Escaping the Necromancer

In my vast collection of Blood Bowl figures, I have exactly one team of the undead. Their colors are black, red, and white, and I have them assigned as the Houston Texans.

Yes, I realize Houston is red, blue, and white (“deep steel blue” as a matter of fact), but my first couple seasons watching them in the league were on a non-“high def” television with questionable color. In my mind’s eye, they look black and red, and I tend to have a pretty stubborn mind’s eye. I have a similar problem with the Chicago Bears.

But why do I have my undead team assigned to the Texans? All my Blood Bowl teams are assigned to one NFL team or another (though the exact teams have changed over the years…I’ve been playing BB since 2^nd edition after all – circa 1990 – and there have been three new franchises and a league realignment since then), because…well, because I’m weird and stuff. But why undead?

Well, a couple reasons. The original Blood Bowl game (which also based their fictional “fluff” on the NFL) has two teams one could say are (nominally) based on the Dallas Cowboys: the Darkside Cowboys (a flashy dark elf team owned by a Prince of Darkness type) and the Champions of Death, an undead team coached by “Tom O’Landry the Undying.” Well, if the Cowboys are still the Cowboys, then where do I put the necromantic TX team? How about in Houston where the NFL sought to resurrect a franchise after the Oilers moved to Tennessee?

Yeah, that works for me.

Of course, play-style is also a factor in team assignment, as I’ve blogged before. The Seahawks are orks because (historically) we’ve been a run-heavy, hard-hitting defense, with a really loud (“waa-agh”) crowd. We’ve also had an almost complete lack of stellar receivers the likes of Andre Johnson, Megatron, Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Irving, etc. Our receivers have tended to be short and stunty, butter-fingered, or mediocre journeymen types (all apologies to Hall of Famer Steve Largent…one dude does not make for a history of high-flying receivers).

The undead are one of those teams that don’t have a real “specialty” type of play; instead they have a resilient team of “specialists.” Ghouls are speedy receivers and the vampire star player is a near unstoppable ball carrier, but they don’t have a real “passer” type player on the roster. A wight usually acts as the team’s QB, but it’s not a “natural” position (they don’t have any starting passing skills)…it’s just that you don’t want a zombie throwing the ball down the field to the ghouls.

But the real stand-out player on the roster (other than the exorbitantly priced vampire) is the mummy. The mummy is a real monster, and hands-down the toughest standard roster player on any 3^rd edition Blood Bowl team. No, they’re not ball-handlers; they are simply engines of destruction wrecking lines and players, leaving the pitch wet with brains and blood. A well-played mummy against an incautious team will wrack up 4 or 5 casualties and knock-out another half dozen over the course of the match…and that’s against a standard strength team. Against the more “breakable” types (goblins, hobbits, etc.) the number of bodies in the dug-out can get really impressive. Having a starting Strength of 5 (more than any other non-star player), Mighty Blow, and a burning thirst for vengeance on the living…well, they tend to advance quickly by racking up star player points.

J.J. Watt is a mummy, and a goddamn wrecking ball.

My wife is not a gamer, but she has played Blood Bowl on a number of occasions. Why not...she’s a big football fan, after all. The undead are one of her preferred teams: they give her the resilience to withstand my onslaughts (I tend to play smashy teams like the orks) and hit back hard. Actually, hitting hard is usually a secondary consideration for her; she really doesn’t like it when her players die (she tends to become emotionally attached to pieces that perform well in a game), and the undead are notoriously hard-to-kill (being already dead)…so when she does inflict casualties with her mummies it’s almost a surprise to her. Like she doesn’t know her own strength (“Oh, I did that?”). She was just trying to get the ball to the vampire.

J.J. Watt knows his own strength and knows exactly how to use it. I haven’t seen such a dominating individual performance from a single player against the Seahawks since last year’s game against Peterson and the Vikings. We won that game, too, but AP was nigh-unstoppable and it was the Vikes’ other weaknesses that the ‘Hawks were able to exploit. The five sacks and numerous tackles for losses and QB hits delivered by the Texans were not all attributed to Watt’s stats, but they might as well have been…it was the Seahawks’ need to double and triple team him that allowed the rest of the defense to come free. The Texans were ferocious…and it started with Watts.

That’s a good team down in Houston and the Seahawks had to show some high caliber resiliency themselves to come back and wrest the victory away from the Texans…a Texans team that dominated our depleted offensive line and moved pretty well against the defense. We’ll see the resiliency of Houston next week when they go into San Francisco next week; can they pull it together and get up the emotion they need to take it to the Niners? Sitting at 2-2, losing at home, and falling behind the Colts and Titans in the division…can they muster their talent and blow up the defending NFC champs?

