Welcome to Frank's World

Thoughts about constructing a Traveller Universe

2010-01-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about what my Traveller universe might end up looking like.

I'm almost certain to use Paul Gazis's Eight Worlds rules for star ships (and perhaps more of his rules), though I might adjust some numbers depending on what assumptions I make for my universe.

One result of this is that ships aren't constrained to discrete jumps, nor are all jumps one week in duration. A jump 1 ship could take two weeks to travel as far as a jump 2 ship travels in one week (we don't yet know how the fuel costs change). So, rather than the universe being a hex map, each star will have coordinates to some precision (1 ly? .1 ly? .01 ly?). I'm still debating 2-d versus 3-d, and if I use real star locations or not, and if Sol/Earth is part of my universe (probably yes, but still up in the air, is it in the initial locale, or somewhere's distant).

As I have been thinking and processing the various systems for generating stars, and thinking about how to handle interstellar travel, I've come up with a few thoughts:

First, a science fiction universe with interstellar travel will have a bunch of "interesting" stars. These stars are where the main action takes place, or are home worlds, or whatever. These stars need not be occupied by earth-like worlds, but they probably have to have useful resources of some sort.

Now one could have a universe consisting just of those stars, and abstract space travel so those stars are the only ones that matter. Such a universe might even use an abstract map. But such a setup would diminish the importance of ships to the game (and one could even imagine a universe that virtually eliminates the importance of ships, to the point one might as well just have a teleporter network between the worlds of interest).

So then, to make ships and their operations interesting and important, we need to bring in other factors. A simple factor to bring in is to make logistics important. Now it matters how far apart the stars are. Additional stars might become important, not because they have an interesting world to have an adventure on, but because a ship needs to make a stopover for logistical reasons (for example, to re-fuel).

Of course, once such stars gain logistical relevance, they become a place for excitement to happen. During a war, a stopover might be blockaded. Or pirates might infest a stopover. Or some kind of natural event might take place, or there might be a systems failure in the ship.

Now it becomes interesting where you go, and what route you take.

Then the question arises of how many stopover locations are there? Too many, and they become meaningless. For example, say interesting stars are 10, 20, or even 30 light years apart, and ships can refuel by dipping into a star. Introduce hundreds or thousands of stopovers between any two interesting stars (or really even more than a few), and suddenly it becomes unlikely someone would be lying in wait for you. So probably stopovers have to be rare. So we probably can't refuel from a sun. Probably wilderness refueling has to be either slow, or unreliable. Now, we might have a refueling base at a star with nothing much more than a single icy planet where a plant can painstakingly extract hydrogen, perhaps, for a difficult route, just enough for a few small ships per week or two, and they probably charge a lot. But it might be worth it to shave off some time for a rich cargo, or important mission.

Of course, depending on how the logistics work out, tankers might be workable for refueling, but if that becomes too easy, we're back to hundreds of stopovers.

So lots to think about. And none of this particularly depends on what rules are used to generate the "interesting" systems, though they do depend on how one treats the "realistic" data.

Paul Gazis is starting to share his Eight Worlds system

2010-01-15T13:31:00.000-08:00

Paul is starting to share his Traveller derived system, which he is calling Eight Worlds after his campaign:

Eight Worlds

Take a look and join the discussion on his forum.

My Traveller gaming history

2010-01-08T11:56:00.001-08:00

I first played Traveller sometime around 1979-1980, my friend and I rolled up a few characters and played the merchant game and never went anywhere.

Sometime in 1981 or later (I can't find any solid reference as to when), I decided to run an SF game at MITSGS. I took the Rune Quest rules and wrote up a star ship creation and combat system, and added some SF weapons for personal combat. Unfortunately, I had not seen Nial Shapero's Other Suns at that point. We played one session, and then decided the system was over complex and the group collapsed. The star ship build system was sort of modular, with ideas borrowed from Task Force Game's Starfire boardgame. The star map was a bunch of dots penciled onto a blank sheet of 8.5"x11" paper, using a ruler to measure distances between stars.

A week or two later, I rebooted with Traveller, though I kept the star ship system and the campaign setting with several new players. Dave Tetreault was the most consistent player in the campaign, which lasted until 1988 or so. The campaign went through several rules mods, eventually being converted to Hero System. Another campaign in the same setting was run at RPI for several sessions. The groups only interaction was the MIT group visiting an airless planet the RPI group had explored, with the MIT group trying to make sense of the trails of ATV tracks going hither and thither.

This campaign was also my first venture into computer aided gaming at the table. I had use of a Compaq suit-case computer from work. I had a program to manage fuel consumption of the ships, and used Borland Sidekick to keep game notes at the same time. I also computerized my star map, which eventually expanded to some 40 or so sectors. The group even visited "Sol/Earth" (Alpha Centauri was the only other real star to make it onto the map).

That campaign was heavily inspired by Paul Gazis, and I used his experience rules and his "generic" "spare parts" for repairs (except I ended up categorizing spare parts into several categories).

Sometime in there I also tried out Mega-Traveller at RPI though the game didn't last long. I think I also had another start at RPI, not quite sure the rules, but I wrote a nifty star map program that worked on a square grid and used a custom printer font to make nice print maps.

Since then, I have essentially only played fantasy games.

Now I'm getting a solid SF itch...

Frank

Traveller Campaign Brainstorming

2010-01-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

I am thinking of starting a Traveller campaign soon. I thought I'd use this space to do a bit of a brain dump.

Chargen Rules: probably Classic Traveller as a basis, probably using Mercenary etc. extended character generation.

Starships: I am looking at using Paul Gazis's rules for star ships (no anti-grav is the big feature) and at least his star ship combat system. This would be a small ship universe. The one thing that might make me change my mind is using this system means not using the various deck plans out there.

Sector maps: I'm leaning towards a freeform map, not hexes. Gazis Traveller did not use such and in the past I have played with a freeform map.

World Generation: probably based on Book 3, however, recently I rolled up a bunch of systems, and the random results were rather limiting. I might jigger my own charts (but still use the standard UPP mechanism). I might generate a few systems using Book 6 level of detail.

Tech Level: keeping tech level lower, perhaps to 12 or so. Though I may end up with rather different lists of equipment since I am diverging on anti-grav and starship technology.

The following is a dump of elements I'd like to include, some of these are just names perhaps with a bit of detail. Names may be inspired by other source material but may not reflect the actual source.

Reavers Deep, Reavers. I like the name. I like the Reavers from Firefly.

Earth. I'm debating if Earth will be in my universe, if so, do I use any accuracy for nearby stars? If I start using accurate data, do I end up with a 3-D universe?

Rifts. I like them.

Vargr & Aslan. I've always been partial to kitties and dogs. I might not use Traveller stats.

Zhodane. I like psionic aliens (or not so alien), thought police, and all that.

Lizards. I like an intelligent lizard race.

Parsinians. Gazis cyborg aliens. They just sound cool and obnoxious.

That's all that crosses my mind right now.

1st session of OD&D Megadungeon campaign - TPK

2008-09-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

The following was originally posted to Finarvyn's Original D&D Discussion board and Dragonsfoot. I combined my responses to some questions, hopefully all makes sense without the questions...

Our band of intrepid explorers gathered at the inn in the village of Canyon Lake. They had all heard of a great dungeon near the village. An inquiry of the innkeeper gathered that they could either approach the dungeon by boat or by a narrow trail following the steep shoreline.

The party chose the trail and set off, two dwarves, two elves, three humans, and a mule. The trail led down to a small beach with a larger trail leading up the hillside to a ruined village. The dungeon entrance was rumored to be in the largest building.

In the village, the party first met a group of six dwarves. A short parley ensued and the dwarves went on their way hunting goblins.

The party gathered at the first of several smaller buildings that were still standing. The door was bashed in and three kobolds were quickly dispatched. On the way to the second building, the party avoided a giant beetle. Bursting through the door of the second building showed five kobolds and a goblin. A sleep spell dispatched all of them. A very nice looking dagger was found.

The third building approached was larger and near an overgrown graveyard. Bursting into the third building revealed three gnolls. The human cleric collapsed under the blow of a gnoll morningstar. Another sleep spell dispatched the gnolls. After the battle, it was determined the cleric was just unconscious.

The party decided to hole up in the building to recover. Early the next morning, the ground started to crack. Seven skeletons burst forth, The skeletons were eventually defeated but with great loss. An elf was the only conscious survivor. The cleric did wake up in the morning. The human warrior and the other elf survived unconscious. The two unconscious survivors were loaded on the mule along with the treasure and the most valuable equipment and the party started to head for home.

As the party made their way through the ruins, four giant ants engaged them. The mule went down and the ants swarmed the mule. The human warrior was revived with a potion but also went down again. Two characters survived with one unconscious body. They took the most valuable treasure and headed for home.

Most of the way back to town, the trail partially collapsed sending the survivors tumbling down the rocky embankment. Sadly, there were no survivors.

Several things the players might have done to do better:

Spend some time finding rumors.
Take the boat instead of the trail.
Not holed up for a night above the dungeon, especially near a graveyard.
Checked out the potion earlier.
Teamed up with the dwarves (at least for resting)

Background

For consideration, here are the background bits (in three separate places in my guide). I did read the section on alignment to them before the start of play. Admittedly there is no discussion of the dangers of camping out in the dungeon or the ruins above, but read the description of the chaos alignment... The rest of the players guide is basically the rules from Men & Magic (plus additions from Greyhawk etc. and house rules), except for the spells (they are in separate documents, one for clerics, one for magic users, and an intro document with first through third level spells from both classes.

The Mega-Dungeon (on page 2 right after table of contents)

This campaign will operate primarily in a single large dungeon, often referred to as a mega-dungeon. Like the dungeons of the early days, the deeper underground, the higher the challenge. In general, first level characters will find the most appropriate challenge on the first level underground, while second level characters will find more appropriate challenges one level deeper and so on. The dungeon itself is rumored to be a force of chaos, filled with foul beasts, tricks, and traps. Some tricks and traps may deposit an expedition on a deeper level of the dungeon unexpectedly. Previous expeditions may have left clues in the dungeon, and maps found on the bodies of those who didn’t make it could be quite valuable (though they could also have fatal errors).

The Dungeon--by which this author means the generic category and not any specific instance, though the principles apply in both cases--is a weird, unfathomable, and deadly place, and as such it should sound an irresistible call to those with the doughty hearts of adventurers. Importantly, it is also vast--do not fall into the trap of trying to "defeat" a level. Set goals, work to achieve them, and don't be afraid to move on when the opportunity presents itself. You can gauge what sorts of risks you want to take, and what sorts of rewards you wish to win, by considering the party level versus the dungeon level, as a rough equivalent exists in terms of PC abilities, appropriate challenges, and rightful prizes. Cautious parties may stay on safer levels, but the treasure will be less; daring parties may make forays deeper into the place for richer reward, but the danger will also increase. Choose the path that suits your party best.

Within you will find ferocious monsters, lethal traps, cunning tricks and buried secrets, tortuous layouts and forgotten ways, baffling riddles, and best of all, fabulous treasure beyond imagining. You the player will be challenged as much, if not more, than your PC, and it will take the combined skills of both to succeed. This place is not merely a workaday, subterranean lair, with logically arranged sleeping and eating areas for a species simply somewhat different from (or even antagonistic toward) humans and demi-humans. The door you open is a portal, the stairs you descend a path, into the mythic underworld, luring you farther from the rational and sane daylight lands above, where a man may plot his way with confidence in the laws of nature, and into a nightmarish world of magic, evil, and elements that can devour your PC's very soul. You must be constantly on guard for peril from any quarter; you must manage your resources carefully, retreating when it is wise yet advancing when the time is right; you must demonstrate bravery, intelligence, and prowess as well, if your efforts are to be repaid with wealth and power. Not everything within the crumbling walls, forsaken chambers, and winding ways is hostile, and you may find allies in strange places or negotiate safe passage from others--but be wary of treachery and ill will. Those who think and fight their way back out may bear the riches that will spread their names throughout the realms of Man; those who do not will die a lonely death far from the places they know and cherish.

Evereaux

Alignment (on top of page 4)

Alignment in my campaign represents alignment with a specific cosmic force. The alignments are:

Law

This cosmic force represents the human drive towards orderliness, with kingdoms and empires gaining strength over small communities.

Neutrality or Nature

This cosmic force is the old cosmic force of living with nature in small communities. Demi-humans as entities are overwhelmingly neutral in alignment though individuals may align themselves with law, or even chaos.

Chaos

This is the cosmic force seeking to tear the world asunder. The forces of chaos breed in dungeons, swamps, and other dank and foul places. It is said that in these foul places, even the very earth itself is a force of chaos. This might explain the inexplicable tricks and traps that abound in dungeons. It could explain the fact that dungeon doors will swing open to allow inhabitants to pass but be jammed solid against lawful expeditions seeking to penetrate the dungeon and slay the forces of chaos. The corrupting nature of chaos sometimes allows individual creatures aligned with law or neutrality to be bent to the needs of chaos, and some individuals will even seek chaos for their own reasons.

Unsolicited Advice (page 13)

The problem with mapping is that so few people (players and DMs alike) seem to understand why it should be done and just accept that it's "part of the game" because it's mentioned in the rulebooks and is somehow "assumed" that at the end of each adventure the players must have a map of the dungeon that looks just like the DM's. But that's backwards -- drawing a map shouldn't be a burden for the players, it should be an aid to them, and they should only do it to the extent it aids them.

In most circumstances, the only reason to make a map is so you can find your way back to the entrance and highlight areas you passed over but may want to return to later. If you think you can find your way back without a map (either because you've got a good memory or because the dungeon is simply designed, without a lot of turns, doors, dead-ends and such) then there's no reason to make a map at all, and even if you do decide to make a map there's no reason to do so on graph paper and try to create a perfect replica of the DM's map. Make each room a square (or oval, or whatever shape the DM says the room is) with the dimensions and number/location of all exits marked; make each corridor a line with the length and any side passages, doors, etc. marked. Don't worry about trying to make it to scale -- if a 20' long straight corridor connects back to a room you've been to previously but your map requires you to draw a long, curved line to represent that corridor, don't worry about it. Mapping in this way should be sufficient in the vast majority of circumstances and IME doesn't slow the game down noticeably at all (because the DM should be giving the same sorts of descriptions of rooms and corridors whether the players are mapping or not -- it's their decision whether or not to draw a map, not his).

The only time to bother trying to draw an accurate map that matches the DM's exactly is when you're either in a very mazy environment where there's a significant chance of becoming seriously lost or when you have some reason to believe that 'empty spaces' on the map might conceal secret passages that you wouldn't be likely to locate otherwise. In such cases mapping/navigation becomes part of the challenge of the game, as much as combat tactics and resource management, and drawing an accurate map is an accomplishment in and of itself -- some players will become proud of their mapping skills and how they were able to 'beat' the dungeon through mapping (by finding a secret area, or quickly spotting a teleport trap, or whatever). If you enjoy such a challenge, go for it, it'll add a whole new element to the contest of the game. But if this sort of 'detail-work' bores or frustrates you, you should probably avoid it and stick to sketch/trailing maps (or even no map at all). Yes OD&D vol. 3 and some old modules (B1 probably most famously) emphasize this 'mapping challenge' part of the game with tricks designed especially to confuse people trying to draw accurate maps, because the people they were playing with (Ernie Gygax in particular, from what I understand) enjoyed that aspect, but if you don't there's no reason to try and force it. Make trailing maps or trust your memory if that's what you prefer -- you may miss an occasional hidden treasure, or get lost in an occasional maze, but that's the price you're willing to pay.

Trent Foster

In Depth Commentary

The players were a bit frustrated, but will return. They are used to newer systems that are more "fair." Perhaps I should have given them a bit more slack on preparations for holing up. They did spike the doors shut - which did play into possible encounters, a humanoid encounter WOULD have had to bust through the door - it just turned out to be an undead encounter.

One thing I realized I had neglected, or couldn't find, was an outdoor encounter table for the ruins above the dungeon. I used my 1st level encounter table with some on the fly adjustment (discarded one encounter that didn't make sense), especially for the night (adjusting probabilities on the fly for their proximity to the graveyard).

I talked with one of the players who rode we me (he lives three houses down from me) on the ride home about things they could have done better.

At the beginning of the next session, I will spend a bit of time talking to them about expectations and perhaps giving them a few suggestions. None of the players had read the background info in the players guide I gave them (the neighbor to his defense did not get one of these guides until we were at the session).

I think in old school tradition, the players do need to discover some of this stuff the hard way, or at least by thinking about it themselves. This is not 3.x where the GM gives the players "fair" encounters and recommends "gather information" rolls...

These segments above are pretty much all the "background" information.

What they were exploring was the surface which just has a few standing buildings. Perhaps having every one of them occupied was too much. I do need to track turns better, I think I did roll too often for wandering encounters (4 giant ants was also probably too many). While holed up though, they did only get a single roll per hour (and many/most encounters would not have been able to get in easily - just the undead (and only because of proximity to the graveyard) and burrowing creatures).

Along the trail, they only got one roll per hour (3 hours travel normally, 4 hours for the return carrying a body). I had tried to at least hint that the trail was dangerous (I certainly described it as a narrow trail clinging to a steep hillside above the lake). The landslide was the result of rolling a 20 on my encounter chart which was "special". They did get a dex roll to avoid falling. I can see that it was perhaps excessive.

One issue is that I couldn't find the surface encounter chart I thought I had made. I also didn't actually have an encounter chart for the trail. For next time, I need to write up a good encounter chart, and probably should have a range of specials (so it's not always a landslide on the trail).

I think it's fair to chalk this up as a learning experience for both me as GM and for the players. Part of the problem is that they are used to being spoonfed information.

While it might not be to everyone's taste, I think it's kind of cool that even though players may have had old school experience years ago, that there is still a learning process. I think that is part of what makes the game exciting.

In my play in Makofan's campaign on the OD&D board, I'm realizing that it's actually not so bad losing a character. I mostly stopped playing and just GMing partly from this fear, but I think when D&D is approached differently, it's not so bad. Sure, sometimes you lose, but there is no winning without losing. EVERYONE WINS is not really all that fun.

I hope that the players come to see this. I think that is what actually drives D&D players to seek more and more challenge, either going deeper into the dungeon, or pushing the limits of their resources. Without that pushing, there is no loss, and thus no real winning. I think this is what Ron Edwards gets at with his definition of "Step on Up" Gamism.

One thing I would like to add, this play took less than two hours. Our session was supposed to run from 6 pm - 10 pm, but traffic and nearby burning buildings caused the last player to not show up until 7 pm. The store clerk also told us we would have to leave at 9:30. Well, we actually finished up before 9 pm.

I love how much faster encounters run than in later editions of the game. We did use miniatures (for PCs, counters for the monsters). The extent of laying out the battle was to set two dice on the table to show the doorway.

Frank

I'm a married man

2007-08-23T11:31:00.001-07:00

The wedding went off just fine on Saturday August 18. Oh, there were a few minor glitches, and it was a lot of work to get there, but yea!

The ceremony was wonderfull. Saranna and I worked together to create it using pieces from a packet our church (First Unitarian Church of Portland Oregon) provided us. The ceremony was relatively traditional, though we didn't use traditional music. Most of us marched down the aisle to Ode to Joy, while Saranna came down (escorted by her dad) to Tis a Gift to be Simple. Saranna's mom and dad even managed to collaborate and decided they would say "we do" together when the minister said: "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?"

Our simple three paragraph "introduction" seemed to take an eternity. So did Saranna's sister's music. We also hadn't rehearsed holding hands so there was an awkward moment for Saranna. Oh, and we were sweating (at least it was easy to put the rings on).

I was surpised I actually was able to pay attention to the crowd a bit and saw some tears. There was also one baby cry, but the dad (one of Saranna's cousins) stood up with the baby and stood by the side door and the baby quited down immediately.

The reception was wonderful and we actually had a chance to eat a plate of food each, and even went back for seconds (just on one shared plate to make wandering around and chatting with folks easier). We even got to eat cake! They also packed us a bunch of food and cake which we enjoyed in the hotel room that night (after a bit of pannic when we realized it was still on the front seat of the maid of honor's car and she was on her way to Corvallis (she turned around and brought it back to us).

Sunday and Monday we had a chance to spend some (but not too much) time with family. We even had a chance to go out to dinner last night with my best man Ken and his sister. Now everyone is home or on their way home. We leave tomorrow morning for our honeymoon, 2 nights in Seattle and then up to Victoria BC for 8 nights.

I'm Engaged!!!

2006-12-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, December 5, 2006, I proposed to my beloved Saranna and she accepted!

For those who like gushy details:

We had been discussing marriage for some time, and had finally decided to get engaged. The original plan was to have a nice evening Wednesday, however, Tuesday morning, the stars aligned just right. I proposed in our bedroom, with Saranna sitting on the bed and me kneeling on the floor (oh how cute! they say...).

Wednesday, we went out to Jakes Famous Crawfish in Portland Oregon for a celebratory dinner.

Wedding plans are yet to be made, however, the thought is August 2007 in Portland, with the cermony in the Salmon St. Sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church.

I first met Saranna in August of 1999 when I travelled to the Pacific Northwest to attend a Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult conference. When I moved to the Portland area in 2002, Saranna was one of the familiar faces when I started attending the First Unitarian Church. We started dating shortly after a mutual friend's birthday party at a park where we took a nice walk together.

