is a shill. Make it easy for these people to publish, and they'll at least give it a shot - they may have been burned by 4e and found a welcoming home in Pathfinder, but if 5e looks at all promising, they'll at least publish a few things just because they don't want to risk getting left out. (Obviously, none of this matters if 5e flops from other factors, but WotC got a huge amount of negative press from the GSL, and that gave a lot of ammunition to people who were looking for reasons not to buy in.)

WotC desperately needs to find a better economic model for DDI. Its initial release was something you downloaded and installed on your computer, so that you could store your character on your computer, copy it to a flash drive, whatever. The problem here is that every time they released a new book full of crunch, they automatically gave you that content the next time you updated DDI. Why would I buy the book, though, when I can have the content for free? Well, but it wasn't free; there was a monthly subscription. A logical solution, except that you could cancel your subscription, wait six months or a year, pay for a single month of subscription, and get all of the new content that they'd released since the last time you patched the program. The steady access to Dragon and Dungeon content just wasn't a good enough lure to get people to stay subscribed - especially when the crunch offered there was likewise part of DDI content updates.

WotC didn't like not getting paid. This is not surprising. They attempted to resolve this by moving the whole thing to the web; you have to be a subscriber to use it at all, which certainly satisfies WotC's goal. To sell this as a benefit to users, they focused on making your character available from any computer - it's just that it's more difficult to use, and I don't actually need to access my character on other computers, unless I've forgotten to bring my character sheet for the night. Homebrewed material went from difficult to basically impossible.

It didn't have to be this way, and they could do a lot better in 5e. This is something Kainenchen has talked about at length, and she's absolutely right. Charge for content, not usage. Let the basic 5e DDI include only the PH, DMG, and MM content, with check-boxes to handle the player's and DM's choices of modular rules for that campaign. Through some means that would admittedly be fraught with issues on the return-policy front, give those who purchase hardcover books a way to redeem a code from that book to get that content added to their DDI access for free. Those who don't buy the hardcover books pay the WotC website a much reduced price to get that content. (The aforementioned return-policy issues in bookstores would probably make it easier to just charge everyone for the electronic version of the content.)

Moving on beyond those issues, create a content-management template that is equally open to fans and third-party publishers, and allow those fans and third-party publishers to sell their content patches in your store for a small percentage, or on their own websites for no fee. The soul of D&D is that everyone's game is different, and fans now go online to exchange ideas about those differences - monetize that. The model here, for those who don't recognize it, is The Sims, where fans hugely expanded the content available and sold it in EA's store. This didn't stop those same fans from paying EA for The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 and all the content expansions along the way - and I honestly believe that D&D fans are enough like Sims fans to do the same.

When writing the 5e OGL, GSL, or whatever, give absolutely as much of the game as you can stand to give over to free usage. Design the game on the foreknowledge that you're going to be giving content over to those third-party guys, and don't mix product identity with rules terminology, because they won't reinvent your content for their own usage if you don't force them. Let competitors make their own clones of DDI if they want - if they can do it better than you can, start copying the features that are improvements on yours. This is certainly how WoW handled their modding community.

Oh, and - a freely-accessible System Reference Document (as shown here) is such an incredibly useful tool that you could put a little advertising on that page and call it a day. This is just another case of the real message of this post: let other people play with your toys. Focus on knowing the most interesting ways to use those toys and staying one step ahead in developing new additions to the toybox. You might actually get away with making everything modular enough that you never again have to publish a new edition.

But hey, these are just my opinions, many of which I got from Kainenchen. What the hell do I know?

Savage Worlds: Player-Side Review

2012-02-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

As one of the test audience for Samhaine's system reviews, I played in a Savage Worlds session this past weekend, set in the classic D&D setting of Ravenloft. (In fact, he's even posted the module!) The GM pregenerated characters and some backstory for each of us. I played Rhys Sulien Llewellyn, a seasoned elderly elven wizard, pretty much min-maxed (as far as I know) for spellcasting: I had a d12 in Spellcasting, 15 power points, and the Wizard edge. I'm pretty sure that's really badass, even though I don't know enough about the system to be sure. When I used something described as magic missiles (really, bolts of force) to utterly annihilate two wolves at once (even if the wolves were extras), for a final cost of one (1) Power Point, I started feeling pretty bold.

But I'm getting ahead of myself slightly. The five of us were swallowed by the Mists of Ravenloft and deposited elsewhere. Before we've even introduced ourselves to one another, we're attacked by a pack of wolves. My positioning is not so great, and for a moment there I have both wolves right up in my face. Now, being elderly means that my Strength and Vigor are both rated d4. This means that my Parry (let's call it my Armor Class, if you only know D&D rules; it's the chance for the enemy to miss you outright) is 2. This is two points below the difficulty of "standard" tests; basically, missing me is very freaking nigh impossible. On top of that, my Toughness (physical resilience; basically my defense against hits causing Wounds) is 4 because of that miserably low Vigor. In brief, a stiff breeze might be a serious issue.

So when there are two wolves all up in my shit, we discuss how I can back away, protect myself, or otherwise just survive their next turn. Much like in D&D 3e and later, threatening enemies get to attack you as you withdraw. I can reasonably guess that they're going to hit me and at the very least impose the Shaken condition - and in this system, that is a Problem. Once I'm Shaken, my turn is over, and next turn I must spend my action attempting a Spirit roll to remove the Shaken condition (well, okay, I can walk at half my Pace instead, but that's really it - a condition bad enough that I might as well not have the option). If I succeed by less than 4 (do not get an extra degree of success, called a Raise), that's it for my turn. If I do get a Raise, I can take my action normally. This Shaken thing is my one towering problem with the system, but it didn't wind up being a problem for me in this fight, because I changed what I was going to do. I Tricked one of the wolves (this is a standard combat maneuver), rolling my Smarts (d12) against the wolf's Smarts (...much lower), describing the maneuver as conjuring a minor illusion of danger behind the wolf. So I get a Raise on this maneuver, and now one of the two wolves threatening me is Shaken and has a penalty to Parry. The party's swashbuckling rogue dashes over and attacks the other wolf, again imposing the Shaken condition.

The shoe is on the other foot now for these wolves. To the best of my recollection, the next round I won initiative by drawing a Joker, at which point I cast the magic missile heard 'round the world. I paid double PP for an extra missile (so I could attack both wolves) and double PP for double damage (going up to 4d6), and then I rolled a whole bunch of Raises on my Spellcasting test to reduce that cost again. Those Raises also meant I did still more damage. Oh, and I think at least one die per missile rolled an Ace (maximum value for the die), and therefore exploded. So, um. The famous mists of Ravenloft were stained a vibrant red as a result. Because this ended the fight (and in a very... colorful fashion), we didn't really get into analyzing what kind of problem Shaken would be - don't worry, I'll be going into a lot more detail about it later.

After the cut, the session recap and analysis continues.

Fight over, we introduce ourselves to one another. The party consists of my character, a remarkably rotund but very badass knight, an elderly cleric of Lathander, a foppish but quite well-educated and groomed scholar, and the aforementioned swashbuckling rogue. We play through the normal first-meeting kind of stuff. Everyone hates the elf. And a couple of us really hate Vistani, which is a problem, given that the Vistani caravan in the area will prove to be one of our only sources of information. The Vistani hate elves, too. It's enough to give a guy a complex. (Which is to say, I had the Outsider Hindrance, so when making Persuasion checks untrained I also had an extra -2 to the roll. I had to roll an Ace and explode the die to get a positive roll.)

Anyway, we get the brush-off from the local villagers, while the Vistani offer absolutely as little help as possible, concluding that the Dark Powers have taken an interest in us, the area is forming a new Domain, we have to do something relating to this, and that's that. Taking stock of our options, we can spend the night in the village's abandoned inn, push on to the next village, go to the cemetery, or go on up to the local lord's manor. We quickly decide that pushing on to the next village is the least obviously suicidal of these options... and run into a wall of mist. We trudge back to town in time to break into the abandoned inn, build a small fire to avoid freezing to death, and eat the rations we bought from the Vistani.

In the middle of the night, the foppish scholar awakens just in time to avoid being bitten by a vampire. The knight springs into action and strikes at her with his sword, at which point we definitively learn that vampires are immune to damage from that sword, and probably from anything that is not specifically one of their weaknesses. The cleric, though, pulls out her holy symbol and with one dawn burst turns her to mist... the kind of mist that flees back to its coffin to make trouble for us again after the next sunset. We panic for a little while, but eventually settle back down to sleep until just before dawn.

We head up to the lord's manor, which is shuttered up nice and tight, with barred doors and the whole nine yards. One breaking and entering charge later, we're inside on the second story. We spend most of the day trying to break down the door to the basement (where we believe the vampires to be resting in their coffins) and going through the diaries in the study. We find out how the master vampire here murdered his evil brother and gradually became decadent and vampiric. All very tragic, I'm sure.

We break for dinner and go to Neo Asia, which chews up something like two hours. This was not ideal. My bad.

In the diaries, we find records of the murdered brother being buried with a blessed sword, so that he will not himself rise as a vampire or other horrible undead. We take the sword, with a firm promise to put it right back once we're done with it. (The Dark Powers find such promises very funny, I am told.) There was theoretically supposed to be an encounter with skeletons and zombies here, but the GM blows it off because it's already late. Back at the manor house, we finish breaking down that door at sunset, conveniently enough, and we all rush down the stairs to meet the master vampire and his two spawn.

The opening rounds of this fight go pretty well for us. The cleric's dawn bursts can be cast multi-target, so she does; this doesn't do the buckets of damage it did the first time around, but they're Shaken and Wounded. The swashbuckler damages one of them with a stake to the heart (a Called Shot). I cast a web to hinder the vampires, since we're pretty sure my magic missiles and fireball won't do a damn thing. Eventually, the master vampire succeeds a Spirit roll to remove Shaken by enough that he takes his normal action, and just about murders the knight on the spot; only his Wound penalties stop him from getting that last Raise he needed. The cleric dumps a bunch of Power Points into healing the knight, who is wielding the blessed sword. The next round, the cleric spends the last of her Power Points on a final dawn burst, and again has miserable dice luck against the vampires' very high Toughness.

This is where things all go awry for us. I don't mean that we lose the fight, though. It's... kind of worse than that. We can't make any progress against the vampires, because we can't seem to hit their Parry and Toughness values with the Raise we'd need to deal a Wound - so they're just getting Shaken over and over again. They have accumulated enough Wound penalties that they can't hit us either, or even reliably pass a Spirit roll to remove Shaken. Also, they're constantly having to break out of the webs I'm casting. We have them effectively stun-locked, but still can't finish any of them off. We honestly went something like five or six rounds without any meaningful change in the situation. After this had gone on beyond the limits of elven endurance, we called an end to it, because there was no possible resolution other than GM fiat. Our GM narrated some denouement, et cetera.

The problem with the game is that improved skill just grants larger dice, which is no guarantee whatsoever of success - and smaller dice explode far more often, so while larger dice are better for you, it doesn't really feel that way. Penalties, expressed as flat numbers subtracted from the final total, can be a significant portion of the overall value of a die if it's not your specialty. These penalties only apply to die rolls, though: attacks, skill tests, attribute tests, and opposed rolls. Static target numbers, such as Parry and Toughness, are not reduced by any amount of Wound penalty. Thus the game has a death spiral, but one that leads to stalemate rather than quick resolution.

Most of the problem, though, boils down to the Shaken condition. On its face, it's a really interesting idea. It works like a kind of temporary Wound level - you're off-guard, rocked back on your heels, or otherwise temporarily vulnerable and stunned. It's not all that difficult to remove the Shaken condition, though it's often going to cost you your turn unless you have a very high Spirit stat. Once you remove Shaken, you have your temporary Wound level back, and the enemy has to render you Shaken again before you start taking Wounds. It could be a great way to represent why a one-punch knockout works only when the hero isn't expecting it. In practice, though, it meant a lot of frustrated rounds of nothing much happening.

There are also a lot of different ways to impose the Shaken condition. Damaging attacks cause an opponent to become Shaken, of course, but so does a Trick or a Test of Wills, if you roll a Raise - and as opposed rolls, it's often easier to score a Raise on those maneuvers than on a normal attack. While we haven't tested this idea, I feel like the fix that would really help the whole system is to change Shaken so that it doesn't stun, but instead opposes a -2 Parry penalty that stacks with the penalty from the Trick maneuver (maybe also a penalty to Toughness if that isn't enough). This means that you'll definitely want to purge the condition soon, but if you're in a desperate situation you can still attack even though you're off-balance.

I suspect that the show-stopping problem of probabilities that we ran into isn't common in most Savage Worlds games, because most things aren't vampires that require magical daylight, holy water, a blessed weapon, or a stake and a Called Shot to the heart. Even given the vampires' defenses, though, the Shaken condition was the thing that got in the way and frustrated players and GM alike. I'd be interested in playing Savage Worlds again in the future, assuming the GM introduced some kind of houserule taking some of the teeth out of the Shaken condition. My other concerns with the rules, such as the aforementioned death spiral, are minor enough.

And, of course, I want to play in Ravenloft again. I don't miss the AD&D 2e rules at all, but the session was a great reminder that 2e was the Golden Age of setting writing within TSR (as another enterprising blogger has observed here).

D&D 5e: Scaling Bonuses

2012-01-28T17:06:00.001-05:00

While very little definite information has yet been released about 5th edition D&D, they've released some new information on mechanics in the past day or two that I want to comment on, based on some educated guesses made in the context of previous editions.

"Instead of the fighter getting a better and betterattack bonus, he instead gets more options to do stuff as he goes up inlevel, and his attack bonus goes up at a very modest rate. I think itoffers a better play experience that the orc/ogre can remain in thecampaign, and people can know how the monster would work from aprevious experience, but they remain a challenge for longer." - Monte Cook

So let's talk about scaling bonuses - Warning, this is about to get mathy. Let's say you're trying to pick monsters for a fun and challenging fight in a 4e campaign. A monster becomes too powerful to use in a fight when its AC and other defenses are high enough that PCs need to roll very high (natural 17+, I'd say) to hit. There's also a band, which I'll arbitrarily identify as requiring natural rolls of 13-16, where the game might be fair, but it's mostly frustrating. For comparison, I'll note that we're talking about ACs of 19 to 23 to challenge 1st-level characters. Based on the Monster Statistics By Role chart on p. 184 of the DMG, this represents 3rd to 7th level for soldiers, or 7th to 11th level for brutes and artillery.

Is this a valid way to judge what you should use to challenge the party? Not remotely, but the point I want to make is that 4th edition paid a lot of attention to likelihood of hitting an opponent, and scaling AC and defense out of reach is a primary way of signifying that an opponent is too tough for you right now. The same is true, of course, of low-level monsters threatening the PCs; once they need high rolls to hit the PCs' defenses, they should really just pack it in unless they are there to slow down the PCs while a boss of some kind does the actual damage.

You reach a point, though, where it just doesn't matter how many low-level monsters you throw out there, because hitting only on 20s is not a valid threat. PCs reach the point of sneering at orcs, even dozens of orcs; a little later, they can sneer at dozens of ogres, and so on. Obviously, you always have the option of creating a new stat block that is a higher-level orc - that's entirely beside the point. You've outleveled orcs as a threat. The same thing happened in a different way, at a different time, in 3.x D&D. We regarded it, in both editions, as the natural order of things; in heroic fantasy, should the high-level champions of the realm be threatened by orcs?

5e seems to be saying, "Yes, you should still have to worry about orcs, at least in very large numbers." Orcs and ogres "remain in the campaign;" they're saying (I presume) that you could have an epic war against the orcs, because orcs don't (or don't quickly - we'll see how the math plays out) reach the point of averaging near-zero damage per round against the party's fighters.

So it's a really interesting goal, keeping a given statblock relevant over most of the range of play. This has a couple of drawbacks, though. People like watching the numbers go up, frankly. I think we can still expect hit points and damage output per attack to scale with level - certainly they've made it clear that wizard spells improve in damage output at higher levels. But if the attack bonus you have at first level is the attack bonus you're going to have for several levels, and you're never really going to improve relative to the scaling opposition (higher level monsters, not the orcs of my earlier example), then having anything but the best possible number in your attack stat (for fighters, Strength) feels like starting out the game in the hole.

This was a problem in 4e (discussed in more detail here) that the system never credibly addressed, to the best of my knowledge. Hit rating was the be-all and end-all of combat effectiveness, because 95% of everything you could do to affect an opponent involved an attack roll. 3.x somewhat avoided this problem by making non-primary stats more useful for more characters, and by making attack bonuses scale faster than the defenses players were likely to face. It's not clear to me what 5e is doing with monster defenses, but slow-scaling attack bonuses for players makes it likely to me that monster defenses will also scale slowly, one way or the other.

I think there's a reasonable solution to this, but first I want to address a tangential point in statting that I expect to hear as a counter-argument. Characters can be defined by their weaknesses, but I think the majority of players don't want to play characters whose primary stats as determined by class are those weak points, since that interferes directly with the character's most basic functions during gameplay. Weak fighters, clumsy rogues, slow-witted wizards - these are not archetypes that are going to catch on in any edition of D&D. A comedy-of-errors character in D&D either keeps his errors outside of his class function, or meets a swift end.

The thing about this is that it doesn't leave a lot of room for character variation, in comparison with fantasy and other source fiction, but I think there's an opportunity to tweak the 4e and 5e rules to cooperate a little better. 4e was, and presumably 5e will be, balanced on the assumption that characters have an 18 in their primary attack stats.

What if the benefits of gaining levels included attack bonuses (at odd levels, let's say) until you have an attack bonus on par with what you would have if you had an 18 in that attack stat?

There are problems with this, I am aware - and I invite comments to that effect. The thing I like about the idea is that "this fighter is remarkably mighty" might be divorced, even slightly, from "this fighter is just better than any fighter with a lesser Strength score." Of course, fighters with a lower Strength score don't have the same damage bonus, and that's sort of a problem, but those fighters might enjoy sufficient compensatory advantages in other stats - particularly if 5e is better than 4e about making stats other than your class-and-build's primary and secondary stats useful.

Since I brought up the point of the source fiction earlier, I want to mention what I specifically had in mind: The Three Musketeers, or really the d'Artagnan Romances as a whole. (Also, their fantasy counterparts.) Porthos (and his counterpart) are noted for their great-verging-on-superhuman strength. Yet they are capable but not objectively superior fighters; Porthos does not outshine any of the other three in actual fighting ability.

Obviously, Dumas had no rules set he was attempting to imitate, and I don't intend to imply otherwise. My premise, though, is that you could have two or more fighters in a party (much like Pendragon) with different Strength scores, without one perpetually living in the shadow of the other, at least as far as their class was concerned. The later introduction of magic items, such as gauntlets of ogre power, might cause some really odd things to happen here by re-equalizing the two, or by putting the stronger even further ahead of his comrade, but a quote from the DDXP seminar on 5e leads me to wonder how they'll be designing such items in the first place: "We want to decouple magic items from character progression so they're not needed, and return that exploration and excitement of finding magic items." So who knows?

I think this kind of rule works best in random stat generation; when a player can plan too definitely around it (as in point-buy), I expect that it will be trivial to find a solution that returns stat generation to a solved game, which is what I'm trying to get away from in the first place. If classes and builds have secondary stats, as they do in 4e, new problems come along, as you may now be able to spare better stats (rolled or purchased) for your secondary stat... and for Constitution, the universally-needed stat. It also really only works for stats that have two functions for a given class, much as Strength governs both attack and damage bonus. In 3.x and 4e, this is pretty straightforward - for example, Int governs save DC and bonus spells for a 3.x wizard, and attack and damage for a 4e wizard.

The simulation goal behind this idea works a lot better in SIFRP. Since so many stats contribute in one way or another to combat, and many weapons use a stat other than Athletics for their damage values, it's much easier to have mathematically comparable fighters that simply shine in different areas. This suggested rule matters a lot less in games with one fighter, one cleric, one wizard, and one rogue, since there's not as much room to directly compare oneself to another character. For that reason, it might be one of those modular rules that a DM only brings out in campaigns where it would be useful, such as an all-fighters campaign.

Encounters Per Day Design

2012-01-26T00:30:00.002-05:00

The concept of designing D&D around a certain number of encounters per day first came to the fore in D&D 3.0. I think everyone reading this is probably familiar with the concept already, but I'd like to drill down on it a bit, because this approach completely changed D&D, and made it unlike any other roleplaying game I can name. I'll start by saying that I neither approve nor disapprove of this approach - I can enjoy a game that embraces this idea as much as I can one that has rejected it.

In 2e and earlier editions, the general idea of an adventure was that low-level spellcasters had very little spellcasting that they could do in a day. Fighters and rogues, on the other hand, could do their thing all day - as I've said in the past, "sword mana never runs out." At low levels, the casters need to work out another solution; at high levels, they'd be hard-pressed to run out of spells without purely wasting them. A big part of the caster's reward for gaining a level is increased staying power in encounters. At low levels, parties keep going with the adventure even when the wizard is out of spells. At later levels, it's a bit more tempting to stop what you're doing and hole up once the casters are out of spells; in particular, you've grown much more dependent on the cleric's healing to get you back to a safer number of hit points. Still, the designers had no concept of pacing the game around a certain number of encounters in a day; they expected players to play through the adventure, and gave DMs wandering monster tables to keep the PCs from resting whenever they liked. For want of terminology, I'll call this a story-paced game - its pacing is determined by the flow of the story at the table.

D&D 3.x is the strange middle-ground edition here: still using Vancian magic, with its per-day spells, but conscious of every spellcaster's desire to spend their combat actions casting spells, rather than holding back and conserving spells tightly. (An exception is made here for all the various types of casters who actually have significant physical combat ability, such as most clerics and druids.) One of the main reasons that the designers introduced 0th level spells was to give even the lowest-level casters a bit more staying power. I can only imagine that introducing bonus spells from high Intelligence for wizards was motivated by the same goal. I generally found that by around 5th level I had enough spells that I didn't need to look elsewhere for something to do during a combat round, unless we were pushing our fifth or sixth encounter in a day.

The concept of an "expected" number of encounters per day was used, in 3.x, as a very loose way to balance weapon-wielders and spellcasters in the early going. (To contrast it with story-paced games, I'll call this an action-paced game; that is, designed to work more like an action flick.) Weapon-wielders manage their hit point total, and that's about it; they essentially have the same amount of "fun" (that is, they are at their peak performance) no matter how many encounters there are in a day. Spellcasters can "go nova" (as the slang goes) if they don't think there will be more encounters in the day - essentially, they can perform above what we might otherwise regard as their optimum performance. This was especially true of psions and wilders. It wasn't until much later in WotC's development of 3.x that they did much with giving weapon-wielders any form of per-encounter or per-day abilities (here I'm thinking of the Tome of Battle), though they also experimented with various kinds of melee brutes who employed spellcasting as central parts of their combat style - psychic warriors, soulknives, and duskblades all come to mind.

The thing about a consciously action-paced game is that the phenomenon of the 15-minute adventuring day became widespread, and widely discussed. Maybe this was a major problem in other folks' 2e-and-prior D&D games, and maybe it wasn't; I don't particularly recall it as being a problem, but the last of those campaigns was, um, more than eleven years ago now, and my recollection may be spotty. Once the DM is particularly conscious of the idea that an adventuring day "should" contain about four encounters, it changes the way the DM tells stories. Yet if the DM ignores the encounters-per-day suggestions, other aspects of the 3.x's balance suffer. Specifically, the guidelines for Encounter Level go out the window, and the DM is pretty much on his own to figure out how much danger the PCs can handle in that day. This is one of those things that's obvious after the fact, but took me a painfully long time to figure out in running games: if you run fewer encounters, you can run 1-2 big encounters - just be very careful about how you increase the threat level of the enemy, because it's not that hard to just overwhelm the PCs. (Digression: be careful about that statement too, and remember that a big pile of enemies can sometimes just be vaporized by a single fireball. The best possible thing you can do for game balance when statting encounters is to just do a bunch of different things.)

After the cut: moving on to 4e, and how it changes everything; also, how encounters-per-day design doesn't factor into other games, from Mage to Dust to Dust.

So in non-Essentials 4e (hereafter 4e as opposed to 4E, because I'm tired of typing "non-Essentials 4e"), a character's powers can be at-will, encounter, or daily. Characters start off with one daily power, and gain additional daily powers quite rarely. As you'd expect, daily powers can be devastating in their effect, and even on a poor attack roll, daily powers always have some effect (or are Reliable, so that it's not expended on a miss). This setup puts fighters and wizards on equal footing, so that it's not always the casters who are starting to encourage the team to hole up so they can recover their powers.

The crucial per-day currency, though, isn't the daily powers - it's the healing surges. Healing surges are, I think, the game's primary focus of attrition. Basically, the DM can try to kill the players quickly, with enough damage to overwhelm their ability to heal (or kill them before they have a chance to heal); or he can try to grind them down by forcing them to spend healing surges and preventing them from resting. All characters benefit about equally from days with fewer-than-normal encounters and suffer about equally from more encounters than normal.

As I've said, the game's balance comes to revolve around this idea; the only reason 2e's balance didn't was that the game was fundamentally not balanced around combat at all. If the DM starts thinking about how balance revolves around combat, it significantly changes how he runs the game: it becomes a better action game, I think, but verisimilitude becomes harder to maintain. See, there's not much point in a single wandering encounter out in the wilds, unless it's overwhelmingly dangerous, and I found that I wanted every encounter to have a point, because it's likely to be a third to a half of evening of play. Likewise ambushes: a party that has not faced any other encounters in the day is remarkably difficult to threaten.

I found that my D&D games took on a more structured flow, as I tried to figure out the three or four encounters I'd need to throw in the players' way before they faced the climactic encounter of the adventure. I need to put forth considerable effort to keep them on that track, too - while I don't especially care if they skip an encounter, they might be fucked if they run into two encounters at once through some accident of exploration. There's a lot to be said for letting the dice fall where they may and letting emergent storytelling happen (I do read OSR blogs), but there's also the fact that DMing is about restraint - the DM can always hit harder.

By way of contrast, there's my Mage: the Awakening chronicle, most definitely a story-paced game. As I discussed in this post, Mage doesn't bother with any concept of encounter balance, and just assumes the Storyteller knows not to send psychopathic Scelesti archmages after newly-Awakened PCs. The PCs start off able to hold 10 mana, and increase from there as they gain Gnosis; since they spent a total of three Merit dots on their Hallow and their Hallow can store up to fourteen days' production worth of Tass, it's a lot like their Mana pools are per-day resources. Of course, so many of their spells are zero-cost that Especially recently, they've kept busy enough that their Willpower pools aren't always full at the start of a day of something interesting happening, but I think they're keenly aware that events in the setting are advancing on a timeline. If they have just one encounter in a day that causes them to spend any resources, though, it's not really a big deal.

This lets me worry less about how I'm going to include the right challenge level of encounters in a day and focus more on the natural flow of the story. As a result, Mage isn't a great action game - that is to say, it's hard to present compelling tactical challenges. This has a lot to do with how the game doesn't discuss scaling, encounter balance, per-day capability, or the like. It does just fine at presenting compelling strategic challenges and puzzles, though, in a more naturalistic way than D&D does.

LARP game balance is still another matter. Other than maybe IFGS (and only maybe in that case), I've never heard of a LARP spending any serious mental energy on designing around a particular number of encounters in a day. In most boffer LARPs, you have a relatively high degree of control over how many encounters you participate in over the course of a day, and players who prefer to avoid combat encounters might well do so without ruining their event. In DtD, nonmagical abilities are almost always at-will or per-encounter, resetting with ten minutes of non-combat activity, while spellcasting is per-day, and consumable items are... aptly named. This is why casters of all kinds are so strongly advised to have some kind of weaponry if they intend to participate in every combat that crosses their paths: even a celestial of the Fifth Circle, with a daily pool of 80 mana, can cast his strongest spell "only" sixteen times. This is not generally seen as the wisest use of mana, but it's certainly impressive; faced with opponents who have any kind of relevant defenses, it's a great way to run out of mana well in advance of the action of the event.

This post is long enough that I don't want to go into it in detail, but I've played LARPs that chose per-encounter design for all abilities, so as to create an action-paced game. Some early design discussions of DtD toyed with the idea of moving in that direction as well, but we eventually rejected it, taking into account the difficulty of flinging monsters at PCs quickly enough to cause them to suffer any attrition if the PCs reset more abilities, or reset them more quickly.

Naturally, I'll be interested to see what D&D 5e does with per-encounter and per-day design. Given their stated goal of drawing OSR players back into the fold, I would expect to see a significant return to Vancian daily effects. I wouldn't expect the survival of many of 4e's pacing innovations: healing surges, action points, and limits to the number of daily effects a single character can use from magic items. (The last of these has been the point of much back-and-forth in the last year or so of 4e.)

D&D 5th Edition: Design Thoughts of My Own

2012-01-19T23:27:00.000-05:00

The announcement of D&D Next, 5th Edition, whatever you want to call it, has unsurprisingly lit a fire under the gaming blogosphere, and now that I'm past the DtD one-day, I'm certainly up for commenting on what I'd like to see and the problems that I hope they attack. Much of this has received direct or indirect comment from Mearls, Monte Cook, or one of the pre-alpha playtesters, and I'll try to include quotes where appropriate. All quotes are lifted from the ENWorld 5e page.

They've talked a lot about modular rules, even though it's not absolutely clear what this will mean in practice.

"The new edition is being conceived of as a modular, flexible system, easily customized to individual preferences. Just like a player makes his character, the Dungeon Master can make his ruleset. He might say ‘I’m going to run a military campaign, it’s going to be a lot of fighting’… so he’d use the combat chapter, drop in miniatures rules, and include the martial arts optional rules.” - Mike Mearls

I would like to think that this is opening the game to genre emulation of many disparate genres, without promising to emulate all genres at once. As a DM, I feel that some campaigns need cinematic wuxia, some need just enough simulationism to achieve immersion, and some need to wallow in unrelenting squalor. Some campaigns need magic items to be common, such that the game's math expects them to be there and operates according to expected gear levels; some campaigns want magic items to be rare and significant, without the game's math collapsing into constant frustration (and, ideally, without invalidating the Monster Manual).

"With fourth edition, there was a huge focus on mechanics. The story was still there, but a lot of our customers were having trouble getting to it. In some ways, it was like we told people, ‘The right way to play guitar is to play thrash metal,’ But there’s other ways to play guitar.” - Mike Mearls

Let's run through a quick example in a little more detail. A huge amount of 2e's splatbooks were genre-emulation mechanics for various historical eras (books with green covers), often including the partial or complete removal of healing magic - but often ignoring any gameplay-level need to replace it. On one hand, this made the games gritty in the extreme; any damage was going to be with you for a few weeks. On the other hand, this is further along that spectrum of realism than I necessarily want - let's face it, it's as inconvenient to the DM as it is to the players when two party members are decisively out of the action one encounter before the climax. It wasn't until later editions that they really explored alternate, non-magical justifications for healing, but that's exactly the kind of thing I look to modular rules to handle.

In a related theme, sometimes a campaign needs complex and detailed rules for sea travel, naval combat, and negotiating trade values for captured goods (for example, a Pirates of the Spanish Main style), while other campaigns would be burdened by anything more complex than some travel times and a Diplomacy check. If the DM announces the modular rules that the campaign uses at the start of the game, the PCs have a much clearer idea of what to expect, and can build their characters accordingly - perhaps picking up feats, classes, or whatever that are only available as part of that rules module. (The point I'm making here is that rules modules can affect both the frontend and the backend of the system, and that's strongly desirable.)

After the break - commentary on many other topics.
I think it is painfully obvious to everyone who reads the vague promises that the designers have made with regard to "unifying" the editions that all you have is a new standard that is, as likely as anything, only going to fragment the community one step further.