I have a feeling Watt will be out for blood. If he was a minotaur he’d probably eat which ever quarterback loses the match (“Yates! Get ready to suit up!”). Hell, minotaur or not, I’d be afraid to be in that locker room if the Texans lose three in a row. You let the mummy off the chain, and who knows what might happen!

Someone's going to die, and it ain't this guy

Next up for the Seahawks: at the High Elves of Indianapolis. Hoo-boy…can the “Legion of Boom” handle the Colts’ high flying offense, bolstered by new dragon warrior, Trent Richardson? Andre Luck was drafted way ahead of Russell Wilson…way ahead of everyone, really, being the #1 pick overall. Can the phoenix warrior out –duel our slippery star goblin? Can the Seahawks get a couple of our injured linemen back? Another frigging 10am start on the road...sheesh.

[J.J. Watt stats in Blood Bowl:

Mummy (M +2, S +1, add Block, Break Tackle, Pass Defense, Tackle)

For other players, call Johnson a strong, fast ghoul with Catch and use the vampire Count for Foster. Schaub is a wight with a handful of passing skills…or a zombie if you’re feeling uncharitable today]

Bean Counting

Yesterday, I missed most of the football games on television, including the entirety of the Seahawks game. I did hear the first touchdown on my car radio before losing reception in Lynnwood, but between 1:30 and 5:30 I was effectively out of action, because my son and I were at Chuck E. Cheese, celebrating the birthday of a two year old amigo.

Now, I don’t know if Chuck E. Cheese exists as a franchise outside of Washington. Hell, it barely exists here…the one in Lynnwood is one of only a handful remaining in the state. I should note the place was high on my list of All-Time Favorite Places as a child, so there’s a certain nostalgia assigned to it, but I haven’t been to one in years…not since a buddy decided to have his 20^th or 22^nd year birthday bash at one (I’m not the only person subject to nostalgia) and everyone, including my buddy, was sorely disappointed by the experience.

For one thing, the concept seems to have changed immensely over the last couple-three decades. When we were kids, I recall the place being bigger, and having a much larger assortment of video games (what we used to call arcade games)…yes, it had the animatronic rat and cheap pizza and play areas for small children, but pre-teens had much more of the types of games one might find (these days) at the larger arcades, like GameWorks. “Cutting edge” arcade games used to be the order of the day…I remember when Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace were these incredibly awesome, super-cool/high-tech vids and the only place you could find them to play them were at Chuck E. Cheese. But anything resembling cutting edge electronic entertainment seems to have been dropped by the franchise sometime circa 1989 and the place is now geared more to small children (like my son). Perhaps there’s just no way to keep up with the technology and quality of console games available to your average teenager at a reasonable price.

This game took a lot of tokens, back in the day...

So instead, most of the games are of the “carnival” variety (throwing balls into hoops or rings or bopping stuff or shooting water from a gun), and ALL of the games offers tickets at the end of a round of play…tickets that can be redeemed for fairly cheap carnival prizes. How cheap? Well, most games seemed to offer three to six tickets based on the quality of one’s play (several “maxed out” at five) and it took 100 tickets to get a keychain, and 400 to get a non-articulated, 3” Spider-Man action figure (which my son wanted). There were some really cheap-ass board games on the wall that required 1500+ tickets to redeem. I think part of the scam is parents have the ability to make up the difference in the price with cold, hard cash if a child hasn’t earned enough tickets through play (keeping in mind that each play costs money…or “tokens”…as well).

Still, D hit the jackpot a couple times on one or two games and ended the day with almost 200 tickets (186, actually) which we were able to redeem for a small (6” long) nerf rocket launcher, a curly straw, and two tiny rubber frogs. My boy, being two and a half, had nearly as much fun with these “prizes” last night as he’d had running around and playing games at Chuck’s. Okay, maybe “nearly as much” is a stretch, but certainly he had much more than I would have enjoyed had they been my reward for five hours of play.

But, of course, I’m not two years old.

One can draw an analogy (well, I can draw an analogy) between this type of play and the play of our favorite table-top role-playing game. I mean, can’t you? You spend several hours, hopefully enjoying play (as my son and I did), and then you get a paltry award of “tickets” (experience points) that get exchanged for…well, for very little on average. In fact, most game sessions probably sees players receiving NO reward for the actions in a particular session, and only after several sessions does one receive a reward (“leveling up”) and even then the reward isn’t all that great. Depending on the edition, you might receive a handful of hit points, you might (might!) receive a slight uptick in attack chance or saving throws, you might learn a new spell…and that’s about it. 3^rd Edition/D20 at least packed more into the reward by giving you skill points to spend (about as useful as rubber frogs, in my opinion), some bonus feats (staggered by level depending on class), and some attribute increases. Even so, there are still some “level ups” where “not much happens” (ain’t much difference going from 4^th level fighter to 5^th level fighter, for example).

