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Game Mechanics That Fail

...in my estimation, of course.

Every game has mechanics that are supposed to represent something, or are supposed to evoke a response. They reinforce player behavior, lend flavor to a game, and create fun...or they don't. While listening to the Brilliant Gameologists (yes, yet another gaming podcast I listen to now) Episode 2 I believe, the topic of Call of Cthulhu's Sanity mechanic came up. It seemed like the hosts all liked the mechanic, but in the past, running Call of Cthulhu or playing in it, I've felt the exact opposite. This got me thinking about some central mechanics to popular, often-mentioned games, games I've had a lot of experience playing and running, which...fail. I came up with three right off the top of my head. After each example, I'll suggest a fix for that mechanic, on the off chance that anyone out there agrees with me about these things.

Call of Cthulhu and Sanity Points

I think that going insane is clearly central to stories in the Mythos, but that the Sanity mechanic fails. Running the game, I feel like it gets in the way of evoking genuine reactions from players. Playing in the game, I feel like it distances me from the horrific things that are going on. The problem is that you end up marking off points, and this is a pause in what is going on, a little calculation, or some erasing, that takes what might actually be creepy or frightening and makes it into the equivalent of taking damage in D&D (which I talk about below) - you just mark off some points and move on. It works sort of like this:

GM: "Boo! You're scared."
Player: "Uh, no I'm not."
GM: "Yes you are. Mark off four points. That means you're really scared."
Player: "Ah." Marks off points on sheet. "I see. Now I'm scared."

Actually, running a Call of Cthulhu game, and then playing in another that was relatively awful, is a lot of what convinced me to work on Horror!, which I've written a bit about on this blog thus far, and may do so again once Parsec is finished and sent to the publisher.

The Fix

To fix this, I can suggest a few methods. The best one, I think, its not to tell the players how much sanity they have left. Things should get creepier and creepier, until maybe they start getting downright freakish for one of the player-characters because she's coming completely unhinged. You can pass little notes to the players to help them get an idea of what's going on and to ratchet up the paranoia as each of them hears something, or feels something, but none of them are sure what's real and what is just a symptom of their minds breaking apart under the strain. With some preparation, you can come up with frightening or evocative images or little vignettes and prepare them ahead of time to reveal at the right moment.

Actually scaring players in a horror game is probably the most difficult task a GM can have, but I think that the Sanity system makes it almost impossible. At least for me.

D20, Dungeons and Dragons etc., and Hit Points

I realize I'm stabbing a sacred cow here. You'll just have to deal.

Hit points are the least flavorful way to handle wounds that I can imagine. Getting hurt hurts. You naturally flinch, cry out, pull back, and shy away from things that could injure you. Unless you're playing D&D. Then, you're just keeping track of a total until it falls low enough for you to go from 100% capacity to unconscious. Hit Points have the power to make being eaten by a Dragon boring. Or to make being backstabbed by an assassin worthy of a yawn. In an adventure game, this is unacceptable.

The Fixes

Unearthed Arcana provides one fix for this that D20 Star Wars 2nd Edition (the one before Saga) used as well - Wounds and Vitality. So you have a pool of Vitality points that you can lose and regain quickly that aren't a big deal. They just represent getting worn down and tired and bruised. Then, you have Wounds, when you lose when someone scores a critical hit on your or when something else serious happens. As soon as you lose even one Wound, you take a penalty. When you lose Wounds, this means that the DM should take a moment to make the wound visceral. The immediate consequences make you shy away from situations that could really hurt you. Running and playing in a game that used Wounds/Vitality, I thought they were a huge imporovement on Hit Points.

Ideally, you should track every significant injury a character sustains. They should all be described vividly and have consequences for the PC. But once you start doing that, you're not playing D20 anymore.

Vampire the Masquerade and Path Scores/Humanity

Its definitely in vogue to give Vampire a lot of crap as a system, but I'm not jumping on that particular bandwagon. I played Vampire and ran Vampire avidly for about eight years or so, and enjoyed almost every session of every game. I wrote and ran huge (80-100 player) LARPS on two occasions and loved those as well. And look! I'm not even brain-damaged. (Sorry, couldn't help myself)

Obviously, the Storyteller system isn't perfect. I've never seen a system that doesn't have holes I could drive a truck through, frankly, so its all a matter of increments to me. One of the most glaring problems is the Humanity/Path system. In most of my games, Path has played a central role, and I've always had house rules galore. As written, your Humanity is just something you grind down as quickly as possible by committing atrocities at every turn. There's no reason not to (except that one Dementation power is, for some reason, resisted by your Path score). Its just holding you back. Ironically enough, the Path system, as written, has no teeth.

The Fixes

The most recent version of Vampire the Dark Ages to come out before Requiem was released actually dealt with Paths a bit better. They added rules for what they called an Aura - it is basically the sense that others get about you, whether you are a seething pustule of moral corruption or a shimmering paragon of virtue. If you had a high path score, your Aura was beneficial in social situations - it was easier to convince people to trust you, for example, or to appear human to a casual onlooker. Those with high Path scores had trouble with both.

I also added a house rule about the order in which PCs woke up at night and got sleepy as morning approached. So with a higher Path score, you got a chance to go out and accomplish things as a PC before others were even awake, and were less likely to fall asleep in a dangerous situation. This added to the Aura as incentive to actually maintain a Path score.

Of course, there was still the fun of plunging into depravity - but now there was a bit more of a feeling that you were losing something.

Brief Update

My computer seems to be in the midst of dying, so stay tuned while I find out if I can salvage it in the next few days...

Storytelling Lessons from "Heroes"

I just got the Heroes Season One boxed set as a gift, and in re-watching the series with my wife, I go to thinking about how I as a gamer can derive some advice from Heroes. The series itself is absurdly good, and in watching it a second time, it is easier to see how tightly everything fits together and how much craft went into developing such a complicated story with multiple principal characters and multiple interlocking storylines that draw together and also change as the series progresses.

Anyway, here are some things that I can take to heart from Heroes that I can apply to games that I run in the future.


1. There are many leads but no read herrings

I'm pretty sure this is a true statement. I don't recall any false leads. There are plenty of things that don't turn out the way you'd expect, but nothing that is presented as important is later revealed to be worthless. Tabletop roleplaying games take place in a collective imaginative space, but that space is imperfect. Its really easy to misunderstand, to miss something important, and so on, especially in a 'traditional' game where the GM or DM is in charge of the storyline. False leads are just frustrating. Leads that change and surprise you over the course of the game are exciting and cool.

In my own game-running style, I tend more toward not having specific leads a lot of the time. This has worked well in the past and has also been frustrating in the past, depending on the group. In the future, I'll have a lot more tools to bring to bear in running games, one of which will be to discuss this ahead of time. Do the players like going around and figuring out what the 'plot' is, or do they want the plot to be, for the most part, a given, or do they want to collectively put together a plot?


2. The principal characters are densely interconnected

This is especially important in a game where the main characters don't begin as part of a single organization or with other kinds of close ties from family or back-story. For example, in a game like Vampire (the Masquerade especially, or the Requiem), you might start out as Vampires from different clans who have never met before the first session, when you're presented to the Prince of the city, for example, or when your Sabbat indoctrination begins. Having other connections worked out, which reveal themselves early and continuously, helps all of the players justify working together.

On the other hand, I've often said that you can "justify" your character doing anything, so you might as well justify your character doing things that are interesting, cool, and move the story forward. It doesn't hurt to have a push in that direction, though, where appropriate.


3. Scenes are all there to tell you something new and important

I haven't played games with powerful scene-framing mechanics for the most part, so I can't say as much here as I'd like to. But scene should always serve a purpose, and something should be revealed, or be at stake, in a given scene. This is also a weakness with some of my games - I like scenes that are just RP between characters and NPCs, and I sometimes forget to include something important about the scene itself outside of the interaction. This can devolve as often as it is fruitful for the game. Putting something at stake in the scene could be a way to help drive things forward in interesting ways.

On the other hand, as a player I enjoy a situation where every scene isn't another intense conflict. So sometimes what is revealed can be something about another player-character, or my own character. I have yet to play it, but Luke Crane describes a mechanic in Burning Empires for just this purpose - defining different kinds of scenes when they are framed so that the group knows what is going on and can define what kind of scene they want.


4. The main storyline is introduced in Episode 1

This only occurred to me when I watched it again, but it struck me that most of the major themes and storylines of the show are introduced from the first episode. This is really cool. It isn't clear at first - you're busy wondering what's going on, who these people are, how are they connected, and so on. But there in the background, even in the foreground, are the main thematic elements, most of the major characters, and the looming threat from the get-go. When these things emerge later on in more detail, they are already unconsciously familiar.