"...this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide." - Monte Cook

On its face, this is such a ludicrous and impossible claim that I am deeply entrenched in Believe It When I See It. Either that, or "relatively balanced" are the world's most evasive weasel words. Event if they are weasel words as I cannot help but suspect, I still think the designers are deceiving themselves to a great degree. A quick scan of the OSR blogosphere - a significant faction of people 5e is trying to return to the purchasing fold - reveals that many of them hold up descending AC and chart-lookup THAC0 as the cattle of the very gods, while it's a cold day in hell that your average Pathfinder or 4e player would even entertain the notion of returning to such a system. To be fair, though, the OSR faithful who fall into this category have effectively cut themselves out of WotC's potential market; I'm aware that the real target here are those tasty, money-spending Pathfinder players.

Still, this claim highlights one of the major areas where D&D has always had problems: the value of choices made during character creation is almost impossible for a new player to appreciate. When we first came to 4e, we had a table full of experienced and perceptive players, but we still made choices that would prove to be painfully suboptimal in the first few sessions of play; 4e was sufficiently different from its predecessors that our experience in 3.x and prior editions severely misled us. 3.x and 4e have pursued the goal of character customization to a very great degree: the idea of allowing players to make exactly the characters that live in their minds' eyes, and ideally do so in a mechanically compelling way. Pathfinder picked up where 3.x left off and ran with it - even as a very experienced gamer, I would say that I am daunted by all the different choice points that are available to me in customizing my character.

The thing about all of these choices is that offering them creates a chance to make suboptimal choices. A player operating with system mastery on his side may make suboptimal choices for reasons of experimentation or character appropriateness, and that's fine. A player who lacks system mastery will make a much greater number of suboptimal choices (3.x Toughness, anyone?) out of ignorance, and that choice will stick with them anywhere from a level or two (4th edition) to the rest of the character's career (all forms of the game that lack retraining mechanics). If there are varying levels of system mastery within a party, as there usually are, that player is stuck wondering why his character is so egregiously outdone by other party members. The books themselves also do a very poor job of guiding players toward good choices; the first thing every player should learn is that D&D, just like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, shows you default choices that are some of the most incorrect of all available choices.

To hook this back into the quote above, though, let's look at Alice, Keeper of the Old Ways, and Bob, 3.x Hypercustomizer. Imagine for a minute that the game does offer Alice the small number of decisions that a 1e fighter ought to be making. If I'm not mistaken, this boils down to race, weapon(s), armor (and shield), languages known, name, height, weight, hair color, and age. At the same time, it offers Bob at least a significant fraction of the choice points that a 3.x fighter ought to be making: race (and subrace), alternate class features, 2-3 feats (from a list of hundreds - fortunately only a few choices are worthwhile at first level), skill points (4*(2+Int bonus)), a wildly longer list of weapons, shield and armor carefully selected to fit Bob's Dex modifier, languages known, name, height, weight, hair color, and age. Possibly Background, if the DM's using one of the many different optional Background tables.

Okay, so they make a different number of choices, so what? Well, there are two ways this could go. There could be bonuses built into Alice's options that compensate her for whatever extra Stuff Bob gets from his feats, skills, and the like. This is probably, technically, the sanest way to do this, but it's pretty ugly from Bob's point of view. They aren't really playing the same class; Alice must be getting some kind of scaling bonus about as quickly as Bob gets feats, while Bob's feats must be a tradeoff in situational or otherwise limited power. The other way things could go is for Alice not to receive a compensating bonus, so Alice is just playing a 3.x fighter who doesn't get feats or skill points. This fails the "relatively balanced" test, and in a big way if WotC's design history of feats is any judge.

But I've belabored this point beyond all reason; let's move on.

As far as I'm concerned, probably the single most important thing for them to tackle in this edition, the thing that most resolutely divides 3.x and 4e in a DM's usage, is how NPCs are statted. In 3.x, there is an overriding conceit that, unless rules for race and creature type alter the playing field, NPCs are built on the same framework as PCs, with skill points, feats, and possibly character levels. Things that aren't core PC races often also have the possibility of advancing by Hit Dice, which is a lot like advancing by levels, but with radically different benefits. Therefore the DM works through all the same choice points in statting a given NPC that a player makes in constructing a PC of the same level, if not more. The DM may feel a greater freedom to ignore a lot of those options, since this NPC is only going to last as long as it takes for the players to bring about weapon-induced facial murder, but the DM does this work in high volume.

In 4e, as I've discussed in previous posts, it's not feasible to find points of solid connection between the construction of PCs and the construction of NPCs. NPCs use different stat-advancement math, NPCs ignore bonuses from ability scores, NPCs don't have feats, NPC magic doesn't use PC-side cosmology, and NPC use of magic items is strictly cosmetic. On the plus side, I can put together a whole party of fully-functional 4e NPCs (or re-skin existing NPCs) in less time than it takes to make a single 3.x NPC. That word "re-skin" - that's a 4e thing, because re-skinning fundamentally acknowledges that the underpinnings of how the NPC came to have the powers that it has is meaningless - there is no cosmological why.

The way these two editions handled NPC creation define the poles of a whole spectrum of design possibility. Original D&D on through 2e (at least pre-Skills and Powers 2e, which has from time to time been called 2.5e) had very little complication in creating a PC, and thus it was possible to create an NPC through the exact same means in a trivial amount of time. On the other hand, they mostly didn't bother, outside of spellcasters; they summed up relevant combat stats in a string of character far smaller than a tweet. The height of convenience - but that convenience came through sacrificing interest, as far as I'm concerned.

I hope WotC finds a middle way. If I were designing it, I'd focus on pre-packaging options for NPCs of various types (each of them within reach for PCs), possibly in searchable electronic content. I've gotten out of the habit of using a laptop or other electronic devices at the table, but I could get back into the habit if they remembered to make it convenient to pick things up and move them around on my computer. Oh, and for the love of the new decade, don't forget the simultaneous release of the same software to iPad and Kindle Fire. This is important: if all the tools I need to build encounters and NPCs are on my Kindle Fire and working fast, I'm not fumbling with a stack of books that are each bulkier than the machine, and I didn't have to murder a forest in my session preparation. (Also? Templates were a really neat idea in 3.0 that just became burdensome to apply. Computers are really good at the logic that goes into applying a template. Make them do the heavy lifting.)

Signing off for now, but I have a lot more to say on this topic for future posts.

SIFRP Hack: Playtest Recap

2011-12-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday, Kainenchen and 2/3rds of my college gaming group sat down to playtest the hack of SIFRP that I've been posting about over the last few months. Our Christmas one-shot is now a matter of tradition, though this was the first of the games that did not use 4e D&D as its game system. The homebrewed Aurikesh setting is an early-Renaissance setting (yay, flintlocks!) with arcane and divine magic. Quick summary of outcome: I think everyone had a pretty good time, but there are significant areas of the rules that need more thought (such as the economy of actions as relates to spellcasting), and I'll be going back to the drawing board on the balance of all but one of the spells that the PCs ever cast.

Our heroes (a veytikka rogue, a kagandi fighter-mage, a human Parthé fighter, a human wizard, and a veytikka priest) awoke in a small chamber inside a larger cavern complex, only to see the Gorgrom guards and their Tiger's Claw commander drop a sixth prisoner in their midst. Listening closely as the guards leave, they're able to hear a door closing and a bolt slamming home some distance away within the caverns. The five heroes get to their feet, introduce themselves to one another, and inspect the prisoner who was so unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the floor. The sixth prisoner proves to be an old and blind beruch named Kalesh. They talk to him for awhile, but quickly conclude that he has little else to offer them in planning a jailbreak.

Desperate for something like a weapon, the human warrior finds a nice heavy rock. The veytikka, of course, content themselves with their claws, and the spellcasters of the group cast their armoring spells.

Design Notes on Armoring Spells:
1. Armoring spells may be too good, but that's an issue I'll need to revisit in the future once I've addressed the problems with the dispelling mechanics, because I hung dispel mechanics on Intrigue Defense - this decision gave an overwhelming degree of primacy to the dispelling character. There are also economy-of-actions issues around dispelling, but more on that later.
2. Armoring spells were the first long-term buffs that the PCs played with, and they really highlighted the issues with hanging any amount of cost on the easily recoverable stats of Health and Composure. To wit, the Catch Your Breath action restores a pretty much guaranteed 2-3 Health or Composure per action, so the long-term buffs effectively have no cost at all. I'd like to move to a system in which Health and Composure are "tied off," as seen in Dragon Age and other games with toggled abilities.

Three of them cautiously begin to explore the passageway out of their chamber, but quickly retreat when they hear something clawed approaching. It turns out to be three veytikka looking for carrion. One of them, Atrik, explains a bit about the caverns. There are 15-20 people stuck down here, including the PCs. Var Dyrak's guards come down here every now and again, grab one of the prisoners, and return with them some time later. They experiment on the veytikka and torture the kagandi; Atrik doesn't know what they do to the humans, and they've never had a beruch down here before now. The cavern complex is quite large, and the most powerful leader of the prisoners is a human named Damornus. Atrik agrees to help with a prison break, if and only if the PCs successfully gain Damornus's aid.

The PCs are still scrounging for anything that could be used as an weapon, and settle on going to a side chamber where the bones of the dead have been cast into a pit. This is close enough to a crypt for the veytikkas' purposes, so they both enter a trance and speak to the ghost of a kagandi. The ghost explains that the kagandi come back somehow broken or wrong inside; the wizard is extracting some kind of glowing orb from their chests. When the two veytikka explain this to the kagandi fighter-mage, he is rather concerned about the prospect. He then fashions two cudgels from bone, stone, and rags. The group senses that the ghosts of those buried in the pit are not at all pleased by this, so they hurry along to meet Damornus once this is done.

A heavily muscled man stops them in the passageway up to Damornus's chamber. After a few sharp words, he lets them pass. Damornus wears patchwork robes; on him they nearly look dignified. He has two other guards with him. He initially scoffs at the PCs' plan to break out of prison, saying that he would prefer to reign in hell. The argument continued without rules for a few minutes, after which point I cut it off long enough to turn it into an Intrigue. Both sides started with a high degree of dislike for one another, except for the veytikka priest; she played Good Cop, and presented a more amiable disposition. Damornus wanted to put these newcomers in their place, while the PCs sought a Service (aid in their prison break). Actually making the shift from conversation to system-based conflict was a bit cumbersome, but it was my first experience with a by-the-numbers Intrigue conflict in SIFRP. I hadn't built any of the characters to be extraordinary at intrigue, though most were at least okay at some intrigue skills.

It's not part of my hack - that is, I didn't change anything other than Frustration changing to Strain/Curses - but I was very impressed with the SIFRP Intrigue rules. Samhaine recently commented at length on systems for social conflicts, and I think SIFRP has at the very least taken a big step forward by increasing granularity. Characters have one of seven Dispositions (how they feel about the other party, ranging from Affectionate to Malicious) that give them three different stats: armor against social damage, modifiers when telling the truth, and modifiers when deceiving the other party. To make an "attack" in a social conflict, you choose one of several Techniques: Bargain, Charm, Convince, Incite, Intimidate, Seduce, and Taunt. Each Technique has a Persuasion (telling the truth) and a Deception approach. This means, in essence, that the trifecta of Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate is spread much more widely. I like this a lot, and we did not have any particular difficulty working out what each character's Disposition and Technique should be for each action. (We didn't use Actions as part of the tests, and looking at them now I don't really understand how they work alongside Techniques - it looks to me like a completely different approach to the whole deal. Admittedly, I'm working from a playtest copy of the rulebook, so any amount of this might have changed in final printing.)

Anyway, the PCs had a hard time really getting Damornus's attention with their arguments, as his Dislike provided him with lots of resistance to their efforts, and he had a relatively high Intrigue Defense. A lucky roll (which did me the favor of coinciding with a strong argument) made sincere headway, and Damornus offered to cut off debate by having one of the PCs fight his champion, to prove that they have the prowess necessary to carry out the fight against Var Dyrak's guards. The human warrior agrees to a fistfight, and uses Parthic Transformation to completely dominate the fight; he takes a few hits, but deals a staggering blow that leaves his opponent bleeding on the floor with a cracked skull.

Design Notes on Parthic Transformation:
Parthic Transformation is really, really good. I need to clarify the text to indicate that it's not just an increase to Athletics and Endurance tests, but also increases Health and Athletics damage. I am pretty happy with how it worked out, though; it's noticeably better than other options for spending Destiny, and carries the cost of being more vulnerable to force damage. That didn't actually come up in this session, but I feel that it would be tolerably common in extended gameplay.

Damornus is clearly impressed with the warrior's display of might, and grudgingly agrees that he and his two remaining guards will support a prison break and more or less follow the PCs' lead. They gather the rest of the prisoners from the far caverns and congregate in the main chamber, where they make plans with the small force at their disposal. In the end, they put Damornus and his men with Atrik and his fellows, and instruct them to stay hidden and cut off the retreat of the force of guards, preventing them from calling up reinforcements.

The rest of the prisoners pack themselves into the chamber where the PCs first awoke. When the guards finally enter, there are three Gorgrom, one Tiger's Claw warrior, and one apprentice wizard. I won't try to write a blow-by-blow of the fight, but the PC wizard focused on countering the opponent's spells, while the PC priest focused on transferring Injuries to herself and then using Ychirra's Poisonous Gift to transfer them to opponents. The kagandi fighter-mage got to enjoy the full benefit of his night sight here, as it was Shadowy lighting - he was the only person not taking substantial penalties.

Design Notes on Mystic Denial and Ychirra's Poisonous Gift:
1. Mystic Denial is part of where we started to see how I had not hammered out enough detail on economy of actions with regard to spellcasting. Midway through the fight, I realized that I needed to make Mystic Denial cost the caster a Lesser Action in his next turn. I also didn't prepare myself for how trivially easy it would be to hit an opponent's Intrigue Defense (especially when he's got an armoring spell running). So I think I'll be changing the Difficulty of Mystic Denial, especially if I go forward with some of the other changes I'm contemplating for casting.
2. Ychirra's Poisonous Gift is a Big Problem in my design. I knew it was likely to be a problem - turns out I was right. I spent a lot of yesterday going around and around about this spell with Kainenchen; the problem with the spell is that it turns priests into perpetual motion machines unless they are taking just a huge amount of damage every round. This compels opponents to focus fire on the priest far more than I had intended.
3. On the other hand, as K pointed out, without the functionality that this spell represents, priests are compelled to avoid combat more rigorously than other characters, since they don't have artificially larger Health pools than other characters and they use that Health as their mana pool. I'll be going back to the drawing board in a big way on casting costs, as I've hinted above. My preference is that priests (much like clerics in D&D) feel that they can and often should spend some of their actions in melee combat, as opposed to hanging back and casting every round.
4. Arcane casters have no comparable way to remove Strain the way Ychirra's Poisonous Gift removes Injuries. I think this is probably how I want it to stay - I'd rather handle the problem of an arcane caster's mana pool some other way.

The PCs handily defeat the guards, giving them access to hard leather armor, a scimitar, a magical statuette, and a starlock pistol. (Starlock pistols use the stats for Blackpowder pistols that the Monkey King wrote up in his post on his Song of Dust and Wind hack.) The PCs used these to kill the door guards (the starlock shot answered for one of the Gorgrom at the door, and a Poisonous Gift killed the other one; I ruled that non-heroic characters, since they can't receive injuries, were immediately incapacitated by receiving an injury from this spell).

I had intended a great deal more plot to take place after this point, with the PCs exploring the rest of Var Dyrak's tower and fighting a number of other terrible things I'd dreamed up, but it was getting late. Instead, we ran one last fight at the main gate, with the PCs fighting four Gorgrom, two Tiger's Claw warriors, and one apprentice. This fight they handled just as easily as the first, now that they had some actual equipment. This fight just reinforced the points I've made above and made me wish I'd statted the opposition a little more aggressively.

In closing, I think the players had a good time, but there are a number of major changes I need to make in my rules hacks. I've received some great suggestions from the players on possible changes, including the introduction of casting implements and how to handle spell durations. The hack is far from ready for prime time, but I think I can get it there.

Pregenerated Characters for the Christmas One-Shot

2011-12-23T13:59:00.001-05:00

Feel free to check my math, ask questions, whatever. These characters are built to what I thought would be effective - we'll see how that works out.

Human Parthé Fighter
Kagandi Fighter
Human Wizard
Kagandi Wizard (fighter/wizard build)
Veytikka Priest
Beruch Priest
Human Rogue
Veytikka Rogue

How to Write Advice for GMs

2011-12-22T17:29:00.000-05:00

One of the most significant challenges that I've faced in running Mage: the Awakening is working out how to structure a satisfying challenge. For all that the many books of new Mage include chapter after chapter of advice to GMs on different kinds of campaigns one could run, ideas for threats, and advice on pacing, along with reams of setting detail. What it doesn't ever do (that I've seen) is offer suggestions on how to create a viable challenge: something from which the PCs will probably emerge, battered and drained, and having had to show some degree of creative thought, but that will not frustrate or overwhelm them to the point of ruining the game.

Mage is particularly significant for this, as compared to other nWoD lines or most editions of D&D (after first level, anyway) because of the remarkable fragility of characters. A reasonably tough mage has three dots in Stamina, and therefore eight Health boxes. Mages rely very heavily on their armoring spells to keep them alive in a bad situation. In nWoD, a mage's armoring spell is a surprisingly absolute defense, because reducing the attacker's dice pool is a pretty big deal. You might still take some hits, but empirical evidence to date suggests that if you can diminish an attacker's dice pool to 3-4 dice while still having a decent attack pool of your own, that's going to be about all she wrote. (Of course, if you're also a Thyrsus, you can probably heal through, as long as you have a decent mana pool. But I digress.)

I've only addressed Mage so far, but it's a point that generalizes to many other games. D&D 3.0 was the first game I'd played that had clear and definite rules for "okay, PCs of this power level should be able to handle this much of a threat." Challenge Rating is something of a wedge issue for the D&D blogosphere, of course, and one that I could write about for hours; I'll short-circuit that digression by saying that I like the existence of Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels, but there are flaws in the system that can only really be corrected with very pointed advice to DMs: discussions of economy of actions, for example (cf., "why a wizard by himself is not a great way to challenge players").

Then there's non-combat challenge, such as 4e D&D's skill challenges. I and the rest of the 4e-friendly blogs have written reams of commentary about the good and bad of 4e's skill challenges. The 4e DMG and DMG2 do their best to give cogent advice on writing a discrete scene that challenges the players in a non-combat fashion. It takes an above-average DM to make skill challenges feel like a risk that the players can engage. It's entirely too easy for a skill challenge to come across as "okay, all attacks do one point of damage. Do 4, 6, or 8 points of damage before you (collectively) take 3 damage." It took a lot of development time before WotC and blogging writers started to improve on the systemic side of this model, generally by creating situations where an attack might deal more than one "damage," or a character's action could remove one "damage" from the party. No discussion of skill challenges is complete without nods to Stands-in-Fire and Ben, two excellent DMs who can make the system feel like something more than the sum of its parts. Even if the 4e skill challenge system is flawed, though, it's a better engine for creating non-combat challenges than the vast majority of games offer. Only Technoir and SIFRP match or exceed it, in my experience, and SIFRP only offers social challenges.

Maybe I can get to the meat of what I'm talking about with a few case studies from my own gaming experience.

Mage: How to Banish a Spirit from a Crystal in Thirty-five Dice Rolls or Less

A few months ago in my Mage chronicle, the players received a pouch with five quartz crystals inside it. After a good bit of esoteric investigation and consideration (the juicy stuff in Mage, as far as I'm concerned), they determined that there were spirits occupying those crystals. They determined also that those spirits were Bad News, and they would be better off evicting said spirits with the aid of the Thyrsus's banishing spell. Okay, good so far. Even better, the party works out a way for two other mages in the party to help out.

But... oh. This is actually really hard, in the low-chance-of-success sense. Or, more accurately, low chance to accumulate enough successes to win. On the other hand, the cost for failure is... nil... except that the way the other two mages assist is costing them mana. There were no immediately-apparent threats for me to use as a timer on their actions.

So there are a couple of ways I could have gone with this:

Allow it to succeed outright - treating it as a no-pressure situation that they will eventually succeed. Without pressure or conflict, there's no reason for them to stop trying, so I should fast-forward to the point where they succeed. The compelling problem with this is that any expenditure of resources (such as mana) is made arbitrary.
Have the players just keep rolling until they either succeed or give up. (This is what I did.) This keeps the situation "honest" with regard to player resources, but it was boring for the players involved because it was repetitive and had no particular tension, and even more boring for the players not involved. In the end, the players were glad to be done with it, but I don't think they felt a particular sense of accomplishment, since they'd just kind of brute-forced the situation and the process itself had been boring.
Interpolate extensive further spell-description content, describing how the mage casts the banishing spell and how the spirit resists. Introducing new weaknesses to a PC's power just so I can make a scene more interesting is not really kosher, to me. The player's expectations are built on that spell's description; if I wanted to change it, I should have done so when we were distant from the situation and the player could adjust his planning. The other problem with this is that I don't think my players are interested in engaging with the magic system on that level and would find it at odds with the rest of the chronicle's approach to magic.
Give the spirit an additional way to resist, perhaps a custom-created Numen that lets it retaliate against any who attempt to banish it (turning the situation into a single-player combat: not great), or against any who fail to banish it (not a combat situation, but creating tension nonetheless). The primary reason I didn't do this at the time is that I didn't think of it until today at 3:10 p.m. The compelling problem with this answer is that some GMs look at adding powers to an antagonist just to make a more exciting scene as dirty pool. In general, this kind of GM behavior also runs the risk of creating continuity errors. This idea also feeds back into my post on Multiple Damage Tracks.
Cause a new threat, external to the situation, to erupt. This would have simply caused the character to stop working on banishing the spirit, resolve the new threat, and return to the banishment effort. One of the regular conceits of Mage is that the PCs do have a Sanctum in which they are more-or-less safe most of the time. (Not that the Sanctum is off-limits to enemy attack, but enemies can't be knocking down your door all the time, because that leaves the chronicle without low-tension periods.)

My point, then, is that Mage could really use advice on when and how to create tension. Many systems and writers point out that there's no reason to even roll dice if there's no credible downside to failure, and on the whole I agree with this advice but feel that it's best to introduce threat of failure if you don't really want to just let the player have it for some reason. (Because, well, anything you didn't overcome challenge of some kind to acquire is not a victory.) Most WoD games expect characters to have a home base where they can relax and work on personal projects - Mage (both Ascension and Awakening) take this further and give characters a huge capacity to change the world around them from the comfort of their living-rooms.

D&D: How to Make a Set-Piece Encounter Actually Interesting

One of the best improvements that 4e D&D made on its predecessors is its emphasis on making the physical surroundings of a fight an important part of the fight. Whether this is a terrain power or an area of fantastic terrain that has a passive effect, this emphasis revolutionized my appreciation for how to build a challenge that got the players thinking. It's hard to do so consistently - honestly, if this were easy for me, I would move from systems design to level design here at work - but it's worth the work.

At the other extreme, I've run and played in far too many fights that have nothing interesting going on in the setting. It's a 30' x 30' room with a door in the far wall and a bunch of monsters in the middle - good luck! Obviously I'm not saying such fights can't be fun; we did keep playing, after all. But they could have been something more with the addition of a few more objects or effects to interact with. Certainly there have been DMs who figured this out on their own years before the release of 4e, but 4e was the first edition to give this advice to DMs in a clear and approachable way.

Spirit of the Century does this kind of thing very well, as it encourages GMs to give every location several significant Aspects that PCs and NPCs can exploit over the course of the scene. Because it's all an economy of Aspects, tags, and Fate points, though, it's easy for it to all become too samey, or for players to feel like they're being lame if they can't come up with the next new and different way to exploit some Aspects.

What 4e DMs need even more than the advice to include terrain features is some kind of help in coming up with ideas for terrain features off-the-cuff. Writing a set-piece encounter is just one of those tasks you can make sure you've done before the session. Much more challenging (really, it separates good DMs from great DMs) is improvising a scene with interesting features once the Plan has (inevitably) failed to survive contact with the Enemy. I think a lot of DMs have set pen to battle mat thinking, "Well, it's another random encounter in the wilderness. It's... more of the same wilderness they saw in the last random encounter." Because the players are sitting there waiting for things to get started, the DM doesn't really have time to do any better than some trees, maybe some underbrush, and possibly a river. Sometimes this is even pretty good - the underbrush might be difficult terrain, maybe some of those trees are ready to fall if given a firm push.

My point here is that I want to see books of GMing advice that train people to make not just well-paced plotlines that appeal to multiple player types, but compelling encounters along the way, even when the pressure is on. If the book is part of a specific game's product line (as opposed to being the single most famous treatise on GMing ever written), I want the book to go a step further and organize the information in such a way that I can find it, determine that it's the right tool for the job, and start implementing it in two minutes or less. For that second requirement, I recommend attaching to each specific feature keywords that indicate the right kind of locale, other features that it synergizes with well, and creature types that are aided or hindered by that terrain.

And now, as always, I open the floor to my dear readers: what kinds of advice do you think are missing from DMGs and other books of GMing advice?

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars: Player-side Review

2011-12-19T16:03:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, Stands-in-Fire ran a session of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars, a rules-light game written to be about space marines killing bugs on the Planet of the Week. Our GM reworked the game's assumed setting, so instead we fought zombies in various Left 4 Dead configurations as the zombie apocalypse descended upon a local office park.

For starters, 3:16 is a very strange game, and I can't help but be glad that the GM's reframing of the game allowed us to ignore a number of the game's assumptions. In 3:16, a character has two numerical stats, plus some descriptive phrases attached to their Flashbacks (on which more later). These numerical stats are Fighting Ability and Non-Fighting Ability. If you're making an attack, you roll FA. If you're doing anything else at all, including shifting from one range of combat to another, you roll NFA. Stats range from 2 to 8, and you want to roll under your stat number on a d10. I played Eddie Mackenzie, a loudmouthed gun nut who was a pretty good shot, but was otherwise seriously lacking in competence (7 FA, 3 NFA). My dice completely supporting my willingness to have Eddie be a braggart rather than a hero - this led to a lot of jokes about how my dice thought we were playing Mage, because I rolled more 8s, 9s, and 10s than I could shake a stick at.

The stats of your weapon are also a relevant concern, and explaining weapon stats reveals one of the game's strangest conceits. We started the game with very few weapons, surprising given that we were part of the Security division for that building. (My character, for example, left his gun in his car because "if I have my gun on me, I'm just too dangerous. I might... snap." ) So we had a couple of fire axes, some heavy bludgeoning toolboxes, and a handgun. All of these weapons were rated at 1 damage; the melee weapons could only deal damage at Close range, while the handgun could deal damage out to Near range. (A later acquisition, a hunting rifle, could deal damage out to Far range.) This one point of damage means that, on a success, the Threat Token that is removed (because all successful attacks, regardless of the weapon's damage rating, defeat one Threat Token) had a value of one (1) zombie, rather than being a larger pack of zombies.

So the GM actually can't tell you how many enemies are attacking, if weapons have variable damage ratings, because he won't know how many zombies there were in that group until a successful attack kills them. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've seen someone try to manifest the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in survival horror. Because the GM can't tell you how many zombies there are before the end of the fight, you as a player obviously can't really care at the time; what you care about instead (at least as far as survival goes) is the number of Threat Tokens that the GM places.

Right, well, why even have variable damage on weapons, if players aren't really able to care about it until after the weapon has been fired? Because the number of zombies you kill (one in the case of our starting weapons; 1d10 in the case of an explosive that Eddie jury-rigged) increases your kill total, which is to say your score. In the assumed space-marine setting, you need to keep score because that's how you increase in level between missions. You can also increase in rank, either from field promotions resulting from Tragic Accidents Befalling One's Sergeant, or from using a Strength Flashback during the session, or you can juice up your gear. Promotions, including commissions as officers, are key to the continuing play of a 3:16 campaign. Ranks above Corporal carry increasingly complex priorities and orders, written to generate a certain degree of conflict between players (since lower-ranking characters are likely to be marked as Acceptable Losses).

Since we were playing Zombie Apocalypse Survival Horror, though, we don't have military hierarchy to worry about. We had... a Project Manager (the character with the highest NFA). After that point, as we all know, performance does not contribute to promotion... But the idea of competing within the team, rather than cooperating for maximum survival chances, neither appealed to us nor made any sense in the scenario. It's also a lot easier to care about protagonists when it's clear how and why the antagonists are a threat that must be defeated (because they'll eat me and everyone I care about!), as opposed to the casual fascism of the space marine setting (this isn't my planet, this isn't anywhere near my planet, and I can't imagine how hard the enemy would have to work to even find out where my planet is, much less go there). The rules of 3:16 strongly and repeatedly encourage players and the GM to revel in the unbridled machismo of slaughtering the local lifeforms. I guess I'm a bad gamer, because the whole idea bores the hell out of me. If I'm going to kill something in a game, I'd like to have at least a slight effort to show me how the bad guys are bad.

So you're going along, fighting various numbers and power-sets of aliens or zombies with weapons that determine how many aliens or zombies there used to be on the field, and the only point of better weapons is to rack up a higher score once all is said and done. Is that all there is to the game? Well, not quite.

First of all, survival is a major challenge, because you really have only two "hit points" (wound levels, really) before you reach Dead, as well as one armor level. We spent a considerable amount of injury moving our most wounded characters (who were incidentally also our best combatants) to Near or Far range from the zombies, just so they'd be less likely to take another hit.

If that had been all we had to work with, though, the various First Aid kits we found over the course of the game would not have been nearly enough, and we would have lost at least two characters, maybe more. (The GM had us hunting for First Aid kits rather than automatically recovering one wound after each encounter.) The other tool in our collective arsenal, to which I referred earlier, was Flashbacks. The session was approaching its climax by the time we started spending our Flashbacks - we didn't bother using them when we felt we could still just soak up the damage and keep going. This also meant that our Flashbacks were clearing more dangerous versions of the zombies - Hunters, Smokers, and so on, so I think we made a solid group decision there.

Flashbacks can either let a player dictate a victory on her own terms (this is called a Strength), or narrate a defeat on her own terms (this is called a Weakness). Without going into too much detail, I don't think the rules do a great job of explaining why you'd ever use a Weakness instead of a Strength if you had the choice; it's implied to some degree that you're using a Weakness because it can counter another player using a Strength against you. That level of PvP is sufficiently distant from the playstyle of the gamers I spend any time around that it just isn't a concern. In the assumed setting, using a Weakness also causes demotion between missions, so your character survives the encounter and may receive punishment later, while spending a Strength instead makes you eligible for promotion.

In conclusion, we found the rules engine of 3:16 to be light and fast-paced enough to let us fight zombies and have a very good time. A lot of our fun came from the GM's complete willingness to roll with whatever we wanted to do and his ability to keep the pressure high, since we ignored the portions of the rules that didn't fit what we already wanted to do. According to the GM, the rules did a great job of supporting what he wanted to do with each of the different L4D-style zombies. My interest in playing again has nothing whatsoever to do with 3:16's advancement and promotion rules, which put a lot of emphasis on competition between players. I freely recommend modified approaches to 3:16, but deep down in my gamer soul I just don't understand the glorification of fascist jingoism-cum-nihilism (seriously, that's the Brigadier's objective) that the system-as-written trumpets and encourages players to embrace. All told, the system did a fine job of getting out of our way and keeping our focus firmly on playing our characters and thinking our way through the challenges, and I appreciated it for that.

The Tower of Var Dyrak: Aurikesh One-Shot

2011-12-17T15:50:00.000-05:00

(What follows is the intro text for this year's Christmas one-shot, set in Aurikesh and using my SIFRP hack.)

You awaken in a natural cavern, with a muddy floor. It is lit by a single tallow candle that burns in a crevice in the wall. All of your possessions, save for the clothes on your back, have been stolen by whoever beat you up and brought you here (though you still have a small complement of prepared spells, if any); you are desperately hungry. A few other individuals, presumably victims of the same kidnapping that you suffered (and likewise worse for wear), are just now stirring.

