Discovering Fantasy

It's been far too long since I've been able to play any role-playing games. Mostly I've been so busy, and there's been so many new things in my life that I haven't had time to miss it, but the last couple days I've been getting the urge in a strong way. I've begun daydreaming the next game I want to run, and that has led me to some thoughts about the fantasy genre as represented in gaming...

Fantasy in gaming is essentially a genre term that has completely moved away from it's root. Really there is nothing "fantastic" about RPG fantasy settings. That is because all of the supposed fantastic elements are really just natural, presumed parts of the setting. Dragons in D&D aren't any more fantastic than a hippopotamus is in Africa. Depending on the setting they may be rare, exciting, or significant, but they aren't fantastic. No one is surprised to encounter a dragon. Dragons are in the title.

To be sure there are "high-fantasy" settings for games, and "low-fantasy" settings and you might think I was just expressing a preference for the latter, but that is not really what I mean. Low-fantasy implies that the magical or fantastic elements are rarer, but they are nonetheless native elements, expected, even required elements of the setting. For a game or setting to even qualify as fantasy such things must be a given.

Fantasy as a genre, of course, owes a huge debt to Tolkein, but almost all fantasy since Tolkein has followed after the LoTR trilogy rather than the Hobbit. In LoTR, elves, wizards, dragons, orcs, magic and demons are all simply assumed. They are part of the background of the story, not the substance of it. The story isn't about Frodo venturing out in the world and discovering to his shock that it is inhabited by magical beings. In the Hobbit by contrast, Bilbo is on a constant adventure of discovery from step one. Gandalf's encounter with the trolls who turn to stone by daylight is far more "fantastic" than Gandalf's face-off with the Balrog - at least in the sense that I am after.

What I am looking for is the sense of wonder or mystery attached to the fantastic that a character like Alice feels when she falls through the looking glass. It is what all the ancient heroic journeys are about - a Celtic hero is tricked into entering Faerie, a young warrior sets off on a sea-voyage and is beset by sea-monsters, the old-crone turns out to be a powerful sorceress... What happens in these stories is that the "fantastic" is discovered rather than presumed. It is fantastic precisely because it is unbelievable, it breaks the known rules, it doesn't conform to our expectations of reality, it conforms to something deeper and more inscrutable.

There ARE games out there which can involve the fantastic in the sense I mean here.

Mage the Ascension comes to mind right away. There is no better game for subjecting the players to a collective experience of discovery, and breaking or pealing away the nature of reality. Where I feel Mage isn't meeting my current craving is that it is too open-ended, so open-ended it verges on the surreal. It would be difficult with Mage to tell a story about a Celtic hero that didn't end up involving space aliens and werewolves.

Changeling the Lost is almost the reverse of what I've described. The characters in this game are coming home from their journey of discovery into the fantastic. It definitely captures the wonder and mystery, but it is ultimately more cynical than I want.

Everyday Heroes is another. I have yet to play this game, but it seems to set out to accomplish precisely what I've described. If I have a problem it's that being "everyday" has very limited appeal. Even Bilbo ends up becoming a clever, and adept thief with a magical ring that makes him invisible.

Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, if it ever gets published, is another option. This game would be perfect for a medieval setting, my only question is how it will handle fantasy elements like magic and monsters. Until that question is answered it is tough to say whether this game will work.

GURPS, of course, is always a viable choice. It is good because the bias of the system is toward realism, making fantasy elements in GURPS already seem out of place. It would be easy as well to start with something very realistic and slowly weave in magic and monsters into the game with the rules as established. GURPS might really be my best choice here, but GURPS has the perpetual downside of being super-crunchy. My GM style tends to work best in a rules-light atmosphere, but GURPS is meant to be hacked...

Whatever system I end up choosing (or if I come up with something homebrew), the game I'm slowly brewing up in my mind starts out as a medieval adventure story with historical-realism as its basic assumption. Indeed, I might even keep the players in the dark about my plans to incorporate monsters and magic into the game. The idea being that the players are genuinely surprised to encounter goblins in the woods (and therefore perhaps genuinely frightened). Let the fantasy slowly unravel before them and lead them on a journey of discovery that D&D could never replicate.

The Home Stretch

I am grinding my way through the last manuscript for Parsec. I've decided to finish it before the end of this calendar year. I really hope I can pull that off while working 60-80 hours a week. Finishing this manuscript will be a big step in my mind - I started something almost a year and a half ago, and I'm close to completing my part of it. Its been a long process, one that I'd normally quit in the middle of and give up on. I've learned a lot of things through the process that I'll be talking about in the near future.

For now, I've really got to get back to writing.

From Neil Gaiman's Journal

This post from Gaiman is very interesting to me because it discusses issues at a nexus of interestes of mine - rights and the law, sexual ethics, and religion. It is a good articulation of Gaiman's position on rights as they apply to Art, and I think it is worth a read because it will make you think. This is a thorny issue. Gaiman says that if you believe in the freedom of speech (including various kinds of artwork and not just verbalization) then you will ultimately end up defending the indefensible.

Do you think that's true? Why or why not?

I'm inclined to tenatively agree, but I definitely want more time to think about the matter. I want to find a more elegant solution, but that might be entirely beyond the purview of the Law, which is, as Goblins in D&D games I run are wont to say, "threat of force". A bludgeon, Gaiman would say, and I have to agree.

Servants of the Secret Fire - Middle Earth RPG

I've taken on a challenge that's been on my mind for years and years now - I want to design a Middle-Earth RPG that actually has something to do with Middle-Earth.

There have been a few attempts in the past - the two big ones that come to mind which have taken on that liscence are MERP and the attempt made by Decipher. Of course, thousands of fantasy RPGs owe a huge amount to Middle-Earth and some, like Burning Wheel, have in some ways tried to do Middle-Earth with the serial numbers filed off, so to speak. Frankly, none of them have satisfied me. Some, like MERP, use another system and tack on Middle-Earthy stuff. ICE actually had very well-researched supplements for MERP with lots of interesting extrapolations about the setting, but the core system was still Rolemaster, which isn't particularly Middle-Earthy.

Decipher's own attempt was the Coda system, which is fucking D20 with the die-type changed to protect the innocent. Their big innovation? Use 2d6 instead of a D20 and change...almost nothing else. I frankly had to buy the base book, and I think I was bamboozled into getting one more when the company ended the RPG line because it was cheap and I'm a sucker for Middle-Earth stuff. The book was actually well put-together. In changing the names of Feats from D20, they gave them names that referenced the films and the books. The book was relatively well written, and they gave the magic system a better stab than MERP for sure. But it was freaking D20 for crap's sake.

Burning Wheel has a lot of cool stuff about it, but what you end up with is sort of Middle-Earth through a distinctly Luke Crane lens. It definitely has a lot of interesting aspects, and picks up on a lot of the color and setting material in subtle ways. Burning Wheel is a great system, and probably the best attempt yet. Still, while it is a good game, it is definitely its own creature. You get something interesting and fun, but it isn't Middle-Earth.

The Song of Arda, which is now defunct, was an attempt to have a Pendragon-esque Middle-Earth RPG. It was never finished, and the site has long since been taken down. I was following its progress with a lot of hope, but...well, I definitely know about games not being finished. Song of Arda would have been freely available online, which would also have been nice.

This brings me to Servants of the Secret Fire, which is the working title I have for my own system for a Middle-Earth RPG. I plan on finishing the playtest document, playtesting it, and then getting together a complete game document that I'll then distribute for free to whoever wants it. I just...I want a good Middle-Earth game to be out there.

Anne Lamott said once in an interview I believe - "Write the book you would want to come upon." Others have said similar things - design the game you want to play. So that's what I'm doing right now.

It's pretty likely it'll come to nothing, but I'll get to play it, and my players will get to enjoy it, and I can give this idea a rest. I've feld like I should write this game since I first picked up a copy of MERP many years ago and ran it and had that feeling of missing the mark but not knowing why or how. I now feel like I know a lot more about the how and the why, so we'll see where this goes.

The Podgecast and My FLGS Make Sweet Love

And their baby is due December 6th. Right now they're calling it One-Shotter Day, but I think they'll pick a better name when the due date is closer. I mean, come on. One-Shotter Day? That'll get your ass kicked on the playground, no question.

