Epic: Attributes

Like almost every other rpg system, Epic starts with a set of attributes that define your character at her most basic level. Epic has ten attributes, or five categories each with two attributes. The categories are also meaningful, and I like how it all breaks down.

The five categories are Vigor, Reflexes, Clarity, Influence and Anima. Each of these represents a pool of points you can spend in-game to accomplish various tasks, either without resorting to the dice or by augmenting the dice somehow.

Vigor is used to resist fatigue and to engage in brief bursts of strength or activity. It is also what is lost when one is wounded or worn down from exertion. Under the category of Vigor are Strength and Endurance, which are both pretty self-explanatory. Vigor is restored by resting, eating and sleeping.

Reflexes are spent in combat or in other physical tests to react to unforeseen events. For example, if you have declared that you are, say, attacking someone with your sword, but notice at the last moment that another opponent is behind you with a spear, you can spend a point of Reflexes to turn and respond to the new threat. Or, if you are making your way along a narrow ledge and slip, you can spend a point of Reflexes to catch yourself at the last minute on a root or a handhold in the rock. You're still in dire straits, but one intention behind this is to prevent PCs from dying for what I think are stupid reasons - falling into holes or botching climb checks. Not very heroic. Under the category of Reflexes are Dexterity and Perception, which again are pretty self-explanatory. I'm actually not sure yet how Reflexes should be restored - for now I just have a relatively arbitrary idea where it is regained at particular points in the story - for now, whenever the GM (or Fate) decides.

Clarity is spent to ignore distractions, and can also be used as a way for the player to coax information about the game out of the GM. To solve a puzzle quickly or to cut to the core of an issue (example of help from the GM), Clarity is what you use. When trying to use fine motor skills or make quick decisions when under fire, or to resist being seduced, Clarity is what you use. Under the category of Clarity are Reason and Learning. Reason includes skills with formal logic and problem-solving as well as cunning and wits. Learning includes not only academic learning, but also life experience that make the character wiser. Clarity is regained through deep, uninterrupted sleep.

Influence is spent to call upon NPCs and organizations that support the PC during the game. It is a way for the PC to manipulate how the game plays out and who is involved. Often it is best for the PC to define what kind of NPC she is looking for with the Influence expenditure. Influence can take many forms, from calling in favors from the nobility to finding members of an old gang to locating a fellow lore-master to discuss natural philosophy with. Influence can also be a method for a player who isn't very charismatic to charm or intimidate an NPC. In the category of Influence are Presence and Appeal. Presence is the force of personality that the character can bring to bear, where Appeal includes not only physical attractiveness but how trustworthy the character appears, for example - what their Credit Rating is, for those of you who play Call of Cthulhu. Appeal is one thing that even a brief fight will reduce quickly, and governs first impressions. Influence is regained at a rate determined by the GM - the rate will be quicker when the characters are around more people, and will be much slower when they are in the wilderness and are disconnected from their contacts and relationships.

Finally, Anima is spend to power Gifts - the heroic (or villainous) supernatural and magical abilities that player-characters have in Epic. It is also used to call upon Intrinsic Magic, and is also involved in the technological innovation and "tinkering" system - essentially, Anima is what drives amazing things. This will be dealt with in more detail later on. Under Anima are Will and Vision. Will is relatively self-explanatory. Vision has the sense of "visionary" - it includes imagination and creativity as well as the power of the character's drives. Vision is what prophets, artists and inventors all have. Anima is regained through spiritual relationships and introspection.

To review: Vigor, Reflexes, Clarity, Influence and Anima represent pools of points which are spent to accomplish things with dice and without dice, and which can also be gained and lost as the game progresses based on what happens to the character. Skills, on the other hand, are rooted in Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Perception, Reason, Knowledge, Appeal, Presence, Will and Vision. These attributes also have effects on their own, which we'll also get into later on.

Resolution Systems

Last night Doug ran a great one-shot introduction to the Burning Wheel system. Aside from his good work as a GM we had a wonderful, mature bunch of players that really got into playing their roles, using accents, gestures, and movements to embody their characters. Fun was had all around.

Through a very simple storyline with archetypal Middle-Earth characters Doug introduced us to the major mechanics of the game - Artha, Combat Scripting and a Duel of Wits. All in all, I'm pretty impressed with Burning Wheel. It plays more exciting than it seems and it lends itself very well to storytelling. There are some glitches I would want to patch with house rules and it does lean toward the gritty side rather than the heroic side (which is normally my preference), but it's a very clever and fun little game.