For those wondering, Saranna is into neither gaming nor LEGO, though she is totally supportive of both my hobbies (though she has made a reasonable request that the LEGO be contained so as to leave room for her and probable future little ones).

Frank

My Roleplaying Summary

2006-10-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Copying Vincent's idea...

Broken down into major periods of life, that don't exactly conform to shifts in my gaming philosophy...

My formal role playing history started in fall of 1977 at my friend's birthday party (I was a freshmen in high school):

We got introduced to the game with Holmes Basic D&D (the very first version of said game - which is different from later Basic D&Ds)
My friend got Chivalry and Sorcery for Christmas, I made efforts over the years to run this (and wore out my friends book in the process)
Somewhere in there we got the Original D&D boxed set plus supplements, some time later I got my own set
I got the AD&D Players Handbook for Christmas in 1978 and we started playing AD&D (well sort of, because of course we didn't have the DMG yet...)
Somewhere in there, I started fiddling with Traveler
Somewhere in there, I bought RuneQuest (1st edition) and fiddled with it
Tried Boot Hill and dismissed it
Ran some Top Secret
Ran some Bunnies and Burrows

Attended a MIT Strategic Games Society Summer Con (probably 1978, or maybe it was Winter Con 1979 - but I vaguely remember warm weather), ran AD&D for 16! players

Shortly thereafter, I started gaming with the MITSGS, and started what is probably my longest campaign (it would last until I went off to college in fall of 1981), probably really started in late 1979 though with the way people ran games at MIT with PCs being exchanged between different GMs campaigns, it's hard to nail down when it really started)
Ran games with various other game systems that I can't really remember
Played in a few different D&D games
Ran some RuneQuest

Then I went to college (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Continued running AD&D my freshman and sophomore years
Somewhere in here, in the summer, ran RuneQuest in space at MIT, switched to Traveler after a few sessions, said Traveler campaign after a total shift in players would run once or twice a year through 1986 or 1987 or so, or maybe as late as 1989)
Tried to run RuneQuest, it flopped badly
Played in a few Cold Iron campaigns
Started running my first Cold Iron campaign (in Harn) in fall of 1983, this campaign would mostly peter out by fall of 1985, though I ran a couple bits with one player in fall of 1986)
Ran Chivalry and Sorcery again (for a session or two)
Probably ran a few other random games
Ran Champions for a while
Ran Justice Inc. and Espionage for a session or two each

Then I continued with graduate school at RPI

Started running Fantasy Hero in fall of 1985, this campaign would end up migrating to Cold iron, and finally AD&D by the end of the school year (with a one or two session interlude with an obscure home-brew system I can't recall the name of - have to check at home tonight), campaign ended late spring of 1987
Started work on my own game system, originally called Now for Something Completely Different, originally derived from the Gazis experience system for Traveler, later bolstered by ideas from GURPS (and later called Yet Another Generic Game System in honor of GURPS), played a session or two
Played a few sessions of D&D
Started a new Cold Iron campaign spring 1988 (in Blackmoor), this campaign would last until I mostly finished grad school at the end of the summer of 1989
Ran some Top Secret SI and Traveler as breaks to that Cold Iron campaign

Then I was done and started job hunting

Started game design on YAGGS in earnest in fall and spring of 1989
Played in a GURPS Supers campaign

Moved to North Carolina in April of 1990

Ran YAGGS, RuneQuest, and GURPS Supers with NC State game club
Ran Everway
Tried YAGGS again with caver friends
Played in a demo of 7th Sea
Ran a session each of 7th Sea and Deadlands with a caver friend
Ran a disastrous RPGA Deadlands module at Trinocon
Ran GURPS using YAGGS magic system (2 sessions)
Ran Evil Stevie's Pirate Game for the first time at BrickFest 2000, would continue running this at conventions (LEGO and game) through 2004

Moved to Oregon March 2002

Ran GURPS in Talislanta using YAGGS magic system (collapsed after 1 or 2 sessions)
Ran Cold Iron in Talislanta
Started Arcana Unearthed campaign in fall of 2003
Ran demos of Cold Iron, Fudge, and RuneQuest summer of 2004 after AU campaign died
Played one Fudge session (disastrous)

Took a break fall of 2004 while I bought a house, moved, and settled in

Started Cold Iron Tekumel in spring of 2005 which died after a few sessions
Started Arcana Evolved campaign in Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting in spring of 2005
Ended AE campaign and started Cold Iron Blackmoor campaign fall 2005
Ended Cold Iron campaign spring 2006
Spent five painful sessions of chargen and almost play of Burning Wheel
Started RuneQuest campaign late spring 2006
Ran a Dogs in the Vinyard demo
Ended RQ in late summer
Ran two sessions (didn't even finish town) of DitV
Started Arcana Evolved campaign in Ptolus fall 2006
Started dating Saranna
Ended the Arcana Evolved campaign in spring of 2007, ran a couple sessions of house ruled AD&D
Dropped out of gaming other than forum/blog involvement as wedding plans with Saranna progressed. I am slowly working on starting an OD&D campaign.

Largely in part due to haze of time, the high school period (and first couple years of college) is very hazy (though I could dig through my collection of articles saved from the Wild Hunt APA and probably pin a few dates down). The high school era was definitely characterized by a lot of experiments in different games, though eventually a solid campaign settled down at MIT (though still with breaks for other games). I'm sure I've left out short-lived games here and there throughout the time (at least until 2002). Some game experimentation involved nothing more than spending a few hours with a couple other players creating PCs for a game, then never actually playing. I often got complaints for trying "the game of the week" though I have mostly settled down now.

Frank

A new campaign launch

2006-09-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

I'm out of my gaming funk. One player from my previous campaigns joined me this evening and we talked about what we want out of a game. Here's the recruitment posting I've sent out (if you happen to be in the Portland Oregon area and this sounds interesting, let me know, I also welcome any general thoughts on this):

I will be starting a new Arcana Evolved (alternate D&D/D20) campaign using Monte Cook's Ptolus city setting as a base of operations. I am looking for three additional players for a total of four.

My campaign style is old school (70s and 80s), episodic, mostly modules, lots of combat, no long involved story lines. With the city setting, I expect there will be some wheeling and dealing within the city, but the focus will be on what D&D does best - dungeon adventuring and combat. Since I like some variety, some adventures will occur outside the city.

Plan is to start with 3rd or 4th level characters with a standard 25 point build. I expect most characters to be Arcana Evolved races and classes, however, there is room for a few things (especially dwarves and rogues, as well as Monte's alternate bard from Complete Eldritch Wizardry). I am hoping to keep the number of supplements to a minimum and will ask players to provide a short summary of any additional books (even AE supplements) they wish to use and how the book will benefit the campaign beyond just your PC.
I will consider the appropriateness of prestige classes to the setting. In general, I don't like level adjusted races, by LA +1 or +2 may be acceptable (optionally, if you can present a nice set of racial and evolved levels that allow the race to be LA +0 that would be awesomely cool).

In order to keep my sanity, here are some additional expectations of the
campaign:

- I would prefer not to have Magisters due to the tendency they have of overwhelming combats.

- The campaign will probably end around 10th level or so (unless it ends for other reasons sooner). This is due to a combination of the effects of high level casters, and the increased prep time.

- I will be working on slowing the XP rate somewhat, I would like to see PCs gain a level every four sessions, three as the fastest. I will be doing some things to tone down treasure appropriately.

Games will run every Tuesday evening (6:00ish to 10:30ish) at my smoke free home in Beaverton. There is some flexibility for Monday or Wednesday, but Tuesday is ideal, there is also some flexibility with start and end time, but I prefer to get in four solid hours of gaming. Please be honest with your schedule, we will break for the Christmas holidays (for two or three weeks), otherwise I hope to run every week with players making most of the sessions. My target for the first session is October 2nd. We will talk about group expectations and create PCs the first session.

The player I already have and I are available September 26 for a meet and greet. In general, I prefer to meet with players before they join the campaign. At a minimum, I would like to exchange a few e-mails or chat on the phone.

I will be happy to share additional thoughts about the campaign.

Frank

Burned out on gaming

2006-09-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

I never quite thought I'd get here... I'm realizing I'm just plain burned out on gaming. Over the past few years there have been some glimmers of worthwhile gaming, and lots of teeth gnashing. This past weekend, other than sort of lame forum and blog following, I've been divorced from gaming. I've been really looking forward to the time I spend in the LEGO room.

One problem is finding enough variety. After a stint of relatively successefull gamist Arcana Evolved (Monte Cook's alternate D&D), we stumbled around. Cold Iron didn't quite cut it (the players never got into what I see as one of the strengths of the game - the strategic choices of magic items, and maximizing their effect in play). Burning Wheel crashed and burned. RuneQuest seemed a possibility, but ultimately died because the majority of the players were looking for gamism not simulationism. Dogs in the Vinyard seemed like the first real possibility of really reaching the young wife, but gamism seems to be rearing its head again (not to mention my first attempt at town creation seems to have been a disaster).

So I'm looking at a game session tomorrow, where we will theoretically finish the Dogs town and talk about what next, with absolutely no enthusiasm.

Frank

A bit of fun

2006-08-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

Dude! You're 81% from Massachusetts!

Okay, either you come from the western half of the state or from the Boston area. Still, it's not bad, so I'll give you the thumbs up. Cool!

How Massachusetts are you?

The one's that kept me from 100% were a pronounciation one (quin-sea vs. quin-zee), and "wicked pissa" (never heard that one), and not being annoyed by "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd" (I actually don't hear that one very often). I do wonder if younger folks from Massachusetts would know the difference between a milkshake and a frappe, and with the advent of nationwide chains, you're a lot less likely to get a surprise if you order a shake in Massachusetts these days (for the uniniatied, in Massachusetts, a milkshake is literally milk shaken up, there's no icecream in it, a frappe is the thing with icecream).

The pronounciation ones point out how local accents are in Massachusetts. "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd" is a Boston accent. Out in the suburbs where I grew up, there is a totally different accent (in fact, I once was told I had a Concord accent - I think one of the characteristics of a Concord accent is the pronounciation of the town name as kon-KERD, very similar to how you would pronounce conquered, and definitely NOT kon-KORD).

Frank

Ruminations on games designed to be played with LEGO bricks.

2006-07-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

Thinking out loud:

In the spring of 1999, I was introduced to the potential of LEGO as an adult toy. We had a big meeting of everyone in our division at IBM, and the inspirational talk was given by Fred Martin of the MIT Media Lab. His presentation was about personal computing, ranging from the use of PCs they way we know them today, computers in appliances, and most interestingly, personal robotics. He talked about how LEGO's recently introduced Mindstorms LEGO Robotics Invention Kit was a huge success, in part because something like half the sets were purchased by adults for their own use. Having always been intrigued by robots, but never enough to shell out for any of the robot kits released over the previous 20 years or so, I wandered down to Toys R Us and came home with a Mindstorms set. Of course, being internet savvy, it didn't take me long to start searching the internet for what people were doing with their LEGO robots. Along the way, I saw a 6' long model of the Titanic, impressive castles, and amazingly, a miniatures wargame with role playing aspects using the pirate ships, designed by Steve Jackson (of Steve Jackson Games).

Within months, I purchased almost every pirate set I could lay my hands on in the Raleigh/Durham North Carolina area. In the spring of 2000, talk started about having a convention for LEGO fans up in DC. I immediately expressed interest, and suggested the Pirate Game would be a cool thing to play. So in June, and the first BrickFest, I rented an SUV (I didn't have a reliable vehicle for the trip) and drove up to DC with the back stuffed with pirate ships, stuff to build islands, and several pirate themed forts. Finally I would get my chance to check out this cool game. It was a lot of fun to run (and lots of fun for several of the players - though many had no RPG exposure, and chafed at the way the game was run). Over the next several years, I ran the game at BrickFest, and in 2002, I ventured to GenCon to run it as part of the newly formed GameLUG (Gaming LEGO Users Group) offerings.

By the end of 2003, I was becoming disillusioned with the game. A big issue was how subjective the interesting parts of the game were. The special islands which provided the most role playing opportunity are very subjective, which may be ok, but clashed with the essential wargame nature of the game. They also didn’t play well with the reward mechanics. And the reward mechanics were really screwed up, they rewarded players for not engaging. If you wandered around to small islands, digging for treasure and picking up stranded pirates, avoiding the special islands, and especially avoiding fighting the other players, the reward in treasure was huge. Especially when, with your huge, relatively un-blooded crew, you swept in after two other players had a fight, and captured one or both of their ships.

There are a number of other games out there, but not have appealed to me very much. BrickWars, while it still has some role playing potential, is very minimal, plus, it features destruction of the props which makes for intensive prep. BrickQuest is an interesting dungeon style game, but it has more in common with the board games with miniatures like Dragon Strike (and presumably some of those new nifty looking games that are coming out). Brick Battles is a simple war game, though I really haven’t looked into it much. Pirate Wars is another pirate game, but I’m not sure it would really have anything over Evil Stevie’s Pirate Game. Mechaton and BrickMech are pure wargames, and feature a genre of little interest to me.

One thing I’ve thought about recently is how Steve Jackson ran the game at BricksWest 2002. He split the players into two sides. This eliminates the problem of two players duking it out, weakening themselves, and falling prey to a third player. That is one of the fundamental problems with the Pirate Game, the reward for fighting another player does not offset the losses. In Risk, when you fight another player, you capture territory, which earns you cards to cash in for more troops (plus the territory is valuable in its own right).

This got me to thinking about how the mechanics of an RPG help support a creative agenda. In traditional D&D play, which supports a gamist agenda, there is an interesting instability of the game. The rules suggest combat is the primary way to deal with NPCs, but the game offers possibilities of bypassing opposition by climbing walls or finding secret doors. Another option is to try and talk an NPC out of fighting you. These options are highly subjective, and I think that subjectivity is what leaves room for the creativity that makes the RPG something more than a wargame. On the flip side, games like Dogs in the Vinyard normalize everything into one conflict resolution system. This dramatically reduces the impact of creativity on the mechanics of winning a conflict, however, that leaves room to assign meaning to the decisions made. The GM can probe the players decisions by creating different situations and seeing how the player reacts. The end is that the players address premise and create theme, for strong narativist play. Games like RuneQuest use realism, and mechanics that help define the social structure of the campaign world, to provide support for a simulationist agenda.

Now here’s another problem with the games that use LEGO bricks: These games make very little use of the construction toy aspect of LEGO toys. BrickWars makes some use in the destruction of props (since the destroyed props may be rebuilt easily, or recycled into parts for new props). Most of the games do allow exchanging of equipment and such, which traditional miniatures games don’t facilitate (though if you used action figures, you would have that same flexibility). And of course, the fact that you can click pieces together means you can hang your pirate crew from the ratlines and stand them on the spars and such. But overall, the games do not provide for creative building with the bricks outside of prep for the game.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to make creative building part of a construction toy game. Lately, I have been considered putting the word out that I’m interested in creating a construction toy RPG that features more creative building. My thought would be to get a bunch of interested folks to come over to my house. My thought would be that rather than starting off by focusing on game rules, we would start by focusing on the creative building. Participants would be encouraged to bring any LEGO creations they might have (whether they be their own design, or just a LEGO kit assembled per the instructions). I would make my huge collection available, and a big table to set up on. We might decide to build a town, or a countryside, or a pirate ocean, or a moonbase, or something entirely wacky. We might even decide to abandon the table for the larger area of the floor. Participants would be encouraged to go beyond just the models though, and start creating shared stories. As play progressed, we could watch for places we need formal mechanics. Perhaps after a few sessions, I would have some ideas to work with to create a game, or perhaps we’d jointly construct a playable game from that play.

References: My LEGO gaming page provides links to many of the games mentioned above.

Fun, but somehow not entirely satisfying RuneQuest play

2006-05-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

I've been running my RuneQuest game for several weeks now, and while it's fun, it's also somehow not entirely satisfying.

One aspect that's an interesting plus and minus is two new players I recruited. They are both Gloranthaphiles, and are contributing a lot to the game (and I think helping drive a simulationist agenda - which is what I'm hoping for). On the other hand, they, especially one of the players, are not quite so into the wargamey combat aspect. On top of this, I'm finding myself more and more frustrated by some aspects of the RQ system. The active defense really just makes for an unfun game (I hit, no you don't, he parried). The system of course, like all old school systems, provides terrible support for social conflict.

I'm having the usual troubles with the young learning disabled couple. The wife is mostly not engaged, though in this case, since she's playing an elf, she might actually be roleplaying really well... The husband is playing a newtling Orlanthi, and I'm more and more realizing it just really doesn't fit well.

In one sense, I think I've been spoiled by Dogs in the Vinyard. Now that I've seen a system which handles social conflict and fighting in a unified way, but also makes for real consequences of chosing to fight or keep talking, it's harder to play a system with disjoint social and combat conflict (I noticed even with Burning Wheel's improved social conflict system, the disconnect was still jarring). But I still can't see a way to unify social and combat conflict and have wargamey combat.

We've also got the most variable attendance I've had in a while, especially compared to my Arcana Evolved campaign which had very solid attendance from all the players.

There was also a problematical bit during the previous adventure, the Rainbow Mounds scenario from Apple Lane. The PCs had started to interract with the newtlings, and I wanted to at least offer the prophesy and quest, but that sort of stalled, though they eventually did trigger the prophesy, but then the prophesised savior got himself killed in spirit combat, and none of the other PCs were invested in the quest. This would have been an area where some meta-game negotiation tools might have made for a really cool game opportunity (or a quick dismisall of the quest as not interesting). For example, if there was a currency the GM could use to bribe the players to accept the quest (the prophesy, for those not familiar with the module, basically requires a PC to fall into an underground lake to be rescued by the newtlings, the PC then accepts the quest with his companions and they go to rid the caverns of an ancient rival to the newtlings, and then they get some blessings, some treasure, and a few other bennies).

Frank

Insight on RuneQuest - Conflict Webs

2006-04-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

A little insight I just had on RuneQuest:

The cults in RQ provide an instant campaign level conflict web. Now, unlike Chris's suggestion on how to create a conflict web to drive play in the linked blog entry, the RQ cult conflict web is something that constantly sits in the background. But by introducing NPCs that follow a cult, the GM is instantly placing that NPC into a conflict web that has a well defined (and interesting for driving play) structure. Of course NPCs can be introduced that don't fit in exactly, but that's just temporarily bending the conflict web, which as long as it isn't bent too far, will still be interesting.

One interesting ingsight here, in Chris's writeup of conflict webs, he doesn't talk about placing PCs into the web, and in fact, it makes sense not to. So what does this mean relative to a PC following one of the cults? Has the PC been placed into the web? No. But there are implicit NPCs (temple authorities, even the actual god) who fill the position in the web. And the players dynamically create new strands that tie their character into the web in play.

And the players dynamically creating strands to tie their character into the web, and in doing so, disturbing the existing strands, is how the conflict web drives play.

One random thought: Is the existence of this campaign level, relatively static, conflict web (that locally and temporarily gets changed in play) something that indicates simulationist play as opposed to narativist play? Certainly it seems that the players discovering, and re-inforcing, and demonstrating, this campaign level conflict web is one way to celebrate the dream.

Looking back on my most successfull RuneQuest campaign, there is no doubt that this conflict web drove play. One of the central PCs was a Lhankor Mhy sage, who was always looking for stuff in tombs. There was almost always a Humakti PC in the group (and I think the other central player played a Humakti for much of the campaign). This of course created lots of tension because the Humakti don't exactly like disturbing graves though they care less about non-Humakti graves. On the other hand, often the tombs were occupied by ghosts or undead, creatures that Humakti consider abominations.

All the significant non-humans in Glorantha are tied into the conflict web, usually through their deity. Trolls aren't exactly buddy buddy with humans, on the other hand, Argan Argar trolls do recognize that trade with humans is valuable. A Zorak Zorani troll can find common cause with a Storm Bull, or anyone else who is willing to dispatch creatures of chaos.

Frank

Categorizing RPG Prep

2006-03-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Over in the comments to Prep-Light RPGs? on Martin Ralya's Treasure Tables blog I mentioned that prep could be broken down into three distinct categories. I'd like to add a fourth here:

creative - generating ideas, situation, etc.

mechanical - writing up NPC stats, determining obstacle DCs, etc.

organizational - organizing and neatening up notes, e-mailing notes to all the players, updating a game Wiki, etc.

research - reading National Geographic for ideas, searching in the library for information on power source efficiency or animals resource needs in the desert, reading novels in your setting or genre, or even browsing your module collection to find a suitable module, etc.

When you sit down to do prep work, it's likely one session will have tasks from several categories, but in general, most tasks will pretty clearly be one category or another.

It might be usefull to compare the prep for some different games, so I will share thoughts on Dogs in the Vinyard, Cold Iron, and Arcana Evolved (D20/alternative D&D). This blog entry of mine is an example of Cold Iron prep.

Research
For my first Dogs in the Vinyard game, I read the sample towns in the book, plus several towns on the web. I probably spent several hours doing this. For the exmple Cold Iron prep, I probably spent two hours browsing the web for a suitable map. For a given Arcana Evolved adventure, I might spend a few hours browsing my extensive module collection (that would also be typical for Cold Iron). But this is just one kind of research.

