Simplifying Combat in Vampire the Masquerade

My V20 game that I'm currently running seems to be coming to a head. Multiple Sabbat packs will be attacking an ancient vampire and his minions, and a second ancient might join the fray. In the past, this has been the point where we have a whole session where two hours or more are all one fight.

One big culprit here is Celerity. Probably the biggest. Each round of combat involves multiple turns for a number of the characters. Not only does Celerity make it less fun to be in a fight when you don't have it, but there is more time spent as a player sitting on the sidelines messing with your smartphone or whatever while everyone else has multiple actions.

A second issue is that resolving a single attack requires at least four dice-rolls: the attack roll, a defense roll, damage roll and soak roll. One thing I really like about NWoD is that this is all simplified to one weighted roll per attack. I used to like the variability and flexibility of the OWoD system, but that was also back when I played with the same group every week, and we had tons of hours to devote to gaming minutiae.

Fix 1: Celerity
In the past I've adapted the LARP rules for Celerity, as I actually like them better than the V20 or previous rules, but in writing them up for this game, I realized they would just add another layer of complexity. We have two players who don't give a damn about the system and would rather it not get in the way, one who is in his very first tabletop RPG, and a fourth who is up for whatever, so I decided to go with simplification.

What I decided was that Celerity would simply add to all Dexterity rolls. I had changed initiative to Dexterity + Wits (rather than Wits + Alertness), so Celerity would also add to initiative rolls. This would be the equivalent of the LARP preempt ability that Celerity grants, and it just makes sense that characters with Celerity would act first. This would also add to pretty much all attack rolls, move around rolls, and so on. I decided Celerity would cost no blood, since frankly this is quite a nerf. I have also not been allowing split actions, and so the extra Celerity dice would not be useful for that either.

So far, the players seem to be happy with it, though one player moved her Celerity 3 point to become a Fortitude 4 point (from out of clan to in-clan), which was fine by me. When I make a change like this (and I don't seem to be able to resist) I always give players a chance to adjust accordingly.

Fix 2: Fortitude
I also wanted to nix the soak roll, and so I had to address Fortitude first. I decided that Stamina + Fortitude + Armor would be the difficult of damage rolls, but this meant that Fortitude would be less useful overall. (You still roll it to avoid fire and sunlight). So I decided that for a blood point, a character could add their Fortitude to their normal Health levels temporarily. These would be health levels that you couldn't heal, but would be a buffer between you and real damage.

Again, so far, so good.

Fix 3: Defense and Soak
As mentioned above, there is no longer a soak roll, but the difficulty of a damage roll is the target's Stamina + Fortitude + Armor. I also decided that the maximum for this difficulty would be a 9. Beyond that point, the extra health levels help, and you have dice to roll against fire and sunlight, but I found that my players had a lot more fun if they could at least bruise powerful NPCs in a fight.

Similarly, I got rid of the defense roll by simply having the difficulty of an attack roll be the target's Dexterity + Athletics + Celerity. Again, with a maximum of 9. This really short-changes my super-powerful Elders, but also makes dealing with those Elders a bit more fun in this game, at least so far. This could easily be adapted to another house rule (or is it a house rule?) that for difficulties over 9, you simply need more successes. So difficulty 12 = difficulty 9 with three successes required for the first success.

Problem: Stakes, and other attacks that are more difficult than normal. Not sure what to do with this, but it basically makes staking a bit more likely and common in the game, which frankly is not a problem so far.

Again, players are liking the rules change, I have to explain rules much less often during the game, and fights go a lot quicker overall.

Mass Combat
The next session of my game is going to be a big-ass combat, with more than 20 named NPCs. Obviously, this is nuts, but the players are feeling it and are excited about it, and it is kind of what has been set up to happen. They are attacking an ancient vampire and his minions, and have the assistance of a couple of NPCs in their pack as well as a Black Hand cell. Late in the fight, another ancient might jump in with her minions to try to diablerize the PCs target, her enemy for the last 3000 years.

So, cool stuff, if it goes quick enough to be at all interesting.

First thing, for the most part, I'm going to hand-wave NPC vs NPC parts of the combat. I have a very good idea of who would win in a given fight and how long it would take, leaving me to focus on the PCs. For the NPCs vs NPCs, I just note what the PCs would see (she tears him up with claws; he empties his clip into her, etc.) and move on. If they want to get detail, they have to go look. Otherwise, it's a mess, as fights should be.

