RPG partisanship leads to reading incomprehension

I'm amazed at the knee jerk reactions some people will do when some of the fundamentals of the RPG rules they love get questioned. To the point they'll read what they want to read and respond accordingly oblivious to the actual content of the blog post.

Yesterday I wrote up a small post touching on the effectiveness of a sword vs full plate and how, given the ineffectiveness of a sword swing, those combats usually boiled down to grabbing, pinning and killing with a dagger or with a blade pushed through the softer spots. My point was that wrestling and grappling played a key element in such combats and that the game rules were "divorced" when it came to such cases.

I got all sorts of responses. None of which were pleasant. Most addressed my "lack of imagination". Others asked if I had never done a fight without weapons. Who the fuck was talking about fighting without a weapon? Sword vs sword in full plate is hardly unarmed combat. I was addressing the lack of leverage the character's wrestling and grappling skills had when fighting WITH a sword against full plate.

Why does this reading incomprehension exist and what's its impact? I'm troubled that this leads to a lack of progress in the game development arena. When someone raises a hand a points out that some modifiers would be better applied somewhere else and gets hammered with arguments against something that is not the actual text of the post then idea exchange and improvement in the game gets hampered.

Is this caused by rules heavy games? A "don't rock the boat" syndrome when players don't want their rules questioned because it would break too many things and lead to a new learning curve?

Have you suffered this? What do you think?

OSR is like a river

I see the OSR as a river. Looking up river you'll see tens if not hundreds of smaller rivers contributing to the main stream. You can paddle upriver and take any one of these tributaries. When you get tired or want to enjoy something new you just let the flow take you downriver until you find a new path to paddle upriver.

Some people believe there's only one true river worth rowing up and down in. Others have chosen a particular river and rowed upstream so far they've seen it reduced to simple stream so small their canoe can go up any more. There are even those that believe there is only one true canoe worth using to row up and down the river.

All this is of course bullshit. To focus on the river is to lose focus of what is important. The view, the sense of adventure and exploration, and, above all, those friends who accompany you on the journey.






To explore new horizons, new games and take on new adventures one must be willing to flow back to the main river and then choose another branch and row upriver through it. I'll add that it was very refreshing for me to read Michael F. Korns' "Modern War in Miniature". A very early (1966) WWII war "RPG". It literally made me throw away a year's work on the Weapons Free game in favor of Saints & Sinners. I guess that over time I had grown to accustomed to certain ideas and needs in regards to mechanics, and although the game's dice and mechanics were very different from what I had played with in other games, it was in essence still much of the same stuff I had vowed to step away from. Slowly, but surely, the game had gotten over complicated with things I liked but were not the true essence of what I was looking for. I was still too influenced by games I had played before. I was rowing upriver so to speak. I needed something new, broader and refreshing.

At around 90 pages Weapons Free was by no means "big", but when I read "Modern War in Miniature" and saw what Korns managed in just 11 pages with huge font size and a small page, I was instantly driven to create something new, simpler, a synthesis of my previous stuff. I realized then than I was being pulled downriver and would soon be finding a new river branch to row up. I realized that up to then I had been dragging the canoe overland, walking, trying to find a new branch to set it in and row, once again, further upriver.

This was not only harder, it was also much more limiting. Quite obviously walking overland carrying the canoe is a lot harder than having the canoe carry me. More important than this is the fact that going overland will only take me to the closest tributary rivers which surely flow to the same main tributary I came from in the first place. That's why after a year's work it still felt pretty much the same as the previous stuff I'd played. Overall a lot of effort for very little change.

With the upcoming release of D&D Next the talk about OSR, D&D and OSR fundamentalism has risen in tone and level. There's always been talk about D&D Next appealing to all their users. I thought and still think that is a bad idea. In the river analogy I see this as looking for a point upriver that all branches meet, and we all know that's impossible. Rivers branch out as one goes upriver. This is also a way to visualize what has happened with D&D over the past decades. Over the course of the last four decades D&D has rowed further and further up a chosen river branch. As the watercourse began to run dry they'd haul their canoe overland and find another nearby branch and milk it for all it was worth. This lead to the fragmentation we see today.

With the release of D&D Basic I see WotC rowing downriver, opening the options for players to choose from the multitude of branches available downstream. A set of wide and affluent branches. It takes us back to the older days of D&D when anything was possible. What we saw over time with 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions was a company choosing a particular tributary and rowing upriver. OSR was a response to this. A move back to the main river. A rejection of WotC's choice.

Unfortunately many OSR supporters have become as polarized if not more so than WotC was back in the day. They believe the river branch they have chosen is the one true OSR tributary. As if all water in it flowed from the fountain of eternal D&D youth or something like that. As much as I value and respect their rules, settings and style of play, I can't fathom their intolerance. There are even those who come to the point of dictating what is a proper canoe and what isn't, who can row in it and who can't. Isn't going against this type of attitude what got OSR going in the first place?

To me OSR isn't about a particular set of rules or even a particular type of die. It's about a spirit of play, a sense of adventure, a drive to explore those yet uncharted rivers. I believe WotC has made a good move with the next D&D version, although only time will tell.



Image Source
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt0ghjgSuzrtjmVrDttZDno7eW9qwbhL1TcbvfsxH-zlwvZZjbByxuA2vtU-M9s9iIvSYq4fW2QZFx0imzH4_GW-ktLF_W2CH0Cn5FLNdaRNquov7WLTOsddYnb-UXFT7_p7H6/s1600/Rapa+River+Delta+Sweden+14.jpg

It's havoc time!

Somethings never get old, and playing a band of orcs raiding a human city with "a smart plan" is a classic example. Playing a band of orcs raiding a human city with a smart plan live on hangouts the day it rains like never before and your house floods mid game is just priceless. This is what did last Saturday and boy was it fun! +Grant Howitt ran a session of his game Havoc Brigade for us last weekend and I seriously recommend it if you want to play something new this weekend.