The only obvious way out of this chamber is a narrow, jagged tunnel leading somewhat downward. Hearing footsteps and low, growling voices from that passage, you fake slumber, keeping your eyes just barely cracked. Four more people crowd into this chamber; three are massive Gorgrom, monstrosities that dwell in the mountains and the badlands of Pereil* and Ferradona.** They have pallid, tough skin that ripples over dense, corded muscle. One of them drops a bundle in the middle of the room. It moans in pain.

Accompanying them is a human who seems to be giving them orders. You note the glint of his metal armor under his tiger-skin cloak. A long, curved sword is bared in his hand, and a starlock pistol is tucked into his belt. The tiger-skin cloak answers a few of your questions by itself; such trophies are the distinctive insignia of an elite cadre of warriors, the Tiger's Claw, who serve Var Dyrak.

Var Dyrak is one of the most feared wizards in all of Balioth,*** powerful in both sorcery and politics. His famous stronghold (which, years earlier, he seized from a dark cult) stands at the end of a long, narrow peninsula in a storm-wracked sea, on the coast of Merestine.† It is fiercely guarded by the Tiger's Claw, warding magics, and monsters such as the Gorgrom he recruits into his service. Who can say what else is hidden in his tower, waiting to be unleashed against any who cross him?

What is Var Dyrak planning, that would lead him to capture you - and in fact keep you so close to all of his secrets? What will it cost you to uncover his secrets, foil his plans, and win your freedom?

(Geography notes. You do not need to know this; it is included here chiefly to communicate flavor in broad strokes.)

*Pereil is a bitterly cold northern domain. It borders on Ferradona to the south, Merestine to the southeast, and the sea in all other directions. The kagandi call the domain of Pereil by the name Atramyr's Crown. Pereil is expansive, but huge expanses of it are uninhabited.

**The domain of Ferradona sits on the western coast of the continent. It borders on Pereil in the north, Merestine in the northeast, Aiverny in the east, Dalassiria in the east, and Rindaria in the south. Most of Ferradona is heavily populated and prosperous, save for its northernmost province. The kagandi call the domain of Ferradona by the name Perch of the Falcon.

***Balioth is the name of the continent. It is north of Sestomera and west of Istra; each continent is separated from the others by miles and miles of ocean. Balioth is inhabited in approximately equal numbers by humans and kagandi, and by smaller numbers of veytikka and beruch. No one really knows how many Gorgrom there are in Balioth, but most people assume there are, at most, a few thousand in total.

†Merestine is a small domain on the northern coast of Balioth. It borders on Pereil in the west, Ferradona in the southwest, Aiverny in the south, and Hullorne in the east. The kagandi call the domain of Merestine by the name Martyr's Bells.

(If you're tired of reading about me slowly building Aurikesh, I apologize, and warn you that there are at least three more posts on this topic coming up in the next week or two.)

The Races of Aurikesh, SIFRP style

2011-12-15T17:16:00.000-05:00

Since I'm now definitely running a session in Aurikesh for my Christmas one-shot, I'll be posting about this hack of the SIFRP rules even more frequently. If I have time, I will also post a bit about the setting beyond what is stated or implied in the original posts on these races.

Nonhuman Races

I've decided to offer my nonhuman races a much more extensive package of racial abilities than Wombat Warlord went with; as much as anything I've made this decision to allow me to keep these races a little closer to their original conceptions. Selecting a nonhuman race costs one of a character's starting Destiny Points (with the exception of the Parthé; see below), but grants full access to the listed racial abilities.

Veytikka:

When bearing no more than 2 points of Bulk, veytikka can travel on all fours (with empty hands), increasing their speed by 33%. (Round fractions of a yard down.)
Claws: Veytikka deal Athletics -1 damage with their fists, rather than Athletics -3.
Keen Scent: Veytikka can purchase levels of Scent as bonus dice of Awareness.
Voice Across the Veil: Veytikka gain +2 bonus dice in all Intrigues or social rolls against ghosts and intelligent undead.
Lore of the Dead: Veytikka can roll Persuasion (Bargain) in graveyards or crypts to communicate with those buried there, typically for the sake of gaining information.
Veytikka cannot start with more than two dice in Status. (This relates to Status across all of Aurikesh society; this value does not represent their standing in all-veytikka communities.)

Beruch:

Beruch have a natural point of armor value that stacks with armor that they wear. This armor carries no armor penalty or bulk.
Beruch have an additional 2 points of Intrigue Defense and Combat Defense against hostile magic.
When a beruch is affected by a damaging spell that deals fire, cold, storm, or force damage, her melee attacks (armed or unarmed) are empowered. She gains her bonus dice in Resilience as bonus dice to her melee attacks for the following round.
Beruch cannot start with fewer than three dice in Knowledge.
Beruch are difficult to heal with magic, thanks to the same mystical properties of their crystal growths that protect them from harmful magic. When targeted with any spell that would heal Health, Injuries, Wounds, Composure, Strain, or Curses, the spell’s Difficulty increases by 2.

Kagandi:

Kagandi are dependent upon fish or replacement alchemical compounds in their diet, at least once a week. Every full week without this nutrient inflicts an Injury and a Strain upon a kagandi.
Kagandi have excellent night vision, and suffer no penalties in Shadowy conditions. In full Darkness, they take penalties as per Shadowy conditions.
Sorcery of the Fen: When a kagandi consumes ulishau root poison, she gains three dice in Wizardry (if she has none) or 2 dice in Wizardry (if she has at least one but not more than seven). Kagandi who already have eight dice of Wizardry gain one die in Will instead. This benefit lasts for three days. The kagandi must suffer the full effect of ulishau root poison to receive this benefit.
Poison Resistance: Kagandi resist all kinds of poisons other than ulishau root poison with two bonus dice to their roll (whether it is Endurance, Heal, or Piety).
Kagandi may not start with fewer than two dice in Athletics or Agility.
Once per combat, a kagandi gains +1D to a Fighting roll.
When in or on the water, kagandi may reroll 1s that come up in Athletics tests. They may do this a number of times per test equal to their current Destiny point total (including spent Destiny).

Parthé:

Spend (not burn) Destiny to gain +2D to Athletics and Endurance. While thus enhanced, they take two points of Composure damage per round; this may not be reduced through any means. Parthé can take Strain or Curses to mitigate this damage. If they cannot or decline to sustain further Composure damage, the enhancement ends on the following round.
Parthé may not start play with fewer than 3 Endurance or more than 4 Agility. This rule overrides any existing racial restrictions.
Parthé are vulnerable to force damage, suffering +1 damage (multiplied normally with additional degrees of success).
Parthé begin play with one bonus die in Intimidate (a specialty of Persuasion).
Parthé may be of any race. Being one of the Parthé does not cost additional Destiny.

Hacking SIFRP: Arcane and Divine Magic, Part 3

2011-12-11T23:30:00.001-05:00

I've posted several times in the past about a nebulous homebrewed setting and my ongoing work hacking the SIFRP rules to include PC spellcasting of some kind. The current working title of the setting is Aurikesh, and during a recent business trip I found some time to scribble out maps and brainstorm names. I'll post more about the setting once I've gotten the map into a more complete form. I've also created a thus-far-small spell list, as I think there's a reasonable chance I'll get to run this as my traditional Christmas one-shot game. Creating even this short list has led me to create a few additional keywords, which I'll also explain. Once again I want to mention the many indispensable contributions of Wombat Warlord that made this possible; the Spell Types in particular are his sole creation, though I'm using the types he identified more as categories than as spell seeds.

These spells are more samples of things I could do with the magic system, rather than any kind of comprehensive list of what's available. Damage values on spells are multiplied with extra Wizardry successes just like weapon damage. Any casting time that is not one Lesser Action will be noted in the spell's Effect.

Arcane Spells

Mystic Dawn

Type: Thorn

Difficulty: 4

Range: Self (portable) or Close (fixed)

Cost: 2 Composure

Effect: Provides light equal to a torch; under most circumstances this will not blind enemies, but may dazzle them (-1 to opponent's next test) at the GM's discretion. The light lasts for a number of minutes equal to the caster's Cunning.

Forgeheart's Armor

Type: Boon

Difficulty: 9

Range: Self

Cost: 4 Composure

Effect: The caster gains an armor value up to his Cunning score. As long as this effect is active, the caster takes a penalty to Intrigue Defense equal to the chosen armor value minus 2. If the caster sets the armor value to 1, he instead gains 1 point of Intrigue Defense; likewise, setting the armor value to 0 grants 2 points of Intrigue Defense. This armor stacks with existing armor.

Piercing Glare of the Silver Eye

Type: Wrack

Difficulty: Target's Combat Defense

Range: Close

Cost: 4 Composure

Effect: The target takes damage equal to the caster's Cunning -1. This effect has the Piercing 1 quality (ignoring one point of armor value).

Fulmination of the Purifier
Type: Wrack
Difficulty: Target's Combat Defense
Range: Close
Cost: 4 Composure
Effect: The target takes damage equal to the caster's Cunning -2. This effect has the Explosive quality. (A spell with this quality spreads its effect over a larger area, including all targets that are adjacent (within five yards) to the primary one as designated during the casting of the spell. The test result made to cast the spell is applied to all targets within the area of effect to determine degrees of success.)

Arcane Tempering
Type: Boon
Difficulty: 9
Range: Touch
Cost: 1 Strain
Effect: The caster touches one weapon to cast this spell. That weapon gains the Magical property (allowing it to injure certain magical creatures, and possibly other things I haven't designed yet).

The Wayfarer's Treacherous Touch
Type: Bane
Difficulty: Target's Intrigue Defense
Range: Close
Cost: 6 Composure
Effect: The target takes Composure damage equal to the caster's Cunning.

The Malice of Sechir
Type: Bane
Difficulty: Target's Intrigue Defense
Range: Close
Cost: 8 Composure
Effect: The target takes 1d6-3 Strain (minimum 1).

Least Conjuration of Forgeheart
Type: Conjuration
Difficulty: 9, or named demon's Intrigue Defense
Range: Close
Cost: 6 Composure or 1 Strain
Effect: A random minor demon appears; its initial disposition toward the caster is neutral, but this can be improved through roleplay or an Intrigue challenge. Alternately, the caster can conjure a specific minor or moderate demon by invoking its truename. This spell's base duration is a number of rounds equal to the caster's Cunning, but the caster can extend this to one day at the cost of one Strain. (I haven't established anything about demons yet, but the setting probably doesn't treat this spell as being demon summoning, even though it technically is.)

Memory of the Silver Eye
Type: Divination
Difficulty: 4
Range: Close
Cost: 2 Composure
Effect: This spell grants the caster mystical insight. On one or two successes, the caster can sense magical auras. With three or more successes, the caster gains further information, such as any planetary or sacred sympathies that the magical aura may possess, its effect, and so on. This spell lasts a number of rounds equal to the caster's Cunning.

The Skyguard's Sanctum Ward
Type: Thorn
Difficulty: 9
Range: Touch
Cost: 6 Composure
Effect: The caster targets a physically defined and delineated area of up to an acre in size. The caster becomes immediately aware of any sentient creatures or large animals that intrude upon this area during the spell's duration. The caster is aware that intrusion has occurred and the particular part of the defined area in which the initial intrusion occurs. This spell lasts for a day.

The Inferno of the Forgeheart
Type: Wrack
Difficulty: Target's Combat Defense
Range: Long
Cost: 8 Composure
Effect: The target takes damage equal to the caster's Cunning +1. This effect has the Piercing 1 quality.

Honeyed Words of the Wayfarer
Type: Boon
Difficulty: 9
Range: Touch
Cost: 6 Composure
Effect: The target gains a number of bonus dice equal to the caster's Cunning (multiplied with extra successes) to spread over any number of rolls in an Intrigue. This spell lasts until all bonus dice are spent. If a character already affected by this spell receives a second casting, the effects do not stack.

Divine Spells

Mystic Dawn (repeated from above)

Hauberk of Talend
Type: Blessing
Difficulty: 9
Range: Self
Cost: 3 Health
Effect: The caster gains an armor value up to her Will score. As long as this effect is active, the caster takes a penalty to Intrigue Defense equal to the chosen armor value minus 2. If the caster sets the armor value to 1, he instead gains 1 point of Intrigue Defense; likewise, setting the armor value to 0 grants 2 points of Intrigue Defense. This armor stacks with existing armor.

Tura Keshik's Breath
Type: Purification
Difficulty: 9
Range: Close
Cost: 3 Health
Effect: The caster restores an amount of Health to the target equal to the caster's Will -1 (multiplied with extra successes). The caster cannot be the target of this spell.

Tura Keshik's Balm
Type: Purification
Difficulty: 9
Range: Close
Cost: 0*
Effect: The caster transfers 1d6-3 Injuries (minimum 1) from the target to herself.

Ychirra's Poisonous Gift
Type: Affliction
Difficulty: Target's Combat Defense
Range: Touch
Cost: 5 Health
Effect: The caster transfers 1d6-3 Injuries (minimum 1) from herself to the target. She cannot transfer more Injuries than she has.

Fiery Vengeance of Talend
Type: Wrath
Difficulty: Target's Combat Defense
Range: Long
Cost: 7 Health
Effect: The target suffers fire damage equal to the caster's Will +1.

Coronation of the Warrior-King
Type: Blessing
Difficulty: 9
Range: Touch
Cost: 5 Health
Effect: The target gains a number of bonus dice equal to the caster's Will (multiplied with extra successes) to spread over any number of Warfare rolls. This effect lasts until all bonus dice have been spent. If a character already affected by this spell receives a second casting, the effects do not stack.

Sioctana's Guardianship of Innocents
Type: Blessing
Difficulty: 9
Range: Self
Cost: 3 Health
Effect: The caster's fist attacks deal damage equal to her Will -1. This spell lasts for a number of minutes equal to her Will.

Tura Keshik's Grace
Type: Purification
Difficulty: Special
Range: Touch
Cost: 3 Health
Effect: This spell's Difficulty equals the Diagnosis difficulty of any poison in the target's system, or 9, whichever is higher. The caster's Piety test replaces the target's Endurance or Will test if it is higher. This effect lasts until the poison runs its course.

That's all I've got for now, but I'll post more new ideas as I come up with them.

Mage: the Awakening Experience Points

2011-12-07T09:40:00.001-05:00

We're about fourteen sessions into my Mage: the Awakening chronicle, and I've been pondering the game's system of distributing experience points. Mages receive the normal share of experience that all World of Darkness characters receive ("general experience"), as well as earning a secondary pool of Arcane Experience. The stated reasons for the existence of Arcane XP are interesting: firstly, mages have to be out of their sanctums exploring the world (including magical worlds beyond our own) to earn Arcane XP. That is to say, they can't just hole up in their sanctums, use sympathetic magic to screw with their enemies, and remain unthreatened. I'm fortunate that my players don't seem too inclined to do this. Well, maybe one of them, but the rest of the party can be relied upon to find some kind of trouble.

The second reason, to keep the mages on par with vampire and werewolf characters, has not the least bit of bearing on my chronicle, but I'm glad they included it. I have played in a nWoD crossover game, though I don't recall at this point whether or not the mage in that game got Arcane XP.

Since my players aren't dependent on Arcane XP to motivate them or to keep them balanced with other supernatural creatures, Arcane XP are just experience points that they can only spend on Gnosis. I doubt seriously that this is adding anything to the game other than keeping them from having to choose between the next level of an Arcanum and the next level of Gnosis. With only a few exceptions, I think they've come to feel like their only meaningful options for spending XP are their two Ruling Arcana. (If they're close to accumulating enough Arcane XP for a level of Gnosis, they might consider dipping into General XP to finish that out, but it's not a priority.)

This mindset is not great for me, as the Storyteller. Every new dot in Arcana is a major leap in their capabilities. New dots in Gnosis are also significant steps up in power, though at this point not as significant of steps. In theory, the game offers a vast list of other options for purchase: attributes, skills, skill specializations, merits, rotes, and so on. In practice, however, nothing on that list is going to offer anything nearly as interesting or useful as Arcana. On one hand I acknowledge, "Rightly so," because... c'mon. They're mages. If improving their magic isn't right at the top of their priorities, something has gone badly awry. On the other hand, I'd like for them to feel like they have more than two options, and that it's worth investing a few experience points in that huge list of skills rather than looking at me dolefully when I ask them for a roll using one of their (many) untrained skills. Increasing the breadth of skills used doesn't really help: it increases dolor, without changing their minds on how they spend experience. (Since my players will read this, I recognize that I'm making generalizations that aren't quite so absolute in actual play.)

I've been pondering a change to this system for a long time, out of a simple discomfort with any system in which the XP decisions seem easy (other than "which of my Ruling Arcana will I increase - I've watched them agonize over this decision for multiple sessions), and to a lesser degree a desire to make them more comfortable with other kinds of purchases.

The change we've discussed would be to make Arcane XP the only way to purchase all Arcana and all Gnosis. I would probably shift the balance of experience awarded; where I currently hand out 2-5 General XP and 2-5 Arcane XP (depending, more or less, on how much stuff the PCs did in that session), I'd start handing out... I dunno, 1-3 General and 4-7 Arcane XP, to avoid completely stifling their advancement in Arcana and Gnosis. As they're nearing their fifth dot in Arcana and their fourth dot of Gnosis, prices are getting pretty brutal.

Naturally, the point of an cost-scaling system is that eventually you get to a point where cost-benefit analysis makes you start looking elsewhere for more immediate gratification. Also, the fifth dot in an Arcanum is the cap until they reach Gnosis 6, which gives me a decent amount of time in which they are merely masters of their Paths. I'm not too sure what the game will be like once they reach that point; their rise to power so far has been pretty meteoric, in my conception of how long it should take to be powerful enough to challenge significant, named characters in the Boston Consilium. I feel like the designers assumed that players would build up more slowly than this, given that the game's actual rules kind of... stop... at Arcana 5 and Gnosis 5. I mean, I know what happens with player stats past that point, but the game makes not the least shred of effort to define in rules terms what kinds of magic one can work at those levels.

It would be like 3rd edition D&D's Epic Level Handbook saying "Fighters get this, rogues get this, mages are just goddamn ridiculous and can do whatever they want if it seems cool at the time, and the same goes for clerics." For all of its problems, the Epic Level Handbook tried to do better than that by at least providing guidelines for building new things. (One of the more interesting pure-crunch design exercises I've ever read was a couple of very smart people breaking down the Epic Level Handbook spell seed rules and looking for broken stuff.)

Anyway, back on topic: this is one of the essential problems of any classless build-based system. CI/RBP LARPs, which are certainly classless build-based systems, have an easier time rewarding skill dabbling, because you can't always be sure that there will be someone around who has any given skill. Some things you really do need just for yourself, such as defenses. Were this a purely-mortal World of Darkness game, I'd be having a similar problem with fighters not really having to buy anything but more dots in combat-applicable stats, and I expect strongly that my two really combat-focused PCs will just finish buying up their combat stats if I make a change like this. Having them do that, of course, is only a problem for me insofar as I want combat scenes to challenge everyone, rather than being too hard for the low-combat characters or too easy for the fighter types.

This is a good opportunity for me to mention my biggest problem with WoD games in general: the games give extremely little guidance as to how to turn the presented rules into an exciting challenge. The problem with totally abjuring tactics in favor of roleplay is that it leaves both the Storyteller and the players adrift in figuring out how to make the fight exciting without introducing huge amounts of ST fiat.

In summary: classless build-based systems can be haaaard. I have an obscure feeling that there are further issues that I'm overlooking - possibly things that would point out to me that this isn't really a problem, just an inescapable phase in any Mage: the Awakening chronicle. But, see, I've never played a PC in Mage, and Harald is the only other active Mage Storyteller I know - and I'm pretty sure he's mentioned ignoring Arcane XP completely in the past.

Opinions welcome.

LARP Design: Invisibility and Detection

2011-12-01T18:35:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of discussion lately in Eclipse's Rules Forum about invisibility and powers that counter invisibility. This is a very complicated topic in LARPing; we spent the better part of a year (off and on) discussing it while designing DtD, and I'm going to try to summarize the whole topic and various proposed solutions over the course of this post. As a disclaimer, I play one of the most frequent stealth users in Eclipse, in a build path that can never have True Sight. Also, I want it to be clear that I'm not trying to persuade Eclipse to adopt DtD's rules model - I'm just laying out the situation because I think it's an interesting and thorny area of design.

A Bit of History: Invisibility

For readers who don't already know all of this, let's start with the basics. Shattered Isles, King's Gate, Eclipse, and Dust to Dust have all had invisibility mechanics, and the exact mechanics of invisibility have seen extremely little change since their inception in SI. The player receives or activates the effect, which is always a per-day usage (either fixed per-day usage or mana-based expenditure), and places her palms together over her head. As long as the player maintains both that gesture and Concentration, the player is invisible to all other players (except as described in Detection, below). As with all Concentration, the player cannot run, and basically any harmful incoming effect disrupts Concentration, aside from a short list of defenses (that distinctly do not include common defenses like Parry, Dodge, armor, or Skins).

About the Gesture

There is some significant genius in particular posture used for Invisibility - palms together and overhead, which until Eclipse was always empty-hands-only (with the further caveat that claws, available exclusively to NPCs prior to Eclipse, counted as empty hands, as did spell packets). Firstly, it is obvious at some distance, in low light or in silhouette, or from behind. This is useful for recognizing quickly that one should not react to the invisible character, even from across a field.

Incidentally, DtD's rules for invisibility do not allow weapons except for Claws or weapons enchanted with the Concealment enchantment.

Secondly, the gesture is tiring to maintain. My personal record is something like forty-five minutes (no weapons) uninterrupted, and very slightly more (with weapons) for a circumstance in which I got one brief break from a Hold. This is a good thing within the rules, as far as I'm concerned, as it gives the effect an inherent duration limit; I am perhaps lacking in sympathy for NPCs who want to change to a more comfortable gesture so that they can be invisible for hours at a time, since that option is not open to players and loses the other benefits of the normal gesture. It also pushes stealthers away from heavy armor, incidentally.

Thirdly, because dropping out of the gesture ends the invisibility, invisible characters cannot open doors, draw things out of pouches, disarm traps, or do much of anything but walk, sit, or stand. This is a critical limitation, and one of the best defenses against an invisible character within these rules is to enter a building you know they are not currently inside (and don't let anyone else in that the stealther might follow).

A Bit of History: Detection

There is no single invisibility-detection effect I can describe here, since this area of the rules has undergone a great deal of change and redesign since its introduction.

I think it was somewhere during the second Shattered Isles campaign that the first player-available invisibility-detection effect was introduced into the campaign. Tremorsense was a super-secret effect, found in a Double Secret portion of the Stone bond, though once purchased it was always active. I don't believe anyone gained this ability in the entirety of Shattered Isles. Further, we didn't particularly notice its lack, since as mentioned above, all invisibility required empty hands at this stage, and Forestblend (invisibility that had to stay near large trees) was the only commonly-used invisibility effect. SI's Tremorsense was an always-on effect, and if it had a range limit, I don't know about it.

It was relatively late in the second King's Gate campaign before SI-style Tremorsense was admitted to the rules. The second KG campaign had far higher-point characters than the second SI campaign, as well as a much larger population of Stone bonders; one player had the ability almost immediately after it became available. The King's Gate campaign had a much broader usage of free-roaming invisible assassins; I'm pretty sure there was a secret order of Air bonded assassins, as well as the various powers of the Skiazo. While I was not privy to the conversations that resulted from the sudden shift in the balance of power, I am aware that they led to a change in the rules shortly thereafter. I'm not exactly clear on what the new rule was.

Eclipse's detection effect is True Sight, which from the beginning of the campaign was an always-active unlimited-range power. From my possibly-flawed understanding, it requires the user to inform invisible characters that they have been spotted by announcing, "True Sight." The announcement informs the invisible people that they done been made, and the person detecting them is actually making eye contact, rather than accidentally failing to avoid making eye contact. This ruling is unpopular with players with access to the ability who want to lure the stealthed character in by pretending that they do not see them, only to reveal their ruse once the stealthed character is well and truly fucked. Importantly, True Sight is available to two power sets, one of which is very popular (but also limited in its use to nighttime, unless granted an exception by way of a magic item).

As a card to trump PC stealth detection, Eclipse has introduced NPC-only Phasing abilities. Two PCs can stop enemies from Phasing Out, but as of current writing, no PC can sense Phased Out characters or force them back into phase once they are Phased Out. Importantly, the gesture for Phased Out is exactly identical to the gesture for Out Of Play.

Below the cut: a recap of DtD's design debates on detection abilities, including the specific problems with the whole deal that we set out to address.

The Problems

Invisible NPCs, regardless of the NPC's reason for being stealthed, are frustrating to PCs, because if you can't detect invisibility, there's nothing you can do, and you might well be giving lots of information away to spies.

If detection is always-on and unlimited-range, the invisible opponent is fucked from the start, because a stealthed character has no means of evading pursuit while maintaining stealth. One detecting PC is completely immune to all forms of enemy stealth, and because almost any successful attack ends stealth, that PC's immunity functionally extends to every ally on the field. (Some characters with detection in Eclipse do not carry ranged weapons; with all due respect, I believe this is a tactical error on their part.)

If detection is not unlimited-range, how do you measure range on-the-fly in an action-based situation? LARPs don't handle fixed ranges well at all, as every argument over whether or not someone is in range of a Point effect demonstrates (incidentally, this is why DtD has no Point effects). Some of those involved in the conversation have proposed a range limit of 5, 10, or 20 feet. This has a couple of problems beyond the measurement issue, though.

Let's say you're a player who wants to avoid being cheesy. What is it okay to do when you are aware OOC of an invisible character in the area? If there are range limits on detection, aren't you being cheesy if you let anything but an unrelated external impetus (and how do we judge that?) drag you into the area of the invisible character?

This problem is one of several that has led some people to propose what I'll describe as the Spidey Sense Tingling idea. You get a general awareness that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, usually with a general "somewhere over there" inclusion. This lets you either activate a power that pinpoints the target, or lets you work on getting within range, or something. From a conversation earlier today related to Eclipse's rules:

dude: It would limit true sight more in relation to invis, but still allow it to be always on.
me: so the weird thing that that does is that it means that even if you don't yet know where the invisible character is (technically, IC) you need to act as if you do, so that you'll know when your True Senses can sense them.
dude: Hrm... I'm not looking at it as a 'get into 10 foot range so you can hit them', I'm looking at it as 'invisibility is always perfect unless you're within 10 feet.'
dude: There's no more metagaming available there than there is in the current system, at elast.
dude: Or what if True vision required 3 seconds of focused attention to get a clear view of what was invisible. Maybe you could see that something was moving around in a general area, but you had to get all squinty-eyed to be able to actually point it out.
me: So the idea here is that True Vision gameplay goes basically as follows: True Vision tells you there's someone generally in the area. You don't pinpoint them, though, because you want them to come within weapon range. Once you think they're about within weapon range, you pinpoint them and shoot them, and they have the three seconds of pinpointing time to get out of weapon range. But the guy with True Vision can't approach the stealthed guy, because that's pretty much pinpointing.
me: that last part is important because the stealthed guy isn't allowed to move quickly.

Now, a version Spidey Sense Tingling is at the core of DtD's detection rules, so I don't dislike it per se; my problems with it have everything to do with its details of implementation.

Always-Active

Always-active stealth detection is, for my money, a Big Problem, since it is pitted against a per-day ability (total uses of invisibility effects available per day in Eclipse vary widely, but all are per-day usage). Having spent nothing to detect and reveal the invisible character, the detecting character will be able to do so again, indefinitely. Even when knocked out of stealth, using another invisibility effect to flee will just get me run down and killed.

Quick war story (because it was one of my proudest moments as a ninja cyborg assassin): Having been spotted by the one guy in the pack who had stealth, he rushed up to reveal me. I Parried his attack, breaking my invisibility, cut him to ribbons, killing-blowed him, and went invisible again before his four allies could land a hit. To drive home my earlier point, this worked solely because he only had melee weapons.

If detection is not always-active, what are its limits - in duration, uses per day, or the like? As with the problem of range limitation, under what circumstances do you use this power if you want to avoid being cheesy? If there isn't a "Spidey Sense Tingles" component in the rules, it's much harder to point to an answer to this question.

DtD's answer, after extensive discussion, was to put three different range-unlimited, duration-limited Spidey Sense effects into the game: Sense Hidden (available to Spider Lords, of course!), Sense Lesser Illusion, and Sense Illusion. All three of these Sensing effects have kind of odd durations, as a solution to the problems posed above.

The character casts these spells immediately after mana refreshes. (In the case of using scrolls... kinda whenever. It's trickier because it's a consumable item.)
They remain dormant until a character hidden by a relevant illusion enters the player's field of view.
This triggers the Spidey Sense, which lasts for the next fifteen minutes.
The detecting character can decline to have the Spidey Sense activate if the invisible character is an ally. In that case, they cannot later decide that the hidden character is no longer an ally, at least until some future casting of the same effect. (This was done so that having invisibility-using allies didn't ruin the game for the detecting character.)
If the detecting character chooses to allow the Spidey Sense to fully activate, the player may spend a minute of concentration to gain more information.
In the case of Sense Hidden (nominally the weakest of the three), the user gains approximate number and general direction of invisible characters.
In the case of Sense Lesser Illusion, the user pinpoints one thing concealed by Lesser Illusions (Melds, some personal buffs).
In the case of Sense Illusion, the user pinpoints one thing concealed by Lesser or Greater Illusions (all Meld or Invisibility effects).
Pinpointed characters may be forced out of invisibility with an attack, or with a Dispel Illusion effect (or Dispel Lesser Illusion, for Melds). Since attacks are free while Dispels are expensive, I'll point out that this also works on people you don't wish to attack, people under a Form effect, and illusions on objects that may not be disrupted by attack.
At the end of fifteen minutes, the now-active effect ends completely, and the player is justified in casting the initial enchantment again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The minute of concentration necessary to pinpoint targets gives the invisible character considerable time to evaluate and possibly change his plans, or to move in on the concentrating character or other opponent to launch his attack. In essence, it forces his hand, but because he may have moved out of line of sight of the concentrating character in the intervening minute, he may still get away clean or get to make a surprise attack.

DtD's rules for stealth detection are some of the most complicated rules in the game that the player needs to remember without a built-in rulebook lookup (cf. ritualism's pervasive and inherent rulebook lookups). This exploration of the problems involved in stealth-detection rules should go some distance toward explaining why we felt we had to do it this way. They haven't seen extensive use in-play yet, so it remains to be seen whether players will handle them comfortably once they're using those powers frequently and in high-tension situations.

Though this post is not primarily intended to offer a proposal for Eclipse's current discussion, I'll end on that note anyway: I'd like to see True Sight work like Sense Illusion (one-minute concentration time to pinpoint one invisible target), except that it simply "goes back to sleep" at the end of fifteen minutes. A more advanced version of the ability might provide an exception to this with a certain number of instantaneous detections per day (but the character can always fall back on the one-minute version when these are exhausted).

A Year of Blogging

2011-11-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

On 19 November, 2010, I created this blog and posted about the games I was running and playing. Things have changed an awful lot for me since then, with six months of unemployment followed by a new job, friends moving away, and the beginning of Dust to Dust.

Games I'm Running

Dust to Dust: We've now run two World Events and two three-day events. We released our rules and our culture packets in a timely manner and before the beginning of the campaign, which are causes for pride in themselves. We've released a towering amount of content since then, with a great deal more on the way. This is the most labor-intensive thing I have ever personally attempted.
Mage: the Awakening. This is the second chronicle of new Mage that I've ever run, and overall it has an edgier, more political tone than the first. We're now thirteen sessions in.

I'm not regularly running anything else these days, though I'm pondering a heavily hacked game using the Song of Ice and Fire rules.

