Back to Some Game Design

My obsession with Tolkien is well documented. There has been a recent lull in editing activity on my other projects, and one of the things that happens at such a time is I dust off an older project and put some more work into it. In this case, that project is Servants of the Secret Fire, my Middle-Earth RPG. It is a cool game, and I hit a point where I had enough new tweaks and ideas that I wanted to put down another draft. So far, so good - about 5,000 words have rolled out in the past few days, partly by way of iPhone while watching a friend play Red Dead Redemption, so clearly my mind is in this space.

I was recently invited to write for my friend Pete Figtree's blog, and he gave me a blank slate, so of course I wrote about Tolkien. I have also been reading about Tolkien and listening to the Aldasaga podcast, which is about Tolkien and Norse myth. I think these things build up to a critical mass, and one of the main ways I discharge this extra intellectual payload is through gaming. Since I haven't yet found a group to play The One Ring with, this is what happens.

It's also a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a new city, new job, toddler, moving and bills.

The One Ring is hands-down the best Middle-Earth RPG out there right now. I love running it and would likely love playing in a game as well. I can still do better. Now I just have to prove it by actually doing better. If I finish SotSF, I will be of course be giving it away. If anyone reading this has any interest in reading or paytesting it, please contact me and let me know. It probably won't be ready for beta playtesting for a while (I haven't even had an alpha playtest yet, honestly), but obviously that'll need to happen.

Maybe other people have fewer of these, but this is one of those projects that I work on simply because I enjoy thinking about it and working on it. I don't make it a priority over actual work - Never Pray Again and writing for my new job come first, no question, as do the couple of editing gigs that I have. But there is still time when I can squeeze in even more writing and thinking, and this is it. My fantasy heartbreaker.

I don't know whether it is better or worse that I realize that and still work on it.

Stealing from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

33,889

I just had an interesting idea that I thought I would put out there. Both WFRP and Edge of the Empire, by Fantasy Flight Games, use a custom dice mechanic that allows for an interesting result on top of fail/succeed. Each has a mechanic that governs fate - a special type of die that gives an overall "this goes well" or "this goes badly" result. What this means is that you can succeed on the die-roll, but then get the "this goes badly" result on top of that, so you succeed but in another way things escalate. On the other hand, you can fail, but get the "this goes well" result on the additional die-roll, meaning that you fail but you 'fail forward', or your failure opens up some new possibility.

The interpretation of both is up to the GM running the game, but I really like this idea. It also allows for something like "critical success" or "critical failure". When you succeed and get the "this goes well" result, it goes REALLY well. If you fail and get the "this goes badly"...well, you get the picture.

This mechanic struck me as a great way to tie story more deeply into die-results, or as a prompt for less-experienced GMs perhaps. It gives you a cue as to when you move the story forward - in a beneficial or challenging way, either of which is interesting. I like this mechanic a lot, but I don't want to have to have custom dice for every game I play.

What occurred to me is that there are a number of ways to solve this problem, and to add this overall 'fate' mechanic to any dice-driven game. One option is to roll a FUDGE die with every roll, where a + is beneficial, a - is a new difficulty, and the blank side is just blank. To make the benefit or difficulty less likely, you might roll two dFs, and require a ++ or -- result.

This could really be done with any die, though. You could roll a d8, and if it is a 1 you get the difficulty, and if it is the 8 you get the benefit. And so on.

(I'm currently poking around with a rough system for Dragonblade, and it uses a 2d8 mechanic. In the system, if you roll two 4s, that is 'bad luck', because in various dialects of Chinese, the number 4 sounds like the word "death", and as a result the number 4 is widely considered unlucky. If you roll two 8s, that's lucky, because 8 is a prominent number in Chinese philosophy, coming up in places like the I-Ching and the Eightfold Path. 8 is a lucky number in the way that 4 is unlucky. 6 is also a lucky number in Chinese culture, generally speaking, but I liked the parity between 4 and 8. Anyway, the two 4s vs two 8s mechanic is in part inspired by the cool mechanics I see in WFRP and Edge of the Empire.)

What I like about this is that it ports a mechanic that I think adds a lot to a game, which most games do not have, into any game in which you want to use it. Most games that come to mind could potentially benefit from this mechanic, especially 'traditional' task-resolution style games where you only roll to hit/miss, succeed/fail.

Parsec Again

I just got a copy of the full PDF of Parsec, complete with most of the layout and a lot of the artwork.  It's really cool to have it to go through - I find places where I'm proud of what I wrote, as well as places where I'm thinking "Oh crap, this is going to be published?"

The upside is seeing a project I worked so hard on develop further.  The downside is that I have 120 or so pages to go through and re-proofread and re-edit on top of everything else.

Still a labor of love, though.

Reckoning Playtest and Our Audience

This past week we got to run another Reckoning playtest while we were at Unco11.  The playtest was drifting the system a bit, outside the settings (modern) for which it is designed.  The situation was that the players would be in the midst of the Fourth Crusade, either Latins or Greeks.  If they had chosen to be the Greeks, they would be inside the city, centered on one of the monasteries in Constantinople, and their horror would be the impending doom coming down on them from the west.

The players chose to be Latins - their horror would be the horror of moral culpability as they sack and destroy cities of their brethren (Zara and then Constantinople itself).

The playtest went really well - the system works.  It does what we want it to do.  People have fun.  Every group tells us that character creation is the best part of the system, and it led to a lot of interconnection and buy-in among the players.

The players were basically a group of five who normally play D&D (one has called every character Ham Samich since he started playing in middle school) and one player deep-friend in the simmering vat of story games, someone with an entirely different gaming background, different expectations at the table.

What I suspected, what was reinforced, is that not only is Reckoning not a story game, it is potentially not fun for story gamers, unless they are interested in playing something like a hybrid.

It was interesting to see this person's discomfort.  We spent three hours after the session discussing the game, and it seemed like our story gamer enjoyed parts of it, but felt a lot of anxiety around the idea of a GM having lots of control over what was happening.

The thing is, the game is solid.  We know a little better about our target audience - basically, people who play D&D or other similar games will have a lot of fun with Reckoning and be introduced to a few ideas that don't exist in D&D.