So, first, the Podgecast. It is an awesome gaming podcast that I always enjoy listening to. If you like Fear the Boot, the Podgecast will have some familiar voices, and it is a better podcast in every way. I mean that as someone who still listens to Fear the Boot as well (though if I had a shorter commute and had to choose, the Podge would win hands down). It is funny, interesting, and for the most part avoids the rambling that many long-form podcasts just fall into. When they do ramble, it is usually either funny, or the person is made fun of, and either way, the listener wins.

Second, my FLGS, Gamescape North. I really enjoyed working there, and still sort of do, doing things like their next IPR order and so on, but the chaplain position has devoured my time such that I can't have more than one job anymore. Which frankly feels weird, since I've had more than one job for years now. But, anyway, its a great store, and if you live in northern california near San Francisco, you should check it out.

It isn't often that two awesome things get together and invite me to come along. So this is cool. Usually when awesome things are happening, I'm here in my living room writing in a blog or something geeky like that. So I'm a happy guy, and if you're in our area on the 6th, come by and check it out.

Podgecast and Gamescape North - keep up the good work fellas.

Hunter: the Vigil and the New World of Darkness

The New World of Darkness games seem to be intentionally designed to give players insane results. In the old world of darkness system, you could get crazy results, but it was because you gamed the system well - you set up a roll with lots of dice and low difficulty.

In the NWoD, everything is target 8, so successes can be relatively rare, but you also have "exploding dice", re-rolling 10's and sometimes even 9's and more rarely, 8's as well. This means that the most common results of rolls are one or two successes or a large number, and it comes out of nowhere. It is also less under your control. Even when you can make some of your successes explode, they are relatively rare, so its more of a game of luck and randomness.

One effect of this that I found in my own play is that it turns the game towards comedy. There is a lot of botching and absurd successes, and it is hard to handle.

The exception here is in combat, when some kind of defense number is subtracted from almost all of the dice-pools for attacks and special abilities. This means that you're rolling fewer dice than you're used to, which in turn means that combat involves a lot of singular successes or marginal failures.

This can get to be...a little unexciting. Your vampire grows her agg-dealing supernatural claws, leaps from the rooftop onto her opponent, slashes the claws down his back, and deals...one aggravated damage. Nowhere near a would penalty or anything. A scratch, really. Then in rage he turns around, pulls out his Desert Eagle, shoots you, and deals...two bashing. And so it goes until one of you has some exploding dice and randomly ends the battle in a paroxism of bloodshed.

I like a lot of the changes that were made to Vampire, Werewolf and Hunter. I think that Mage took a step backward both in its fluff and in the system itself in almost every way. But the dice system is just sort of hard to manage sometimes. It doesn't work for me. It doesn't deliver the play experience I want - it isn't reliable when it should be, and it isn't exciting when you want it to be.

I find that I'm left wanting to hack White Wolf's games all the time. When we used to run V3 (Vampire third edition), we probably had a minimum of house rules, but by the end of a chronicle we had a few to make the system more playable.

I wonder - did they playtest the new system before they brought it out? It just comes off as...unfinished in a lot of ways. So you have huge, beautiful books with unfinished systems in them that don't deliver what you want them to deliver.

I sort of want White Wolf's graphic designers and artists and setting designers to team up with Paizo, maybe, or a team of designers who can create a game that is tight, efficient, and delivers when you want it to deliver.

We just had a session of Hunter: the Vigil with some members of our new home group we're trying to put together, and it went really well and was a lot of fun. It isn't like I'm not having fun with White Wolf's games - I almost always do. It just isn't...reliable. Their new system, its core dice mechanic, just isn't as good as their old one, and it takes something away from the game that used to be there. I'd have kept a similar dice system, with variable pools and variable difficulties on d10s, because that just lead to a more interesting game, a system that the players can use to set their characters up for huge success or for big risks at critical moments. The dice helped the game along - not so much with the new WoD stuff. Its really too bad.

Third Draft is Out

I just emailed out the third draft, what I'm calling the Gamma Draft, of the Parsec system to the publisher. I'm proud of where it is on the one hand, and on the other hand there is the feeling that I always get when I read what I've written - man, this is crap. I know that it probably isn't crap, but that's just the reaction I have to things I write most of the time.

Its been a long process, and it isn't over yet. Something like 14 months and counting.

I've run a couple playtests with the near-finished system a while ago, and they both went really well. Everyone had fun, they understood the system in a matter of minutes, and I got some solid new ideas to improve the whole thing (which have gone in already for the most part).

At the same time, there are always other ideas percolating. What tells me I'll be designing games for a long while is that when I get burned out thinking about one game, I just turn around to work on another. When time allows of course.

If only I was passionate about writing something lucritive, you know? Like writing self-help books, or writing how to get out of paying taxes if you're rich enough, or writing adolescent fantasy about vampires in high school. Of course, there are tens of thousands of people who are passionate about writing those things who never make a cent.

The average editor of a major fantasy or scifi magazine, for example, gets something like a thousand submissions a month, or 12k a year, of which they publish maybe 6-12; say 10 for the ease of math. That means if you've finished a story and sent it in to a magazine like that, you have a 1/1200 chance of being published. And that's just one publication - that's not paying the bills or anything wild like that.

Not writing crap is a good way to up those odds. Also submitting to lots of publications. Having a decent story moves you out of the outright slush-pile, maybe to the 1/120 range. So if you write 10 good, solid stories, and send them to every publication you can think of, you might get something in one of them.

Anyway, long tangent. The good news is - draft three is done and draft four, AKA the final draft, is coming.

Mage: the Ascension and the Tangle of Entropy

A friend of mine is currently putting together a Mage: The Ascension game for us to play over the intertubes in the near future. This has been a good way for close college friends to keep in touch and keep in the hobby when we are separated by thousands of miles.

One thing that precedes any of these games, and has for years now, is a significant discussion of house rules. We house rule everything under the sun. It's part of the reason I stick with trying to be a game designer - I'd find almost the game I want to play, with almost the system I want to use, that is almost as consistent as I'd like. I got tired of almost. Anne Lamott says "Write the story you would want to come upon." In the same way, "Design the game you want to play."

If you've played Mage, you know that it is a game about everything, in which your characters can do almost anything. That's the point, and that's the incredible design challenge behind the game - to deal with characters who have improvisational reality-altering power with anything but a narrativist hand-wave. Because of this, we're tweaked our own ideas of what the Spheres do and some of the assumptions behind the game - we've hacked it significantly, such that I can't even run it as written in the book anymore at this point - and I don't mind. Our system is better in a number of ways.

But we got caught up in arguing over what Entropy, the Sphere that oddly covers both decay and chance, should function. The discussion ranged over dozens of emails, with all six of us chiming in at various points. There were votes, counter-votes, suggestions, and near-treatises written on the topic.

Ultimately, our ST had to say "Ok, this is over. I'll figure it out. Moving on to character backgrounds and group template..." (well, he doesn't say "group template" but that's the stage we're in) It was sort of a necessary anticlimax.

I can't help but think that we, the players of a game like Mage, have these long discussions because the designers of Mage didn't. That is, I'm sure they had lots of design discussions - but were they the right ones? Mage is probably still my favorite WW game, but it is also the one for which I have the longest house rules document. In part, it's a labor of love, like custom random-encounter tables for my pubescent AD&D escapades.

It is also one of the things that, as I said, motivates me to design games, and to pay special attention to magic systems, which are almost 100% garbage in the RPGs out there for the past 30 years.

After all of those emails back and forth, I'm left with the deep feeling - this could've been done better.

I will do it better.

We'll see if I live up to that.

Desolation RPG and the Ubiquity System

I just paged through a copy of Desolation, a post-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying by Greymalkin Designs, which liscences the Ubiquity system. The reason I mention this is that I'm not sure why they liscenced it (from Exile Games) at all.

The Ubiquity system is a lot like a dozen other systems where you have the same attributes as D&D (Body, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma in this case - so, ok, they changed the name of Constitution to Body, but you get the idea). It also has "Talents", which are Feats with the name filed off, and skills that are rooted in the attributes which are eerily familiar.