The game is really easy to grasp and get going. I played a grumpy old orc shaman who dislikes the "new stuff" and what can be newer than a "plan" and a "map". What happened to the old ways? You know: skull crushing and dismembering? Unfortunately in orcland muscle outweighs good judgment and at 4 feet wide shoulders Ox had the final word. So we went along with the plan which was to infiltrate the city through the southern door, enter the keep and kidnap some important person. What could possibly go wrong?

Our day's rations, uhhh, I mean the band of goblins that accompanied us took to the task of infiltrating through the gate. Gone are the days when we'd just tie them up in pairs and catapult them over the wall. One always survived. Why didn't we just do that? No, no, we had "a plan".

So anyway we take to the task of going through the gate according to "the plan". Handsome as we are we didn't go by unnoticed. A little brawl ensured in which our tinker orc Wrench (the Copper Clan Inventor) had to pull out his rail whatever crossbow and unfortunately miss. Did I mention I dislike the new stuff? Specially the clever inventive new stuff. Unreliable as hell. Whatever happened to charging the enemy with a troll high on wyrdforest mushrooms? That always worked!

Well to make thing short after some old school magic from our fellow ettin the guards were neutralized will a pus blast spell that rendered them well... lets leave them at neutralized.

From there on we "followed the plan", and after a little brawl with the local guards (again) which were overcome by more ettin magic(which I'll refrain from detailing this time), we got a few nice dresses (five of them for our friend Ox) and then headed to the party in the castle. Our entrance into the castle was louder than the party itself. Fortunately to us nobody though something that loud was up to something bad. Once in the castle we secured our "target" and made a quick exit. Not without guard resistance of course. Which we had to handle the good ol' way by crushing skulls and dismembering bodies. My joy was so great I even rolled my mayhem dice and got an outstanding success using my thunderbear cloak and wyrdforest mushrooms. I was roaring, the room was thundering and there were lightning bolts flying all over the place. Needless to say nobody challenged our exit from there on and we made a hasty retreat back to our clan's village.

Overall it was a great game I'd recommend and a one shot weekend game. I'll certainly be playing it over and over again. Please make sure to check out the game here.

PS, my house did really flood mid game. LOL talk about havoc!

What is initiative?

We're used to seeing initiative as a die roll to determine who goes first. Is this really initiative and how does this "initiative" build up round after round to build combat momentum? While one meaning of the word initiative is "the power or opportunity to do something before others do", there is also the meaning "at one's own discretion : independently of outside influence or control". Using this definition we can understand that holding the initiative is leading the battle or encounter and not necessarily attacking first.

If the party has a plan and they want to push the orcs to the ravine then it should not matter if the orcs attack first or they party attacks first. What matters is that the orcs don't break out and flank the party.

In that sense the characters must be able to impose their will even if the orcs attack first. Most attack mechanics work by gaining the upper hand and rolling first. The outcome is favorable for the attacker or neutral. Neutral in the sense that no benefit is gained (damage to the opponent), but no loss is suffered either. Except maybe in some systems that contemplate epic failure, but that is sometimes in the way of "you drop your sword", "hit the wizard instead" or "cuts your leg".

The way I see this working better is to have the roll represent a challenge between attacker and defender in a way that the defender may become the attacker if things go sour for the attacker. This calls for greater set of outcomes from a single roll. It's not limited to two outcomes: attacker hits or attacker fails to hit. Instead the outcomes are: attacker achieves something, neither achieve anything, defender achieves something. In this case the one who moves in first is called the attacker and the other the defender, although in truth both are attackers. The attacker is the one that "has the initiative" in the classic sense, but not necessarily the real initiative. The attacker may have a polearm and the defender a short sword. The attacker enjoys the advantage of reach, but does he enjoy the benefit of skill? A skilled defender may lead the fight by dodging and looking for the right time to move in for a kill. It is the "defender" who really holds the initiative and may guide the encounter as the "attacker" tries hopelessly to hit him, misses and instead gets injured instead of delivering damage.

Have you handled situations like this? If so how? I think that being a key player in an encounter while always losing the "initiative" roll is a great opportunity to add more flavor to a game. What do you think? Is it interesting to you?


Image soure
http://martialartkalaripayatt.blogspot.mx/2010_03_01_archive.html

This post also appears on Indie+_ and is covered by the Indie+ Community Standards.

D&D Basic PDF, a move in the right direction?

I've read the rpg pundit's article on Prophecies on the Impact of the Basic D&D PDF with great interest. It seems like D&D is finally coming around to making a compact and easier to use version. One that will be easier to pickup and start playing and may also be more prone to extending and building on top of it by creating interesting content and not just more and more rules.

Back in 2012 I mentioned that WotC should make D&D more like its flagship product: Magic The Gathering. No, not by turning D&D into a card game. Instead of building what looked like a complex system at the time they should build a slim and compact rule set. Externalize all the other stuff to additional books and modules. In the same way MTG has very simple and long lasting rules and simple easy to understand cards, but put together the rules and the multitude of cards make for a very interesting game to play. I enumerated the following points:

• Make D&D a game with long lasting rules.
• Make D&D a game with simple rules.  The complexity in Magic appears in the cards not the rules.
• Make D&D a profitable game. 

I mentioned that instead of the immense complexity that D&D seemed to be building at the time WotC should be focusing on:

• Reduce D&D to no more than 10 rules or so.  Make it fit into 20 to 30 pages.  Like the basic edition.
• Open up a zillion classes and powers.  Magic has the white cards, and the black ones, and the green ones, and the blue ones, and red ones, and probably more I don't know or recall.  It has creatures, and spells, and artifacts, and also more I don't know or recall.  Can't D&D do some equivalent to character class, skills, power, spells, etc.  with that?
• Place the "modular" part on the "cards" (read: classes, spells, skills, powers) not on the rules.  Sell "modules" with ideas, thoughts, inspiration and all that which gets the campaign going.  Do what Magic does and "sell cards" or the equivalent you come up with for D&D.