What my interactions with Burning Wheel and a few other Indie RPG's out there have led me to reflect on is the nature of what I'm calling "Resolution Systems" in an RPG. Resolution Systems are what make a roleplaying game a game. They are the mechanics which everyone goes through in order to determine whether the actions being taken resolve themselves favorably or unfavorably (and for whom). It is popular for Resolution Systems to involve dice in some manner, though there are also diceless games and games which use cards, or coins or other methods. The main requirement for a Resolution System is that it follow some basic rules known to all the players which in some fashion restrict the possible outcomes of a situation.

Resolution Systems are good. Even live-action games use basic Resolution Systems. I stress, without a Resolution System a game is simply not a game - it is something else, possibly something fun, but not really a game. One reason gamers like myself play is we like the intellectual/puzzle-solving aspect of attempting to operate within the parameters of the Resolution System provided in order to come out with the best possible result. For this to be effective and fun the Resolution System needs to do a few things:

1. It needs to be limiting in the right degree. Systems that are too restrictive railroad players into predetermined results removing all suspense. Systems that are too loose do not permit sufficient predictability for the players to have confidence that their actions matter.
2. It needs to be relatively unobtrusive. Different players like different levels of complexity in the rules, but ultimately the Resolution System is a means to an end, not an end in itself, so it should be simple enough to keep the game moving.
3. It needs to be fair. The players need to have confidence that the system isn't rigged against them, and that they can actually achieve success by playing within the rules.

Those are sort of the bare minimum things the Resolution System needs to do, however, what the Indie RPG designers are demonstrating is that a Resolution System can do more than this. Indeed, it could be argued that a Resolution System isn't fully developed unless it takes into account these other factors:

1. Theme. If possible a Resolution System should fit within or even help establish the theme of the game. Using a poker bidding system in a game about Riverboat Gamblers is an example.
2. Simulation. What types of situations do you envision this system resolving? The Resolution System should be flexible enough to effectively simulate the situations you intend with the degree of accuracy you desire.
3. Rewards. Since your players will be rewarded with success when they play the system correctly you should think about what types of behaviors you want to reward and plan the system accordingly. If you reward players for killing monsters the game will be mostly about hunting and fighting monsters.

The Duel of Wits from Burning Wheel is a great example of a Resolution System that takes these latter 3 things into account. The theme of Burning Wheel is very Tolkeinian and one feature of this style of fantasy is the confrontation with an opponent in a public arena where credibility is on the line. The Duel of Wits helps establish the overall theme of Burning Wheel by providing a means for players to simulate scenes like the confrontation with Wormtongue. This answers the question of what it is intended to simulate, which is does effectively through the simple mechanic of having each side begin with a "body of argument" that is the target of their opponent. The side which has their body of argument demolished first loses. Victory means that you may demand the losers meet certain conditions you established at the beginning of the duel. Because achieving victory requires the players to take actions like "incite", "accuse", "discredit", "rebut", "obfuscate", and "avoid" the players are rewarded for clever argumentative roleplaying. This Resolution System accomplishes exactly what it sets out to in a very neat way.

In a few days I will talk about how I think the Duel of Wits mechanics could be used as an interesting model for various Resolution Systems.

Spirit of the Century Review

I just got back from participating in a one-shot Spirit of the Century game at the local game store. There were three players, a two-fisted 'man of the people', a wacky gizmo-creating genius, and Kitsune Ro, my own Kung-Fu master character. I had fun playing with people thinking he was a "Chinaman" when he was Japanese.

Anyway, Spirit of the Century is an Indie game creted by Evil Hat Games. It is aimed at a 1920's pulp-action style of play and uses the FUDGE/FATE dice system with modifications.

You have Aspects of your character that are descriptive things. For example, my character had Aspects like "Iron Fists", "Soft-Hearted" and "Death-Defying". In situations where you Aspect might help you, you spend a Fate point to gain a +2 to your die-roll. If no Aspect applies, then you can spend the Fate point for a +1.

You also have Skills that are set up in a tier, with one +5 skill, two +4, three +3, four +2 and five +1 skills for your character. The way you accomplish things is you roll as normal in FUDGE and add your skill modifier and compare it either to the difficulty set by the GM or to the roll of someone who is opposing you.

I only know how this particular person ran the game, and all of us were new to it (for example, we didn't even use Stunts), but I really enjoyed the improvisational aspects of the game and the simple, intuitive engine it is built on. I liked that thugs/mooks can either be dealth with individually, or they can just add to the rolls of the Big Bad that you're dealing with at the time. By narrating things in an interesting way, you can fill in the blanks as to what is really going on.