This would be an awesome way to kick off games - include the big things that will come later without making it obvious.

This could also reflect a collective storytelling system, where the first session or the first few sessions are where the group defines what the game will be about, establishing theme and facts and so on. It would have a very different 'feel' from watching Heroes, but would perhaps be similar to the experience of writing Heroes, which is at least as cool for many of us.

A Problem With Story Games

Maybe someone in the Story Games community (not necessarily just the one 'Story Games' forum, but overall) will read this at some point and want to address it. Who knows? And bear in mind that in taking on this topic :

1) I'm talking about something I know comparatively little about

2) I have a funny feeling I'll provoke someone (but that's Ok, just look at my theology blog)

What I mean when I talk about Story Games is actually exemplified by the forum of the same name, which I have a link to on this site but you can also find here. The way I understand it is that Story Games are about Story Now, which needs a little explaining.

There are three ways one might talk about the kind of story that results when we play a game with the goal of story in mind. The first is Story Before, which is one traditional stance where the GM or DM or whomever comes up with a story, works it out ahead of time, and then invites the players to participate in it. The story is already there, it is just being fleshed out, perhaps. At one extreme is something like a video game, where the story is literally laid out for you, and at the other is perhaps a GM or DM who is good at improvising, who has an idea of where things are going and who the major players are but is open to other directions in that framework.

The second is Story After. This also happens a lot, particularly in games that I run, because I tend to like "sandbox" style games where I set up a situation, or a bunch of interlocking situations, drop the players into it and see what happens. Story After essentially means that at the end of a game or session, we look back and say "look at the story that we made!" Maybe someone writes up the session as a story, or someone keeps a game journal. In two current games, one I ran and one I'm in, there is a shared blog that the players and GM have for just this purpose.

Story Now means that the story happens during the game, that the game itself might take on self-conscious story structure elements to it, and the game mechanics guide and develop the narrative, which wasn't worked out before-hand and isn't just something that becomes apparent after the fact.

As I said above, Story Games are concerned with creating Story Now. And I think this is very cool, but it also has a weakness in my limited experience that especially came up in a conversation with a friend recently.

When you are going to Story Now, that means that no one comes in with a plan of what is going to happen. This could mean that things devolve into a random assortment of events and scenes that don't connect to each other. Kind of like the game where you tell a story where each person adds a sentence, and the story goes around and around. You might come up with a great story that way, but you also might come up with crap.

One way that I think a lot of Story Games try to get around this is to more carefully define what their game is about. For example, if I play D&D, I've bought into a genre, and I've bought into a lot of rules and conventions and so on, but the story might be anything. It might be about breaking out of a prison, or about defending a city, or about political intrigue. Granted, D&D is a combat game, but not everyone uses it for that. Or take While Wolf's games - you buy into a genre but not into a specific kind of story.

In contrast, with a Story Game, the game is not only tools to create a story, but it also tells you a lot more of what that story will be, and includes mechanics for that kind of story and not others. Rather than pick on a particular game, I'll given an example. One game might be called Prison Break. So when you play this game, you know that your Story Now will be about breaking out of a prison. If you want your game to be about Machiavellian politics, no dice. If you want a game about breaking out of prison, chances are this is a fantastic option. To me, Story Games are focused in this way.

The reason this is a problem, for me, is twofold.

1) I'm used to a completely different model of games. For example, the first game I ever bought and ran was Mythus by Gary Gygax. I used that rules-set to run games for about three years or so - using just the one book to run and play in all kinds of games. Granted, none were Story Now, but that's a lot of mileage, and I've since used other systems, D&D/D20, GURPS, White Wolf's games and so on, in a similar way.

2) I'm broke. So let's say that now I want to run a game that's about bronze-age competition between Greek heroes. Next I want to run a game that's about competition in academia that involves an insect somehow. After that, a friend wants to run...whatever else. I can do all of this with one Story Before/Story After system, but if I want the Story Now experience, each of these games will need its own system.

Like I said, this isn't a big problem, but its something that has come up - if nothing else, then because there are a lot of games that I want to buy, but can't afford them, motivating me to focus on systems that can be used a lot of ways and developing house rules for them.

Or designing my own games, though I don't really see any of them as Story Games.

So, in short, I get what is cool about them, and maybe what I really need is someone to run a Story Game for me and convert me so I can drink the Kool-Aid. For now, though, Story Now seems like it is interesting...and a barrier as well.

More D&D 4th Edition News

I got turned on to a new podcast, Gaming Steve. What brought the cast to my attention was an hour-long interview with Christopher Perkins (he's the bald one) from Wizards of the Coast about D&D 4.0. There was some information about what they're developing and thinking that I hadn't encountered elsewhere.

A lot of what he talked about is D&D Insider and Gleemax-related; more about the online gaming table, encounter and adventure-creation resources that they'll have available and so on. I have to admit that from his description, Gleemax in general seems less crappy than I'd thought up to this point. It looks like they're considering a few good ideas along with their bad ones I've already talked about (not in the order that they were discussed on the podcast):

1. Software that draws on a database of all of the rules that they publish that you can use online to build encounters and adventures. You will also theoretically be able to publish them for the community at large and possibly even sell them.

2. The opportunity to even potentially sell your scenarios and adventures, which serves as an entry-point into the industry as it has in the past.

3. A "Not Tournament Legal" setting for the online gaming table, which will be a category for things like house rules and tweaks to the game - so they can coexist fairly with RPGA and Living Greyhawk and so on. I'm not sure how they'll support these kinds of tweaks, but I'm glad that you're not bound to what is published - if all this turns out to be true.

4. Pickup games. This is cool, though something I'll probably never get involved in where D&D is concerned - too much time commitment required to have a decent game.

5. Support for discussion of other kinds of games. Again, I'm not sure how far they'll go with this kind of thing, but a general "Facebook for gamers" might be helpful. Sometimes its hard to find a game, and maybe having some kind of central hub for this kind of activity among D&D-style gamers would be good. Who knows? I fear hegemony, but I'm a pessimistic anarchist :)

6. The "completely new" rules reveal: all classes will have powers that are at will, per encounter and per day, not just casters. The power level will be equal to your character level - a 13th level character will have 13th level powers, on up to 30th level. I had guessed this from other sources, but its still interesting to know.

In general, if you are excited about the online functionality of D&D 4th Edition, check out the link above to the podcast itself and listen to it. You can even scan past the first 1/3 or so, which is also quality, but is much more focused on video gaming, which seems to be Gaming Steve's overall focus.

Design Journal 12: It Has Begun

A couple days ago I sent out the first batch of (very) rough drafts of Parsec. Now I wait while people read them and put their comments together. I wish I had more time to produce better and more complete rough drafts, but I thought it was better to get them out now than to wait for two weeks until I can start actually working on the thing again. Now I need to turn my attention to all the things I've been neglecting because of wanting to work on Parsec.

Even after I send it out, I still get ideas of how to clarify and improve it. I'm writing them down, and I'm sure that if I get responses from the ten or so people who are reading the MS right now, I'll have loads to consider.

Its been said that "better is the enemy of done" (on various podcasts - I forget who supposedly first said it - an indy game designer) and I can really see the truth of this in my own mind. That's part of why I gave myself an artificial time-limit for the work. If nothing else, it reminds me that I can't work on this thing forever.

Fear the Boot; Theory from the Closet

I just listened to Fear the Boot Episode 80, which I think was one of their best in a while. I always enjoy FtB, but this one got me thinking more than usual. They talked about how to get new people into gaming, and I had some ideas on how to expand on what they covered. I think I'll say more on some of these ideas in the future on this blog. (And co-authors feel free to do the same!) Assuming I find the time that is.

I also just listened to Theory from the Closet Episode 15. I'm a long way from caught up, but I'm also listening to them out of order. In this show, Thor Olavsrud was the guest, and he talked about "Editing for Game Designers". I learned more about the process (which was great) from a very active insider (even better), and it was a good show as always. I appreciated, for example, the list of things that would go on a "style document" for a game. I have definitely seen that I have to make those decisions, and I've been careful about being consistent, but I don't have a specific style document. If this works, and I do end up writing supplements and so on, I'll definitely need the doc to remind me of how I used commas, what I capitalize and what I don't, how I notate dice-rolls, and so on. I've been particular on all of those things, but being consistent is tougher.

I also had a slightly sinking feeling, comparing the ideal situation to my current situation writing Parsec. I'll definitely be leaning on my (wonderful, generous, gracious, brilliant!) friends but I would love to have unlimited time to work on this.