I wrote a bit before about the “leveling-opens-content” thang, and how I’m tired of it…been tired of it for a while, but am now more tired of it than ever before. You know, my big “claim to fame” was my writing of the B/X Companion for high level B/X play…but how many B/X campaigns (or Labyrinth Lord or whatever) actually get to a level where such a book would be useful. In the three or four years I was playing B/X prior to my “play-testing phase” (in which all the games I’ve been running seem to be testing one thing or another), none of the player characters ever reached Name level, let along the 15^th plus range postulated in the B/X Companion. Sure, you could have your players create high-level characters from the get-go, but this is still only a “patch” to the issue of closed content…besides which it trades off (i.e. loses) the actual play aspect of the game (the fighting and finding of all those low- and mid-range monsters and treasures), which is hardly desirable.

Yes, “paying your dues” is an essential part of the D&D game, but not everyone wants to play the young farm boy that grows up to be a glamorous Jedi Knight. Some people simply want to have a series of adventures as Han Solo. And some people want to be Old Man Ben Kenobi from the start without going through all that prequel jazz.

[sorry for the Star Wars references…it’s been on my brain lately]

I’ve been revisiting The Hobbit quite a bit lately, both the novel and the Rankin-Bass film. The reason being that I have a young child to whom I read at night, and who really digs the music (because originally The Hobbit was a children’s fairytale, unlike the ridiculous action film currently being sold to the public as Tolkien). I’ve discussed before my whole problem with assigning a “class” (in D&D terms) to the dwarves or hobbit in the story, but after analyzing the thing (with regard to my recent game concept musings) I see less and less where there is any “advancement” that is taking place in the characters. Despite defeating lots of monsters (trolls, goblins, spiders, etc.) and finding lots of treasure and magic items (from the troll hoard, to Gollum’s ring, to the dragon’s lair) these characters aren’t developing in the traditional D&D sense of the term. They are maturing as individuals, they are seen as more heroic based on their actions, but their inborn effectiveness remains the same at the end of the adventure as at the beginning. Where their effectiveness does improve, it is based on the finding of magical equipment (Orcrist, Sting, Sauron’s One Ring) and the use of that equipment.

[as a side-note, has anyone ever noticed that while the dwarven adventurers are defeated at every turn, the penalty for that feat is ALWAYS capture? At the hands of the trolls, the goblins, the spiders, the wood elves, the dragon…the only consequence they ever face is being bagged, chained, webbed, imprisoned, or entombed in the mountain. The only time any of the character’s dies is at the end of the book/film…and then, that is death in VICTORY (over the goblins in the Battle of Five Armies), not death in defeat. Just thought that was interesting, and certainly something I’m considering in the design process as well]

Now, the game I’m currently working/writing still has “bean counting” because…well, because it appeals to my snarky sense of humor as well as my competitive attitude. However, right now the “beans” turn into a meta-game mechanic, increasing character effectiveness in game (similar to “karma” in the old Marvel Superheroes RPG…thanks, Mr. Grubb!)…there’s no rules for using them to “advance” (i.e. “permanently make more effective”) the baseline character a player is playing. If you start as Bilbo Baggins, you remain Bilbo (though perhaps one who has lost his pipe and pocket handkerchief). If you start as Gandalf you remain Gandalf (though you might acquire a magic sword along the way).

Is that “fair?” Boromir is one tough hombre, but Aragorn is better (and has other skills to boot). Moonglum might be a better swordsman, but will never have the sorcery abilities of Elric (and both will always be better swordsmen than Count Smirogan Baldhead). Does this make them less heroic in the stories in which they appear?

Again, you have to ask what is the point of fantasy role-playing…is it to become more powerful? Why? To open up content? Why not simply open content from the beginning? Because the characters will all die if they’re forced to face the dragon? Would a character in a story die for facing a dragon? Neither Bilbo nor Bard got cooked by Smaug…but Beowulf wasn’t quite as lucky.

Characters die in fairytales…both modern ones (like Tolkien) and ancient sagas (like Beowulf and Arthur).  Sometimes characters die long before the end of the story (i.e. they don’t wait for a “dramatically appropriate climax” in the action)…like Hector or Ajax. That’s fine…the idea of a serial adventure game (like D&D) is that the campaign or saga goes on…the PCs are protagonists and the main characters, but if they go down the story continues and others must “take up the torch.” In other words, I’m not talking about “taking death off the table,” or even meaningless death. Death has meaning in a story…or should have meaning…regardless of the point at which it occurs in the tale.

So why does a character need to have these regular level increases? Why is it important to give the PC an extra 3-5 hit points every five or ten or 20 game sessions? That’s a cheap-ass prize.