Above, I hinted at a couple extended research sessions at my university library. Once, we were about to do a desert expedition, and I wanted to know how much water the party would need to cary. So I read about camels and donkeys. I did a lot of research for SF gaming, including one extended session of studying power sources and their efficiency (a cool resource for that was some NASA publications, and I think I managed to find a paper or two my father had published in another government publication [he was a civil servant working for the Air Force Geophysics Lab]). I still have the notes from some of these research sessions. These types of research sessions can be a lot of fun, but the way I understand gaming these days, are probably mostly irrelevant. Sure, it's fun to base stuff on reality, but what the players actually care about is that they need so many donkeys or camels, and if you tell them 2 per expedition member as a SWAG, or 2.3 as a carefully calculation based on reality, the players really don't care.

Creative
For some folks, this is the most exciting prep. For others, it's the most torturous. Dogs in the Vinyard is the only game I've seen to date with a complete guide for this part of the creation. This prep can either be very explicit when you sit down to just try and generate ideas, or it can be more casual when you think about the game on the drive home from work (and this second type of prep suggests there is no such thing as a zero prep game - every game is going to utilize and benefit from this kind of casual thought). Note that every other category of prep does involve some creativity, but my goal of calling this out separately is that there is always some time spent purely imagining and creating, without putting pen to paper or reading texts.

I didn't do much of this kind of prep for the Dogs game since I used prepared towns. Of course I did read the towns and think about how I might use them, and started to form ideas of the NPCs. The example Cold Iron prep had perhaps 10-15 minutes of direct creative prep once I had a map. When I do module searches, there is often creative prep intermixed. I'll look at a module, read parts of it, browse the map, etc. and think about what I might do with the module. When I'm doing a module conversion (I do a lot of this since 90% of my modules are for D&D, and I haven't run D&D for almost 20 years), I'll spend a lot of creative energy coming up with appropriate NPCs (monsters or otherwise).

Coming up with a scenario from scratch generally requires a lot of creative prep time, and is one reason I don't do that much at all for D&D-like games.

Mechanical
This prep is the statting up of NPCs, traps, etc. Drawing a map on an appropriate grid might be this kind of prep (though it will mostly be creative). Generating mechanics to utilize library research would also be mechanical. This type of prep directly engages your system's mechanics. It should be noted that some folks really dislike this kind of prep. It's too hard. It takes too much time. It isn't fun. Of course other folks love to churn out NPCs in loving detail. Some game systems ease this prep by statting up NPCs differently than PCs.

For Dogs in the Vinyard, mechanical prep is very simple. You generate a page (or two) of proto-NPCs. Perhaps noting which stage of the sin progression each element of the town's problem is in is mechanical.

One of the reasons I love Cold Iron is that for a crunchy system, this mechanical prep time is pretty modest. I can stat up a creature in as little as 5 minutes (and when I do so, I generate 4-8 levels for the creature). A complex NPC might take as much as 30 minutes if I really spend time picking spells and magic items (but more likely can be done in 15 moinutes, and in any case, I use relatively few NPCs of such complexity, most are 5-10 minute grunts). Cold Iron NPCs can be just as fully statted as a PC, but I have some short cuts that simplify the process.

For a side comparison, games like Rune Quest and GURPS can have quick mechanical prep time, while allowing NPCs the same complexity as PCs. This is done by ignoring the point system or advancement system. Games without strict character level progressions but instead with skills that advance individually is well suited for this kind of shortcut generation.

This prep for Arcana Evolved was painful. I could often re-use some of the monsters if I was using a D%D 3e module, but spell casters and other monsters with PC classes would need to be re-written. Using pre-3e modules (probably more than half my collection) left one without even monster stats. When I had more than 4 players, I would also have to upscale encounters.

Organizational

This prep is often part of mechanical prep, but can be separate.

For Dogs in the Vinyard, this was where I spent the most prep time after chosing a couple towns. I cut and pasted one town from the PDF into MS Word for printing, and re-formatted a town pulled off the web. Copying proto-NPC stats from Chris Week's web generator onto proto-NPC sheets also counts.

For Cold Iron, I tend not to spend too much time here, though I may copy NPC stats onto handy sheets for use during the game (but just as often, I will copy the 5-10 stats I need the most onto scratch paper during the game when the encounter happens).

For Arcana Evolved, this was again a significant time, though mostly it was done in combination with the mechanical prep. I developed my own stat block format in MS Word and would cut and paste monsters from the SRD, or stat up NPCs into the stat block. The pages I printed left space to keep track of each creatures hit points and spell slots used.

Photocopying maps or player handouts would also fall into the organizational prep. Preparing the game room also qualifies as organizational prep. Sending e-mails to find out who is coming etc. also qualifies. Basically this stuff doesn't require much thought (I would place chosing fonts and such to make a genre approproiate handout into creative or research prep).

Conclusions

So what use is all of this? Well, one way would be to classify systems for the amount of prep in each category they require. Each of us has different interest levels in the various categories, so just knowing a system is light-prep isn't enough, if all the prep is of a category I hate, it might be a heavier-prep system for me than one that takes twice as many hours overall. Another way is in design. Dogs in the Vinyard is really cool for including such a good guide for creating towns. D&D at various times in the past has included some tools for creating dungeons, but doesn't have the same degree of guidelines (but the system is also less focused so providing such guidelines might be very hard). Cold Iron as I received it came with almost no help for prep (just a handfull of monsters and a few pages talking about monster creation, plus a few guidelines on creating magic items, from which I developed pricing formulas).

It's also valuable to look at how important each type of prep is. For example, I now realize that my in depth library research is of little value for most gaming. For Cold Iron, I learned what was necessary for stats for NPCs and streamlined my mechanical prep. During game design, consider ways to streamline this mechanical prep. Look for ways to simplify NPCs without constraining them. Systems can also help the creative prep. Again, Dogs in the Vinyard's town creation rules help the creative prep by providing a framework that must be filled in for each town. This guides the GM to spending creative energy on what is needed for the game, and not on what is not needed. Who cares how many miles between towns, it doesn't come into play in any mechanical sense, if you really need a number, let it come up in play. On another note, it would be poisonous to prep dialogue for an NPC in Dogs (even the intro the Steward gives when the PCs arrive in town should not be scripted, let it flow out of the mood at the table).

In fact, that bit about scripting dialogue in Dogs in the Vinyard turns out to be a major factor in my enjoying the game. The system drives the necessary dialogue rather than the GM having to decide ahead of time what the steward's speech will be.

I'm also planning on using Dogs in the Vinyard's town creation guidelines for prepping for my Burning Wheel campaign. I've followed Chris Chinn's The Conflict Web which is part of the prep, but I realize now that coming up with what each NPC wants from the PCs, as suggested in Dogs, will help me tremendously. So will "What happens if the PCs don't intervene." Even the sin hierarchy idea can be used, so I have all these NPCs, what have they done already? What is already broken that needs fixing by the PCs?

Frank

Stalled on Troll Slayer

2006-02-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

There have been a few good discussions that have got me thinking about Troll Slayer, and I've been pounding away on character generation rules. But the more I get into this, the more I realize I really don't want to design a new game. What I really want is to polish off Cold Iron and make it something complete and maybe tweak a few things. I've found myself slicing up character generation, cutting things out and such, and then realizing, gee, I think the only reason I'm cutting that out is to make Troll Slayer not Cold Iron.

Really, when it comes down to it, for me, Cold Iron is awfully damned close to a playable game. Sure, there are a few things here and there that I'd change. But the core mechanics, they work for me.

I'm also realizing that right now, I don't want to have to design a game, I just want to have a game that is playable, and that folks are interested in, and play the damned thing.

Frank

Creative Combustion

2006-02-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

-or-

My church includes some lessons in playing RPGs in it's Sunday school teacher training - and to the children in the program.

At the First Unitarian Church of Portland Oregon, a program called Creative Combustion is used to train the religious education (Sunday school) teachers. The program is also used with the children and youth to develop trust and group cohesion in the classes.

The program uses a variety of exercises to build trust and group cohesion.

One game, Fruit Basket Upset, which is a chair swapping game, has a rule that's interesting to consider for RPG play: There is no Fruit Basket Upset police. Basically, what this rule means is that if someone doesn't get up when they're supposed to, you don't call them on it (though raising an issue where perhaps the game is being misunderstood is a different ball of wax). That rule might not be appropriate to an RPG is it's most open sense, but the idea behind it is worth considering.

One of the significant concepts is Offers and Blocks. This concept is very relevant to RPG play. The idea is that when someone offers something to the group (significantly in RPG play, creative input), the idea is not to block by shooting the idea down, or not paying attention, or in any way dismissing the idea. That doesn't mean that you say yes when some kid says, "Hey, let's burn the church down!"

Connected with the Offers and Blocks are two games, that by Vincent's definition of an RPG (the players agreement creating a shared imagination space) are RPGs.

The one that when I look back on when it has worked really well is obviously an RPG is Two-Headed Adventure. In Two-Headed Adventure, players pair up. The game is played by the player alternately saying a single word (though often pairs wind up saying a very short phrase - but this can be a dangerous drift). As the players create their story, they are free to move around and gesture. An example might be:

"Look! (player points) - a - river! - Jump! (players jump) - Jello! - Strawberry! - I'm - starving! - Thank - goodness - we - found - food - before - the - giant - found - us!"

Notice how a story unfolds that exists only because the players accept and agree to each other's creative contribution.

Gift Giving is a similar game. One player offers a gift to another. The gift is unspecified. The second player pantomimes opening the gift and then starts describing it. The first player may respond by giving encouraging statements (such as "I knew you always wanted a new car" after the second player says "Wow, a Red Mustang with chrome wheels!").

I believe that these exercises come from improvisational theater training. They have been helpful to me in thinking about how to better empower players in my games.

Frank

Troll Slayer - some areas to think about

2006-02-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

I've been mulling over some things, and thought I'd do some mulling in public to see if anything comes out of it...

Skills

I used to pepper my games with skills. Through paying attention to what really was going on in my D20 games, I've realized that most of the time, non-combat skills are meaningless. Particularly troublesome are the social skills.

For my current Cold Iron campaign, I took a new path. There are still combat skills because they make sense. I put a bunch of things (like thieving and scouting) into abilites that each character gets two of (though some races may use one of them up), and warriors get additional ones with levels. Then I set up proficiencies to cover all the other skill uses (like swimming, climbing, riding, cooking). The abilities work to some extent: quick draw is cool, scout and thief see occaisional use, medic looks good on paper and never comes into play, combat riding works, swashbuckler makes the lightly armored character more viable, paladin works. The proficiencies might as well not be there, is that desireable? Lots of games get away without much in the way of skills (D&D did so for many years). Is player's attraction to skills just part of the 8 page background phenomena, perhaps with an even worse twist (if my sheet says I'm really good as a cook, but cooking skill is never checked, then my character concept is never negated).

Alertness

I came up with a nice scheme for setting encounter distance based on how well people make alertness checks. Also handled waking up at night. The basic idea has merit, but one problem is there's such a wide swing, that the two characters to maxed out alertness are the only ones that really matter (unless someone rolls a 90+). One result is that an ambush has a 25% chance of succeeding, which actually is too much. So this system needs some tuning. One thought is to use Alertness bonus rather than raw altertness (which will cut the swing between poor and good in half).

The really good thing about the system is that it has mostly eliminated the GM's ability to negate a player's choice to have a good alertness, especially when they roll well. Of course the GM can over use ambushes, but so long as the PCs have a decent chance of detecting ambushes, their choice and good rolls are still meaningfull.

Clean up Spell Casting

Spell casting requires too many rolls. It winds up being too easy to whiff. Taking 2 turns to cast a spell is a book keeping nightmare. Spells need to be balanced for a 1 turn casting time (though it's nice that Cold Iron makes it advantageous to continue to use low level spells - this is a feature worth keeping).

Treasure Economy

Need guidelines on how much treasure to give out. Need to better educate players about why they should use charged items and potions. Spell casters need to have as much reason to use charged items and potions as the fighters so that treasure expenditures between characters are more balanced.

Equipment and Encumbrance

Good things about encumbrance are a real benefit to being strong (less penalty for wearing heavy armor), but there are a lot of encumbrance modifiers that are almost meaningless in Cold Iron. Weapon choices are nice, just eliminate bunk weapons (maces, some of the bows and cross bows). Trim the non-combat gear way down (just declare everyone has an adventurers pack - who cares if the PCs always have rope when they need it...plus, if they have to drop the pack in combat, you can still deprive them of the pack, and the rope...).

Frank

Answering Troy Costisick's Power 19 for Troll Slayer

2006-01-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Please see "What are the 'Power 19' ? pt 1" and What are the 'Power 19' ? pt 2 for the source and discussion of this exercise.

EDIT: Please see this thread on the Forge which has some newer comments, but please direct comments back here rather than resurrecting the old Forge thread (or open a new thread on the Forge).

I've highlighted some questions and comments in italics. I've asked a ton of questions, so what I may do is start new threads to continue discussion on questions people seem most interested in discussing with me.

1. What is your game about?**

Troll Slayer is a sword and sorcery fantasy game about a group of characters who seek fame and fortune by traipsing off into the wilds and slaying trolls, dragons, and other enemies of civilization and taking their treasure.

2. What do the characters do?**

The characters are warriors or spell casters who fight creatures and acquire treasure and experience.

3. What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?**

Each player creates one character, controls it during the game, and makes decisions on how to advance her and spend her treasure share. The player’s characters will act as a team in responding to the challenges the GM presents. The GM is responsible for presenting opposition to the characters and controlling their actions in the game. The GM will present challenges by drawing a tactical map on a battle board and indicating the characters starting position. The GM also determines the rewards of experience and treasure. In presenting the opposition, the GM will create a situation that the players will respond to. The GM is most responsible, but the players also have responsibility, for providing color and background that tie the combats into something that brings the game beyond a war-game.

Here's one area where I'm not clear how to communicate in a reasonable amount of words what players actually do. Or do these questions need much bigger answers?

4. How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The game has an implied sword and sorcery setting with untamed wilds dominated by goblins, trolls, and fell creatures. The setting provides opportunities for the player’s characters to kill creatures and take their treasure. Brief trips to civilization give the players opportunity to convert their treasure into useful magic items.

Another area, I'm not sure how to really describe the implied setting, which is more or less a D&D style sword and sorcery fantasy setting

5. How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

The character creation focuses on the combat abilities of the characters (weapons or magic). Characters have attributes and skills. The attributes help distinguish the characters (one warrior might be strong and clumsy, while another is weaker but more dexterous, spell casters can chose a balance between fighting ability and casting ability). Race and some secondary abilities also provide distinction (for example, lizard men can move in swamps without problems, which might allow them to gain a tactical advantage, elves don’t need as much sleep and can see at night, dwarves can see at night or underground and resist magic).

I think this is an area where I've got a real clear idea how things fit together

6. What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

The game rewards tactical and strategic thinking about combat effectiveness. The game avoids leading players into favoring talk over action, at least as a primary method of addressing challenge.

I think I'm clear on this one, but articulating it may need help

7. How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

Winning a fight results in a reward of experience and treasure.

8. How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Each player declares the actions for his character with the GM declaring the actions of the opposition (and any NPCs aiding the PCs). The GM is responsible for driving the negotiation to resolve conflicts of declaration. After the dice hit the table, the GM is responsible for confirming the results (though a player who rolls really well should be allowed to describe his attack – with the caveat that his narration should not conflict with the actual result – for example, it is perfectly reasonable after rolling really well to describe the opponent slipping in the mud, of course in the end, the blow might barely damage the opponent, so narrating severing the opponent’s neck is likely to end in disappointment).

Another one that could use some crisping up. Just thinking about it, perhaps some actual guidelines on when a player can narrate their really good (or really poor) roll. As a GM I often narrate something when an NPC rolls a 90 or better or an 09 or worse, the players should have that opportunity also, but since such a good (or poor) roll doesn't guarantee an effect (it depends on the actual abilities of the opposition), the narration needs to be made with care (I often narrate that the PC slipped when an NPC rolls a 90 or better - but just because the PC slipped doesn't actually mean the NPC is able to do much to the PC).

9. What does your game do to command the players’ attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

Combats are changing tactical situations that reward players for seizing opportunities.

This is the key thing that needs to be visible in the combat system, but the bit about what ties the combats together is also important

10. What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

The resolution mechanic uses a normal distribution chart to convert a die roll into a positive or negative modifier that is added to an attack rating and compared to a defense rating. The chart is open ended, and exceeding the defense rating by a large margin results in additional damage (also open ended). Characters have hit points that increase with advancement.

The resolution system, while really cool, of course is somewhat tricky to describe. I posted a description here. I would welcome more comments in that thread (perhaps indicate that you have done so here since that thread is long gone from the front page of the blog). I would entertain ideas about a different mechanic, but the mathematical beauty of the normal distribution is hard to pass up (and my experience with Cold Iron play suggests it actually works, and feels good - and once people get used to the system, really isn't that hard).

11. How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

The open ended bell curve makes the unexpected possible, but consistently rewards players who seize tactical advantage.

That answer seems weak...

12. Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

Characters advance with experience, increasing their hit points, attributes, and skills. Warriors gain some additional abilities, and spell casters gain access to better spells. The characters also gain more treasure.

One thing I certainly want to question is if the spell casters get cool new spells, what do the warriors get? In one way, I like D&D 3e's feats, but I also realized they are part of what made NPC prep so difficult. I think it's important that the advancement not be purely better numbers. Of course the magic items bought with treasure give even the warrior increased access to the cool spells.

13. How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

These advancements allow the characters to face more and tougher opposition, and increase the tactical choices. The treasure system especially provides a strategic element.

I find it hard to separate 12 and 13, which I guess may be good because a cool mechanic is meaningless if it doesn't reinforce the game. Improving my understanding of reward cycles is definitely the greatest thing I have learned in the past couple years of my Forge and blogging involvement.

14. What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

Players should revel in success, whether due to brilliant tactics, or just a run of good luck.

Another weak response.

15. What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

So this is one I'm stuck on. Hmm, interesting, 14 and 15 don't have any commentary in part 2.

16. Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

What excites me most about the game is the way the treasure economy and advancement work together to provide a real strategic element that drives the focus on the tactical situations. Additionally, the magic system, which focuses most on supporting the warriors, but is critical so players of either type of character continue to feel relevant. I’m also excited about the relative simplicity of creating NPCs and the resulting modest preparation time on the GM’s part.

17. Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?

The treasure economics work in conjunction with the combat system to make the continual advancement of the characters more sustainable. The tight focus on combat also avoids the confusion many combat focused games suffer when they introduce non-combat focused character options.

I need to refine this and the previous answer, but I think I'm pretty clear on what I like about Cold Iron, and therefore what I intend to focus on and refine in Troll Slayer in the process of producing a complete game that actually represents what I want to play.

18. What are your publishing goals for your game?

My goal is to have a game that I can publish that embodies some of the cool things I discovered about Mark Christiansen’s Cold Iron game which has never been published.

19. Who is your target audience?

Players looking for a solid wargamey tactical and strategic RPG that celebrates a combat (or dare I say “hack and slash”) play style. And more directly, players who might be interested in gaming with me. My desire to publish Troll Slayer is to satisfy me, and in doing so, I hope it is a coherent design that will also be attractive to others.

I'm also struggling some with just how to break Troll Slayer off from Cold Iron. Do I really want to commit to starting completely from scratch? Some of the mechanical elements of Cold Iron work really well, but some of the glue between them is just flour and water paste.

Thanks for your attention and any feedback you can give me, especially if you can help me with any of the troublesome areas (but feedback on where I think my thoughts are clear is also valuable, either in the form of pats on the back, or constructive criticism because I'm not communicating or I'm screwed up).

Frank

Starting to think about Troll Slayer

2006-01-24T16:36:00.000-08:00

As I start to think more and more about just building a new game from the ground up that captures the best of Cold Iron, I've been starting to try and define the game. I'm working on a list of things I want in the game, but the following just spilled out and seemed to need to be captured:

Introduction

Role Playing Game

Troll Slayer is a role playing game. A role playing game is a structured cooperative creative endeavor where the participants negotiate and agree on “what happens.” The game is structured in the sense that this text provides rules to help the participants negotiate and agree on what happens. The creative part is how the participants offer contributions and react to the contributions of the other participants.

One participant is called the Game Master (or GM). The other participants are called players. The GM serves as the primary rules arbiter and primary scene setter. Each player is the primary controller of one or more characters that are the focus of play. These characters are referred to as Player Characters (or PCs). The GM controls any other characters in the game, and especially controls the characters that oppose the PCs. The GM controlled characters are often called Non-Player Characters (or NPCs). Not all NPCs are in opposition to the PCs, and some may actively help the PCs.

What is the Purpose of the Game

The purpose of Troll Slayer is for the players to portray characters who slay trolls. The game master will present a setting (or world) where the action takes place. Not all opposition will be trolls, some opposition will be humans, or other “civilized” races, other opposition might be dragons or other mythical creatures. It’s possible the game won’t even focus on killing trolls. The key however is that the central conflicts of the game will be battles between the PCs and NPCs. In the course of play, the PCs will improve by gaining innate power (experience) and through acquiring treasure. As the PCs improve, they will be able to fight more, bigger, smarter, or just simply better trolls (or other opposition). The battles will be tactical in nature, with the players making strategic choices between battles (deciding how to improve their characters with experience and treasure).