Then I realized that, if I did have unlimited time, it would probably never get finished. So the limits are also a blessing, because without them, I'd probably have nothing. Given that, work continues - I'm around 40,000 words now, and starting to actually put together what I might call an Alpha copy - for playtesting and sending out for first reads from the aforementioned heroic friends. It continues to be an interesting process, finding a middle ground between what Jolly Roger wants and what I want in a game (as much as possible - deferring to them), and also writing the damn thing, which, yes, is definitely still way harder than writing a novel (not that I've written a good one).

Even if it wasn't interesting, stubbornness alone will see me through at this point.

January or bust!

Nostalgia II: What Makes A Gamer?

Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys was the first rolelpaying game that I played as a kid. I remember a trip to the bookstore - my parents felt like they should feed my book addiction with library and bookstore trips now and then. I was wandering the fantasy/sci-fi section, having just been turned on to this kind of stuff by Hobbits, Narnia, Earthsea and so on. There was this little section that stood out on the bookshelf, of larger books. One of them was the one pictured above.

I got the book and read it over and over, trying to figure out what the heck it was about. It took me a little while to figure out how a book could also be a game. It came packaged with two little ten-sided dice in shrink-wrap (I still have them, actually) and after a bunch of readings I finally caught on. Dangerous Journeys starts off with Mythus Prime, which is a very simplified version of the Mythus system. The other three hundred or so pages of the book, small print, double columns, was the full Mythus system in all of its convoluted Gygaxian glory.

So a weekend came up when we went camping, and as usual I brought along a friend, and I talked him into playing this game. It was goofy and absurd in every way that a game run by an middle-school kid would be, but we both had a lot of fun. We gamed an entire day, afternoon and evening by. People were worried because we just sat in the tent and played this game. We intuitively knew that it would be almost impossible to explain to my parents and their friends, so we probably didn't make a lot of sense when they asked. By the afternoon, though, they were all pretty drunk, so they liked that we were quiet, and when it started raining, we had something to do to keep ourselves occupied.

I got to thinking yesterday - what would have happened if I never found this book, if I never decided to give it a try? Is a gamer geek born, or is a gamer geek made? At this point, I can't imagine not gaming for any length of time. I can get by on MMORPGs the way prisoners can get by on bread and water, but they aren't real sustenance by comparison. Reading and writing stories and poems and nonfiction is also great, but not enough by itself. But would I have felt this way regardless, or is this the person I've become?

Part of why I am wondering this is because I wonder how someone gets into gaming in the first place. Is it a natural affinity? Or do you have to be sold on it (by a book, a friend, etc.)? I also talked to my older brother on the phone about Parsec last night, and gaming in general. He's past the point where he's worried that I'm going to Hell, it seems, but he still doesn't really get what it is that I enjoy doing so much.

Maybe its just one of those things.

Nostalgia

Yesterday I got a strange package from my mom - this happens sometimes, especially around my birthday, which happened recently. Inside, amongst strange thrift-store clothing and life-savers and a Transformers coloring book, was my old copy of Dragonlance Adventures for AD&D. Man, I used this book a lot with my friends Jordan and Nate back in middle school.

Its a classic of AD&D game design, with lots of details including fully statted-out deities. If you're eleven and playing D&D, what's more fun than finding some way to go to the realm of the gods and try to lay some smackdown on them? If you've already accepted things like the saving-throw tables and THAC0 as reasonable, you're halfway there already.

I remember devouring those books set in the Dragonlance world of Krynn, the main trilogy, the other main trilogy, the prequels, and the prequels to the prequels, and all of the other various and sundry books that they put out for kids like me to buy and read with our meager finances.

I think there's definitely a developmental aspect to gaming, especially for those of us who played for a decade before most people had heard of an indie game or a story game as such. An adolescent doesn't want to play in the same kind of game that an adult does, for the most part. At least, that was the case with me.

What kinds of things did you do in games, and what kinds of games did you play, when you first started out?

Design Journal 11: Playtesting

I'm still getting closer and closer to the first playtests of Parsec. As I work with that in mind I find that the problems that I realize I need to deal with increase exponentially. Its like whack-a-mole. However, I'm looking forward to some playtesting because I like improvising, and as I improvise fixes for rules that don't work, I'll probably come up with some good ideas.

I'm listening to the Sons of Kryos Episode 51 which deals with playtesting, and trying to absorb as much advice as I can in general from all kinds of sources.

To be really candid, I'm actually really nervous about this whole processes. Its one thing to write a game in your living room for months and think its ok, and quite another to subject yourself to comments from lots of other people, some of whom know you and some of whom don't. Its nerve-wracking. I'm not a lover of criticism, though I like to think I take it...relatively well.

I'm partly insulated by the fact that I'm writing a game for someone else. I'm still writing a game that I would definitely play and enjoy, but it is ultimately a game that I am writing as a freelancer for someone else. So I can just claim the cool stuff and pass the weaker stuff off :)

I'm looking at the various things I want to accomplish through running playtests and, hopefully, having helpful friends run playtests with other friends in various parts of the country. I'll also be having other friends just read through the text as it stands now and give me their feedback - both from gamers and non-gamers, since I want a wide variety of responses.

Here's what I want to accomplish:
1. Get some cheap copy-and-content-editing by having friends read through the thing. A significant number of them are at least as good writers as I am, and many of them are also avid gamers.
2. Work through the character creation system and make sure that it isn't broken - that what I'm thinking of is what comes across, and that the end result is a playable character that makes sense, has a story she's embedded in, and so on.
3. Iron out the various conflict systems, especially physical conflict (read: Combat!) because in true RPG tradition it is the most complicated system of rules in the game, and will also be one that will have a lot of mileage put on it.
4. Get more ideas and suggestions in the area of setting and concrete details. "About a hundred years in the future" could include a hell of a lot of themes, technologies, societies and so on. I have my own ideas, and I've been reading a lot more in futurism (the tech kind, not the art kind), but I want other peoples' ideas as well. (I'm also leaving a lot of setting material off to work out in more detail in supplements.)
5. Be provided with some examples to use throughout the text - currently they are lacking, and are definitely necessary. But I think that if I come up with all of the examples, then there might not be enough variety to help people better understand the system.

In conclusion: If you have any wisdom to share on playtesting, or want to read through the game and give feedback, or anything of the kind, please feel free to let me know. That would be awesome. Even if you can link me to a forum thread that's really helpful (I'm trolling forums for this kind of thing already) that would be great.

Design Journal 10: A Samurai Cuts!

In her book Writing Down the Bones, which I recommend to anyone who writes anything, Natalie Goldberg talks about how, when you are editing your writing, you must be like a samurai. Why? Because a samurai cuts!

I'm finding that is more true of fiction, but it is still true of game design.

It has been a unique challenge. Writing what is essentially an instruction manual, but one that people will want to read, which describes something you do with your imagination.

I'm now doing more editing than writing of new material. It looks like I'll ease past 30,000 words total in the near future. There's no question that given this amount of effort and time I could easily have written 100,000 words of fiction, but designing and writing a game is a lot slower going.

I'm still aiming for finishing the playtesting copies by December so I can send them out and run playtests myself. I'm nervous about it. Because of the time constraints on the whole project, I'll have to send out relatively rough material in some cases. I'll actually be depending on my friends' suggestions and the playtests to let me know if/how this whole thing works. My nagging fear is that I'll try it out and it'll...you know...suck. It won't be fun, it won't make sense, I'll have overlooked massively important systems, or created systems that are broken. And so on.

I don't mind editing, but I hate other people reading what I write, with a few exceptions in a previous Mage game and a current BESM game. I think many people feel this way, actually, but at the very least I do.

There are definite glaring weaknesses in the text as it stands now. Resources in general - money and equipment specifically - have no system that works at all. There is actually, at the moment, no fixed damage system for combat. And no recovery system once you're damaged. Maneuvering is a little shaky, and while I like the concept of "the initiative", I definitely need playtesting to see if my ideas of how it can work stand up.

Basically, I'm putting a lot of weight on playtesting and getting feedback.

But, I keep grinding away. I'm going to finish this thing, and hopefully also not fail any of my classes or let anyone down at my internship in the meantime.

Combat in Gaming

A recent experience with a pretty horrible D&D one-shot got me reflecting on rpg's, their history, central mechanics and GMing as a craft. Yeah, a lot of disparate stuff. This is gonna be stream of consciousness so go somewhere else if that bugs you.

D&D came out of tabletop strategy games. At its heart it always has been (and probably always will be) a combat simulator with some roleplaying elements appended to it. Sure, you can run a D&D game where roleplaying is primary, but you'll end up doing it almost entirely outside the system. The vast bulk of the rules, the massive energy of WoTC R&D and the preference of most of its players keeps D&D focused on battle. Hell, your character has a base attack bonus! What is it for if you're not whacking things on the noggin? Yeah, when you get right down to it, D&D is about combat.