Second, I have to have a way to keep track of NPC dots and numbers without having a fat stack of character sheets. Even the 3x5 cards I usually use for NPCs are a bit too large, as I want to have them out on the table so I can move them around. I decided to cut the 3x5s in half, and to have some notes for the combat only. What I have on the lined side of each card:

Name, Type (ghoul, clan, generation, etc.), Nature/Demeanor if they might come up in a fight
Physical, Social and Mental dice (these are just average pools for rolls of each type)
List of powers and level
Primary attack
Secondary attack
Special effect (if any - for example, Majesty with the Courage roll difficulty, an aura, etc.)
Path (if any) and Willpower
Blood pool total/Blood spent per round
Any other little note

Then, on the un-lined side of the card

Initiative number (I rolled ahead of time)
NAME
Boxes for the health levels, assuming that everyone has activated Fortitude who has it

And that's it. We'll see how it works on Sunday night.

GenCon 2011 Vampire the Masquerade LARP "The Forgotten"

I've been asked to help with the writing and preparation for a VtM LARP, The Forgotten, which friends will be running at GenCon 2011.

The LARP will be held in the Hyatt Regency Ballrooms A and B Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 6pm to 1am.  I can definitely recommend playing - it looks like an excellent concept with a lot of interesting characters.  It's an official LARP, so you can sign up for it when you register for the con.  And no, I'm not just saying this because I am writing some of them.

But the most interesting ones are mine.

I've also tweeted back and forth with one of the developers for V20, and hopefully some of them will get a chance to come by the LARP and see how it is going.

Not for the last time, like Bilbo missing his Hobbit-hole, I am wishing I could be at GenCon this year.

The Theme is Burial

So much has been going on lately - a possible book deal with Chalice Press; three or four other book ideas with my collaborators over at Two Friars and a Fool; helping friends with a Vampire the Masquerade LARP for GenCon this year; a rough draft of the character sheet for Parsec; continuing work on a rough draft of Reckoning; and that on top of everything else.

Hence the longer-than-usual languishing of this blog.

There's a lot of writing inside me, and it is coming out like one of those old-school lawn sprinklers - in multiple streams and all over the freaking place.  That being said, if I didn't enjoy it, it would be the easiest thing in the world to just...stop.

But that won't happen.

I'll be at Origins this year for at least two days - Friday and Saturday.  I want to make sure I get a good look at the dealer floor, maybe try to awkwardly schmooze with people, and also check out the art room, since that was awesome last year.  Also, you know, Columbus is no slouch as cities go.  I wish I had more time to prep and run a game, but honestly we need a final character sheet for both Parsec and Reckoning before I want to do a full-on convention demo.  I feel like, especially for a convention game where people are paying to play, there should be a baseline of quality, and we're not quite there yet.  It's one thing to hand friends something you laid out yourself in Microsoft Word three years ago.  It's quite another thing to do that with strangers who you want to turn into fans, you know?

Recent Developments in V20

I'm very excited about the release of Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition - I've already ordered my own copy and it'll be a great early birthday gift when it comes out.  You can see the huge banner above.

I'm also following the open development process, reading and commenting in the few cases where I think I have something smart to say.  Here is some of what has been going on lately:

The Tzimisce Clan document is up, as well as the Gargoyles and Giovanni.  These have been out for a few days, but I was away at UnConference11 and didn't have time to do much reading while I was getting ready and certainly not while I was there.

I'm currently working on a one-shot to possibly run with friends while on vacation in a couple of weeks.  I actually don't expect us to have the time, nor for enough people to have the inclination, but it takes my mind off work.

With any luck, when my V20 book arrives in October, I'll have figured out the basics of keeping a human larva alive and will be able to have some bitey adventures.

V20: Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition

Not too long ago, White Wolf announced that they would be releasing a 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire the Masquerade.  20 years ago, VtM's huge impact on the gaming industry and overall geek culture began.  In terms of system mechanics, Vampire was a hymn to Shadowrun and others before it, but there was some kind of sweet spot that was waiting for something like Vampire the Masquerade to strike home.

According to demographic research done for Wizards of the Coast, Vampire is responsible for bringing in a huge number of women into the gaming hobby, what was up to that point apparently the purview of war-gaming grognards...or something.  I didn't start gaming until around 1991, and I started with Mythus and then GURPS, but one can imagine what a hobby with even fewer women would have been like.

From their official comments, it would appear that V20, as they are calling the anniversary edition, would only be available to those who are attending the Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this year.  Fortunately, I am pretty sure this is not true.  I asked the question via Twitter, using their preferred hashtag #v20, and got a quick response that the book (which is going to be around 400 pages) is going to be available apart from the Masquerade - they just aren't sure about the details yet.