There is something to be said for experience…the paragraph Kevin Siembieda includes in every Palladium rulebook holds true to a certain degree. But show me an experienced adventurer, and I’ll show you a guy with a bad back, a trick knee, and a lot of gaps in his teeth. Scars and a hook for a hand…not to mention night sweats and fantasy PTSD from facing giant slavering monsters should be the order of the day for an “experienced” adventurer. Frodo’s Morgul wound never fully heals and bothers him for years after his adventure…why would a veteran of a dozen dungeons remain in happy health, only getting better with time? Because of clerical magic? Doesn’t every raise dead spell sap a point of Constitution?

The issue raised by Will (mentioned in my prior post) was one of what motivates players better than regular continued improvement? What indeed? That’s the real question: what GOALS can you provide players that they can shoot for…what WIN conditions can you provide that will encourage players to come back and keep playing? Because serial play…accompanied by development, identification, and fantasy escapism…is desirable. We don’t want just a one-off game.

This isn’t Dungeon! where a player wins once after collecting 10,000 gold and returning to Start.

More on this later folks.

A Beginning

I'll be quick because...well, it's Football Sunday but I've got a lot to do, including getting a gift and showing up to a kid's birthday party (scheduled for the same time as the Seahawks game? What's that all about?)...plus something about breakfast and naptime and all the usual Sunday rigamarole. Yes, I'm back on "single parent duty," as a week after returning from Montevideo the wife is currently on a plane to NYC. Fortunately (?) the beagles woke us up at 6am or she would have missed her flight.

Play-testing of yet another “fantasy heartbreaker” began on Thursday night. Only had one player show up (thanks, Will!). Materials consisted of two pages of printed notes, a modified Keep on the Borderlands, two copies of Holmes Basic (for equipment lists), a couple D6s, a D20, and a case full of poker chips (because I didn’t have a chance to actually pick up dried beans from the supermarket, which would have been my first choice...have to remember to that this week).

Definitely a different game.

I spent a lot of this last week reading up on a couple recently published games: 13^th Age and Dungeon World. There’s a good couple posts over at The Walking Mind discussing how these games (along with Cook’s Numenera) could act as easy transitional games for folks looking to move from D&D to “something else.” I, of course, have no interest in creating my own “transitional game” but what I’ve read I found interesting enough to at least take a look at these games…maybe I'll pick 'em up sometime this afternoon, if I get a couple more sales of 5AK to justify the purchase.

[ha…who am I kidding? If I can find any free time today, I'll probably be sitting in front of the TV or taking a nap]

Why am I not interested in creating a “transitional game?” Because I’m not really interested in transitioning gamers from one game (or one style or system) to anything else. I’ve made peace with Pathfinder, as I wrote a month or two back. People who love that game can and should continue their enjoyment. MY goal (as much as I have one…the concept is still pretty amorphous in my mind at the moment) is to bring non-gamers into gaming, table-top gaming, in the easiest and most accessible way possible while still:

1. Playing up the strengths of the table-top game over computer games, and
2. Firing the imagination of the participants (can’t be too abstract).

I like the system I’ve created. Despite the misgiving of some of my readers, there didn’t seem to be any issues with the game as a “class-less/skill-less” system.

Will, at least, didn’t have any issue with it…and we discussed (prior to play) how much he dislikes the “blank page of indie games.” Do you know what I mean? Where people are told during chargen: “pick five things your good at” or “assign 10 points between three descriptive phrases (that you make up yourself.” Some people dig the hippy-dippy, loosey-goosey-ness of games like FUDGE and RISUS…others (like Will) prefer a game with a bit more structure to ‘em. Me, too, for that matter…it keeps the game tight and focused, which is a lot easier for a lazy DM like myself.

[there are, of course, plenty of indie games that DON’T confront a player with a blank page, and you’ll find plenty of "structured" games…even “old school” ones…that have blank spots. Villains & Vigilantes have several powers of the “make this up yourself” variety, if I remember correctly]

Having said that, the magic system in the new project is a lot more freeform than what you’d find in any edition of D&D…or its retro-clones, or its pseudo-clones (the latter term being the one I’d apply to Five Ancient Kingdoms). And, of course, Will chose to play a magician of the “black magic” school. Duh…who wouldn’t?

Things ended up with quite the Clark Ashton Smith feel to it. “Nazaloth” showed off his sword skill by killing a pair of bugbears in Ye Old Caves of Chaos and then – after getting as much info as possible out of the corpses using some minor necromancy – decided it'd be a good idea to raise the corpses as large, hairy muscle. Unfortunately, that particular spell went awry and the ghuls, while raised, were much more interested in tearing apart their slayer than in following any orders. This resulted in a chase back to the entrance (where a group of recently freed slaves huddled awaiting their liberator) and tragic hilarity ensued.  Nazaloth eventually got the dead under control and directed their rage on some latecomer bugbears, while he led the surviving refugees down the side of the cliff, using a makeshift rope crafted from the guardsmen’s bedding.