Games I'm Playing

Eclipse: I feel that the game has evolved a great deal in the last year, with a staff that seeks to explore boundaries of what's possible in LARPing, particularly when given a tightly-knit playerbase.
Arcana Evolved: This game continues much as it has for the past seven years; our characters have reached 14th level, with the concomitant headaches of high-level 3.x-like D&D. It looks like our level of importance in world events may be on the rise.
Smallville: At the risk of giving away Samhaine's next game for review, we're planning to play several sessions of Smallville, but set in the Marvel Universe as described here. Our character-creation session was as much fun as a very good session of a tabletop game.
Arkham City: I've just finished my first playthrough of Arkham City on Normal Mode, and now I'm continuing into my New Game Plus. I loved this game; my only criticism is that many of the times that I wanted to explore the city and play side missions, the game prevented me from doing so, leading to the game feeling very short (because I'd played so little of its content). I'll be correcting this in my New Game Plus playthrough. I will probably post about this game in detail at some point soon. It feels very much like someone took Arkham Asylum and applied it to Prototype, resulting in an open-world setting with a hero I actually like.
Heroes of Neverwinter: This Facebook game is a simplified version of D&D. The thing that sets it apart from other Facebook games is that it actually feels like a game.
Dragon Age: Legends: This G+ game has better miscellaneous features (castle construction) than Heroes of Neverwinter, but Heroes of Neverwinter has much more interesting core gameplay and story.
Magic: the Gathering: We've gotten back into playing Magic, not in any serious competitive way, but just as a way to pass an evening. It's been good fun, and not too difficult to return to after many, many years away from it.

D&D 4e is conspicuously absent from these lists, as my Road to Bael Turath campaign ended just three sessions after I mentioned it in last year's Games I'm Running, Games I'm Playing post, and the games I was playing ended at about the same time. Long-time readers of this blog will be well aware that I have a lot of things I still want to do with 4e rules, but I've become frustrated with the direction that WotC has taken their design of the game.

King's Gate, which was a significant part of my life from its inception in '01 to its conclusion, came to a satisfying and thrilling end in January of 2011. The creative debt that DtD owes to KG, and its predecessor Shattered Isles, is very great. By any reasonable measure, this LARP was a great success, and I am glad to have played in it.

Hacking SIFRP: Arcane and Divine Magic, Part 2

2011-11-14T16:05:00.001-05:00

This post continues the development of ideas presented previously, with specific numbers and the introduction of a few new ideas to the mix. As before, I'll tip my hat to Wombat Warlord, who has worked with these ideas a lot more than I have, and without whom I probably would not have pressed on with any of the rules hacks of SIFRP.

Spell Difficulty

Because the system hangs on degrees of success, there are a few more game-balance levers to take into account than in, say, D&D. Attack spells have a base casting difficulty determined by some applicable defense on the part of the target. It wouldn't be at all unreasonable to treat Combat Defense as a defense against anything that can be dodged and Intrigue Defense as anything that can be resisted with Will, leaving only some variation of Fortitude to create. This unifies spell mechanics with the rest of the combat system, as well as cutting out one of the levers one might use to balance spellcasting.

Things that are not attack spells but still need a success/fail roll and need to pay attention to degrees of success, such as defensive/buffing spells or divinations with better results for degrees of success, are generally set to a difficulty of 9 (or 12, for the spells of the highest rank; it's also possible that there are cantrips at difficulty 4). It works this way so that characters with Wizardry/Piety 1 are novices, not yet quite able to cast their first spell. Characters with Wizardry 2 do not yet find their magic to be reliable, but can sometimes complete spells - ideally when there's no pressure and failing a spellcasting roll doesn't carry any real drawbacks. At three dice, they'll succeed more often than not, and can score up to one extra degree of success. Failure remains a realistic probability all the way up to six or seven dice, though, thanks to the possibility of penalties from Injuries, Wounds, Strain, or Curses.

Spell Cost

So difficulty is the first lever. The second is the cost in Health (and Injuries and Wounds) or Composure (and Strain and Curses). The amount of Health or Composure damage that a player can endure before taking an Injury or Strain scales pretty seriously, but you're just not going to see wizards with a Will of 2 or priests with an Endurance of 2. Presumably such people wash out of spellcasting training, or experience character growth, or something. Anyway. I'd expect most PCs and NPCs to have a 4 in their "mana reserves" stat. I assume therefore that 12 Composure/Health is the power reserve of the average spellcaster, and that divine spells intended to be cast in battle need to have a slightly lower Health/Injuries/Wounds cost than an identical arcane spell, since the priest may be taking damage from actually being in combat as well.

Injuries/Strain represent a pretty remarkable amount of additional power for priests and wizards. (As a quick note, I want to say that I am well aware of how strongly these design structures resemble Mental Consequences for wizards in Dresden Files. This is not an accident, but at the same time I didn't feel like DF got the balance of a wizard's staying power quite right - if this system does nothing but re-create that one with more numerical granularity, I can go home happy.) I feel like the cost for basic spells should be about 4 Health/Composure, and if anything that's rather conservative (see Places of Power, below). This might scale up to 6, 8, and 10 for higher tiers of spells. Four tiers of spells sounds pretty good to me for this rules hack.

As a side note: Injuries and Wounds are particularly important for powering healing spells - it would cause serious problems to the game's balance if a priest could ever turn Injuries into a survivable amount of simple Health damage, or Wounds into Injuries. SIFRP rules are deadly, which is why I'm interested in using them in the first place. The long-term consequences of Injuries and Wounds are central to the system's grittiness.

Some arcane spells would undoubtedly carry a comparable cost, always inflicting Strain or Curses. This line of thought led me to some really interesting world-building: what if the setting has Laws of Magic of one form or other, and the violation of those Laws immediately results in a Curse? This creates a situation in which casting more magic than you can handle is just as bad for you as casting forbidden magic outright. Maybe these things are all part of the magical tradition that is available to the PCs, and an enemy tradition inflicts Curses for completely different things - one tradition bans communication with the dead, maybe, while another bans making compacts with elementals.

Spell Effect

The third lever is the spell's effect, of course. Cunning is the ruling stat for an arcane spell's potency, but a spell can reasonably carry its own modifiers for its final effect, much as many weapons deal a few points more or less than the wielder's Athletics or Agility. Of course, those extra points of damage are also multiplied when the caster scores two or more degrees of success, so we'll tread carefully around such adjustments; spells don't have an obvious cognate to a weapon that takes up two hands. (Which immediately suggests to me the need for a series of negative spell qualities to go with the more desirable spell qualities that Wombat Warlord has already created.)

Defensive and utility magics rely much less on the spellcaster's relevant potency stat. A healing spell that restores Health might still use the caster's normal potency stat, but spells to transfer Injuries or Wounds... not so much. Anything that doesn't operate on the same scale as Composure or Health is generally assumed to either use the potency stat in a different way, or ignore it altogether.

Places of Power

Then I started thinking about the function of armor in combat. To stop all warriors from piling on the heaviest armor available, armor reduces the character's Combat Defense (making it more likely that attacks will hit and will score additional degrees of success), but also mitigates damage. (This tradeoff is tuned pretty well, in our experience; an agility-focused fighter is a very expensive character build, but viable.) Anyway, I want to give wizards and priests similar ability to mitigate spell costs, particularly because I think that attention to location is very strongly in keeping with Birthright's themes (and is a common theme throughout fantasy).

Wizards, therefore, have one point of armor against spell-cost damage while located in any province where they have at least a zero-level Source holding. (This is a Birthright thing; wizards should be building up a network of sources and ley lines as far and wide as they can, so as to increase the number of provinces they can affect with Realm spells.) Furthermore, they have a base of two points of armor against spell-cost damage while within their personal Sanctum, and they can increase this further, up to (in theory) 10 armor. Spells always have a minimum of 1 Composure damage. A wizard intruding on another wizard's turf has an uphill battle ahead of him.

Priests have one point of armor against spell-cost damage in any temple, or on any holy ground, consecrated to their deity, even if it is a conflicting sect of their faith. Priests gain additional armor against spell-cost damage (all of which is, in in-game terms, reduced requirement - the deity demands less of their blood to grant the spell) based on the relative holiness of the place, typically as influenced by the places where martyrs of the faith died. The power of a true martyr's blood can never fade, unless the land is defiled; the slightest portion of the priest's blood stirs the soul of the martyr (who rests with the deity in paradise) to intercede on the behalf of the priest.

Cooperative Casting

I would also like to come up with a workable, flexible cooperative casting system, because that's something D&D has never done well, but that feels very appropriate to the way the Birthright setting thinks about magic. I seem to recall that SIFRP already has rules for cooperating in skill use, which covers the initial Wizardry check (and also opens some design space for spells with difficulty so high that no one character can ever reasonably reach it). The casting cost is the only other thing that I'd need to design, since I think it makes sense for priests to share around the cost of a spell, and not unreasonable for wizards to do the same. The Ritual Fatigue chart used in Dust to Dust for cooperative casting would work pretty well here, though this rules hack mostly uses spells with a higher cost in Health or Composure than have been seen in the rituals of DtD.

(Also, this is the first step of working out SIFRP rules that I could keep twisting until they fit DtD, since Kainenchen and Ben both requested that I work toward that end.)

Don't Rest Your Head: Player-side Review

2011-11-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

As part of Samhaine's ongoing tests of all kinds of indie-gaming systems, we recently played a very enjoyable evening of Don't Rest Your Head. I played Corwin van der Hoyt, a crosstown courier who worked for some kind of shady people; he was a Mirror's-Edge style thrillseeker. Ever since the mysterious car crash that killed his wife and the two people in the other car, though, Corwin has taken military-grade stimulants to avoid sleep, even as he wants to figure out, or remember, what caused the car crash.

These statements almost complete Corwin's character creation, even though none of them are "stats," as such. The way Don't Rest Your Head works, a starting PC only has four things you could call "crunchy" stats, and two of those are determined in a single decision. These are, in order: the Fight or Flight Responses, which determine what your character does when he goes mad. Essentially, out of six boxes, you choose three that are responses you'll use. Will you always Fight, always Flee, or some mix of the two? So you mark off enough boxes to leave open squares for your available responses, and as you go mad and choose that response, you mark off its box. Eventually you don't have a choice anymore, and you might be screwed. My other two stats are my Exhaustion Talent (Speed/Parkour/Reaction Time) and my Madness Talent (Perfect Insight - everything seems dreamlike, so that I almost know what's going to happen before it happens).

To make life easier for one of the other players, I also created his character: Andre St. John, a washed-up rock star (concept art) with an incredible ability to destroy stuff (Exhaustion Talent: use almost anything as a weapon of destruction) and an even more incredible resistance to harm (Madness Talent: Stoneskin). Living the lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock & roll left him too fucked-up to sleep, and now he's got to find his girlfriend, who vanished one day.

A decent amount of the early game was taken up with getting the group together, but the GM handled that part with skill: a package that I was supposed to deliver was stolen from me (with a few unkind words as to my character on the side). A conversation with the guy I was supposed to deliver it to revealed that it was a "black box" - an early-90's hacking device that accomplished various things by "phreaking" a pay phone. (In hindsight, this was the first Big Clue as to where the whole plot was going.) Kainenchen's character, a thief who could summon demons, had just had her latest job go horrifically awry, and was now on the run from the cops. The fourth player was an office drone whose girlfriend had, strangely, not been killed when hit at full speed by a car; instead, she turned into a horrible monster. When he saw her at the office the next day, she was back to herself and didn't mention anything of the incident. So that was weird. Also, she started pressuring him to accept his life as an office drone forever...

(After the break: setting spoilers for DRYH.)

We run into each other as we're each running from various threats, mostly robots with plastic, featureless faces. We start traveling all over the city looking for clues as to what's going on, eventually wandering through an inexplicable door in Andre's kitchen, into the Mad City. This is where the weirdness really goes off the deep end, with Pinheads (who murdered the hell out of the waitress we had just finished talking to) and the windup agents of Officer Tock and other doorways that took us to Dubai and references to the Bazaar that opens at 13 o'clock. It's all very strange and atmospheric, with whimsy and Gaiman-like fantastic imagery overlaid with more outright menace than one usually sees in Gaiman's work or similar fiction. The general tenor has a lot in common with Ink, which makes me quite happy. It's all very dreamlike, of course, with rapid shifts and scene-cuts; much as the (typically ignored) uncertainties of the medium of film were used to incredible effect in Inception, so insomnia and unstable reality fit perfectly with the intended presentation of DRYH and the general flow of tabletop games. This is cemented for us when we finally reach the Bazaar, which is a straight-up goblin market.

Digression: Goblin Market
So, most of my experiences with goblin markets in games have caused games to grind to a halt, as both players and GM face a difficult negotiation. On the players' side, they're looking for things to offer up as currency, in a place where the whole point is that the goblins only want the things the buyer cares about. Obviously the players don't want to over-pay, because players hate feeling cheated. At the same time, it's hard to even figure out what you do care about if the game hasn't forced you to define that thing numerically. Can I feasibly judge what the GM will do to screw me over when I offer the goblins a particular dream or memory, which is of course always what they love best? Because it's not (typically) a game stat, these transactions also require a lot of improvisation from the player. Thus they're the essence of good roleplay, but can also bring a scene grinding to a halt.

On the GM's side, there's a lot of pressure to make suggestions (just to keep the scene moving), knowing that the player will eventually pick whichever of your suggestions matters least to them. At the same time, they're internally struggling for the answer to the question that troubles the players: what am I going to do to screw them over that logically follows from the loss of one happy or important memory? What you have is both sides trying to game the system, which does at least adequately model the negotiation with the goblin merchants. I've always wanted to try a goblin market in which players aren't completely at a loss for what to offer, and go in with at least a limited amount of market-appropriate "currency" in hand rather than wandering from stall to stall knowing that they're screwing themselves over if they try to buy anything. (This seems an opportune moment to link back to my own related post.)

The other thing I'd like to do with a goblin market in some game is to make visiting one more than a one-time deal. I'd like to see PCs start with very little, but gradually accumulate a network of favors owed, odd but valuable tchotchkes, and the like as they go on adventures and build relationships with NPCs.

In this particular case, we sold memories to the merchants of the Bazaar, not knowing what they might cost us, and the GM parsed that as muting rather than erasing their significance. In return, we bought a series of answers from the merchants. Of course, we failed to interpret "the Book of Faces" as something mundane and from our own world rather than something more esoteric, but we eventually stumbled our way toward the answer. Of course, over the course of our wandering, we're having to roll dice, and in order to succeed we're having to add Exhaustion dice occasionally (though we're steering well clear on Madness).

Eventually, though, we piece enough together to know where to go to find Andre's girlfriend Bonnie, which proves to be the office where the office drone works. We've gotten the names of the two factions of Nightmares who are chasing us, each of which wants us to serve them. On the one side, the Phreak, who wants to modernize the Mad City, and is using the Black Ice system to transform people into monsters; on the other side, Acidburn, who is more or less Friend Computer, and opposes modernization by attacking the Mad City's infrastructure. We're there to ask questions, but they decide to get a little rough with us. We flee to the elevator, forcing us to break bad with powers again - things are starting to get really bad for us now.

The elevator doesn't take us back to the ground floor; instead, it takes us up and up and up, to the top floor, an office done in black marble, glass, and chrome - the works, really. Though I think we entered this building through the waking world, the floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto the Mad City. We banter with the villain for a good long while, and he demands that we join him. Samhaine succeeded for just a moment in presenting siding with the Phreak and Acidburn as the only two options, relying on us to realize that we could fight them both. That said, we weren't exactly planning to fight the Phreak in his office. Kainenchen's character went all-in on Madness to summon demons large enough to carry all of us out of there, and once she'd done that I don't think she had any option other than fleeing. I use both Exhaustion and Madness to reach one of the demons so that I too can catch a ride out of there. The office drone's player had left, so he fate-of-the-party'ed his way into a demon's clutches.

Andre... didn't make it. Madness dominated for our boy Andre, and Andre only had Fight responses. Ain't no way Andre St. John is running away from this thing that stole his girlfriend and threatened him. As the rest of us break through the windows of the office and are borne away (to safety, one hopes) by demons, Andre uses his Stoneskin to beat the bejeezus out of the Phreak, tearing his arm off. It's some ten stories to the street, but Andre throws himself out the window and uses Stoneskin to survive the landing, clutching the robotic arm overhead, in what we universally agreed was about the most fucking metal thing we'd ever seen in a tabletop game.

Summary
Don't Rest Your Head is another of the indie games we've played as a one-shot that I would eagerly play as a long-term campaign. I played Corwin as if I would get to continue playing him, and no small amount of table-talk was generally directed toward people hoping we would make plans to play a second time. Its rules got the hell out of the way so that we could play in a rich setting, while at the same time modeling of the slow slide into exhaustion and madness to get the game's themes across. The Pain mechanic is the only place where things feel just a little bit off; when Pain dominates, the GM can screw with our rolls so that Exhaustion or Madness dominate (which is really very bad for us), but whenever he does this, we get a point that we can use to reduce Exhaustion. The net effect is that Exhaustion is redistributed among players, since players with very low Exhaustion won't spend the points the group has received. This is sort of the problem with the game not having a true damage or health mechanic on the PC side.

I recommend this game very strongly, however, in the same breath with Over the Edge, as a good system for rules-light Modern Weirdness/Pseudo-Horror gaming. That's a pretty popular sub-genre of gaming around these parts. Its native setting is excellent, but it could easily be substituted for OtE's Al-Amarja setting; I can even imagine a campaign casually flipping back and forth between the two rules systems, to an interesting overall story effect.

LARP Design Diary: Wizard Dueling

2011-11-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

Shortly before our most recent Dust to Dust event, we released rules for wizard dueling. In this post, I want to talk about some of the design considerations that drove this project, some of the ideas we set aside, and some of the problems that we didn't discover until after this stuff was in front of the players. The most obvious form of dueling - two players standing 10-15 feet apart and hurling packets at each other is not as engaging or tactical as we wanted. That is, it doesn't engage the things that wizards should hold up as virtues, such as preparation and forethought. It also doesn't communicate anything interesting about ritualist society.

This led to considerations of convoluted physical maneuvering, marked out by rope laid on the ground. This was more tactical, but very bulky and very public; in all probability it would also burn through huge amounts of Fatigue or mana. Because of the different balance axioms at stake between ritualists and mana-using casters in DtD, it would be very difficult to make a duel between them fair.

From there, we veered into more abstract games, including a modified form of Tsuro and Liar's Dice (Bones). These weren't interacting well with DtD's rules; more powerful wizards either had no edge at all or too much of one. These were our first (and frustrating) attempts at modifying an existing game. The good news for us is that we can revisit them in their original form, because their general style suits the feel of the setting well.

One of our early touchstones in design was Erasmus's challenge in Quest for Glory I. We liked the idea of solving problems through the creative use of spells, as that does communicate one of the intended aspects of ritualism. That line of thought brought us to a single-column boardgame implementation that included creature summoning, walls, damaging spells, and the like. Though I can't speak for my fellow designers, the thing that troubled me about it was the fear that there would not be enough viable strategies, leading to a solved or stalemated game. This design approach was eventually put on a back-burner.

Having already created a custom tarot deck for the setting, we briefly discussed the idea of creating a straight-up CCG, since several staff members are long-time players of Magic: the Gathering and other CCGs. The (staggering) amount of work involved was never something we regarded as a major hurdle; instead, we set the idea aside because playing a CCG in-character would be too jarring for many players.

I don't remember exactly how the design came to us at this point, but when we finally found it, it was as if it had been there all along, almost fully formed.

What we eventually wound up is a system heavily based on chess. Game pieces are readily available, for a wide range of costs; this particular benefit is also what makes ritualism itself viable. The core rules of chess are familiar to the vast majority of our playerbase, and they are rules that have been developed, tweaked, and experimented with exhaustively throughout almost every culture of Europe and Asia for many centuries. Because pieces other than pawns and the wizard marker are summoned, powerful wizards have an edge over weaker wizards, but as long as the two competitors are reasonably close (within 10 bones of one another), superior skill may be able to compensate for the difference. The game requires strategic and tactical thought, while completely dispensing with any element of luck - this felt about right for a wizard's outlook on the world. There can still be surprises, however, as the game's (limited) collectible nature means an opponent may have a piece you've never seen before, forcing you to rethink your strategies quickly. The summons also meant the game was easily incorporated into the campaign's existing research rules, if dedicated duelists wanted to spend BGAs to gain new summons.

In the course of developing wizard dueling's current form, we discarded an idea in which duelists cast a separate ritual (laying out bones, etc.) for each summon. We saw that this would represent an unacceptable amount of "setup time." If the summons required players to expend "real" Fatigue rather than a supply of "dueling Fatigue," we felt that they would not be interested in playing, as they would be sacrificing a large amount of combat capability.

Another design element we dropped was the idea that the game always cost the loser something. This persisted into a late stage of design because extremely early game concepts involved using Fatigue as an "ante," and we didn't want players to be able to transfer Fatigue by throwing the duel. Shortly before the game's publication, however, it became clear that players were excited about purely competitive play, and this would lose much of its appeal if someone in the duel always lost Fatigue.

It was important that wizard dueling allow mana-based spellcasters to play as well, especially given that ritualism already represents a minigame that receives a great deal of attention in the campaign. This presented the serious (at least, to me) problem of finding cosmological space to explain how this could be done, without generalizing to "you can turn mana into Fatigue all the time." The same element that justifies dueling Fatigue is also used to justify dueling mana and auto-success when casting summoning formulas.

We've attached flavor text to each summoning formula, in a natural continuation of DtD's tendency to put text on absolutely any blank surface, including players, and (where possible) using this text to communicate additional world flavor and foreshadow future events and threats. That this flavor text strongly resembles the flavor text found on cards in more familiar CCGs is not a coincidence. ;)

We had a relatively intensive level of volunteer playtesting at the event; fortunately, all players involved understood that it was brand-new and might need significant alteration to work properly. The two major problems we've found so far are that the orthogonal leapers with a large range (4-5 square leap) can actually only reach four squares on the board in any given game, varying by their initial placement. I had been focused on how many defenders that allowed the leapers to ignore, rather than how difficult that made them to use, and thus priced them dearly. Fortunately, it's reasonably easy to correct by offering an alternate form of movement (presumably as a rider) that they can use for positioning; this form of movement would be much weaker if it were their only option, but as an alternate it should make them much more competitive pieces.

The other problem that I have - and have not yet decided how to solve - is that the Praxis of Arcane Prowess is a ritual that requires a nontrivial number of bones, and is intended to be shared between multiple casters. Of course, by the time the players got to the dueling competition, they had prepared their rituals and burned most of their daily Fatigue, and so were too drained to complete the Praxis. I could solve this by reducing the number of bones required to cast, or I could leave it as it is and just allow those players to use the duel-initiating items that exist for mana-users.

All in all, wizard dueling has been well-received by players so far, and we expect a great deal more feedback on this topic over the next few weeks... and years, for that matter. I think that the core of its gameplay is solid even if some of the details need polishing. We've always intended for the campaign to include a number of board games or card games that are significant to the world's cultures, and I expect we'll introduce the second of these at some point early next year. I'm also glad to return to posting in Harbinger after having almost no time for writing here over the course of the past month; I have one other post written in longhand and another percolating.

Multiple Damage Tracks

2011-10-24T14:36:00.000-04:00

I've been playing Echo Bazaar pretty constantly since I started a couple of months ago, and it's what brought this to mind for me, but Samhaine pointed out that Smallville did the same, and as I thought about it I realized that it's not a new idea, I just happen to really like Echo Bazaar's implementation of it. At the same time, I've been thinking about different ways to fix the save-or-die spells and effects that so dominate high-level 3.x D&D. An increasing number of indie games are embracing the inclusion of multiple damage tracks: ways other than just hit points to knock a character out of action, lethally or non-lethally, without creating a single save-or-die situation.

Smallville and Mouse Guard, among others, track things like bad moods that a character may suffer - Angry, Tired, and the like. This works well for tracking consequences of conflicts, so that an argument or a physical challenge don't necessarily result in hit point damage or nothing. Ultimately, though, I think they're a little more granular and specific than I'm particularly interested in stealing for other games.

D&D 3.x introduced "new" damage tracks to the game, in the form of ability score damage and negative levels. These mechanics were interesting and new takes on simulationism when 3e first released, but over the course of several years and a great deal of design work (monsters, magic items, spells, even a revised edition... you name it) it became increasingly clear that they slow down play egregiously, because so much recalculation takes place. In my experience, players repeat the math process for each separate roll that involves a reduced ability score or negative level. It's the same kind of mental slowdown and "no wait that should have missed" that beneficial spell effects like bless and prayer cause, but with the added difficulty of lost spell slots, spell DCs, and spell access. In short, adjusting ability scores has cascading effects throughout the rules that can be all too easy to overlook.

I wonder if it would actually represent simplification to count ability score damage upward in the form of "damage" scores, in much the same way that negative levels count upward. For example, a character has 16 Strength and fails a saving throw against Medium Spider Venom (1d4 Str/1d4 Str). What if the result was 16 Strength and 4 points of a Weakened stat (-2 to attack, damage, and Strength saves)? This would make it so PCs don't lose feat access when they no longer meet feat prereqs (but then, that's almost always overlooked anyway), but still become helpless when their Weakened stat equals their relevant ability score. It would similarly not change spells prepared in any way, though there's no reason it couldn't apply to spell DCs. (But seriously, do yourself a favor and turn all spell DCs into attack rolls against fixed defenses so that that's actually intuitive.)

But this isn't quite on the mark of what I mean to cover in this post.

In Echo Bazaar, characters have (in addition to other stats) four negative statistics, called Menaces. Menaces are rated from zero to eight or higher; if they get to eight, you experience some non-voluntary content - that is, your character goes directly to jail without passing Go. Each Menace has its own "jail;" only Suspicion (the tracker of the constables investigating your illegal activities) is actually described as a jail. Other Menaces include Wounds (this is pretty much your hit points; only about a quarter of all challenges threaten you with Wounds), Scandal (the cost for failing social challenges), and Nightmares (the cost for seeing or knowing That Which Man Wert Not Meant to Know).

If your Wounds reach 8 or higher, you take a trip down the River Styx or something like it, but death isn't permanent in EB. Scandal of 8 or higher compels you to go to "the tomb-colonies," which is pretty much EB's version of celebrities going into rehab to show willingness to reform. Nightmares of 8 or higher send you to the Royal Bethlehem Hotel - an insane asylum, that is. There are also actions you can take to reduce your Menaces to a particular threshold: food or rest reduce your Wounds, laudanum eases your Nightmares (but may cost you in the Wounds department), going to church reduces your Scandal, and... well, getting rid of Suspicion is kind of a bitch, actually, but there are occasionally good ways to do this.

The applications of these Menaces in a tabletop game are what interest me. Plenty of games have included a Sanity mechanic, going all the way back to the venerable Call of Cthulhu, so what's new about this? Well, for one thing, calling it Nightmares rather than Sanity makes it applicable to more games, and directs the imagination to more "troubled sleep" rather than "too busy gibbering in the corner to be playable" as a consequence. They're both about increasing derangement and delusion, but EB and most tabletop games (though not CoC) want logical ways to recover from insanity, particularly if the player is willing to sacrifice time or resources for it.

Then there's Scandal and Suspicion. I'd like to see Scandal used as a consequence for failing social conflicts - in 4e, for example, failing a whole skill challenge, not a single roll. The tough part here is getting PCs to understand, as part of the setting, that running up your Scandal doesn't just mean you can play as a rebel against society - it has to be as complete of a penalty, if not as final, as running out of hit points or Sanity. This means that you need PCs to be dependent on NPCs in the setting for adventure hooks, rewards, or information in general.

Suspicion is the kind of stat that will vary wildly by campaign and party, but a lot of games with any kind of urban activity may put PCs in a position of doing legal-but-suspicious things like crawling around in the sewers or showing up on the scene of unsolved murders. Much like Scandal, they would also have to accept that when the cops come to arrest them, they can flee the city (another kind of exile) or they can accept being thrown in jail for awhile, but they can't resolve the situation by fighting the group that shows up to make the arrest. The other cool thing here is that "we need to reduce suspicion and show what good people we are" can be a motivation to accept adventure hooks that PCs might otherwise ignore. All in all, though, if you're not running the kind of game where Suspicion is a problem, just leave it out.

Watching The Return of the King last night brought to mind a great way to use Menaces. Do you want the PC to roll for something, but it's going to really suck for the flow or logic of the story if the PC fails and has to retreat in ignominy? Have one of the character's Menaces increase. The RotK example was Aragorn's encounter with the Dead Men of Dunharrow. In a game, I'd like to include a die roll here, but... well, I don't really want to see whether the PC succeeds or fails. We're not rolling to see if Aragorn is Isildur's heir, after all. No, we're rolling to see what it costs the PC to assert his control over these horrific beings. There might be a slight increase in Nightmares for succeeding (spectral undead!), and a much worse one for failure (as you spend the rest of the scene escaping the chamber, including an avalanche of skulls). There are also scenes throughout the films that can be interpreted as reducing Aragorn's Nightmares stat, typically scenes involving dream-interaction with Arwen.

Another way to use Nightmares is a nod to CoC's Sanity mechanics: make Nightmares a cost attached to some spells, for whatever cosmological reason you like. Maybe all Vulgar magic causes Nightmares instead of Paradox. Maybe breaking the Dresdenverse's Laws of Magic causes nightmares; all of the things that are forbidden seem like they might be sources of horror. If you do this, just make sure you introduce interesting but costly ways for the character to ease his troubled mind again.

I also have ideas along these lines for things like Doom Tracks and Terror Tracks, as used in Arkham Horror. Those will have to wait for a future post, however.

Crafting Systems Design: 4e Hack

2011-10-07T19:42:00.003-04:00

I've been working on creating a decent crafting system for tabletop games for as long as I've worked on this blog, and then some. I've discussed some of the hurdles to doing so before; the things that make crafting interesting in MMOs don't apply in tabletop gaming. There are big issues with itemization scaling. And so on. A conversation with Kainenchen got me thinking about this again the other night, and today I think I had a breakthrough, though I won't know until it's all written.

Part of the itemization scaling problem is that passive benefits are very powerful. If I give weapons, armor, and shields ever-increasing bonuses to their relevant abilities, those will in turn stack with their magic items, and while it may remain playable, it will skew the balance axiom of the game in a way I feel obligated to avoid in order to call this valid design. In 4e Dark Sun, though, the designers introduced rules for weapons of substandard materials. They wanted PCs to take interest in these, while maintaining the theme that they are substandard in some way. This could be unfolded into a wider variety of "powers" associated with specific items.

Also, I recently read this excellent post, the summary of which is that Dungeoneering can reasonably be unfolded into Engineering and used as a smithing skill. The fact that dwarves get a racial +2 to this skill is just gravy for my fondness for this idea. I have currently only worked out this idea for durable goods such as weapons, armor, and shields. I have glimmers of ideas for consumable goods such as alchemy, but that needs further consideration.

Without further ado:

Assume that, at base, every item that can be crafted involves three components that vary in quality, from the very poor to the legendary. (Some components may not be physically incorporated into the final product, such as the water that quenches the heated metal. This is irrelevant to the system but useful in the fiction.) The bone of a normal animal is a very poor weapon-making material, while bronze is below average, steel is good, and adamantium is legendary. These range in value from -4 to +6 or higher.

To craft an item, the creator makes three skill checks against the item's DC; most weapons have a DC of 25, while I would expect armorsmithing to vary a bit more. Each check is modified by one of the components. Failing one of the checks by 10 or more points ruins the project. Failing the check by 5 to 9 points results in a -2 penalty, not to the next skill check but... well, I'll get to that in a second. Failing the check by 1-4 points results in a -1 penalty to that later roll. Succeeding by 5 points nets a +1 bonus, by 10 a +2 bonus, and so on.

Once you've made all three skill checks, assuming you haven't ruined the project, you will have generated a number that is anywhere from -6 to, who knows, +12 or more. This modifier is in turn applied to a d20 roll, checked against the following chart.

Modified Roll	Features/Flaws
-5	0/3
-4	0/2
-3	0/3
-2	0/1
-1	0/2
0	0/1
1	0/0
2	0/1
3	0/0
4	0/1
5	1/3
6	0/0
7	1/2
8	0/1
9	1/2
10	0/0
11	1/1
12	0/0
13	1/0
14	2/1
15	1/0
16	1/1
17	0/0
18	1/1
19	2/0
20	2/1
21	1/0
22	2/1
23	2/0
24	1/1
25	2/0
26	3/1
27	1/0
28	2/0
29	3/1
30	3/0
31	3/1
32	2/0
33	3/0

Above 33, even numbers result in 2/0 and odd numbers result in 3/0.