This definitely seems like a game that won't do well with players who like to turtle up or a GM who is looking for the rulse to tell her exactly what happens and how. Because of this, it seems bset for relatively experienced players, or perhaps for players with a very strong sense of the genre and setting.

Overall, I had a great time, and it'll be really easy to talk me into another Spirit of the Century game in the future.

I give the game 4.5 out of 5 stars - it was fun, fast, exciting, dramatic, and it did exactly what it set out to do. The missing half-star is for the problem that new players might have with it - though this might be easily handled by what's in the book - I wouldn't know. Yet. If I come into a little money, I'll definitely pick this one up. (AND - it reinforces my idea to use the FUDGE system for Epic)

Epic: Dice System

I've decided on using a modification of the FUDGE system for Epic. In the FUDGE system, you basically roll d6's that have +'s on two sides, -'s on two sides and two blank (or +0) sides. So if you rolled, say, 4dF, you would get results ranging from +4 to -4. Basically, it is a randomizing system that doesn't let you veer too far from the number you start with, and that's why I like it. There's a element of luck, but it is relatively limited, and over the long term skill will do more for you than luck.

To make things more interesting, the number of dF's that you roll is equivalent to the amount of danger associated with what you're doing. What this means is that you've got a chance to pull off truly amazing stunts, but its also more possible for things to go horribly wrong for you. Lethal combat should always be in the 3dF to 4dF range, since the stakes are high, as should social interaction that really matters. If you're rolling dice at all, you should probably roll at least 2dF. If it isn't very dangerous, or the stakes aren't high, why roll dice at all?

For humans and humanoid types in Epic, there will be a basic 1-10 scale for things like attributes, skills, damage, etc. Average will be around 4 because I felt that more than a few levels of below-average wasn't very exciting. Higher than 10 is possible, but it is going to be incredibly rare. Obviously, if 10 is the general human maximum, other creatures and animals will sometimes have higher values. To keep things from getting out of hand, there will be a diminishing return once you exceed 10 - that is, a rating of 20 is generally more than just double a rating of 10. For now, though, I'm focusing on humans and human-sized things.

When tested, an attribute or skill is just compared to another attribute or skill or to a target number determined by Fate. (Right now I'm playing with calling the GM "Fate" because of what s/he'll be doing - more on that later) When it is a static test, that is, against a set number, meeting or exceeding the number means you succeed. Degree of success can be handled in-game in whatever way is appropriate, where beating the target by 2 or more is pretty exceptional. In a dynamic test, when there is a tie, there are things you can do to break the tie - more on that later as well.

Rather than die-rolls that potentially add a lot to your skills to get you out of trouble, there will be other mechanics that will boost you when you need it. Sometimes the dice will save you, but they're just as likely to burn you - but unless you're trying something dangerous and foolhardy, they won't burn you that badly. Bad rolls can be mitigated in-game and good rolls can be boosted to be incredible, but more is in the hands of the player even after the dice are rolled.

Origins 2007

Well, I'm all signed up, looks like I'll be able to stay with three others so the hotel is cheaper, and I'm excited about going. I get to watch geeky movies and play in games and learn about new games like the new Changeling that White Wolf is putting out, and I'll also be in three panel discussions about things like game design and self-publishing. Good times.

If anyone who reads this blog is by any chance planning on attending Origins 2007 in Columbus, let me know and we can meet and maybe play a pickup game of...something. I'm up for almost anything.

New Dice System - Bearing

Aric and I got to talking about how it would be interesting if morale was built directly into a combat system for a roleplaying game. Not just as a die-roll that tests whether you run away or not, but something that is intrinsic and dramatic.

We got to talking about "Bearing", our word for essentially someone's presense on the battlefield, modeled after (in my mind at least) imagines from Tolkien's stories of heroes sending foes running in terror because of their forceful presence, or of the overwhelming effect of the Nazghul, making enemies cower and quail and seemingly sapping their strength away.

The basic germ of the idea is for Bearing to be a die-pool that you keep track of during a combat or a social encounter. It should be a specific color of dice, perhaps, which you place out on the table for the other players to see. You line them up, and they represent the impact your character or an NPC has when you meet them and face off against them. We liked the image of taking out an NPC character sheet and lining up a bunch of red dice on the table while the characters think to themselves "Oh crap, what's this?" It might be a cool way to make that cold feeling in the pit of the gut more concrete, something players can experience a bit of as they contemplate those dice added to rolls against them.