Since it is the granddaddy of our hobby almost every other game out there has similar issues at heart. The Indie gaming scene of late has been fantastic about trying to put story at the center of their games and White Wolf has for a long time been working on more immersive story experiences, rather than hack 'n' slash, but a huge majority of games still include combat as a central element, or the central element of the game. Flip open almost any RPG manual and you might find alot of different things in there, but there is almost bound to be a section on resolving combat. And most players I know, even the hardcore roleplayers, wouldn't be satisfied with a game if combat didn't play a role somewhere in it. It's part of the genes of this hobby that the characters we play end up in violent conflict.

Partly, as I said above, this is due to where RPG's come from - tabletop strategy games. Maybe it's more profoundly anthropological than that. Maybe it's because the root of all games is the kind of playful interaction that teaches baby tigers how to be good predators. Maybe gaming itself is a way that humans have of preparing for warfare. Or maybe we just have such a hard time imagining interesting stories that don't involve violence because we are saturated with it everywhere else in our lives. Movies, television, novels, real-life - violence is a big part of it all. Most likely violence in gaming is just an extension of all that.

Whatever the reason that RPG's are so violent, it is worth having a look to see how much time and energy you put into "combat" as an aspect of your gaming. WoTC, for example, doesn't seem to even ask questions like "why are 90% of our rules about fighting?" Consider the number of man hours being spent on system design so that you and your friends can beat up some orcs. Consider how much time your GM puts into preparing combats (and it's ungodly with D20). Then think about how much time around the table is spent with the mat and minis out. Is that really what this game is about?

Is Wizards of the Coast Killing D&D?

My local game store, Gamescape North, runs a discussion forum for their customers and the local game community. Recently there has been a huge discussion going on about what WotC is doing with D&D 4th Edition. Check out at least the first post in the discussion before you read further.

It seems that WotC is not only doing nothing to support local gaming stores, but is doing multiple things to actively undermine them. Distributors like Amazon and Borders are getting D&D books weeks before local game stores are, and are able to order massive amounts of books and therefore sell them at less of a margin. Their announcement has also ensured that those 3.5 books will be almost impossible to sell over the holiday season.

WotC is also pushing this Gleemax/subscription model drawn from MMOs, which I think is asinine. As many have humorously pointed out, they'll be competing with their own MMO in that market - but it seems to be what they're intent on doing. To use their lame online dungeon software, you'll have to register unique codes from all of the books and expansions you buy - or else you can't use the rules contained in them.

They're also keeping third parties out of the loop on the OGL material. They claim that 4th Ed will be OGL, but I wonder whether it will be meaningfully so? As of now, since 4th is coming out, no one is buying 3.5 anymore and those are gathering dust on the shelves. Third parties are unable to develop new 4th Ed material because WotC is telling them nothing about 4th Ed. So I guess they just sit there twiddling their thumbs and laying off staff or something.

This is bad because the OGL has been great for the hobby. It has allowed an incredible number of creative people to contribute content and has spawned a number of new companies putting out quality material for d20. It looks like, even if 4th Ed eventually goes OGL, the time of rich contributions from third parties might be in a major decline.

Is this anything but a crass money-grab from people who have no interest in the hobby overall beyond their own profit margin? Sorta looks like it.

As I said on the forum linked to above:

Long-term prediction: WotC kills D&D, Hasbro realizes you can't really make money in gaming, and they sell the license to a better company as TSR did one upon a time, and life goes on. 5th Edition comes out at GenCon 2012 to great fanfare and huge paper-mache dragons. By then game stores have had to diversify somewhat, and the industry takes a while to recover, but the WotC D&D Reich has fallen, and we have our damn hobby back.

Rolemaster Express vs HARP (Again)

At the most recent event at my local gaming store, the owner handed me a copy of Rolemaster Express by Iron Crown. It is essentially a boiled-down version of their famous Rolemaster system, which I encountered mostly in the form of MERP.

Having read through it, my response is basically "Yup, that's Rolemaster." Its free, so if you want to get your hands on it, check out the Iron Crown link above and get a copy for yourself. Your generous local gaming store may also have a few copies to hand you if you ask.

There's enough in this slim book to get you acquainted with the rules. Its actually pretty thorough, with a sampling of races, spells and monsters as well as things like basic equipment and the combat rules and so on.

What really struck me, oddly, was the comparison between this free book and HARP, which is about twenty bucks as I recall. First, some of the art in HARP was also in this book - but what appears clearly pixellated and faded in HARP is dark and fresh in Rolemaster Express. It actually makes the HARP book look a bit like a zine that someone made by cutting out art from xeroxes of this Rolemaster book and blowing them up with a scanner or something. But I've already really talked about my frustration with a book that has unprofessional-looking art.

Its just that art is a major expense for the production of any book - and the art in the free book is better than the art in the book they're charging for. That's just weird.

If you want to convince some stingy friends to try out Rolemaster, though, this is the book to use. Its free and contains the basics of the system, ready to use. I'm not going to give it a rating, really, but I recommend it for that purpose.

Design Journal 9: The Initiative

Lastly we come to the initiative, another concept from Parsec that I think of as cool.

When combat in a roleplaying game begins, it usually begins with these two words "Roll initiative!" Everyone knows that now, there's going to be a fight. Get out the damage dice and miniatures. Lay down the combat map. Etc.

When I talk about initiative in Parsec, I am using the word's more common meaning - where initiative just means going first, or more generally perhaps, being pro-active. In Parsec combat, one side starts with the initiative. It is usually the side that started the fight, but if not, then it is the side with the best position, or with some other advantage. In situations where no side has clear initiative, then the first round of combat will determine who has it after that point. For that first round, everyone should act in order of their Resilience scores.

The side with initiative has the privilege of declaring what they are doing first. This means that they will control the tempo and the action to a large degree. In Parsec, you basically get either a normal action in a turn or a long action, depending on what else you do. But you don't get multiple actions. That means that the side with the initiative during a combat can force the other side to defend if they remain aggressive.

For the side without the initiative, the challenge is to use tactics to steal the initiative. It is possible to defend in various ways, depending on terrain, the kind of fight you're in, etc. Also, the side without the initiative has the chance to capitalize on any mistakes the initiating side makes. Attacking usually leaves you vulnerable to counter-attack.

No question, though, having the initiative will be a big advantage. It is one of the things that makes ambush more powerful in this system than in many others, as well as other kinds of tactical decisions. Its rare that in an rpg, combat depends on group tactics per se. Usually its more an issue of how the various individuals work together - or not. I wanted some components to the conflict system that were broader than particular characters' decisions, and the initiative is one of them. I like that the 'tide of battle' is something that is tracked rules-wise and has an impact on what is going on and what decisions you can make in a conflict.

Addendum: I forgot to mention this in the original post, but if you're paying attention, you'll realize that whichever side in a conflict has the initiative also sets the stakes. This means that they define the conditions of their own victory over their opponent. So if one side has the initiative, and they are out to kill the other side, then the stakes of the conflict are "life and death". If, however, they only want to capture their opponents, then the stakes of the conflict are "capture".

When/if the initiative is taken away, then the side that now has the initiative can set new stakes. So, for a simplistic example: a security officer is in a conflict with a suspected criminal. The security officer gets the initiative on the suspect and tries to subdue him. The suspect, however, turns the tables on the officer - capitalizing on a mistake or utilizing a clever tactic. Now, the suspect ups the ante - he feels he needs to incapacitate the officer and get away or else the background check will reveal outstanding warrants for arrest. So in this example, a change in the initiative means a change in stakes from "arrest" to "incapacitation".

Design Journal 8: Orientation, Abstract Combat and Ship Attributes

Continuing in my little series where I talk about specific cool things in the Parsec system, I turn to orientation, abstract combat and ship attributes. These three are crammed together because they are all somewhat connected and I think I can talk about each without taking up too much space.

Orientation

I'm sure other space-combat systems have something like this, but orientation is the system for figuring out what part of my ship is facing what part of your ship. This is to make it easier to target specific parts of a ship - say, the engines or the command deck - and also to bring to bear particular weapon systems on your own ship which are only oriented to be able to fire from a certain position.

As far as the rules are concerned, every object in space is a cube, and each of the six sides corresponds to a particular surface of the ship. In game, you can even use a d6 to represent your ships' orientation if you don't want to revert to expensive models and miniatures. For the names of each side, I went with some nautical terms and some physiological ones - the face, dorsal, ventral, starboard, port and rear surfaces are the terms I'm using for now.