We did what we set out to do.  We wanted to create an excellent horror rpg that we would want to play more than any other horror rpg.  That's what we have.  As a wonderful bonus, most other people who have played the game in the past have a great time with the game - all but one, actually, though I don't want to imply it was something wrong with this player.  It's just - well, not everyone is going to enjoy a given game.

This thing is sharp, man.  It does what it's supposed to do from a design standpoint.  We got some good advice from the one less-satisfied player that we need more time to consider, but what we really need is a rough draft to start having readers look at.

New Parsec RPG Sketches

Once again, I got to see some new sketches for the game.  Those of you who know where the art blog is for Parsec can check them out.  Otherwise - here are a few samples:

Yes, my friends, that's a cover mockup.  Not sure the buggy will stay in the final version.

That is a zero-gravity ju-jitsu knife fight.  Zero-gravity because people will fight there, and it will play out differently from fighting in gravity (yes, there are rules for that).  Ju-jitsu because when I imagined the fighting, it would quickly become close-quarters, and once you grab someone in zero-g, the two of you start spinning and jerking around with each push and pull, and something like full guard would help you keep control of an opponent, just like in gravity.  Knives because I don't imagine lots of discharging firearms in a spaceship, and because I really like an action sequence that results in globs of blood floating around the cabin.

This is an idea we talked out (the publisher, the artist and I did) about a flag-raising image, a take on Iwo Jima, but it is of Silva Energy raising their corporate standard over yet another fallen Latin American nation.  The new world order in the ruins of the old.  Impending privatized dystopia and all that.

There's more but you'll have to support the game when we go live on Kickstarter to see it. :)

bySwarm

There's recently been something of a burst of activity on the bySwarm site.  We're planning an online game for the purpose of playtesting and continuing to develop the setting, and the new players have been very eager to get started.

As a result, I returned to the forums today and updated a number of posts.  It's always really exciting for me when new ideas and new people start popping up on this project.  I've been part of it for more than a year now, and it keeps changing and morphing over time.  Most of the people who were involved a year ago are no longer involved, but that's part of the idea of the whole project.  New people bring new things to the Dark Golden Age, and the setting is the sum total of our work.  Still great a year later and going strong.

Parsec and Lessons Learned

As I never tire of announcing all over the Internets, my science fiction RPG, Parsec, is out at last.  It is my first RPG credit, and was a long time coming in retrospect.  Like you'd expect with any first-time outing, there is a lot about the project that isn't perfect.  Also, since I was working for a publisher, there ended up being a lot that just wasn't under my control.  Being new to the hobbistry, this is something I've just had to get used to and accept.

Just like with any threshold crossed, I've been working out what I've learned from the whole process, what I can take with me as I move forward to other projects and future goals.  A few things come to mind.

There is no substitute for time
Writing this book took a LONG time.  I started playtesting it about 2 years ago.  Now, granted, during the time I was working on this book I was also going to graduate school and simultaneously working multiple jobs on the side.  I worked 80 hours a week at a hospital for a year.  Then at one point I technically had 6 jobs at once.  So it wasn't exactly a picnic time in my life either.  But still.  I have a much more realistic view of how long it takes to put together something with as many moving parts as a roleplaying game: approximately 6 times as long as I expect.

I cannot playtest too much
I actually only ran 3 or maybe 4 playtests of Parsec.  I had a few people read through it and give me feedback, and I went through it very carefully many times, but playtesting was kind of a challenge to put together.  Fortunately, Parsec is, underneath it all, a pretty simple game. It is a combination of things I know work from other kinds of games combined with a few things I tested in the playtests I did run to see how they turned out - things like the Initiative, zero-G combat, and Scars.  Otherwise, it's a dice-pool task-resolution system most of the time - it's just the system that I've always wanted for simulationist hard science fiction.  For other more innovative designs that aren't built on a dice-pool/task resolution skeleton, I know I'll have to find a way to playtest even more.

Do I want to publish, or be published?
This is a good question put forward in one of the Accidental Survivors' Collateral podcasts, and it was good food for thought in light of my recent experience with Parsec.  I guess my pipe dream is to be published, but to have creative control over the entire project.  Good luck with that, Doug.  Instead the question is creative control OR being published by someone else.  Do all the work myself, or give up some of the creative control to someone else.

That's a hard choice.  Are there companies that will just put something out, unchanged but under their imprint?   Maybe.  That still leaves me either learning layout or hiring someone to do it; either becoming an artist or finding, recruiting and paying them.

Self-publishing is probably something I can do - but can I do it well enough, on top of everything else I have to do well (as a solo pastor, that's everything), to justify not finding and hiring someone who can do it a lot better?

I heart collaborators
Yup, that's about it.  Parsec was 98% designed in a vacuum.  The feedback I got from playtesting helped, but as I noted above, I didn't playtest as much as I'd like to in the future.  Other feedback I got was on the writing itself, from people who are more familiar with other kinds of writing and not specifically writing gaming systems - really helpful, but not exact.

I feel like in an  hour with a couple people I can hash out more good ideas than in a month by myself - maybe it's just how I work.  The price paid for collaborating, though, is that things can also go a lot slower between bursts of inspiration and creativity.  And yeah, sometimes you hit a snag where you just don't agree, and it's hard to see how to move forward then.  Also, people can be unreliable, myself included.  But there's always the chance that I get left holding the bag for a big project when collaborators find they are no longer interested.  I find I have a hard time letting go, even 7 years later.

***

Well, regardless, Parsec is out, for sale at what I think is a good price-point for what it is.  I come away from it a little wiser and more experienced, a bit proud and also thinking of how I can do better next time.  There was nothing about the experience that makes me want to do it less, so here we go - I'm already waist-deep in the next few projects...

Parsec

Parsec, the hard sci-fi RPG I have been writing for Jolly Roger Games is nearing completion.  It'll be my first publishing credit in the gaming "industry", and even though the project has taken longer than I expected at first, it's still pretty exciting.