When you do things like slay a foe easily, you gain Bearing. When you shout unanswered challenges or roar ancient, terrifying battle cries ("Elendil!" "Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!"), you gain Bearing. When you are struck in battle, you begin to lose Bearing, but if you are not overcome, you might gain it back.

It could be a cool mechanic for gaining and losing initiative in a mass combat as well, as the "tide of battle" turns, and it seems especially Tolkienian somehow. Anyway, we like it and its going to come up somewhere.

It doesn't really fit Horror!, since that's intended to be basically diceless, and I'm still going back and forth for what the dice-mechanic will be for Epic exactly. We were thinking this mechanic might first come up in Real20, which involves rolling lots of dice as a main ingredient already, and is all about overwhelming your foes with otherworldly prowess...

Wow

No, not WoW, this time, just plain old "Wow". I just found out that I have readers from Canada, Germany, India, Australia, Finland and the UK. This is crazy and exciting! If you don't mind, please introduce yourselves, via email or by commenting on something you like (or hate, want to see changed). If not, that's fine too, I'm just really curious.

(To the one Indian reader I'm aware of - please continue to comment and let me know what you think!)

The Genesis Worldbuilding System (rough)

Here I go again. I've been thinking for a while now about a system to handle collective world-building. I've read Aria: Worlds and I have yet to read Mortal Coil, which I understand has a method for creating a setting built in. I like the idea of getting a group of players together to create a world for a game to take place in. This seems especially well-suited to Fantasy and SciFi games of all kinds, where world-building and setting creation are often the main task of someone running a game.

This will be more useful for systems like True 20, GURPS, FUDGE, Burning Wheel and many others which do not have a built-in setting in the system. It is also useful for the many, many other systems which are built into a lackluster setting (dare I name names?).

Anyway, what I have here is a very rough sketch that I'm putting out for comment, expansion and improvement. I'd like for this to become something worth playtesting, which it is not as yet. I haven't even decided on a dice system, but am at the moment just using a diceless system and am dealing with overall concepts of the game.

First off, in Genesis, the group will need to decide some things by consensus. Some work needs to be done setting the basic stage for the world. This could come down to a bidding system, but I've found it hard to come up with a method for things like the physical geography or the time period to be left up to a resolution mechanic. Also, if some players lose in a given resolution mechanic, they probably won't want to put time into a world that doesn't reflect their ideas.

What needs to be decided beforehand

1. The overall theme of the game and the game-world - high fantasy, cyberpunk, space opera, dramatic and mythical, whimsical and humorous, gritty realism, etc.

2. Time, both relative historical period and scope. The game will deal with time in terms of Eras (long term) and Periods (short term), but this covers things like, for Fantasy, is this a Medieval world? For SciFi, is this world near-future, or far-future, or an entire solar system, etc.

3. Physical environment. There are many kinds of fractal map software out there that can be used to produce random (but logically constructed) continents, or the players can just sketch something out. The environment can be a city, or one nation, or a continent, a world, a solar system, a galaxy, etc.

4. Settings. This has to do with where each player's culture will begin - which neighborhood, which planet, which region of the continent, etc. How many resources are available to be exploited will be handled by the game itself, so this is more a choice of 'color' or feel for the culture, and is a good way to begin brainstorming aspects of that culture.

5. Parameters, having to do with what "culture" will mean in this setting. Does "culture" mean a culture in the usual sense, where race and species is shared? Or are there different races, or species, all involved? Is it a particular gang in a given neighborhood, or a political party in a capitol city, or a particular religion vying for cultural influence? And so on.

Next, we come to Cultural Attributes. I've thought up five that cover most aspects of what I think is important, but there are bits and pieces missing that might be improved with a better system or organizing.


Cultural Attributes

Aesthetics: this has to do with how much a culture values art and beauty, how likely it is to create art that other cultures appreciate, and how much of its resources the culture dedicates to artistic pursuits, comparatively. Aesthetics has a lot to do with how much outsiders value a particular culture and how much lasting influence it will have historically.

High-Aesthetic cultures: Renaissance Italy, modern New York City, Paris, Elves.

Low-Aesthetic cultures: the USSR, the Second or Third Reich in Germany.

Aggression: this measures how warlike your culture is. Does it have a long-standing warrior culture, or a warrior class? Is it often involved in wars of expansion with its neighbors? Aggression has a lot to do with how a culture interacts with its neighbors as well as how hard it is to conquer or how easily it conquers others.