The main system question Will had was regarding the development system...mainly, where was the "carrot" of advancement to drive the characters forward? It wasn't enough to start out as a competent character, there was an interest in becoming "something more,"or developing and changing over time. I have some ideas for this (it's tied to the "bean counting"...natch) but I have to tighten 'em up.

But really, I don't have time for writing about this at the moment. I just wanted to get a quick note our (I've been meaning to do so for the last three days but, you know...busy).

Later, Gators.

Classless

Damn...Wednesday already?

Hate to say it, but the week has been flying by with little productive action from me. I'm working on a little something-something that I hope to have in "test-able" form for tomorrow night...but we'll see what happens.

In other news: a quick search of the web found that Five Ancient Kingdoms has been talked up in a couple places, though the only new review I've found was on a French forum. Those who can parle francais are welcome to check it out here. It's fairly complimentary (thanks pseudo!), with his main gripes being A) the resolution of the artwork, B) the blandness/unoriginality of the introductory adventure, and C) the changing of proper names from their original (real world) analogs....especially irritating to folks who already have to translate the game into their own language (e.g. from English to French).

Regarding that last complaint...sorry. At my own table, I generally stick to the actual proper names, but for the 5AK game I wanted to emphasize that the setting is fiction, not historical. I'm sure there are folks who would take umbrage with painting certain cultures with an unflattering brush...but a fantasy game requires fantasy antagonists, you know? It's like my other adventure game (only play-tested once) that makes all the fine folks of Portugal to be heinous villains because...well, you know the justification for that is really a separate post topic. But there's a reason I haven't put that one up as a free download.

(yet)

Anyway...

In completely rewriting the whole "fantasy adventure game" concept from the ground up, I find myself branching into territory that I have (for years now) been avoiding: namely the realm of gaming divorced from the concepts of "class" and "level." Ugh...gross. I like class and level, and I use it in most everything (Cry Dark Future and Clockwork being notable exceptions...but then, they're based off other RPGs that don't use class and level)...even such random concepts as DMI, post-apoc, and my supers game. Hell, even CDF has levels if not actual classes.

The problem with ridding oneself of classes and levels is you rid yourself of two very useful design concepts: an archetypal shorthand (chargen made easy) and a golden carrot (reward system). Unless you're trying to design a one-off (or otherwise short-lived serial) story game (i.e. premise addressing RPG facilitating the narrativist creative agenda) then all you're doing is setting up a sim-style game in which PCs just piddle around, in which the GM is either a dancing monkey for the players' enjoyment or a railroader extraordinaire. Neither of which I was shooting for, by the way.

Oh, and no...there's no "skill system" in the game. Get that out of your head!

So, I've been working on a different style of bean-counting reward system (literally...the mechanic is currently referred to as "beans" in the draft notes). In some it feels like I'm trying to reinvent other "chip-counting" systems like FATE or Savage Worlds...except that I'm not and the system feels a lot different from those (other than the beans).  Still...classless. The whole thing makes me decidedly uncomfortable. What's to keep players from making all sorts of random, dumb-dumb type characters?

The rest of the rules, natch.
; )

Well anyway...that's just what I'm working on this week. Who knows? Maybe it will all be scrapped by the weekend. At this point, I'm still shooting for something around the size of Holmes Basic.

A Perfect Storm

It would be out of character for me to not at least mention that I was at last night’s Seahawks-Niners game, where even the sky itself seemed inclined to add to the noise and pyrotechnics with thunder and lightning. It was a good win against a good team…I won’t bother gloating, since there’s still plenty of football left to be played including the rematch in San Francisco. However, I will say I was proud to see so many fans stick out the weather, lending their voices to the cause.

My own son was in attendance (with stout ear muffs) and we considered sending him and mom home when the game was suspended with no timeline announced for resumption. However, he wanted to stay (after powering down a hotdog while sheltering under the bleachers) and stay we did. He yelled and stomped with the rest of us, and didn’t start getting squirrely till the very end…pretty good considering the extra hour tacked onto the game time. He’s a great kid…too bad this will be the last season he gets in for free (he turns three in January).

All right, that’s it. Back to the regular gaming-related posts.

[go, ‘Hawks]

Dichotomy

A couple days back, Anthony was commenting on my Cacodemon post when his brain went into a minor meltdown (I don’t fault him for this, BTW, as this kind of thing tends to happen to me all the time when I start musing and muttering). He wrote:

“On a related note, with regard to age of character, character level, whatever…I feel like I’m tired of levels! And perhaps anything related to character advancement! How about a game where the character you make is the character you make, for the entire time you are playing in said campaign. I mean, if campaigns have a tendency to crash and burn (with those decades-long campaigns being the exception to the rule, and trust me I doubt the veracity of those claims of long-running campaigns), then why not create a character that just advances in abilities, rather than have the seemingly superfluous add-on of an XP system. “I’m not quite sure what I even mean by all of that…maybe it’s related to my growing disdain for roleplaying games as being counting exercises. I’m tired of counting XP!”