The dice system itself isn't meaningfully a dice system at all - all of the dice are basically the same as coins you flip. Evens are successes and odds are failures. That's it. You add up the successes. What I mean is, it doesn't matter that you're using dice - so why use them?

Oddly, it is even possible to get your hands on special Ubiquity dice, which...just seems extra odd to me. Why?

I think that the Ubiquity system comes with one really cool setting - Hollow Earth Expedition. People have run HEX at the store before, and players have had a really good time shooting dinosaurs and Nazis from biplanes. That's good times however you slice it.

It just seems really odd to me to license a dice system that is basically a coin-flip system - even Burning Wheel, which is also basically a coin-flip system, has shades, so that some dice-rolls aren't just straight 50/50.

I really don't see a reason to create the Ubiquity system at all. I think it would be easy to adapt another system, even one that would be free to license, for the settings that they're putting out. It doesn't have elements that aren't already in a dozen other games. I understand the desire to have a new system for your new company putting out new books and all that, I just think it could've been done more easily. There's nothing about Desolation or HEX that requires a new system, and if I was going to design a system for either, I'd try to have a dice mechanic that somehow added to the experience, rather than just having various ways to flip coins...

Other than the dice and system, Desolation's post-apocalyptic setting has most of the fantasy tropes you'd expect - the races you see everywhere else (some under different names) with the common generalizations which hold true for them as well.

What will be really interesting is to compare Desolation to the 4th Edition D&D incarnation of Earthdawn, which I believe is coming out next year. Earthdawn is sort of the original post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, the most recent incarnation of which is over 10 years old. Its doubtless going to get updated, and really fits the "points of light" theme of 4th Edition. I'll be curious to see how WotC adapts the setting and how it compares to Desolation, given that in the generalities they are going to be very similar (and overall I must admit a preference for Earthdawn, which years ago was already dropping some of the entrenched D&D tropes...)

Roleplaying for the Uninitiated a'la Fear the Boot

I don't know if you, gentle reader (if you're still with me that is) also listen to Fear the Boot, but I want to point out a project that the Fear the Boot podcast crew is producing. The project is basically a multi-part introduction to roleplaying games intended for someone who has no idea what they are but is curious about them.

This is a way to answer the ancient and troublesome question - "So, what is a roleplaying game?" Its a question that gets a lot of inadequate answers, I think. It is a complicated question. It's like "What is football?" You can give a bare-bones answer pretty quick, but that quick answer won't be adequate to play the game or understand it when you watch it on Sunday night or whatever.

The intent behind the series is to make it possible to burn them to a CD and hand it to someone to play in their car during their commute or whatever. I'm thinking that it might actually be fruitful to put the CDs out at the game store where I work for when people ask me "So, what is this D&D thing?" or some similar question.

Anyway, its something to keep in mind. Lots of us who are gamers have family or friends who don't understand our weird little hobby. It might be helpful to slide them these tracks and tell them to give a listen. I've actually got a couple family members in mind myself...

Work in Progress: Horror! Alpha Playtest Document

Putting this up here in case anyone sees it and wants to comment on it so far.  Its a work in progress and not done yet, but it is getting closer to what we can use to playtest the system.  Note: placing this document on this blog does not constitute publication.  All rights reserved.

Horror! Alpha Playtest Document

Style Bible

Always Capitalize: Adrenaline, Appeal, Attributes, Fear, Hopes, Might, Occult, Pain, Precision, Scars, Traits, Virtue

Use numerals rather than written numbers - so, 3 rather than three.

Capitalize with first mention: types of Traits, character types - victim, jaded, etc.  Afterwards, it isn't a big deal to capitalize and can just be a descriptor with a rules effect

Italicize important sentences - one or two from each section at the very most - that people need to see and understand, or that hold a key bit of rules or system in them

Italicize whenever you want to draw specific attention to something - a word, phrase, sentence, etc., that isn't already specifically handled in some way

Embolden the first instance of a new key word or term that doesn't occur in a heading but in the body of the text

What you have
Attributes: Might, Precision, Appeal, Occult
-->Note on other Attribute systems, since this is one of the weakest parts of the game at the moment (to me at least)
Traits/Items: 
Virtue
Adrenaline
Dreams

What will take it from you
Scars
Fear
Pain

How it will happen
Conflict System
Tabletop
Live Action
Rewards

For example...


WHAT YOU HAVE

First, you figure out what kind of character you're going to play.  There are a few ways to do this.  The first way is to choose 3 Hopes or Scars or some mixture of the two adding up to 3.  So you can have 3 Scars, 2 Scars and 1 Hope, 1 Scar and 2 Hopes, or 3 Hopes.  These will correspond to your starting Adrenaline (Scars) and Virtue (Hopes).

You can determine your Scars and Hopes one by one, thinking them through and sketching out what they represent in  your character's past or the future she wants - or you can determine them semi-randomly with a deck of cards.  Each player who wants semi-random Scars and Hopes is dealt 3 cards from a shuffled deck.  The red cards are Scars and the black cards are Hopes.  A spade is a Scar having to do with violence or suffering.  A club is a Scar having to do with disempowerment - perhaps poverty or oppression or emotional abuse.  A heart is a Hope having to do with relationships.  A diamond is a Hope having to do with achievement.

Each Scar is a time in your life when you were crushed by suffering and wanted to give up.  Each Hope is something that you desperately want for your life to give it meaning and make it worthwhile.

Someone with 3 Scars is a Victim.  A Victim has been beaten down by life again and again, and is often mostly concerned with survival.  The Victim might accept horror for what it is and respond directly to it.  The Victim has learned not to mess around if she wants to get through this.

Someone with 2 Scars and 1 Hope is Jaded.  Jaded characters will tend to be competent, professional types.  They believe the horror can be kept at bay, but you've got to break some eggs in the process.  The Jaded character still holds onto some hope for the future, but her feet are also firmly on the ground.

Someone with 1 Scar and 2 Hopes is Foolhardy.  The Foolhardy character believes that the horror can be overcome in the end.  They tend to be idealistic visionary types who might be entrepeneurs or artists.  The Foohardy character has been burned before, but believes that in the end, things work out for the best if they can keep believing.

Someone with 3 Hopes is an Innocent.  The Innocent never really comes to believe that true horror is real, and an Innocent character might hold onto her ideals even when giving them up might serve the "greater good".  The Innocent is fragile and powerful at the same time because there is something about them that the horror has a hard time reaching.

Attributes
Attributes are measured from 0 to 5.  0 is handicapped, 2-3 is average, and 5 is the maximum for normal human beings.  Attributes are also the base for all tests - the Attribute provides the base number, which is then modified by Traits, Fear and Pain.  For Attributes, you distribute a 2, two 3's and a 4 between your four scores.

Might is a measure of your physical power, athletic ability, and toughness.  It could also be Muscle or Force or Power, maybe, but the name is just the place-holder for physical badassery.

Precision is your mental acumen, fine motor skills and ability to think clearly.

Appeal is your social grace, charm, good looks and general likeability.  It is how you get what you want from NPCs.

Occult is your knowledge of dread secrets humankind was not meant to know, psychic abilitites, supernatural sensitivity and so on.  High Occult will also make you more susceptible to the supernatural abilities of other creatures. [CAN PERHAPS REMOVE ENTIRELY]

/Spirit/Mysteries

Alternate Attribute Systems
The Idea is that the Attribute system is brief, tightly designed, and covers the categories of conflicts that you might be able to resolve or 'win'.  Right now, Might corresponds to a lot of physical combat; Precision corresponds to shooting people and skill or thinking-based conflicts; Appeal pertains to social conflicts and interactions, and Occult is sort of a catch-all for the weird, creepy, supernatural stuff.

Traits/Items
Traits and items modify your attributes when you're involved in a conflict.  Basically, having a trait that applies to a certain situation grants a bonus in that situation.  Traits should be specific and descriptive - there will never be a catch-all Trait that is useful for everything, or anything close to it.

There are six kinds of Traits: Feats, Influences, Items, Knowledge, Mysteries and Skills.