In 3D zero-G combat, its almost impossible to represent what's going on on a 2D surface like your gaming table. Instead, you make maneuvering checks and based on the result, you can determine which side of your target is facing which side of your own ship. At the very least, you can move things to a more favorable position. I think that this system is a simple way to avoid having to keep track of 3D maneuvering on a 2D battle map. All the map is needed for (if you're using it at all) is to determine relative distance between objects. The assumption is always that they are moving dramatically through three dimensions throughout the combat.

Abstract Combat

This is in contrast to what is more common, which in Parsec I just call Tactical Combat - that is, combat involving a battle map, moving a particular number of hexes per turn, finding lines of sight and determining cover, and so on.

Abstract combat relies on the gaming group to supply the dramatic details of what exactly is going on, or how maneuvers look in the game-world. For example, if an opponent is behind cover and you can't get a shot at them, you can take what is called a "long maneuver" to move to a new position from which you can fire on your target with less obstruction. Depending on how well your roll for the long maneuver goes, you will find yourself in a better or worse position at the end of the round.

Of course, while you're moving you can also be targeted, and the new position may or may not have good cover for you to hide behind. Rather than letting this be determined by objects on a battle map, these details are just determined abstractly by dice-rolls and narrated out during the resolution phase.

Ship Attributes

In Parsec, ships have the same attributes that characters have - Power, Precision, Mobility, Connection, Appeal and Resilience. I always got frustrated by systems that made you learn an entirely new set of rules and whatnot for vehicle and spaceship combat. To get around this, I came up with attributes that thoroughly described a person and also described a ship. This means that all of the connections between characters and ships are much more logical and really, both function with essentially the same system. Quicker to learn, quicker to use and to adapt in a game.

I also like the idea that in a setting where, depending on what kind of game it is, a lot of time could be spent aboard a ship, I liked the idea that different ships are like different characters, having some of their own personality. This is reinforced by the fact that both characters and ships use a lifepath-type system to build their backgrounds before the game begins. Again, its another take on the idea of ships and people functioning by the same basic set of rules.

Next time, the final installment on (the) Initiative, as well as some of what's next.

Design Journal 7: 100th Post!

Well, this is the 100th post. Not much of a blog at the moment, really. A few sporadic random hits, some hits from Google searches that send people my way, a few friends who check on a pretty regular basis. Not much more than that. I just don't have the time to post as much as I'd like, and I don't have the time to be as active on forums and other blogs as I'd like to be, which would drum up more hits. Ah well.

As I continue to work on this game, I tell myself that there are some things that are cool about it. The things that come to mind are advancement, orientation, abstract combat, ship attributes and (the) initiative. I'll probably break up a brief discussion of each one, or maybe two at a time, over the next few days.


Advancement

This is usually driven by some sort of experience point or character point system or whatever, in which you save up and then purchase new things for your character progressively. A few systems, like Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Burning Wheel, have you keep track of how often you use abilities and they raise as they see more use.

Of those two options, I prefer the first one for player control of development and the second one for realism. Often in the first case, in a point system, groups I've played with have developed house rules where you can only spend experience points on things you do in-game. This is almost always added onto the rules, however, and in many circumstances points are spent on things that don't come up in game anyway.

What I've done with Parsec is to take what I like from both methods. Advancement is entirely bound to what happens in-game, but what happens narratively rather than mechanically. The first way to advance is to achieve a Goal, spelled out during character creation and also while developing a group template.

The second way to advance is to face an Obstacle - whether or not you overcome it. Obstacles are also part of character creation and group template building, and I like that you advance whether you succeed or not. These are also separate from Goals. Meaningful Goals aren't just overcoming Obastacles - there is also something positive to be achieved.

The third way to advance is through either learning Secrets or having your Secrets revealed. Essentially, Secrets are a big part of a game that is intended to be at least somewhat driven by intrigue and conspiracy, and in a story secrets are meant to come out. If the Secrets were developed well in the beginning, when they are revealed it'll be a big moment for the game and for the character(s) in question.

The fourth way to advance is to receive Scars. As mentioned a couple of times before, Scars make you tougher - they modify Resilience the way that Skills modify the other Attributes (lower the target number). They also hurt, and count as anti-Traits - in certain situations, you will lose dice because of the Scar. Not every injury or setback or betrayal will leave a Scar, but when it does happen, your character has learned something. This also encourages the kind of actions that will lead to Scars - dangerous and emotionally charged ones, which are exactly the kinds of things that make a game fun in the first place.

Design Journal 6: A Change of Pace

I've realized that I have probably made a mistake in the last three Design Journal posts. They were essentially barrages of information, and in retrospect I've decided that this Journal will do better as just that - a journal. As I move through the process of designing, playtesting, and editing a game for publication in the coming year (I hope!), it will be nice to have some sort of chronicle of the process. Being a first-timer in this sort of endeavor, I'm sure that things will happen which were unforseen.

I've heard that you're not supposed to edit as you write, but I'm not sure that's true of game designs. Yesterday and today I spent a lot of time on airplanes, meaning I had lots of time to kill while sandwhiched in at 30,000 feet. Before I left I printed out the current rought draft of Parsec, now at just over 13,000 words, to look over.

I definitely found a lot of things I'd missed and plenty of weak spots, but what surprised me was that reading through the project, I actually felt like it was pretty good. Normally I don't read things after I finish them because I tend to hate what I write after the fact - but I could really see places where I think the text flowed well. Its a challenge to write rules - its like writing an instruction manual that someone will want to read. As always, its turning out to be harder than I imagined.

As I work on Parsec, I have to find a happy medium between what the publisher seems to want and what I want in the game. We don't want the same things, but I think we want compatible things. Ultimately, he'll be the arbiter of whether the finished product is going to print. I hope so, and he remains interested and engaged with the project. If not, as I said, I'll print the damn thing myself. I can lose the parts of the game that came from his setting ideas, make it more generic probably, add some story game elements, drop some systems I don't need, and go.

So either way, I'll finish the damn game. I know it will be a painful process - it alread is, and it isn't like I've quit my jobs to do this full-time.

But I also find that I consistently enjoy working on it. Its is engaging and challenging and rewarding in its own way. Whether anyone else will think so is another matter.

In Rainbows

This is not related to gaming at all, but its important nonetheless. In case you didn't already know, Radiohead has released a new album. Its available for download from their website. You name your price for the download. Yes, "zero" is an option for the price.

I really want to support this kind of activity by artists. I like cutting out distributors entirely from the creative process, except in situations where they are actually needed. For music, which everyone buys in digitial form anyway, there's no reason to pay $20 for an album so the artist can get $1 from it. That system screws everyone but the distributor.

I'm also excited that a huge band like Radiohead is doing this. You may remember Radiohead from hearing about their album "Ok Computer" which was hailed by Spin magazine as the best album in 20 years.

If you haven't heard of Radiohead, but you like music, you might want to give them a listen. They're one of the biggest rock bands in the world, and have consistently set records in terms of concert attendance.

You can get the album here.

I finally had the chance (and the money) to pick up the Game Mastery Critical Hit Deck put out by Paizo Publishing. I'd heard about it a few months ago, and it was an Ennie Awards nominee in 2006, so clearly I'm late to the game, but regardless I think it was a good buy.

It actually does something similar to what HARP/Rolemaster tries to do with its critical damage tables - to make damage dealt in combat feel unique, and not just another chunk out of an opponent's hit points or whatever measure you're using.

Basically, when a critical hit is "confirmed" (a'la the D20 rules), you draw a card from the deck. One each card are four descriptions of different effects that a critical hit might entail - for Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing and Magical attacks. Each gives you a special effect of some kind that is far more colorful than simply double damage. Examples include dealing double damage and switching places with your target (Magical), battering someone so they have memory loss (Bludgeoning), jamming your weapon in an opponent's mouth (Piercing) and permanently blinding an opponent (Ref negates).

I think this would work well in a cinematic game where only PCs get to use the deck, and also for a grittier game where NPCs and monsters can also use it, upping the threat ante in any encounter. Its also probably adaptible to other systems that have a critical hit function of some kind that you want to spice up. You can easily ignore the little notes about D20 effects of each blow and just translate them into the system you're using.

Overall, I'm not sure how to rate this one, but I'll give it a 4.5 out of 5, because it does exactly what it is supposed to do in a fun and simple way, but it would be perfect if it was a bit more accommodating to use with other systems.

H.A.R.P. High Adventure Role-Playing...

...is overrated.

HARP is the scion of ICE, the publishers of the venerable Rolemaster system, which I primarily experienced through Middle-Earth Role-Playing, or MERP. If you've played Rolemaster, you doubtless have vivid memories of massive critical tables and a great deal of page-turning during combat.