High-Aggression cultures: Vikings, Mongols, Bismarck's or Hitler's Germany, al-Qaeda, Orcs.

Low-Aggression cultures: Tibet, Australian Aborigines, Switzerland, Quakers.

Cohesion: this is a measure of how strong a culture's identity is and how resistant it is to rapid change. A culture with high Cohesion will have more continuity through history and will resist conquest from outside cultures. Low Cohesion cultures tend to value individual freedom and have large immigrant populations, or are perhaps only ill-defined conglomerations of multiple distinct groups.

High-Cohesion cultures: China, various Fundamentalisms, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Hogwarts.

Low-Cohesion cultures: (many of these are lost to history, of course) Postmodernism, North America, Yugoslavia, Singapore.

Curiosity: this is a measure of how a culture views the outside world and how committed it is to rational inquiry. Cultures with many trade relations and which value cheap transportation may have high Curiosity. Curiosity has a lot to do with the pace of advancement and how often new ideas, technologies, techniques, etc. emerge. Some cultures are consciously restrained and insular while others tend to be less Curious because of geographical limitations.

High-Curiosity cultures: ancient Greece, Medieval China, the Netherlands, secular humanism.

Low-Curiosity cultures: Tibet, Hobbits, Kalahari Bushmen.

Productivity: this is simply a measure of how industrious a culture is, and will influence how efficiently it can make use of its environment. High productivity will often also lead to high exploitation and may result in degradation - these problems will be handled by the Resources mechanic. High Productivity could mean many things in a Fantasy setting - the efficient use of mana or power crystals, for example.

High-productivity cultures: modern Japan, Dwarves, Hong Kong.

Low-productivity cultures: Tuareg, Hippies, wood Elves.

How Attributes are decided: Right now I like a system where the culture is sketched out and then questions are answered about it. The total of "yes" or "no" answers will render an Attribute for each culture.


Techne and Gnosis

Every culture is located on a point between the poles I describe as Techne and Gnosis. Techne represents how industrialized or dependent on technology a culture is, its tech level or development level in other terms. Gnosis, on the other hand, is for lack of a better word how spiritual a culture is. Especially in a setting with magic and the supernatural, this will be related to Gnosis. Gnosis could also represent a culture that foregoes technology for moral or spiritual reasons, like the Amish. It isn't necessary a statement about how 'advanced' a culture is, but rather where its values lie and how it seeks to accomplish its goals.


Traits

For added color, I would like to have cultures have particular Traits that could aid or hinder them in given situations. There could be environmental traits (lots of iron ore, little arable land, landlocked, convenient rivers), political traits (fundamentalist bloc, anarchistic streak, isolationism), etc. These traits would essentially modify Attributes in instances where they apply (iron helps when an opponent in war doesn't have it, isolationism can make it hard to open new trade relationships).


Golden Age

I would like a Golden Age mechanic, related to the Resources and Destiny mechanics, and also related to what is going on in-game - perhaps a majority player-vote to inaugurate a culture's Golden Age. During the Golden Age a culture has a lot of advantages in all categories, but when the Golden Age ends there is a period of decline that could be disastrous in the long term.


Cultural Vitality

This will be the equivalent of Hit Points for a culture and may also play into the bidding or dice mechanic when I have sketched that out in more detail. Possibly gathering Vitality over time can lead to a point where a Golden Age is triggered.


Stability

Revolution and insurrection are always possibilities in any culture, from minor ones like a liberation movement for a particular minority to big ones like the Cultural Revolution in China or the Bolsheviks overthrowing the Czars. In periods of instability, random elements enter the game and create problems for the player in question to handle. Cohesion will probably factor into how long a particular period of instability lasts.


Destiny

Destiny is what I'm thinking should be the base pool of dice or bidding points, etc., that each player's culture receives. Presumably, the Destiny of any player culture should be very strong, just as PCs tend to be destined for greatness in a given game. Through the game, this Destiny can be added to or subtracted from, particularly depending on what strategic choices are made by the players.


Resources

Starting points will probably be assumed to have the same resources. Resource-rich areas should be smaller, while another culture might control a vast area that is resource-poor (think Mongols in central Asia). It should be possible to under-utilize Resources, and maybe even get some advantage from that - with the sense that you're not polluting and whatnot. Perhaps an Aesthetics bonus. It also needs to be possible to overdraw on Resources, representing rapid depletion and exploitation that could have disastrous results (think Easter Island). Resources can also come from making trade arrangements with other player-cultures, probably made easier for a culture with more Curiosity and limited by Productivity.