Build Your Own D20 Weapon

In working on D&D house rules, I hit upon a method for creating balanced new D20 weapons. This might even be posted elsewhere or something, but I think that it works pretty damn well, and so if you want to come up with crazy unique weapons for your setting, use this simple system.

Base unarmed weapon 1d3

Determine a total number of points based on the kind of weapon you are creating.

light +1, medium +2, heavy +3

simple +1, martial +2, exotic +3

missile -2

1 pick = upgrade damage die, upgrade critical range, upgrade critical multiplier

Then you spend the points to upgrade your weapon compared to a basic unarmed strike from an untrained person.

Examples/

rapier: light martial 3, up to 1d6 (1), upgrade critical threat to 18-20 (2)

bastard sword: medium exotic 5, dice up to 1d10 (3), threat up to 19-20 (1) -hmm...one 'pick' left

kukri: light martial 3, dice up to 1d4 (1) threat range up to 18-20 (2)

greataxe: heavy martial 5, dice up to 1d12 (4), crit multiplier up to x3 (1)

longbow: heavy martial missile 3, dice up to 1d8 (2), crit multiplier to x3 (1)

light crossbow: heavy simple missile 2, dice up to 1d8 (2), crit range to 19-20 (1), move action to load (-1)

Anyway, you get the basic idea.

10 Things Dungeons & Dragons Online Does Right (That D&D Could Learn From)

I'm only in Rank 4 of Level 1 in Dungeons & Dragons Online, and already I've found a lot of things that DDO does well that could be translated directly to the tabletop D&D experience, all of which would improve that experience in my opinion.

Following is my list of 10 things as well as many suggestions for how to implement these ideas from DDO in your tabletop D&D game right now. Most of the suggestions are applicable for any edition of D&D - if not, I'll try to note it.

1. Incremental advancement as well as leveling

In DDO, each level is broken down into multiple ranks. At each rank, you get to pick a small boost for your character. For example, as a Dwarf, I can choose to raise my saving throw bonus against magic by +1, or get another +1 against goblinoids. This is a great idea, especially if one is using the DMG-recommended leveling schedule, which has you leveling every few sessions, meaning you can go for 12 hours or more of straight gaming without character improvement, and then suddenly, DING, everything increases all at once for no in-game reason.

How to implement this at the table: This is going to be challenging and to require some work from the DM and the players to come up with a solution. One option, which I take, is to have the characters level every other session, regardless of XP. That means that even-numbered sessions involve leveling and, in my games, odd-numbered sessions focus more on loot and story rewards (hirelings, allies, rank, etc.) This way, every session, there is a payoff. As a player, I really like this method myself. Some players will not care as much, I realize, in which case they are probably happy with the leveling system as written.

2. A wide variety of incremental options

Not only can you advance incrementally between levels, there is also a lot to choose from. There were probably 20 options for my level 1 Dwarf Cleric. The theme they all had was their specificity - a +1 for saves against one kind of threat, or a +1 against one kind of creature, or a +1 to a single class skill. There were also powers one could use in exchange for sacrificing a use of Turn Undead, or my Cleric could choose to follow a particular deity or pantheon and gain proficiency in their favored weapon as well as a +1 with that weapon.

How to implement this at the table: One simple way to do this is to grant a skill rank or a hit point at the end of every session. Skills are not that big a deal, and they already have a level-based maximum, so these extra ranks will be used to flesh out a character with secondary skills anyway. The hit point is just there for players who don't care about skills, or who just want the extra padding. A DM could add to the above list a specific bonus to one saving throw or to attack rolls - like the little bonuses that some races start with. So, after an adventure full of fighting Goblins, a character could take a +1 to attack Goblins, or a +1 to Will saves against Goblin magic, or poison, or whatever.

3. XP for quests completed, not monsters killed

I have a running joke with my old gaming group about the "experience gland" that every creature in every D&D setting has nestled in their torso. The experience gland must be eaten, or at least ruptured by physical damage, so that it's sweet sweet XP leaks out to be absorbed by adventurers. This running joke is just in response to the absurdity of granting XP for every creature killed (or "defeated", but come on, who plays D&D to nonviolently overcome their enemies?)

How to implement this at the table: This is also easy, and a lot of DMs do it. Most times, we give out XP at the end of a session anyway. Just give each section of the session an XP amount that the PCs get if they do really well, maybe reduce it by 10% if they make bad decisions or for whatever reason don't really shine, and give that out at the end of the session. Let your players know you are doing this, and watch them suddenly sneak past guards, knock people out, talk their way out of trouble, and generally become more creative. They can still slaughter everything in sight too, there just isn't an extra incentive to do so.

4. Minor magic items early and often

This is traditional fare for MMOs and I'm not sure it is a bad idea in tabletop as well. It doesn't always have to be a big deal. My 1st level Cleric got to choose, already, between a mace that is masterwork and deals +1 fire damage and a mace that deals +1 damage against monstrous humanoids. That's kind of cool - not a big-deal choice, but 1 damage makes a difference when you only do 1d8 base.

How to implement this at the table: These items could be along the same lines as the incremental awards between levels. A ring that gives +1 to saves against poison or a minor one-use magic item from the DMG or inspired by the DMG. One great example are the featherfall necklaces in the Sharn sourcebook for the Eberron setting. In a city of mile-high towers, this little 25gp baby is a priceless one-use magic item that will save you rolling up a new character. Weapons that deal +1 or +2 elemental damage aren't as powerful as +1d6 weapons but still matter, especially at low levels. Armor that grants a few points of DR against elements, in the same way, is also cool.

5. A "Casual" setting for casual players

D&D requires a huge investment of time and effort to learn the basics of the game. It is a terrible game for beginner players or young children for this reason. I say this as the husband of a woman who has played D&D for more than ten years and still hasn't wanted to put in the effort to learn most of the system. She has no interest in sitting down with 1000 pages of rulebooks, and I have trouble blaming her.

This is something that either an intrepid DM will have to take on themselves or WotC would have to just provide - a simplified version of the D&D rules for casual players who don't want to have to earn a Bachelor's Degree in opportunity attacks or arcane spellcasting. I know that WotC is putting out a new version of the original "Red Box" basic set for D&D, and maybe that will fit the bill.