HARP uses a percentile system where d100 is rolled and a character's Attribute (rated from 1-110) and skill modifier is added to the roll. If the roll totals more than 100, you succeed. More difficult tasks have penalties from -10 and worse, and very simple tasks will have a bonus to them.

There are the standard fantasy races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halvings and Gnomes) with a new race called the Gryx. HARP still has the critical tables we remember from Rolemaster, somewhat modified but still quite recognizeable. In a lot of ways, HARP is an improved version of Rolemaster. It has a lot of problems, though.

HARP won best non-d20 game at GenCon 2004, so there are plenty of people who disagre with me. I'm also sure that a good GM and a good group of players can make any game fun, including HARP. The problem is HARP's complexity. Its a game that involves a lot of rolls and tables and arithmetic. For example, to cast a spell which can be resisted, you make your spellcasting skill roll, then compare the result to your target's resistance attribute, then you look up both of those numbers and cross-reference them on a Resistance Table in order to find the modifier to the defender's roll to resist the spell. Then if the spell strikes home, you roll a damage roll and look up that roll on a critical table. Based on this table, you find out how many Health Points the target has lost, or what the affect is otherwise (if it is a non-damaging spell for example), as well as other effects that might result from the damage.

(If you don't want to handle everything quite this way, there is an optional Life Points system that is even more complicated, because you first have to calculate the normal Health Point damage and then translate it into Life Points.)

I also have to mention the production values of the game. The inerior artwork is all greyscale, which is fine, but it is possible to see pixellation in much of the interior art. This is pretty much unacceptable. Use some vector art, people! If Luke Crane can afford it for the revised edition of Burning Wheel, which is self-published, I think that ICE can as well.

The thing is - most of the time, when reading through a game, I can think of ways I'd improve it. That's where all my house rules come from. There really isn't a game that I play directly out of the book. But reading Harp, I found so much I would have changed. I think there is potential there, even in a d100 system where there is a little more arithmetic than is normal. Even involving the infamous critical tables.

Here's what would have to happen:
1. Get rid of Life Points, Health Points, and so on. They're derivative and not interesting nor fun. Track wounds individually, since you've already listed the effects and description in the critical tables.
2. Get rid of the Gryx. Instead, add rules for designing players' own races, because anyone can come up with an Orc-Klingon looking guy and stat him up.
3. Unify the tables into a couple tables with multiple columns. Too much page flipping makes me not have fun anymore.
4. Get rid of classes. Just have experience lead to Development Points, which are already in use, and give everything a Development Point cost.
4.1 If you're not going to get rid of classes, differentiate them from D&D more clearly. Since D20 is also an additive dice system, and it simpler, you need to stand out to get people to play the game.
5. Look at the art in a self-published indie game. Then put in art that is twice as good, because you have more money at your disposal than some guy in his garage with desktop publishing software. There's no excuse for a publisher's offering having visible pixels in the illustrations and artwork.
6. Simplify combat. I didn't want to get into the rules in this brief review, but there's a lot of rules you could toss out, simplify and unify to make it a more streamlined system - especially if you also expect players to be flipping to critical tables every time they throw down.


Give that, some positives:
1. I like how they handle half-races. Essentially, you take a bloodline trait that gives some bonuses and can be a lesser or a greater bloodline depending on how far removed you are from the second race.
2. I actually like the idea of tables for descriptive wounds and effects. They just need to be much-better-implemented.

The main positive of HARP is a nostalgia factor for Rolemaster players. I've got to give it 2 out of 5 stars - there's just so much they could have done better.

Steal Away Jordan

Steal Away Jordan, as far as I know, first debuted at GenCon 2007 this summer. The impression I've gotten is that if you talked to anyone who is at all interested in Indie games who attended GenCon, they'll have said something about Steal Away Jordan, which is currently available from Indie Press Revolution.

It is a game by Julia Ellingboe. The tagline is "Stories from America's Peculiar Institution" - yes, the game is about American slavery. In the game, you play the part of a slave in the American South. Your main attribute is your worth - your die-pool for use in conflicts in the game is based on your economic worth to your owners. Things like your name and what you do for a living seem to be determined by the GM - which seems like the right mechanic for a game about what happens when you have no freedom.

Right now I'm listening to an actual play presentation being done by The Game Master Show podcast from GenCon, with the writer/creator of the game running a demo of the system for one of the Show's members. The dice-mechanic involves rolling d6's equal to your worth in a conflict, where 1's count as a -1 and where any two dice that total 7 (without 1's that is - 4 and 3 or 5 and 2) count as +1. Whoever has the highest total wins the conflict and gets to describe what happens.

As you can imagine, things just get worse and worse. And worse. Julia is actually pretty gentle about the way the game functions, which is probably important, given how horrible the situations it describes are. The game ends with the only PC jumping off of a wagon on the way to her new home (where she was sold to) and trying to run and being shot in the back. The player got to narrate how she died when the die dictated that it would happen.

Then something really interesting happens. The player's husband comes over to the table and talks about how uncomfortable this makes him, the idea of playing a slave in a game. The game has led to this interesting and candid conversation about racial issues in our country. Julia handles it really well, and has a great chance to talk about overcoming stereotypes. In fact, the discussion of the game and the issues it brings up takes longer than playing the actual game. Fascinating.

Come to think of it, I think this is what the game is really about. Julia says "this is our history". And that's the truth.

Clearly, this is a game that deals directly with very uncomfortable topics. According to the creator, one of the things she intended with the game was for Americans to be able to deal with each other and with the history of slavery. She sees slavery as something that has hurt everyone in this country, that has caused nothing but pain, and one way to deal with this pain is to do so through a game.

I think this is an interesting idea, one I've encountered before and one I've given some thought to myself. It is possible to deal with things in a game that we don't feel able to deal with otherwise. I've even tried this in games - its just the sort of person I am. I think important stories talk about things that we deal with in life in some way. The game has to have teeth now and then. The story has to strike home. Not all the time - this is an Escape after all! - but sometimes you have to dig because it makes the experience better overall, and sometimes you get the chance to deal with things in a new way.

On the other hand, you can design a game like Steal Away Jordan, where the point of the game is this kind of process. It is a teaching game, in a sense. Another example that comes to mind is The Prince's Kingdom. Sale of the game goes to support the American Friends Service Committee and the game is a way to deal with issues of violence and nonviolence and justice with children - while also having fun of course. I'm sure there are others I'm not aware of.

I doubt games like this will take off and replace Dungeons and Dragons as the gaming lingua franca, but I found Steal Away Jordan really fascinating to think about.

Character Success Vs. Player Success

In more than one of the games I've played in over the years, truly terrible things have happened to my characters - and almost all the time, I'm happy about it. The reason for this is that I have a distinct view of character success and player success.

Character success is easy to like. You roll well, or spend points well, or however the system works, and your character wins in the conflict or gets what she wants. I think that at a very basic level, character victory = player victory. When I first started playing, I felt great when my character won and frustrated when he lost.

Over time, though, I started t realize that the two need not be the same. I had a few situations where things went bad for my character, but it was funny, or exciting, or made the game more interesting, and I forgot to be frustrated and had a good time. As time went on, my victory as a player became more and more independent of my characters' victories.

I started to play with this idea more and more. I would do things that I knew would be detrimental, but would be fun or make things more interesting. Not in the obnoxious sense of escalating every situation or doing things that made no sense just to derail the game - I was thinking about how I could improve the game by my characters' successes and their failures.

This led to more thinking about the game-as-such, which I've continued to develop as I've become aware of a lot of Indie games and RPG theory (the pretension-lite versions) that deals with the game-as-such more in their rules and thinking.

I think this results in a win-win situation for the game as a whole. If your failures are thoughtful, even planned like this one was last night, then the game is improved when things go well and when things to terribly...for your character. Either way, its more fun for you as a player.

--> As a side-note, this is also a great way to get over cheating on the dice, or to help other players stop doing that. In RPGs, when you roll the dice, there are usually so many modifiers that you can fudge a roll if you feel you have to - I've done it in the past and I've seen it done in most games I've been in at one point or another. Realizing that player victory does not have to equal character victory gets over this.

--> On the other hand, sometimes its just dramatically better if you win. In this case, I prefer games with some kind of mechanic that lets you weight some rolls or actions more than others - White Wolf has Willpower (and Vitae, Quintessence and other spendables), Burning Wheel has Artha, Mortal Coil uses tokens for everything, Exalted has stunt dice, BESM has Energy (and my friend has come up with a cool token system to use as well), D&D has the optional Action Points...you get the idea. I think these kinds of things are absolutely necessary - but its a lot better if you use resources like this with the overall game in mind, and not just your character's victories.

