The Folly of the Universal Die Mechanic

I've been reading through my various gaming books and I think I've figured something out.  I'm not a huge fan of "universal die mechanic" systems that have become the rage for almost all the new RPG's coming out.  I just bought and read through a used copy of Legends of Anglerre and I realized while the idea of relating nearly everything to an Aspect or Skill or Stunt is an incredibly flavorful idea at first.  I can dream up nearly anything (just like in the old FUDGE system that FATE is based from) put it to words, put it on the Terrible to Legendary ladder and roll on.

However, I think while this is really neat for short term games, the fun can wear off quickly...  suddenly you realize there is pretty much no mechanical difference between a fighter and a wizard or a noble.  One skill is treated almost exactly the same as all the others and all the powers a balanced under an elegant system.  Blah.

Maybe one of the reasons that original AD&D was so popular is that it was a massive tackle-box of all sorts of little rules systems.  It pretty much had all these "little games" inside of the big game.  All these different rules mechanics in the game gave all of us gamers things to love, but also things to disagree about.

In fact some of the early adventure modules took it so far as to have elaborate spot rules for handling chase scenes, maybe a little game mechanic to handle a siege combat or a ship on ship naval battle that would occur during the adventure.

Related to this I'd also like to chat a bit about my favorite game I've seen come out in a long time.  The DCC RPG by Goodman Games.  It is awesome.  I don't think I will ever actually play the game because the "inherent" game world and ethos implied by the rules isn't really the flavor I'm looking for in my fantasy games.  However, reading through the free BETA rules the thing I liked the most is the complete lack of any "universal die mechanic".  The game is a beautiful mess of jumbled rules systems and random effects tables.  In reading through it I was able to recognize the things that got me into this hobby in the first place.  No vanilla jazz music here people, just finger blistering heavy metal rock.

As wizards of the coast gears up to make 5th edition, maybe they should go back and review the obtuse and contradictory, jumbled rules systems that Gary and Dave came up with.  Maybe they should eschew elegance and embrace chaos.  Fourth edition made all the characters the same, and made nobody special.  Maybe this time around they should think like a 13 year old, figure out what makes each class or character unique.  Scream out the names of the nine lords of Hell!  Roll your d20's!  Make each class or profession special!  But then again, maybe I'm just crazy.      

My Quest for the ultimate d100 Fantasy

Last year I was all about d100 gaming.  I was playing in a Call of Cthulhu game PBEM and having a great time of it.  In addition, I switched my PbP Greyhawk game over to Open Quest.  How did I decide on Open Quest...

First I purchased the following d100 books over the last two years:

1.  Chaosium Basic Roleplaying
2.  Stormbringer 4th ed
3.  Stormbringer 5th ed
4.  Elric Dark fantasy RPG
5.  Rolemaster Classic RM2.
6.  Open Quest.
7.  Legend System (Mongoose)
8.  Runequest SRD (Mongoose)

First of all, why did I need so many.  Each of these has points I like and points I don't like.  Open Quest was the one I finally settled on.  Unfortunately it was the last one i picked up...

In the next couple of posts on this site I'd like to discuss some of the differences between each edition and describe how I ended up picking Open Quest.

Three Companions - Odd Parts, Final Thoughts

Well, I actually finished this series of posts - this might be as rare as our little friend above :) It may be the first non game play related group of posts that I finished. There were parts of each book that mostly didn't overlap with the others. I thought I might cover these to give context about each book.

Barrataria games Companion Expansion had an expanded equipment list and a little section on overland movement rates with different animals and the effect encumbrance might have on rate. It had some good descriptions in its equipment section and also had 4 fast packs... I liked the fast packs used in Moldvay's B4 - The Lost City. The fast backpack just gets through the phase of character creation where certain players will hog the book and try to buy everything in the item list. Lately, my games have been loose enough and short enough (2-4 sessions long, no long campaigns) that it wasn't worth letting people pick out their equipment. Last time we made up characters, I told them, just pick out a backpack from B4 so I will definitely be pointing my players in this direction for more variety in Ye Old Fast Pack. Barrataria had riding dogs for halflings and gnomes this gives short folk more choices than the standard pony.