How to implement this at the table: Given that this is a lot of work, there are a few things you can do. The 4E character generator that comes from your D&D Insider subscription is a step in the right direction - though I still saw one casual player take over two hours to level up her character using the software because of the bewildering number of choices. One option is just to hand new players a pre-generated character. I've found that for best results, make that character really good at 2 or 3 things, and just encourage the player to do those 2 or 3 things whenever they see an opening. For casters, just give them a short list of a few spells that fall into a theme of some kind.

6. A return to set-piece puzzles

With 3rd and 4th edition, there was a move toward systematizing traps so that they could be balanced and given challenge ratings and standardized experience. This was also a move away from what I think of as set-piece puzzles that I found to be more common in "old school" gaming. Things like colored levers or movable floor tiles in a room that you had to arrange somehow in order to move on, or get the loot, or weaken the monster enough to defeat it, etc. These were the kinds of puzzles and traps that challenged the players primarily, and they just don't have much support in the published materials from WotC. Personally, I don't enjoy these kinds of puzzles, but they are always the thing my wife, for example, loves most about a given D&D session.

How to implement this at the table: Pretend you're playing AD&D and create a puzzle or trap. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at video games in the 'adventure game' genre where the world around you has to be manipulated in order to solve problems, then steal, hoping that your players don't play the same video games. If you have to give specific XP for the puzzle or trap, just pick an amount appropriate for the party level and how fast you want them to be leveling up (if you're ignoring suggestion #3).

7. Increased HP at level 1

This one is simple. At level 1, my Cleric has 30 hit points and my Bard has 28. This means I can be pounded on by monsters a lot longer before I drop at level 1 which is necessary for D&D in my opinion. D&D is not a game about being threatened by a pitchfork-wielding peasant or the local stray cat. It is a game about detailed action scenes where you fight monsters and then take their stuff. It is in no way fun to play a level 1 Wizard with a Con penalty, giving him or her 3 hit points. For that reason, when I run D&D, I usually have a house rule about hit points or I start at level 3.

How to implement this at the table: One easy way in 3E or Pathfinder is to just add a starting character's Constitution score to their starting hit points instead of their Constitution bonus. This gives the average Fighter (Con 14) 24 hit points and the average Wizard (Con 10) 14 hit points. You can easily do the same with all of the listed creatures, NPCs and monsters in the MM. If you want to import the rule from 4E, you can use minions as throw-away fodder - what would usually be those 4hp Goblins. 1hp Goblins are functionally identical, except that the dagger-wielding Rogue with the low strength bonus won't accidentally deal negative damage to them (which is not fun).

One result of this change is that combats might last longer. Having used the above house rule or ones like it for years, however, I've found this incredibly easy to adjust for. Have a bunch of minions, a boss-lackey and a boss in a given fight and you're golden.

8. Damage reduction from armor

Armor Class in D&D has never been anything but stupid, regardless of the edition. If you are in plate mail, you aren't hit for either no damage or full damage. Wearing plate mail in, say, the 14th century, you were hit a lot, but the armor was designed so that the weapon slid off of it's rounded edges, and you wore chain and a padded leather gambeson under the plates to help absorb the impacts. This is DR, people.

How to implement this at the table: Crack open Unearthed Arcana and use the "Armor as DR" alternate rule. As a rule of thumb, take the AC bonus from armor, divide it in half, round down, and you have your DR from that armor. To even things out a little, have the DR only work against physical attacks and not against magical attacks, spell-like abilities and so on.

9. The option of blocking in combat

I'm holding a shield. There's now way to do anything with this shield that would improve my chances of survival. I might as well sling this shield around my neck like a huge Flavor Flav clock necklace and be about my business. Right? Because that's how shields work.

How to implement this at the table: This one is tricky because it is another reason AC in D&D has always been stupid - why can I never learn to better defend myself as a D&D character? A simple solution that is in many house rules as well as Unearthed Arcana is to let the player roll an attack roll as a constested roll against an incoming attack. If the player's roll wins, then their character successfully blocks the attack.

This still means a player is sacrificing a precious attack roll, though. Another option - make this a move action, and the roll is made at a -2. Then there is still a sacrifice, but the PC can stand their ground and pound away while having the extra defensive action from the move action they're not using (particularly if they are a heavily-armored fighter type, or a Defender in 4E terms).

10. Spell points

This option is very work-intensive on the part of the DM. If you don't share my pet peeve around Vancian spellcasting, feel free to avoid this one...but there's a reason that all those MMOs out there don't use spell slots.

How to implement this at the table: There are always the rules provided in Unearthed Arcana for 3E, and if you are playing 4E then your at-will/encounter/daily powers pretty much handle this issue nicely. Stuck in 3E land, though, it's tougher. Honestly, I can't think of a simple way to impelent this in 3E/Pathfinder. If I do, I'll post it, or if any of you readers think of something (or already have a cool house rule in this area) please leave it in the comments with a link if possible.

bySwarm

I've put my own two offerings forward for bySwarm's rpg setting contest. Put up your own ideas here, and be sure to read up on mine and rate them. (username Robosnake)

What they're doing over at bySwarm is working on an experiment in collective setting design. Right now people like myself with too much free time are posting setting theme documents for consideration. At some point they'll select something, by popular vote it looks like, to expand upon and to attach to an rpg system.

Anyway, it looks interesting. Right now there don't seem to be that many posts, but it is cool to get in on or near the 'ground floor' in something like this.

Word of Anesthesiacraft

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts now that I am mostly unemployed, one of which is NPR's Science Friday podcast. In catching up on back episodes, I came upon a topic from September 18th - the relationship, during the Romantic period, between science (natural philosophy at the time) and the arts. One vignette is about Samuel Taylor Coleridge helping his friend Humphrey Davy experiment with the effects of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Davy finds that nitrous has an anesthetic effect, and writes a paper saying that this could be used in surgery. At the time, however, it was thought that the agony of surgeries like amputations was medically necessary, however, because it was believed that this mobilized the body to heal.