I like how White Wolf is going about this process.  They are actively soliciting and responding on a forum devoted to the topic of the new edition, and they are also posting drafts of the rules and text that will go into the final book.  The book is going to have new, full-color artwork from 'classic' Masquerade artists, and will not be a new edition, nor will it be the beginning of a new round of book releases for Masquerade.  They are saying that it is simply something for those who have been playing Vampire since it was released 20 years ago.

That's what they're saying now anyway.  As always, we'll see.

I've been following the hashtag #v20 on Twitter, and that is where I am getting most of my information and updates, apart from the documents they release and the forums, where I am participating as time allows.

I can honestly say that this announcement has re-ignited my desire to play Vampire the Masquerade.  I started in 1998, my first year of college, and I played in games for the next 7 or 8 years with the same group of great people who are still some of my closest friends.  Before I played VtM, I was actually kind of contemptuous of a game that seemed to be all about being goth and bemoaning one's fate and blood fetishism.  And yeah, there's some of that.  What I got was a fantastic game and great memories and friends.  I'm not really a fan of vampire fiction or movies; I've never been even remotely goth; but VtM is still one of my favorite games out there.  I'm really excited about the new edition, and will definitely get myself a copy when it is available.

In the meantime, for any other fans, I recommend checking out the open development documents and blog, the forums, and also following the news as it comes out.  You ask questions and much of the time, one of the guys working on the book answer you.  That's one thing I really like about our little hobby - the people at the very top are not so high up as to not be accessible to even casual fans.

Updates:

Justin Achilli posts about the weirdness of dice, botching and probabilities.

Eddie posts an exhaustive (?) list of Vampire bloodlines to be included in the V20 book.

Game Mechanics That Fail

...in my estimation, of course.

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

Call of Cthulhu and Sanity Points

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

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

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

The Fix

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

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

D20, Dungeons and Dragons etc., and Hit Points

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

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

The Fixes

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

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

Vampire the Masquerade and Path Scores/Humanity

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

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

The Fixes

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

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

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

I recently ran my first session of Vampire the Requiem as a one-shot for my usual gaming group. We were taking a break from this for a night and I had an idea for a game. Overall, I think it went ok. Not great, but ok.

I generally don't like the dice-mechanic for the New World of Darkness as much as I liked the mechanic for the Old World of Darkness. I like having two variables, number of dice and difficulty, to manipulate in a game in different situations. In the NWoD, everything is difficulty 8, and the only variable is number of dice.

WW also took a turn toward D20 with the NWoD that I don't like. They added Merits that are obviously based on Feats, even to the point of replicating some Feats almost exactly. Maybe this is what other gamers are looking for who knows?

I think that, in general, to enjoy Vampire you have to want to play a vampire. There has to be something about you that likes when you finally frenzy and tear into people, doing things that you know you'll regret later. There's a particularity about vampires that isn't always there in other games. Even in Mage, there are a lot of kinds of Mage games, but Vampire is a little more limited, especially in tone.

As for me, I really like Vampire - both manifestations. I remember my first game, feeling sort of contemptuous of these stupid Goth kids and their Vampire game, hoping I could talk them into something else after this game was over. Turns out, Vampire is awesome. It does what it does very, very well. It also has the cool effect of combining the potential for severe, visceral violence, while still making it difficult to actually kill a PC. For modern games especially, this is very difficult to do in a way that makes sense.

Requiem works well, I thought. Its pretty intuitive. The dice mechanic is a step backwards from the last editions, but the rest of the game is a step forward. Five major Clans representing five archetypes of vampires themselves: sexy and dangerous (Daeva), bestial (Gangrel), intelligent and arcane (Mekhet), terrifying (Nosferatu) and manipulative (Ventrue). Under each Clan are a multitude of Bloodlines - I think there are four listed in the main book, and they have a lot of others in other expansions as usual.

Disciplines are a little more streamlined and a bit more logically laid out, and there are also multiple kinds of blood magic which I think is an excellent move. Making that available to any Clan, usually through their faction, means that you don't have to play a Tremere to use blood magic.

I also like that there are five major political factions, with other minor factions listed as well. It makes the political intrigues potentially richer and more interesting, since you have Clan politics going on, faction politics, and also the city's overall political structure. This makes it easier to involve player-characters at multiple levels.

One hallmark of the NWoD is the incredible production values in the core rulebooks. The paper stock, artwork, graphic design, and especially the incredible covers are all beautiful and evocative. The expansions move to a lower quality paper stock and no shiny foil in the covers, but that's ok. They're expansions. I think that when VtR came out, the cover especially was as embarrassingly better than other games as the original VtM cover was back in the early 90's.

Basically, its an awesome game if you like violence, political intrigue, and night-time. Having run it, I'd give it 4 stars - and I'd give Vampire the Masquerade 4.5 stars. The change in rules makes a difference.