Feats are specific ways to call on physical prowess, particularly when beating ass or doing things you'd do when playing a sport - throwing, running, swimming, jumping and so on.  Influences are ways to influence other characters socially and psychologically, as well as a way to measure who you know who can help you - contacts, allies and the like.  Items are just that - a catch-all of useful objects.  For a lot of things, like shooting someone or driving, you'll need an item at bare minimum to even do it. Knowledge just says in what area or areas you are an expert.   You can expect to have your questions answered in that area of knowledge during the course of the game - maybe in forensics or biology or even conspiracy theories or art history.  Mysteries are weird shit, and they overlap with some of the other categories of Traits.   You can have special items or objects, a special occult ability, a magical ritual or a way that you are resistant to the attacks of alien mind-rays.  Finally, Skill are pretty self-explanatory - they are a main way that you get concrete things done in the shared imaginary space of the game.

You can stack one Item with one Skill for one test when applicable.  Otherwise, Traits can only be called on one at a time.  Traits can stack with themselves, however.  For example, at a basic level, you could have a handgun.  You could also have a Desert Eagle with a laser sight (+1).  Lastly, you might have a hand-machined .50 caliber handgun with extra chambers, armor-piercing rounds, a laser sight, recoil suppression and a scope attachment.  That's a +2, and would take the place of 3 Items.

Examples of Traits
Traits include skills and talents as well as particular pieces of equipment that make tasks easier.  They should be a lot more specific than an attribute, but still grant an advantage in a conflict.

Feats: 

(You can spend an Adrenaline to double the effect of a feat)

Influences: 

(You can spend a Virtue to double the effect of an influence)

Items: 

(One item can "stack" effect with one skill)

Knowledge: 

(You don't test knowledge - you just know things in a given area)

Mysteries: 

(When you fail a test in which you use a mystery Trait, you gain one level of Fear or Pain)

Skills: 

(One skill can "stack" effect with one item)

Adrenaline
Adrenaline is a pool of points that you can use to modify conflicts.  Understandably, Adrenaline helps you kick the shit out of things - doors, objects, and opponents.

You earn Adrenaline back by being aggressive, by leading with your chin, fists, knife, fire-axe, shotgun and so on.  Adrenaline creates a cycle where you paint the walls, then earn some more, then paint the walls again.

The amount of Adrenaline that you can spend at one time is equal to your Fear level +1.

Virtue
Virtue is a pool of points, a reasource that you can use to further modify rolls, among other things.  Virtue is the only thing that might enable you to deal with Fear and Pain, and one character can use their Virtue to help others.

Virtue is earned - you begin a game with a little bit, but if things are going right, you should be spending it pretty often.

The way you earn Virtue is by taking risks on behalf of others, by doing self-sacrificing things to preserve others in the face of horror.

Virtue represents one of the two ways you can survive horror - by being someone who should survive in the first place.

If you RP talking someone down or soothing them or encouraging them and spend a Virtue point in a scene, you reduce their Fear level by one step.  If you RP caring for someone, binding their wounds and so on in a scene and spend a Virtue, you reduce their Pain level by one.  You can only do one or the other in a given scene - for 2 Virtue you can do both at once in a scene.

Hopes
Your Hopes are what give you life.  They inspire you, they make you who you are.  

They give you something to lose.

Your hopes are what give you your starting Virtue in a Horror! game.  You can  have up to three hopes which will function this way.

Also, whenever a Hope comes into play in a conflict specifically (GM's discretion) you get a +1 to directly-related tests.   Your Hopes inspire you to greater effort and at times, true brilliance.

Of course, in situations like this, when things go terribly wrong, it is possible for a Hope to transform into a Scar.  This should be a story event that takes place - and a character can never have fewer or more than a total of 3 Hopes and Scars unless they have received a Scar for being taken out of a game or incapacitated and then returning later.


WHAT WILL TAKE IT FROM YOU

Scars
Scars are the counter-balance of Dreams.  A scar is a memory of something terrible that happened to you.  It often resulted in a particular fear or weakness.

It also pisses you the fuck off.  Your scars give you Adrenaline.  You draw on what has hurt you - and use it to hurt other stuff.

Every time you're in a situation where a Scar specifically comes into play (GM's discretion), you are at -1 to all tests, but you also get a point of Adrenaline as soon as the penalty comes into effect.

Fear
Fear exists on a scale that is right there on your character sheet.  The more Fear you have, the weaker you'll become, the more ineffectual.  The accumulation of Fear is automatic over the course of a game.  Whenever how bad things are escalates from where they were before, everyone's Fear increases.  The only way to mitigate this effect is for someone to spend Virtue and talk someone else down.  This has to be roleplayed out, and then the Virtue is actually spent, and the person who was talked down can reduce their Fear by one step.  Your level of Fear is subtracted from your score in all social or mental conflicts.

You can spend Adrenaline on any one test equal to 1+your level of Fear, so being afraid can actually empower you...sort of.  Really, what it does is let you blow even more Adrenaline to negate the penalty to your tests, thus encoraging you to go out there and get more Adrenaline faster - and that just makes everyone's night more fun.

Pain
Like Fear, Pain is right there on your character sheet.  Whenever you lose a physical conflict where someone or something is trying to injure you, you gain one level of Pain.  Each level of Pain progressively incapacitates you more and more until  you are took broken to continue.  Your level of Pain is subtracted from your score in all physical conflicts.


HOW IT WILL HAPPEN

Conflict System
Conflicts in Horror! are simple, designed to be resolved in the midst of panic and shouting and running for your life.  The higher total number wins.  Two equal totals cancel out, and both sides take consequnces from the conflict.  Most physical conflicts will have Pain as a consequence.  Some social or mental conflicts will have Fear as a consequence, but genrally Fear just escalates as the story escalates.  The conseuqnces of a conflict might also be something simply related to the story - will the car start?  Will the locked door open?  Can you weld razor-wire to the sides of the schoolbus for the run through the mob of zombies?  In these cases, the GM just sets a target number.  If you get the target number exactly, you get what you wanted - barely, and not as thoroughly as you'd want.  If you get lower than the target number, something bad happens.  If you get something hither than the target number, you get what you want in the conflict.

Target Numbers
1-2 Easy
3-4 Normal; relatively challenging
5-6 Very challenging
7+ Probably impossible

Otherwise, the conflicts are character vs. character.  You compare each character's Attribute + Trait + Adrenaline or Virtue spent - again, the higher total wins.

In all cases, the player-character makes the first move - the PC is the first to take the risk, even if they are being attacked.  This adds to the feel or Horror! - you don't know what you're facing.  You might over-estimate and burn Adrenaline when you didn't need to, and you might under-estimate and get hurt for your trouble.  What this means is, the GM might say "Ok, the zombie is trying to grab you and bite you.  What are you doing?"  Then the player says what her character is trying to do to resist this - say, struggle and get out of the zombie's grasp using Power + a Feat + 1 Adrenaline to help make sure.  Her character's total is 5.  The GM knows that this is a very strong zombie, with a 6 in Power, but what happens is that the GM narrates what happens, ending with the zombie getting a grip on the PC and sinking its bloodstained teeth into her shoulder.  She takes 1 Pain.  Now, what does she do next?

This should always keep the PCs off-balance, making them guess how bad a thing they are facing is.  There is a way to try to figure out this ahead of time - we'll get to that in the Traits section.

A tie goes to the status-quo - often the "defender".  In combat, a tie means that both sides take a level of Pain and continue as they were, wounded and panting.  Note that ties will be pretty common, so things can get bloody for both sides quick.

Table-Top
The table-top game of Horror! doesn't involve any dice.  There is no chance that will come to save you, no high roll that will get you out of a tight spot.  In fact, we're doing what we can to keep you in the dark, make you waste resources, make you over-react to small threats and underestimate large ones.  Every player should say "oh shit", or something like it, during the course of every Horror! game at minimum.

Live-Action
Live Action is exactly like table-top, except that Adrenaline and Virtue should probably be playing cards or something so that they are harder to lose when  you're walking around.

It might be interesting that when you spend one or the other, you just throw your card to the ground, leaving indications that some kind of serious conflict took place here for others to find and/or intuit when they come by later.  That is, a pile of Adrenaline cards on the floor would mark the site of some combat, and you'd expect to find spent shell casings and blood splattered all over the place.

Otherwise, your character sheet easily fits on a single 4x6 card, and items can be cards you carry on you or can just be recorded on your sheet.