Now we know better, for physical ailments anyway, but this podcast has had me thinking all day. In my own experience, emotional pain can be very necessary to enact change or healing in a person's life, much the way that physical pain was thought to be necessary to surgical patients in the 1800s. In thinking along these lines, it suddenly struck me that WoW is serving me as an anesthetic for my feelings of boredom at this point in my life.

I compared it to nitrous oxide. I enjoy playing WoW, just like I'm sure I'd enjoy taking some recreational nitrous oxide. I know WoW isn't as extreme as abusing a medical anesthetic, but the connection was made in my mind. What I realized is that it may be necessary, in order for me to be more creative and more productive in my creative endeavors, to take a break from WoW so that I will have to feel my boredom. Hopefully it will motivate me to do something about it.

We'll see how it goes. I want to see if I am in fact more productive, or if I am instead just more bored without WoW for a while.

Anybody out there had an experience of taking a break from some consuming hobby? What was it like for you?

How I Made D&D Cooler Part 2: Characters

Here's an example of a character sheet I sketched out for one of the characters in my D&D game:
[Stolen Image from the Internet]

“Cornelius Finch” Lvl 5 Human Huckster of Evil

Str 12 Con 9 Dex 13 Int 14 Wis 10 Cha 17
HP 22 [ ] , Bloodied 10, +1 Leather 2, Initiative +4
Surges 7, Healing 4
Melee +4, Missile +6,
Fortitude 12, Reflex 17, Will 18
Feats: Smooth Talker, Dodge
Special: Extra Skill, Extra Feat

At-Will: MW Throwing Knives +6 (1d4+5) or +4 (1d4+5), Bluff +10, Diplomacy +10, History +7, Insight +6, Sailing +8, Stealth +6, Thievery +6, Default +3, Bardic Inspiration (+1 to rolls and damage), Helpful Anecdote +2

*Encounter: Entrancement +8

**Utility: Suggestion +8

***Daily: Charm +8, Lesser Geas +8

Pretty simple; I'll go through it bit by bit. A lot of this is being familiar with the D20 system and working things out organically. As I said before, this isn't a new system or anything, just a way to play D&D without having fifteen books at the table or having drawn-out rules arguments - basically, beginner-friendly with some Doug-ish twists.

“Cornelius Finch” Lvl 5 Human Huckster of Evil
The class is Huckster of Evil based on the players' description of his character concept, which most resembled a fast-talking, capitalistic Bard. Levels work the same as usual - his level is his number of "hit dice" and is also added to d20 rolls and defenses as it is in 4th Edition.

As you can see, I kept the usual clunky ability scores, where you subtract 10 and then divide by 2 for the actual bonus. This is just a D&D convention that people are used to.

+1 Leather 2
Armor in this version simply provides DR/-, or damage resistance against everything physical. In this case, I divided the listed AC bonus for leather armor by 2 and that was the DR for the armor. Because it is +1 magical armor, I add 1 to that number, for a total of 2. Easy.

Surges 7, Healing 4
Surges, as I said, are a player resource to boost particular actions their characters attempt. They are like a more versatile version of the action points from Unearthed Arcana and the like. The "healing" rating is a flat number that represents the character's rate of recovery from Hit Point loss. I get the number by taking their level and adding their Con bonus - in this case, Cornelius' Con has a -1 penalty because it is a 9. So when he rests for a full night, he gets 4HP back. When someone casts Cure Ligh Wounds on him, he gets a base of 4HP back. When he spends a Surge to have a second wind, he recovers 4HP - you get the idea.

Melee +4, Missile +6
Every character has a base melee and missile attack score, just for ease of reference. In this case, the Bard is trained in either melee or missile, and Cornelius is trained in missile. That means that his melee bonus is equal to 1/2 level + Str mod + Feats, etc. and his missile bonus is level + Dex mod + Feats, etc. He has no combat feats, so the math is simple.

Fortitude 12, Reflex 17, Will 18
In keeping with D20, the Bard has trained Reflex and Will and untrained Fortitude defense. I also used the 4E convention where Fortitude can be modified by either Strength or Constitution, Reflex either Dexterity or Intelligence, and Will either Wisdom or Charisma - that's a cool little rule. So, Cornelius' Fortitude defense is 10 + 1/2 level + Str OR Con mod + Feats etc. and his Will defense is 10 + level + Wis or Cha mod + Feats, etc.

At-Will
For at-will abilities, I include basic attacks, basic (first-tier) Feats, and skills. These are all the things you can do in-game, basically, that will have some set effect on the fiction and that you don't have to pay Surges for.

Encounter
Encounter powers cost 1 Surge to use, and in this case, Entrancement works like an attack against Will defense much as it functions in the 3.5 PHb - you can use it to distract people with your performance. The difference, to make this potentially useable in combat, is that you can use it against targets even if they are threatened. They take a -2 penalty to their first action after the entrancement is broken by taking damage or a bigger distraction elsewhere.

All of the rules for these powers are made up and discussed with the player in question. I take what is in the official books as a starting point and then simplify and streamline what I find.

Utility
Cornelius' Utility power is Suggestion, and costs 2 Surges to use, like any Utility power in this system. This is also similar to the 3.5 PHb, and can have you "suggest" anything short of suicide.

Daily
Cornelius, at level 5, has 2 Daily powers, each of which cost 3 Surges to use. The first he's always had - Charm is basically Charm Person - the target becomes your best friend for a scene. The second is the new one - Lesser Geas. The player specifically requested an ability to create magically-enforced contracts to function in his scam-artistry. Again, much like what is in the books.

The way I work out how many Encounter, Utility and Daily powers a character has is pretty simple, and I use 4E as a starting-point.

1st Level: 1 Encounter and 1 Daily (and technically, here, if you use the Daily, you won't have enough Surges to also use the Encounter unless you earn one...)
2nd Level: 1 Encounter, 1 Utility and 1 Daily (and again, you have to choose, since you only have 4 Surges to start a session)
3rd Level: Move one power down on the list and replace it with another - usually move an Encounter power down to At-Will and add a new Encounter power
4th Level: 2 Encounter powers, 1 Utility and 1 Daily
5th Level: 2 Encounter powers, 1 Utility and 2 Daily
6th Level: the character automatically gets a "Prestige Class", and gets the new abilities from that class

And so on...I haven't gone past level 6, but you hopefully get the idea.