 Anthony then goes on to write that he’s still interested in some sort of character development (actually, “development” is my word), that may not be necessarily in the traditional, linear, level-up fashion of D&D.

I understand his frustration. I do, really. It was about…oh…nine or ten years ago that I started writing a fantasy RPG that had an XP system that just went from 1 to 9, with each number representing a different, life-changing experience a character might have. For example, going to war for the first time or being crowned king. There were more than nine possible experiences, but a character was limited to nine…and each experience provided its own individual bonus or change or advantage to the character.

In fact, the milestone mechanic in Five Ancient Kingdoms is the direct descendant of this idea, though it was developed into its current incarnation through my (as yet unpublished) B/X Star Wars game, combining my original idea with the destiny mechanics (I think that’s what they’re called) found in the Star Wars Saga (D20) Edition. You can also see something similar in the old school game Villains & Vigilantes, where every “level up” gives you some mechanical advantage (chosen from a substantial list), in addition to bonus HPs and such. I incorporated something similar to V&V in my Land of Ice campaign setting for B/X.

In developing the milestone concept, both for B/X SW and 5AK, it was suggested to me that I return to my original idea of giving each different ‘stone some sort of related “power up.” There are a couple-few reasons why I rejected the idea:

1. No matter how hard you try to make the game otherwise, some people are going to see certain associated power-ups as “better” than others. If a character gets a +1 to initiative and attack rolls because they’ve been “blooded in combat” that’s going to be more desirable (in a D&D-style game) than certain other advantages…unless you do the dumb-dumb thing of making ALL the various associated bonuses as being “combat-related” (see Saga Star Wars for that kind of stupidity in game design).
2. Milestones were developed as a bonus for taking “extra action” outside of the normal loot/slay paradigm (rewarding players who engage the world, i.e. “going above and beyond”) but it wasn’t meant to distract from other adventure-related goals (i.e. finding treasure). At least not in Five Ancient Kingdoms since most Arabic folktales tend to fall into the category of “adventurer looking to get rich.” In B/X Star Wars, it’s a different story (and a topic for a different blog post).
3. I still like the idea of variable XP totals between player characters as a gauge of “how well” players are doing in the game. I don’t like the idea of everyone “leveling up at the same rate.” Call me a curmudgeon if you like but I’m NOT of the generation where everyone on the little league team gets an award at the end of the year. I like to have comparison and variation and tracking individual “points” does that.

[hmm…this might be a good time to note that I am NOT a fan of the Chaosium/BRP system of development for precisely this reason. I don’t like it anyway because I find it to be too slow, too random, and too dumb (only going up), but placing the emphasis on skill use as the only means of “advancement” makes the whole game about finding ways to use those skills (to meet the reward requirements of the system) rather than exploration of the setting, which would otherwise seem to be the desired objective of the Chaosium game designers]

There’re some other pitfalls, too (which is part of why that experiment nine or ten years ago didn’t fly) but I don’t want to get into ‘em right now.

But as I said, I understand Anthony’s venting. It IS a pain in the ass to track and record XP, and the whole idea of linking not just effectiveness but game content to advancement is kind of shitty. I have a mage that wants to explore the astral plane…sorry, you don’t get access to a suitable spell for 12+ levels (and it takes weeks of play just to go up one level). Maybe your DM will let you find a cubic gate or magic portal in the course of adventuring, but otherwise you’ve got to commit to a few years of constant gameplay to open that content…assuming the group and DM are willing to stick together that long.

And, of course, this doesn’t just apply to magic-users. “My character’s a hero! When do I get to fight a dragon?” When you’re damn good and ready in about eight or ten levels…unless I’m a sadist of a DM. And this is, of course, assuming you find adequate equipment along the way. “But isn’t this Dungeons & Dragons we’re playing?”

It sure is. Which means you get none of that “big kid stuff” for a long, long time.

What folks should understand (and what I’ve tried to explain before) is that there are a lot of parts to the game that were not conceptualized by the designers when they first created the game, they were simply added and added and added IN PLAY to make the game “fun.” And a lot of the things that were added were not very well thought out and have caused all sorts of problems for all sorts of reasons over time.