It's clear from the pundit's article that the first point is coming to be. The Basic (and free) version will be a fully functional and compact book. A starter deck so to speak. Points two and three require a different focus on WotC's part and also a strong community as the pundit mentions. If they manage to ignite that I'd say we are quite possibly looking at some interesting times. Only time will tell. 

Thoughts? Do you think D&D Next offers new ways to put out new content? Can a community be built around this and can WotC make a business on this instead of rolling out more and more rules?

Team Cooperation Rules

We're used to having characters work as a team when they're on adventure. Yet this is usually in a complementary way. There are fighters and clerics, there are rogues and magic users. Each member of the party has a specific role and is specialized for it.

Now what happens when two or more characters work on a single task using the same skill? How would we handle this when the participating characters have different skill levels? For example two rogues trying to disarm a trap or two magic users casting a spell or two clerics trying to raise a dead party member. Or two shadowrunners trying to hack into a system. Or two members of the enterprise trying to fix the warp drive before the Romulans catch up.

What would we expect out of this and what use would it have? There is for example the task that can't fail, like disarming a nuke. Bad things happen if that goes wrong so it can't go wrong. On the other hand there can be tasks that can't be resolved without two or more members participating. For example the classic example of turning two keys that are four meters apart. Not that you need a special skill or roll for that, but you get the point.

In terms of rules this is what I'm looking for:

• There is a difficulty rating for the task.
• Characters have a skill that grants them some probability to succeed.
• Characters have attribute bonuses that grant them a better chance to succeed.
• Individually the task can be very challenging. Each can try, but with their individual odds of success and only with their individual attribute bonuses.
• Working as a team they should get a bonus from adding their individual attribute bonuses and for teamwork.
• Working as a team their individual skill level should affect the overall odds of success. 
• Having many good characters of the same skill level should improve the overall odds. 
• Having one good character and many of lesser skill should not improve the odds as much as the prior case and/or should increase variability (the odds of rolling further from a good central value).
• Working as a team should reduce the time spent at the task. For example many observers should spot the enemy faster than one. This may finally end up in the GM making the call, but it would be good to have a mechanism to convert time to success rate and vice versa. In the previous example many eyes could be on the lookout in a 360 perimeter that reduces the time required to go full circle around the camp, but is not so good at reducing the odds of failure in any one area. There is a lower chance of success, but if it happens they enemy is spotter further out. On the other hand there can be a focus in one area at a time (like a lighthouse). The odds of success are higher, but only apply when the "lighthouse" is painting the area. There are higher odds of success, but the enemy may be spotted later (or sooner if they get lucky, but luck is the topic of another post).
• Rolling as a team is done by a single roll instead of many for each individual character and that's always good.

If we're to see this graphically, I would look for distributions that work like the following:

Task and characters acting individually

Experience isn't only a bonus modifier that moves the curve to the right. It changes the curve making it more compact and higher on the central value (reduces variance). This means the expert is more consistent being an expert and tends to roll closer to a good value than a lesser trained character. You may notice the less skilled character can also roll higher in some cases. This is a particularity of the dice mechanics I'm using which I'm keeping and calling it beginners luck, but I digress, more on that in another post.

I see characters of distinctively different skill levels acting as a team to behave in the following way. The graph shows three levels of expertise: novice, skilled and expert. When building teams we see that the expert and novice together don't add much except maybe the novice's beginners luck. The green curve for the team is right underneath the black curve for the expert. Things get interesting when the expert works with the skilled (yellow curve). The change in variance isn't that great (the yellow curve is just slightly under the black one), but there's a considerable shift to the right. Showing an improvement in odds of success when working as a team.

As a final note I'll add that I haven't included individual attribute bonuses or other type of bonuses. Things can really get interesting when characters pool their attribute bonuses. What may only be a + 1 for intelligence when working individually may convert to a + 3 if all members pool their + 1.

Thoughts?
How do you handle team work in your game? What bonuses do you provide for team work? Have you forced your players to work in teams because that was the only way to overcome a challenge?  Like the aforementioned "turning two keys at once" example in which the fighter or wizard need to help the rogue unlock something or disarm a trap because the mechanical parts are too far apart for one person to handle.


Image 
http://thepeoplebrand.com/blog/2014/04/23/hidden-benefit-of-teamwork/

We tackled the Atlantic wall and killed a tiger!

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day I ran a D-Day session last night using the Saints & Sinners game rules. +Gabriel Perez Gallardi , +Lan Kelly , +peewee rota and +Randal McDowell joined the session to recreate that famous landing that took place on Normandy.

I had them running over the beach, rushing for the cover of some sand dunes and ditches, giving some cover fire as they inched up trying to get a better shot. Gabriel joined the game just in time to bazooka an MG nest into oblivion. This opened the way for the group, and all the men behind them to storm up Hitler's Atlantic wall. I have to say, I had never played with so many NPCs before. It was fun!

You know what also was fun? Just jumping in the game after rolling 6 attributes and giving the character a name. Players got a choice of M1, BAR, Bazooka, flamethrower or sniper rifle (actually a somewhat better M1).

The trench encounters were packed with grenade throwing, shots coming in and going out, bazooka rockets flying down the trenches to hit enemy positions. It was mayhem, but after about two hours they had secured their part of the wall and were ready to move inland.

The next hour was played on a march into Formigny where the group was ambushed and their tank destroyed. It was looking like a dire situation. More so when the Tiger broke through the morning mist and marched up the road to their position. Only Gabriel's lucky shot with the bazooka saved the day. In a miraculous roll the shot breached the thinner lateral armor and killed the engine. Without it the tank was a sitting duck and it was quickly taken out. The remaining Nazi forces in the area either retreated or surrendered.

We were all left craving for more. It seems like this just spawned another exciting campaign. Possibly the best yet. Second only to the Merc Ops Maersk Alabama one.

Can it be tactical if it's balanced?

Tactical: of, relating to, or used for a specific plan that is created to achieve a particular goal in war, politics, etc

By tactical I don't mean running the game on a grid with miniatures. I mean building a plan and executing it with success. When asked Arneson said the following.