Appeal of 3 could be one gold star on your nametag; Appeal 4 is 2 stars and Appeal 5 is 3 - to indicate how hot, influential, menacing, or inspiring you are.

For a test, both sides get out their character card and any item card or Trait card they hope to use, as well as any cards they're willing to risk in the test.  Both sides reveal at once and compare.  All spent Adrenaline or Virtue cards are scattered on the floor.

Rewards
At the beginning of a game, there is a pool of Adrenaline and a pool of Virtue, set by the GM for that session.  Players award each other Adrenaline and Virtue during the course of the game when they see fit - the another player is baddass or virtuous, basically.  Once the pools are spent, there can be no more awards.  Unawarded points go away at the end of the session.  The PCs should probably work out some kind of shorthand for saying "I think we should award a point for what you just did"

Adrenaline:  "Holy shit", "Baddass", "Hardcore", "Oh my God", "You're a sick bastard" - or you could pound the table in appreciation

Virtue: "Nice one", "Awww", ::Cheering::, "Wow, that was amazing", "Saved!" - or you could raise your hand in blessing or make the sign of the cross or a peace sign toward the player in question

Parsec Alpha Playtest 3

(I only say "Alpha" because I was present for it, and that's how I categorize them).

I just got done playtesting Parsec, with me present, for only the third time. This isn't a game that needs a lot of playtesting - I'm not doing anything revolutionary with the system, I'm just using existing tools in a few ways I've never seen before, and using them in usual ways that I think are better than I've seem some of them used before. There's also a lot of it that is just "Yeah, its a rules-lite science fiction game".

The playtest was designed to test the ship-to-ship combat system, and frankly, it went really well. The system came through about 90% unscathed - and in talking it out with the players afterward, I think I found all of the problems and also found fixes for them. I'll want to test those a little, but I really feel like it succeeded in multiple areas.

We had two walk-ins to the game who had no idea what they were sitting down for, and they both learned the system in about...maybe ten minutes. It is really simple, which is exactly what it should be. This is being handed pre-gen characters (I'm confident about character creation already, so didn't need to test that again) and having no backround whatsoever with the system (thought both were experienced gamers).

I also had two other game-designers from the area, one who created an Eberron version of Spirit of the Century and the other who is designing a game and is apparently talking to Palladium. The important thing is - they both seemed to be having fun, and they both quickly figured out exactly what they had to do.

I was very nervous (only my wife could tell) and it had some slow spots (of course) but it was fun and it worked. The wheels didn't fall off and nothing shorted out. It just sputtered a bit - basically, the system needs a tune-up, and I feel confident about what I have to do going forward.

So that's really good.

My God I might actually finish this thing (it's been a year of work in earnest).

One kid, one of the walk-ins, told me that he would keep an eye out for the game, and said flat out that when it comes out, he's buying it. And that's a walk-in. Just one kid? Yeah, I know. But when a playtester who walked in off the street says "I will buy this game", that's a fucking score in my book.

I feel really good about it. It helps balance out the infinite weight of the work I know I still have to do.

Ashcan Review Part 1: How We Came to Live Here

I've been reading through Brennan Taylor's ashcan of How We Came to Live Here, which he has posted for download. This is fortunate, because this year conventions aren't happening, so I unfortunately won't be able to get any of these ashcans in person.

I have long been of the opinion, particularly after doing my undergraduate work in religious studies, that the vast majority of rpg magic systems are horrendously awful. Magic is basically nothing more than someone else's religion. So often, magic systems are put out there which are entirely devoid of color and particularity, or their color and particularity are completely arbitrary and uninteresting.

I thought of this persona rant while reading How We Came to Live Here because it is so incredibly strong in this area for a lot of reasons, the most important of which might be that the magic system he presents is not a magic system at all - it is a life system. Unbelieveable! That what amounts to "magic" would just be people's beliefs about how the world works and how they interact with that world and with each other! This is one of the only instances in fantasy in general, and in rpgs in particular, when the magic system has been anywhere near as interesting as the religions and occult practices here on planet Earth. ::Applause:: Like a good anthropologist, Taylor gives us an inside view of this culture which is different from, well, my culture at least, as well as his - an inside view which is affirmative. These things are true because they are true for the People. What you're sort of swept into is this holistic system of life that is presented, where supernatural and mundane things are all caught up in the same over-arching system.

In effect, I think, a good "magic system" is one where there is not any "magic" at all, if by "magic" you mean something separate from the life of a particular people at a particular time. It always bothers me when Elves and Orcs approach magic like Enlightenment philosophers, relegating everything to its hermetically-sealed category, casting spells that have no real meaning in their lives, which aren't based in anything important, which are essentially flashy-but-arbitrary shortcuts.

In contrast, the strength of HWCtLH in this regard comes from Brenna's stated goal of representing, faithfully, a fantasy setting that is based on a culture that is not his own - that of the southwest American natives whom he lived near growing up and whose beliefs and practices he also studied in college. He describes his game as a king of fantasy setting for the Anasazi people rather than for northern Europeans. I think it is this change in viewpoint that enables him to make this excellent presentation of a "magic system" that is actually interesting and evocative, even compelling.

I will try to put together a playtest of this game. Right now, I'm jealously trying to finish Parsec so that I can move on with the lessons I've learned from my first foray into rpg publishing, and I'm also running a Spirit of Eberron game, but hopefully I can put something together so that I can give him some more concrete feedback on this game.

I can't speak about the mechanics of the game so far - they seem like they'll work on paper, but I'll have to put that playtest together to actually figure them out. But I'm loving reading this book for its own sake, which hasn't happened in a long time for me when it comes to rpg books. You can really tell that this is a labor of love, something that Taylor feels passionate about. It shows through even in his relatively simple, straightforward text. I look forward to test-driving it.

This was Part 1 - Part 2 will come when, and if, I get to run the game. Even if I don't, I'll probably have more to say about how I think it'll work when dice hit table...

Parsec: Functionless Attributes

Now that I'm down to just three jobs, I remember that one of those jobs is writing Parsec, so I'm trying to buckle down and work on it in a more disciplined way.

As I go through the text once again, I have re-habilitated my rules on Status, which is basically a measurement of your social and economic standing in the setting. The thing about Status is that there are almost no actual rules attached to it. It is sort of a measurement, a note about your character like the place of their birth (but more important, I hope, for a game).

The reason I decided to bring Status back after I cut it out is that I want Parsec games to have a strong sense of economic realities of the setting injected into them. I don't want Star-Trekkish homogeneity because I think that's less plausible than faster-than-light travel. I think we're going to have phasers and warp drives before we have an economy without scarcity, without wealth on the one hand and the poverty on which wealth depends on the other.

But it does feel odd to put something forward as important when it won't be involved in spending points or rolling dice or doing the other things that attributes usually do in an RPG. Maybe its just that I don't want to tell players how Status must function, only that they have to take it into account in some way.

What do you think about something on your character sheet that doesn't really have rules attached? Should I give it leverage in the system or drop it, or is it not a problem?

Dragonlance vs. D&D Film Battle!

Green Ronin Rejects D&D 4th Edition

Apparently, Green Ronin has decided to follow in the footsteps of Paizo Publishing in rejecting 4th Edition D&D for their product lines. I had a feeling this might happen, having gone over the new GSL and reading responses to it. It looks like it is a less open liscence than 3rd Edition was, and I understand publishers not wanting to follow Wizards of the Coast into 4th Edition territory.

It's unfortunate, though. I like a lot of what Green Ronin does, and I was interested to see what they'd come up with for the 4th Edition rules set. The good thing is that Green Ronin will keep on publishing as they have been, and for those D&D fans who still prefer 3/3.5, there'll be plenty of quality content and support for years to come.

D&D Insider - WTF?

D&D Insider was supposed to go live when 4th Edition dropped - but its still "Coming Soon" according to their website. I have to wonder what the hell is taking so long? I mean, I wasn't excited to learn about the deaths of Dungeon and Dragon, to be replaced with a WoW-style online subscription model, but WotC seemed to be excited. And now they've just fostering frustrated fans one day at a time.

The lack of D&D Insider also means that organized play isn't happening in 4th Edition - no Living Forgotten Realms yet, and no Dungeon Delves. What this means for the game store I work for is that we've needing to designing our own Delves, and our organized play just...isn't happening yet.