In playtesting so far, this sytem has led to much faster-paced D&D games with a lot more happening. I also really enjoy having social powers, particularly in Cornelius' case, so that a player-character can kick ass between fight scenes. Who enjoys being schooled by the local magic item salesmen at level 10? If one character can kill dragons, another should at least be able to win arguments...

How I Made D&D Cooler Part 1: The Basics

In planning to run my current D&D game, I had a few things in mind.

1. I didn't want to spend more time preparing for the game than playing the game in a given week.

2. I didn't want to spend multiple sessions teaching the players how to play their characters effectively.

3. I didn't want to use a battle mat or miniatures, but wanted action to flow quickly while still retaining some tactical detail.

4. I wanted there to be special abilities for things aside from combat, like movement and social interactions and information-finding (much like we've working into Heroes of Karia Vitalus)

In achieving what amount to game-design goals working with the skeleton of D&D, I decided to do a few general things and then work each until the details became clear. The first and most complicated of these was simplification - taking the rules and simplifying them, tossing out the necessity of a battle mat and miniatures, and boiling down the hundred-thousand variations on the rules into a few general principles.

The second, easier process was diversification- taking what I'd simplified down and working on it so that it represented what each of the players wanted to play and do with their characters.

Here's what I mean.

Simplification
The first think I decided was that there would be two kinds of abilities: trained and untrained. Trained abilities would be level + attribute modifier + other modifiers, +10 is it was a passive ability and + d20 if it was an active ability. Untrained abilities would be 1/2 level, but the rest would be the same. This counts for spells, saves, defenses, attack rolls, skills, everything.

I dropped Armor Class entirely and just used Reflex Defense in its place, adding 1 for a small shield and 2 for a large shield, and factoring in armor penalties from the 4th Edition PHB. The effect armor would have would be to reduce all incoming damage in the amount of 1/2 the armor's listed AC bonus + any magic modifier.

I wanted to add character level to all damage rolls as well - I've found that in 4th Edition in particular, but in any high-level D&D, characters and monsters can pound on each other for hours while they whittle down Hit Points with no discernible in-game effect.

Healing Surges became just Surges, and they were melded with Action Points (allowing adding 1d6 to a d20 roll). I also added an indie game twist stolen from Mouse Guard - you can spend a Surge to succeed with some kind of consequence chosen by the GM. I've gotten a lot of fun and mileage from this already, and like the rule a lot.

I kept At-will, Encounter, Utility and Daily powers from D&D 4E but changed what they meant. At-will powers cost nothing, and include skills, basic weapon attacks and some basic feats. Encounter powers cost 1 Surge to activate and include basic spells, class or racial abilities, second-tier feats (with one pre-requisite, say). Utility powers require 2 Surges to activate and include a lot of movement, social and information-gathering abilities, as well as abilities related to traveling more quickly than usual. Daily powers cost 3 Surges to activate and represent more advanced spells, feats with many pre-requisites, and other powerful abilities.

For abilities I just made up, I used as a rule of thumb 2d6 damage for an Encounter ability and 3d6 for a Daily ability, though I might change this so that it is higher.

Characters start a session with level + 2 Surges and can earn further Surges from the DM by doing interesting things in-game.

I decided to give spells attack rolls like in 4E against the appropriate defense. I also split melee and missile proficiency, since I liked the idea that some classes would be better in one or the other. Fighters, Rangers and Rogues are trained in both melee and missile. Barbarians, Clerics, Druids, Paladins and Monks are trained only in melee. I made it so that Bards could choose to be trained in either melee or missile, but not both, and Sorcerers and Wizards are untrained in both. I also added spellcasting as a trained or untrained ability, to represent pure casters and hybrid casters. Paladins and Rangers are untrained but can still cast spells. As usual, Barbarians, Fighters and Rogues cannot cast spells at all. Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers and Wizards are trained of course. This means that Paladins and Rangers will be able to use support abilities, but won't be able to make attacks with pure spellcasting most of the time except against weak opponents - this made sense to me.

I gave each character a healing rate (or "stitch" rate for the one undead PC) that is equal to their level + Constitution modifier. This is the amount they heal when they take a "second wind" (which costs 1 Surge) in combat or when they have a night's rest. They heal double that amount when they have a full-day's rest (which of course never happens in D&D). Healing spells like Cure Moderate Wounds use this system - Cure Moderate Wounds heals 2x a character's healing rate + any bonuses the character has to healing spells.

I kept the Bloodied condition because I like the idea, and decided that similar to Vitality and Wounds from Unearthed Arcana 3E, when you became Bloodied you would be Fatigued or, if already Fatigued, Exhausted, until you received some kind of healing (even if it doesn't bring you back up over Bloodied).

Diversification
In this particular game, I had a few unusual characters (which is part of what I enjoy). One of them is an intelligent Ghoul. Another is a Ogre Barbarian, and a third is a Human Bard who has a number of social powers but none that are really useful in combat (the kiss of death in most D&D games).

I also had some more "normal" characters like a Halfling mage-thief, an Orc Cleric and a Human Necromancer. These were a lot closer to what you find in the various books and supplements, and were relatively easy to come up with.

The most interesting for me was the Ghoul, and I think that'll be my first example in this series. Her name is "Mr. Scram" (I'm not sure why this female Ghoul is a "Mr" but oh well) and she is actually the Human Necromancer's mother - he raised her out of loneliness but she turned out to be more intelligent and willful than he wanted, and now nags him from beyond the grave.

I decided that the Ghoul would be like a zombie from Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later, fast and grabby and bitey and really hard to bring down. It didn't make sense that she'd wear armor, so I gave her d12 hit dice and a high Cconstitution as well as a trained Fortitude defense and melee attack. I made her claws and infectious bite (3E MM) At-will powers, along with trained Endurance, Intimidation and Stealth. Her Encounter power has been her Paralyzing Stench (3E MM again). Her Utility power is Creep, which I invented. Basically, it lets her crawl along walls and ceilings in a freakish way like critters do in horror movies. Her Daily powers are Devour Flesh, which I invented (she eats living flesh and heals 3 "stitches" as well as cancelling ongoing negative effects) and Bilious Blood, also made up for her (when hit for an encounter, she deals 5 acid damage to her attacker).