Time

In Genesis, there are basically two kinds of time. Eras are broad categories of time that define a certain chunk of play sessions - similar to storylines in roleplaying games. For a game where, say, cultures are competing for control of a continent, there could be an Era of expansion and conquest, then an Era of competition for key resources, then an Eraof warfare, followed by an Era of competition in the arts and sciences, etc.

Periods are shorter snippets of time, probably about one game session each, which simply break time into more easily-digestible segments. Things like gathering Resources or trade arrangements or military campaigns might be broken down into Periods.


What's Needed

The most pressing need at this point is for me to decide on a base mechanic. The particulars of rules can't be ironed out until I know what I'm dealing with. My ideas fall into a few basic categories:

1. A point-based, diceless, bidding system. Similar to poker, for example, where bids may or may not be known in advance by other players (espionage could play a big part in what you know about your opponents, as could Curiosity). Highest bidder wins, ties go to the higher Attribute.

2. A dice system where die-pools are built and then rolled and 'successes' compared. Maybe d6's where anything equal to your Attribute or lower is a success if Attributes are rated 1-5, etc.

3. A mixed system, with dice and points than can be spent to manipulate the dice somehow - automatic successes or bigger pools or lower difficulties, etc. For example, Resource points can be spent to reduce the difficulty of an Aggression roll during warfare.

Group Templates

One thing that has been a problem in some games I've experienced is when there is too little group cohesion. Different people have different tastes as to how tight they need their characters to be, but I tend to prefer there to be strong bonds between the characters that set up meaningful interactions when they are all in life-threatening situations together. There are several sources of this problem and various ramifications in the game. I will lay them out briefly.

Source #1 - Players come to the game wedded to fully developed character concepts without consulting the other players or GM.

Ramifications: Character concepts can be wildly divergent with no ability to gel together. Because the concept is conceived in isolation it tends to play in isolation. I have even seen games where players arrived with characters that were so opposite they were like magnesium and water - the ended up self destructing.

Source #2 - The GM has too loose of a concept for the campaign or doesn't communicate it clearly to the players.

Ramifications: This kind of situation can create a cast of characters who don't really know what their job or role is so players end up pushing their characters in divergent directions toward whatever interests each of them the most. When this happens you get players all jostling for GM attention and inevitably a few people are sitting bored while others play.

Source #3 - The GM and Players put too little thought into each character's "role" in the party or the GM designs sessions which don't play to each character's strengths.

Ramifications: It is almost inevitable that not every character will be useful in every situation, but some care and thought should go into making every character helpful in the great majority of situations. Otherwise you end up with bored diplomats, waiting for the fight to end, or bored fighters waiting for the negotiations to go south. The GM should make clear what types of situations are likely to come up and every character should be able to address those situations in some fashion.

There are two main ways I see to address these problems:

They can be addressed in an autocratic fashion by the GM who simply declares campaign requirements for who the characters will be and how they will relate or at the furthest extreme even creates the characters the players will use. This works best in short games or one-offs (in fact it's almost a necessity). Most players will be dissatisfied (and rightfully so!) if they don't at least have a hand in creating the character they will play for longer campaigns. Even in very democratic games and long-running campaigns, the GM usually sets some guidelines however even if it's only which source books will be permitted..

The other option is to get together as a group before the campaign and produce a group template. I'm looking forward to trying this for the first time in an upcoming BESM campaign. The idea for the template came from Fear the Boot, and it is essentially a simple worksheet that the players and GM fill out together before creating individual characters. It sets up some guidelines for the players when building their character concepts. I'm going to go one step farther and have the players create their characters together as well, discussing ideas and sharing how they imagine each character will fit into the party. I've thought up some novel ways to make the experience more narrative and less number-crunching, which I will share in another post. Then, for those players who want to have a bit of secrecy in their background we can always add skeletons in the closet privately later.

For now, look at this example of a group template to see how it works (click to enlarge):

Learning Experience

Having just finished running the Mage: the Ascension game mentioned previously, I have some reflections concerning what I learned over the course of it, including helpful comments and feedback after the fact.

The main issue that I see is with providing information. I think I fall into the trap of seeing information as something I should make the players earn through effort, which leads to a problem whenever there is a difference between they think it should require and what I think it should require. This comes out of previous experiences, perhaps, where I have had players who are rampant and obsessive in following up every possible lead. It is also just part of a fundamental hoarding instinct - I want goodies for me, I suppose.