In case you're having a similar problem, or are just interested, we're going to be posting about our Delve scenarios that we come up with. They sound pretty interesting so far - one is based on demonstrating how easy it is to make D&D 4th Edition look exactly like WoW, with a Delve based around the Scarlet Monastery using characters based on our WoW characters. Another is going to be based on Godzilla, with the Tarrasque attacking Sharn. I've come up with one that just uses the 4th Edition D&D minis that you get in the new starter set. We're trying to base them around groups of all sizes and all classes and levels, and to give them all interesting hooks.

There'll be more on what we come up with as we flesh them out.

In the meantime - WotC, get off your ass and have D&D Insider go live. After all that fanfare at last year's GenCon, you've got nothing? Really?

4th Edition D&D - Warlocks and Wizards

Last night, running my little 4th Edition D&D game, I noticed something that I had suspected would be the case. The Warlock blew through all of her Encounter powers and never made a single successful attack. Part of this was because the encounter was scaled to test how much the PCs could handle, but the fact is that the attack bonus for Warlocks and Wizards (and Clerics as well) is 2 or 3 points lower than those for Fighters, Paladins, Rogues and so on.

The reason for this is that classes using a missile or melee weapon get a proficiency bonus with the weapon in question, either 2 or 3, added to their attack values, whereas the 'pure casters' do not.

This means that for melee/missile classes, their attack value is around: Ability modifier + 1/2 level + proficiency modifier,

Whereas the casters only get: Ability modifier + 1/2 level.

If your game is low-level, without many magic items, then that proficiency bonus is going to be a huge difference. In this case, it meant the Range hitting all the time and the Warlock only hitting once, with her Daily spell.

So, I instituted another house rule. Warlocks get a proficiency bonus of +2 for using either the wand or rod that they have as their arcane implement, and Wizards get the same proficiency bonus for whichever implement they choose to focus on as well. I realize that the Wizard's AoE spells especially can be quite powerful, but they also have fewer hit points and less armor, and making it so that they hit significantly less often as well just takes a lot of the fun out of the game in my opinion.

So, in theory, the next session should be a lot more exciting for the Warlock, and I imagine the Wizard will also be a lot happier.

A One-Shot of Ice and Fire

I have mixed feelings about licensed material forming the basis of an RPG. In some cases, where the universe of the base material is sufficiently expansive (such as Star Wars) it can work. But if the source material is too closely wedded to certain characters (as with Serenity/Firefly) then I am less inclined to enjoy it. The appeal of the original world is simply too closely tied to the personality of the original characters and every game using the setting is going to feel derivative.

That makes Green Ronin's latest venture into the world of Westeros from George R.R. Martin's series of novels a tricky proposition. Part of Martin's genius is his gift for creating rich memorable characters. On the other hand, Westeros is incredibly detailed and there is such a dedicated fan following that it is hard to fault anyone for making the attempt. There have already been several forays into game design for Martin. There was a previous RPG using the D20 rules. There is a strategy board game, and a card game as well. So Green Ronin has their work cut out for them to distinguish themselves and make a game which will have an impact on this crowded market.

This past Saturday was Free RPG Day and Green Ronin released a preview set of their rules for the game and a test module to be run on the day. I was sufficiently intrigued to run it at Gamescape North in San Rafael and I am extremely pleased to say that this game delivers on everything it promises. I have not been so excited about a new RPG release in quite a while. Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (SIFRP) is a gritty, elegant, profound game that hits the nail on the head in terms of mood, mechanics, and material. 

If you are familiar with the books you'll know what a mismatch the D20 ruleset was for this material. D20 is all about combat simulation and heroic adventuring whereas Westeros is a place of intrigue, politics and gritty realism. No one should ever take a sword blow and shrug it off as a mere 1d8 hit points damage. Players should fear the very real danger that live steel presents and prefer to solve problems with their wits and careful planning. This game needed a a ruleset that would deliver on a crunchy in-depth intrigue system and Green Ronin has done just that.

Intrigue deserves a post of its own, but I will summarize here. Every character has ratings for Intrigue Defense, Status, Persuasion, Deception, and Composure. Aspects like Disposition and Frustration come into play, also, and you will be choosing to use techniques like Bargaining, Charm, Seduction, Taunting and so on... As an Intrigue progresses in exchanges parties will gradually lose their composure until one person gets the better of the other and gets what they want, which could include information, could be a new friend or ally, or it could be to cause their opponent to lose their cool and do something rash. The possibilities are endless. The system is slick. It is fast to learn and run and it provokes players to be better roleplayers - which is the highest compliment I could possibly pay to it.

Green Ronin also succeed on the fluff. They've obviously paid close attention to Martin's world and done their best to evoke it in mood and flavor without just using canon material. The module they sent had great characters with depth and complexity to them, portraying all the roles the books suggest - a Maester, a Septa, a Bastard, a Knight, a Lord, a Squire... Their descriptions of places and suggestions for NPC's were on target as well. I do have one criticism of their module design which is that it was way too vanilla to be an adequate introduction. I understand the philosophy that you want to have an introduction be simple since players will all be learning the rules, but I think it is shooting yourself in the foot. You want your first impression to be as good as possible and so they should have put together a module that was far more detailed and highlighted the things about the system that are unique - particularly intrigue. Instead they threw us a story about bandits which could have been in any D20 game.

So, of course, I modified the module heavily. Instead of being mere bandits, they were men hired by a family still loyal to the Targaryens to waylay and kill a Knight on the way to the tournament. There were family feuds and hints of a plot to bring a poisoned blade to the upcoming tournament at King's Landing - perhaps to kill King Robert in the Melee! I made 9/10 of the game about these intrigues and threw in a little combat with the bandits just to spice it up. Green Ronin could certainly have done more with the module to impress folks, but I'm just happy with how  easy it was to concoct all of this intrigue on the basis of the system they've made.

This game gets 5 out of 5 stars from me for sheer originality and grace. It is totally different in feel from any medieval fantasy game out there right now and I hope it sells like gangbusters.

Hunter: the Vigil

I don't know if you guys got a chance to check out White Wolf's offering for Free RPG Day, but it was a Hunter: the Vigil introductory scenario, and there was enough in there to get a good idea of what the Hunter game will probably be like, as well as how White Wolf is going about scenario design these days.

It looks like Hunter: the Vigil is going back to the roots of Hunters Hunted, rather than Hunter: the Reckoning. In Hunters Hunted, you were just regular people who hunted monsters. You did so for various reasons, and at most possibly had mild psychic powers, but ultimately you had to use your brains and teamwork to survive. Hunter: the Reckoning, in contrast, had a lot of character options that were freakishly overpowered and a other options that were almost worthless, and not a lot in-between. It was pretty easy to build a Hunter using the Reckoning rules who would never experience any danger from any supernatural. That...basically guaranteed a lack of fun (though I've heard the computer game was decent - never played it myself.)

In Hunter: the Vigil, you're back to being regular mortals built with the basic World of Darkness rules. Instead of super powers, you have two special advantages when facing down the monsters. The first is Tactics - a Tactic is a way that your hunter cell has developed where they work together to augment themselves against supernatural attacks, or to work as an efficient and effective team. The two that the introductory book mentions bolster you against mind control powers and make you a better investigator, respectively. The other thing that you can do as a Hunter is risk Willpower. Instead of spending Willpower, you can risk it, meaning if you succeed you get two Willpower back, but if you fail, the failure is treated as a dramatic failure.

For scenario design, White Wolf seems to be outlining and clearly delineating scenes. Each scene has a rating of Mental, Physical and Social, corresponding to what the scene will focus on and how it will challenge the player-characters. It also has a short introduction and a paragraph of "Storyteller Goals" and another paragraph of "Character Goals". I like what I've seen of the scene design system because it lends itself to a style of storytelling that I think works well with White-Wolf's games - a kind of semi-cinematic drama. I also like thought going into what the goal of a scene is from the storyteller side and the player side.

Overall, I think Hunter: the Vigil looks promising. Its a return to grittier and more frightening Hunter stories, where you pit cunning and courage against the supernatural powers of creatures of darkness. That's what I want in a modern-day Hunter game. When it comes out in August, I'll be looking at getting myself a copy.