Conclusion for Now
This is definitely a way of running D&D that is a lot of fun (more fun than "real" D&D as far as I am concerned, and the players seem to feel similarly) but I couldn't actually write up in a book or something. This is very much my project achieving my design goals - the best thing these posts can be is a sort of rough blueprint for other people whose friends want to play D&D but who don't like how much D&D bogs you down.

Next up: Using the Ghoul as an example character and looking at some more details.

Horror RPG Module Challenge!

What we have at the core of Horror! is a really, really simple system of comparing numbers. The higher number wins. The lower number loses, and then the character with that number gets some kind of penalty for losing - Fear, Pain, a setback, or just lost time against the ever-looming Countdown.

This is why I think it is easy to make modules for Horror!, even when they will require a lot of improvisation and quick thinking, and even when what you're mostly interested in is coming up with background and fluff and story.

Attributes range from 1 to 5, and Traits, on average, will add +1 or +2 in rarer cases to that number. Y ou can assume that a given character, after the beginning of the game, will have at least a little Fear and Pain, meaning the penalties from those (-1 or -2) will often cancel out the Trait bonus the player might be able to come up with, leaving the 1-5 range again.

Basically, just create a flow-chart of how hard you want the session to be based on that range. So...

Don't do anything that is a target of 1

A target of 2 is a throwaway, should be the minimum you'd ever set for anything that's worth calling a test

A target of 3 should be standard for someone doing what they do for a living, but still isn't much of a challenge

A target of 4 is a bit of a challenge

A target of 5 will require that most characters go looking for help, either in the environment or from another character

A target of 6 is a way of saying "don't do this" - any character will need to call on help, Adrenaline or Virtue, a Trait, something to even the score, especially if they have already gotten some Fear and/or Pain. The 6 is "big bad" territory, because on average, characters will go down unless very well prepared.

A target of 7 is a good maximum. That's what a healthy character using their Attribute of 5 and doubling a Feat or Influence with an Adrenaline or Virtue respectively can hit

As always, feel free to just say "you can't do that, try something else". Horror! is not a game about "say yes or roll the dice" - and not just because there are no dice.

So what did I do?
I used the target numbers as a pacing mechanic. Like the countdown, they should escalate as the game progresses, so things become harder and more threatening as time goes on.

The scenario I'd sketched out in my mind placed the PCs in a secret installation beneath Tibet, a huge particle accelerator built by the Chinese government, designed to crack open quantum theory and prove or disprove string theory. What happens is that the first experiment is a success - and the PCs are part of a group splintered off into an alternate mini-dimension, forever disconnected from the "real" world - set adrift.

Everything begins to become unhinged - mechanical and digital systems, the characters' memory and sanity, even gravity near the end, as this splinter dimension 'forgets' how it is supposed to function and spins down rapidly to entropy. Others on the station have figured this out and are overcome with despair and begin killing each other and themselves. Each of the PCs comes to, suddenly having a moment of clarity in the midst of either committing suicide or killing someone else. They briefly 'reset', forgetting some of what has happened but also being able to think clearly. So each of the characters start in the midst of something awful and then go on to figure out what is going on from there, while the clock is ticking and everything is going apeshit around them.

In the beginning the targets are around 2. One PC comes to locked in mortal combat with a crazed old man trying to drive a syringe into his eye; another in the midst of hanging himself, a third locked in her room being suffocated in her bed. They get out pretty easily, begin to get a handle on the system, etc. This is kind of like the Prelude.

Act One has mostly target numbers of 3 or 4. This includes seeing the first dead bodies, or people dying, in horrible but relatively 'mundane' ways, as well as changing locks and that kind of thing. Stuff that a skilled professional can do, or someone with a strong stomach can tolerate (humorously, two player characters had Conviction as their dump-stat of 1 and got Fear from everything).

Act Two, in my mind, starts involving the really messed up shit that is at the heart of everything - they find out much more about the awful situation they're all in, they see the piles of bodies, etc. This is where targets of 5 and even 6 come into play, where everything starts to hit the fan. The Countdown should be low at this point, and ideally everyone is sweating bullets.

Act Three is when the Ace of Spades comes off the table and things escalate before the inevitable end. These target 5 and 6 tests come at you one after another, and even a 7 here and there to push people in the right direction and let them know that even if they work together and have some Traits, they can still fail.

For each of the Acts, I had what I called a Pressure Menu (yeah, I know, I need a better name). On this menu, I just listed bad things that I can have happen to push things forward. A guy jumps out of a doorway screaming and leaps on one of the PCs. They find out X scary information. They find a trail of blood leading to a person who is in the last moments of suicide - someone they know, care about. Etc. Then, if I feel myself getting bored, or antsy, I have one of these things happen and slap a couple of numbers on it appropriate to the approximate "Act" I'm in .

What if the players skip ahead in my story?
Take off a card and escalate things to the next Act. Do the exact things you'd already planned, but increase the target number by 1 or 2. Presto! Drama and fear ensue.

What if it takes too long?
Same answer as above. When in doubt, escalate.

What if I set the Countdown wrong?
It only has to be as regular as you want it to be.

What if they go off the rails entirely?
Take a moment to look at the obstacles you've set up to put in their path. Which ones can just be moved to the new location? Zombies and security doors and so on can come up whenever, frankly.

Then find the things that won't fit and change the fluff, leaving the obstacle there and about as bad as it was. If it was one named NPC, make it another named NPC. If it was a physical threat, make it another kind of physical threat.

Plan everything so that the PCs die horribly.
Put enough tests in there to wear them down entirely. Balance things against them. Make the Countdown account for about 1/2 to 2/3 of the expected length of the session. Escalate things early and capriciously.