Features and Flaws

A Feature is a beneficial property in an item, expressed here as a minor, daily-use function. Features are selected by the smith's player at time of creation. A Flaw is a detrimental property in an item, expressed here as a minor, daily-use function triggered by the GM. There are typically more restrictions on when a flaw may be activated. When both features and flaws exist in an item, the smith chooses first; some features and flaws are mutually exclusive. Where applicable, a feature or flaw may be selected more than once to fill out the allotted number. It is recommended that each weapon's features be recorded on a card in the player's possession, and its flaws on a card in the GM's possession. Although these are "daily powers," their use is not tied to daily magic item uses.

A sample list of features for slashing weapons:

Keen Edge: Roll twice for damage, taking the higher of the two. Use this after hitting but before rolling damage.

Serration: When making an attack that deals ongoing damage, increase that damage by 3, or impose a -2 penalty to all saves to end that ongoing damage.

Wicked Edge: Increase the critical range of this weapon by +1 until the first time in a day that it scores a critical hit.

Weighted: When an attack using this weapon forces an opponent to move, increase the distance of that forced movement by 1.

Hooked: When an attack using this weapon misses an opponent, that opponent takes a -2 penalty to AC (save ends).

A sample list of flaws for slashing weapons:

Can't Hold an Edge for Long (mutually exclusive with Keen Edge): The player must roll twice for damage, taking the lower of the two. Use this after hitting but before rolling damage.

Soft Material: When an opponent uses an attack with the weapon keyword against the wielder and misses, the weapon is bent or notched, dealing 2 fewer points of damage until the end of the encounter.

Awkward: When an attack with this weapon misses, the target gains combat advantage against the wielder on its next attack.

Improperly Forged: One of the qualities (such as high crit or brutal) that this weapon normally possesses does not function for one attack.

Crude Grip: The weapon's wielder is denied the weapon's proficiency bonus for one attack roll.

I imagine a similar, if more extensive, list of features and flaws for other types of weapons, implements, various categories of armor, and shields. If you're running that sort of game, add in similar listings for ships, castles, or trained horses.

My thinking on materials is that there would also be pricing charts for how much one unit of various materials costs. This is one of the reasons you'd want cheap materials: with a good crafter and/or a lucky roll, you can wind up with a perfectly serviceable weapon. It also gives you a reason to seek mithril or whatever other unobtainium your heart desires.

The visible downside of this system is that you have more fiddly bits of choice and consequence going back and forth between player and GM. My hope is that this adds interest in exchange for that cost, and that it makes crafting a viable if minor part of a character's actions in game. I haven't specified time-to-create for any items, as that can vary so wildly that it needs much more thought. Nor have I created charts of materials and their modifiers to skill rolls. That's the easy part, if and only if this design holds water in itself.

Finally, there's no intrinsic reason that this idea couldn't be adapted into D&D 3.x, or into SIFRP, but the function of features and flaws might come across as incongruous in those systems.

Technoir: Player-side Review

2011-10-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Samhaine has recently been posting his GM-side analysis of Technoir, and I've been talking about it more or less nonstop in my posts, so here's my actual post discussing it. In the second session he ran, I played Thornton "Pierce" Kimball, an investigator who had been working for Minnesota's Big Pharma corps and had picked up some medical knowledge along the way. He was also pretty 'borged out, with an experimental headjack connected to an external derma-linked router patch, and reflex stimulators to give him the speed to get out of trouble. See, Pierce couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper sack, a fact which would become relevant (but, curiously, not detrimental to my enjoyment) during the session.

He was both in debt to and obsessed with one Arma Winn, whose shop stood in downtown Minneapolis (also relevant). He got one of his connections to another PC through his employment with Pen Re; Kainenchen's PC was Pen Re's cousin, if I recall correctly. Also, I had some previous contact with Four Color Criticism's character, who in turn was buddies with Stands-in-Fire's character. All of this occurred as a systemic part of character creation; for one-shot or short-run games, this is perfect. It was, if anything, a genre-appropriate and more stripped-down parallel of Spirit of the Century's excellent system for connecting characters, so that you don't waste a whole session on "okay, why are we hanging out together?" (As a brief digression, if I had expected this to be a longer-term game, I might have wanted more complete control over my character's starting nature and relationships, depending on the degree to which the character was fully formed in my head prior to character creation.)

Our group had a slow and kind of rocky time getting into the game's plot, specifically because of Technoir's GM-side innovations. There's a baseline "something going on" at the start of play, but neither the players nor the GM can really know what it is or who's behind it until the players start investigating it. This means that the GM can't exactly telegraph reasons that you'd start asking a particular contact about a situation, because until you go talk to them, he hasn't generated that information. If I understand correctly, the GM couldn't pre-generate this information if he wanted to, because the order in which PCs proceed makes a difference. It's all randomly rolled anyway. I like investigative games and I like games that reward me for paying attention to the information that goes out over the course of play, so there was a sense of... breaking the ice, I guess.

To explain just a little further, I tend to be cautious and circumspect in questioning NPCs, so as to avoid burning bridges - I figure I can always ratchet up the pressure later. Technoir doesn't really approve of this approach, because noir doesn't approve of this approach. Noir protagonists - not to say heroes - get in people's faces. They put them off balance. They shake the tree and see what falls out. Maybe the next time I start a new character for a game that is more than a one-shot, I'll give that a try.

Our initial challenge was simply traveling through the city, as there were riots going on downtown (ongoing fallout from the first session that Samhaine ran). We were asked to find out what had happened to one particular guy, because he was inexplicably off-grid. It turned out that he had been shot and an EMP had been set off in his bar, frying everything. In a cyberpunk world, this is about as bad as it gets. We start working on arranging medevac for this guy, because the tools that would save his life are (predictably) dependent on electricity. We sort out some suspicious circumstances of who's flying the medevac chopper, or something to that effect, and found out just how he made so many enemies: he handed a bunch of his bar's patrons over to the law as they planned to free themselves from the cortex bombs that had been implanted in them (the plot of the first session). Pretty awesome cyberpunk stuff all the way around.

So I went up to wave down the medevac chopper or something like that, I spot someone watching the roof from a nearby building. Well, crap, I should tell the team about this. On my way back down the stairs, some lady goon puts me in a headlock. Well, crap. I mentioned how Pierce can't fight his way out of a wet paper sack? So the lady goon - turns out to be Pen Re's sister, a cyborg with total cyber-psychosis - starts making some demands, you know how it goes. The thing about being a cyborg is that a lot of really important system become vulnerable to hacking when you're in skin contact, because dermal linking is so convenient. So it becomes a race between her chokehold on me and my hacking into her system. The rest of the party shows up to save my bacon and continue the fight, because once I lock up her nerves it's a lot easier to break the chokehold. I think I also shut off a couple of her senses.

What I particularly loved about this was that it came down to shifting the context of the fight to play into my stats. All of my skills are verbs intended to give me some way to apply progressively worse negative adjectives to my opponent. I can make them sticky - that is, much harder to purge - by handing the GM some of my precious push dice (dice I otherwise use for bonuses to attack and defense). Once he has his hands on them, the tension level of the game goes up, because he can use them to apply sticky adjectives back to us. This is how PCs start dying - two sticky physical adjectives at the end of the fight and you might need major cybernetic surgery to revive you and get you into the next scene.

In fact, I was dying at the end of the scene, and I was shipped off with the NPC we'd come to save when the medevac team showed up. The cool thing about this is that once I've taken a sticky adjective and recovered from it, the stats of any rolls that I failed (and thus "primed") have a chance to improve. In the game's first conflict, I made a point of using Coax, which was another of Pierce's many weak points (Coax, Fight, Move, and Shoot all started at 1 die), just so it would be primed.

The problem that I have with the system - one I wonder if they'll change in the upcoming Hexnoir - is that PCs cannot struggle against things that are not living or sentient opponents (wild animals yes, robots yes; flooding river no). I think that Man vs. Nature is an underused source of challenge in games, and it makes me sad that Technoir's system doesn't really have a clear way to handle it. Of course, noir protagonists don't deal with raging rivers or mountain climbing all that much, so it suits the genre just fine.

I haven't mentioned much about the cyberpunk world that it presents, mainly because it accomplishes this in a minimalist fashion through the gear list, but what we see of the world is still very cool, and an excellent foundation for conflict and investigation.

Overall, I like Technoir very, very much, and we've been hounding Samhaine to run another session with the same characters. But then, I felt the same way about Dresden Files, as I've mentioned before, and about Don't Rest Your Head, which I'll get around to talking about sooner or later.

More on Skill Systems, Particularly 4e

2011-10-01T21:59:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about skills in D&D 4e. Sarah Darkmagic's last two posts (here and here) are a working summary of the current round of this discussion, and I can't say enough good about some of Rob Donoghue's posts on this topic, though you'll have to do some digging to find them at this point.

The point that hasn't quite been addressed yet is the inequality of demand between skills. This is an issue that is well-nigh universal to games that include a "normal" array of skills. (Technoir, with its tightly constrained list of verbs, doesn't have this issue. There are some things everyone needs to be able to do, and some things only one person in the party needs to be able to do. For example, if there's a chasm, probably everyone will have to cross it (possibly with some help from their friends). If the whole group wants to sneak from Point A to Point B, every character in the group needs to roll Stealth. If an opponent is hidden, everyone needs to roll Perception to spot the enemy. Let me clarify "need" in this case: parties can adapt to a small percentage of PCs being able to hit the target DCs, typically by doing something that lowers the DCs or increases the bonuses for the other PCs' rolls. There's something to be said for this kind of teamwork, and I'll come back to this point in a minute.

At the other extreme, the game has skills that need just one specialist per group. Conveniently, these skills generally represent highly specialized training. Arcana, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Nature, Religion, and Thievery are all examples of this. Heal is the kind of skill that newbie players imagine that everyone in the party should have (by comparison, I believe just about every PC in a LARP should pick up some way to stabilize the wounded), but in the games I've played, it's really only useful to the party member with Ritual Casting - my players didn't have the patience to treat diseases nonmagically, if they even remembered that it is possible. The other functions of Heal are good, except that there's almost always a better way to accomplish the same thing using a power.

As a quick side note, Pendragon not only has this problem, it egregiously exacerbates it, as the main way to improve a skill is through use. If you aren't good enough at something to be the one the party calls upon to use it, you're never going to be, unless the party is split up.

Lore-oriented skills are subject to this kind of specialization in every game. D&D 2e and... well, a lot of games made in the 90s famously suffered from this, as they created monstrously long skill lists that no player in his right mind would ever think of learning. Massive skill lists offering pointless levels of specialization are the conceptual reversal of the (warning: TV Tropes link coming up! Do not click it if you have something else you have to do today!) Omnidisciplinary Scientist. The Omnidisciplinary Scientist is, well, also the Brain of the Five-Man Band, and thus is awfully useful as a niche in a PC team. D&D stats (and SIFRP stats, while I'm thinking about it) lend themselves to creating just such a character, as all Lore-type skills are based off of the same stat (Int in D&D, Knowledge in SIFRP). There's a very short list of reasons you'd have more than one character in a party pursue the same Lore-type skill:

They get the skill for free anyway (Arcana for several arcane-source classes, Religion for divine-source classes).
The players involved find it sufficiently valuable to have two chances to learn things about that skill, and they've got other bases covered well enough already.
The characters are satisfying prereqs for something else they plan to pick up (such as 3.x prestige class and feat prereqs), or the skill has other applications (Mage: the Awakening and rote skills).
The game in question has a combined-effort or Aid Another system that grants greater bonuses for hitting higher DCs and/or having more ranks in the skill (3.x D&D, Mage: the Awakening).
Miscellaneous roleplaying reasons.

What I'm getting at here is that some skills just aren't necessary for characters-in-general as others. Thievery is an interesting case here, as 4e is the first edition of the game since the creation of the thief in which one can (by hook or by crook) play a traps-and-locks rogue without explicitly being a rogue or thief (whatever we're calling it in the edition in question). 3.x let other character classes buy cross-class ranks in Open Lock, Search, and Disable Device, only to declare (through Trapfinding) that only rogues could even roll against some kinds of traps.

What all of this means is a little harder to pin down. I certainly don't recommend creating a situation in which every character in a group needs to specialize in the same Lore-type skill. At the other extreme, Athletics (and similar skills in previous editions of D&D) isn't really a protected niche for fighters or rogues, and shouldn't be. The things that a character does with Athletics (or Climb, Jump, and Swim) is generally bypassing physical obstacles in a straightforward way, and thus shouldn't be the exclusive province of one character over another. Acrobatics (Balance, Tumble) and Stealth, on the other hand, are flashy interaction with the world; the main things that characters do with acrobatic stunts in fiction are getting to hard-to-reach places and bypassing physical obstacles in an impressive way (the link is one of the more memorable displays of Athletics versus Acrobatics).

Just to round out my list, I'll mention that there are three more skills everyone in the party more or less needs. Perception - well, if you can't correctly perceive your character's surroundings, you can't really make informed decisions, now can you? Endurance is the kind of skill that either everyone needs or no one needs, depending on how much the DM likes diseases and long periods of physical exertion. Finally, Diplomacy (and to a much lesser extent Bluff and Intimidate) theoretically governs your ability to interact nonviolently with NPCs. One of the commenters in Sarah Darkmagic's second post on skills pointed out, though, that the game would not be diminished if every character received training in Diplomacy for free, and I think I agree.

I think the solution, at least for 4e, is to narrow the vasty seas between the best a character can be at a skill and the worst, and work on side benefits (such as the skill powers introduced in the PH 3) for characters who want to make that skill their area of expertise. A narrower range of skill scores would keep more characters in reach of the target DCs, and thus improve their ability to participate in skill challenges. The idea of simply giving characters more trained skills might work too, and isn't far from what I suggested some time back. Ultimately, I'm happy to quote Samhaine's point, that the skill system and skill challenges need a deeper integration into the game's mechanics.

There exists no finer example of a system that integrates skills with the rest of its mechanics than Technoir, but it achieves this in part by simply declaring that players do not roll dice unless they are struggling against an intelligent antagonist. Fortunately, struggles between man and nature are not genre-appropriate to noir... but I would love to see more done with them in fantasy adventure. The movie of Fellowship of the Ring does a lot with this - a lot of the physical heroics are outside of combat, such as Caradhras (though of course that has an intelligent antagonist, in the distance) and the crumbling stairs in Moria. The OSR guys are all about bringing the hexcrawl back, but 4e's skill system could make that kind of game really sing if it handled man-vs.-nature struggles with more grace.

To bring this ramble to some kind of cohesive conclusion, I think 4e pretends that all skills are equal, but doesn't create such a situation in actual use - not in availability, demand, or utility. I'd like to see this change, because I think that despite their faults, 4e's approach to skills was an important step in the right direction.

Martial Schools for 4e: Rowan Berserker

2011-09-27T18:08:00.000-04:00

Way back in June, I worked out thefirst few powers for a RouxSwordsman character class and suggested additional attack descriptors thatmight lend more of a cut-and-thrust feel to 4e combat. Today, I'm working onthe Rowan Berserker school, also taken from King's Gate. They fight withshields made of rowan, and share in the tree's incredible strength and toughness.The choice to make the berserker school shield-users is strange in the contextof D&D, but in KG they had powers involving beating their weaponsagainst their shields, and I certainly plan to retain that.

This class takes a certain amount of inspiration from the Warden, though I write it without the PH2 open in front of me. It is, at least, a defender in light armor who draws on the wisdom of nature, and I've carried over the Warden's high hit point and healing surge values to support the Rowan Berserker's approach to life. What I haven't (quite) done is carry over the shapeshifting aspect of Warden daily powers, because it's a little more mystical than I care to go with this class. I do, after all, still see them as a martial school, not a primal one.

If you're wondering about the High, Middle, and Low descriptors, click on the Roux Swordsman link above, where I lay out several of the ideas behind these martial schools and cut-and-thrust combat.

RowanBerserker

Role: Defender, Strikersecondary

Power Source: Martial

Key Abilities: Strength,Constitution

Armor Proficiencies: Cloth,Leather, Hide, all Shields

Weapon Proficiencies: SimpleMelee, Simple Ranged, Military Melee, Military Ranged

Bonus to Defense: +2Fortitude

Hit Points at First Level:As per Warden

Hit Points per Level Gained:As per Warden

Healing Surges per Day: Asper Warden

Trained Skills (Choose Four): Athletics,Endurance, Heal, History, Intimidate, Nature

Class Features: Heart ofRowan, Rager's Yell

Heart of Rowan: Add eitheryour Constitution bonus or your Dexterity bonus to your Armor Class whenwearing light armor. Add your Constitution bonus to your damage when making anattack granted to you through a mark you placed.

Rager's Yell - RowanBerserker Attack 1

With a primal yell of challenge,you beat your weapon against your shield; your foes must face YOU before theycan threaten your allies.

At-Will - Martial

Minor Action Closeblast 3

Target: All enemies in area

Effect: Target is markeduntil the end of your next turn, and takes a -2 penalty to attacks that do notinclude you as a target. If the target makes an attack that does not includeyou as a target, you may make a melee basic attack as an immediate reactionagainst that target if you are within range.

Special: You may not usethis attack more than once per round.

Skullsplitter - RowanBerserker Attack 1

With a brutal overhand strike,you attempt to split your foe's skull. Even if you miss, your opponent will bescrambling to recover.

At-Will - Martial, Weapon, High

Standard Action Melee weapon

Target: One creature

Attack: Strength vs AC

Hit: [W] + Str damage

Miss: If your target iswielding a shield, you receive a +2 bonus to your next attack against thattarget before the end of your next turn. If your target is not wielding ashield, your target takes a -2 penalty to its next melee attack against youbefore the start of your next turn. (Editor's Note: if Cleave can have a miss effect,so can Skullsplitter.)

Shield Bash - RowanBerserker Attack 1

You throw your weight behind astrike with your shield, and your opponent staggers back.

At-Will - Martial, Shield,Middle

Standard Action Melee1

Target: One creature

Attack: Strength vsFortitude

Hit: 1d8 + Str + Con damage,and push the target 1 square.

Scars Make Me Stronger -Rowan Berserker Defense 1

Don't you know that blood onlymakes a Rowan crazier?

Encounter - Martial, Shield,Middle

Immediate Reaction

Trigger: You take damage andare bloodied afterward (regardless of whether or not you were bloodied before)

Effect: Gain temporary hitpoints equal to 5 + Str, and add your Constitution bonus to all defenses untilthe end of your next turn.

Special: If the attack thattriggered your use of this power was a critical hit, your next melee attackagainst that opponent is a critical hit on a roll of 18, 19, or 20.

Strong Arm - Rowan BerserkerAttack 1

The force of your blow hurlsyour opponent to the ground. Hedon't own you!

Encounter - Martial, Weapon,Middle

Standard Action Meleeweapon

Target: One creature

Attack: Strength vs AC

Hit: [W] + Str damage, andmake a secondary attack

Secondary Attack: Strengthvs. Fortitude

Hit: Target is knockedprone, and choose one: deal your Str + Con in damage to that opponent, or youare grappling your opponent, or that opponent is marked (save ends; this is a fear effect) as if by your Rager's Yell ability.

Rowan's First Lesson - RowanBerserker Attack 1

The first lesson of the rowan isdefiance - of wind, of stone, and of black magic.

Daily - Martial, Weapon, Shield,High

Standard Action Meleeweapon

Target: One creature

Attack: Str vs AC

Hit: 2[W] + Str

Effect: You enter the stanceof the Rowan of the Vale. You gain resist 5 arcane, divine, psionic, andnecrotic, and you may resist up to two squares of any push, pull, or slide(this part of the effect is cumulative with other forms of resistance to forcedmovement, such as the dwarven racial ability). You may not run while in thestance of the Rowan of the Vale.

Defy the Storm - Rowan BerserkerDefense 2

Your arrows may blot out thesun, but my shield has the strength of the ages.

Encounter - Martial, Shield,High

Minor Action

Effect: Gain a +4 bonus toall defenses against attacks with the High descriptor, and resist 5 all againstattacks with the High descriptor.

From the Roots - Rowan Berserker Defense 2

It's important to have a quick hand with the shield, to defend against underhanded treachery. Those who strike at you from beneath will feel your hobnailed boot.

Encounter - Martial, Shield, Low

Minor Action

Effect: Gain a +2 bonus to AC and Reflex against attacks with the Low or Middle descriptors. The first time a melee attack with the Low descriptor misses you before the beginning of your next turn, you may make the following attack.

Target: One creature within 1 square of you

Attack: Str vs Reflex

Damage: 1d6 + Str, and the creature is slowed and marked until the end of your next turn.

Hacking SIFRP: Arcane and Divine Magic

2011-09-24T00:18:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, Wombat Warlord and I spent a good bit of time working out ideas to add a robust and flexible magic system to Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, because we liked the core of the system enough to adapt it to other fantasy settings. In particular, WW was preparing for the Birthright game he now runs. He's modified his system further since I last did any work with it, so this post won't be offering direct commentary on what he's using, only presenting what we did at the time and improvements I'd still want to make.

As a quick summary, SIFRP has 19 separate ability scores, because it doesn't separate "ability scores" and "skills" the way D&D does. Where D&D treats Charisma as a "ruling stat" over Bluff, Diplomacy, Streetwise, and so on, SIFRP has Deception, Persuasion, Status, and the like as equally available abilities. Each ability is rated in d6s, and an average level of skill in any ability is two dice. Target difficulties scale so that average tasks are within easy reach for average people, while highly skilled characters will be counting up degrees of success on average tasks. Players gain additional dice from skill specialties, rolling more dice based on the degree of the specialty, but only keeping a number of dice equal to their ability score. The system does a solid job of making all of these abilities useful.

From these ability scores, there are derived stats: Intrigue Defense, Composure, Combat Defense, Health, and Injuries. Intrigue Defense is a difficulty rating for attacks from other characters that would cause you to lose Composure, while Composure is your health pool for social attacks, and Disposition is a variable armor value that applies to intrigues. Combat Defense is your ability to avoid getting hit by an attack; heavy armor reduces this number, but soaks damage. Health is a very small number, but it's expected that characters will take Injuries (which are relatively short term) and Wounds (which are long-term) in a prolonged combat.

Characters also buy Qualities, which are more-or-less feats, including feat-like progression. Through Qualities, fighting styles become increasingly like prestige classes, with situational bonuses and exceptions to the rules. SIFRP's existing mystical abilities - green dreams - are also handled through Qualities.

Two New Abilities

One thing clearly absent from the SIFRP ability list is any magic-focused stat, though Animal Handling applies to green dreams. There are cogent arguments to be made for Knowledge, Cunning, Will, and (for some settings) Language, but adding magic as a primary function to any of these stats would be severely unbalancing. Therefore we decided to add Wizardry for arcane magic and Piety for divine magic. Unlike normal abilities, however, these abilities must be unlocked with the purchase of a Quality, and then must be purchased up from a base score of zero dice.

There are two different Qualities that a character can use to get some benefit from Wizardry: Hedge Wizardry and True Wizardry. True Wizardry carries the additional prerequisite of any bloodline Quality, as Birthright's more powerful magic is available only to those with a mystical bloodline. A similar pair of options are presented to character pursuing Piety: Touch of the Divine and Power of the Blood.

Wombat Warlord further created specialties for Wizardry and Piety, as exist in other abilities. These specialties represent core spell types, with partial overlap between arcane and divine magic. Each spell type can work with a limited number of spell descriptors, much like the Qualities possessed by weaponry; each spell, then, is in a sense a new weapon assembled ad hoc.

A spell's casting difficulty, which is for most spells also its chance to take effect, uses the caster's Wizardry or Piety, paralleling Fighting or Marksmanship. The spell's potency (damage healed/dealt, and so on) is Cunning for wizards and Will for priests, paralleling Athletics or Agility. The caster's power reserve (currency spent for casting) is Composure (derived from Will) for wizards, which came from the idea that wizards are holding complex mystical geometry and the like in their minds and are mentally drained by the experience. Priests use Health (derived from Endurance), because I interpreted Birthright divine magic as all about the power of blood (even for the Good religions), and I liked the idea of making all priests heavily scarred but unbelievably tough.

Some Alternate Ideas

WW has wizards take Injuries and Wounds when they run out of Composure, so that the wizard can take more lasting consequences when scraping the bottom of the barrel for power. I came up with a variant idea for that, such that the more severe of the two (parallel to Wounds and lasting at least a week) are Curses. The story that backfills from that is that the powers of the land, from which the wizard draws power, are angered and exact their wrath in the form of a debilitating Curse. The lesser form (parallel to Injuries and passing in a few days) is simply be Strain. When healing Strain and Curses, Will tests replace Endurance. I'm not sure if there's a skill that someone else can use to help you purge Strain and Curses, but Persuasion sets up an interesting story possibility.

The second addition I'd want to make to WW's system is a sense that spellcasters have to learn spells in advance rather than casting spontaneously, which also means that there are pre-defined and inflexible spell parameters. This is just a matter of my personal taste in magic systems, but I love it when characters need to research new spells and/or capture spellbooks and sacred scrolls from enemies. Therefore, wizards use Knowledge to comprehend arcane mumbo-jumbo. After some debate, I've settled on recommending Status for priests to learn new spells. I feel that the religions of BR are more about organized than they are about religion, and the goal of PC priests in domain play is to establish a widespread sect of their religion under their personal control; I think, therefore, that the gods would grant the favor of new spell knowledge to priests based on their place in that hierarchy. (One could just as readily attach Knowledge and Status to spell preparation rather than spell knowledge, depending on how you want all of this to work.)

But I didn't stop there. I liked my little chart, with its Arcane and Divine columns and its rows of Spell Knowledge, Accuracy, Potency, and Reserve. So I added two more columns, with help from Kainenchen. These magical traditions could be shoehorned into BR, but they might fit better in some completely separate setting.

Druidic Magic
Spell Knowledge: Awareness
Accuracy: Shamanism (new ability)
Potency: Survival
Power Reserve: Will (or Endurance, if you want blood-sacrifice druids)

Goetic Magic
Spell Knowledge: Language
Accuracy: Goetia (i.e., Demonology - new ability)
Potency: Persuasion
Power Reserve: Will (or, again, Endurance... this doesn't bear further explanation)

I particularly imagine Goetic Magic involving lots of Intrigue Challenges with summoned demons.

And - of course! how could it have been otherwise? - now that I've given it this much thought, I really want to write a new setting and run stuff using this. Maybe some future posts will include details of arcane, divine, or other spells.

PS. Wombat Warlord, I'm totally calling you out to post some of your casting rules in your blog!

PPS. Wombat Warlord has replied, and I link it here for future reference.

Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying: Retrospective

2011-09-17T03:18:00.000-04:00

From March of 2009 to March of 2010, the Monkey King ran a campaign of Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying for a group of six players, eventually expanding to seven. I'm not sure at this point how many sessions we played, but I would guess that it was somewhere between 15 and 20, and the GM MK significantly accelerated our XP gain. As part of character creation, we created House Vervain, named (in my head) for the Vervain Hub in the Vorkosigan Saga... because I'd never heard of vervains before. (Go me.) But it wasn't the first time that a group of PCs accepted the name that I came up with off the top of my head, simply because it was an idea.

Much like the active and interactive character creation of Technoir, the group involvement in House creation is excellent for getting campaigns started with energy and player investment. The House has stats! I can watch them go up and down! My victories make them go up! (Fortunately, we did not face a lot of losses that would make them go down.) My character, Arden, was the House maester, and I invested in abilities that would improve our Stewardship rolls.

Like many fans of the series, we tied our family in with the Starks, and situated our lands about as far north as the southern edge of the Queen's Gift allowed. The MK fleshed the area out with both canonical and invented Houses, and over the course of the campaign revealed a deeper backstory for House Vervain that tied us into the Age of Heroes. We had three actual members of House Vervain and three (eventually four) people who worked for the House; the maester I played was (uncharacteristically) actually a member of House Vervain. His story was that Oldtown had made him a maester, but sent him back to his own House in disgrace because of his unseemly interest in magic. The other two House members were the lawful heir and the much more suitable... but illegitimate... son, sort of like if Robb and Jon didn't really like each other and were wickedly funny about it. Both were archers. The other four PCs were a septa with maxed-out healing ability, a guard captain with Jaime Lannister-level swordsmanship, a Mormont fighter chick who preferred to disarm her opponents at Point A in this handy chart, and (the last to join) a Braavosi mercenary captain who concealed her gender from some-but-not-all members of the group, to endless comedic effect. (She was also Braavosi water dancer and an incredible badass in her own right.)

Discussing these details about those characters brings me to the second thing we loved about the system: PCs start off pretty awesome in this system. I think most of us started with one skill at 5 dice, and several skills in the 3-4 range, though I was not the only person to purchase a Flaw at character creation. (Arden was utterly terrified of Greyjoys and their super evil religion. This was a significant hindrance in the campaign.) Relative to the named characters of the novels, starting PCs seem to be about on par, so it's just political pull that PC Houses will typically lack in the early going. I don't require this in games as a general rule, but it feels like the right move here; the protagonists of the novels come across as well-matched for one another, either in direct contests of skill (Jaime and Brienne), or with comparable strengths in different fields (Tyrion and anyone). In Westeros, significant people have typically heard of new characters long before those new characters come on-camera, creating the impression of a widely-dispersed society that is knit together by surprisingly strong bonds of reputation. SIFRP follows this trend by making PCs people who matter from the beginning. Most of us had a skill in which we could not realistically fail, and it was more a question of how unbelievable our success would be. The game has a long enough skill list, however, that we still had significant weak points.

Our group was bound together by ties of blood and sworn service, and because all seven players had known each other for many moons, we quickly fell into comfortable patterns of snark and murmured advice that would have made the game fun with even a terrible rules system. Instead, we had a rules system that, as far as I know, everyone at the table liked. The all-but-ludicrous successes possible with each character's best skill led to some quips of which I am still proud. "Our septa? She could heal a rare steak," and "...did you just cure old age?"

Anyway, I don't mean this commentary to be too laden with anecdotes. One of the problems with playing a maester, though, is that maesters aren't really protagonists in Westeros. They aren't supposed to travel, because they're sworn to the castle that they serve, and they don't control the forces of magic (but then, neither does anyone else, normally), so the only conflicts in which they take a direct hand are intrigues. Our MK, I'm happy to say, ran several of those, but I had a lot of time to do little more than snark the rest of the party.

I didn't learn the social-conflict system in as much depth as I really ought to have, but I enjoyed delivering venomous or thundering oratory when called to court before Robb Stark. Composure hit points as parallels of the combat system's Damage, Injuries, and Wounds mean that the social conflict system has, if nothing else, a sense of progress, rather than turning into one-roll success or failure. There are also a wide variety of skills that can apply to social conflict, but also have other applications. Combined efforts also went over pretty well.

I didn't personally play with the combat system much at all, aside from one incident of meritorious use of a tapestry to hinder enemies. In a number of tourneys and sparring matches, however, it looked like heavily-armored warriors were evenly matched with unarmored swashbucklers. In a protracted battle, though, it was just as clear that the heavily-armored warrior would fare better. The game accomplishes this through a combination of multiple stat dependency for Defense, armor making characters easier to hit but harder to damage, and the Braavosi and Water Dancer fighting schools. I also like the way the Damage/Injury/Wound system provides three different degrees of consequences for getting hit in combat. It strongly resembles the different degrees of physical consequences characters can suffer in the FATE system, but SIFRP's system feels more intuitive, as it hides the weirdness of its roll-up system.

Our campaign also included a number of mass combats, another of the high points of the SIFRP system. We fought a rebellious lord who also happened to be a horrible necromancer, we defended a ruined keep in the deep woods from an army that wanted to take it from us, we freed Deepwood Motte from the ironborn, and we defended Winterfell from a second, much larger force of ironborn (the campaign's climax). These were exciting even for me, as a non-martial character, because I enjoyed controlling a unit of soldiers and granting them a small stat bonus. House Vervain tended to favor a smaller number of elite soldiers, taking orders from our guard captain (playing to his other major strength).