The XP/level advancement system was NOT present from the get go. Arneson wanted a game of underground exploration and fantasy adventure; THAT was his objective. Napoleonic wargame maneuvers underground against the orcs of Sauron or whatever. It was only after a while of playing that players asked “shouldn’t we be getting better [i.e. more effective] at this exploration thing as we survive?” The objective of finding treasure/gold was ALREADY in place…it was a very small leap of concept to adapt that to leveling up.

And it makes sense…but it makes MORE sense when you consider the original scale. “Gygaxian ecology” wasn’t necessarily in effect from the get go. Who knows what giant piles of treasure were pulled out prior to concepts of scaling and “realistic” or “balanced” treasures? The scale of character advancement was different, too…from a "three level" system based on CHAINMAIL (no-name, Hero, and Superhero) to the level seven to twelve range found in OD&D (which quickly scaled up due to infinity potential, Monty Haul campaigns, and the potential of Odin as an antagonist).

2^nd Edition AD&D tried to reinvent the game with a revised XP system, but that was pretty much trying to shut the lid on Pandora’s Box…the game needed a rework from the ground up if you wanted to restructure folks’ assumptions. 3^rd Edition DID restructure the game assumptions drastically, by making the game entirely about combat (sure, sure…”overcoming challenges,” but those are mostly fighting monsters especially as PCs advance in level) with rewards (feats, spells, etc.) being related to the same (i.e. combat). 4^th Edition was a natural “next step” from what had been introduced in 3^rd Edition, even though people hated it.

But I’ve blogged about all this before. You can check out my various posts on advancement and development and Arneson’s Blackmoore, etc. scattered throughout this blog. The question isn’t really what D&D is or isn’t or what we’d like it to be. The question is this: given that you don’t like it, what are you going to do about it?

The question is not intended to be rhetorical and is directed at myself as much as any of my readers. Fact is, folks like advancement (not just development) of character. Arneson’s players asking him, “shouldn’t we be getting better at this?” is pretty solid evidence. I think it’s also safe to say that practical experience in one’s craft (in this case “adventuring”) is worth something…most would assume that the wet-behind-the-ears rookie isn’t as effective as the ten year veteran. But do you want the game to model the progress from rookie to veteran? I only ask because, you know, that’s what it does.

And some would say: “That’s the game.” D&D is about young Turks going into an underground world and looking for treasure, eventually becoming hardened vets. Fantasy Vietnam, right?  This doesn’t contrast too much with traditional folklore and hero tales, most of which combine “coming of age” themes with their tales of valor. The difference is in the effectiveness of the heroes in classic legends. Theseus may be on his first adventure, but he still manages to beat the Minotaur single-handedly (and bereft of armor or magical accoutrements). How many 1^st level fighters can claim that?

[yes, I suppose one could say Theseus (in D&D terms) got incredibly lucky with his dice rolls, and it is because of this exceptional encounter that he is remembered as a legendary figure. But his is but one example of many, and don’t you want your characters to have the same “literary probability” of heroic achievement? Or do you want your game to be a crapshoot lottery when it comes to seeing if player characters’ names will be remembered?]

Again, we know what D&D is…maybe it's not the game we want to play. At least, not every day of the week.

Do you like variation and disparity in power levels between player characters? Do you think that “good play” (a whole ‘nother line of design theory) should be rewarded with increased in-game effectiveness? Do you want players to have to “pay their dues” before they can access “the good stuff?”

Think about your own fortitude for this last one: does making folks wait for content make the pay-off all the sweeter? Or does it simply frustrate the hell out of ‘em to the point where they want to play something else? Keep in mind that the DM has to wait, too…no excursions into the deepest bowels of hell when the PCs at your table are all under 4^th level!

Personally, I’m not much for delayed gratification. That paradigm of doling out points and content over time may be a frigging godsend to the video game industry – who can turn players’ desire to achieve into a steady supply of subscription cash – but that’s the very thing that turns me OFF of such games. I don’t want to have to play and play and play just to reach a point where my character can ride an f’ing horse! Again, I understand that “that’s the game;” it’s just not the game for me.

SO…given all these thoughts, what do I want to do with my redesigned fantasy game? Do I want characters to begin their adventuring career as Harry Potter or as Elric of Melnibone? I’ve already said I don’t like systems like FATE or FUDGE because they’re not “nailed down” enough for my taste, and I certainly don’t want a point-based system like GURPS or a skill based system like BRP (chargen takes too damn long). I like the specificity and simplicity inherent in a random ability, class/level system…it may just be a matter of scaling the game properly.

I’ve talked about level compression before; I’ve also talked about cutting the “XP needed” by a factor of five or ten. It’s possible to write a game so that a “1^st level” character has the same effectiveness as, say, a 4^th level character (by adjusting HPs, saves, attack rolls, etc.) and making each step of advancement be the equivalent of going up two or three levels. That’s an easy enough fix.

But it still requires a system for awarding those levels, and that would generally be based on some type of “merited action,” whether we’re talking XP or the clearing of a dungeon level.