Not all action in the game will be pitched tactical battles, but that will be the focus. Occasionally, the PCs will talk to NPCs, perhaps to get information on the next troll menace. Players may occasionally make thematic statements (for example, deciding it is more important to take out a traitor than to survive). This kind of creative contribution will make the tactical situation all the more interesting – but it will probably not become the focus of the game. Occasionally, “how the world works” will be an interesting factor in play, but again, it will not become the focus of play (though such play would be much better supported by these rules than making thematic statements).

I'd like to acknowledge Vicent's comments in this thread as an inspiration for the above "what is an RPG" section. Finally something clicked as to what defines an RPG for me. When I first read that, my thought was, "and this is why Monopoly isn't an RPG, but it could be, if everyone agreed to take creative contribution - because that agreement to take creative contribution is the core of what an RPG is."

I know the above statement needs a lot of work, and may be premature, but I think it's a good start at trying to capture what I want Troll Slayer to be (of course the name Troll Slayer may not stick - but I need something as a working title).

At this point, my plan is to do a bit more thinking here, and then start a conversation at the Forge (and hopefully Ron will accept a design from the ground up, even if it borrows some stuff from Cold Iron as an indie game).

I guess another thing that's worth talking about at this point is what my goal is. Ultimately, I am designing Troll Slayer for me. I want to be able to run cool tactical gamist games with a system that is easy to share. Of course if others get excited about the game that's cool too, and will make it easier for me to find players for the game (and even find games to play in instead of GM). I want to be able to publish and share my game with a clean conscience.

Frank

A couple threads that illustrate some things I like about Cold Iron

2006-01-20T16:35:00.000-08:00

Or at least the way I use Cold Iron. Threads on Monte Cook's ezBoard:

DMing Styles
Interesting Fights?

A major sub-topic in the first is statting up NPCs, and shortcutting by just inventing a couple stats. The second has several posts that talk about making combat more interesting by inventing new monsters.

In the first case, Cold Iron's combat stats are simple enough that it is reasonable to use the correct derrived stats and not just invent stats. And with my handy monster skill cheat sheet, I can whip up a set of combat stats in a few minutes.

In the second case, people are trying to regain the fun of that very first D&D session where you had no clue what an orc was capable of. People try and regain that by inventing new monsters, or twisting old ones. But basically, this amounts to Calvinball. And it's not necessary.

One of the most enjoyable encounters in my Cold Iron history was a necromancer and his horde of typical undead. The same undead stats I had been using for ages. But with a twist, not invented, but taken straight from the rules. See, I realized the necromancer could easily afford to create anti-magic shell charged items for every single undead minion. It was really fun watching the players deal with these simple ghouls - that they couldn't hit with spells (well, at least most of them - many of the ghouls weren't protected because the items failed to activate).

While I have about 50-100 creatures written up for Cold Iron in various forms, the reality is that 90% of the encounters are run from a very small subset of this list, probably 20 creatures. And because the combat stats are fairly simple, and don't have lots of extraneous stuff (I mostly just figure out Size, Str, Dex, and Con for monsters for example), it's really quick to stat them up (and when they need to make saves, for example of a less used stat, 90% of the time, it seems like, I don't need to figure out their save because the roll either clearly makes it, or clearly doesn't make it - now perhaps sometimes I wing those).

Another factor is that I only run meaningful encounters. So I don't need stats for the thousands of people in the city. Because the PCs aren't going to fight them. If they're just talking to them, I'll be saying yes. Or when we roll the dice, it will probably be an unopposed roll. And if they decide to kill a street urchin, I'll probably just say they dispatch him, and if I'm mean, I might roll 1d6 of damage for the PC or something silly like that (really no need to do that kind of thing - but that was one way of handling insignificant encounters in the past).

Of course all of the above isn't specific to Cold Iron. Rune Quest was also similarly simple. I admit that I get trapped by all the monster manuals for D&D. But what D&D doesn't have is a good quicky way to write up a monster (and with the CR system, it would be really cool to provide a variety of "generic" monster stats - a CR 5 "tank" might have AC 20, 50 HP, Attacks 2x +8 1d8+8, 1x +3 1d6+4 or something like that).

Frank

Recent Cold Iron play and thoughts

2006-01-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Just finished another session last night. The PCs tried to rest for a night in the swamp. They were attacked in the middle of the night by 5 swamp trolls. It wasn't until we were into the encounter that I remembered that their fighters were pretty wounded (when we had just been talking about that before...oops...what a brain fart...). Suddenly, I wondered if I had overdone the encounter. The mage went down almost immediately. He was in a tree, and a troll reached up and swiped him with claws, knocking him unconscious (and out of the tree). Because of the awful reach, the troll was at -8 attack (an adhoc penalty), but the mage was casting, and was -8 defense... The cleric much more easily fended off the troll attacking her. The two frontline fighters were caught sleeping, and went down pretty quick. The lizard woman ended up being the hero. Near the end of the battle, a troll got lucky and got the halfling into hand to hand (she was blurred, so had a 20 dodge, the troll rolled a 99 and got a 25 to tag her). Another 90+ roll resulted in a crit that rated to do 6x her hit points (twice the "head chop" quantity of 3x HP in a single blow). A halfling head went popping up into the sky. The troll tried to run off with his dinner, but was quickly taken down.

After doing what healing they could, the PCs headed into town to confront the innkeeper. The mage cast truth on the innkeeper, who refused to say anything about the guides, and called out a code word to alert the staff. He drew a greatsword from under the counter, while the bartender drew a seige crossbow. The fight quickly errupted. A couple patrons came to the aid of the staff. One patron was entranced, another was severely injured, and the innkeeper knocked out. As the party converged on the bartender, the constable arrived and called a halt. After some more truth spells and questioning (and the cleric healing up the patron and the innkeeper), the constable took the innkeeper away and thanked the party. The bartender and patrons were absolved. The bartender offered the PCs two nights stay for free. The constable mentioned that no one would notice if the the innkeeper's sword went missing so the PCs got a bit of treasure for their trouble.

I had intended to prepare for the fight in the inn, but had been so busy I just plain didn't get to it. But I was able to pull together some quick stats for the fight and run the fight in about an hour. A great demonstration of why I like Cold Iron so much. Of course in my haste, I used the wrong hit points for the innkeeper.

Some things I observed from this session:

Night time alertness checks need some work. I may be using too many stealthy encounters, but the PCs had little chance of detecting the troll encounter with warning. Also, the penalty to check alertness while asleep makes it almost meaningless to check.

I really need to define how the obscurity spell is useful to the party. I also have to define what the effect of large creatures is (it just states a cost per creature), and how tight the group has to be.

I need to define acrobatics and dexterity checks, though there weren't any problems (it basically amounted to me saying yes, though I might have called for a die roll).

I still need to decide exactly how Charisma works. I called for several Charisma checks, but they weren't really meaningful. I'm not supremely worried about Charisma because I've set it up as very cheap, and if it's mostly a color tag that allows certain characters to be the obvious face people, perhaps that's ok. This session was a nice application of talk/negotiation without bypassing fighting.

I have been giving out XP at a pretty good clip, and as a result, the PCs treasure probably is severely lagging where it would have been in past campaigns. The players haven't made huge use of charged items and potions. The fast rate of XP also means a significant percentage of session time is used for levelling up. I need to think about streamlining levelling up (while not eliminating strategic choices for the players). I'm also concerned about treasure division/shopping time. Back in college with our 8, 10, 12+ hour sessions, spending an hour or two every other session or so for a major treasure division/shopping wasn't too bad. And with a slower XP rate, levelling up didn't consume that much playtime. I should be able to get Cold Iron levelling up to be at least as quick as D20 (possibly faster since there aren't feats - or at least not so many - and skill points). Treasure division/shopping should be comparable. Part of the problem is the young couple needs a lot of help with this. Learning curve is probably also slowing down the other players.

Overall though, I'm very satisfied with how things are going. I'm not killing myself on prep. I can handle unexpected/unplanned for changes in direction. The players seem to be enjoying the system, and figuring out good tactics and such.

The bad news is that I am definitely losing the mage player until summer, and may be losing the young couple. If I lose them also, I think I'll cut off the campaign, and do some serious work on Trollslayer (as a working name), and look for playtesters in a few months.

Frank

Can a gamist, tactical combat game like Cold Iron be an RPG?

2006-01-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

All of this discussion about Cold Iron has me thinking about what can be a role playing game. As I consider this post on Deep in the Game, I wonder. If Cold Iron play is stripped to what really matters for resolving combat situations, what distinguishes it from a war game? At one time, I would have said that part of what makes an RPG is that you can do things the rules don't cover. But that means there are floaty mechanics, and the ruleset is missing something. And if RPG play has creative agendas, then there is something being created. And this creativity, which in a system like Cold Iron falls outside the explicit rules, seems to be important.

My games aren't just a sequence of combats. The combats are linked, even if the connection is sometimes very tenuous.

I also wonder if all the CAs actually come into play.

In this week's session, we had two players make thematic statements, one through play, one through what he would have done had his character not gone down. The PCs were getting overwhelmed, and their guides turned on them. The player of the PC who went down stated that had he not gone down so quickly, he would have concentrated on killing the turncoat. The other player didn't flee when he had a perfect chance because he didn't want to give up the small amount of treasure he had on his mule (and the mule itself). Now the first player did make another statement. One NPC was able to escape. And in a fit of stupidity, I had her ambush the turncoats. And she took them out. I should have let the players set that up (with improvised weapons). But at the end of the session, the player who didn't get to make a statement with his character said the NPC should gain 2 renown for taking down the traitors.

Now these thematic statements are not at all the focus of the game, and don't indicate a narativist agenda, but somehow the ability to make those statements, and be affirmed for them (and not just be that "crazy minis gamer who always does XYZ, even if it doesn't really make sense for the current scenario") is important. And maybe in that wargame example, if the player really is making those kinds of thematic statements, maybe that wargame is actually an RPG.

On the simulationist angle, the campaign map, and the geographic relationships seems to have some importance. And that you need to go to a city to get the higher level magic items.

On the angle of a wargame actually becoming an RPG, when I run Evil Stevie's Pirate Game, I'm pretty sure that what I'm running is an RPG, not a pure wargame. Of course they way I've run it, there's lots of floaty mechanics, and I've become horribly disillusioned with the game because the rules don't actually produce the type of game I want.

Frank

Possible name for my version of Cold Iron

2006-01-12T22:09:00.000-08:00

As I get closer and closer to deciding to publish my own game based on Cold Iron, I'm considering that it needs it's own name.

One name I've got in mind is Troll Slayer, which doesn't seem to be the name of any game out there.

One reason I thought about that name is that I use trolls of various sorts quite freqently (though goblins and undead are frequent also). But maybe the fact that I use other creatures also is a problem for that name...

I also thought about something like Hot Steel that ties the game to Cold Iron, but that seems cheezy.

Frank

Grappling (Hand to Hand combat) in Cold Iron and PC vs NPC abilities

2006-01-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

Chris Chinn (bankuei) asked a reasonable question, does Cold Iron really need a separate grappling system. My initial answer was that it is something that is used frequently, and it presents interesting tactical challenges.

But last night I got to thinking about what the system really enables. Basically it makes two types of opponents more powerfull against typical PCs than the regular melee system does. For very large and strong creatures, it allows them to use their full strength against weaker opponents, and it allows them to use their full strength as a defense, and add their size to offense and defense. It is most useful to non-weapon using creatures (which get no benefit of strength in defense, and are penalized for size). It also allows weak creatures to gang up more easily.

The result of this is that it's almost never beneficial for PCs to be in hand to hand combat. Sure, they can play neat tricks, like have a fireball charged item, which they trigger when multiple creatures gang up. Sure, they take damage too (but they could also use fire resistance with it), but each of the bad guys takes the same damage, so in the ideal case where the PC is in hand to hand with the maximum 4 opponents, the good guys take X (or even 1/4 X with fire resistance) while the bad guys net 4 X damage (with fire resistance on the PC, this is a 1:16 damage ration - pretty darned good). A PC could even be a decent hand to hand combatant. But PCs will rarely benefit from the ganging up rule (if PCs outnumber their opposition, they are better off in melee).

This got me to thinking, to what extent is it reasonable to give creatures abilities that PCs don't get. And more importantly, to what extent is it reasonable to have extensive rule systems to govern NPC abilities.

Now it is traditional for RPGs to distinguish between PCs and NPCs, and many systems reserve abilities for NPCs. Especially D&D Fantasyesque systems. In original D&D, in fact, PCs and NPCs were created entirely differently. They used different combat charts, and their hit points and AC were derrived differently. Game systems slowly developed towards an ideal of describing PCs and NPCs in the same terms (even if they are generated differently). Cold Iron got on that bandwagon, and other than defining special abilities (breath weapons, regeneration, immunities [though there is a spell that confers the same immunity to non-magical weapons as were creatures have], etc.), monsters in Cold Iron are defined the same way as PCs are, even to the extent of having fighting and magic levels (always - as opposed to D&D 3e/3.5 where monsters have HD which are almost like levels, but not quite).

D&D 3e/3.5 is interesting to look at with an eye towards how does it work to try and make any monster available as a PC. Some monsters just will not be worth playing as a PC (non-intelligent, overly specialized, etc). But others that appear worth playing still have problems. One bizarre thing can come out of the LA/ECL system. In an attempt to balance the multi-encounter benefits of creatures special abilities, the LA system makes a creature with lots of special abilities effectively a higher level PC. On the reverse, the CR system tries to take into account the specialization of the creatures and their ease of defeating. This produces a weird effect when combined with the XP system. A starting Fire Giant PC would be ECL 19 (15 HD +4 LA). The CR of a Fire Giant is 10. A one on one fight between a Fire Giant PC and NPC would earn the PC NO XP! Despite their stats being identical (and so presumably an even fight - though granted the PC gets more magic items, but that shouldn't be so much as to render the fight trivial).

So clearly it's reasonable for there to exist NPC creatures that can't be PCs, and even reasonable for them to have special abilities not really available to PCs.

But is it reasonable to have a whole sub-system that benefits NPCs and dicks over the PCs? I think I'm coming to the conclusion that such a sub-system is not good for the game. On the other hand, it's nice to have a way to make a swarm of weaker creatures a challenge. The melee system does that to an extent, but only if the PCs can't form a defensive line.

Of course one interesting possibility would be to allow a player to play a horde of weak creatures as a PC. I suspect that wouldn't actually work well.

One thing that fueled this brainstorm is that last night, I ran two encounters featuring swamp trolls. In the past, I would have had the swamp trolls use hand to hand extensively. Last night they mostly fought in melee. And they provided a just fine melee challenge. Sure, some good rolls took some of them out quickly, but with decent numbers, they were able to do serious damage to the PCs (though they were also aided by traitorious guides the PCs had hired - but without the guides, the encounters still would have been challenging).

I also got to thinking about some related things. One is how and whether unarmed combat by PCs is ever worthwhile. I'm mostly inclined to leave it not worthwhile. Weapons were invented for a reason. I'm ok with leaving "cool unarmed combat" to heroic martial arts themed games.

I was also thinking about the fact that there is no magic that enhances dodge, but not other defenses (Coordination enhances Dexterity, and thus enhances all defenses, Blur affects all defenses). So a PC built around dodging (the PC with the best defense last night was the NPC halfling scout who has a very high Dexterity (+8), +2 defense for size, and a bonus to defense from swashbuckling - as a two handed weapon user, her parry will be 2+enchantment better than her dodge). If she dodges, a strong opponent can only use +6 Strength in their attack, so even when she has a +5 weapon, netting her a 7 better parry than dodge, she will still be better off dodging against many large creatures (Strength adjustment of +14 or higher). And if she's fighting two fairly strong creatures, the 2nd creature will generally be attacking her dodge (since 2nd parry is -6, so a creature with a Strength adjustment of +8 or higher - with the +5 weapon, with a +3 or lower weapon, she will always dodge). A cool benefit of being so dodge based is that there was no penalty for her turning and running (defend with dodge only), which is a good effect (the PCs best fighter on the other hand has a 13 difference between primary shield parry and dodge).

I'm interested in other folks thoughts on NPC only abilities, and rule sub-systems that will primarily be invoked by NPCs.

Frank

Going on vacation

2005-12-22T13:56:00.000-08:00

I'll be leaving tommorow for two weeks in Florida. I will most likely not have a lot of computer and web access, so don't expect much in the way of updates.

I plan on taking my Cold Iron notes with me, and probably working on fleshing out the rest of the game (that's all in my head right now).

In the interim, I have posted my latest documents on my Cold iron web page.

My first task will be to put together an outline of what is necessary to make a complete game. At a minimum, I think I need the following sections:

What is Cold Iron all about?
How do I set up for play? (Setting, how many players, character generation, creature creation, etc.)
Character generation (I've got a nice reference for folks who know the game, what is needed for someone who doesn't know the game?)
How do I play? What is the sequence of play? How do you set up a scene? Who sets up scenes? Are there different types of scenes? How do we actually play a scene? I've got some nice rules on how to resolve combat, and how spells work, but how do you decide what an encounter should be? How do you decide how to setup the encounter (distances, who is aware, etc)?
What are the reward mechanics? How to tune them. How much XP and treasure to give.

Am I missing anything from that?

Frank

New Alertness Rules - Actual Play

2005-12-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

I posted an actual play on the Forge of last nights session where I used my new alertness rules.

Alertness Checks

2005-12-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

In starting to break down all the non-combat bits mentioned previously, I started with alertness. I see the following uses:

Determining encounter distance
Determining how quickly someone wakes up at night
Finding hidden things
Tracking a creature back to it's lair
Tracking a fleeing creature

Now I just wrote up a bunch of detailed tables with all sorts of modifiers for these various things. And now I'm thinking, woa, that's way too much for such a simple mechanic.

One problem I see: on the encounter distance, I provide modifiers for various terrain types. Now the PCs probably have limited ability to strategically affect the terrain they're in, other than from a gross standpoint (the next adventure is in the marsh). Modifiers for night are probably ok (even though the players don't get a choice as to whether a random encounter is at night or not - though my thought is actually most random encounters that approach them would do so at night, if you were a bunch of orcs thinking of attacking travellers, would you do so in broad daylight when all their guards are alert, or a night when 2/3 of the guards are sleeping? Especially when you see in the dark better than they do). So I'm thinking of throwing out any modifier based on terrain.

There are lots of modifiers for spells, but I'm thinking perhaps those could go in the spell descriptions (afterall, the combat rules don't talk about all the spells that modify to-hit probabilities). The spells along with character generation/advancement provide a variety of tactical and strategic choices which should make this an effective rule.

Waking up - in one sense, I'm a jerk and don't let people wake up instantly. On the other hand, I see some interesting choices introduced. What I'd like is a systematic way of handling it that allows the players to see who they need to make an effort to wake up, and who will wake up on their own. In the past, we had some people sleep through several rounds, which does start to get ridiculous. Hmm, and the chart I worked up doesn't look very good (the worst PC has like a 50-50 chance of sleeping at least one round after being kicked - or struck by an enemy). One thought is to have a defined "what is necessary to wake this person up" depending on their alertness (so someone with a poor alertness needs to be kicked). If you do the defined thing, they will wake up the next round. And then perhaps a one lesser step where they wake up in two rounds. Anything less and they must roll (and could sleep through it - I don't feel too bad that someone might sleep through a fight going on say more than 20 meters away from them). I need to think about this, but I do want sleeping to be a real penalty (I stopped doing night encounters in D20 partly because it really didn't seem to be much of a penalty at all if I ran the rules as written).

Tracking: I was splitting tracking into two types. One is that a successeful tracking roll produces an "optional" result (like extra treasure), the other is when the GM intends the quarry to be found (tracking the orc scouts back to their cave which is the object of the adventure...). In the "intended to be found" result, a good tracking roll would reduce the encounter distance (you sneak up on the cave, or they spot you 100 meters out) and/or find a back door or other "best" approach. The "optional" case is a pure success/failure. Again, I put in all sorts of modifiers. I'm inclined to replace the modifiers with standard DCs (wolf lairs are DC 20, orc lairs are DC 10, dragon lairs are DC 30). Again, modifiers for weather and such aren't something the PCs can do much about.

Searching: here I was thinking of set DCs for "optional" things, differing time for "expected" things (time to find something plays nicely into the system since spells will wear off and such, so this is a useful result). I guess optional things could actually be rolls on the time chart, with a modifier for difficulty, and a minimum result needed (the secret treasure compartment is -10 to your check, you must roll at least a +0 result, which results in an hour of searching). The PCs of course can always choose to cut the search short. Ask them what the maximum time they want to search is - if their result indicates a longer time than that, they fail and spend that much time. It might also be fair on a really terrible roll for them to only spend 1/2 the time, and realize there's no hope (you start searching the haystack, after 5 minutes, you realize there's no way you'll search the whole stack in 10 minutes [the roll was going to require an hour of searching]).