JB's B/X companion had some cool sections on Dungeon Mastering as a fine art and rules for dominion. This was also something covered by Mentzer. JB's dominion rules were fast and loose, while Frank was all about the random table. I think by combining these dominion rules together with the mass combat rules, players could take part in a "game within the game" if they so choose.

Mentzer also had a pretty neat section on extraplanar adventuring. He only touches on the ethereal and elemental planes in these books. I'm assuming he saves other planes for the Masters and Immortal rules. He also touches on the concept of vortexes and wormholes which are points where the elemental planes bump up against other planes. They create little pockets ripe for adventuring that are limited in scope rather than trying to tackle an infinitely large plane. I could see using these wormholes to spark interest in the planes from my players. It could also be a spot to place an interesting NPC or villain that the PC's will have to interact with on unsure territory. You can bend the normal game physics in these spots so it is important that the PC's are experienced and have an idea of what the norm is for your adventuring world before trying to change their expectations a pocket dimension.

Overall I was happy with the companion series books. I definitely will be slow to adopt material from these books into a B/X game and will test things out one at a time. Having come from a hard core background of 2nd edition AD&D I can tell you that when the splat books (Book of Elves, Book of Gnomes, Book of Fighters, Book of Thieves, etc...) all came out, my players wanted to integrate them all into my game immediately. Initially I let them, but over time I started pulling back on this tactic. I found that by adding tons and tons of very specific rules into the game atmosphere suddenly there was less and less room for flexible GM tinkering. Suddenly all the players were turning into Rules Lawyers... I would hear stuff like, my elven PC doesn't have to sleep because the Book of Elves says he doesn't. Then I would have to play the GM fiat card and say, "Well in MY GAME WORLD elves sleep!" This kind of back and forth just disrupts game play, so I eventually had to tell my players that all the optional rules were banned from the table. Players were limited to options from the Players Handbook unless I told them they could bring in one specific component from an optional rules book.

I feel that the options presented in these companion books should be treated the same. They can add tons of extra flavor to your game, but don't add too many flavors at the same time. I like steak, and peanut butter, lobster, and ice-cream, but if you add them all together (and you aren't an Iron Chef DM) you may just get an inedible mess...

Three Companions - Treasures and Magic Items

I have a certain reservation about the default experience system of B/X DnD. I don't like to give out massive boatloads of treasure in order to fuel the PC's in thire rise through the level charts. In playing my short little run through B/X DnD so far I corrected this in two ways. First off - I like to give out achievement based EXP. This throws sand in the face of certain OSR folks who have alternate theories on this issue. However, once the PC's have decided on a goal, I tend to give them an EXP award if they complete the goal. This isn't some DM driven story award carrot created to push the PC's into running down the linear path of the DM's pregen adventure. Instead, I will give EXP to players who create goals for themselves and then complete those goals. They make my job as a DM easier by "making decisions" and "engaging in teamwork to accomplish a goal" - things I like to see in my games because these things lead to fun. Another simple thing that I did to decrease the importance of treasure in PC experience gains was to multiply monster experience awards by 3x. I tend to maximize my monsters effectiveness in hampering the PC's as much as possible, so if the PC's actually defeat the monsters, I like to give them a good deal more exp for that creature than what is in the default rules for B/X. These two little changes make gold based EXP less important to leveling a PC.

Which is good because I am a stingy DM. I make my PC's work for their gold! My PC's in my PBEM castles and crusades Greyhawk campaign are near broke right now at 4th level. Some of them are complaining, but most of them are having a good time with the game and enjoy the challenge. Another interesting side effect of being a stingy DM, is you can let your PC's play to higher and higher levels without worrying about them entering into a run away power spiral. If you keep monty-haul treasure dumping on the PC's, at a certain point they have so much treasure and so many magical items, that there is really little left in the game world to go after. They are also so powerful that you have to come up with crazy stupid monsters to challenge them.