What this information should be is a way to drive the story forward. Sure, it shouldn't be lying on the ground, but any significant effort should probably be enough to get what the players are after.

(This brings me to briefly reflect on reasons why I like Burning Wheel. With the way the game is written, any Skills test involves making clear what is at stake. So if you go to research something, the GM makes clear what's at stake, so when you succeed, you know what you're in for. This is a meta-game process that I'm at first a little uncomfortable with, but I do see the value in limiting red-herrings and useless searching, as well as preventing misunderstandings at crucial points.)

The second major issue is one that was clear early on but there was nothing I could do because it occurred to me after the game had already begun - that is the issue of group template. In short, the group template for this game wasn't strong at all, and throughout the game it got in the way. It also led to opportunities for humor and development and character interaction, but at least some of this was motivated by frustration, which isn't a good thing in a game. Ideally, there would be room for the interaction, but with more cohesion and a clear idea of why this group is in this story together, I think this interaction would be more driven and would make more sense to everyone.

Detour

I have just recently finished running a Mage: the Ascension game with friends of mine here in San Anselmo. I think that the game was generally a success, though I certainly also learned a lot of things I can do better in the future.

As part of the game we maintained a blog which combined my writings, some out-of-character and some in-character, designed to add flavor to the world and move to plot onward, with the players' writings, all in-character, aimed at developing them further or in response to things happening on the blog.

I think that the result has some real gems, honestly. Some really cool stuff that we worked together to create. I figured out belatedly that I could invite the players to post directly to the blog, but in our next game, this'll be the case from the start, and the result should be even better.

In the meantime, check out our Mage game blog, which I'm leaving up for anyone's reading enjoyment. I have added the tag: "Quality Writing" to note what I particularly liked of what we produced. Treat them like vignettes, perhaps, since only a few people will understand what these things mean/meant in context.

Burning Wheel Review

To take a detour from game-design posts for a moment - I've been reading through Burning Wheel lately and have some reflections on it. Burning Wheel is one of the games to come out of the Indie game "revolution" that took place in recent years, when many new independent games came out to popular acclaim, including Dogs in the Vineyard, Mortal Coil, Artesia and Spirit of the Century, among many many others.

Basically, what happened is that years of theorizing about roleplaying games with things like GNS Theory intersected with the falling cost of self-publishing due to new and improving technologies. The result was an incredible profusion of indie games. One of these games was Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, and I caught the bug and picked it up recently.

I like the way that BW is written, first of all. It is in a very approachable style, and "flavor text" is only used to exemplify how a rules element might look in-game. Luke utilizes various voices, represented by little imp icons, to mark side-notes in reference to the rules, including reminders, admonitions and explanations.

BW is a very complex system, by far the most "crunchy" of the indie titles I'm familliar with. The system is a simple d6 system where d6's are rolled and 4-6 is a success, where 1-3 is a "traitor". Obstacles, or Obs, are set as the number of successes necessary. Rolls are written so that they are more rare than other systems - there is the Let It Ride rule, which I like, which says that a roll stands for a situation until something drastic changes. This is to prevent GMs from demanding multiple rolls for one task, and to prevent players from demanding new rolls every time they fail.

You have the usual Attributes (Power, Agility, Forte, Speed, Will, Perception) and Skills (a huge number of them for any imaginable situation) that are in almost every RPG. You also have some derived Attributes, such as Health and Steel (a character's ability to recover from fear or pain) and Reflexes.

Along with these, however, you have Emotional Attributes, one for each of the four main races that he discusses. Dwarves have Greed, Elves have Grief, Humans have Faith and Orcs have Hatred. These emotional attributes directly impact the game and also play into the race-specific kids of magic available to each of these races. I have to say, I really like this. It adds color and interest, and also reflects, in the case of Dwarves, Elves and Orcs, a Middle-Earth feel.

In BW you also have Instincts, Traits and Beliefs. Instincts are things that your character does without thinking - the are expressed as if-then statements, and are a way of taking out insurance for a character, as well as a good way to get into trouble. The common example is "draw my sword at the first sign of trouble" - problems arising from this are obvious, but it also protects your character from being taken unprepared most of the time.

Traits are interesting - the are descriptive, and some affect the rules. You have Character Traits, which just describe, Dice Traits, which add or take away dice in certain situations, and Call-on Traits, which allow rerolls in certain situations. Most interesting is the fact that 'negative' traits cost points, in stark contrast to systems like GURPS where you take Disadvantages to earn more character points. The reasoning behind this, I learned on the BW Forums, is that Trait cost reflects the attention that that trait will demand in the game, among other things. Negative traits are also great ways to get into trouble, and getting into trouble earns you Artha (see below).