What makes for a really great encounter?
Arneson: That the players overcame the obstacle by wit and not muscles.
What's the point of having a plan if the encounter is already balanced? If it relies more on "balanced muscle" than wit.

Does balance mean that unless the players do something really stupid the party will succeed?

Does this also mean that no matter how well planned the actions are the moment the party enters the room it will all depend on the initiative roll, the damage rolls and the mechanics? After all if the GM knows an encounter is balanced because he rolled it on a table and the outcome is known (with a high degree of certainty) before the first die is even rolled. Otherwise it wouldn't be balanced, right? The rules will work as a safety net around the character.

One of the issues I've got with the current D&D combat mechanics is the lack of urgency and planning in high level combat. It's something that's been in the game for years and we notice its lack of more when we meet level draining monsters or such critters as the rust monster. Get touched once and wham, lots of pain no matter how many hit points your character has. Ever sat down to think how differently those encounters are handled vs the average monster. Even breath weapons and regeneration don't convey that sense of urgency and instill the fear a level draining wight does.

That sense of fear, of need to plan and really stay ahead of the monster, or even run if it comes to that, is something we begin to forget as players as our characters reach mid to higher levels. We're in the 40 to 50 hp range, we've got fireball, some serious armor and cure serious wounds. We are rocking!

What would it take to keep encounters challenging throughout all levels? Without it boiling to some sort of calculation we do in our head: hit points delivered minus hit points received on average, number crunching, ok, let's attack it. Or worse yet, let's attack because the GM surely planned it for our current character level and adventure difficulty. So it should be safe to attack. Even worse yet, have to hear the complains of a player or all the players as some members or the whole party gets killed because they engaged an opponent they were not supposed to engage. They did so because the encounter was there and it was supposed to be balanced, right?

Does this bother you as it bothers me? How do you handle it in your game? Is the fix possible within current combat mechanics? If not, would a game that does a grass roots change to the mechanics still be considered OSR?

Sources
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tactical
http://www.koboldpress.com/k/front-page460.php#.U4xpqvldWWE
http://accuracy0.deviantart.com/art/Lady-Justice-372932739

Initiative, weapon speed and reach

How we model melee in an RPG sets the framework for players to leverage their weapon's strengths and exploit their opponent's weapon's weaknesses. Weapon speed and initiative have been two variable commonly used in games to model this. Another variable that's used is weapon reach. Although less commonly so in my experience.

One variable that is seldom considered is character speed. We infer and sometimes we're event told that within the abstraction of combat rules characters are constantly moving, turning, evading and looking for a weak spot to attack. It is usually disregarded because characters and monsters move around each other at about the same speed as they turn, take a step forward or take a step backwards and prepare to attack. If this is constant or pretty much so that it can be disregarded then weapon length is a key element in initiative and getting the first hit.

After looking at the video I'm left with the feeling that a character with a dagger has no chance against a sword. Yet many modern sword and armor duels show the participants engaged in a way that looks more like a wrestling match than an exchange of sword swings. There's pummeling, grabbing, pulling, tripping and pinning to the ground. Movements that would benefit from the quick use of a dagger rather than a long sword. Swords are even grabbed by the opponent's gloved hand and they do little or no damage to full plate armor.

If distance grants the advantage to the longer sword and not the shorter dagger and if the dagger, nimble as it may appear when compared to the sword, is really not that much faster; where is the advantage? How can we leverage the different weapons' advantages? What happens when we change the sword for the polearm? Sure, it's longer and deadlier, but get close to the enemy and it's useless.

This brings me to initiative. To attack the polearm with a knife our hero must first wait for the initial assault (yielding initiative to the attacker), not get killed by said attack and then get close enough to attack and (hopefully) neutralize the polearm. Initiative in this case is not actually about rolling first, but rather rolling last. Wait, what if initiative isn't about going first or last (although this is a common understanding in RPGs and a common usage of the word). What if initiative is about doing things independently of outside influence or control (another definition for the word). How can we leverage the weapon's attributes in a way the character has the initiative without attacking first, or without attacking at all until she or he is ready? This would take initiative from being a round to round thing to something that spans rounds and builds on a series of successful initiative, not attack rolls. Remember the character is looking to get an advantageous position from which to attack without the risk of getting hit by the opponent's weapon. Things like armor rating and shield types don't apply to these rolls. What about mechanics that have partial success and partial failure values rather than binary hit or miss. These could be better applied to the polearm vs dagger situation. The polearm attacks and misses, but keeps the character at bay; or attacks and misses horribly exposing the character's side to a dagger attack. The dagger can use a succession of these critical misses to gain an advantage when actually stepping up to stab the opponent. The character with the dagger is losing initiative under the common understanding of the term "initiative", but he or she is actually maintaining initiative in the sense of controlling the encounter and weakening the opponent.

This post also appears on Indie+_ and is covered by the Indie+ Community Standards.

Is free good enough?

WotC revealed today what many called a bomb to OSR.

There will be a basic set and it will be free.

Although I agree it is a game changer, I would limit its impact to WotC and the original DnD. That's to say it keeps WotC in the game, nothing more. I applaud those who championed this idea and those in WotC who bought it and made it happen. It's a great step in the right direction, but it isn't a game stopper for OSR by a long shot.

Offering a product for free is a great way to get people to try it, but it hardly adds value in itself.The real test will come in a few months. I'll be honest, I haven't been following up on the D&D Next development and I certainly didn't sign into their playtest due to their NDA policies. So I won't comment on the specifics as I don't know them. I will though express my thoughts based on what has been mentioned and some observations of old RPGs, which by providence I've stumbled upon recently and have had the opportunity to read..

Lets go back two years to the beginning of the playtest. To me the NDA seemed too draconian. It's about owning and not sharing. I give WotC an idea, great it's theirs, end of transmission. They'll pick from there and build on it. We can discuss this on end as it has been done before, but that to me talks about an owning WotC and not a sharing WotC. Not a very good thing to start building a community about sharing and building together.