So anyway, with that lead up out of the way, let's talk about what I was planning on focusing on for this post! Treasure and magic items in the three companions!

I will start again with the Barrataria Games Companion Expansion books. There are a wide variety of magic potions and scrolls, which I tend to give out fairly frequently because I love magic items that have limited use. This allows your players to use them effectively but then eventually run out of their magic and be forced to go out adventuring for more. One particular scroll that I found interesting was the scroll of interrogation - it is pretty neat, and I don't remember seeing it before. There are some pretty neat wands, rods, and staves for wizards. And then there are some really cool oddball magic items such as Marvelous Pigments that allow an artist to draw out non magical inanimate items and then it becomes real! That is a pretty darn useful magic item! They didn't have much in the way of treasures described beyond the magic items - no art objects, or land titles, or strange artifacts, etc... Overall, I was pretty happy with their use of magic items. I have the Forgotten Realms adventures book which has the most amazing set of tables and descriptions for art objects and jewelry. If you have never seen this before it is worth checking out.

JB's B/X companion, started out with a treasure table built on the starting points from the B/X style game, and then added new magic items. He has a very brief section about gems and jewelry and then moves on to the magic items section. First off, I really did get some evil DM chuckles from JB's cursed items. I normally don't use many cursed items, but he has some real interesting cursed items in this book which make me think about changing that policy!!! One of my favorite items was the Tome of Utter Destruction, beyond its cool name, it sucks the reader into another dimension - and the GM gets to decide the fate of the character. Yeah, you can suck the PC into the Army of Darkness universe so they can go all BOOMSTICK on the population there. I also enjoyed the Dancing Hut which reminds us all of the walking huts from Baba Yaga and the witch in the Fafrd and Grey Mouser series.

Now we move to the Mentzer companion set which starts on page 43 of his DM's guide. Frank probably has the best non-magical treasure sections, having gem value tables with example gem names like amethst, carbuncle, and tristals and starstones! For his jewelry table he describes a variety of types of jewelry that the PC's could find such as leaf shapes, bracelets, crowns, scepters, etc... on page 48 he describes each of these types and what they would look like. I think that is nice for the beginner DM. Then we get into the magical items section. Most of these items seem to be from the AD&D manuals, but I can't cross-reference since my copies were destroyed years ago in a real life fire. I'll pull out examples of neat magical items that seem new to me or sound like they would be fun to use in the game. I like potions of Dreamspeech - this seems very Howardian - I can see the dark eyed wizard using this potion to interrogate the sleeping Queen of Aquilonia. Scrolls of shelter and spell catching are really neat! I like the idea of a wizard using scroll paper as a sheild against a spell and then behold, the spell is transcribed in glowing runes on the parchment with no detrimental effects to the defending wizard!!! Eggs of wonder are really cool and could be used to interesting effect. Also, Frank had two really cool sections on missile types, such as screaming missiles and speaking missiles - the final section is on special weapons and it has some table on how to make special magical weapons using tables similar to those found in the AD&D handbooks.

Anyway, there are a wide variety of magical items in these books for you to use. However, if you are a new DM to the game, remember my cautioning statement at the beginning of this post and be a little stingy. Make them work to gain and keep all the magic items they find. Also, I think you should always try to make the magical items be a personal and add little quirks to them to make them unique. For example, maybe a magical sword is non-magical on one particular night of the year. Or perhaps a +1 sword is +3 on the night of the full moon? Do some wacky things like that to keep your PC's interested otherwise, you will hear little sighs around the table when they figure out that it is "just another +2 sword" and NOT the SWORD OF OMENS.

Still Alive - Mass Combat

I'm still alive.

I haven't been blogging for a while, but I am having a great time with both my PbP Castles and Crusades Greyhawk game and also the continuation of the adventures of the Majestic Four in a PBEM Call of Cthulhu game started by Daddy Grognard and now continued by Pete. I've also become obsessed with the Known World and I'm starting to collect gaming materials related to it. I'm developing some ideas for a campaign based in Mystara/Known World, which I probably won't start until this summer or fall.