What if your character went up one level every time he or she found a stairway down? That might resolve some of the problems with the standard system (counting points, opening content, etc.) though it wouldn’t allow for much variation/discrepancy between characters. It would create an objective of exploration certainly; but it would also undermine the traditional premise of “treasure finding,” Maybe you want that, maybe you don’t.

All right, that’s enough for me to chew on for awhile…hopefully, these musings were useful to Anthony.

; )

Spell Works (Part 2)

[continued from here]

Abstract magic systems can be a bit overwhelming for players used to more traditional (spell list type) magic systems. Plus it can just be tricky to provide the game information to know what is and isn’t possible…what fits within the scope of the game. To off-set this, you find many abstract systems will include a certain number or specific, named spells for players to choose. Ars Magica, for example, has each mage select a certain number of specific, named formula (spells)…though the presence of these spells does not prevent a character from  using spontaneous magic or developing new formula of their own.

On the other hand not all abstract systems do this. When playing Dresden recently, my pregen character simply had “air evocations” and “water evocations” and I was left to my own creativity in determining how this magic worked. For me, this provided a lot of freedom of expression and my character was damn effective…however, the other mage player ended up “sitting on the sidelines” most of the time, only using his magic in a reactive fashion (like offsetting the antagonist mage’s magic), despite having more raw power than my own character. Abstract systems don’t work for everyone.

But throwing a giant list of spells at players and saying “choose” can be at least as over-whelming as creative freedom.  The lists in D&D and other systems contain hundreds of spells…how would a new player be expected to choose their spell “inventory.” Usually, the offset to this is to limit access so that spells are digested in chunks: a 1^st level magic-user in D&D only needs to worry about the magic-user spell list, and only needs to select from the 1^st level spells. By the time the character reaches 3^rd level (which might take weeks or months) it can be presumed that the player is fairly familiar with the level one spells and is ready to move onto to spells of the 2^nd order of magnitude.

[my guess is that limited spell access in D&D has more to do with “game balance” and that particular game’s cosmology, but it DOES provide a mechanical way to introduce players – over time – to a gradually expanding content. Anyone who’s ever tried to start a “high level campaign” from scratch will know how painful it can be for a player to create a Start-at-10^th-or-12^th-level magic-user because of the time spent choosing spells]

On the other hand, some games with specific magic systems grant “full access” but simply limit the total number of options available to the player. A sorcerer in 1^st Edition Stormbringer has the possibility of possessing every spell I the book (especially Melniboneans or the priests of Pan Tang)…however, the total number of spells is limited to summon elemental, summon demon, summon elemental ruler, summon beast lord, and summon demon lord. Yes, there are four different elementals and six different demons meaning the total number of spells is 13, but as the mechanics for summoning a fire elemental or water elemental is exactly the same (as is the summoning of an attack demon or a defense demon, etc.), it’s hardly a huge amount of information that needs to be digested by the new player’s brain.

For the “introductory” game I’m talking about, I find myself torn between the two possible types of system as each has a number of drawbacks.

Abstract System

- Requires a creativity that might be hard for a new player (aimed at kids, remember?)

- Has the tendency or propensity for making mage characters too effective, shifting focus and upstaging other characters

- Can be a bitch to design and explain/write (I’ve tried my hand at this before, more than once)

Specific System

- Can be a long process (with regard to time and page count) creating all inclusive “spell lists”

- Limits player creativity somewhat (I didn’t really want to include “spell research” rules)

- Not sure it works with the themes I originally discussed, unless I open access to the whole “spell book” (thus risking over-whelming the new player).

I will say that I find the idea of doing an Ars Magica Lite really distasteful. For one thing, Ars is already quite well done. For another thing, I’ve found Ars mostly unplayable as an adventure-oriented RPG (which is kind of the point of my game). Plus, this game ain’t going to be any kind of “historic fantasy” game…I already did that with Five Ancient Kingdoms.

But the system I was dreaming up before…a riff off B/X, natch…welp, now that I’ve been thinking and mulling it over, I can anticipate some possible problems. What I wanted to do was base spell knowledge (i.e. spells known) on a combination of INT, character level, and age…regardless of spell magnitude. However, that means providing access to the whole spell book – which might not be too bad if I limit the number of spells in the game, but I wasn’t thinking of something as small as Stormbringer. More like B/X with 60-70 spells spread between five and seven orders of magnitude.

I think…I think that what I need to do is consider a few things about the game before I actually start working on the magic system. I mean, I’ve got the basics in mind, and I should still be able to write it up…getting the geezers I want, at least in a house-ruled type B/X game. But I want to take a few moments to think about something someone brought up a little bit ago.

In fact, it might require another rambling blog post to address.

; )