Second point is what Mike Mearls has commented over and over again. They're building D&D based on all that which we like from previous versions. While a valid approach, I will base my comment on the wisdom of Abraham Wald who, during WWII, suggested armor be added on bombers where the airplanes got shot the least, not the most. They returned to base because they hadn't been hit in those critical spots. Based on this I have commented that WotC should build D&D on the weaknesses of previous versions and by fixing them turn them into strengths. A fix to that which I don't like about 1st and 2nd would make me buy Next, not a copy paste of what I already have. Did they? I don't know until I read the rules (see NDA above), and I hope they have.

Corporate red tape. WotC like it or not suffers from corporate inertia and lawyers. Many OSR publishers are not slowed down by this.They call the shots, publish and get things out quickly. Their ability to innovate and take risks is higher than WotC. Many will flop, but on the other hand many do succeed, and boy do they succeed. I see WotC as the old vertical, waterfall, software development paradigm while OSR is the more dynamic and agile release early and release often. WotC spend 2 years doing what? Once again without the NDA I don't know. There is though an interesting analogy with newspapers 'Paul Berry, who helped found the Huffington Post, eloquently describes the core problem with the way The New York Times views content creation: “At The New York Times, far too often for writers and editors the story is done when you hit publish. At Huffington Post, the article begins its life when you hit publish.”' (source). Take a look at all the WotC release hype and compare it to OSR products. The big unanswered question with WotC is what comes after launch, after they've hit "publish". Is that the goal, the end, or is it just the beginning?

Innovation. What new stuff does D&D Next bring to the table? I'm sure it fixes many things, but aren't these design flaws of the past and not really innovation. Would you consider a vehicle recall an innovation? Once again I'm talking off the top of my head because to know I'd have to sign an NDA I'm not willing to sign, and once again I'd love to be proven wrong. Looking at old wargames and RPGs as well as the history of the d20 made me value the work put into creating the roots of our hobby, but it also made me look at dice mechanics differently. Not as dogma, but at a solution to a problem present in that time. The dice mechanics we so cherish today solved many issues from long ago which many are unaware today. They were innovative in their time. Fast forward 40 years and I'd ask. Is d20 a valid model? If so are we innovating in its usage? Solving problems of the past in new ways? In what way is WotC breaking away from the mainstream as Gygax did 40 years ago when he made a brief comment about coloring half the sides of a d20 (which were at the time numbered 1 to 10 twice). To answer the why of doing this Gygax mentioned he was working on a new set of rules that made use of this. The rest as we all know is history. Is WotC making history or is it making a new edition?

So as great and groundbreaking as a free D&D Basic set may be, and I applaud those who pursued and managed to achieve this goal, it's a long shot from being a game stopper for OSR. IMHO there's still a lot of work in regards to community building, community participation and innovation. Things which may be hard for a big company like WotC are much easier for the smaller and more nimble OSR publishers. WotC is still competing with people who do this for the sport, and they're damn good at this sport. So free by itself may not be good enough.


Image Source
http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/d_and_d.html

There's always a bigger story

Many times when we create an adventure we expect it to go in a particular way. To have certain steps lead to a climax. We see it and envision it in our minds. Yet sometimes dice don't favor the players nor the GM and the adventure begins to stray from the plan. What do we do then? How do we fix it? Or is there an underlying issue we should solve first so we don't need "fixn'" in the first place.

Yes, there is a Star Wars story in which Greedo kills Solo and the Death Star isn't destroyed just then. It gets destroyed at another moment in time and by other means. If you're forcing the story to follow the footsteps of A New Hope then not only are you missing out on a great set of alternative outcomes, you're setting yourself up for a load of game mechanic pains.

The first step I take to achieve this is realizing there is always a bigger story and the initial plot line need not be the actual outcome. This requires that a) I have less of a reliance on the expected events occurring and b) have a backup plan. Realize that the world the characters are living in is a live and dynamic environment. It will continue to evolve as the characters interact with it. It isn't waiting for a preset of events to occur. It doesn't have a preset set of scenes and images like a computer RPG has. Don't throw away the greatest advantage a tabletop RPG has over a computer RPG!

Here are some guidelines:

• Don't rely on a character or set of characters to make it to the end.
• You should not fudge the rolls or bend the rules to force an outcome that's needed to follow the storyline.
• Don't fudge to open a door
• Don't fudge to save a party member
• Don't fudge to convince the gatekeeper
• Don't rely on a single character in the end scene. Actually now that I think about it, don't have a preset ending scene.
• If something needs to happen and this depends on a die roll or the application of some rule with random outcomes, then there is something wrong with the adventure. You must either make the event independent of die rolls or have an alternative to handle a failure with the dice.

20 1st Level Millionaires, part 2

I continue the countdown of possible histories and backgrounds for millionaire 1st level characters. These are background stories for characters with a lot of wealth and no army nor castle.

15 - Family owns lead mine

Your family has amassed great wealth out of lead mining and ore processing. You have good access to resources to finance your dreams of adventure and dungeon explorations. While well known dungeons in the area may provide for your first levels of adventure it is possible that danger looms closer to home than you expect. A recent tunnel in your family mine has collapsed revealing a passage to a large cavern. What lies ahead?

14 - Banished nobleman

You're a banished lord or lady from a distant land. You've arrived here with gold and henchmen in a quest to rebuild your lost army and retake the throne that was stolen from you. You're unskilled, but the lineage of your family gives you great power should you learn to wield it. Will you survive to become a renown and respected warrior? Will you succeed in rebuilding your army and return home to reclaim your title as king or queen?

13 - Recently stolen loot

You're either the luckiest or the unluckiest of crooks. You've robed a wagon and it turns out you're a million GP richer. What now? What will you buy? What can you buy without raising too much attention? What will you do with this? Will you adventure and become a local hero? Will the true owner come back some day to retake this? And if so when and will you be prepared?