It was, in short, a completely amazing campaign, and it is only because I am spoiled for choice that I can't instantly declare it the best tabletop game I've ever played. There is a lot to like in the rules system, and the game's engine is absolutely worth adapting to other games, much as Wombat Warlord has done for Birthright. Were I to play in another SIFRP campaign, I would avoid playing a maester, as direct involvement in problem-solving was often not possible, through no fault of the MK's; maesters simply don't learn things that are useful to adventurers' problems. I believe I speak for all of the players and the MK when I say that we would eagerly play SIFRP again.

Tabletop Systems: What I'm Missing

2011-09-12T22:49:00.001-04:00

At present, the tabletop systems freshest in my mind are Arcana Evolved (a cousin of D&D 3.5), D&D 4th edition, Technoir, Mage: the Awakening, Over the Edge, and to a lesser extent A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. This odd melange of systems and genres naturally leads to a discussion of each system's high points and what I'd want to take from each if I were to start work on my own tabletop rules system. Each one scratches an itch that none of them manage entirely.

AE, and by extension D&D 3.5
The long-term choices that I make for my character are particularly satisfying in this system, because they take a concrete form and typically carry implicit tradeoffs. Though it varies by ability scores, the type of armor my character will wear is a meaningful choice, and it makes sense to own more than one suit of armor and more than one set of weapons.

The nature of multiclassing in this system feels the best to me, in that my character really would be stopping his studies in one field in order to advance in another.

The scaffolding of the magic system, with its discrete spells, appeals to me. I don't prefer AE's automatic knowledge of all spells of a given level and rarity, because I like the way that wizards need to purchase, research, borrow, or steal spells in order to progress. (This has everything to do with why DtD ritualism is the way it is.) Were I to hack 3.5, nowadays, I'd rework the cleric and druid to have to learn spells the way the wizard does. I'm not sure what I'd do about the bard, but a relatively invasive rework is probable. Minor spellcasting classes with limited custom lists might or might not get changed.

For better and for worse, 3.x exists within the conceit that enemy NPCs follow the same framework of creation as PCs. This leads to a colossal amount of work that some of the best 3.x DMs circumvent with Excel-based character creation or by only running published adventures. This leads to its own kinds of weirdness, such as specific abilities that are only balanced if the character using them is probably only going to survive for one encounter (e.g., regenerating 3 hit points per round).

AE in specific has some pretty good races outside the standard array of elf-dwarf-halfling (well, mostly outside of halfling...), but its rules accommodate their sizes only poorly. I am of two minds on AE's class list; sometimes you want a generic advancement that will let you have something from another part of the rules set that you want (feats or skill points) but you don't want deeply-enmeshed setting flavor. AE won't offer you that - all of its classes have strongly implied social roles that are very hard to overlook. As a result, multiclassing seems very odd here.

D&D 4e
As far as I'm concerned, the single best thing in 4e is the presentation and nature of powers and the way they represent different tactical choices in combat.

The second best thing in 4e is the way monster abilities, the variety of player abilities, and terrain leads to interesting, varied fights. Writing an interesting combination of monsters, terrain, and any other ambient conditions takes work, but it's not terribly more work than previous editions of D&D. Some of the terrain is higher on the flashy magic and gonzo fantasy than I would prefer, admittedly.

The magic is often too solely gamist for me - while I'm happy that healers can heal their allies without sacrificing too much of their in-combat time to it, granting mystical protection to your allies by hitting enemies with a mace doesn't really feel right to me, all in all. Bards and warlords work a bit better in that regard than clerics.

When 4e first came out, I was comfortable with the total divide between "how PCs work" and "how NPCs work." As time has gone on, it has bothered me more. For actual monsters, I'm fine with things like Elite and Solo status, recharge mechanics, and so on. For things that should be like PCs (particularly NPCs intended to be allies or foils to PCs), I think it reminds the players that it's just a game and they shouldn't try to understand what the NPC is doing. It's possible, in 4e, to design NPCs that do the things players do, but only in limited and awkward ways. This is more obvious in 4e's spellcasting characters than anywhere else in the game.

Interlude: First Fusion
Oh, the rules I would hack. From talking to Kainenchen and Stands-in-Fire on a long drive this past weekend, I got the idea (I dunno, Essentials may already do this) of reworking spellcasters so that their powers are:

2-3 At-Will attacks
A 3.x-style increasing progression of prepared spells. These are balanced as encounter powers, but are expended as daily powers. There are a mix of attack, defense, and utility powers here, though there might continue to be room set aside for utility power "siloing." Players learn additional spells through research, capturing enemy spellbooks, revelatory experience, or whatever, and choose from those learned spells when preparing spells on any given day. Durations measured in rounds per caster level and the like would remain exiled from the system, because I hate tracking those kinds of durations.
Rituals - but more like the rituals of 3.5's Unearthed Arcana than 4e's rituals.

Over the Edge
The best thing about Over the Edge, the thing to steal for other games, is the "okay at normal things, and good at a few things or okay at otherwise unavailable things" setup of stats. The crippling problem with D&D 3.x's skill system is that some characters are, inescapably, just going to suck at almost all skill-based challenges. My warmain in AE has just reached 14th level, and there was no combination of stats and skill point expenditure that would allow him to be any good at the huge list of skills. Instead, he's good at about three things, okay at about six things, and don't-bother at everything else. I don't feel like my character is sufficiently dominating (compared to other characters) in combat to justify the game making him a complete non-participant in skill-based sequences.

The second-best thing about OtE is the game's reward for stunts. My experience with the game has been that players are very willing to describe their attacks in cool ways so that they can either gain a bonus die or negate a penalty die. This simple mechanic, along with player creativity, led to some of the most cinematic and engaging fight scenes I've seen in a game.

Mage: the Awakening
The rules component that I like most in M:tAw is the item that it has in common with other nWoD games - I like the breakdown of skills and attributes very much. My players are less than thrilled about the way these factor into their rote spellcasting, but the way attributes and skills can creatively recombine for mundane or mystical skill usage is good stuff. This is something that WoD has done all the way back, as far as I am aware, and that has led to some ludicrous but creative combinations of skill and attribute. I like the form and variety of skills available in nWoD.

Interlude: Second Fusion
So skills. I've written before about my issues with 4e's skill system. I would like to see a hack of 4e with a skill list more similar to Mage: the Awakening, though for a medieval fantasy game I'd replace Politics with Religion. (This change writes its own snarky commentary, so I leave that as an exercise for the reader.) The tough part for this translation, then, is the skills Brawl, Firearms, and Weaponry. In just about any game I've ever seen, combat skills are flat-out better than other skills, simply because the consequences of failure are more difficult to shake off. This is true even in games that go out of their way to make physical conflicts the same as mental/mystical conflicts and social conflicts - Technoir and FATE come to mind here.

There are a couple of ways I could handle this, but all of them require me to pre-determine how players improve their skills. What I know I don't want to do is use the 3.x skill point system - while it's great for character customization, it's a damned nightmare for a lot of other things. Something along the lines of what I laid out in the aforelinked post could work - sure, a lot of PCs would put a +4 in Weaponry and a -2 in Brawl, but I'd try to write powers and such so that +4/+4 or +4/+2 were really the place to be. Is this taking a page from FATE? Hell yes it is. But you'd add that to your attribute bonus and go from there. Yeah, there are still problems with this that I need to spend a lot more time analyzing. The important thing here is that characters have basic competency with most of the game's skills, and are only markedly incompetent with a few.

Technoir
Technoir has a lot going for it - I really, really like this game, and I may write about our experiences with it in a future post. The conflict-resolution mechanics, particularly with regard to applying adjectives and making those adjectives sticky, are confusing to explain, but they are fantastic once you're playing with them. Ultimately, Technoir may be the best example I've seen of a rules system that sets up a compelling skill-based fight scene. (I've seen DMs who can make 4e's skill system really sing in non-combat challenges, but I feel like they had to work harder to make the rules do that than they would have in Technoir.) The thing that makes Technoir work here is the way bonus dice shift back and forth between the player and the GM. The ball starts in the player's court with a pool of bonus dice. When the PC does lasting, bad things to an NPC, the player passes those bonus dice to the GM. (The bonus dice have other applications as bonus dice, so this represents a cost to the player.) The GM, in turn, now has ammunition to do lasting, bad things to one of the PCs, and in this way the cycle of violence perpetuates itself. This generalizes to nonviolent conflict as well, and that universal mechanic is another part of what makes Technoir so wonderful.

Song of Ice and Fire
SIF likewise has a lot going for it, though the basic dice-pool mechanics are not easy to borrow for other systems. I am really rather surprised that I haven't already written about SIF at great length in this blog - something I'll have to rectify. Anyway, the mechanics that beg to be stolen are conflict resolution mechanics for courtly intrigues (central to that setting, and possibly suggestive of ways to make them compelling in other settings) and mass combat. The problem with skill challenges - diplomatic or otherwise - in a lot of games is that there's not a fun sense of progress as you work at it. Either it's a one-roll victory (D&D 3.x, nWoD), or it's a "x successes before 3 failures" (D&D 4e), or... something along those lines. In SIF, you're manipulating bonuses to your side and penalties to your opponent with various diplomatic postures so that you can damage your opponent's Composure. This is pretty well in keeping with the combat mechanics, including the multiple stat dependencies for attack, damage, and defense.

(I don't know enough about the SIF mass combat system to write about it here, as my SIF character was a complete idiot about Warfare, and I think our GM mucked around with the rules for heroes attached to units. I should buy a copy of the rules and mend my ignorance.)

Interlude: Third Fusion
This area of fusion into 4e-like rules is something I'll be exploring more thoroughly in a future post. The short form is that I like games that award hero points when the GM does something that sort of arbitrarily screws you over, an idea I first saw in Mutants and Masterminds and most recently saw in Old School Hack. I'm thinking that many powers and/or feats might have an "if you spend a hero point" clause that involves a juiced-up version of the power. When you do this, you pass your hero point over to the GM, who can use it to power nastier versions of monster abilities. It will be tricky to balance this so that players are actually willing to spend points and, in essence, crank up both their power and the danger level of the game.

When Samhaine and I discussed this idea earlier today, he suggested that the GM gained this "juice" for monster abilities when players violated genre conventions in favor of doing something pragmatic. That could definitely work too. Yet another version of the idea was offering them to the players as a temptation to use a system's version of Dark Side powers, Dark Sun defiling magic, Tal Shar, whatever. In this third version, the points or tokens become a mechanic of karmic justice, possibly one that only builds up over time and unlocks new monster abilities.

Conclusion
This has been some general noodling about a fantasy heartbreaker rules system, because obviously I'm now equipped to write the perfect system. What the world needs now is another fantasy tabletop game like I need a hole in my head. But anyway, it's fun to play around with, and maybe this will give someone out there in the blogosphere a cool idea. This may also be a jumping-off point for future posts.

When a Bad Idea is the Right Idea

2011-09-07T15:35:00.001-04:00

Often in gaming, characters are faced with options that are Obviously Bad Ideas, whether in terms of a plot hook, a magic item, a bargain of some kind, or a button that just begs to be pushed. Some characters are rational and cautious, and avoid such involvement; probably the most classic case of this is Call of Cthulhu investigators burning every book they find, unread, in a laughable attempt to forestall their doom. In my experience, such characters generally also can't understand why another character would make the opposite choice to investigate, to push buttons, to make deals. The most extreme cases of this type have little option but to retire from adventuring, as total non-involvement is rational, safe, and boring.

On the other hand, every game has button-pushin' apple-biters (as we called them in King's Gate); these characters vary widely by degrees. Sometimes they're doing this because they don't care about the consequences (a significant subset of these are outright evil characters making dark bargains). Sometimes they're bored and looking for excitement. Sometimes they think they've got a handle on the situation (sometimes they're right).

On the gripping hand, you have the GM's view of the whole situation. Because the GM is equipped with perfect knowledge of the situation, this view is both nuanced and necessarily correct, and that leads to a new set of conflicts and problems. GMs can fall into thinking of something Obviously Bad as Obviously To Be Avoided. From this stance, it logically follows that the character is foolish to get involved with whatever it is, and then that foolishness should be punished so as to teach a lesson. (Sometimes this is the correct response on the GM's part, so that characters won't do increasingly ridiculous or obnoxious shit.) GMs can also be baffled by the character's conclusion that Obviously Bad means Obviously To Be Avoided - these GMs quickly become frustrated with the PCs' refusal to pursue any of their delicious plot hooks, especially those hooks that the GM has dressed up with evocative, creepy stories. From the GM's perspective, this can look like the player doesn't trust the GM not to use every choice as a chance to screw the character and wreck the player's fun.

The consequences of these differences in view can be problematic, leading to more bickering and recrimination than engaging conflict. The thing is, narrative structure demands that consequences involve conflict and problems, and the nature of non-solo roleplaying is that one character's problems splash onto other characters as well. The character saying I told you so! is also suffering some of the brunt of the conflict, and as often as not this only heightens the bickering.

When players are sufficiently afraid of the weird things the GM puts into the world, survival instinct trumps curiosity. Characters stop engaging with the world, because they believe that only bad things can happen to them as a result. Years of gaming with rat-bastard GMs of many stripes has bred a very strong strain of this approach into gamers. This response is well-supported in fiction - it's called "refusing the call to adventure," and in gaming it's a roadblock to actually getting to the fun.

At the other extreme, there are players who have no fear whatsoever of consequences to their characters... or anyone else's character. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" is a general guideline to this school of thought, and taken to its extreme it is a very selfish playstyle, bringing down consequences on everyone around them - consequences the GM must carry out, because actions without consequences ruin games in yet another, different way. Those consequences are a key part of the social contract between GMs and players.

There is, in short, a very difficult balance to strike here. The most important thing is variety, and making sure that that variety reaches all of the characters. You want players to have to think, consider, and possibly look for more information when they come across a mystery, a magic item, or a button to push - if they don't have to think about it one way or the other, it wasn't really a choice, and the essence of all roleplaying games is choice and consequence. The balance, then, is between trust and fear - trust that there are good things out there, and it's okay to explore the world and see what happens; and fear for your character's safety. It's the same kind of trust that readers put in writers when they bother to become invested in characters, and the same kind of fear for the characters we care about that gives tension to the conflicts. (Pro tip: if you're reading A Song of Ice and Fire, you should trust GRRM to create an interesting ride along the way, and trust that he is going to murder several of your favorite characters in the most horrible ways possible by the end, while still enjoying the tension along the way. The demise of your favorite character is a foregone conclusion.)

Sometimes, too, I think it's important to write plotlines such that curiosity and investigation are not only rewarded, but prove to be the way forward when other avenues have been exhausted. If it convinced players to look for a new path rather than continuing in a course that is frustrating them, that would be a great victory for almost any game.

4e Bar Brawling, Part 5: Sulimo

2011-08-12T11:11:00.000-04:00

I've come to the last of the Bar Brawl power lists I created back in 2009. This set shows the beginning of some thinking about terrain powers; in this case, though, I was reskinning the character's core powers to interact with terrain that I could know for certain would be present. In a similar vein, it would be much easier to come up with terrain powers if I already had a team of PCs in mind, with their own personal style, much as I was talking about yesterday.

Sulimo, in any case, was an eladrin wizard. The player initially built the character to be all about single-target control and use orbs, but shortly after the bar brawl session he rebuilt the character to be an area-damage blaster using wands. I made a point of writing his attacks to target things other than people, and deal damage to the actual enemy as collateral damage, for the same reasons that the rest of the characters weren't using swords and axes in their attacks. Once a wizard is actually hurling damaging spells at someone, it's a lot harder for me to accept that the fight is intended to be nonlethal.

A point I want to make about the way I created the powers as a whole is that I repeated a number of powers between characters, such as Deceptive Move being available to both Dendric and Sulimo. In retrospect, I feel like this is a good thing, though it's hard to verbalize why. In a sense, I feel giving characters something in common links them together in the game's conceptual level of powers. It's a lot like the skill powers that WotC published in the PH3, although those powers ran into odd balance issues from the differing strengths of classes. That suggests to me a series of "Deed of Strength," "Deed of Dexterity," etc., kinds of powers that would be available to all characters meeting stat minimums. This could be good if it gave characters more reason to care about stats other than their class's primary and secondary stats, but there are obvious problems as well.

At some point, I may go back and create bar brawl powers for Kiel, Hane, and Dominik, both as a design exercise and to amuse those players, even now that the campaign is long since ended.

At-will

Ray of Frost Wizard Attack 1
A blisteringly cold ray of white frost streaks to the floor beneath your target, causing him to slip.
At-Will ✦ Arcane, Cold, Implement
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: Int vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d4 + Int cold damage, and the target is knocked down.

Target The Architecture Wizard Attack 1
You hurl bolts of force, splintering the wood near your enemies and injuring them indirectly.
At-will
Standard Action               Ranged 10
Target: Int vs Fortitude
Hit: 1d6 + Int damage, and one square adjacent to the target is difficult terrain until the end of the encounter.

Encounter

Fey Step Eladrin Racial Power
With a step, you vanish from one place and appear in another.
Encounter ✦ Teleportation
Move Action Personal
Effect: Teleport up to 5 squares.

Deceptive Move Wizard Attack 1
When attacked by two at once, you meet superior strength with superior wit.
Encounter
Immediate Interrupt                            Personal
Trigger: An enemy makes a melee attack against you while contributing to flanking you.
Effect: The target of the attack is changed from you to the attacker’s flanking partner, even if reach would not normally permit this attack. Resolve the attack normally.

Splintering Force Wizard Attack 1
You invest force into a piece of furniture, and it explodes into splinters.
Daily
Standard Action               Ranged 10
Target: Creatures adjacent to one table
Attack: Int vs. Reflex
Hit: 2d6 + Int modifier damage, and the squares where the table used to be are difficult terrain until the end of the encounter.

Daily

Sleep Wizard Attack 1
You exert your will against your foes, seeking to overwhelm them with a tide of magical weariness.
Daily ✦ Arcane, Implement, Sleep
Standard Action Area burst 2 within 20 squares
Target: Each creature in burst
Attack: Int vs. Will
Hit: The target is slowed (save ends). If the target fails its first saving throw against this power, the target becomes unconscious (save ends).
Miss: The target is slowed (save ends).

Utility

I Thought Elves Liked Wine
Alcohol: cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.
Encounter
Minor Action
Effect: Upon finishing your beer, you gain +2 Reflex until the end of the encounter.
Special: If the beer you just finished was Demogorgon Pale Ale, gain a +2 AC also.

4e Bar Brawling, Part 4: Dendric

2011-08-11T11:08:00.001-04:00

Many of Dendric's powers didn't work as well as intended or weren't as appealing as intended due to the DM being sort of a moron. Allies in the Crowd didn't work because I forgot that I needed to place all of the uninvolved NPCs. Silvershield Soldier shouldn't have been Wisdom-based - I should have gone with Charisma or (once Dendric was rebuilt to use the PH2 bard rather than the preview) Constitution. Oh well, live and learn.

You'd think that bards would be some of the best in the game at bar fights, what with spending most of their careers in taverns. I just had some shortcomings of imagination in writing these powers, as well as trying to theming the powers around a Cunning rather than Valorous bard (i.e., misremembering Dendric's actual character). I think Dendric's bar brawl powers would have been an ideal chance to push him temporarily into a different combat role; a fight banter mechanic that turned him into a marking defender would have been a good time. The other part of my problem at the time was that Dendric joined the campaign in the fifth session, and the bar brawl was in the eighth session; we hadn't yet gotten as much characterization with that character as with others.

At-Will

Allies in the Crowd Bard Attack 1
A talented bard can get a crowd on his side with a word and a glance.
At-will
Standard               Special
Target: One creature adjacent to an uninvolved creature
Attack: Cha +2 vs. AC
Hit: 1d4 + Int + Cha damage.

Vicious Mockery Bard Attack 1
You unleash a string of insults at your foe, weaving them with bardic magic to send the creature into a blind rage.
At-Will – Arcane, Charm, Implement, Psychic
Standard Action               Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: Cha vs. Will
Hit: 1d6 + Cha psychic damage, and the target takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Encounter

Blunder Bard Attack 1
You fog your foe’s mind, causing it to stumble past your allies.
Encounter – Arcane, Charm, Implement
Standard Action               Ranged 5
Target: One creature
Attack: +8 vs. Will
Hit: 1d6 + 6 damage, and you slide the target 2 squares. During the slide, you or one of your allies can make a melee basic attack against the target as a free action, with a +4 power bonus to the attack roll.

Deceptive Move Bard Attack 1
When attacked by two at once, you meet superior strength with superior wit.
Encounter
Immediate Interrupt                            Personal
Trigger: An enemy makes a melee attack against you while contributing to flanking you.
Effect: The target of the attack is changed from you to the attacker’s flanking partner, even if reach would not normally permit this attack. Resolve the attack normally.

Daily

Silvershield Soldier Bard Attack 1
You conjure a ghostly guardian, indistinct except for a glowing shield. A burst of radiance erupts from it to sear foes that move next to it.
Daily ✦ Conjuration
Standard Action Ranged 5
Effect: You conjure a spirit of vengeance that occupies 1 square within range. Every round, you can move the guardian 3 squares as a move action. The guardian lasts until the end of the encounter. Any Magmarn that ends its turn next to the conjured guardian is subject to a Wisdom vs. Fortitude attack. On a hit, the attack deals 1d8 + Cha modifier psychic damage.

Utility

Invoke Pride Bard Utility 2
A man will do for pride what he would not do for love or money.
Daily
Minor Action                    Close burst 5
Target: One bloodied ally in burst
Effect: The target regains use of second wind and gains a power bonus to his or her next attack roll equal to your Charisma modifier.

4e Bar Brawling, Part 3: Terrence Wilhelm

2011-08-10T11:52:00.001-04:00

Terrence is one of the key examples of how I adapted a character's existing combat style to brawling. In this case, obviously, I added elemental stuff (we'll call them "particle effects") to the normal things you'd do in a bar brawl - punching and throwing beer. Also, since Terrence was very much about beer and beer distribution, I made sure that he had powers that varied by beer type. At some point, this could be tweaked into a fun PvP drinking game, in which real-world beers are "relabeled" as the beers listed in the powers. You want the bonus? Bottoms up!

The flavor text for several of the powers is based off of Terrence's outrageous German accent. That player is very fond of outrageous accents, and (as others have noted) one or two players at the table with distinct accents or manners of speaking go a long way toward getting other people to think and speak in-character. For my part, I can't usually maintain a consistent accent all that long, but my current Mage game is distinctly improved by the same player's outrageous Boston accent and Samhaine's outrageous Russian accent.

One thing that I wanted to try with the bar brawl rules, but never quite completed, was to hand out powers that shifted characters over into different combat roles. I felt like my players enjoyed their normal combat roles, but none of them were so attached to those roles that they wouldn't enjoy a one-encounter shift into another role. Variety is the spice of life, as I'm told.

At-Will
Improvised Attack Swordmage Attack 1
In a pinch, just about anything is a weapon.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Int + 2 vs AC
Hit: 1d8 + Str + Int damage.

Greenflame Fist Swordmage Attack 1
Each blow ignites your fists in deadly green fire.
At-Will ✦ Arcane, Fire, Weapon
Standard Action                Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Int vs. AC
Hit: 1d4 + Int fire damage, and you deal 3 fire damage to all enemies adjacent to the target.

Lightning Throw Swordmage Attack 1
Using a tiny burst of your lightning lure, you grab an enemy, twist, and throw him to the ground.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee 2
Target: One creature
Attack: Int vs Fortitude
Hit: 1d4 + Int lightning damage, and you move the enemy to any square adjacent to you.

Encounter

Extra Stout, Extra Cold Swordmage 1
You grab ze tankard, chill its contents, and throw ze whole sing at zer enemy.
Encounter
Standard Action               Melee or Ranged 5
Target: One creature
Attack: Int vs Reflex
Hit: 2d6 + Int cold damage, and the enemy is marked and weakened until the end of your next turn.

Cascading Assault Swordmage Attack 3
You punch the nearest enemy, and force cascades off of him to strike other nearby enemies.
Encounter
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Str + 2 vs AC
Hit: 1d4 + Int damage. Make a secondary attack against a target within 5.
Secondary Attack: Int + 2 vs AC
Hit: 2d6 + Int damage.

Daily

Down to the Bitters Swordmage Attack 1
You hurl ze beer in ze faces of enemies crowded around you. Apparently, it wasn’t so good anymore, ya?
Daily
Standard Action               Close burst 1
Target: All enemies in burst
Attack: Int vs Fortitude
Hit: 2d6 + Int poison damage, and ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends).

Utility

Drink the Pain Away
Alcohol: cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.
Encounter
Minor Action
Effect: Upon finishing your beer, you gain +2 Fortitude until the end of the encounter.
Special: If the beer you just finished is Orcus Imperial Stout, gain Resist 5 Damage until the end of your next turn.
If the beer you just finished is Baphomet Witbeir, you give a savage howl. You and all allies within 5 squares gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

4e Bar Brawling, Part 2: Azamon Fyori

2011-08-09T10:30:00.001-04:00

Azamon Fyori was (in this campaign) a tiefling resourceful warlord. He was much less of a sociopath than some of that player's previous characters! He normally fought with sword and shield, and (like all tieflings before the rework of their racial power) was all about the fire damage.

As you can see from comparing these powers to Norman's, I was inconsistent in applying keywords to attacks, and in this case sometimes outright incorrect (since, in essence, nothing granted a Weapon keyword here). Varying up his attack stat to use Int was not a significant hindrance. Azamon also preserved a few more of his normal abilities than other characters did, simply because it made sense to me at the time, and because they weren't tuned off of his weapon damage (that's Warlords for you). I didn't give him any beer-themed powers because he was not played as being the drunkard that some of the other characters were.

Finally, I'd like to comment on some of what's going on with Tail Slap. Even though 4e tieflings are drawn with thick, powerful-looking tails, there's no real reference to this anywhere else in the race's powers and abilities. I'm fine with the reasoning that a tail slap shouldn't do enough damage to matter in lethal combat, but in a bar brawl? A tail slap should totally matter. As to the reference to resetting, my campaign had a long-running but eventually discarded house rule that gave each player dice to reset their encounter and daily powers. At some other point, I'll discuss this rule and its effects on the game. The rules for Tail Slap make it much easier to reset than other powers. I had figured that it was comparatively weak enough that I'd be okay with the player using that attack every time it triggered if he felt like spending dice for it. At this point, I don't remember whether or not he used it at all.

At-will Attacks

Commander’s Strike Warlord Attack 1
With a shout, you command an ally to attack.
At-Will ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action -- Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: An ally of your choice makes a melee basic attack against the target
Hit: Ally’s basic attack damage + 3.

Improvised Attack Warlord Attack 1
In a pinch, just about anything is a weapon.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee
Target: One creature
Attack: Int + 2 vs AC
Hit: 1d8 + Str + Int damage

Encounter Attacks

Ettin-Killing Gambit Warlord Attack 1
One enemy’s skull is hard enough to be a weapon against another enemy.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: Two creatures
Attack: Str vs Fortitude, two attacks
Hit: 1d6 + Str damage, and the target is stunned until the end of your next turn.

Infernal Wrath Tiefling Racial Power
You call upon your furious nature to improve your odds of harming your foe.
Encounter
Minor Action -- Personal
Effect: You can channel your fury to gain a +1 power bonus to your next attack roll against an enemy that hit you since your last turn. If your attack hits and deals damage, add 3 extra damage.

Tail Slap Warlord Attack 3
People tend to forget your tail is even there until they’re stepping on it or you’re slapping them around with it.
Encounter
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: An enemy misses you with a melee attack
Attack: Str vs AC
Hit: 1d4 + Str damage.
Special: Reset this ability on a roll of 1 or better on a reset die. Reset this ability when you take your second wind. Reset this ability when you first become bloodied.

Daily Attacks

Loose Plank Warlord Attack 1
You stomp on one part of a loose floorboard, and the other end flies up to strike an enemy’s jaw.Daily
Standard Action               Melee 3, special
Target: One creature
Attack: Str vs Reflex
Hit: 3d6 + Str damage, and the target is dazed (save ends).
Special: Only use this attack if there are no other creatures between you and your target.

Utility Powers

Adaptive Stratagem Warlord Utility 2
Your companion has the ability and the will. You provide the plan and the motivation.
Encounter ✦ Martial
Minor Action Close burst 10
Target: One ally in burst
Effect: Until the end of your next turn, the ally gains a +3 power bonus to damage rolls and a +3 power bonus to saving throws.

4e Bar Brawling

2011-08-08T11:46:00.000-04:00

Early on in my 4e campaign, I wanted to experiment with odd powers and temporary change-ups in character stats. I was a little more adventurous in the general area of kitbashing in the first year of the campaign's run, when only one or two players were using DDI heavily. As DDI usage increased, it became a real headache to remember to modify character sheets each time they were printed, so I focused more of my writing time on exciting encounters with interesting terrain features, and on creative re-skins.

One of those temporary change-ups was a bar brawl. Obviously it doesn't make sense to use swords and big fire spells in a bar brawl - it would be just totally out of theme. I wanted the PCs to beat on their enemies, not murder them. So the PCs were going along in the scene, the dwarf got in a good dig on the dwarves of the enemy clan, and they started a brawl. The PCs were not expecting me to whip out replacement power sheets that I had created some time earlier, and the whole effort was worth it for the surprise. They seemed to really like the fact that I'd written up new pages of powers themed on their characters, with a strong emphasis on the zany and on terrain interaction.

The first of these is Norman Flynn, a dwarf barbarian of Clan Silvershield. Clan Magmarn was his hated enemy. The party's early purpose was to travel from place to place selling Wilhelm family beer, and Stands-in-Fire had named several different brews that the family produced (this comes up in the powers). Norman was the bodyguard and porter for the party's nobleman, and he usually had a pony keg strapped to his back.

Damage on these powers was deliberately tuned to be lower-than-normal for 5th level PCs, though I did include striker-style damage kickers for the party's strikers. NPCs also did less damage than normal, and also had larger-than-normal hit point pools. The fight never really got grindy because the PCs had all-new powers and a sense of play in the whole scene. If I had it to do over again, I'd add in probably one more at-will, encounter, and utility per character. Because the PCs would lose the power sheets completely at the end of this fight, I only gave them one Daily power each.

Without further ado, Norman Flynn. I'll post the rest of the characters over the next few days. (Yes, this is filler while I try to keep up with DtD writing.)

At-Will Attacks

Shin Kick Barbarian Attack 1
This is what steel-toed boots were made for.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: +8 vs AC
Hit: 1d6 + Str damage, and the target is slowed until the end of your next turn.

Head Butt Barbarian Attack 1
Of course you should use your head in a fight.
At-will
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: +6 vs Fortitude
Hit: 2d6 + Str damage, and the target is dazed until the end of your next turn.
Effect: You take 1d6 damage.

Encounter Attacks
Vicious Barrage Barbarian Attack 1
This attack leaves no part of the enemy uninjured.
Encounter
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Str + 2 vs AC
Hit: 3d6 + Str damage, and the target is stunned until the end of your next turn.

Upend Barbarian Attack 3
No real berserker would let furniture get in his way.
Encounter
Standard Action               Special
Target: Enemies adjacent to table
Attack: Str + 2 vs Reflex
Hit: 1d6 + Str damage to all targets.
Effect: Set up total cover between yourself and any one target. This cover is stationary.

Daily Attacks

Punch Drunk Barbarian Attack 1
“Hammered” is such a multi-purpose term.
Daily
Standard Action               Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Str + 2 vs AC
Hit: 3d6 + Str damage.
Miss: Half damage.
Effect: Use this attack only while bloodied. You gain a +3 bonus to melee damage until the end of the encounter.