The big key here is that these are all at most a single roll per PC. Searches might be nice to figure a way to combine checks so the whole group makes one roll (the logarythmic scale for adding grapple abilities together might work, even the PCs with an 8 alertness will add +1 or +2 to the total). Wake up definitely needs to be per person Encounter distance, which gives a possibility for the really high alertness PC who is sleeping to notice - and thus wake up w/o a wakeup check, is probably also best rolled by each PC (that also gives the best benefit to multiple people on watch).

The most important ones to the core story of course are the encounter distance and wake up checks. Tracking an "intended to be found" encounter is also part of the core story. The other checks are mostly for extra stuff, though I think the search for hidden treasure does play well into the kill things and take their treasure core story. The trick is to make sure every roll really is helping focus the intended game. Otherwise the answer should be "yes" (though I think "no" is also reasonable if it is totally unreasonable - for example, in a conflict res game, players can say "no" to unreasonable stakes - though something to consider is that when you are negotiating unreasonable stakes into reasonable stakes, I think that's actually a social contract negotiation ["Let's talk about these stakes I want to become king, that's not the game I was interested in playing, how do we come to agreement here?"] - once the social contract is successefully re-negotiated, we step back into the game, and say yes or roll the dice).

One thing I like about Cold Iron is how it systemizes modifiers, so for example, most things that penalize spell success break down into a -3 or -6 penalty based on degree of interruption of concentration. Lots of combat penalties amount to a -4 defence for "really bad position". Or -6 for attacking when not really ready (drawing a weapon, or aborting a full defense to swing at someone who decides to grapple you). I think the alertness system needs to have a similar level of complexity (and probably should try and use the same modifiers, though being an attribute check, the scale is sort of different).

Hmm, I also need to systemize some of the other things I use alerness for (for example, realizing your non-magical sword isn't actually damaging the creature, or noticing whether the creature has been affected by a spell or not).

Frank

More thinking on non-combat stuff in Cold Iron

2005-12-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

Chris's response to this post got me thinking some more about the non-combat abilities/skills in Cold Iron. I think it's ok to have a little bit of stuff just for color, but mostly anything written down on the character sheet should somehow support the gamist agenda. So here's some thoughts about the various bits (I'm basically going to list all the abilities, and a couple other things - most characters get two abilities, warriors get additional abilities at 5th and 8th level, some non-humans get only one or even no abilities).

Scout Ability (Tracking) - This can have two purposes. One is to increase treasure (you track a creature back to it's lair and get more treasure than if you just looted the body). Another is to give the PCs an advantage in a challenge (a creature runs away, you track it back to it's lair and catch it before it rests and comes back looking for you, you get to choose the time of encounter, or you get it before it summons aid). There are spells (and thus magic items) that help this, so there is even some tactics/strategy (beyond chargen/advancement strategy). What needs to be done is make the difficulties systematic. Scout should also give chances to identify creatures and thus their abilities, again difficulties are needed. This ability of course has a mother-may-I factor (if the GM never gives you anything worhtwhile to track).

Thief Ability - Ok, the way I play this is mostly color. I do use a small amount of traps and locks. Systematic difficulties are needed. And systematic penalties for failure (trap damage etc.) It can increase treasure by having chests with contents that are damaged by trying to break the lock open. Thief also entitles a character to take Night Fighting as a fighting proficiency as opposed to having to gain separate experience in it. Night Fighting has a pretty well defined effect on the penalties for fighting in the dark or while blinded. This ability has a mother-may-I factor.

Aletrness attribute - this plays into both thief and scout. It is also useful for getting more warning of encounters and waking up faster at night. Systematic difficulties are needed. Also point out that alertness (and tracking) can be purchased (dogs or other creatures).

Acrobatics Ability - This one definitely needs some work. I need to define the difficulties of various tricks and why you might want to use them. In our game so far, there was one incident where having this defined would have been helpfull. The PCs decided to sleep up a tree, and the high DEX NPC decided to draw her weapon and roll off a branch. Perfectly good action, but needs a defined difficulty. Having the acrobatics ability would make these challenges easier (by adding fighting level to DEX for such checks).

Additional Fighting Proficiency Ability - this one has a pretty clear combat application. May not be all that necessary but doesn't hurt to be there.

Charismatic Ability - This feeds into the Charisma/Renown system. Which right now is very floaty. One way to make this less floaty would be to have defined difficulties for social interractions, and then to tie into the gamism, the result of a successefull social interraction should be information (that improves odds in a future combat), treasure, or other aid, or perhaps even just a promise not to harrass (used against a prisoner). Also needs definition of how additional renown is awarded.

Combat Finesse Ability - This is an attempt to help balance the fact that a STR 18 DEX 12 character really is a better fighter than a STR 12 DEX 18 character. I'm not totally pleased with it. The issue here is that (mostly) both STR and DEX add to melee attack and defense (STR doesn't add to dodge though, and DEX doesn't add very well to grappling, and STR doesn't add well to two-handed weapon users).

Combat Riding Ability - Fighting from a mount is great when you can do it, and not only does you mount get to fight too, but you can protect your mount, so you may actually be better off on your mount than the two of you fighting separately. But this ability more than most others is a mother-may-I ability (the GM can negate your ability by setting all the fights indoors).

Fletching (Quality) Ability - this allows a character to make quality ammunition in the field. Probably a marginal ability.

Medic Ability - this has some very nice defined uses (I do need to clear up what "treating a person in magical reserve" means - I think my intent was that a medic treating someone in magic reserve could significantly extend the time they can live - normally it's just an hour or so, magic reserve is when HP are below zero, between 1/4 and 1/2 hp, for a 40 hp PC, that would be anywhere from -20 to -11 hp).

Quick Draw Ability - very well defined (difficulties and benefits defined).

Sailor Ability - Hmm, perhaps this one just shouldn't be there. It's a serious mother-may-I and doesn't really have any input to combat ability.

Scholar Ability - I probably should ditch this one. I've NEVER been good at making knowledge skills useful in games that have them. Might be better to just assume mages and clerics are very knowledgeable, perhaps with obvious specializations (a cleric of a beast god should be more knowledgeable about beasts than other casters would be).

Sense of Direction Ability - Ok, here's another one that could go away.

Short Sleep Ability - This lets you stand an extra watch every other day, or an extra half watch every day. Useful and easy to administer even when using the extra half watch (the GM just needs to roll which half of the watch the encounter comes).

Terrain Tolerance Ability - Hmm, serious mother-may-I.

Travelled Ability - get extra languages. Assuming languages are put to use, should be a benefit. PCs can also spend time learning languages.

Arcane Defender Ability - This was an attempt to allow a fighter with a little bit of mage magic. My gut feeling is that it isn't worth while, I should eliminate it.

Paladin/Templar/Hedge Priest Ability - This is more useful because they could get some healing at 2nd level, or get STR buffing at 2nd level, or get a decent attack spell at 2nd. May not be worth taking at 1st level (because your cleric level is limited to 1/2 fighting level). There is an Initiate Ability which can be converted to Paladin/Templar/Hedge Mage at any point. One solution might be to allow up to 2nd level cleric even if fighting level is below 4. Making sure they get something useful as a 1st level spell would also help.

Simple Proficiencies - Character choses three simple skills (like climbing, swimming, mule handler, etc.). These are unlikely to be of much use, but do provide a bit of color. Can spend these on extra language points though.

Languages - I need to consistently make these worthwhile.

One thing that is worth considering and pointing out in the rules. If a player takes a mother-may-I ability that the GM hasn't removed from his game, then the GM is obligated to make the abilkity useful. But clearly it would be better to have definitive rules that support the player in demanding their ability be useful.

On a related note - In Cold Iron, blunt weapons are mostly useless. They don't crit as well as other weapons, and some only do fatigue damage. I've been thinking that I should either make them useful or remove them from the game. But the question would be how to make them useful, yet different from the other weapons. Swords are the benchmark weapon. 2-Hand axes do more damage, but you can't use as much strength in your parry (which is a bit bizarre - they are the weapon of choice for low STR, high DEX characters). Spears do less damage, but parry better (if not backed into a wall), and can either swing from the 2nd rank, or get first strike (combat is mostly simultaneous, however, there is some ordering: spears and polearms then other melee weapons then natural weapons). One way to fix blunt weapons would be to make them do significantly more damage yet still crit not as easily, but that might be hard to balance.

I also need to make sure players understand that unarmed combat is not particularly worthwhile as a primary mode of fighting (grappling can be effective though - though usually monsters benefit far more from grappling than PCs do - it's a rare PC who would rather be rolling around on the ground wrassling his opponent than standing up and swinging a weapon). That doesn't mean a warrior should never take unarmed combat as a primary proficiency (warriors get two primary proficiencies, and dodge taken as a secondary works like a primary - so primary sword & shield, primary unarmed combat, secondary dodge, secondary bow, and two tertiary proficiencies is quite reasonable, but so is taking bow as primary and unarmed as secondary).

Frank

Cold Iron's Implied Setting

2005-12-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

In order for an RPG to be complete, it really either needs to come with a setting, or document the assumptions of it's implied setting sufficiently that prospective GMs know what the basis is so they can adapt if necessary (or avoid the game if it totally doesn't meet their needs).

Cold Iron's implied setting is definitely derrived from D&D, but it isn't D&D's implied setting either. For one thing, Cold Iron isn't suitable to the D&D style dungeon (of course D20 is less suited to the old style dungeon than people care to admit).

To use Mike Mearl's term, core story, I would say that the core story of Cold Iron is kill things and take their treasure to gain power.

Fame might be part of that also, though the system provides little mechanical support for that (I've got a renown mechanic, but right now it's rather floaty, back in college, there was "humor level" which was a similarly floaty concept, but was also a skill that you gained XP in just like fighting and magic).

There's no attempt at "story telling" with angst driven elves and grumpy dwarves or any such sort of thing. The non-human races are basically packages of attribute range modifiers and special abilities.

PCs also realistically aren't going to become top dogs. The game provides magic items that need 11th level and up mages to create. I've certainly never run a campaign that long (though I think the system would still be playable up there, so a GM could tweak the XP rate and campaign length to let the game get there).

My campaigns tend to be a combination of wilderness travel with encounters (not really random), and small site based adventures. See the example prep for good idea of what I might prepare as a site based adventure. The adventure the PCs just completed featured three caves to explore (2 from a module - Necromancer's Glades of Death, and one drawn up on the spot) and two wilderness encounters. They were tied together, and I used some of the hooks from the module.

I'd certainly welcome pointers to games you think have done a really good job of presenting what the game is about or what the options you could play are. I don't think many games really do a good job with this. The D&D basic sets definitely did, at least originally providing a small sample dungeon, plus either dungeon geomorphs (original) or a module (later). As I recall, the example of play also tied to the sample dungeon in the book. Games with detailed settings certainly provide a lot of detail for the setting, but often don't tell you what sorts of games to play, and this may be especially true of settings divorced from a system. I remember trying to figure out what to actually do with Harn when I first got it. Of course I was also trying to figure out Cold Iron at the same time. Judge's Guild's original Wilderlands of High Fantasy actually was kind of good. It provided you with players maps that were mostly blank. It was easy to imagine that the game play would revolve around filling in those blank spots. And the wilderness was filled with ruins and lairs. And the City State of the Invincible Overlord was keyed almost like a dungeon (but I have to admit that as much as I like cities like this, I have yet to run a satisfactory campaign, or even a single adventure, in a city).

So certainly I could provide a sample dungeon (or even two or three since they're really pretty easy to write up). I certainly can create formal rules for running wilderness encounters (night and day), and those rules would benefit my game play (ok, now we know what the DC for the alterness checks is, and that for each N that you beat that by, you detect the encounter one round earlier). But how do I describe that while I don't do story arcs, I do connect things.

In the recent adventure, they found a necromancer's diary. This is a great way to introduce the next, or at least some future, adventure. Or there is one of my favorite encounters ever. The PCs had been fighting goblin bands, and after beating them, suggesting they not attack people on the roads (but saying that sure, they could defend their villages and such) and then setting them free. I read this interesting looking ambush adventure in Dungeon Magazine, and then I came up with this idea. A group of ogres had captured one of the goblin tribes the PCs had fought and the ogres set up this ambush. So the PCs suddenly find themselves fighting this overwhelming encounter of ogres and goblins. Then a round or two into it, a PC recognizes the goblins, and the goblins recognize the PCs. And the goblins turn on the ogres. And the PCs and goblins beat the ogres. And the PCs gave the goblins a share of treasure. Now I admit I'm not sure what I would have done had any part of that adventure not gone the way I was thinking, but I didn't have to force anything. And I think it was a cool way to reward the players for their stance on prisoners.

But does that even really matter? As long as the game is gamist, I think anything the GM uses to tie the campaign together would work fine. Cold Iron might also work for simulationism, though it certainly would take care to mesh Cold Iron's mechanics with the setting (unless it's a GM made up setting). So perhaps just some pointers on setting up good challenges is all that's really necessary.

Frank

Creating monsters for Cold Iron and other related bits

2005-12-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

In thinking about what would be necessary to turn Cold Iron into a complete game, one thing that is definitely needed is a decent bestiary, along with some hints at how to set up encounters (which of course also includes what sorts of treasure to give).

I was looking over the stuff that was made available to me, and realized it's pretty scanty. There is a series of summoning spells which provide stats for wolves, hawks, small lions, snakes, bears, large lions, and horses. The player who wrote up all the spells and such also provided a several page description of how to create monsters. That includes complete stats for dragons, wyverns, and gnaths (some kind of nasty feline - with some comment about "Who ever heard of a 1st level gnath?"). That document also provides some hints on hydras (with an admission that the GMs he talked to probably do them wrong). He also mentioned he had a huge specials chart for undead, but didn't want to share it. A bit of information (mostly mental attribute ranges back tracked from saves) is provided for goblins, ogres, cave trolls, stone trolls, flesh trolls, ghouls, displacer beasts, griffons, manticores, werewolves, orcs, urak hai, and moties (from Niven's A Mote in God's Eye). The Animate Dead spell indicates that undead have higher Strength and Constitution and lower Dexterity than when alive.

What the monster writeup stuff does do is provide some general hints. It talks about the square cube law, and provides a chart to match Strength and Size (and mentions that Constitution usually is the same as Size). It provides an extented attribute chart (with Strengths and Sizes high enough for anything you'd ever want to stat up - up to a size of 12.5 tons). Another chart shows how armor protection (T) and critical protection are related.

There is an admonishment that unless you want to run a killer world, keep monster levels low (at least for big monsters).

Somehow with all of this, and a bit of talking to the other GMs, I figured out how to run monsters. Of course looking back at my notes, I obvioulsy ran some things by the seat of my pants. There's no indication in my notes if ghoul paralysis has a penalty to saves or not (or even how long it lasts). Somewhere I got the idea that the way to handle skeletons is that you have to deal them 20 points of damage (past armor) in a single blow, otherwise nothing happened to them (you just chipped off some unimportant bones).

What I tended to use the most were goblins, trolls (really ogres, not dumb creatures like in D&D, and no regeneration - they may have been influenced by Harn which is the setting I used for my first campaign), ghouls, zombies, skeletons, wights, spectres (corporeal, just the name for a spell casting wight), and an occaisional dragon or so. I have a module writeup with gnolls. I used a few animals (wolves and large felines mostly). I also had flesh trolls (the stupid, regenerating D&D kind). I know I used a very occaisional dragon or wyvern, and I kind of vaguely recall a manticore. Oh, I had giant ants also. In general, most encounters were with intelligent humanoids (lots of goblin and troll encounters).

As to treasure, well that I really had to come up with my own. I think mostly I started off cautiously. I'd usually give decent opponents decent armor and quality weapons. The captain might get magic weapons and armor. I'd scatter a few potions and charged items around.

Hmm, looking at the gnoll module writeup:
The 6th level gnoll leader had +3 weapon and shield, 3 somewhat used charged items, 4 pretty good cure potions, and 4 buffing potions. He only had quality arrows and non-magical plate. The 3rd level troopers had quality weapon and shield, 2 decent cure potions, and one very used charged item, they had plate armor. There was an ogre zombie with +2 equipment and a wight with +2 equipment. The PC fighters were probably 8th level or so (not sure how close to the end of the campaign this was, the one PC fighter I have a character sheet for made 10th level, the mage made 6th level - but that fighter may have played several months longer).

In my first campaign, I have no PC character sheets from, but the main NPC made 12th level fighter/7th level cleric. There was some extended play with just one player. I remember fragments of a couple adventures. One was the great dragon slaying, where the NPC and the PC (and maybe another NPC or two) were exploring a cave, noticed a dragon, retreated to buff up and charged the dragon - the NPC rolled a many 9s attack and killed the dragon in one blow). I also remember an adventure where they attacked a necromancer in his caverns. He must have been a 9th level caster because every single undead in his retinue had an anti-magic shell charged item he had made for them (boy were the PCs annoyed - of course new players won't have this kind of joy since anti-magic shell is gone).

I think it would be nice to come up with a challenge rating sort of system. With a combat simulator, it would be possible to see how various creatures rated out against a "standard fighter". Spell casters would be harder, but if you know how the fighters rate out, and you match their challenge, giving the bad guys a spell caster or two at the same level as the PCs would be really tough, a higher level would be unwise, and a level or two lower should give the PCs a good fight. Obviously a hard to hurt spell caster (like a troll) would rate a little higher than a wimp (like a goblin).

What might also be interesting to work out (and should fall out of the challenge rating determination pretty easily) is a "level adjustment" system. I don't absolutely feel like anything the GM can throw at the PCs should be open for play, but it would be cool to know that it would be ok to let a PC run a troll as long as he was treated as if he was 2 levels higher for experience (or whatever the adjustment came out to). The only problem is that it might not be constant, but you might still be able to come up with a formula (perhaps a troll is equivalent 1.5xL+1, so a 6th level troll is comparable to a 10th level fighter). Then you just create a new XP chart for trolls. Monsters with specials would be harder to deal with, but I have used relatively few specials in Cold Iron (flesh trolls regenerate, ghouls paralyze, most undead see invisible, some undead only take fatigue/subdual damage from non-magical weapons, undead otherwise don't fatigue, dragons have breath weapons, basilisks petrify, rust monsters rust, blur wolves are harder to hit (unless you see invisible), shadow cats are surrounded by a shadow spell (need see invisible), some creatures have poison, and a few more). Humanoids who use weapons rarely have much in the way of specials (and I don't think it's too much to ask players not to run undead, and non-humanoids).

When writing up PC races, I keep away from making races that are clearly better spell casters than humans (though some races might have a better willpower which is important to spell casters offensively as well as defensively). I also make PC races trade off between Strength and Dexterity so no race is clearly better than humans there. I keep special abilities minor (night vision, infravision, leather skin [which stacks with armor], bonus to saves, need less sleep). Now players tend to take non-humans over humans, and that's ok, but they should be trading off at least something.

One of the things that I really like about Cold Iron is how easy it is to write up a creature. You pick a Size (or Strength and backtrack Size from Strength), that gives you Strength and Constitution. You pick a Dexterity (and most large creatures have some room to grow their Dexterity). Then a relatively simple chart gives you the base abilities by level (and I now have a spreadsheet which makes it real easy). When I'm in good form with the system, I can create a new monster in half an hour or less, and since I write up a progression for the monster from 1st level to 6th or sometimes 8th level (most animals and beasts only go up to 6th level), I have an instant variety of monsters for different power levels.

But the big question is how to turn this all into something someone else could work with. Especially someone who had no experience with the system at all.

Frank

Cold Iron Character Generation and Advancement

2005-12-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

First, the basics:

Cold Iron characters have attributes, skills, and proficiencies, in a rather D&Desque way. Skills are sort of the equivalent to character class in D&D, except rather than each class providing both fighting ability and whatever else, in Cold Iron, everyone has a fighting skill, and usually has a magic skill (there is a passive magic skill which provides some knowledge about magic, and factors into saves). Proficiencies mostly come into play for fighters.

This is the area I've diverged from Mark's rules the most. In Mark's game, profficiencies were treated the same as skills (you could put XP into sword proficiency just as well as fighting proficiency). Fighting skill granted some XP to put into proficiencies (the default was you had one proficiency equal to your fighting skill, or you could break it down). XP for skills follows an exponential curve (doubling each level). In Mark's rules, spell casters were potentially just as good fighters as non-spell casters. Other than riding proficiency, some reference to scouting skill, and a humor skill (which was a catchall for social skill/charisma stuff), there were no other skills or proficiencies detailed (though I think they did exist, and you could ask for them).

The basis for attribute generation is 3d6 for each attribute, with an additional 1d6 added to that to get a "potential". 1st level characters got to raise one attribute to potential, and each skill level beyond first allowed increasing one attribute one point toward potential. Of course most campaigns ran with things like roll 4d6 take the best 3.

One issue that bugged me from the start, partly because in every game I ran in, I got hit by it, was that with random generation, it was quite possible to wind up with a character who had no hope of being a spell caster, who also didn't have quite as good physical attributes as the spell casters. I found it very frustrating to run a character who was basically good at nothing.

This resulted in a big change in how I ran proficiencies. I set it up so fighters got the equivalent of 2.5 proficiencies by the old system. I split the proficiencies in half mostly, so a fighter actually got 5 of my new proficiencies (shield proficiency became a double proficiency). Clerics got 4, and mages got 3. I also added in all sorts of side skills, and proficiencies for them (scout, thief, alchemist, and more).

