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.

Changeling the Lost House Rules

In planning on running a Changeling the Lost one-shot, I've come up with some house rules which I think enhance the game and also simplify it somewhat. What Changeling the Lost has is a lot of great fluff and atmosphere and color. What it lacks is a coherent system, seeming as if each power and special ability was designed by someone who only had cursory contact with the other designers. This is my little attempt to not only add some flavor but also to change some of that.

First I wanted to change how Virtues work in Changeling. It makes sense to me that Changeling Virtues and Vices would be a little different from the Thomistic ones presented in the base system.

Virtues
Love/Romance: for the most part, romantic love (Love is everything)
Joy: pleasure and happiness for their own sake or for others (Follow your bliss)
Honor: filial piety, fealty (Honor is life)
Wisdom: seeking knowledge, teaching, learning (Mind is sharper than steel)
Balance: peacemaking, something like temperance (All things in measure)
Hope: inspiring others, defying despair (After darkness, the dawn)
Courage: self-sacrifice (Never surrender)

Vices
Hatred: (Destroy your enemies)
Pettyness: squabbling without a larger goal (Accept no disrespect)
Lust: (Take your pleasure)
Gluttony: (There is always more)
Sloth/Banality: (Let others risk)
Arrogance: (Humility is weakness)
Despair: (Hope is a lie)

Next I changed the blessing and curse for each Seeming

Seeming's Blessing and Seeming's Curse are both handled differently. Each Blessing has a constant effect that is usually a roll-again. The player can invoke their Curse against themselves at one critical moment to gain one extra Glamour per session. They can invoke their Blessing once per session at the cost of one Glamour.

Beast: 9 on Wits; spend Glamour to speak to animals for a scene; gain Glamour when instinctual urges impose a dice-penalty (equal to Wyrd)

Darkling: 9 again on Manipulation rolls; spend Glamour to manipulate shadows for a scene; gain Glamour when bright light enforces a dice-penalty for a scene

Elemental: shrug off one attack per session; spend Glamour for Wyrd in bonus Health for one scene; gain Glamour when penalized trying to socialize

Fairest: 9 again on Presence; spend Glamour to charm one target for a scene; gain Glamour when their Clarity falls and -1 dice to Clarity pool

Ogre: 9 again for Strength rolls; spend Glamour to double Strength for one roll; Glamour for penalty to Intelligence/Mental skills for a scene

Wizened: 9 again on Dexterity rolls; spend Glamour improvise a device or tool for one scene; Glamour for times when equipment malfunctions around you and imposes a dice penalty for a scene

Kith's Blessing

To call on these, you call upon your Kith and drop your Mein for a scene. You hope that the Wyrd takes care of people who might see you.

[Beast]

Broadback: ignore 'encumbrance', lift and carry much more than usual

Hunterheart: unarmed lethal

Runnerswift: +2 Speed, +3 to Athletics rolls for pure speed

Skitterskulk: Dodge to triple defense rather than double it

Steepscrambler: +3 to climb and can try to climb anything

Swimmerskin: hold breath for 30 minutes and swim at normal move speed

Venombite: once per session, make an unarmed attack. If it hits, the target is poisoned

Windwing: spend Glamour to glide, take falling damage every 15 yards instead of 5

[Darkling]

Antiquarian: 9 again for Academics and Investigation

Gravewright: Changeling can see ghosts for one scene

Leechfinger: drain one lethal to heal one bashing or lethal or downgrade one agg per session

Mirrorskin: +3 to Wits + Subterfuge disguise attempts, can mimic anyone s/he has met

Tunnelgrub: can fit through spaces others couldn't and roll Dex + Athletics to get out of bonds

[Elemental]

Airtouched: add Wyrd to Initiative

Earthbones: add Wyrd to Strength out of combat for a scene

Fireheart: 9 again for Wits for one scene

Manikin: learn Contracts of Artifice as favored, Craft without penalty untrained

Snowtouched: 9 again on Intimidation and Subterfuge for a scene

Waterborn: breathe water for one scene (and not! air)

Woodblood: 9 again for Stealth and Survival outdoors with growing things

[Fairest]

Bright One: light for a scene, can be brightened to impose -2 penalties (-4 to Darklings) for any targeting the Fairest for a scene

Dancer: 9 again for Expression and Socialize using dance and +1 when dodging

Draconic: one extra Health that functions like armor

Flowering: 8 again on Persuasion and Socialize

Muse: grant +2 for a scene to Craft, Expression, Persuasion, Socialize, Subterfuge

[Ogre]

Cyclopean: have one handicapped sense but gets 9 again on Wits perception rolls

Farwalker: 9 again on Stealth and Survival to travel and get around

Gargantuan: add Wyrd to Size for one scene, granting temporary Health and bonuses for contested Strength

Gristlegrinder: bite for +2 lethal after a grapple

Stonebones: Wyrd as armor for one scene, subtracted from Dexterity rolls

Water-Dweller: hold breath for 30 minutes, no perception penalties for seeing underwater

[Wizened]

Artist: 8 again on Crafts

Brewer: ferment a brew of Glamour in order to store it for later use - brews up to Wyrd score at any one time