Utility Powers

Drink the Pain Away
Alcohol: cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.
Encounter
Minor Action
Effect: Upon finishing your beer, you gain +2 Fortitude until the end of the encounter.
Special: If the beer you just finished is Orcus Imperial Stout, gain Resist 5 Damage until the end of your next turn.
If the beer you just finished is Demogorgon Pale Ale, gain 2d6 temporary hit points.

No Hate Like Dwarf-Hate
Those bastard Magmarns made me spill my drink! I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch!
At-Will
Minor Action
Effect: By recalling your personal and familial grievances against Clan Magmarn, you can choose the nearest member of Clan Magmarn for violent reprisal. Deal +1d6 damage to that target until the end of the encounter or until you choose another target with this power.

Design Theory: Secret Rules

2011-08-03T16:16:00.000-04:00

In working on Dust to Dust, one of the significant areas of design theory discussion has been which rules to reveal and which to keep secret from the publicly-posted rules. That secret rules exist should be no surprise to most gamers; in one form or another, it's a practice as old as the roleplaying hobby. I've been trying to think of an example of secret rules outside of roleplaying games or roleplaying-derived games, and I eventually came to a Wikipedia page dedicated to that very idea.

Let me get one thing out of the way. There is most assuredly a wrong way to design secret rules. You do not want your game's rules to feel like this or this.

Tabletop Games

What am I talking about with secret rules in roleplaying games? Well, going all the way back to original D&D, there was a concept that only the DM should read the DMG. Up until 4e's publication, the rules for magic items had always been published entirely in the DMG, and moving those rules to the Player's Handbook was a controversial decision among the fans. The DMG also has all of the rules for NPC morale, building strongholds, monster abilities, traps, and so on. These rules are kept secret from the players on the principle that discovery and exploration are key emotional rewards of player fun. It also preserves the DM's right to do anything he damn well pleases, and (if secrecy has been maintained) the players won't be able to say much about it. Of course, this becomes a complete fiction as soon as another player in the group steps up to run a game. In my experience of DMing 3.x, the only truly secret rules were things I wrote myself. Otherwise, players might be unfamiliar with a rule published in a book they didn't own (The Really Definitely Complete This Time Warrior), but I would not have considered refusing to hand over that book on request, so it was more "lightly obscured" than secret.

Setting-specific material (such as, say, regional sourcebooks for Forgotten Realms) presented themselves as having actual secrets for the DM, and much less in the way of rules that players would ever need to reference. These for the most part stayed secretive by group consent, though this too fell away over time. Other game systems made a stronger case for secrecy in their early release - Deadlands comes to mind, as the book was split into "what people think is going on" and "what's actually going on." I'm not sure how much of this really came down to secret rules, though; perhaps one of my readers will chime in.

LARPs

Which brings me, circuitously, to LARP design and secret rules. LARPs publish a rulebook that generally tells players what their characters can learn to do and how to react to the various awful things that monsters do to them. The pace and flow of LARPing means that designers need to reduce as much as possible the number of taglines players have never heard of before, so that every fight doesn't start with a briefing on tagline rules. I say this advisedly; Dust to Dust has a sort of famously large Effect List, but we really did try to include every tagline we intended to use, knowing that the rarer ones would require pregame reminders as to their effects. LARPs may not tell you how a monster will use an effect, but they do have to be transparent about what the effect is in ways that tabletop games don't. Even monster stats often can't stay secret for long, as many games require players to spend a few hours of each event playing monsters or other NPCs. Sportsmanship and confidentiality are key, but the surprise is ruined for at least some portion of the playerbase.

And now, I conceal the rest of the discussion from you.

(No, not really.)

Some History

The rules that we bother to conceal in LARPing are therefore different. The baseline good secret rule is one that represents an in-play discovery, such as a character learning a heretofore-unknown power. For example, Shattered Isles introduced bonds as a kind of power set, but initially released them as minimalist accents to a character's power; with only three or four powers on the list, one would be hard-pressed to build an effective character on those powers alone, and the design didn't intend that as a possibility. I was new to the game and not in contact with the design staff at this period of the game's history, so I don't know what was intended from the start as opposed to becoming intended along the way. Perhaps another of my readers will speak to this point.

In the fullness of time, however, the game revealed that the published powers were just the tip of the iceberg. Each bond had two more ranks of power (Intermediate and Master), and eventually a Lost Path and two Related Powers. This opened up a lot of room for all-new powers and upgraded forms of existing powers. It added a lot of exciting discovery to the game for a lot of players. It allowed designers to explore themes within the elements and Spirit that they had not gotten to fully explore in the schools of magic, given that almost all bond powers were per-day and self-only. It was, on the whole, a good design space to open up.

This approach was broadened in King's Gate to include the six totemic bonds and the martial schools. In all cases, only the Basic levels of bonds and martial schools were publicly available, and the rest were revealed over the course of play. Importantly, these effects were put together from other familiar effects, or were effects that only the power's user needed to understand. In King's Gate, the bond powers were still typically not a character's whole power set, as only a few bonds even had something that could be called an attack, and such powers were very expensive to purchase beyond three uses per day. Martial schools were much more frequently a character's entire (or nearly entire) power set... given that advancement within the martial school required advancement within the Wounding Blow progression.

Eclipse continued this pattern, initially revealing only the basic levels of its Combat Disciplines, Mutations, and Cybernetics. This had some unintended outcomes that, at least from my player perspective, were not preferable, and they have since revealed all grades of standard powers. The problems I had with this had to do with the feeling that the second and third tier of powers in some paths revealed those build choices to be objectively superior at the thing I had wanted my character to do well, in ways that were not indicated or strongly hinted in the first tier of powers.

The specific case of Eclipse highlights a problem that I have with secret rules of this kind in general. SI, KG, and Eclipse asked characters to make immutable character decisions from the start of play. Bonds, mutations, and cybernetics have been treated as nigh-impossible to acquire after character creation. This gives an overwhelming game advantage to experienced players, who know what to expect from various power sources and can plan accordingly. First-time players, particularly those who are not already well-connected in the game's community, have a much harder time of it. Eclipse also has Seekrit psionic orders, but these are for the most part not locked out by decisions made at start of play.

As a counter-example, the Wildlands campaign asks players to make very few choices at character creation that lock them out of future options, aside from their choice of race and class. Wildlands has a long and involved history of Lost Arts that require the player to find someone with that skill and the Instruction skill in order to learn. Many of the most important Lost Arts (affectionately known as "Misplaced Arts"), such as Dexterity Armor, are advertised in the campaign book. The system also has a number of race-change and Spirit Forge options.

The thing that I think is kind of strange about the through-line trends of SI, KG, and Eclipse is that no concept of secrecy spread to other parts of the game. In SI and KG, players had to put forth a certain amount of effort to collect all of the brew recipes listed in the rulebook, but there was no plan in advance (as far as I know) to keep a certain list of brews out of the rulebook and reveal their existence through research. Voldari/Brewer's Inferno in SI/KG is the clear exception here, and I believe there were a few mega-poisons that were intended from the beginning of KG's brewing plot. Instead, the game had to restrict research rather tightly, as the Brewing skill was balanced on the assumption that the list published in the rulebook was complete. Likewise the schools of magic, though the exceptions there are interesting stories and somewhat more numerous. A certain amount of research was permitted within Ballistics and, later, Mechanics, but I'm similarly unclear on which parts were always intended to be new discoveries by PCs and which parts were added when suggested by a PC. In Eclipse, some research has been done within Med Tech and other fields, but here again it feels like the things that are introduced are rules tweaks because Plot and Rules agreed that something new could fit in there.

Therefore:

Okay, in my experience, players love to research new things. It gives them something cool to do with BGAs, and the reward is fantastic: a spell or whatever that you can share out to your friends and sell dearly to everyone else, since you're the only one who has it. Why not build research into the rules from the ground up? So that's what we've explicitly done in Dust to Dust. Ritualism, brewing/Alchemy, Inscription, and Forge Magic have listed in the rulebook a limited set of their effects. For example, the Ritualism chapter shows twenty spells, of which players can pick several for their starting spellbook. This is trivial, however, compared to the number of spells currently created. We've shown a handful of those hidden spells in the hands of the powerful wizards of the first and second (NPC-only) World Events. The same is true of the other forms of magic, though to a lesser degree. We're expecting that these new formulas will enter play through research, loot, and trade, so that each player who seriously pursues those arts always has something to chase. The text attached to each formula even gives hints as to what your next goal might be.

This doesn't mean, of course, that we can't expand the rules with a new-to-us formula. But the odds that we'll need to are much reduced, and even research projects that are pursuing something we know to be doomed to failure can turn up relevant and useful information or new material.

I've often said in the past that I hate secret rules. This is only half true. What I hate is making permanent decisions on partial information all on an out-of-play level, and because I don't like it, I assume that other people dislike it. On the other hand, I love exploration, and (as stated above) I think this is universal. Now that I come to the point of it in this post, the difference between the two is a little tricky to verbalize. Because players will be spending XP on Ritualism (or whichever skill) rather than on specific effects, newcomers shouldn't have gross misconceptions about how much the skill has to offer. (At least, not to the degree that someone who only saw the basic level of a bond would be mistaken about the overall power of a bond.) There's a lot of depth to explore, and the spells in the rulebook aren't really indicative of the power of ritualism as a whole, but there should be enough shown and hinted at to give even new players a pretty good idea of what the choice represents.

Secondly, because players can initiate in a school of magic long after character creation for an increased cost, they only lock themselves out of ritualism if they choose to play a homunculus (and then it's only a partial lockout). The other highly expansible arts have no restriction on post-creation purchase. The power sets that do not encourage expansion - such as Warrior Orders or Celestial magic - have much less in the way of hidden material.

4e Terrain Powers, Part Three

2011-07-30T18:03:00.002-04:00

I thought I'd go back to terrain powers today, since I always meant to go back and add more ways to interact with the fantastic terrains of the DMG and DMG 2. Several of them go away when used anyway - if you look at that as a "per encounter" kind of thing, they're already terrain powers in a sense, so there's not really any work to do on my end in getting them there. Doomlight Crystal, Eldritch Influx, and Energy Node are all examples of this.

What I do have for you today is a new application for the Grasping Bog and a way to attack with Quick Sear.

In the Bog's Clutches At-Will Terrain
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

Minor Action

Requirement: An enemy must be prone in an adjacent square of grasping bog.

Check: Athletics check vs. enemy's Athletics check

Success: The target takes a penalty to its next saving throw against the Restrained condition equal to your Strength bonus or -2, whichever is greater.

Alternate Use:

Drowning Bog Single-Use Terrain

Drowning in sucking mud. What is this, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay?

Standard Action

Requirement: An enemy must be prone in an adjacent square of grasping bog.

Check: Athletics check vs. enemy's Athletics check

Success: The Effect line of Grasping Bog gains the following. "On the first failed save, the creature is dazed (save ends). On the second failed save against the Restrained effect, the creature is unconscious (save ends). On the third failed save against the Restrained effect, the creature is dead."

(It's single-use on the notion that the bog is only so deep, and later targets can't sink far enough in to be dragged down if there's a buoyant body in-place. If there are many squares of grasping bog, obviously the GM could feel free to allow this trick more than once. Also, this would be a kind of awesome way to kill an enemy who was nigh-immune to your other attacks.)

Quicksear Lash Single-Use Terrain

With a coil of arcane force, you lift and twist the silvery-green fluid into a whip-like tendril. After you strike with it, it breaks and scatters once more.

Standard Action - Implement, Acid

Requirement: Must be within 5 squares of a patch of quick sear that includes at least four squares. You must have an available power with the Force keyword. (This keyword may not be granted by a weapon or implement.)

Check: Arcana (moderate DC)

Success: The tendril forms, and you may use it to make an attack against a target within three squares of any part of the quick sear patch that you have targeted.

Target: One creature

Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex

Hit: Medium Limited damage expression.

Effect: Rearrange up to four squares of the target patch of quick sear, as long as they end up no more than three squares from their previous location.

Alternately, reduce the damage expression to Medium Normal, and make this an at-will effect as long as the user has a power with the Force keyword available.

Finally, I've been reading a novel where the threat of petrification is a big deal, and it got me thinking. Pools of fluid that do awful things to anyone who touches them take all different forms. Petrification is a pretty under-used effect in 4e. I think something called petrific water or basilisk blood could be cool. I imagine evil alchemists storing this stuff in vats in their laboratories, which creates great opportunities for havoc during a fight, especially for a grapple fighter. (Pardon me if describing it sounds a lot like a cement mixer...) Thus, a new terrain:

Basilisk Blood

This grainy, gray tar-like substance alchemically transmutes skin to stone on contact, if kept heated and churning. It bubbles up naturally in places, wherever certain oils of the deep earth are infused with infernal fumes.

Effect: Squares filled with basilisk blood are difficult terrain. Upon entering or starting your turn in a square with basilisk blood, you are slowed (save ends). On your first failed save, you are restrained (save ends both), except that instead of being immune to pushes, pulls, and slides, you become prone when you are forced to move through a push, pull, or slide. On your second failed save, you are stunned (save ends all), and on your third failed save you are petrified.

Special: If you are prone in a square of basilisk blood, you take a -2 penalty to the save against the slowed condition and any resultant conditions.

Usage: Much like grasping bog terrain, basilisk blood combines well with enemies that can knock PCs prone; it is also good for places that characters have to stand in order to manipulate battlefield features, such as traps or levers. Adapt the terrain powers of the grasping bog, above, to let players make full use of this.

Basilisk Blood Vials

When collected out of pits or an alchemist's vats, basilisk's blood stays potent until you have gone through two milestones or one extended rest, whichever comes first.

Alchemical Item

Power (Consumable - Poison): Standard Action. Make an attack: Ranged 10, +12 vs. Fortitude; the target is slowed (save ends). On the first failed save, the target is restrained (save ends both), except that instead of being immune to pushes, pulls, and slides, the target becomes prone when forced to move through a push, pull, or slide. On the second failed save, the target is stunned (save ends all), and on the third failed save the target is petrified.

Level 14: +17 vs. Fortitude

Level 19: +22 vs. Fortitude

Level 24: +27 vs. Fortitude

Level 29: +32 vs. Fortitude

Because it is not portable in the long-term, basilisk blood vials are a way to give players a consumable item that they'll want to go ahead and use, since they can't keep them past the duration of the adventure.

LARP design: Culture Packets

2011-07-22T14:44:00.001-04:00

So, for non-LARPers in the crowd, I want to explain culture packets in a few words, so that the rest of this post will make a damn bit of sense. A culture packet is a document describing one of a game's cultures, organizations, or races, with details on a variety of topics: government, land, history, cuisine, faith and/or superstitions, traditions (birth, death, and marriage at minimum), attitudes toward outsiders, clothing... the list goes on. The list goes on so far, in fact, that actual completeness is no more a goal here than in, say, an introductory text on American culture - or the Silmarillion as a text on elvish culture. Instead, the text presents salient details that might influence a player's costuming choices, details of roleplay, and otherwise establishes a common frame of reference and baseline for the culture.

Because the text has to have an end, a culture packet presents a stereotype, with writing quality increasing the nuance of the stereotype. A recent article in Temporary Hit Points put forth one player's realization that playing the stereotypes of a setting really is better than playing the contrarian outlier. There are a lot of good reasons to learn and live by a culture packet in a LARP, while in a tabletop game most players would look at a multi-page race or culture briefing as more than they wanted to read. In a tabletop game, it's reasonably likely that the elf in the party is the only elf in the party, so nothing is lost if other elves do not share common idioms with her. Even if there are two elves in the party, they develop their idioms together, because players in a tabletop game hear 100% of the dialogue that is relevant to the game, while characters in a LARP really do spend time away from one another, and there may well be multiple full teams from the same culture. Verisimilitude demands that these characters have some sense of their shared origins.

Given that core goal, there are two valid but mutually exclusive directions a LARP committee can go with writing culture packets. One model, used by Shattered Isles, King's Gate, and Eclipse, is to solicit volunteers from the playerbase to write the culture packets, preferably (though in SI, not absolutely) volunteers who plan to play PCs from that culture. This model has a number of strong points.

Once a group of players has written the culture packet, they have a deep level of investment in that culture and their characters. The ideal volunteers for this kind of work are people who were going to do some serious legwork researching the culture regardless of whether or not they're writing the culture packets, so in a sense they're compiling that text for everyone else. (This is not meant to impugn the creativity of those who write such culture packets.)
Plot can get a sense of what their most invested players care about most strongly in their cultures, judging by the focus of the text.
Some would argue that adding more creative voices to the melting pot is a benefit in itself.
It's a lot of writing that the Plot committee doesn't have to do during the same span of time that the Plot committee is also planning their events.

This method also has some observed weak points.

The task has an endpoint, and (in goal if not in practice) that endpoint comes before the first event. The downside to this is that players who join the campaign later, or players who start a second character, do not share that sense of authorship, and elements of the culture that are important to them may see much less emphasis in text and in actual play. This becomes particularly thorny when the culture includes a political or religious organization with a strong emphasis on orthodoxy.
Because the writers do not have privileged access to plot secrets, the culture packet has little in the way of secret information known only to that culture.
Because the writers do not have privileged access to plot's development of the campaign's timeline, writing the culture's history of interactions with other cultures can be very difficult. From what I've seen there a couple of different ways to handle this.

The committee can write the timeline in detail and hand it to the culture writer. This reduces the amount of work that the committee isn't doing, of course.
The culture writer can include a number of conflicts that are not mentioned in the culture packet of the party of the second part. (This is not recommended, as it subverts the consensual reality that LARPs attempt to construct.)
The committee can mention one or two significant conflicts, and otherwise have a world with vast periods of either peace or lost history.

Because the Plot committee may be developing and clarifying their vision of the world even up to a relatively late stage in pre-production, farming out writing makes it more difficult to enact changes that become necessary for inter-cultural consistency.
In all cases, a committee member needs to be in the loop on what the culture writers are doing and providing them with information that it would not be safe for the culture writers to invent. This can come to represent the same workload as if the committee member had written it from the start.
One other factor that did not enter into our consideration, but can be an issue in player-written culture packets, is maintaining a balance of powers between the cultures. Much as a plot committee would typically not let a player get away with describing a force of assassins at his beck and call in his character history, the committee also would not want to see one culture given superiority in arms, magic, the arts, or other fields without their direction. This is not the same as every culture believing itself to be the most refined in manners and customs (as every culture of KG believed, providing a constant source of needling one another) - I'm speaking of granting objective superiority, as everyone wants to their culture to be awesome.

The other practical model, obviously, is for the committee to keep the writing in-house. The Wildlands campaign has always used this model, and Dust to Dust is taking a page from its playbook here. From some perspectives, this model seems to indicate a lack of trust in the writing skills of the playerbase, but as this was not remotely a factor in the decision of the DtD committee, I want to lay out the strengths (and weaknesses) of this model.

Secrets. Some secrets are known to one culture but not another, and some secrets have the two or three hints that reveal them divided between an equal number of cultures. Some are hidden in plain sight. For a culture packet writer to put the information into the text, including obfuscations, they would need to understand the secret in its entirety. If a committee member took the writer's text and added in secrets later, the importance of those changes is exaggerated, and you wind up with some parts of the text that matter and some parts that don't. An integrated whole requires that all writers be on the same side of the Plot fence and free to receive information.
Plot's own vision of the world matures by leaps and bounds in the hothouse of culture writing. It is more important for Plot to have a deep and nuanced grasp of the world's cultures than for a subset of the players interested in a culture to have a similar grasp, in the same way that it is incumbent upon Plot more than upon those same players to provide exposition of that culture to the playerbase as a whole. We have had to write a huge number of NPCs, vignettes, and synopses in the process of writing these culture packets, and the world has been enriched thereby. In my experience, no one is comfortable playing in someone else's sandbox, making it all the more important for these story segments to come from Plot. Not, then, a quality judgment, but an optimization of utility.
Integrating even the non-secretive inter-cultural connections - for example, varying versions of legends and accounts of historical events - is easier if all involved writers are permitted to communicate freely on the matter. Sharing culture packets with people not playing a character of that culture is a breach of sportsmanship.
The committee doesn't have to wait to see if all of the game's cultures will have representation among the playerbase. Even games with a smaller number of cultures than Dust to Dust have had some cultures unrepresented for many seasons of the campaign, or no volunteers for culture packet writing. This leads to either a player from another culture writing the packet, or a committee member finally giving in and writing the culture packet some number of seasons into the campaign.
As the counterpoint to an increased number of creative voices in the melting pot: limiting the number of creative voices to "more than one but fewer than all" improves the tonal clarity and reduces the complexity of communication. To put that another way, a committee of twenty may have so many conflicting voices as to become cacophony rather than harmony.
We have had players submit draft character histories prior to the publication of the culture packets. Some of the things they have sought to include in their character histories have been significant enough to appear in the culture packet. By comparison, a PC-side culture writer would not have access to the uncensored versions of character histories. (This is a specific case of the first point on this list.)

But really, everything after the first reason is incidental.

As to weaknesses:

It is a lot of work. A really lot of work. I can't really overstate how much work it is. The level of preparatory work I've had to do for events in the past, even events that I'm running, has been trivial compared to the labor that has gone into culture packets.
Games using the other model have historically not had culture packets available at the start of play, so players have had no choice but to send in character histories prior to their publication. Because we do plan to release culture packets prior to the start of play, many players have expressed the feeling that they cannot write character histories without culture packets. This is an issue of perception, understandable but unfortunate, despite the fact that we have encouraged draft versions of character histories.
Because of the level of detail that the committee is putting into the culture packets, players have felt unusually reluctant to assume or make up even very basic details, such as the names of the hamlets where they were born. They also wonder about details it has never occurred to us to address - but then, this is just as likely to be a problem with any limited number of writers preparing text for a non-limited number of readers.

Even from early stages, we preferred the strengths and weaknesses of the second option to the first, but this decision was not made as a criticism of any other game's decisions. This is simply what was right for the game we are running.

Five Kinds of Plot

2011-07-12T01:12:00.000-04:00

I've been playing a lot of Avadon: The Black Fortress lately. I'll be saving my full review for another time, as I haven't yet finished the game, but it's gotten me thinking about the kinds of plotlines and stories that drive scenes within games, and games as a whole. Before I get into this, I want to point out that I may use terms incorrectly, even though I am an English major. It's kind of amazing how little time my high school and undergraduate classes spent on defining high-level terms and talking about their interplay. I'm sure these are all things I'll need to learn if I ever decide to get a graduate degree in English. Moving along...

I think that there are five kinds of plotlines that we really see in games, and I'll try to point out parallels in genre fiction. I invite commenters to point out categories within this system of definitions that I've overlooked. Unsurprisingly, there are areas where these categories bleed together, making classification more disputable. To a certain extent, this relates to the classic seven basic conflicts, but a lot of those get lumped together here because of how they are applied in gaming and genre fiction. There are also categories of plot at stake here that just don't matter in literature (because everyone is under authorial control), but matter hugely in games.

Main Plot

Main plot is the story the GM has shown up to tell, in a lot of cases. It's the one where the dark lord needs to be thrown down, where the dragon needs to be slain, where the secrets of who's behind the attacks on the village need to be uncovered. This is conflict driven by people who are off-camera until the last few minutes of their lives, or (if the GM/story gives them a way to get away) only occasionally. Maniacal laughter is often involved. It seems that the existence of main plot is central to why genre fiction will never be truly literary. Failing to accept this is part of why I am a bad English major, as Real Literature Is Strictly Character Driven. Main plot is essentially the same from one game medium to the next, and its parallels in genre fiction are entirely obvious.

Character Plot

Character plot is the story that the players have brought in on their own: their personal drama, baggage, and connections. If you want to see character plot at its most pure, go into a chat- or forum-based roleplay environment in which the characters don't have any greater concerns to discuss or roleplay about. For want of interesting conflict, they will start telling each other their character histories and devising personal relationships. Don't get me wrong, though: character plot isn't a bad thing. Character plot is most recognizable by its exclusively personal scale; in games, you see this as a single NPC showing up to talk to a single PC, typically a relative or NPC romantic partner. Some of the most gut-wrenching plot in all of King's Gate was character plot for my team (hi, Pipistrella!). The conflict of character plot is chiefly conflict between protagonists, since most gaming has multiple protagonists of equal stature. I would venture to state that a lot of people mean character plot when they talk about roleplaying as a concept.

Character plot is hugely useful for LARP plot committees, because it gets the players to entertain themselves while the plot committee works on doing its next thing. Conversely, there's almost nothing categorical that plot committees can do to facilitate or drive engaging character plot, so it's hard to teach a committee to do this well. The best I can say is to create an interesting, conflict-filled setting and subject the playerbase to a high degree of external pressure; they'll probably take care of the rest. On the downside, this is where Drama Llamas come from in gaming.

Tabletop gaming sees a significantly different style of character plot, if it's there at all. Our Pendragon campaign had a lot of it, probably more than I've seen in any other tabletop game I've been in. This did a lot to give the game the emotional weight that made it archetypal. I can't make blanket statements about gamer chicks causing character plot, but in the case of this campaign, the women players were the ones pulling the campaign's emphasis onto character plot. It is certainly possible to run a tabletop campaign that has no character plot at all and have it be just fine, but in general I find that a modest degree of conflict within the party does more good than harm. (It's not hard to go over that mark and into Bad News, though.)

Personal Mechanical Plot

This is a kind of plot that is a little more unique to games, though it's modeling literature in a way. Personal mechanical plot is what happens when a character strives for teaching or self-improvement. It's usually Man vs. Self conflict, sometimes given allegorical form to become Man vs. Supernatural. Some examples include spell research, circle tests to advance within a practice of magic, or training for ranks within warrior orders. This is common in CI/RBP LARPs.

In literary terms, this is the Bildungsroman. It's different in gaming than in literature, though; in literature, the climax of the story is when the hero defeats his antagonist and proves that he has grown, allowing him to return home or continue his wandering. In gaming, the main antagonist is part of the Main Plot, often not even faintly related to the Personal Mechanical Plot that the character experiences. Theoretically, the protagonists want the mechanical results of these powers so that they can defeat the villains of the (probably multiple) Main Plots; in practice, the protagonists want the mechanical results of these powers because they are self-aggrandizing and hungry for power.

To put that in less judgmental terms, part of our escapist fantasy is feeling awesome. The rewards of personal mechanical plot are a major source of individual might. It is not unreasonable to frame the role of the villain as "the characters that the protagonists defeat to demonstrate their awesomeness." Many games are up-front about this and have waves of nameless mooks that are all but acknowledged as punching bags. The desire to become awesome is the same as being power-hungry; racing against other players for degrees of power is the same as being self-aggrandizing.

I like this style of plot, in general. I like running it in games, because its promises of reward are clear and appealing, and because the mechanics involved are hooked into the setting. I like playing it because I'm good with being a power-hungry player - it's a survival skill. It's also All About Me, and I'm vain! Tabletop games have a hard time offering this kind of plot in a lot of cases; 3.x D&D's main examples are qualifying for prestige classes and spell research, unless the GM is willing to hand out statistical benefits in excess of what's granted through level progression. Because of the role of the Character Builder in 4e, it's damn near impossible to run it in that edition, though in the linked post you'll see some of my ideas for changing that. The question, I suppose, boils down to whether or not the game demands adventuring and table time for the sake of advancement in and of itself.

MMOs do this pretty well, because players have so much time to do their own thing. Though it strains the definition of "plot," all time and energy spent on crafting is Personal Mechanical Plot; so are any class-specific quests. For virtue of their scale, MMOs avoid the critical downside of this kind of plot that tabletop and live-action games suffer: the plot resources soaked up with focus on just one player. Even so, an MMO that put too much of its action into class-locked content would have problems.

World Mechanical Plot

This category of plot, like personal mechanical plot, has a lot of bleedover into other categories. What I'm talking about here is stories that turn on world laws, cosmology, obscure science facts, and the like. This covers everything from locked-room mysteries, where the antagonist is nearly irrelevant, to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics stories. (I know you know what these are; I link the article because it has a brief overview of how stories have tested some of the Laws.) I am an enthusiastic reader of stories presenting complex and compelling systems of magic or other rules systems that can be discussed in-character, and of speculative fiction.

World mechanical plot is blatantly not character driven; part of its popularity in genre fiction is that it presents a puzzle to the reader, and the reader is competing to figure out the answer before the protagonist does. This is why it's so crucial for the author to play by certain rules, giving the reader all of the clues to which the protagonist has access and doling out those clues over time. Rob Donoghue makes a solid argument here that capers are fundamentally similar to mysteries, and I can see how a caper can be a kind of world mechanical plot.

Since I just said that World Mechanical Plot isn't character driven, I'll counter my own statement by pointing out Time Traveler's Wife, a character-driven, Man vs. Supernatural/Destiny story with no clear antagonist other than Henry's own doom, that is a hands-down example of World Mechanical Plot. The author cares about the rules of time travel she has developed, and the way those unfold in Henry's and Clare's lives is the plot. She's field-testing the rules she's written just as directly as Asimov does with his Laws. I'm not saying that's the only plot at stake in TTW; Henry's emotional baggage and Gomez's... cut for spoilers are Character Plot, for sure.

I always felt that this was a kind of plot that 3.x did very well, because it had its own WotC-created cosmology but also adapted relatively well to homebrewed cosmologies. As I discussed in the same previous Harbinger post that I linked above, 4e doesn't present a strong cosmology, and it's very hard to find a real system of magic in its rules. In addition to losing elements on which to hang stories, it also removes a lot of the deductive reasoning that players can perform during encounters to predict enemy behavior. Conversely, in CI/RBP LARPs, there are certain knowable rules that apply to players and NPCs alike, and learning that someone has gotten around those rules is a big deal. For example, one of the main campaign antagonists of Eclipse, the Szghani, can develop multiple mutations within the same individual, unlike* PC humans. This is a Big Deal that would mean nothing without that clear rule.

*as far as we can prove, anyway

Several of the seven types of conflict might drive world mechanical plot - fantasy defaults to Man vs. Supernatural, unsurprisingly. Many fairy tales that deal with Man vs. Destiny at all become world mechanical plots, as the protagonists seek loopholes in cosmic laws so as to escape destiny or ill-made bargains. Man vs. Technology is one of my opening examples for this type of plot. Locked-room mysteries can be Man vs. Man or Man vs. Nature; I'm sure we've all seen locked-room mysteries that are revealed not to have been murders at all, but tragic accidents.

I can't think of a time I've seen an MMO get any significant mileage out of this kind of plot, just because I can't think of a mystery that calls for deductive reasoning or a matter of cosmology that players need to think about to any particular degree. In addition to the impossibility of a true mystery in current-generation MMOs, they also don't really present rigid laws of cosmology that protagonists or antagonists might exploit. Plot linearity is sort of the enemy of this whole category, I think. Even a heist is boring if there was only ever one way things could go (because that's how the missions got written). Sandbox MMOs (Shadowbane, EVE Online, SWG) get a pass here, if they elect(ed) to use it.

Political Plot

Plot within this category is particularly likely to belong in Main Plot (politics being a hurdle along the way) or Character Plot (if what you actually have is a lot of the game's protagonists bickering and forming factions). Still, there are some kinds of plot and encounters that carve out a space not otherwise defined, as Kainenchen was pointing out to me when I first presented this idea to her. The kinds of things I'm filing into this space are the guild-advancement quests in Oblivion, negotiation plotlines that present neither side as the villain (and, ideally, have PCs loyal to both sides), and the like. This kind of plot is challenging to write in the first place; where anyone can come up with a dark lord to smite (and so very many have), fewer have written compelling political dilemmas. Shattered Isles, King's Gate, and Eclipse all started with political plotlines; Arinth's ruling triumvirate (SI) and the Matter of Albonne (KG) notably used these as smokescreens for their serious villainy. It's such a popular move specifically because it introduces conflict without tapping a clear villain, leaving room for the story to reveal the villain in a shocking twist sometime around Season 2 (Emperor Salvatore and the Academy/Armand Miraval) and revealing the depths of their villainy sometime around Season 4.