4th Edition D&D - Milestones - House Rule

I think I found a way to adapt my ideas about alignment - be devouring and co-opting the 4th Edition milestone rule. I want to steal the Milestone idea, and make it a lot more meaningful.

In the current rules as written, your character reaches a Milestone when she has completed two encounters without taking an extended rest. When you reach a milestone, you receive an Action Point, which can be spent to take an extra action in an encounter or to activate some Feats or Paragon powers. Essentially, the system is rewarding you for not resting after every encounter, the classic tactic from 3.5. I think this is frankly sort of unnecessary.

Now, when I think "Milestone", I think of some kind of important stage in someone's development. A Milestone is something like graduation or marriage or the birth of your first child - not room #2 in a dungeon delve.

I think that, once a player has defined her character's Alignment, she should then define four Milestones that are related to that Alignment. Her Action Point pool is equal to the number of Milestones she has achieved. These Milestones should be ranked in order of difficulty or importance, so that each successive one is a greater challenge than the past.

A Milestone should probably be some kind of really important decision or challenge that the Alignment will force on the character.

I need to give this more thought, but I like the germ of the idea.

D&D 4th Edition - Character Creation + Hacks

I recently sat down with my home group to create some characters for 4th Edition D&D. I've got a wide range of players, from those who are really interested in rules and systems and even number-crunching once in a while, to players like my lovely wife who couldn't care less about system and has fun playing off the top of her head and improvising. She'll take notes on the setting, draw maps and little pictures of what is going on, write down NPC names, but mostly ignore her character sheet.

Considering this, I thought that just sitting down with the very detailed D&D character sheets for number-crunching wouldn't work so well, so I came up with a worksheet for character creation. It basically lists all of the big decisions you have to make as a player creating a character, and using it I can do the number-crunching for my two players who just won't have fun doing it themselves. (In case you couldn't tell, I'm on the end of the spectrum that is excited about systems and I don't mind having an excuse to create more characters.

The worksheet had a very simple layout (I suck at layout something fierce) and had the following prompts on it with lines after them (italics mark house rule elements):

Character workseet for

Who will be playing

Ability scores

Alignment: As mentioned before, I'm looking at ways to rework alignment so that it...doesn't completely suck, or at least cease to actively hinder good roleplaying

Character race

Character keywords: I wanted players to choose keywords from their racial description or class description, or just come up with them. I had three blanks for these, and got things like Determined, Terse, Pragmatic - good stuff

Character class
Class subtype
Role

At-will abilities chosen

Encounter abilities chosen

Daily ability chosen

Trained skills

Feats

Equipment

Monthly upkeep: I don't love dealing with detailed equipment, so I lumped food, ammunition, shelter or tents, camping gear and an adventurer's kit into a lump monthly sum that represents how well you've living. The levers were Squalor 20gp, Poor 30gp, Relative Comfort 50gp (the most popular choice), Easy Life 100gp, and High Roller 500gp (pun intended). If these totals seem high, I came up with them using the PhB equipment section to estimate what you'd go through in a month of semi-active adventuring, and added in the fact that adventurers sleep in inns a lot and don't cook much for themselves, which is a really expensive way to live.

Armor and shields
Weapons
Adventuring gear

Informational Contacts: I had the players come up with one informational contact, an NPC who would be in the game, for every point of Intelligence bonus they had. I just used this as a way to help me produce NPCs for what was a custom setting

Family/Mentor Contacts: for each point of Wisdom modifier, I had the player choose one family or mentor contact. Not sure why I keyed this to Wisdom - it just seemed to make sense. Wise people are probably on good terms with family and keep up helpful relationships with teachers...I guess

Social Contacts: obviously, this was one for every point of Charisma bonus they player-character had. I also encouraged them players to choose the same contacts so that they would have connections starting off. For each extra PC who had the same contact, the contact basically become twice as useful.

Starting Situation: We brainstormed the situation together. Thank God the players were motivated to do this. It could've been a disaster, but I wanted them to feel like they were participating, like they had ownership of the game overall, and weren't just being fed it.

Starting Setting: the setting brainstorming session was awesome. I think our setting is cool. It is basically a large and once-powerful island colony 99 years after a huge tsunami wiped out most of the main city. The survivors are now cut off from the empire that founded them. The island is a huge volcanic caldera millions of years old - the interior of the caldera is entirely uncharted, and much of it lies in the Feywild. The main city, Good Hope (going for a South African theme of sorts) has a large Tiefling population and a large Halfling population - Halflings were brought in by the drove as indentured servants to work in the colony, and have since liberated themselves and now control most of the agriculture on the island.

Color: this didn't happen, but I wanted some key words or terms from teh players about what kind of setting they wanted this to be. I got some color during the other brainstorming sessions, though, so I think it'll be something they're interested in. We'll see.

D&D 4th Edition, 3.5, 3 etc. - Alignment House Rule

I've been thinking about alignment and how to 'fix' it so that it is something that I want to bother putting in my game. I've already talked about D&D alignment in the past a few times, and have laid out the problems with its various iterations.

I came up with a fix, while hanging out with Aric at work today (another author on this blog), and I kind of like it. I want to see how it works in an actual D&D game, because I'll be damned if I'm using the alignment 'system' that 4th Edition has in place. In order to use this alignment system, I end up changing alignment to feed into an action-point mechanic. (As I imagine how this works, the closest thing I can come up with is Burning Wheel's Artha mechanic. I'm also thinking about H. Richard Niebuhr, as it turns out.)

What goes in the alignment slot on your character is what I'll call your "center of value". That is, it is what your character values most. This should be relatively abstract, so that it can be interpreted a few different ways during the game. Some examples we came up with could be "Personal Gain" or "My Code of Honor" or "Peace Between my People and X Neighbor".

You will regenerate action points when this center of value, this alignment, is threatened in some way in the game. What this does is it rewards the players for putting their characters into situations where their center of value is threatened. This also provides the DM with a source of ideas of ways to push the characters and challenge them in dramatic ways.

Now, once your alignment is set, you have three more things to write down.

1. The first thing to write down is a specific goal that is related to your alignment. This has to be something achieveable in-game, and the DM and other players have to agree to it, because you're obviously not going after these goals alone.
2. The second thing to write down is one important thing you are willing to sacrifice for the sake of your alignment.
3. The third thing two write down is one thing you are not willing to sacrifice or compromise for the sake of your alignment.

When you achieve the first goal, you add one to your action point pool, meaning you can have more than one action point saved at any given time.

When you face an opportunity to make the sacrifice you wrote down, you increase your total pool of action points.

When you betray something important for the sake of your alignment

So, here's an example.

Alignment: "Personal Gain"
Whenever this character sacrifices their personal gain for the sake of something else, they get an action point. So, if they donate their money to a village so it can buy medicine to halt a plague, that is worth an action point.

1. "I will become the most renowned rogue in the city."
When you become the most renowned rogue in the city, you increase your action point pool.

2. "I am willing to sacrifice my family's good name for the sake of personal gain."
When you have destroyed your family's good name for the sake of personal gain, you increase your action point total by one.

3. "I am not willing to betray loyal allies for the sake of personal gain."
This one will work whether you betray a loyal ally or not. If you betray the ally, then you increase your action point total. If you decide at the last moment to remain true to your ally and suffer the consequences, you also increase your action point total by one.

Without talking about these ideas in game-jargon - what the intent behind this is to reward players for doing cool things in game, for causing their characters trouble, for making the DM's job easier, and for keeping foremost in their minds what it is that their characters value most, what it is that drives them to be adventurers rather than shepherds or cobblers.

Right now this not a final idea. I might come up with better things to put beneath alignment. Maybe one thing at a time would be better. One important aspect of this house rule is that the players and DM come up with these as a group when you are designing character concepts. This way, your alignments will fit together well and will hopefully feed off of each other in dramatic ways.

I also want to have the option of "Unaligned", meaning you don't have strong values and are sort of easygoing and blow with the wind. This will mean that you won't regenerate action points at all, but I should add some kind of mechanic which will enable the Unaligned character to have action points as well.

As I said, this alignment hack needs some more thought.