Design Journal 5: System and So On (Rough)

Three: System

The Basics

As mentioned previously, Parsec uses a system wherein six-sided dice are rolled in groups against a target number, where every number showing equal to or higher than the target number is counted as a “success”. The shorthand for writing the number of dice to roll is a number followed by “d”; for example, “5d” means “five six-sided dice.” To represent the target number, we use “@” followed by the target number, written after the number of dice. So, for example, “5d@3” is shorthand for “five six-sided dice against a target number of 3”. In that situation, you would roll five dice, and 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s would all count as successes.

So, all you need to know is how many dice you’re rolling and what the target number is. Your Skill will determine the target number, as described in the Skill section, so most of the rules are focused on figuring out how many dice you roll.

You always start with the Attribute in question, whether it is a character’s Attribute or a ships’ Attribute. This Attribute gives you your base dice-pool, or the starting number of dice you have. This total is then modified by a few different things – dice are either added to the total or subtracted from it.

If your character is doing something and no one is trying to stop her, then the only important thing is the number of successes you roll – the more successes come up, the better you do. If someone is trying to stop your character, however, then you compare your successes to theirs, and the one with the higher number wins. Ties go to no-one – neither character succeeds in what they are intending to do.

There are three categories of things that modify the number of dice you roll. The first are your Traits. No more than one positive Trait can modify a given roll, but both positive and negative Traits all modify rolls – otherwise, there isn’t much reason to mention them as far as game rules go.

The second thing that modifies the number of dice you roll is your Equipment. There aren’t many things you can do without the right tools, so in many cases there will be a penalty for not having the right Equipment. There are special items, however, which are very well-suited to what they do, or are very high-quality, which will give bonuses to Skill rolls when they are used. Like Traits, these modifiers don’t generally change, so they are easy to keep track of. In item descriptions, any bonuses or penalties associated with the item will be listed.

The third thing that modifies the number of dice you roll is the Situation. Unlike Traits and Equipment, the Situation modifier changes constantly. In most cases, it is the Director’s job to keep track of Situation modifiers – it is also the Director’s job to make those clear, unless there is a reason the PCs wouldn’t know about them.

Conflict

Terrestrial Combat (range, cover, tactics, melee, movement, weapons and armor, grenades, firearm types)

Space Combat

Advancement

Four: Setting

Civilization

Technology

Conspiracy

Space Travel

Five: Advice

Story

Adversity

Design

Design Journal 4: Character (Rough)

This is the very rough Character section of Parsec - thus far.

Two: Character

Everything Starts With A Story

In order to create a Character in Parsec, you have to have a story. It doesn’t have to be detailed, or filled with adventure – those will come once the game starts. Rather, this story is your Character’s story – her history up to the point that the game starts. What is her family like? Where did she grow up? What did she study in school? What does she do for a living? What, or who, does she truly love? And what has happened in the past to hurt her? Those are the first questions you need to answer for your Character.

There Are A Couple of Ways to Do This

When you’re creating a Character, you make decisions about the Character’s story and these determine what kinds of things your Character will be capable of doing in the game – what she’ll be good at, who she’ll know, what she’ll own, and so on. This is one method, and it leads to pretty balanced characters who are ready to go. Another method is to just tell your character’s story up to this point, plug some numbers in (once you know what they mean of course), and go! This chapter assumes that you’re taking the first option, since if you’re taking the second option, there isn’t much we have to tell you.

Birth
Even in the future, where you’re born has a lot to do with what your life will be like. Its unlikely, but possible, that you were born ‘offworld’, that is, not on Earth. You might have been born on one of the geosynchronous space stations surrounding the Earth, or on Luna (the Moon), on Mars, or even on one of the distant colonies on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

One important thing about where you’re born is that it will help determine where the game takes place and even what kind of game it is. All of the Players need to talk about what kind of game they want to play so that everyone’s Character fits together from the beginning. This is called a group template, and it is just a way to keep Characters from being redundant (no one needs two hotshot space pilots – unless that’s what you want) or from being too hard to get together for the start of the story (“You all meet in a space cantina…”).

When you decide where your character was born and what her family is like, you need to determine whether she is a Citizen or a Pariah. Citizens are born to privilege, and have the benefit of gene therapy and medical care from birth. They are the oligarchy of the solar system, and the majority of the people in space. Most of them have positions in the world government or in a major corporation virtually guaranteed. On Earth, they live in sealed arcologies protected by security personnel, and if they commute to work at all they do so in sealed commuter tubes riding maglev trains. Citizens start with higher Attributes and will have more Property than Pariahs. The main languages spoken by Citizens are Portugese, Mandarin and English.

Pariahs live on the edges of society – and those edges are vast. For every Citizen, there are at least 10 Pariahs, living in tenements and slums all over the world, sleeping in factory dormitories or in tiny berths in space. Pariahs do not have the full rights of Citizenship. Their main options are to either join the military police or indenture themselves in the hope of earning citizenship for their children. The common languages for Pariahs are Arabic, English, French and Afrikaans. Pariahs – the ones who survive – are tougher than Citizens, physically and psychologically. They have seen more and have had to endure far more, and are much harder to break.

You also need to decide whether your character was Terraborn or Colonyborn. If she was Terraborn, she is pretty ‘normal’ for a human being. She may make the move to space, but she will be unaccustomed to long periods of time spent in zero-G and will need to become acclimated. If she was Colonyborn, she is unusual, and there will be something different about her. Reproduction in fully artificial settings, even with artificial gravity and excellent medical care, is still unpredictable. She will have one negative Trait as a result, physical or psychological. However, she is already acclimated to work and live in zero-G. In fact, her problems will come when she is someplace where the gravity is constant, like Mars or Earth, for a long period of time – it is like a sailor having to get their “sea legs”, and is disorienting at first.

Education

Education might be take place in a government orphanage or school, in a private academy, or on the mean streets of a slum. This part of your character’s story covers her late childhood and adolescence, and it is the time when your character will learn her basic Skills. It is also when she will begin to build Relationships.

Work

Only the very wealthy can afford not to work at all, and they will still have hobbies or pastimes of some kind. For most of the rest of humanity, if you don’t work, you starve. (For many, you work and starve.) Work is what you do. It is the stage where you choose which of your basic skills you have improved in, and how far.

In Parsec, there is a lot of specialization. General education is for the most part something of the past, and jacks of all trades are rare. If you are a Citizen, you are valued for the way you function in society, the way you contribute, and to make this contribute as efficient and predictable as possible, you are strongly encouraged to specialize. If you are a Pariah, you often have a little more bredth of skill, but it is very difficult to survive as a migrant worker, so at some point you settle down into some kind of work, and that will still be what you are best at.

Characters will have a Relationship to their employer and to society in general. They may also have Relationships with coworkers or adults they know socially.

Passion

Your Passions are what really drive you. You might be religious or love art. You might be deeply in love or have children you care for. You might have a cause or a vision that drives you. Through your Passion, you build further Relationships, you might gain some new Skills, and most importantly, you tell the Director what you want your character’s story to really be about.

Scars

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If only this were true. What does kill you Scars you – you survive, and are probably marked forever, but you are also stronger in a certain sense. Your Scars don’t just provide great ways to develop your character’s story – their game effect is to add weaknesses to your character which will drive the story forward. They also increase your character’s Resilience – despite the Scars, you did survive, and you learned how to survive better next time. Fear, Pain, Privation and Temptation are the four things that Resilience helps you resist – and your Scars make you better at doing so.

Attributes

One of the most fundamental things about your character are her Attributes. These are basic measurements of what she’s good at and where she’s weak. The amount of dice she rolls for a given conflict will be mostly based on her Attributes. In Parsec, there are six of them: Power, Mobility, Precision, Connection, Appeal and Resilience. (These are also the Attributes that every spaceship has – more on that in the Space Conflict section in the next chapter.) For human beings, an Attribute of around 4 is average.

Power is a measure of physical strength and overall health, including endurance. Energetic athletes and muscular soldiers have a high Power score. Power helps keep you from getting tired when you exert yourself, and it also helps in any conflict that involves strength or physical prowess.

For spaceships, Power is the amount of energy that a ship has available to dedicate to different tasks. It is the output of the ships engine at any given time, as well as the amount of reserve energy a spaceship has.

Mobility is physical speed and agility, and also represents how accustomed a character is to working and living and maneuvering in zero-G. Acrobats and characters who spend most of their time in space have high Mobility scores, and without a decent score working in zero-G can be incredibly disorienting.