Finally, Beliefs are what really drive your character. You start with at least three, and Luke recommends that the first one be about your past, the second one be about your future goals, and the third one tie you into the situation that the game is built around. Beliefs should be driving forces that are specific enough to be interesting, and they should have consequences built in whenever possible. They can be anything from "Never trust an Elf farther than you can toss him" to "I must prove I am the rightful king".

Artha is a point currency used in the game. In short, you spend Artha to modify your rolls, making extraordinary success more likely. There are three kinds of Artha - Fate, Persona and Deeds, in order of how powerful they are.

Fate Artha are earned by roleplaying Beliefs and Instincts in a way that entertains and drives the story forward. This is where those negative Traits come in. Negative Traits are more likely to be entertaining and to drive the story forward than positive onces. Failure is almost always more interesting than success. With Traits, Fate Artha is earned only when use of the Trait moves the game in an unexpected direction. Fate Artha is also awarded for Humor - just making the group laugh. Finally and most rarely, Fate Artha is awarded for having the right skill at the right time to move the story forward.

Persona Artha are to reward general roleplaying. It is earned for Embodiment, when a player captures the mood at the table perfectly - great speeches, dire decisions and gruesome revenge to name a few examples. Moldbreaking is another way to earn Persona Artha - when a player roleplays her inner turmoil in-game when faced with a decision that violates her Beliefs, Instincts and Traits in some way. Players can nominate each other for this award. When a PC accomplishes Personal Goals, Persona Artha can also be rewarded. Finally a group's Workhorse and MVP can earn Personal points for being the ones who make it happen behind the scenes or for the one that really shines in a given session. These last two are generally voted on at the end of a storyline, and in BW the GM and players get one vote each in these instances.

Deeds Artha are awarded for accomplishing things far beyond the character's immediate goals. They are the most rare, powerful, and loosely defined. They seem appropriate at the end of a major story arc that was successfully concluded and that had wide impact beyond the PCs. Deeds Artha always comes with a cost or a sacrifice of some kind.

One final note - on character creation. BW uses a Lifepath system, where you create a character by going through their life as a series of experiences over time. For example, a PC might be Village Born, then a Troublemaking Kid, then an Apprentice, a Journeyman, then she gets Conscripted, and finally joins the standing army as a Military Sergeant. I like this system because it forces you to have a story for your character and because it covers failures and misfortune as well as success. Rather than have a particular point-amount for starting PCs, you have a number of Lifepaths, so that all of the PCs have similar amounts of life experience, though this experience will be very diverse.

In brief:

What I like about Burning Wheel:

1. It is driven by beliefs and characters are rewarded for both success and failure
2. Lifepaths force players to make concrete choices that result in the backbone of a story for a character's background
3. There is a vast diversity of skills, traits and other bits and pieces to make the game infinitely interesting
4. The rules reward player interaction, roleplaying, and getting into trouble
5. It has a very strong Tolkienian feel, though its limited because Luke couldn't afford to license the actual Middle-Earth property
6. Emotional Attributes are awesome

What I don't like about Burning Wheel:

1. I like more interesting dice mechanics. The d6's become essentially 50/50 coins that you toss in most cases, which leads to a less-interesting progression of probability
2. It will be very hard to get someone into this game if they aren't interested in a) lots of crunchy rules and b) lots of roleplaying and c) deadly, brutal combat
3. The Human magic system of Sorcery lacks flavor and interest. I'm still waiting for the Magic Burner supplement to come out to see if this is fixed
4. Specifically, the Fight! system is very complicated. Granted, its much more interesting than the D&D combat system for example, but its at least as complex
5. The Resources system is overall very intuitive, but I don't like that you still use points to purchase specific equipment. Why not let what you own come naturally from what lifepaths you chose?
6. Finally, as for the dice system, it seems that sometimes the game assumes that dice are equivalent to raised Obstacles, which just isn't the case statistically. It leads to a few absurd situations, opposed rolls that are impossible to win, etc.

Overall

I'm going to need to test-drive this baby and see how it handles. Lots of interesting things and a few things I like less. I imagine, with high player buy-in, it could be amazing. But then again, so can most games out there.

I give Burning Wheel 4 out of 5 stars - great concept, well-written, I like anything Tolkienian, but I could do with some rules changes.