4th Edition D&D - On the Offense of Omitting Gnomes

One of the announcements prior to the launch of 4e which generated the most uproar was the announcement that they would be leaving Gnomes out of the PHB and putting them in the Monster Manual instead. While there are plenty of people who are either indifferent or actively despise the Gnome there are also people who are passionate Gnome-lovers. Regardless of where you stand the Gnome has been with the game for a long time and many folks (including me) were more than a tad miffed to hear that the Gnome had been replaced by the laughable upstart races of Eladrin, Dragonborn (WTF!), and Tiefling.

While I still think this was a lame move, the edge of my complaint has been substantially blunted by the inclusion at the back of the Monster Manual of the four best pages in the whole damn core rulebook set - a variety of "monsters" done up in brief format as playable character races eliminating the loathsome Level Adjustment typical of such hacks in 3e. Since the flavor text in the PHB is such crap anyway (play an elf if you want to sling gobs of arrows!) these mini stat blocks are basically the exact same content as the official player character races in the PHB. In other words - play a Gnome if you bloody want to (I intend to!).

In fact, I actually like how they've done Gnomes in this edition. Previous editions of Gnomes always had a variety of silly little powers that basically never came up in gameplay and served almost no purpose. Remember how 3e had a hard time figuring out which class Gnomes should favor (illusionist? That's not even a class!). Basically Gnomes were suffering from an identity crisis. This is not true at all in 4e where Gnomes are sneaky little buggers with an awesome flavorful power "Fade Away" which allows them to become invisible if they ever take damage. It's a delicious little power that would compliment a Fey Pact Warlock very well. With a plethora of ways to be concealed or invisible, to teleport and to blind targets such a character would be all kinds of broken. Enjoy the expression of disappointment on your DM's face when he realizes he can't find or hit your character with any of his monsters!

Frankly, I hope 4e continues the trend established by those 4 delicious little pages and releases a slew of playable races in such a simple intuitive format. Since WoTC has clearly abandoned any attempt to provide deep and interesting fluff we can just embrace the fluid mechanics and make up our own fluff to cover the deficiencies. Gnomes are back baby!

4th Edition D&D vs. 4th Edition GURPS

It had to happen - a comparison between the 4th Editions of two major gaming systems. GURPS is not as big as D&D, of course, because no RPG is, but it is up there among the main systems that one would think of if asked to list some off the top of their head.

GURPS 4th came out a few years ago of course, and it is only coincidence that D&D, an older game, is also in its 4th edition at the moment. Still, I thought a comparison could be interesting. Rather than compare the games to each other (since they are different games in a lot of ways), I thought I might compare them to their predecessors.

Continuity

GURPS is one system that has a strong identity and hasn't changed radically in any of its editions. Point-based character creation, long lists of skills that represent task resolution, Advantages and Disadvantages, variable Magic system, lots of customizeability, etc. 4th Edition GURPS has a lot in common with 3rd Edition. It keeps all of the tropes of the previous editions and, in general, improvees on them or simplifies them slightly.

D&D, in contrast, underwent a big change with 3rd Edition, and in my opinion an even larger change in 4th Edition. Monks, Druids and Bards, who have been with D&D from the beginning, are no longer found in the core rulebooks. Gnomes are now monsters, and Eladrin, Dragonborn and Tieflings have been added to the core race list where they have never been found before. Rules changes are more significant than even 3rd Edition compared to AD&D 2nd Edition, in my opinion. In some cases these are simplifications or improvements, and in other cases I think the step was a step backwards.

Rules Changes

As mentioned above, the rules changes in GURPS 4th Edition were basically improvements on the previous rules set. Costs of some Attributes and Skills are changed and more templates are available in the basic books. Defenses are simplified slightly. Really, its the same game, overhauled.

D&D has changed a lot with the 4th Edition. Races, Classes, Skills, levels and leveling, class abilities, magic items, entries in the MM, encounter-building, fixed Fort, Reflex and Will defenses, 50/50 saving throws...this is not just building on 3rd Edition, this is a different game in many significant ways.

Production Values

Both 4th Editions were marked improvements on previous editions in terms of production values. The 4th Edition D&D core rulebooks are beautiful with better art and better layouts. They have better covers with glossy and matte surfaces. The use things like color-coding to help cue what abilities are and how they function, and their layout is a bit more logical than it has been in the past. There is also an improvement in the writing style and quality in some cases. 4th Edition GURPS also uses color coding, as well as little visual icons marking various types of Advantage or Disadvantage.

Overall, production values for the new D&D books are higher than everything out right now except for the new White Wolf Clanbooks, which are freakishly beautiful and well-done. But you really can't compete with White Wolf when it comes to production values and sheer beauty of their books. GURPS production values are much higher than 3rd Edition, but you can't expect Steve Jackson Games to keep up with Hasbro.

My Reactions

My first reaction when I read through the new GURPS 4th Edition books was "Wow, they improved everything and added almost everything I had as a house rule." I really liked the books. They took what GURPS does well and they did it better. I bought the two main books and the Fantasy book outright even knowing that my current group doesn't even like GURPS. I read them all and enjoyed them.

My first reaction to the new 4th Edition D&D books improved as I moved from the PhB to the DMG and finally to the MM. I thought "these are beautiful books that contain a different game from 3rd Edition rather than an improvement." The PhB hit me as a superbly-presented sideways move. They got rid of some good things and added some bad things, and vise-versa. The DMG went over a little better - actually, its the one I've read the least at this point, but I thought "Ok, this is a very good DMG; better than the last ones." The MM I really enjoyed. I liked the thoughtful and interesting re-builds of all of the creatures I've read so far, the new more efficient layout, the new art, and the racial stats in the back for all of the creatures I could think of wanting to play as a PC.

Conclusion

GURPS and D&D are very different games which have made very different moves with their 4th Edition offerings. GURPS takes the past and improves on it across the board. D&D takes the skeleton of 3rd Edition and builds what is essentially a new game. I'm pretty sure I like the new game a little better than I did 3.5, but it isn't an overwhelming conversion. I'm still running a 3.5/Pathfinder module for Free RPG Day, and I really like what Paizo is putting out for 3.5. As for GURPS, on the other hand, there's no reason whatsoever to keep using 3rd Edition unless you're too broke to buy 4th Edition.

4th Edition D&D - Holy Typos, Batman!

I've noticed a massive number of typos in the Monster Manual for the ability scores of the creatures listed. Ogres are a great example - a +2 bonus for an Intelligence of 4? +14 for a Strength of 23? These errors are all over the place in multiple entries, almost to the point where the mistakes are the rule rather than the other way around.

I'm sure they'll post corrections to D&D Insider once it is up and running, but wow, those are a lot of mistakes.

4th Edition D&D - Reivews - Kobolds

Like Goblins, Kobolds have been reworked in the 4th Edition Monster Manual, and I really like the change.

Kobolds

Like Goblins, Kobolds can also shift 1 square with a minor action at will. Kobold Skirmishers and Kobold Dragonshields have an extra ability called Mob Attack. What Mob Attack means is that these Kobolds get a +1 to all attacks for every Kobold that is adjacent to the target they are attacking. You can easily see how this will be bad news for a race that loves to set traps and then swarm all over you in large numbers.

But there's more. There is the Kobold Slinger who has his special shot. He can hit you with a Stinkpot, which deals damage and and imposes a -2 penalty to attack rolls until you make your save. He can also hit you with a Firepot, which deals damage and then deals a little bit of ongoing fire damage until you make a save. Lastly, there is the Gluepot, which immobilizes you.

So here's how this goes. First, at range, a bunch of slingers sling you, so that you are potentially at -2, on fire, or immobilized. Preferably, all three. Then, you are swarmed by Kobolds who are getting bonuses for every other Kobold near you. This swarming means that your Wizard or other Controller will have a lot of trouble clearing out Minions with blasts of arcane energy.

While being swarmed, you are still being attacked by the Slingers, who continue to shift to better positions and rain down stink, fire and glue for the duration of the battle.

You'd better hope there is no Kobold Wyrmpriest with them, because as an encounter power which is a minor action, he can Incite Faith, granting all Kobold allies within a close burst of 10 5 temporary hit points and letting them all shift one square as an immediate action.

Covered in poo, on fire, glued to the floor, and swarmed by shifty Kobolds who get stronger the more of them there are fighting you. Sounds like quite the way to die.