The players are signing up to see their characters die and go insane in delicious ways. That's what this is all about. It is not about triumph (though sometimes the PCs may do just that). It is about doing terrible things to each other's characters and enjoying every minute of it. By the time the last card comes up off the Countdown and the game ends, the players should be on the verge of getting out alive, or have some hope still glimmering, and then you stifle it forever.

That's horror.

Fear Rating
Most psychological tests, involving Conviction, will occur when a PC encounters something awful. Just set a number for these tests like you would any other - and make sure to include some 5s and 6s to that everyone can enjoy the fun...
2 Seeing something very frightening but within your normal experience - like watching a car accident
3 Something possibly a little traumatizing, like seeing a car accident when someone is thrown through their windshield
4 This is bad, bad stuff, like seeing someone killed and their severed head falls in your lap, staring up at you, and blinks at you before all of the blood drains out
5 Heinous crimes at the limits of what you can imagine a person doing - like being caught in the The Cell or seeing the Wolf Creek guy at work on a loved one or two
6 You really are a sick fuck. Nice job.

The Basics of Our Horror RPG

Before I start talking about this thing, I need to give the basics of the system, which is pretty easy to do. The system has no dice. You just compare the number representing your character's salient ability to the number assigned to how difficult the thing you're trying to do is, and if you're over, you win. If you're under, you lose. If you tie, then there is either a stalemate, or you both win and lose, whichever is more interesting.

You start by choosing your Archetype and your Subtype. The archetypes are taken from our thinking about horror as a genre - what kinds of people get caught up in a horror story? we came up with the Innocent, the Foolhardy, the Jaded and the Victim. Your archetype is important because it determines how many Hopes and Scars you start off with, as well as how much Virtue and Adrenaline one starting Virtue per Hope that you have, one starting Adrenaline per Scar you have. Hopes are things you Hope for, Scars are bad things that happened to you that still hurt you.

There are four subtypes under each archetype, and each subtype has one once-a-session ability that only they can use. This ability will hurt a PC in some way but benefit your character or your player agenda in some way. They are all different, and are still in rough form, but that's the idea behind them.

There are four Attributes in this game - Might, Precision, Appeal and Conviction. Might helps you pass physical tests; Precision helps you pass technical tests; Appeal helps you pass social tests; Conviction helps you pass psychological tests. Physical tests are usually about avoiding or inflicting Pain. Technical tests are about overcoming obstacles in the fiction. Social tests are about getting NPCs (and PCs if you go PvP) to do what you want. Conviction is about resisting social influences from others and about resisting Fear.

Fear and Pain are what destroy your character. If you accumulate 4 of either, you go for a side talk with the GM and your character is subsumed by the horror, whatever it happens to be - or possibly just insane or dead.

Adrenaline, mentioned above, helps you resist your own Fear and Pain (which impose penalties). Virtue lets one character remove another character's Fear or Pain - nothing else in the game does that. You get Adrenaline for kicking ass and Virtue for putting yourself in danger on behalf of others and that kind of thing.

Lastly, there are Traits. You have six kinds of traits, and they modify your Attributes in a test, usually by +1. Feats are physical abilities that you have, ways you can push your body to do amazing things. Influences are social abilities you have, as well as friends or allies or contacts you have that you want to be part of the game. Items are things you have with you when the game starts - they are a contract with the GM, because if it isn't on your character sheet, there is no guarantee that you'll be able to use it in the game. Knowledges are areas of expertise. Once per scene, you can ask the GM a question in your area of experties (if in the game you have the opportunity to sit and reflect, do a little research, use a lab, etc.) and the GM has to give you an honest answer. Mysteries are the wild card Traits in the game that we are still working out - things like ESP or telekinesis, knowledge of alien abductions and conspiracy theories, or occult abilities. Mysteries are very versatile, but when you call upon one, you risk increasing your own Fear. Last are Skills, which are just like skills in every other rpg.

Each Trait functions differently, but they're all pretty simple. They either let you do something, let you introduce something into the game, or give you about a +1 on specific kinds of tests. That's about it.

What drives this all is the Countdown. The Countdown is represented by some cards on the table (right now) and it functions to keep the pressure on the PCs. As cards are taken away from the center, they know that death and disaster is looming closer, but they don't necessarily know why. The Countdown can represent anything - time until the full moon, how much air is left to breathe, cultists completing a ritual to summon a dread deity, how many campers the slasher goes through before he gets to the PCs - anything. It is the screws that you put to the player's thumbs. The only ways to buy time are 1. take a risk once you've figured out what the Countdown represents or 2. do something awful to someone else - push another camper in front of the slasher, suffocate someone so they don't breathe your air anymore, kill one of the cultists in cold blood, etc.

That's the basics. Now some analysis.

Turning Game Experiences Into Game Design

As a religious functionary, manufacturing experiences is one of the things I'm supposed to be good at. That's sort of what's behind sacraments, for example, or any kind of ritual really. They are guided processes intended to evoke a particular quality of experience in the participants.

That's also what game design is, though don't worry, I'm not going to get into some kind of wankery about how gaming is ritual (though I guess it sometimes is, in small parts).

I've been thinking and struggling a lot looking at how to better design games so that they evoke predictalbe experiences in the players. The specific concern here is my write-up of Heroes of Karia Vitalus. The game was a heavily-modded version of BESM - so modded, in fact, that all of the cool things about the system had nothing to do with BESM. It occurred to us that 1. our experience playing Karia was amazing and 2. it amounted to its own game system by the end of the storyline.

Rather than just releasing a hack of BESM, I wanted to come up with a system for Karia that was its own animal, cutting out the vestiges of BESM that were still in the system and replacing them with some other set of ubiquitous dice mechanices or whatever.

The problem I'm running into is that I shy away from what feels like 'over-designing' the game, since I'm the kind of guy who likes to mod. On the other hand, the experience we had was amazing and what is fueling this attempt is my desire to propagate this experience to others.

What are some good examples of games that produce similar experiences in everyone who plays them? Mortal Coil comes to mind, in my opinion, as does Dogs in the Vineyard. Anything else? Ever found a game you thought was over-designed? Way under-designed?

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