12 - Circus owner

You're a travelling circus owner. Wealth is not an issue. You're well over a million GP rich. You travel from land to land entertaining people. On each kingdom and barony you take time off to explore the city and its surroundings, gaining a little more wealth and experience from dungeonering. Yet there is also a dark secret. Something lives in your circus you don't want others to know. A curse of types you wish to get rid of someday. So you explore and quest to find the answer. Never staying too long in the same area and seldom returning.

11 - Bar or Hostel

You're the owner of a bar or hostel were travelers and adventurers usually stay to rest between trips and dungeon explorations. You know all there is to know about the land. The secrets abound in your bar and you've listened to them all. Suddenly you feel the urge to take on a sword and shield and explore on your own. Who will come with you and why? What new secret has moved you so much you're willing to leave the comfort and security of your home for the risk and uncertainty of adventure.

Water, food and sleep

Usually we assume our characters rest and eat appropriately, and do so even deep in a dungeon, threatened by monsters that dwell in the deep passages and tunnels. They eat "iron rations" and take turns to sleep. But what is the true effect of not sleeping or lacking abundant food and water? What happens when these effects accumulate over time or become compounded as food lacks first, then water then sleep? To show this effect I've drawn up some graphs that show the combat effectiveness of men as these three things become scarce. I've also added some rules to manage this in a game.

The graph below shows the effect of no sleep, no water and no food over the course of days. Notice the steep slope for sleep and water compared to food. Now I don't believe anyone can go for three of four days without water or sleep without serious impact on their bodies. So dropping to an effectiveness of less than 40% can be very limiting indeed. A state of extreme weakness, disorientation and near comma. In game terms going below 60% should be very limiting and reaching 50% should be very impacting indeed. Very strong penalties at that point.

Spending a day without food drops effectiveness by 12%. This can be represented in game as a light penalty when performing actions. On the other hand, a day without foot or water drops performance by an outstanding 25%! And a day without water and sleep drops performance by a whooping 45%! By the end of the second day the character's performance drop due to lack of water and sleep would drop by 70%!!! A near death situation if you ask me.

Lets now consider situations in which sleep, food and water are not totally lacking yet they're not available in sufficient quantities either. We can imagine that such shortage would accumulate over time. In this case characters having a fraction of what is required will eventually build up a whole day's worth of loss, specially when doing strenuous activities such as exploration, travelling and combat. For example going with half the required amount of water will build up the equivalent of a day's lack of water over the course of four days.

Consider the following rules:

Food

• A day without a warm meal counts as 1/8 of a day without food.
• A day with half a ration counts as 1/4 day without food.
• A day with one fourth of a ration counts as 1/2 day without food.

For example, travelling over tundra without a fire to cook will accumulate 1/8 of a day for each day. After 10 days of travel the character is suffering from a day's worth of famine (10/8 days = 1.2 days). Spending four days eating less than 1000kCal (half ration) is the equivalent of a day without food. If the rations are eaten cold it's the equivalent of a day and a half without food.

Sleep

• A day with less than 8 hours, but more than 6 counts as 1/8 day without sleep.
• A day with less than 6 hours, but more than 4 counts as 1/4 day without sleep.
• A day with less than 4 hours, but more than 2 counts as 1/2 day without sleep.

Your party has been pursued non stop for the past 48 hours and has only managed to sleep about 3 hours every day. This is equivalent to a whole day without sleep and effectiveness drops by 25%.

Water

• Each day with less than 2 liters of water but more than 1 liter counts as 1/8 day without water.
• Each day with less than 1 liters of water but more than 1/2 liter counts as 1/4 day without water.
• Each day with less than 1/2 liter of water but more than 1/4 counts as 1/2 day without water.

These quantities need to be adjusted for climate. Being twice as much in hot climates and four times as much in desert climates. The later can be reduced to three times if the character's activities are restricted to the cooler hours of the day.




Sources

Modern War in Minature, Michael F. Korns

This post also appears on Indie+_ and is covered by the Indie+ Community Standards.

How we got the d20

Those d20 rules are quite common aren't they? They started back in the original D&D and have grown to cover quite a vast amount of genre. They're easy to understand and those 5% increments are sure easy to calculate. But where did it all start?

To begin to understand the story and the work it took to get our hobby up and running we must leave the internet generation behind and travel back in time. So back in time we'll leave the PC and Atari generation behind too. Even those, who like me, played with 4 bit graphics on a gaming console will be baffled by the limited technology of the time.

Sometimes this can be hard to relate to unless there's a reference we can carry back in time as a measuring stick. But what is easy to visually understand, computer intensive and can still relate to an era without video games? The Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set a quite a complex image with its roots back in the 70's and will help me tell this story and hopefully carry you back in time, convey enough of the setting to help you feel inside the era and place the challenges they faced in perspective as they worked hard without many of the things we take for granted today. Without further delay lets travel back in time and see the dawn of the d20.

This is the Mandelbrot set. My cell phone (Samsung Galaxy III Mini) takes 0.97 seconds to render it, and that's on a bad day. Usually it takes between 0.45 and 0.65 seconds.

In 1984 a computer would take minutes to render it on a IBM AT at 8MHz with  80287 math coprocessor using a CGA graphics card with 640x200 resolution with two colors or 320x200 with four colors. Total hardware cost $4000 (1984) US Dollars.

In 1978 the first visualization of the Mandelbrot was made with ASCII. I don't know what computer it was nor it's cost, but I believe it was done at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, Heights, New York, and thus not cheap.

Now step back ten more years back to 1968...

Back then wargames were using statistical data from military experience to add realism to the game. An example of this is Korns' Modern War in Miniature (1966) which used percentage tables to represent weapon effectiveness. Yet his tables had the limitation of relating to d6 rolls. So Korns added a conversion table that related d6 rolls to percentages in, you guessed it, roughly 5% increments.

Those were numbers just waiting for the d20 to show up and it did in 1969, when they were mentioned in the "Must List" of Wargamer's Newsletter.

