A bit of fun

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.

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

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

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

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:

1. creative - generating ideas, situation, etc.


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


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


4. 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

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

Update: And guess what - I've got permission to publish something that IS Cold Iron...

Creative Combustion

-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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

Alertness Checks

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

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

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