Spaceships depend on Mobility to maneuver, which is absolutely crucial in combat.

Precision is not only hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills but also the ability to reason quickly and decisively. It involves some critical thinking as well as accuracy with most weapons. Skilled technicians and stealthy assassins have high Precision scores.

For spaceships, Precision is the quality and speed of the targeting software of the ships’ weapons as well as the speed of the central processor. It also represents the sensory instruments the ship has and how much detailed information it can receive.

Connection represents the ability of a character to find and understand information. With worldwide information networks, memorization is no longer an important skill. Even offline, vast stores of raw information are available at any time. The trick is to understand what information is important, and how it all fits together. Researchers and social networkers have high Connection scores, and they know how to find things and people in any situation.

For a spaceship, Connection represents what is available on board and how connective the ship is to whatever networks might be available. It also represents how powerful the ship’s communication array is.

Appeal is physical attractiveness as well as social skills. It is the ability to get what you want from people when you meet them in person. Sexy socialites and clever spies have high Appeal scores.

For spaceships, Appeal is not only how shiny and smooth the ship appears – it is also the ship’s service record and reputation. If you want respect, or at least work, for the ship then it needs high Appeal.

Resilience is simply how tough a character is. Slum scavengers and spiritual gurus have high Resilience. Resilience helps you resist fear, pain, privation and temptation. Resilience is increased when things go wrong for your character but she survives to fight another day.

For spaceships, Resilience is simply how well the ship holds together when it is stressed or under attack. Space is a hostile environment without taking into account pirates and privateers waiting for the next score. Resilience is increased by armor, shielding and reinforcement of a spaceship’s design

Skills

Skills represent what your character is good at. Anyone can attempt to do any task, even lacking the requisite skill, but the roll is going to be against the Default target number of 6, meaning that only 6s will count as successes. This means that significant success is very unlikely without at least some skill.

Any significant training in a Skill gives your character a Basic rating. That means that when she uses this skill, the target number is 5 – so 5s and 6s count as successes. Basic represents a talented beginner or someone who has just begun to train in a new skill. The next step in training is Intermediate. For Intermediate Skills, the target number is 4 – so 4s, 5s and 6s count as successes. Intermediate training is at the low end of professional Skill but enough to earn a living. It is appropriate for an apprenticeship or an internship, or possibly a Bachelor’s degree equivalent. After Intermediate, a Skill is raised to Advanced. With an Advanced Skill, the target number for rolls becomes a 3 – so 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s count as successes. Advanced skill is a high-level professional making significant contributions to their field or with plenty of responsibility. The highest level of Skill a person normally has is Master. With a Master Skill, everything but 1s count as successes. Masters in a given Skill are rare, and are almost always well-known. Masters of a given field are the ones who make the breakthroughs. Masters of professional Skills are renowned and sought-after.

Each Attribute has Skills which are linked to it. The level of the Attribute determines how many dice are rolled for that skill. So, for example, a character with a Power of 5 has 5 dice to attempt a grapple or to lift a heavy object. The target number for the roll is based on the Skill that applies in the situation. Here are the Skills for each Attribute:

Power: Striking, Hand Weapons, Athletics

Mobility: Zero-G, Acrobatics, Evasion

Precision: Firearms, Gunnery, Larceny, Analysis

Connection: Research, Networking, Science, Navigation

Appeal: Deception, Seduction, Persuasion, Intimidation

Resilience: Fear, Pain, Privation, Temptation (Remember, these are a bit different from normal skills…)

Traits

Traits are a further way to describe your character. Every Trait either adds dice or subtracts dice from particular kinds of rolls. Of course you can describe your character in ways that aren’t represented by Traits as well, but Traits are aspects of your character that are not covered by Attributes and Skills but that still affect the dice you roll in a conflict.

Traits are selected based on the work you’ve done in character creation, and they can also be awarded during the course of the game. Spaceships also have Traits, which are a way to customize a ship in a way that has an effect on the game.

Relationships

A character has many relationships, but only a few of them need to be mentioned I character creation. Minor relationships can come up organically in-game – there are even rules for that, which we’ll talk about in the System chapter.

In character creation, you begin with a story, and we break that story into five categories: Birth, Education, Profession, Passion and Scars. For each of these categories, a PC needs to have one major relationship. Relationships brought out in this way need to be ones that will have bearing in the game if possible, or at least influential ones for the character herself. In writing down what your character’s significant Relationships are, you as a player are telling the other players and the Director part of what you want the game to be about.

Birth: the Relationship from this category is almost certainly a family relationship – it could be a parent or a sibling, a grandparent, and so on. This Relationship might also be someone from an orphanage or a foster system if the character doesn’t have living parents or doesn’t know who her parents are.

Education: this Relationship is most likely a friend or a mentor who was influential during your character’s formative years.

Profession: the main Relationship here is going to be with the character’s employer or patron. Who does the character work for? If the character is self-employed, there will still be professional relationships based on what your character does.

Passion: this Relationship could be to an individual or an organization. In the case of an individual, that individual is very likely your character’s significant other – spouse, lover, and so on. This Relationship is probably the one that your character fears to lose more than any other. This Relationship is one that the Director is almost certainly going to push in some way.

Scars: Relationships drawn from your Scars are very like with antagonists, even enemies. Who are the people who are scarred you? What did they do? What is your relationship like now?

Profile

Here you take a chance to step back and look at your character overall. What stands out? What themes have emerged? What do you need to ‘flesh out’ or expand on in their background? Do you need to switch any Traits around to make more sense? How will this character fit with the other characters and with the overall game as your group has envisioned it? And so on.

Property

It isn’t important that you write down every object that your character possesses. In fact, its probably just going to slow the game down. In some situations, it will be important to know what your character is carrying with her – the Director should let you know when that is, and there is a place on the character sheet to write down what you have on your person.

Aside from some specific items you have on your and a few major things you own such as ships or vehicles or homes, everyday objects can just be assumed to be available. The game system that determines whether you can afford a given piece of property is your Status. Status is pretty much equivalent with financial wealth – there is some variety here, but the powerful are also the wealthy and vice-versa.

Status is determined in a cumulative way by your Birth, Education and Profession, as well as whether you are a Citizen or a Pariah.

Spaceship Building

Spaceships are built, in game terms, much the same way that characters are created. It is very rare that the ship your character might be living in or serving on was built yesterday, and it is also unlikely that it hasn’t been tampered with at all since it came off the assembly line. The rigors of space travel alone require constant upkeep and maintenance, as well as sometimes drastic repairs. Also, once a ship is out, it might change hands, peacefully or otherwise, and be put to uses that weren’t the original intent – piracy, smuggling and so on.

As mentioned earlier, spaceships have the same Attributes that characters have, though they mean slightly different things. Often, on a ship, the ship’s Attributes determine die-pools for the crew’s Skill rolls. That is, if your ship only has a Connection of 2, because of a damaged communications array for example, it doesn’t matter if your character is a master computer scientist. There just isn’t the Connection available to accomplish much. On the other hand, if your ship has a Precision of 8, almost any idiot sitting in the gunner’s chair is going to be able to do some damage because of the superb targeting system and HUD.

Resilience, as mentioned above, functions differently for spaceships (and any vehicles, but we’re just concerned with spaceships here). Resilience protects against four things: Concussion, Electromagnetism and Radiation. (Yes I know heat is radiation…) A given ship will have different ratings against different kinds of damage that it might encounter in space.

Concussion is obvious. Things banging into the ship, including other ships, small asteroids, and so on. Bear in mind that it is the job of the astrogator and the sensor array to make sure that the ship doesn’t bang into anything on long-term, high-speed trips. Hitting a tiny meteroid at thousands of miles per hour on a trip from the Moon to Gannymede will be disastrous. Fortunately, space is very, very empty. This reinforcement is more concerned with someone banging on the ship, or other mishaps that happen when maneuvering tactically.

Electromagnetism is a threat when maneuvering near things like neutron stars or planets with strong magnetic fields, but electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is a very popular way to incapacitate a ship. If you don’t want to have your hardware fried, you’re going to need specific kinds of shielding and system redundancy to deal with this kind of threat.

Radiation, including heat, is simple – most military-grade weapons function by essentially blowing up near you or burning a hole in you. A missile, for example, is both Concussion and Radiation, whereas a laser is Radiation alone. If a hole is burned in your ship, all of your air (and possibly your crew) will be vented out into space, so heat shielding is crucial. Also, if the ship is intended to enter and exit any significant atmosphere, or to travel anywhere near an active star, Heat will be a serious threat. Space is actually full of all kinds of Radiation, and what dosen’t fry you in the short-term will probably fry you in the long-term