These 20 sided dice provided an easy way to generate percentile numbers by numbering their sides 0 to 9 twice and rolling two times.

Which brings me to Gygax's article "Four & Twenty and What Lies Between." (June 1973) and the reason I begun with all the computer stuff. In this article Gygax explains the probabilities for polyhedral dice combinations. Which he obviously calculated by hand since, as I already showed, there were no readily available computers and anydice.com was decades away. Quite a daunting task once you realize how limited and expensive computers were at the time.

Finally he comments that to him "the most useful are the 20-sided dice." and adds the note "color in one set of numbers on the die, and you can throw for 5% -- perfect for rules which call for random numbers from 1-20." What use could that have? In the same article Gygax reveals that he was  "busy working up chance tables for a fantasy campaign game." That game was, of course, none other than Dungeons & Dragons.

Now let it sink for a little. Let yourself get carried away to that time. Let the setting engulf you. Reread the Mandelbrot thing again and let it take you back to a time when computers didn't help us see things as advanced CGIs do today. A time when Tron was still 15 years away. A time when your imagination created and filled in all the detail on its own. A time when everything was new and no rules were set. Start fresh and use your imagination to create you fantasy setting, one without limits.

Roll for initiative, the adventure begins...

sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
http://www.davidlouislevine.com/mandelbrot
http://playingattheworld.blogspot.mx/2013/02/how-gaming-got-its-dice.html

20 1st level millionaires, part 1

So what would you do if your 1st level D&D character started off with a million gold pieces? This is a countdown of 20 1st level millionaires who didn't get a castle and an army with their gold. Without further delay here are the first five millionaires from our top 20 countdown.

20 - The Influential Cleric

Your family name could very well be Borgia. Dad's money has ensured you a prominent position within the city's temple. The temple's clerics respect your family wealth and envy you just as much. You're on a fast track to overtake many who have dedicated more to the gods than you have, and that's usually not a good thing. Your family wealth gives you access to resources such as armor, weapons, travel expenses and religious items. It buys you lots of stuff, but does not buy you skill nor the favor of the gods. You start off well equipped, but will you be able to overcome the risks ahead? The ones outside the city walls as well as those within the temple walls?

19 - Loan Shark

You've amassed a small fortune out of loaning money at high interest rates. Your wealth is in the hands of others generating a handsome rent every month. Your job is to make sure the payments are done on time and deal with those who forget who's the money is. About 4/5 of your wealth is in the hands of others. Now you must make sure that money keeps making more money. You finance trade routes, fleets, insurrections and small wars. You're an influential person when it comes to money and the power this generates. How will you manage this from now on is up to you.

18 - Crazy Wizard

You're an energetic wizard apprentice with a great family treasure supporting your wild and dangerous power quest. Getting a hold of scrolls, potions and magic items is easy. Managing their power is something else. Will your skill keep up to your ambition? This is a good character to play in a DCC game. Things can and will go astray with magic. How much will your character gamble? Will the wealth be enough to pay for the mistakes done?

17 - Librarian

You're a reserved, introverted and wealthy heir to a fortune of books. Remember that in the middle ages books were transcribed by hand and beautifully decorated. Each piece an art piece on its own. The knowledge withing a great desire to many rulers, magic users and clerics alike. Will you and your party harness the power of these books and the knowledge they hold? Or will you become a Don Quijote of sorts, driven to madness and mounting a decrepit horse in quest of imaginary giants? What yet undiscovered magic lays in the pages of your library's books?

16 - Sea trader

Your wealth is a fleet of very successful trading ships. Your a trader, merchant, pirate and buccaneer all in one. You know kingdoms and rules from the four corners of the earth. You travel from port to port trading silk and spice. Now you're driven to quest further into uncharted territory. What adventure lies ahead? 

Image

http://pqphotography.deviantart.com/art/Treasure-chest-350978300

Hostage Situation

Let's talk about hostage situations in RPGs. Not only in modern combat like games, but in general. Intuitively I feel friction, edgy. It's a situation most games I've played can't handle very well. On one side there's the negotiation aspect. Very role playish and usually one player does it. What do the other players do meanwhile? On the other side it can change from role playing and negotiation to a combat scenario very quickly. A combat scenario that needs to be resolved quickly and with little margin for error. Lose initiative and the bad guy shoots the hostage or detonates the vest. Miss and the outcome is just as bad if not worse.

The main issue I see is that a lot of games that are strong in handling character emotions and feelings are a bit weak in handling combat and games that handle combat well are a bit impervious to such aspects of character development and negotiation. More so, even if you can handle the negotiation aspect as pure player based role play between both the player and GM, what about a shoot out? Things go sour and suddenly the bad guy needs to be taken out. Do you trust your initiative and attack roll that much? Is the skill mechanics good enough to make you feel confident you'll get first shot and will not miss?



As a closing treat here's the floor plan to Big Bang Theory's main apartments. Good luck saving Penny form crazy Sheldon.

Image source

http://www.brokenarrowok.gov/index.aspx?NID=449

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/awesome_of_the_day/2013/05/inaki-aliste-lizarralde-is-a.html

The millionaire peasant

So your character starts with a million GP. This post has created a great deal of feedback. Some very valid if viewed from our early 21st century outlook on life. A great deal of players have said they'd buy an castle and an army. This is a very understandable aspiration from our point of view, but it rises the following question:

Who the fuck is going to sell you a castle if you're a fucking peasant?!?!?!?!

Now my intention is not to trash those who commented along those lines, but rather to raise the issue of how immersed are we in the medieval setting. BTW, I'm not using immersed in a game theory way so don't trash me back. I'm simply wondering how well players dive into the setting of a medieval society.

If you have a million gold pieces to start you already have a good social standing. Otherwise you're just a bandit, or maybe some bourgeoisie of an era still to come. With a million GP you're certainly a noble and maybe a courtesan. You'll probably be skilled at fighting, but you'll have others do the fighting for you. You will lead, and leading will exercise those atrophied aspects of D&D. You know which, charisma and that sort of stuff.