I also structured the rolling so a player declared what they wanted to roll up (fighter, cleric, or mage), and then we rolled until the attributes looked good. I began to observe a problem though that I've noted in long term campaigns with rolled attributes. As the campaign goes on, the average of the rolled attributes slowly creeps up. This is due to a variety of issues, mostly player driven (but some GM driven).

When I resurrected Cold Iron a few years ago, I decided to go to a point buy system. I came up with a point total that allowed one to just barely build a perfect fighter (18/24 in Str, Dex, and Con). The perfect fighter would have no spell casting ability, probably a 10 Will (for magical defense), a 10 Alertness, and below average MP.

I've been noticing a problem now though. The spell casters can't fight their way out of a paper bag. They wind up with 10s, maybe 12s in Str, Dex, and Con. Combined with a limited proficiency set (I have also changed the way proficiencies are handled, mostly a simplification), we discoverd the cleric was more a danger by trying to help in combat. The mage (who has slightly better fighting skills) surprised us all by actually rolling well in one combat and doing a bit of damage.

With my recent revision, I set it up so that the interesting non-combat stuff does not detract from combat ability much at all. A non-spell caster can be a scout or thief, or they could take combat riding (fun, but not overly usefull), or they can get a bonus to charisma/renown (charisma is now just the characters best skill, plus renown points earned in play), and a few other abilities (everyone starts with 2 abilities, non-spell casters get another at 5th and again at 8th). A character can choose to have minor cleric abilities (paladin sort of deal) as an ability (and then they get no more abilities in the future, cleric level is limited to 1/2 fighter level, they get full fighting proficiency).

One thing I'm thinking of doing is getting rid of the big distinction in fighting proficienct since the point buy makes the caster trade off fighting ability attributes for spell casting attributes. But I think I also need to do something about the attributes. One way would be to get rid of Talent (mages) and Faith (clerics) and run all the magic stuff off Will, but that gets rid of dump stats (though casters will still want more MP than the fighters). Another would be to make the attribute points non-linear, so the spell caster who is spreading out amongst more attributes can still take decent attributes (but I worry that that might make the fighters more generic - but maybe it just takes the "perfect" fighter off the table, which might make the fighters more distinguished).

Getting rid of attributes alltogether would be a solution, but that would be a radical change to the game.

Another possibility might be to throw out the point system for attributes, and just create sets of attributes that don't necessarily add up to the same point value. With such a scheme, a kick-ass mage might have 18/24 in Talent and Will, and say 14/16 in Str, Dex, and Con (and perhaps they can trade off between Str, Dex, and Con), an 8 Alertness, and 36 MP. A cleric would have the same values, but Faith instead of Talent (or maybe Faith gets ditched). A Less kick-ass spell caster would have 16/20 in Talent and Will, 30 MP, and 16/18 in Str, Dex, and Con, and an 8 Alertness and can trade off Str, Dex, Con, and Alertness. A kick-ass fighter has 18/24 in Str, Dex, and Con, 8 Talent, 10/14 Will, 8 Alertness, and 16 MP. A not quite so good fighter has 16/20 in Str, Dex, and Con (and can trade off), 8 Talent, 12/16 Will and 12/16 Alertness, and 22 MP (and can trade off Alertness, Will, and MP [MP 2 for 1]). A warrior-cleric gets 16/20 Str, 16/20 Dex, 12/16 Con, 14/18 Faith, 12/16 Will, 8 Alertness, and 20 MP.

This way, the non-spell casters still get ok attributes, but clearly are lesser fighters. They will also probably be a level lower in fighting skill, so even if they get as many proficiencies, they are still definitely second class, but can fight their way out of the wet paper bag.

Another way to play with it might be to make Talent, Will, and Alertness cost 1/2 points, and maybe make MP be 1/3 points instead of 1/2. With points kept so the "perfect" fighter has trouble getting better than Talent 8, Faith 8, Will 10, Alertness 8, and MP 16, it might work pretty good. This would also help the thieves and scouts (who definitely want decent Alertnesses). And it might make for a few fighters that have average or better MP.

Hmm, another thought would be to take MP out of the point buy. Non-casters get 20+Passive Magic Level MP. Clerics get 26+Cleric Level. Mages get 26+(Magic Level +1)(Magic Level)/2 (and then maybe I also get rid of the mages focus and one of the nasty equations). Since clerics also get spell points, which have a geometric progression, they are going to be on par with the mages.

I need to look into this... I think I may have a solution...

Frank

Cold Iron Magic Item System

2005-12-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

Cold Iron is heavily based on consumable magic items. Potions are always important because they are the only magic item that supplies it's own MP. The temporary hit point and energy resistance spells are most commonly used in potion form (because their MP cost is so high). Charged items have a chance of failure, and tend to be good for 3-4 uses. Each time they are used, the chance of success drops (they can be used more than 3-4 times, but you have to be a bit desperate).

Magic weapon and armor enchantments are the cheapest permanent magic. They also have an advantage of being more efficient in MP cost (to the point where one generally doesn't worry about the cost unless you have a +5 sword). Each aspect (to hit, parry, damage, and damage reduction [armor]) is enchanted separately.

Permanent magic items are the most expensive.

Permanent and charged items come in 4 flavors, in order of cost: item only, user only (can also affect user's equipment, or another person if the user maintains contact with the other person), combat touch, ranged.

Some example costs:

Iron Flesh (spell that adds 6 damage reduction - separate from armor enchantment), duration 22 rounds (unrestricted for permanent items):
Potion 220 (made by a 6th level mage)
Item charge 390 (made by an 8th level mage)
User charge 820 (made by a 9th level mage)
Touch charge 1340 (made by a 10th level mage)
Ranged charge 2020 (made by an 11th level mage)
Item permanent 9000 (made by a 9th level mage)
User permanent 17500 (made by a 10th level mage)
Touch permanent 31600 (made by an 11th level mage)
Ranged permanent 63100 (made by a 13th level mage)

For comparison:
+1 armor 400 (9th)
+2 armor 1100 (10th)
+3 armor 2500 (11th)
+4 armor 5650 (12th)
+5 armor 10850 (13th)
+6 armor 21850 (14th)
(for reference, the +6 armor theoretically costs 31/hour to maintain - though I have actually tended to run with a more efficient maintanence cost for enchantments - still it's less than the 1/round cost of the iron flesh spell, though iron flesh stacks with magic armor).

In my past gaming, other than armor and weapon enchantments, we saw almost no permanent item use. Charged items allow more flexibility, and allow you to pay as you go. Eventually, clearly permanent items become more efficient to purchase, but you have to be able to afford the one time cost (and there aren't mortgages like we have for house buying...). Charged items for rarely used spells will continue to be popular even for rich characters. And of course since potions supply their own MP, they continue to be usefull.

For the really rich, there are items that store MP, and even items that regenerate MP. The costs of 24 MP (the same MP as in the potion) storers and growers. Storers come in 4 varieties, inneficient costs 3 MP per MP put into it (2 MP are wasted). Internal storers can only power spells in the item they are part of. Growers are internal and external.
3/1 internal storer 24 MP: 8,400 (10th)
1/1 internal storer 24 MP: 21,600 (11th)
3/1 external storer 24 MP: 52,800 (11th)
1/1 external storer 24 MP: 14,400 (12th)
internal grower 24 MP: 1,008,000 (14th)
external grower 24 MP: 1,992,000 (14th)

For the price of the 3/1 external storer, you can buy 240 potions... And you still need to be able to cast the spell or have a magic item... Of course for 17,400 you can get a permanent iron flesh on your armor with a 3/1 internal storer attached to it. Not too bad (and it does have an advantage over a potion, you can choose to use your own MP and make it last longer). Of course the potion still has an advantage. When you get attacked a second time in one day and haven't been able to recharge your storer...

There are a handfull of esoteric "preservation" spells that are very low cost permanent items (nice because it does let you have a magic sword left in a tomb and it hasn't rusted yet).

The one thing we did notice - until they decided to change their treasure distribution, since mages don't use as many potions and charged items, in one campaign, the mage was the first to buy a +5 sword (looking at the handfull of characters I held onto, at the end, the dwarf fighter still did not have a +5 all around sword). After the mage declared this, they came up with a treasure division scheme where they paid for most potion and charged item use out of treasure before division. No one had any permanent magic other than weapon/armor. An earlier campaign went to a higher level, but it was also wacked out because I actually inserted some D&D style magic items (which of course should have been worth millions...and attracted all sorts of unwanted attention...).

Another thing that I noted was that there was a significant opportunity for player skill in item purchasing, which feeds a gamist adgenda nicely. Also, while characters may wind up with more magic items listed on their sheet than in D&D, there is less tendency to forget about them (though I have to say that was mainly a comparison to 1e where characters actually probably had more items than the Cold Iron characters, and they were all sorts of weird things).

Frank

Cold Iron Mana Point System

2005-12-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

Cold Iron uses a mana point (or spell point) system (to add a little bit of confusion, there actually are both mana points and spell points...). Every character has mana points (MP). Starting characters generally start with about 20 MP, possibly 30 for mages (and theoretically as high as 38). Clerics get both MP and SP. MP increases slowly with level (mages add twice their level, clerics add their level, non-spell casters have a passive or defensive magic level which is added to MP).

MP recovery is at a rate of 1/6 current MP per hour. This is a continuous function just like bank interest (which means if we need to know exactly how many MP you have, or how long it will take to recover, we need to whip out the calculator - generally an estimate is close enough, or enough time passes that we don't need to worry about it).

Clerics regenerate MP slower (usually at 1/12), with the excess being donated to their deity. However, in exchange they get spell points, which come back during their daily prayers. Spell points follow a formula that is geometric with level, and is based on the cleric's faith attribute.

One of the things I think is really cool about the system is that even when a character's MP is at full, the regen is still pumping out MP. There are spells that cost a few MP per hour, which can be maintained by this excess MP.

Higher level mages have a MP storage focus, which (here's more math) is essentially a leaky bucket. It is charged up (using the same forumula as charging a capacitor) with MP regen.

Most offensive spells cost 1 or 2 MP to cast. Additional MP up to the caster's level may be used to increase success chance, or reduce save (unfortunately, the system does depend on two chance adjustment resolution rolls per offensive spell, one for success, and one for save or for to hit). Energy spells (which are single target and require a to hit roll) cost 1 MP per die, with the die getting bigger as the spell level increases, energy spells can't crit. Magic missile costs 1 MP, requires a to hit, and can crit. There are a variety of defensive spells. Energy resistance spells cost MP based on how much damage they absorb (with higher level spells being more efficient). There is a temporary hit point spell which absorbs a 1/2 or more of the damage received, and costs MP based on how much gets through (thus it also gets more efficient at higher levels).

A lot of utility spells (see invisible, detect magic are two common ones) cost 1+2/hour. Light costs 1/30watts + 1/30watts/hour. These spells are common to be maintained.

Attribute boosting spells cost 2/+1 + 2/+1/hour (and do get more efficient at higher levels). A caster can stack these spells (though there are maximum attribute caps) as long as he has enough MP.

Enchant weapon has a geometric cost based on the bonus granted and is capped by caster level.

Non damage spells include demoralization which reduces the targets offensive ability (and may cause them to run away), entrancement (a parking spell, though the target recognizes direct threats so you can't just take the guy out like D&D's hold person), cluminess, weakness for the common ones. Sleep, paralysis, disintegration, and death are high level spells.

Higher level spells take longer to cast (spells higher than 1/2 caster level take 2 rounds to cast), are harder to succeed with, and are easier to save against. This tends to mean the low level spells are the most common (plus I've never actually run a game to a high enough level to see the "save or die" spells).

There's a lot more to the magic system like counters, dispelling, magic protection spells (there's a lot of defense, though anti-magic shell was taken away - Mark tells me that when it went away, people were concerned for fighters, but it turned out it was mages who got plastered). The spells mostly allow the mage to support the fighter, though the mage's contribution can not be discounted - the battles last week with the skeletons turned very heavily on how successefull the magic was. The key for me is that the fighter and the mage need to cooperate, rather than in D&D where it seemed like the purpose of the fighters was to screen the mages while they did the killing.

Oh, I should also comment on how the mage prepares spells. The mage gets a number of memorization points that increase geometrically with level, and are based on talent. A spell costs it's level to memorize, but lower level versions of the spell are included for free (so if you know Fireball VIII, an 8th level spell, you also know Fireball II, Fireball III, Fireball IV, Fireball V, Fireball VI, and Fireball VII). Mages can also cast any spell from their books (usefull for casting light before entering a cave). Clerics get more memorization, but don't have books. Clerics have a more limited spell list (based on their deity's domains), and get some spells earlier, and some later (they particularly get healing earlier than mages, and much more efficient).

Frank

Cold Iron Task Resolution

2005-12-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

I worked up this as an introduction for my players, and thought I'd post it here also:

Cold Iron, like many RPGs, is based on a task resolution system. The player will declare some task they want to attempt (I try and hit the troll with my sword). The character will have some ability with this task (for attack, the ability is hit, often abbreviated to H). There will be some difficulty of the task. Some tasks have a static difficulty, others, like hitting trolls with big pointy things, are opposed checks, the target will resist with some ability (the troll might defend with a parry, often abbreviated as D, or a dodge, often abbreviated as Db). All check use the same randomizer. Some systems use a single die and add (d20+ability), others roll dice against the ability (d100 <= skill).

Cold Iron has a clever chart that utilizes the normal distribution to generate a modifier (often called a chance adjustment). The probabilities of getting particular modifiers follow the bell curve of the normal distribution. The clever trick is in how the probabilities are generated.

Probabilities are always a number between 0 and 1 (when expressed as percentiles, the number is multiplied by 100). Gamers have long used a pair of d10s to generate percentile values between 1 and 100 (sometimes 0 and 99). One die is labeled the 10s digit, and the other the 1s digit, and the pair is rolled and read as a two digit number (00-99, where 00 is usually read as 100). The normal distribution however requires infinite precision, more than two digits. So the concept of rolling two digits is just extended to rolling as many digits as are necessary. The way the probabilities are arranged in the normal distribution, it's not always necessary to roll a bucket full of dice.

Here is a chart that uses the normal distribution to express the probabilities for a range of values:

.000088 -25
.00016 -24
.00028 -23
.00048 -22
.00082 -21
.0013 -20
.0022 -19
.0035 -18
.0054 -17
.0082 -16
.012 -15
.018 -14
.025 -13
.036 -12
.049 -11
.067 -10
.088 -9
.12 -8
.15 -7
.18 -6
.23 -5
.27 -4
.33 -3
.38 -2
.44 -1
.50 0
.56 1
.62 2
.67 3
.73 4
.77 5
.82 6
.85 7
.88 8
.912 9
.933 10
.951 11
.964 12
.975 13
.982 14
.988 15
.9918 16
.9946 17
.9965 18
.9978 19
.9987 20
.99918 21
.99952 22
.99972 23
.99984 24
.999912 25

The left hand column is the cumulative probability (for example, on 2d6, there is a 1 in 36 chance of getting a 2, a 2 in 36 chance of getting a 3, a 4 in 36 chance of getting a 4, up to a 6 in 36 chance of getting a 7. The chance of getting a number, N, or less is the sum of all the individual probabilities of each number less than or equal to N, this is known as the cumulative probability, so the cumulative probability of a 4 or less on 2d6 is 6 in 36 or 1 in 6). The right hand column is the modifier (chance adjustment, or CA). The chart above shows the decimal point, however, it is common practice to leave the decimal point out of chance adjustment tables.

One more bit about the probability math behind this chart, the chart is designed so that a +20/3 (+6.666667) is one standard deviation "above average").

To generate a chance adjustment using this chart, the player should roll a pair of d10s, identifying which digit is first (if it's easier for you, consider it a d100 roll - except 00 will NOT be read as 100). If you look at the chart, most of the time, the number will fall in the range from 12 to 88, which corresponds to chance adjustments of -8 to +8. If you roll between two numbers, you use the lower chance adjustment (so a 51 results in a +0 CA). If you roll in the range of 90-99 or 00-09, you will note the chart has additional digits and multiple rows. In this range, you will need to roll additional d10s to generate additional digits to distinguish between the different chance adjustments. There is a simple rule which lets you roll the dice, then look at the chart. You will see that each number in these ranges starts out with a string of 0s or a string of 9s, and after that string are
2 more digits. So basically, if you roll a 90-99, for each leading 9 you roll, you need to roll an additional digit, for a 90-98, you roll one more digit. For a 99 you roll two more (which may result in rolling even more digits).

Note that if you roll a 99 and then your subsequent pair is a 09, you do not need to roll any more d10s. Your roll is a 9909, which is a +15.

Rolling low is always bad, which is kind of fun if you roll a 00, it's probably an oh-oh kind of moment...

Once you have a chance adjustment, you add it to your ability and compare to the difficulty. If your ability equals the difficulty, you will note that you have a 50% chance of success. If you roll lots of 9s and are confident your result will be a smashing success, feel free to narrate something ("The troll slips in the mud as my axe falls on his neck, I hit him with a 35 (having rolled a +24 on an 11 attack, knowing the troll has a 20 defense).").

A really good result with an attack (and some other abilities) results in a critical success. Generally, a critical success occurs when the adjusted attack is 7 or more higher than the defense. With an attack, this will cause double damage. With attacks, it's possible to get even more than double damage (normally 9 better is triple, 11 better is quadruple, etc., however, armor does modify this).

Here are some more examples:

A fighter with an 11 attack (H, typical of a 3rd level fighter) swings at a goblin with a parry (D) of 14. The fighter rolls an 89, which is a +8, so hit net attack is 19, since this is greater than the goblins D the fighter hits. Later the fighter rolls a 999985, which is a +27, and will probably smear the goblin all over the floor! Shortly thereafter, he rolls a 00045 (-23) which will cause him to fumble. The fighter needs a +3 (67) or better to hit the goblin.

The chart seems daunting at first, and there is some fancy math behind it, but after some play, most players find it easy to use, and you don't need to understand the fancy math. Many players even end up memorizing some of the numbers that come up the most, and mean the most. Normally, D is higher than H, so negative chance adjustments often don't hit. So memorizing 50, 56, 62, 67, 73, 77, 82, 85, and 88 will suffice for a large percentage of rolls.

Another thing is that since the difference between a hit and a critical is 7, you can often look at the dice and see a 60 something, and you know you hit with a +0 CA and crit with a +5 CA, so it doesn't matter if you got a +1, +2, or +3. You hit. Of course the situation could have changed, so the GM should pay attention to the rolls and may ask the player to figure it out (because now a +3 chance adjustment might score that character a crit).

For those interested in exploring the math a bit, the following Excel formula can be used to generate the chart:

=NORMDIST(chance adjustment,0,20/3,TRUE)

The first parameter is the chance adjustment you desire the value for, notice the 20/3 standard deviation is the third parameter (the second parameter indicates the average on the chart is +1, while the fourth parameter indicates cumulative probabilities should be used). I have an Excel sheet on my website that shows how the table can be generated.

Frank

Publishing and improving Cold Iron dilemma

2005-12-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

I've been working through a dilemma. I really would like to have a solid complete game of Cold Iron that can be passed out to people I game with, and pointed to for folks who might be interested. There's one big problem though, the core of the game isn't mine. I have posted stuff, but I always feel a bit dirty because I'm distributing someone else's copyrighted material without permission (I tried to get permission). Mark Christiansen (the author of the game) really doesn't seem interested in publishing (in fact, other than very occaisional Cold Iron games with his old buddies, I get the feeling he's mostly out of gaming). In making a more complete game, I'd also love to get outside review, and it would be really cool to get the help of folks on the Forge.

I've asked Ron, and he said it didn't qualify as an indie game, which I respect. He did invite me to use the RPG Theory forum so long as I kept things of general interest, but of course the RPG theory forum is now closed. And what I really need help and commentary on is the explanatory text I want to add. I'm pretty comfortable that the mechanics are solid (though getting others comentary on the mechanics would be interesting also - but they have been through a lot of playtesting already).

So how do I proceed?

One thought I have is to just start my own game from scratch, using the core mechanic but none of the copyrighted text. That seems like a horrid waste of energy, but would be a fair way to proceed. But would such a game be welcome at the Forge?

I could also do stuff here, but how to attract enough people interested in commenting?

Frank

In the spirit of Thanksgiving - a note of thanks to influential gamers in my past

2005-11-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the holiday, and given how much I've been thinking of some of my past players and mentors, I'd like to thank the following folks (and sorry if I've missed anyone):

First off, the biggest thanks goes to Glen Blacow who was willing to mentor me as I was getting started in gaming as a teenager. Glen not only gave me tons of great advice (as one of the earliest people who really thought about game design and the implications of different play styles), but he also honored me by playing in my games occaisionally.

Another big thanks goes to Robert Whelan for all the discussions we had in college about game theory. He was the first person who really clued me in to reward cycles and making sure they reinforced the kind of play desired. He also helped me understand what I now understand as hard core gamism.

Reggie, player of Regulus, probably the best player I have ever had.

Ken Walsh, fellow caver and the person I talk to the most on the phone about gaming. He and his friend Richard also participated in the best Rune Quest campaign I have ever run.