So when I say that Babylon 5 is structured like a LARP, what I mean is that it too followed this structure. Oh, and (sorry for the spoilers) A Song of Ice and Fire is kind of headed in the same direction, except that it's on a longer story cycle than a LARP's five years. One of the important notes about political plot in books as well as games is that it won't carry a whole campaign or a whole novel, even though it may continue to be relevant plot all the way through. It's just wouldn't be satisfying if the Shadows never showed up to get blown to hell by the White Star. We do love to have villains to beat the bejesus out of in games, and if both sides are a little sympathetic... well, where's the fun in that?

On a model more like the guild advancement quests in Oblivion, I see some parallels in Brust's excellent Vlad Taltos novels. The Organization is a group of bad guys that our... hero... belongs to for the first several books of the series. Each novel of that span has a Main Plot and a clear Man vs. Man conflict for Vlad to puzzle his way through; these Main Plots are often World Mechanical Plot, because Brust primarily likes to write puzzles that his rather tarnished hero can solve with witchcraft, knives, and sarcasm. Along the way, though, there's a lot of maneuvering within the Jhereg to displace and/or dispose of the other members of the Organization who are in Vlad's way. They're bad people, but a lot of them aren't sufficient challenges to be called antagonists. If Vlad's adventures here were a video game, you'd say that he was filling up bars of faction reputation, because his influence within the Organization increases as he claims more territory and does work for the people in charge. Jhereg is a specific case in which his target, Mellar, is someone the reader doesn't care about one way or the other, except that he's causing a lot of problems for people that we like. He did at least screw over bad people... who happen to be Vlad's bosses. When Vlad unravels the mystery of Mellar's motivations, we discover that he is a lot more like a Main Plot villain, just in case we weren't completely on board with his brutal murder already.

D&D can accept political plot as fodder for roleplay and as a backdrop to thrilling heroics, but as no edition of D&D has done social conflict all that well, it may not be what the rules do best. Much as A Song of Ice and Fire (the novels) are a good example of political plot that is going to give way to thrilling heroics as we approach the climax, the ASoIaF rules published by Green Ronin are probably one of my personal preferences for running such a setup. This is the part where I plug Wombat Warlord's ongoing Birthright/ASoIaF mashup.

In Conclusion

I'd like to hear in comments about categories of plot that I've overlooked, better classifications that apply well to gaming plot, and so on. I've tried to mention where a medium of roleplaying games or a particular roleplaying game handles a kind of plot well or poorly, with detailed examples from genre fiction and a wide variety of games. All of these kinds of plot can be done well or poorly, and all have their place in gaming.

Mansions of Madness: Informal Review, and some Armchair Design

2011-07-10T14:48:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I played my first-ever game of Mansions of Madness with Kainenchen, Stands-in-Fire, and Mrs. Stands-in-Fire. None of us had played before or read the rules exhaustively, though Stands-in-Fire had gone over them a bit - so he played the Keeper. This review, then, is based entirely on player-side experience; I haven't so much as opened the Keeper's Guide, and there are going to be big gaps in my understanding of how the Keeper actually functions. The extremely short form of the review is that while I found a few items in their design questionable, I have a deep appreciation for what the game attempts, and I expect to play at least four more times in the future.

That note highlights the first of the game's strong approaches to story: there are five different map arrangements included in the box. The map is made up of rectangles of various sizes that are the rooms of a building; the map arrangements combine these so that doors meet up with doors and the building is put together in a more-or-less logical fashion. Each map has associated event cards to create the plot for that story. The replay value that is obvious on the surface is five sessions - not bad, considering how completely different those future games will be. Especially in a competitive game (where all players have a strong incentive to vary their gameplay, resulting in different outcomes in the emergent narrative), five different games in one box is pretty good - but that's just the beginning for this game.

The number of available plays diversifies wildly when you get to the Keeper's pregame decision points for the story. The Keeper makes three decisions, each of which has (I think) three possible answers. These choices change things on both the narrative side and the strictly-gameplay side. In this regard, the game has a strength for narrative that kind of blows my mind. I was expecting something a little closer to Descent, where the action is nonstop but the narrative is almost self-consciously trite. Instead, I got something with clarity, very strong structure, and some interesting ways of ratcheting up the tension.

Playing through "The Fall of House Lynch," a lot of the minor goals along the way are finding the keys to get through certain doors. Locked doors are a pretty basic way of gating a map, but I appreciated the way the game directed us generally from one minor goal to the next. It's possible that some of the bloom would be off the rose for this particular point in future gameplay; there is a risk of feeling like the game is just leading you around by the nose. The underlying problem here, then, is that if you don't pursue those plot goals with single-minded devotion, you're losing ground with the Event timer. In our case, we lost about three rounds exploring the dining room and kitchen, and I think all we got for our trouble was the Fire Extinguisher and the Lantern.

The Event cards and associated timer are one of the game's two key ways of ratcheting up the tension. Less appealingly, the Event cards that we saw just do different degrees of bad things to the Investigators, and they get the worse outcomes if they are following the plot and keeping up with the Event timer. I suspect strongly that this mechanic is intended to re-level the playing field slightly if one side is getting way ahead (it does, after all, punish the Investigators less if they're not doing well). It's also highly genre-appropriate for learning more about the mysteries and the Mythos only making things worse for the Investigators, but it means that victory incentives (again, in the one game we played) work against players going along with the plot and trying to solve the mystery. The particular victory condition we played for is

(SUPER SPOILERY! That's why there's a jump break here!)

to escape from the building through a puzzle-locked door. If we had pursued the plot assiduously, we would have unleashed a lot more zombies and would have been far enough from the only way out that we would have definitely lost.

But I need to back up and explain victory conditions. At the start of play, the Investigators are presented with a directive, but not a victory condition. In this case, there isn't some horrible monster at the end to defeat; all the Investigators can hope to accomplish is to escape with their lives. The Keeper, then, wins if he kills one of the Investigators before the end of the timer; the Investigators win if all of them escape the building. That leaves a yawning crevasse of space for ties: though alive, the Investigators fail to escape. Which is exactly what happened in our game yesterday. Faced with a puzzle lock, I went back for the axe that I had dropped in a previous fight, but I misjudged the amount of time this would take, and got to the space in front of the door just as time ran out. Oops. I'm not sure anyone at the table found a draw satisfying on our first time out. We're all veteran Arkham Horror players, so we're accustomed to being devoured by Old Ones, so I don't really understand why our failure wasn't a victory for the Keeper.

I mentioned puzzles briefly, and they're another of my favorite things about this game, to say nothing of one of the richest areas for idea-mining for other games. The game has Obstacles to overcome as part of exploration. These puzzles are presented on cardboard tiles that Investigators manipulate one move at a time. One Investigator can work on a puzzle at a time (and the others have to maintain monastic silence), which is good for maintaining personal challenge. The puzzles come in a wide variety of configurations, but with randomized game pieces from a large pool - again, replay value.

The problem that I have with the puzzles is that the number of moves you get per Action spent to work on the puzzle is based on your Investigator's Intelligence stat. I was playing a big dumb fighter (Michael McGlen), so I could contribute almost nothing to puzzles. I felt like my character choice was (unwittingly) opting out of a major area of gameplay, without the character's other advantages really compensating him for that cost at all. The one time I worked on a puzzle, I burned one of my three precious skill points to treat my Intelligence as 6 for that Action... and then, of course, I proved that I am not Mensa material by failing to think through all of my moves correctly, but let's not dwell. Puzzles are interesting and varied (we saw three completely different puzzle types, one of which was in two different configurations), but I feel like it's an area of gameplay that would be better if not tied to stats, since it's a striking contrast between character ability and player ability. It is wildly unlikely that I could solve any randomly-arranged puzzle in the two moves I got from Michael McGlen's Intelligence, but the game shouldn't be designed so that being able to fight means being unable to handle puzzles. Since you have some control over your starting stats, I could have chosen a more intelligent iteration of Michael, but of course I didn't understand that that would be important at the time.

Talking about puzzles has in turn led me to mention Skill Points and Combat, both of which are interesting but have issues. Skill Points are a per-game resource (Michael gets 3) that can be restored, but only rarely. They allow you to add your Luck to any other skill for a single Action each. This is a pretty smart application of Luck as a stat. Being the typically cautious and hoarding player that I am, I spent one on that first puzzle, and then lost the rest when I got hit with Dementia (one of the Keeper's cards). While it was obviously the right thing for the Keeper's player to do, it bothers me as something that he was able to do. Any way to deny characters per-game abilities is likely to be unpopular with me, much like if I had taken Dynamite as my starting item and had it taken away from me before I could use it.

Continuing on that note, though, that's something that for the most part the Keeper can't do; I think the power is called Uncontrollable Urges, and one of the Keeper's options with this power is to force the player to do something - but he can only force the Investigator to use an item if the player would get some benefit from it, rather than completely throwing it away. I like this setup in that it is an interesting and tactical tradeoff for the Keeper.

Okay, back to Combat. Combat bothered me. I made a number of decisions when selecting my character's stats and planning my Actions that were based off of assumptions that are valid in other games. For example, Michael has a Strength stat (6), a Marksmanship stat (7), a Willpower stat (8 - the only thing that protects him from his startlingly low Sanity), and a Dexterity stat (2). I chose the tommy gun for his starting item, and picked up an axe in the course of the game. When I'm thinking about how I want to spend one of my precious Actions (the game is short; I think I get about 15-16 of these), I really only want to do things that have a reasonable chance of success. This is hard to judge, though, if I can't know which stat will be tested when I make my attack. It's randomized by card draw, and over the course of the game, attacks with my tommy gun used Marksmanship, Willpower, and Dexterity. Unsurprisingly, I failed the Dexterity test in a big way. In another case, I had to use Marksmanship for an axe attack; when I succeeded, I dealt extra damage, but also dropped the axe, so it cost one of my precious Actions to get it back. I found it to be a very unwelcome surprise that my decisions were founded on such incorrect assumptions about how they would be resolved.

I've mentioned Actions a couple of times, and they're one of my areas of complaint with the game. I felt like I spent a lot of the game accomplishing nothing, for one reason or another: either because my attack missed, or I needed to spend my Action picking the dropped weapon back up (this happened twice), or because exploring an area revealed that there was Nothing Of Interest Here. Considering again how few actions we had in the course of the game, it's pretty frustrating. But as I mentioned above, success in the plotline isn't necessarily related to victory in the game. Compare this to, say, Arkham Horror, where players are on a tight but slightly flexible timer (the Doom Track, and possibly also the Terror Track, the Dunwich Horror track, and let's not even talk about Innsmouth), and while some actions may be unsuccessful, completely lost turns are relatively rare.

That pretty much covers my complaints about the game, so I want to mention a few more positives. I like the function of Traumas and Insanities, which are Keeper cards that he can only use after an Investigator has taken Health or Horror damage. Being reduced to zero Sanity isn't a game-ending consequence; it just means that the Keeper can play Insanities on you whenever the hell he wants, since you can't take any more Horror damage. As Michael McGlen only had six Sanity to lose in the first place, I was grateful for this.

We only found one spell (Blood Pact) over the course of play, and its ability to heal Health was not crucial since we didn't take many physical injuries, but the design of spells and their backlashes is really interesting. Lore is a stat (Michael's Lore was 1). When you cast a spell, you get a minor beneficial effect. After resolving that effect, you test Lore and read the back of the card. On a Pass, you get some additional benefit, possibly with an associated penalty (probably a Horror cost). On a Fail, you get a nasty penalty (Horror cost and more), possibly with a minor associated benefit. You usually then discard that spell card and draw another card of that same spell, though sometimes you lose access to the spell instead on a Fail. There are four or five different cards for each spell, and each is different. I like this means of handling variation, and I'll be thinking about ways to apply it in other games.

Stands-in-Fire said after the game that he felt like he was "playing the board" rather than playing a true antagonist, and it felt about the same way from the other side. Considering that the sharply antagonistic relationship between Descent's Overlord and players is my main complaint with that game, this was a welcome difference. I also liked the fact that the Keeper had his own minor objectives within his overarching objective. When a Maniac attacked, he tore out some of Michael's hair and ran through the house until he got to the altar in the back of the building. Once there, he sacrificed the hair on an altar, and the Keeper gained a big pile of threat tokens. This is the game's other way of ratcheting up threat that I mentioned liking. It was also very cool that the NPCs had a goal... and I'll totally be using this mechanic for a field battle at some point.

In conclusion, I like this game a lot, and I strongly feel that it has accomplished things in a board game in terms of cohesive yet varied narrative (above and beyond emergent narrative) that I hadn't ever seen before. My complaints with its mechanics weren't such that they stopped me from enjoying the game, and it gets a solid Would Play Again. I would even enjoy playing the same map and story choices over again, just to try different player strategies and see more of the things we missed. Fine family fun... if you have the Innsmouth Look.

Mage: Hidden Weapons

2011-07-08T22:00:00.002-04:00

For reasons having everything to do with Dust to Dust, I started thinking about how a character in Mage would conceal a weapon from various levels of searching. While I don't have specific plans along these lines in my own Mage game, characters might very well want to sneak a weapon into a meeting, and magic seems like a pretty good tool to accomplish that task. (Aside from a spell's ability to deal Aggravated damage after a certain point, Weaponry and Firearms offer larger dice pools than direct damage spells in many circumstances, assuming you've bought skills along those lines... and you don't make Paradox rolls to fire a gun under most circumstances.)

Some Arcana have self-evident ways to accomplish this goal, while others require more thought or combination with other Arcana. I seriously doubt that any of these will be Covert, except for (arguably) Mind.

Matter is the most self-evident of all. Three dots: Transmute Earth! Yay, that metal weapon is now something socially acceptable to carry, such as a bracelet or (perhaps rather bulky) necklace. Or, if you're feeling saucy, four dots: Lesser Transmogrification turns your 9mm into the water in your bottle, or the shampoo that the TSA is going to confiscate anyway.

Space is almost as self-evident, though the core book doesn't have anything quite right. I would call this a completely reasonable three-dot Vulgar effect - a kind of micro-version of Pocket Realm and Safe Keeping. This is strongly within Space's theme, so I'd want them to handle this task about as easily as Matter did.

Prime plays a secondary but important role in hiding weapons: once you've cast the spell to hide the weapon, you need to hide the spell that hides the weapon, at least if you're going to be around other mages. Prime 2's Transform Aura is either the right way to do this, or a basis for the right way to do this.

To handle the primary function of hiding the weapon with Prime, Phantasm (Prime 3) is probably your go-to effect, unless the disguise needs to stand up to extended rough handling. If it does, then use Prime 4's Phantasmal Weapon - either tweak the spell to create a durable masking illusion, or ditch the mundane weapon and fight with a Phantasmal Weapon.

Life doesn't bother. Life gives the mage claws and superstrength. If you're not satisfied with that, though, try Fantasia (Life 5) - hollow out a portion of your body and hide the weapon there. It's ridiculous, but this is just not Life's strong suit. Honing the Form (Life 3) can increase the caster's Dexterity by a large amount, helping his Dex + Larceny roll for Sleight of Hand - other than claws, this is Life's best course that I can see.

Death handles this task sort of clumsily, but decisively. Ghostly Object (Death 3), cast on a weapon you don't need in day-to-day life, makes it a Twilight object. Touch of the Grave (Death 2) makes it somewhat fragile, but otherwise usable as per normal.

Spirit has a solution that is much like Death's: Cast Rouse Spirit (Spirit 3) on a weapon, followed with some finagling to get the weapon into an appropriate location in Twilight. Then cast Reaching (also Spirit 3) to use that weapon. This is intensive in advance planning and is Vulgar, but (unless I misunderstand the interactions of Twilight objects and non-Twilight opponents) pretty effective.

Mind has two really fun ways to solve this problem. The first is that even when a mage has no dots in Larceny and a rather poor Dexterity, the observer doing the searching is going to have a tough time if you Befuddle (Mind 4 - and Covert!) him and significantly reduce his Wits or Composure. Breach the Vault of Memory (Mind 4) is sort of a brute-force way to make him forget seeing a weapon, but it too is Covert. The graceful way to do this is to never get searched, thanks to Emotional Urging (Mind 2, still Covert), or to trick the senses of the searcher with Impostor (Mind 3, and yeah, still Covert - you want at least two successes, to cover sight and touch; third priority goes to sound).

Forces is (as you might expect) unsubtle here. Invisible Object (Forces 2) explains itself, but you might still have to worry about getting patted down - Invisible Object won't do anything for its volume. The obvious followup to handle that is Telekinesis (Forces 3) to tow it behind you; the classy variation on that theme is Autonomous Servant (Forces 3 and Mind 1), to carry the weapon and offer it when needed.

The one thing Forces does better than any other Arcana in this general theme is foiling mechanical weapon detection (though Lesser Transmogrification in Matter 4 certainly makes a weapon stop being metal) - better in that the benefit applies to the whole party's weapons. If Science is your thing, use Transmission (Forces 2 - Covert!) to send false data to the metal detector; if not, short out the whole machine with Control Electricity (Forces 3 - also Covert). The latter solution is likely to lead to a pat-down search, though, and that's inconvenient if you don't have a backup plan. I would personally allow a mage with Forces higher than 2 to use amped-up versions of Transmission to cover shortcomings in the Science department.

Fate handles this issue sort of similarly to my idea for Life's Honing the Form solution, but instead of improving his Dexterity, the Fate mage improves his chance of success with various Fate manipulations - starting with Exceptional Luck (Fate 2 - Covert, but with an annoying Mana cost) at the low end. Lucky Coin (Fate 3, Covert) is entirely reasonable, Superlative Luck (Fate 3, Vulgar, Mana cost) is sort of excessive, and Probable Cause (Fate 4, Vulgar, Mana cost) is just beating destiny over the head. The nice thing about Lucky Coin is that it stacks with any one of the other three spells I've listed here.

Time follows Fate's lead, unsurprisingly, but at lower Arcana. Perfect Timing (Time 1) is a solid choice for increasing that Dex + Larceny pool, and Glimpsing the Future (Time 2) is the same but better. The stylish solution, though, is to cast Temporal Stutter on your weapon, just before the inspection.

Then there's the really stylish solution that combines Fate, Time, and Matter.

Belated Birthday Present (Time 4, Fate 2, Matter 2)

The mage shunts an object forward in time until just the right moment.

Practice: Patterning

Action: Extended

Duration: Conditional (p. 150)

Aspect: Vulgar

Cost: None

The targeted object disappears entirely until the mage performs or experiences the specified condition. It cannot be detected or retrieved by other means; it does not exist at intervening points in time.

Rote Dice: Intelligence + Occult + Time

A variant that uses Space:

Nothing Up My Sleeve (Space 4, Time 2, Fate 2)

The mage hides the object in a dimensional pocket until just the right moment. Not for use on lagomorphs or doves of any kind.

Practice: Patterning

Action: Instant

Duration: Conditional

Aspect: Vulgar

Cost: None

The targeted object returns to hand (or drops to the ground if the caster does not have a free hand or does not wish to catch it) when the mage performs or experiences the specified condition. It could potentially be retrieved by other means, through the use of Space magic.

Rote Dice: Dexterity + Larceny + Space

4e Rules Variant: Healing Surges

2011-07-06T21:56:00.000-04:00

As I've established pretty thoroughly in this blog, I'm interested in 4e rules hacks, tweaks, and general brainstorming. This is because I believe the most essential part of 4e is the way information is presented in the form of powers; everything else is worth examining for other applications. The 3e Unearthed Arcana was one of my favorite books released in the entire edition, just for the kitbashing and genre-bending fuel it provided. Since I don't think WotC will release a 4e version (though the DMG 2 was a nod in that direction), I'm interested in compiling as many rules variants as possible as another Harbinger project.

Healing Surges

One of the most interesting variations I've heard about is a change in how players recover healing surges. The problem with healing surges as we have them right now is that short of unusual rules (perhaps modeled as a disease track), PCs cannot suffer injuries that take longer than one extended rest to heal. The game wants to get players back into the action as soon as possible, rather than running the risk of requiring downtime and interrupting the flow of the game. For the high-octane game that 4e wants to be, this is a reasonable choice, but there are other ways it could work that might create a grittier feel.

I like the core idea behind healing surges, because they are a solution to 3e's issue with a wand of cure light wounds: for a relatively trivial investment of cash, characters always start every fight at full health, and this does not cost any spell slots or any other resource that can really suffer attrition. (At even mid-levels, 15 gold per 1d8+1 healed is not enough to count as attrition.) There are other fixes to 3e's problem that are worth discussing, but they're a matter for some future post. With a lot of these ideas, characters may be at full hit points the next day, but getting there cost them some or all of the surges they got for that day; you'll need more time before you're ready to go back into the field.

Versions:
1. PCs recover one (1) healing surge per extended rest, and cannot benefit from more than one such extended rest at a time. This does mean that at most, you'll need about four days to go from negative hit points to full health. The problem that I have with it is that a paladin or warden will take up to a week longer to return to their full complement of healing surges than, say, a wizard.
2. PCs recover a class-linked number of healing surges per day, typically 1-3 (with a possible +1 for paragon tier and +2 for epic tier). This means that very tough classes will take about as long to get to the maximum number of healing surges as a more fragile character, give or take.
3. PCs recover healing surges from an extended rest equal to their Constitution bonus, minimum 1. This is probably more benefit than Constitution needs, so I don't recommend this.
4. PCs recover a number of healing surges based on a level-scaling Endurance check, or another character's Heal check on them.
Easy DC - 1 surge
Moderate DC - 2 surges
Hard DC - 3 surges
Hard DC + 5 - 4 surges
5. PCs recover healing surges from an extended rest if and only if they are resting in an inn (or equivalent), or are receiving extended-care medical attention in someplace that is not a dungeon. This focuses the effect on attrition over the course of a wilderness adventure, and would be a good first step toward making 4e work in a hexcrawl.
6. PCs have specific conditions, chosen at character creation or available as class features, that replenish healing surges. (This would need to be combined with at least one of the above ideas.) Here I'm imagining something like nWoD's Virtues and Vices that replenish Willpower, or Spirit of the Century's Compels that replenish Fate points. One game I know of rewarded the emotional high of quest goals with healing surges, which is really where I'm coming from with this idea.
7. For a sufficiently episodic game: PCs can only recover healing surges at the definite end of an adventure. This is the most like a TV show or series of action movies, where the characters are (almost) always back to full health by the next episode; particularly serious injuries might be plot complications for the next episode, but only if the writers feel like it.

I think this #7 pretty close to how the designers intend for players to approach 4e anyway. One of the toughest lessons I had to learn over the course of my two-year 4e campaign is how to run adventures that demand the players take on 3-5 encounters in a day, rather than running 1-2 larger encounters in a day. Incidentally, this is one of my problems with 4e; it needs to be run in its own patterns, and deviating from those patterns causes headaches or challenge-scaling issues. Which brings me back to why I'm writing this in the first place: breaking those unbreakable patterns.

Problems:
1. Any of these would hugely increase the usefulness of daily healing powers that restore hit points "as if" the target had spent a healing surge. (I can live with this; my players have not tended to see those powers as particularly useful under current rules.)
2. A paladin's ability to heal by laying on hands is heavily nerfed by reducing the paladin's supply of healing surges. (Obviously this only matters if someone plays a paladin. Even then, the point was to reduce the availability of healing somewhat, and the game is still fair.)
3. Monsters or effects that drain healing surges are really awful. I would have to think carefully before ever using any kind of wight, and then only as a small part of the overall encounter - or treat standard wights as elites and elite wights as solos, in that their hits represent so much that cannot be healed that day.
4. The new Vampire class that WotC has released doesn't work with this at all, because its supply of healing surges is central to the class's mechanic. (This is a non-issue in my gaming group.)

Achievement-based Advancement

2011-06-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

So, a blog much more widely-read than this one recently posted about doing away with XP tables and transitioning to achievement-based advancement. This reminded me, naturally, of Samhaine's series "To End an Era of Exp," particularly the concluding post. Notably, Samhaine was really talking about video games, but the ideas there might be applicable to tabletop as well.

I was thinking about what's really going on here, and it seems to me that this is pretty much the same as using 4e's quest-goal rules as the only source of experience points. Telecanter's idea, then, is a quest-only system with meta-game quests. (Just to be clear, I use the term meta-game here without prejudice.) A goal like "survive a dicey combat" is a goal about the game side of things, while "defeat the ogre warband" is a specific story application of the same goal. "Outwit a trick/trap" is a game goal; "Only the Penitent Man Shall Pass" is a specific trap to bypass within the progress of the story/dungeon. Neither way is particularly better - my point here is just to show variations on the scheme.

As it looks like Telecanter realized in his following post, an achievement-based system does not play nice with editions of D&D prior to 3rd, in which classes have uneven advancement charts; sorry, OSR guys. It's also less than ideal for systems that aren't based off of character levels, such as the World of Darkness; while you could assign a number of character points to each specific achievement, it's not as interesting a change - XP aren't replaced, just bundled.

Anyway. Thinking along these lines, a GM could use these meta-goals to encourage any number of different things. The first that comes to mind for me is stunt usage: page 42 of the 4e DMG has rules that offer scaling DCs and damage values for stunts, but from what I can tell the vast majority of gaming groups don't think to use them this way. Thus a GM might offer an XP bonus of (25 xp * current level) to all party members each time a player comes up with a new and unique stunt. If this seems too generous, offering that bonus a limited number of times per session or per level would be reasonable.

In the comments following Telecanter's post, more purely in-world achievements were discussed, which brought to mind for me the circle tests used in our LARP magic systems. SI was the first game I know of to include a circle test mechanic, and from the beginning we've faced the same problem in its implementation: players need the specific intervention of an encounter in order to continue their advancement, and they grow understandably frustrated when many events pass before their circle test encounter finally shows up. On the other hand, these encounters can be some of the most personal and intense scenes in the game, since SI's sorcery and all of KG's schools of magic tailored those encounters to the character. The problem with something like this in the proposed achievement-based advancement system, of course, is that not only can the player not advance within his form of magic, he can't advance in any other way either. At least in CI/RBP games, you can just spend your XP on something else, or save them for a future large purchase.

There are a lot of fiddly details at stake here, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. I won't try to go into each possible iteration, because I'd like this post to remain at least marginally readable and less than a hundred pages long. The one that I think is important is offering slightly more goals than the number required to advance. Much like earning merit badges in Scouting, players will probably always see some of the achievements as the lowest-hanging fruit. Certainly this is how I've seen players approach plot goals in the past, when they've tabulated everything they want to accomplish.

Outside of replacing experience-based advancement, it would be cool to have in-play organizations that reward specific accomplishments: the Fighter's Guild or your Warrior Order rewards you for vanquishing a superior foe, demonstrating mastery of a particular strike, and forging your own weapon. The Ancient and Accepted Order of Ruby Magi promotes you when you (pick three): rediscover a lost spell (or create a new one), defeat a frostwraith (the Order's stated purpose), donate a completed magic item of at least a certain value, and undertake the Third Trial of the Burning Gem. This folds back into the organization advancement systems presented in the 3.5e DMG2; what I find particularly interesting about this is that you could write these goals in an in-character way and thus make them completely a part of the roleplay. I guess that's my only real problem with meta-game achievement-based advancement: if the goals aren't things that the players can't help but complete in the course of play, the characters will need to seek those things out, and may lack solid in-character motivations. Much as I hate to hear in-character references to experience points, I would hate to hear "we need to find someone or something to outwit... that's really our main goal at this point."

Anyway, below the cut: Sample Achievements. Ten per level, pick... let's say eight.

Sample Achievements

1st Level
1. Defeat an enemy of at least 4 HD/4th level/CR 4.
2. Defeat a group of at least 6 enemies of 1 HD/1st level/CR 1.
3. Bypass or survive a trap of at least 4th level/CR 4.
4. Reach the second level of a dungeon (for OSR dungeoncrawlers), or spend four weeks in the wilderness (for hexcrawlers). (Honestly, just having an achievement for the passage of in-play time does some interesting things to the game, encouraging players to let time pass.)
5. Return one of the captured villagers safely home (implied: Escort quest).
6. Establish a recurring patron NPC.
7. Gain a permanent magic item worth at least 1,000 gold (3e value numbers - for 4e, an item of level 3 or higher), or consumable magic items worth at least 2,000 gold (4e: ...um, you know, whatever).
8. Survive in a bar brawl with at least 10 other combatants.
9. Talk your way out of a fight with Hostile opponent.
10. Find the entrance to the Temple of the Hidden King.

2nd Level
1. Defeat an enemy of at least 5 HD/5th level/CR 5.
2. Defeat a group of at least 6 enemies of 2 HD/2nd level/CR 2.
3. Bypass or survive a trap of at least 5th level/CR 5.
4. Reach the third level of a dungeon, or spend four weeks in a more dangerous wilderness.
5. Return one of the treasures stolen from the Academy.
6. Learn a secret about your recurring patron NPC.
7. Gain a permanent magic item worth at least 2,000 gold (4e: an item of level 4 or higher), or consumable magic items worth at least 3,000 gold.
8. Win a contest of skill during a village festival (horse race, archery, footrace, wrestling...)
9. Intimidate an opponent of at least 4 HD/4th level/CR 4.
10. Enter the Second Fane of the Temple of the Hidden King.

3rd Level
1. Defeat an enemy of at least 6 HD/6th level/CR 6.
2. Defeat a group of at least 7 enemies of 3 HD/3rd level/CR 3. (Since AoE effects are a bit more feasible for party wizards at this level in most editions...)
3. Bypass or survive a trap of at least 6th level/CR 6.
4. Reach the fourth level of a dungeon, or something something wilderness.
5. Rediscover a long-lost spell (arcane or divine) or alchemical formula, or develop a new spell or alchemical formula.
6. Cultivate a relationship with your patron's direct superior.
7. Gain a permanent magic item worth at least 4,000 gold (this is damn hard at 3rd level in 3.x; 4e: 6th level or higher), or spend at least 1,000 gold creating magic items.
8. Convince an enemy to become a loyal ally.
9. Succeed a dangerous non-combat challenge requiring at least eight difficult skill checks.
10. Discover the connection between the Temple of the Hidden King and the dark forces threatening the village.

Available at any level:
1. Develop a stunt into a signature move. This probably requires design work on the part of the player and the DM.

Modified Roll	Features/Flaws
-5	0/3
-4	0/2
-3	0/3
-2	0/1
-1	0/2
0	0/1
1	0/0
2	0/1
3	0/0
4	0/1
5	1/3
6	0/0
7	1/2
8	0/1
9	1/2
10	0/0
11	1/1
12	0/0
13	1/0
14	2/1
15	1/0
16	1/1
17	0/0
18	1/1
19	2/0
20	2/1
21	1/0
22	2/1
23	2/0
24	1/1
25	2/0
26	3/1
27	1/0
28	2/0
29	3/1
30	3/0
31	3/1
32	2/0
33	3/0

Modified Roll	Features/Flaws
-5	0/3
-4	0/2
-3	0/3
-2	0/1
-1	0/2
0	0/1
1	0/0
2	0/1
3	0/0
4	0/1
5	1/3
6	0/0
7	1/2
8	0/1
9	1/2
10	0/0
11	1/1
12	0/0
13	1/0
14	2/1
15	1/0
16	1/1
17	0/0
18	1/1
19	2/0
20	2/1
21	1/0
22	2/1
23	2/0
24	1/1
25	2/0
26	3/1
27	1/0
28	2/0
29	3/1
30	3/0
31	3/1
32	2/0
33	3/0

Modified Roll	Features/Flaws
-5	0/3
-4	0/2
-3	0/3
-2	0/1
-1	0/2
0	0/1
1	0/0
2	0/1
3	0/0
4	0/1
5	1/3
6	0/0
7	1/2
8	0/1
9	1/2
10	0/0
11	1/1
12	0/0
13	1/0
14	2/1
15	1/0
16	1/1
17	0/0
18	1/1
19	2/0
20	2/1
21	1/0
22	2/1
23	2/0
24	1/1
25	2/0
26	3/1
27	1/0
28	2/0
29	3/1
30	3/0
31	3/1
32	2/0
33	3/0