Sit back and think about what it meant to have power in the middle ages. Was it just gold? Does gold make you powerful or just a rich bandit? Who conspires in court? Who negotiates the deals? Who leads the armies? Is it the +3 attacks, x2 damage, 3d12 + 2xSTR bonus fighter or the cunning noble with an even cleverer player behind him?

Images
http://www.whiteoak.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Medieval_Morons.jpg

Introducing the Grimscience d20++

Back in the day when it all begun (D&D, not Earth), there were no d10. Actually d20 were numbered 1 to 10 twice and you'd roll a d6 or something extra to see if it was the high or low values.

Then came this jewel of advertisement from Gamescience. Let's put pluses to half the sides and call it a d20 Plus dice. It even allows you to roll d2!!! Wait, isn't that what a coin is for?

So now that we've crossed the barrier into rolling d2 with a d20, what else can we do? How much can we overload the d20? Here at Grimscience we put d20 and C++ together and developed the d20++. Can you play D&D with just one 20 Plus and one d6?

No you say? Well with d20++ you can! With it's exclusive worldwide patented technology Grimscience d20++ allows you to roll d0, d1, d2, d4, d8, d12 and d20!!! Not only does it allow you to roll all the polyhedral dice commonly used in an RPG, it also adds d0 and d1.

Tired of your players calling it GM fiat? Worry no longer. With Grimscience d20++ you can now roll d0 so they can't say it's GM fiat.

Worried the party won't overcome a critical challenge that's fundamental for their advancement in your railroaded adventure? Worry not! With Grimscience d20++ you can now roll d1 and guarantee success every time, all the time!

Lets look at all the great new features implemented in d20++:

d0 - Like /dev/null, it's always present and you always get the same result "nothing". Commonly known as GM fiat it's done by using the patented Null Roll technology in Grimscience d20++. This provides and outcome for the GM's without actually rolling the d20.

d1 - This is like the exact opposite of d0. It's handy in poorly designed adventures and with temperamental GM's. A great railroading device it's done by rolling the d20 and totally disregarding the result. It's very useful in situations like the-only-locked-door-to-the-boss-chamber-which-the-rogue-needs-to-pick.

d2 - A carry over from the old 20 Plus. It is resolved by rolling the dice and taking the + as 1 and the blank sides as 0.

d4 - A new overload functionality to 20 Plus, Grimscience d20++ allows you to do d4s too. Just roll the d20 and divide by 5 and round up to the next whole number.

d6 - Just roll a d6, don't be stupid. Who'd patent a d6?

d8 - Another great and exclusive functionality of the Grimscience d20++. Just roll like you would to get a d4 and add a d6 if the d6 rolls 1 to 3 you use the direct d4 result if the roll is 4 to 6 you add 4 to the d4 result.

d10 - A shared feature with 20 Plus. Roll the die and read the number directly. Values go from 1 to 10.

d12 - Yet another outstanding and exclusive functionality of the Grimscience d20++. Roll a d4 and a d6. If the d6 rolls 1 or 2 leave the d4 value as is, if the roll is 3 or 4 then add 4 to the d4 and if the roll is 5 or 6 add 8 to the d4.

d20 - A shared feature with 20 Plus. Roll the die. Sides with a + get 10 added to their value.

So don't miss this great opportunity and order your Grimscience d20++ now!
Don't miss this weekends launch price!
Order now!

Not available on hangouts, roll20, electronic die rollers nor macros (yea savagedaddy, we're talking to you).



Thanks grognardia for bringing this back to light!

Starting with a million GP

Lets do a little experiment. Have your D&D character starts off with a million gold pieces. That's a lot of money. It buys a lot of stuff, but it doesn't buy skill. How does this affect the game?

It's one thing to have a + 5 sword and quite another is to defend it against a 6th level fighter. Gold plated full plate? Mithril armor? All great assets a greater fighter would like to take from you, or a rogue for that matter.

Would you fight the monsters the same way? Fighting those goblins may earn you a few hundred pieces at best, but you may lose a million if they kill your character. All of a sudden being all bloodthirsty to kill and pillage doesn't look all that tempting. So how do you earn XP to increase your character's level without risking the family fortune?

Some GMs may think this will lead to an unbalanced game in which the characters become too powerful due to unlimited wealth. I'd agree to a point. Initial wealth does solve a great deal of issues we as players face during the first levels, but it also brings a whole new set of issues to the game. Defending such wealth and the goods it can buy is one of them. It also kills one of the main drives to center the game around fighting and pillaging.

In my experience wealthy first level characters has open up some interesting options in the game. On one end there is more diplomacy and negotiation taking place. This can be interesting to players looking for a campaign less centered around hack and slash. On the other end such wealth doesn't only buy henchmen, it buys a whole army, and mass combat is lots of fun!!!

So what do you think? Have you given your first level characters huge wealth? If so, what has been your experience? If you haven't, would you?

Vector Insects

A vector insect is one used by another insect as a vector to infect a human host. The vector insect is trapped and eggs are laid on it. When the vector insect bites, stings or in any way does whatever it does to a human, an egg is laid on the human host. The human's body heat activates the egg which uses the vector insect's injury to get under the skin (literally). Once inside the egg grows to a full and rather disgusting larvae.

The potential use for this in a monster manual is huge, albeit a bit appalling and it does scream GM fiat all over. Imagine all those little critters you once found in a dungeon now laying eggs on mosquitoes that fly into town. Remember the dreaded rot grubs? Now you don't have to journey deep into the forest or a dungeon. They're delivered fresh to your home by your friendly mosquito.

Or maybe the villages honey bees are now infected with some terrible bug using them as vector insects. 

Why stop with insects. Curses and even zombification can be airborne on mosquitoes and other vector insects. Maybe even the G'ould evolved to be airborne that way. Chilling thought.

Source

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/nsfl-botfly-removal-5-year-old%E2%80%99s-eye

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?680134-Why-did-D-amp-D-amp-Pathfinder-art-become-so-stylized/page6