Chatelaine: 9 again when depending on proper etiquette

Chirurgeon: 9 again on Medicine, can improvise medical tools

Oracle: once per chapter, can fortell one event

Smith: tinker with a tool to get a +1 equipment bonus from it for a day

Soldier: 9 again on Weaponry

Woodwalker: 8 again on Survival, can eat poisonous plants

Mantle functions differently:

Blessing of the Green: Gain extra Glamour when harvesting

Challenge of the Black Spear: Gain Glamour for defeating an opponent

Harvest of Whispers: Gain Glamour from things learned during a session

Feast of Ashes: Glamour to Willpower

-->all limited by Mantle level per session

Discovering Fantasy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hunter: the Vigil and the New World of Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Production Values

An aspect of gaming that is often overlooked is presentation of the game itself. When buying a game book we certainly pay attention to the quality of the art, layout and printing. Why not pay attention therefore to the quality of the other materials we use in gaming? What about having beautiful character sheets, beautiful dice, beautiful tokens or markers etc...? Why not be concerned about the gaming environment as well? Isn't it cooler to game in a dank dungeon with flickering candles than in a room with doilies and floral print sofas?

Some things are beyond our control obviously, when we game, but some things can be done with a limited budget and plenty of creativity.

For example, Doug and I recently ran a game of Changeling: the Lost for our local game store (a perfectly brilliant place called Gamescape North Bay). To make the game more immersive and enjoyable we covered the tables with cloths, and set out candles and props suited to the game's setting. Then we spent a good amount of time and energy making sure the character sheets and materials for the game looked fabulous and set the tone.

The Character Sheets looked like this, unopened:














And we had special character sheets to represent the Others (the True Fae) who appeared late in the gaming session:
















We even had special 3x5 cards made up for single use items, Trifles, and Goblin Fruit that we handed out in game:

Changeling: The Lost

Changeling: The Lost is the most recent game released by White Wolf. It is Changeling for the NWoD, and is actually quite different from the original Changeling: The Dreaming.

In Changeling: The Lost, you play the part of mortals who were taken to Arcadia to serve the True Fae but who have escaped, returned to the mortal world, to find that the world has moved on without them. The game seems to be about finding your identity in a world you no longer quite fit into, finding a way to return home, while avoiding the notice of the forces of Faerie which would like nothing better than to find you and capture you again - or worse.

Like Requiem and Forsaken, character creation in Changeling begins with creating a mortal and then adding the Changeling template. This comes with some advantages, of course. Wyrd is essentially the power of your Fae magic - similar, actually, to Blood Potency in Requiem, because Wyrd determines how much Glamour (magical energy) you can hold and how quickly you can spend it. Clarity is the 'moral' attribute for a Changeling - it is the ability to tell dream from reality, essentially. High Clarity sharpens perceptions and allows kenning - discerning what is magical around you clearly. Low Clarity means you are essentially a lunatic.

Instead of Arts, Changeling magic is expressed through Contracts. Each Changeling has one special affinity Contract based on her Seeming (Beast, Darkling, Elemental, Fairest, Ogre, Wizened) as well as her Court (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter). Contracts have Catches - things that must be done in order to use them that are special limitations - having thread from someone's bedclothes to affect their dreams, for example.

All Changelings also have affinity for the Contracts of Dream, Hearth (traditional blessings and curses), Mirror (changing appearance), and Smoke (stealth). When using your Contracts, you roll Attribute + Wyrd in dice, and even may high-level Contracts are pretty subtle.

New Merits include: Court Goodwill, Harvest (allows you to gather Glamour), Hallow (special housing, including the sub-Merit Hallow Amenities), Mantle (connection to a particular Court), New Identity and Token (magical objects).

If you're looking for similarities with Changeling: The Dreaming, there are many to be found. Beasts are somewhat like Pooka or Beasties, animalistic fae with nature-attuned powers. Darklings are similar to Sluagh, nocturnal lurkers. Fairest are similar to the Sidhe, beautiful manipulators. Ogres hearken back to...well, Ogres, as well as Trolls. The Wizened are artificers somewhat like Nockers.

The similarities are not very direct, however - Lost is very much a new game. The book, of course, is absurdly beautiful and well written. On first reading it seems easy to use, though like any WoD book the rules are spread out and interspersed with flavor text and examples. The game is dense with setting and tone, and it needs to be. It is quite evocative - reading it, I feel like I get a sense of what the designers and writers were going for in the game.

There's a great deal I won't get into here - Fetches and Hobgoblins and Goblin Markets, Entitlements. There is also the Freehold in the second Appendix, which is in this case Miami, presumably the iconic city for the Changeling setting - an interesting choice. Really, I need more time to read the book again, and ideally, I need to run a Changeling game, or play in one, to really get a handle on how everything works together. Just reading the book, however, gives the strong impression that this is an excellent game. It definitely, in my opinion, lives up to what I expected from another edition of Changeling.

Without even playing it yet, I give it 4 out of 5 stars, and that's partly because I actually prefer the dice mechanic of the Old World of Darkness. This game is dense with story, and is probably the best of the NWoD thus far.

Learning Experience

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

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

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

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

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

Detour

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

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

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

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