Mark Christiansen for a really cool game design, Cold Iron, and Robert Hendrie for introducing me to Cold Iron, and allowing me to copy the rules he had acquired.

Henry Welch, player of Harbinger of Wit, companion of Regulus, the best dwarf PC I've ever seen in Cold Iron.

Dave Tetrault, one of the MIT gamers who made me feel welcome as a teenager after I managed to run a 16 player D&D game at one of MIT's game cons (the first time I had ever played with other than a small group of friends). I should also thank James for insisting I go to the con, and for recruiting those 16 players (while I was doing my usual "duh, where am I" think upon arrival at any kind of convention or retreat).

And I guess I should thank Peter Dwyer's mom for being the coolest gamer mom ever (first for buying the orignal Basic D&D for Peter, and then several later things). And of course Peter for being my best friend in junior high and high school. Ok, maybe my parents deserve praise also, a couple months after we started playing D&D my parents bought me my first fantasy miniatures for Christmas (I still have at least some of them I think).

I should also thank the proprietor of Excalibur Hobbies and Games (Arlington MA, later Malden MA, not sure if they still exist) who introduced me to Glen (and helped my parents pick out those minis), and who even let me watch the store for a few minutes once.

Well, those are the folks I can think of.

Frank

The role of nostalgia in gaming

2005-11-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

This post over on The 20' By 20' Room combined with my recent plans to go back to old campaign settings got me thinking a bit about nostalgia. Nostalgia is a powerfull emotion that brings back the best of old memories. It can be harnessed to build excitement about a new campaign. But there's also some dangers.

One danger is that of rose colored glasses and the softening effect of passage of time. You might resurrect some ideas from an old campaign, forgetting the fact that the nostalgic memory is based on the one good session in a generally blah campaign. Of course if you can examine what went right in that one good session, you can turn this disadvantage into a strength.

A similar danger is that you just replay the old campaign. The new campaign will most likely feel stale because you're just solving the same old problems. The new campaign has to have new problems to solve. You can reference the old campaign, but don't let all the problems be solved.

A final danger is a crippling one. If you let yourself feel like the new campaign could never live up to the old one, you're doomed. This danger is probably holding me back from playing Rune Quest again. I had one really good campaign, and I wonder if a new campaign can hold up to the standards of the old.

Nostalgia can also be a powerful drive for gaming products. D&D 3e/3.5 is definitely powered by nostalgia. The 3e team used nostalgia to get old players to buy into a new game, but they also leveraged modern design techniques and production values to produce a game that has been popular with new players also.

Goodman games has used nostalgia to power a series of modules that harken back to the old days (and they even use the simpler production values of the old days to constrain costs). Many old campaign settings are getting a face-lift (Blackmoor, Tekumel, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and now I hear even Rune Quest/Glorantha, even Greyhawk had new maps published in Dungeon Magazine).

I will be starting a new Cold Iron campaign that takes me back 15-20 years to my college days. But I don't plan to simply relive the old campaign. I'm bringing some fresh ideas to the table. I'm bringing a much better understanding of play style that will focus on gamism and cut out a lot of fluff I had introduced trying to bring in non-combat skills (I will still have some stuff, but it's designed to not get in the way of designing a good combat character).

I had some failed Cold Iron campaigns using Tekumel and Talislanta as settings. These in part failed because I strayed from what made my old college games succeed. I used complex settings that begged for a less "hack 'n slash" game. They are also both fairly strong settings that didn't bend easily to Cold Iron's magic system. My new campaign will be set in Blackmoor. I'll be able to use some of the material from my college Blackmoor campaign, but other material is based on the recently released Blackmoor setting by Zeitgist games. I'm using the deities mentioned there instead of the mishmash of stuff I had back in college (The First Fantasy Campaign version of Blackmoor published by Judges Guild had no deities listed, making it easy to put whatever I needed in). When I made my first attempt at the deities, I thought they were going to be a problem, but I started over with a different angle, and everything came out ok. So I will be able to power this campaign with some of the excitement from the old, while not being trapped by the old.

Frank

Followup on my post about permanent death - changing expectations on players

2005-11-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

As I have developed my thoughts on players being able to reject permanent death after a combat is over, I have been thinking more. Recently in our Arcana Evolved campaign, a PC was hit with energy drain and gained negative levels. Now the PCs were right around the corner from an NPC Greenbond who could have restored him, and even without that, in the context of my ability to reject permanent death and extending it to rejecting any permanent disability, the PC could have been restored without using PC resources.

However, the PC Greenbond had the ability to restore and I required them to use the spell slot. Since then, I have since stated that if a PC could cast raise dead, that I would require the PC to use the spell slot rather than just rejecting the death. Is this unfair? Is this changing the rules on the PCs?

My assertion is that it is fair. What is going on here is that when the PCs increase in power, more is expected of them. Low level PCs aren't expected not to die, but high level PCs are expected to be a bit more careful. Granting the high level PC resources to respond to death (or any other lingering effect including ability score damage, level drain, etc.) just means the players are now challenged to manage their resources a bit more carefully. This does not break gamist ability to step on up, in fact it enhances it.

Many games have basic and advanced rules. This is a good thing. It allows players to incrementally learn a more complex game than they might otherwise be able to learn. Handicaps (for example in Go) are a similar thing. One the player understands the basic game, then the gloves can be taken off and they can play the real thing.

This idea can be extended to RPGs, but instead of starting a new campaign when the players gain expertise, we can simply have rules that kick in at certain power points in character development.

In Cold Iron, I usually don't use fatigue in low level combat. Partly because it's not much fun for a low level character to suddenly find they are suffering fatigue penalties because they took a small injury and the combat has taken 5 or 6 rounds so far. Bringing fatigue in when PCs have enough hit point and fatigue capacity to last most battles makes sense from this same perspective of demanding more from the players at higher levels.

What examples do you have from, or could you apply to, your own gaming?

Frank

Random bits

2005-10-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

I discovered that a Sandisk USB thumb drive can survive the laundry. I heard this whacking noise coming from the dryer... Checked it out - everything is still readable (though who knows what I've done to the life expectancy of it). It's nice and clean and dry now though! It was quite warm when it came out, the clothes were mostly dry. Of course the thunking didn't stop, because there was a key in there also... I need to check my pockets better...

In sadder news, yesterday, my almost new (about 1 month old) flat panel display bit the dust. It flashes on for an instant and then blacks out (from what I see when it flashes on, looks like it's displaying ok). It didn't work in self test mode or on my work laptop either. Fortunately I still have my 10+ year old 20" monitor (unfortunately it can't quite keep up with the video card, and was starting to flake out). Good thing I brought my work laptop home for the weekend.

Frank

An example of prep for Cold Iron

2005-10-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

This is another contribution for Martin Ralya's 31 Days of Blogging for GMs.

I had suggested to Martin that I would provide an example of prep for Cold Iron. I decided to do this as a word document, so take a moment to browse to The Dark Crypt (MS Word format) or The Dark Crypt (HTML format) so you can follow along.

If you want to read up on the rules in some detail, check out my Cold Iron page. Also, see my analysis of Cold Iron in this blog post.

A few notes on the creature stats: Pt is hit points, H is attack, D is defense (parry), Db is dodge (Dbl is dodge vs. long weapons - unarmed creatures and those attempting a grapple take penalties against swords and such [not daggers]), T is armor absorbtion, C is critical protection factor, HtH Hm is used for the tackle roll to initiate a grapple, HtH is the grapple ability, MA is movement allowance (run/normal), MP is mana points, SP is spell points (clerics use both MP and SP), the associations are like D&D domains (though the cleric gets all his spells from the associations, there are no "standard" spells, a strong association usually gives the cleric spells a level early, a weak a level late), MemP (memorization points - spells cost their level in MemP, the spells in parenthesis are known as a result of knowing a higher level spell). The spell caster also has a reference to 3/hr etc. MP in Cold Iron regenerates sort of like interest, and if you're at your max, you can use the interest to run continuing spells (one of the really neat things about the system).

I spent a couple hours searching Wizards of the Coast's site for a suitable module to use. I didn't find a module, but in the Map of the Week archives, I found this interesting map. Clearly a crypt is filled with undead, one of my favorite encounters. This module search time is actually not unusual for me, and can be one of the more time consuming parts of prep if I'm going to run a site based encounter. More often with Cold Iron, most of the time will be spent in the wilderness with wilderness encounters and I wouldn't need this prep time.

First I looked over the map to see what features it had. It appears to be underground, so I decided to ignore the shape of area 1. I decided that the crypt will be located in an old overgrown graveyard. Area 1a is enclosed by a low stone wall with a rusted iron gate.

The basic undead in Cold Iron are skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights, and wraiths. For this module, I worked up abilities for spectres also. Wraiths in the past have been corporeal undead who are spell casters while wights are the fighters. I didn't put any skeletons or zombies in this module. Also, since I'm not really sure what level characters I might use this with, I have mostly avoided assigning the creatures specific levels. This of course lets me show off how I write up creatures with several levels. I also haven't fully populated the magic items the creatures will have. I did spend a bit of time writing up the spell caster (which of course sets his level). I also didn't figure out the creatures saves etc. (partly due to this having changed since I last really ran Cold Iron and I haven't figured out how that all really works now).

All told, I've spent quite a few hours on this, but a third of the time was looking for a module to use. Another third of the time was dealing with the fact that my flat panel display just died (fortunately I brought home my laptop from work, though I still have my 20" monitor for the desktop, but it was starting to have problems being overdriven by the video card in my new computer). Probably half of the remaining time was spent sorting through my Cold Iron stuff to find the relevant bits for creating monsters. In the end, I probably spent about 2-3 hours writing up the brief notes on the module, and creating all the opponents. These opponents are all highly re-useable (even the spell caster is likely to be re-useable since, at least in the past, I run a lot slower XP gain with Cold Iron). The spell caster also only took me about 20-30 minutes to write up, and most of that was choosing spells. If I had to write up an encounter on the spot, I might not be so complete on the spell selection (as I worked him up, I initially chose almost every spell he could memorize, but when I trimmed the list, it turned out I didn't really have to remove anything I would really be that likely to use in a combat - I have in the past done a quick selection of the key spells, which can be done in a few minutes). Note that I also didn't figure out the MA for the wights (they are going to be affected at least somewhat by encumbrance - if I was running an encounter and suddenly realized this was missing, I'd make a quick guess, probably something like 18/12 or so).

What's also interesting about the creature prep is that I haven't in the past used incorporeal creatures like this in Cold Iron. I'm not sure my quicky mechanics will really work well, but it's worth a try (in the old days, I would have used spirit combat for the spectres, but I'm not really sure I like the spirit combat rules I was using, they are completely different from Rune Quests).

This module is very representative of the size of module I would prepare for Cold Iron. Cold Iron does not do dungeon crawls very well (a good fight will leave the PCs wanting to rest right away, and since characters can only be healed their hit points once in a day, even if they can heal up pretty quickly, they still won't want to fight again). I spent a few minutes coming up with a bit of a back story (basically, necromancer moves into old crypt system and animates a few more undead, he lives there long enough to eventually die and become undead himself).

Another problem with dungeon crawls in Cold Iron is that it really is meant to be played on a hex grid. Of course rectilinear spaces don't look too good on hexes. I might be inclined in drawing out this module to make the coridors run at 60 degree angles instead of 90 degree angles just so they can always run with the hexes (a room usually isn't so much of an issue).

Perhaps at a later date I'll prep this same module for Arcana Evolved and Rune Quest.

Frank

Game aids that have been useful to me

2005-10-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

Over the years, there have been a variety of game aids that have been useful to me. Some of these have been supplements, others are more generic aids.

Battle Mat, Mega Mat, Crystal Mat. Berkely Games was the first distributor of vinyl mats printed with square or hexagonal patterns, other producers have produced similar products. The Crystal Mat is especially nice being a clear sheet of vinyl that can turn any map into a hex map (when I started playing D20, I wished these were still available so I could get one with a square grid).

GURPS Battle Maps - this product, released early in the life of GURPS was a set of three 21"x32" double sided hex maps. One side was printed in black and represented a dungeon or town. The other side was printed in brown and green and represented wilderness. I used the wilderness side of these all through one Cold Iron campaign (to the point that the players knew the best place to set up camp on each map, and used the rocks to great advantage).

Page protectors - these are absolutely a must for use with Rune Quest character sheets, allowing marking off individual hit point and power boxes, and then wiping the marks away as hit points or power are recovered. In other games, these are useful to protect heavily used pages of charts.

Judge's Guild's First Fantasy Campaign - this is a nice little campaign setting, documenting Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. There's not a lot of detail in the book, but the map is gorgeous. There are several interesting places noted on the map. In the 1980s, TSR reproduced the map in color for their Blackmoor series of D&D modules. The last module added an extension to show the Valley of the Ancients (JG originally slightly modified the map so it would fit into their Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting, though the map scale was 10 mile hexes instead of the Wilderlands 5 mile hexes). This campaign setting has been re-published by Zeitgist Games in conjunction with Goodman Games, though with a new map (that isn't included in the book - I snagged a couple copies from their table at Gen Con though).

Judge's Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting - this was a really nice campaign setting. The maps still are my standard of reference for campaign maps. The only product released since that I consider serious competition is Harn. Most of the maps have little patches of different terrain scattered in (most campaign maps have huge swaths of one terrain, some even have each country basically be a single terrain). Roads, villages, and keeps are marked all over the map. This campaign setting has be re-released by Necromancer Games (the new maps are not quite as nice, but a lot of detail has been added).

Lou Zocci's 8-sided d4s. The d4 "caltrop" never rolled very well. Lou Zocci produced an eight sided die with blunted points and in funny colors marked 1-4 twice. These are the only thing I ever use for d4s.

Dungeon Magazine (especially pre-D20) - I was still playing D&D when Dungeon Magazine was first announced and I quickly subscribed. Soon after, I stopped playing D&D, but every issue seemed to have at least one adventure that was easy to translate into other games. I have used Dungeon Magazine adventures in Rune Quest, Cold Iron, and Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. Lately, I don't find it as useful since the adventures tend to be larger, and the color maps while looking pretty somehow don't inspire me as much as the simpler line drawings of the early days (which could also be photocopied so you didn't have to keep flipping pages as much). Still, this is the only magazine to which I've never let my subscription lapse.

Borland Sidekick - it's been a long time since I've made regular use of a computer at the game table, but I ran an extended Traveler campaign bringing my Compaq suitcase computer to game sessions. I would run Sidekick in the background and keep all the game notes in the notepad. In the foreground, I would run a variety of programs (especially a program I wrote to manage fuel costs for jumps using a fine grained system of my own). My use of this computer sold at least two people Compaq systems for their own games. In these days of laptops, I somehow seem to find the computer a distraction during play, though I use the computer heavily during prep.

D&D Miniatures game - The easy availability of pre-painted miniatures is a blessing. One bummer though is their 28mm size compared to the 25mm that was popular in the 70s and 80s. I have lots of lead miniatures that are nicely painted that get looked over by the players because they're too small (and some don't stand up well - the consistent round base size of the D&D minis is nice - and it's a shade smaller than 1" so they fit well in close formation on 25mm and 1" battle mats). It's still a pain to try and have figures for all the monsters though, and every game I run seems to have a PC race or two that just aren't available, or at least not in enough quantity.

Frank

Game System Analysus - Rune Quest

2005-10-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Rune Quest (RQ) was one of the first systems to replace character classes with a freeform skill system. It was also the first system to create monsters the same way PCs were created. It also revealed one of the most in depth campaign settings (however, it was not the first RPG to come with a deep campaign setting, that honor goes to Empire of the Petal Throne, released just a year after D&D). Rune Quest also introduced the gaming world to vapor ware, claiming that the Hero Quest rules were just around the corner (rules for hero quests were finally published as a formal game in 2000 with the introduction of Hero Wars, later renamed to Hero Quest, however that game is rather incompatible with Rune Quest).

RQ introduced some new concepts like armor that absorbed damage instead of making you harder to hit. Being large made you easier to hit. RQ also had spell points (though it probably wasn't the first such system - it was the first such system I used). It also introduced character religion as a real choice and impact in play (instead of the gods of D&D that were given combat stats, but never impacted how their clerics were played).

However, one problem quickly surfaced with the game. After an adventure, characters got the opportunity to make an experience check for every skill they had succeeded in. The gamist players at MIT immediately pointed out that this perversely encouraged characters to carry a golf bag of weapons (long before D&D 3.5 introduced it's new DR system...). Characters (assuming they weren't too threatened with their life) should switch out their weapon after scoring a hit and a parry. Since everyone had an open locks skill, some groups had players try to open locks in reverse order of skill. My early solution was to count the number of successes in each skill, and add this as a bonus to the experience check (this has the problem that combat skills will get a bigger bonus). My later solution was to give each player a fixed number of experience checks (and I may have assigned some).

In my most recent RQ campaign, I noticed the only time I've ever seen real success with having different languages in the campaign. Since RQ language skill is just like any other skill, you start off really bad, and slowly improve. Of course if you play the rules strictly, there's a significant chance of native speakers misunderstanding each other (of course some would point out that's realistic - but not at the rate it would occur in RQ). There also aren't that many languages you need to learn. The result, players could learn languages, but had to make choices as to how much resource to put into it, and how much to trust using the local language as opposed to using a better understood language.

Rune Quest was also the first game I'm aware of that allowed characters to spend money on improving their skills. This creates a very good econimic flow as much of the treasure gets spent on training. Training also takes time which makes campaigns last several years of game time (and the players plot out where to spend the winter).

The 1st edition had another problem. Hit points were Constitution modified by Size and Power. Every creature in RQ gets 3d6 for CON (except maybe Dwarves, I think they got 4d6). Later the role of CON and SIZ were reversed and the game worked a bit better. There's still a problem that large creatures do more damage than most people have hit points, especially when you take hit locations into account (a decent human only needs about 8-12 points of damage to their head to be killed, giants might get a 12d6 damage bonus).

A big problem arises when RQ is examined for the possibility of replacing random attribute rolls with a point buy system. INT is way more important to skills than any other attribute (plus it restricts how many spirit spells you have available). It also is one of two attributes that can't be raised at all during play (SIZ is the other). DEX is also pretty important (though it's one of three attributes that can always be raised to racial maximum, and the only one that can be trained there - CHA and POW both increase only with experience). CHA has very little use, affecting only a small set of skills. Of course once one notices this imbalance, even rolling for attributes will be disappointing, being quite a crap shoot.

RQ is not really and ideal gamist game. It has all the trappings of a tactical combat game, but the rules are imperfect. Players can also easily fall into a trap of spending resource on non-combat skills, or joining cults that don't help the player much (some give free weapons training and/or free spells). To get the most out of the game and setting, one has to have some simulationist play also. It takes a good social contract and willing players to pull this off.

As I write this, Mongoose Publishing is working on a new edition of Rune Quest.

I have had lots of fun with one RQ campaign, and a fair bit of fun with a few other campaigns, but it seems to really be a hit or miss. If the players get into the setting, and the game drives more towards simulationism, I think it can work well. If the players simply treat it as another type of D&D and play gamist, the shortcommings of the system will blow wide open.

Frank

Game System Analysis - Cold Iron

2005-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd start a series on the game systems I have experience with, so we'll start with my college friend, Mark Christiansen's Cold Iron. Cold Iron has never been published, in fact, Mark actively discouraged attempts to provide copies of the rules that others had crafter out of a legitimate desire to avoid people telling him how HIS game worked based on some rules set that incorporated misunderstandings and house rules. Eventually he softened his stance (eventually even using the same computer document for the spells that I have been working from). Still, the game has never been published by Mark. For my own campaign needs, I have published my rules on my Cold Iron page.

I was first exposed to Cold Iron when another friend, Rob Hendrie, started a new campaign (Mark had already graduated by then). He had an early copy of the spells plus the combat, weapon, and skill charts. He had some handwritten pages with some magic items listed.

Cold Iron as I orignally saw it was basically just a combat system. Sure, the spell list included some random non-combat spells, and I think Rob included a scouting skill. The system very clearly derives from D&D, however, there is definitely a lot of influence from Rune Quest.

Cold Iron is a transitional system between pure character class games (D&D/AD&D of the 70s and 80s) and skill based games. Every character is multi-classed. Every character has a fighter level that determines their hit points and weapon skill. Every character also has at least one magic class. There is a passive magic class that only represents the character's magical defense and general knowledge of magic. Spell casters are either magic users or clerics (or both) with appropriate class levels. Experience in all magic classes is totalled together to determine effective passive magic level. Then there are the combat skills. By Mark's rules, these are actually separate skills from fighting level, but every fighter may either improve one fighting skill with his fighting level, or he may spread XP based on his fighting level amongst two or more combat skills. Every game I ever played in also had an additional class level, humor level. I'm not quite sure why it was called humor level, but it represented one's personality strength (going along with Charisma). I think many games also had a scouting level.

Characters have attributes, with Alertness and Size added to the standard D&D mix of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma (later Willpower was also added). An additional attribute, MP (mana points) was used to power spells and most magic items. All attributes except Size and MP were rolled on 3d6. An additional d6 was rolled and added to the sum as a Potential that the attribute could be improved to. Size was generated as 4d4 - 10 + (STR potential + CON potential) / 2. MP was generated as 6d6. Most games allowed you to roll 4d6 take the best 3 (no re-organizing or trading points though) for the base, and something like 2d6 take the best or 1d6 and 1d4 take the best for potential. Different races had various different ways of rolling things (Dwarfs got 3d6 for MP for example).

At the start, a player could increase one attribute to potential. Every class level above 1st also allowed the character to increase one attribute one point towards potential, sometimes with limitations of what attributes you could increase (for example, humor levels could only be used to increase Charisma). This was called augmenting. Spell casters could also augment MP (though mages also got +2 MP per level, including 1st and clerics and passive magic got you +1 MP per level), MP has no upper potential. Fighters who ran out of things to augment could augment hit points.

Spell casters were not limited in use of weapons and armor. Spells are mostly single target, and usually it's more efficient for the mage to do something that makes it easier for the fighter than directly doing damage. Spell casters get new spells each level, and can memorize a pretty wide selection, using their MP to cast them.

One of the features I find most interesting in the game is the use of the normal distribution for resolution. People have long played with using various numbers of dice to create bell curves, and various schemes for exploding dice (if you roll the highest number, roll again and add) for open ended results. Mark realized that when you roll d100, trying to roll less than or equal to some number, you can visualize that ever so slightly differently. If you visualise the target number as a probability (between 0 and 1) and the dice as generating the first two decimal places of a real number between 0 and 1, you basically get the same thing (and d1000 is just rolling 3 decimal places). What if you roll a d10 for each decimal place in a real number? You could roll as many dice as you wanted. Mark then took this idea and created a normal distribution with a mean of 0, and a standard deviation of 20/3. He rounded each number so that it had two digits beyond a leading string of 0s (for the low end) or 9s (for the high end). Here is an Excel spreasheet that shows how the chart is computed (thought Mark didn't have such a convenient way to compute it - it's interesting to see how close his chart is to what Excel computes, column E shows the rounded Excel values, column F shows the three values that were different on Mark's chart). This chart sometimes scares players away because most people do not find probability and statistics intuitive, but in play the chart is real easy to use. Roll a pair of d10s, making it clear which one is read first. If the first die is a 0 or 9, roll a 3rd die. If the 2nd die is the same 0 or 9, roll a 4th die. If you roll 3 or 4 0s or 9s, you've done really well, roll additional d10s until you can pinpoint your resulting number as greater than or equal to one of the numbers on the chart, and less than the next one (so if I roll a 9 3, I roll one more die, a 4, look at the chart and read a +10). The way the game tends to work, rolling less than a 5 0 rarely succeeds. I have found that when I am playing regularly I can remember enough of the chart that I hardly need to look at it (I can also remember the chart well enough that I can come pretty close just writing numbers down blind - I also have a wallet card with the chart...).

Another feature I really like is that most of the treasure goes to purchasing potions and charged items. This dramatically reduces the growth curve of magic items. Also, all the magic items are directly implementing spells. Additionally, since they require the user to spend the MP (except for potions), there are no problems with overly cheap magic items, in fact, some magic items end up being impractical. Magic swords use slightly different rules to make them practical.

These days, I have only two fundamental problems with the basic system. First, I have come to dislike random character generation. Fortunately, it's easy to use a point build system (it can even have linear costs and works ok, in fact, I think it's good to have linear costs, geometric costs like used in D&D 3e may encourage too much sameness in characters by discouraging the highest attributes). The second problem is a little bit more of an issue, and that is that it's too optimal to be a spell caster. It doesn't cost enough of your fighting ability (though point buy attributes would actually cure a lot of this, still, everyone would want to be a caster even if they just had the minimum spell casting attributes).

Back in college, I refined the skill system by breaking down the combat skills and giving non-casters 5 combat skills (which amounted to 2.5 skills by the old system). Magic users got 3 combat skills, and clerics usually got 4.

I also added more non-combat stuff. That introduced several problems. First, it was never really clear how to use some of the non-combat skills. I was quickly on my way to realizing the "locks and traps" "thief" of D&D was a diversion to the game. The character existed to deal with the increasing use of locks and traps, but had to be justified by making locks and traps even more important, so you could no longer play without a thief. In my Tekumel campaign, I had one player create an aristocrat that basically was useless in a fight. It wasn't a pretty sight when he tried to use his charisma to get someone else to take care of the problem they had stumbled on. It was less pretty when I tried to push him into combat (at one point, he was standing by watching while two characters struggled with an undead, had he stepped in between the two characters, the undead would have been prevented from parrying one of the two, relying on dodge only).

Cold Iron does tend to have somewhat long fights. It also simply doesn't handle non-combat stuff well at all. But as a gamist system it really works well. Before I got involved with the game, it had already been through 3 or 4 years of hard-core gamist play with several GMs running games. The worst of the "holes" had been patched. Bunk choices were either eliminated, or well recognized ("Don't do that, your character will suck."). The base system doesn't trick you with lots of "character development" that is really bunk choices (except where I mistakenly added such choices).

I am in the process of writing up new character generation and skill rules that will give players some non-combat ability as a free extra. I'm eliminating the Charisma attribute (in any point buy system that is gamist and combat oriented, I've never seen a serious character have anything more than the minimum charisma). I'm playing around with the possibility that instead of chosing a non-combat ability, the player may choose an ability that makes a less optimal combat strategy more effective. With what I've learned over the past few years about what I really enjoy for game play, and how non-combat resolution meshes poorly with a tactical miniatures style combat system, I think I can massage Cold Iron into something that will be enjoyable to play. I have considered adding some of the ideas of D&D 3e's feats to increase character design choice (while being wary of adding bunk choices). A few simple indications of non-combat ability combined with old school "attribute checks" or whatever will give players enough feeling that there is more to the world than just combat. The key will be to use those abilities to enhance the game. Let the scout find a back door, let the thief open it (quietly) so the PCs get the drop on the enemies (and make a very challenging fight easier - but not eliminating the challenge). Let the scout track the wyvern back to his lair to find the treasure.

Frank

Game Master Characters

2005-10-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

As I've been contemplating my gamist GMing, I've been wondering why one of my habits seems to work. I almost always have an NPC member of the party that I run more or less like a PC. I get a lot of enjoyment out of presenting the players with a challenge, and then stepping in to help them overcome it.

I have heard some people warn of this style of play, and I have had issues in the past where I allowed my NPC to overshadow the PCs. This was often caused by the fact that they gained XP faster than the PCs since they never missed a session. Then there my high school days where I would often run my NPCs through a new module as my way of reading the module, and they got the XP for that! Then one (or two) of them would get to run through the module with the PCs!

But in some of my recent play, I've been paying a lot of attention. And I've talked to players specifically about their feelings. In my Arcana Evolved campaign, I thought I saw a big red flag when one of the players started moan about how he wasn't the "coolest scrapper anymore" after my NPC pulled a particularly good stunt. Then before I really had a chance to ask the player about it, he figured out how to use a new ability. When I got around to asking him if he felt he was being overshadowed and his character wasn't working out for him. He said "No, my character is starting to be really fun."

I think what happened here is that he didn't see my NPC as cheating, but that I had figured out a particularly good combination of abilities. And now he had a challenge. And when he stepped on up to that challenege, he succeeded.

I know there are a few games out there (can't recall the titles) which have one of the players take on some of the traditional GM roles, though I'm not sure that part has been the creating challenges part. Somehow though, it seems like my play is functional.

This is another contribution to Martin Ralya's 31 Days of Blogging for GMs.

Frank

Frustration with non-combat abilities in a gamist combat RPG

2005-10-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

All the talk about gamism on Chris Chinn's Deep in the Game has me thinking a lot about gamist games.

First I want to thank Chris for his essays which helped me understand that actually I do enjoy a good gamist game. I used to think I was primarily a simulationist, but now I realize that I problably just use some of the techniques that most often support simulationism to form the backdrop for a gamist campaign.

One of the things that's always bothered me is that combat dominates my games. Oh, I'm quite up front that I enjoy combat, and there will be lots of it, but sometimes I think I want some non-combat stuff going on. The trouble is that everytime I use game rules to provide some non-combat abilities, the result is horribly unsatisfying.

One early example is the roll your skill until you fail. This was most often seen in tracking and climbing. A sequence of skill checks would be necessary to successefully follow tracks to their end, or to climb a cliff or wall. Invariably, the skill wouldn't be quite enough and there would be a failure.

In my recent Tekumel campaign, another example showed up. One player noticed I provided an opportunity to be an aristocrat, so one player (who was almost certainly NOT interested in gamism) jumped on the chance. Of course he wanted to use his ability so after the PCs stumbled into a mystery, he wanted to convince his clan to send folks off to solve the mystery. Crash!

In looking back at these incidents with a gamist lense, I realize what the problem is. The problem is there's no real challenge to be overcome.

The climbing and tracking systems provide no mechanics for strategy. The calling for multiple rolls is just an attempt to make it feel more like combat (where multiple rolls are required for success), however, since there is no choices to make (or no real choices), the whole thing comes off as a waste of time.

The aristocrat is an example of another problem. The player is trying to bypass the challenge (or at least that's how it comes off to the GM). Of course since the GM is trying to run a gamist game, such a bypass will never work. Again, the result is an unsatisfying set of rolls with no reall strategy (though lots of player input).

The real problem is that abilities are provided for the players to choose that don't support the gamist ideal. Worse, the choice of these abilities often comes at a cost in combat effectiveness. In the Tekumel game, I provided the aristocrat choice for two reasons. One was a feeling of needing to be complete (the world has more than just fighters and magic users), the other was that I felt like I wanted to have more than just combat go on (since the Tekumel setting is very rich in social detail).

What I have learned is that one shouldn't present opportunities you don't really want the players to take. The Tekumel game would have been much better had I only allowed the players to play fighters and magic users. The social detail could have been run purely as color and used to direct the fighters and magic users.

I do think it would be interesting to have a gamist social interraction system, but for me, it would have to work with a tactical miniatures style combat system, which seems unlikely.

Now there are some non-combat abilities that are still useful, but the trick is to make them work better with gamist challenge. One possibility is a single roll with a yes or no result (either you track back to the monster's lair or not, if you do, you get more treasure, spending resource on the track skill pays off in additional equipment which improves combat effectiveness). Another possibility is to have the single roll result in advantage or disadvantage in an upcomming fight (you track someone back to their lair, a good tracking roll results in some tactical advantage - tracking pays off with increased combat effectiveness). Climbing again fits the yes/no or tactical advantage/disadvantage secenarios. What's important then is to make sure climbing and tracking can't be used to trivialize challenge. It may be ok to bypass a challenge, but if you get the artifact or solve the mystery without a combat challenge, then something didn't work right.

So then the trick is to provide the non-combat abilities in such a way that they don't reduce combat effectiveness too much. One thought I have is to have a list of non-combat abilities. Every character gets one, or maybe two, or maybe several. Thus there is no combat tradeoff. Another solution is to have combat tradeoff, but make it pretty minor (and make sure the system doesn't allow a player to create an ineffective character).

Oh, and now I realize that worrying about the dominance of non-combat is pointless. Truth is I enjoy combat and there are plenty of players out there who also enjoy plenty of combat. That doesn't mean that every moment in a game session must be combat, or preparation for combat. It does mean that we shouldn't be spending lots of time rolling skill checks that really don't mean anything. The non-combat parts of the game can be used to set the scene and set the mood for the combat. They can give a why for the combat.

This is a contribution to Martin Ralya's 31 Days of Blogging for GMs project.

Frank

Idea for making more effective use of game books in a campaign

2005-09-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

This entry inspired by More Books, or Fewer Books? on Martin Ralya's blog, and a first draft of this idea appears in the comments there.

Hi, my name is Frank and I collect RPG books. I've got several book cases of game books, but when I actually start gaming, it's rare for more than a few books to come into play.

In my current Arcana Evolved game, Arcana Evolved, Transcendance, the Dungeon Masters Guide, and the Monster Manual all get heavy use. Other books get minor use. I look up stuff occaisionally in the Players Handbook and have used a Dwarf NPC, and played with writing up a Spryte Rogue. Another NPC uses the Scout and Highland Stalker class from Complete Adventurer. One PC used some stuff from the Book of Roguish Luck.

I tried to use Mystic Secrets, but the players didn't find anything of real interest, despite it being freebie stuff (characters get a number of Power Rituals equal to 1 + Int bonus, plus more if their Knowledge (Ceremony) has more than 4 ranks). I've pulled occaisional monsters from the other monster books I have. I hardly ever use anything from the Players Guide to the Wilderlands, the campaign setting (and only one player looked at it, to choose his god for the Priest feat).

A variety of factors come into play in why this happens, but a couple critical factors:

First, it's only possible to really absorb so much material.

Second, since my players aren't as voracious collectors as I am, and some don't even like to read books, the players have very little idea of what might be in the other books I have on my shelf.

So here's a proposal for a way to gain more effective use of books in a game, by limiting the number of books in play.

First, the basic idea of the campaign is settled, including what the game system is. Then the core rule books for that game system are automatically included in the book set for the campaign (PH, DMG, and MM in the case of D&D. AE, DMG, and MM in the case of Arcana Evolved). Then, each player (including the GM), chooses one book. It's best for the group to choose these books together. A concensus process should be used to handle disagreement (so the GM, or anyone else, doesn't get to just veto books, but a book someone really is uncomfortable introducing into play also won't be brought in).

Then, each player takes their chosen book home and reads it. They should spend some time really reading the book. Their assignment is to be able to come back to the group and present just how that book will come into play. They aren't just picking one or two items from the book to use for their character, they're defining how the book will impact play (for example, several characters have evolved levels in my AE campaign, and they are constantly doing jobs for dragons - a definite tone has been set and Transcendence is being well used in my campaign).

After that, ideally the players would all commit to at least some time reading the other people's books. Perhaps each person reads one other person's book, concentrating on the highlighted areas or things that might be of interest to them personally. The GM might have to committ to more reading. Having multiple copies of the books would be good to speed up this phase.

Another possibility is for each player to commit to finding one feature in each book to highlight for play (so now in a group with a GM and 4 players, we have one more extensive presentation, and four additional nuggets for each book). Some kind of reward or recognition should be given to players (not the GM) who highlight things in the books that the GM could use against the players (a monster, a class that will be used by a major villain, an adventure seed inspired by something in the book).

Now sometimes there is some really cool idea (feat, class, spell, magic item) from a book, but there isn't enough material of interest to use the whole book. The hard line approach would be to say no. Leave that idea for use in a different campaign that does make use of the book. Another idea is to allow each player to introduce a small amount of material in this way. Ideally they would type up (or extract from a PDF) the little bit they are interested in, and that material would get added to the "house rules notebook." Of course there are possible copyright issues with doing this (but a group doing this for their own purpose, who own the book in question aren't really doing any harm). By doing this, the game isn't cluttered with books that really aren't being used.

Of course if the GM likes to use modules, they would be exempt. For one time monster appearances, the GM might be allowed to bring the monster in without adding it to the house rules notebook, though I'd be inclined to seriously constrain this. I think it would be much more effective if at most one extra monster book was used in a campaign, and a real commitment to regularly use those monsters is made. The group of course should negotiate exactly what the GM is allowed to use (and GMs shouldn't be forcing modules down their players throats).

I think to make the most effective use of this idea, even setting sourcebooks should not be exempt. As my example shows, a setting book that isn't being referenced is just clutter. So what happens if a setting is large, and has more books than players? Well, perhaps it's good that the campaign is constrained somewhat to a portion of the setting. Or maybe each player gets two books (but I suspect that would really wind up to be too many books). Maybe you can introduce the other books slowly over time. Perhaps a player is always allowed to introduce a cultural book for a new character (the 7th Sea setting comes to mind from this perspective). Another thought is that additional setting books come and go from play as needed (just like modules). If the book isn't one of the "chosen" then any idea from it that will stick around after the campaign moves out of that area needs to be entered into the house rules notebook.

What if this idea is appealing, but like me you have some players who just don't like to read? One possibility is to let them off the hook by using their slots to pull in books everyone is excited about (Transcendence would be perfect for this in my game).

I think there will be a cool benefit beyond streamlining the set of books in use, and increasing the players awareness of the content of each book. I think this process will give the players more buy in to the campaign. Not only do they know more about the campaign, but they've even had some significant input.

For my current campaign, my input would be the following:

I would extract Dwarves and the Rogue from the SRD and enter them into the house rules notebook. I might take the combat section (that I always reference in preference to the same section from AE) and put that into the house rules notebook. And then I'd put the PH on the bookshelf (ok, so for my current adventure, I might also have to extract a few spells from the SRD). I'd probably put all my additional monster books on the shelf (in fact, since I've started to use the SRD to pull text from to create my monster stat blocks, there's a real incentive to sticking with the SRD monsters). I'm really not sure what my one book would be. I'm really tempted to choose one of the environment books (Stormwrack, Sandstorm, or Frostburn).

What if no one picks a setting book? Well, perhaps that means no one is really interested in the setting, or perhaps it means the players aren't interested in where the PCs fit into the world. Using this idea doesn't necessarily prevent the GM from perusing other books outside the session. He can always bring material in through the house rules notebook (so can any other player).

Of course the books aren't chosen in a vacuum, so if the book you absolutely want in the game is chosen by someone else, well, that leaves you with another choice (or leaves them with another choice if your passion for the book is higher).

Frank

Challenging the assumption that permanent death of character must be at stake in D&D

2005-09-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

In my Arcana Evolved campaign, I've been working at removing death of character from the table.

Characters in my game are built with 32 points, come in at the same level all the other characters are at, everyone gets standard wealth (when they level up, they get to buy/improve items up to the standard wealth), hit points for each level are non-random (die size/2 + 1 + Con bonus - even at 1st). So there is nothing mechanical that stops a player from erasing the character name and damage from his dead charater's sheet and writing a new name down and introducing Fred II to the party.

And I won't even raise a social barrier to them doing that. I've even suggested it once or twice.

So why even make the player do that? I suggested to my players that at the end of an encounter, if a character died, they can simply state, no, I didn't die if they want. If they're ready to move on to a new character, cool.

My players resisted. That would be taking away the threat of death and cheapening the game. But they aren't losing anything by introducing Fred II that they haven't already lost (the character did still go down in battle).

Last night, a PC died. They were going to have him raised which would take 7 days and 7 castings of raise dead, and then the PC would lose a level. Likely no one would play a character who was a level behind when they could bring in a new character, even Fred II. So let's not make raise actually cost a level. But there's still this 7 days thing.

I again pointed out that the player could just bring in Fred II. And I re-offered the possibility of just sidestepping the BS and let the player reject the death. And I think it finally sunk in.

Does this idea really cheapen the game? Not if one accepts that basically all characters are the same level and have the same wealth.

Frank

Are D&D characters too complex?

2005-09-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of my second D&D 3.5 game, well, actually I use Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, but the basic game is still D&D. One of the issues I have with the game is that the characters are too complex. They have too many skills, feats, and abilities that never get used.

I've been trying to think about how to pare down the skill list to a set of skills that will actually get used. We use spot, listen, and search all the time. Intimidate and other charismatic skills get used occaisionally (though we never seem to have characters that really focus on those skills). Knowledge skills get almost no use (and the Akashics in the games almost never delved into the Akashic Record). The "thief" skills (disable device and open locks) rarely get used (I have always felt that these skills were circularly justified, traps started appearing in D&D, so we needed someone to deal with them, so the thief class was introduced, but now we have a character that can't contribute that well in combat, so we need more locks and traps for the thief to deal with, so now we really need thieves, and round and round the mulberry bush of justification we go). Climb, jump, and the other athletic skills get used rarely (especially given the ease of getting flying characters in AE). Tumble is hard to use (for one thing, it's not clear, does the attacker make two rolls, one against your tumble check and one against your AC, or just one. If the attacker makes just one roll, your tumble check has to have a good chance of being better than your AC to be even worth trying).

Spell casters also may end up with too many options. And then there's people's magic item lists. 3e isn't as bad as my AD&D days where PCs might have 20+ items, but still, characters that have items other than standard AC, weapon, and save items that are factored into the "combat" abilities spelled out on the character sheet often get forgotten.

On the other hand, all of these options are important for creating unique characters and providing a wealth of options that are gameable (I like the tactical wargame nature of D&D play). Some are important for creating flavor even if that flavor ends up granting little or no mechanical advantage.

But trading effectiveness for flavor creates imbalances in the characters. We have had numerous flavorful characters that basically sat around on their butts during combat. Even if the character sees use outside of combat, it still seems less effective. And potentially there is circular justification going on.

Character sheets tend to show the failings of this complexity. One page character sheets don't really work. All the skills need to be listed to remind folks what skills are there. There has to be space to show how things like saves and attacks are derrived (and it doesn't really work to have the formula on a "worksheet" on the back, and just plug in the number on the front). Spell casters need at least half a page to list out their spells. Magic item and possession lists take space. Even if you could keep the sheet to one page, there would probably still be stuff missed. My current sheet is four pages, though I get everything (except for spells) necessary for combat on one page (well, skills aren't on there either, but few skills apply in combat - perhaps I should make room for a couple on the front page like Tumble - but then information is being copied since those skills should still be listed with the rest).

Frank

Here I am

2005-09-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

Testing.