The first text from Barrataria Games doesn't have a section on mass combat. This book was more of a Companion Expansion and is not fully focused on higher level play. It is all about adding lots of options to a current B/X, LL, S&W game.

The B/X Companion by JB at Running Beagle games has a very simple multiplier system that essentially treats units like large monsters. It is pretty slick, super quick to operate based on my casual overview, and will need lots of GM creativity in handling special cases. I would like to try it out to see how it plays I think people who care about the little details of things will feel like something is lacking, but in general this system would be really nice for a GM who is going to introduce a little mass combat here and there but not focus on it.

In comparison, the Mentzer Companion has a mass combat system called "The War Machine". This seems very war gaming - I feel like you would want to grab the mini's and the battlemat and some snacks and prepare for a long afternoon. There is an elaborate system by which you give each unit some stats - basic force rating, troop class, and battle rating, and then there is a combat system with lots of tables and modifiers. I think this could be really fun to use for an afternoon, but it is going to take a long while. You would have to have the right type of gamerz at your table who would be into playing a "game within a game" and focus on this. I think you could create a high level mini-campaign with three to four adventures based on alternating the PC roleplaying and the war machine focus. If played correctly and with the right gaming group this could be an epic finale to a long campaign. Or a way to involve your PC's in the "War that changed everything", leading to interesting role play opportunities in the aftermath.

Anyway, I like both systems for what they are good for - use JB's B/X companion rules for small units of troops for a quick resolution and "move on the with the game", but, if you want to make Mass Combat the focus of a gaming night, then get out the battle mats and throw down with the war machine.

Rolemaster (Take 3) and Amethyst

Having read over the rolemaster core books I set right out to make a character. I started small - a common human ranger. I rolled some stats, then potential attributes, then modified for race, chose some languages then started flipping through the skill list and figuring out things like development points and power points, etc...

Well, lets just say that I may have been accustomed to a simpler way of making characters over the last couple of years (during which the only systems that I have used are Fudge, Risus, and 2nd Edition DnD). I'm not sure I have the time or patience right now to make Rolemaster characters unless I got a group together who would get me inspired to do so. Or maybe if I can figure out that Fudge conversion for Rolemaster that I think is a really juicy idea....

Anyway, I shelved Rolemaster for the short term and I am following the sacred teachings of Risus Monkey by trying to get a Mythic game started up. For now I may start up solo and then add my buddy in later if that makes sense. I'll probably post something up about the game I am planning in the next couple of days. I read through that book over the last couple of days and it immediately "clicked".

Also, Chris Dias of Dias Ex Machina contacted me about his game Amethyst which is being sold by Goodman Games. I checked out these links here, the pictures here, the free adventure Biohazard ( a zombie apocalypse style game), and finally this youtube clip. I wrote this blog post a while back about adding guns to ODD, well this game adds guns, and computers, and cars, and pretty much everything about our modern world to the conventional D&D game. Chris popped the top off his head and completely imagined a really excellent world where all the stuff that exists in our DnD games "came out to play"...

I think this picture that I popped into this post pretty much sums up the game (to Chris Dias or artist Nick Greenwood - if you want me to take this down I will immediately). They talk about it quite a bit in that cool YouTube series where they not only discuss the gameworld but how it evolved with the art from Nick Greewood (who did like 99.9% of the art for the game apparently). I've said before that having Peter Bradley do like 90% of the art for the Castles and Crusades game set up a consistent look and brand for that game. I think the same will hold true for amethyst.

Anyway, I can't say much more since I haven't picked up a copy of the game (I probably won't anytime soon since it is written for 4th edition DnD which I have no plans to play). The combination of technology, magic, fantasy, politics, and interesting imagery makes me want to slap my practical side silly and BUY THIS GAME (which is saying that I have like 50 different campaign worlds that I downloaded as part of the Haiti bundle and like 50 more campaign worlds that I have thought up in my sick head and don't in any way need another game world).

I'm not a fan of the 3rd edition, 3.5 edition, and 4th edition DnD rules - however, just because you don't like the rules doesn't mean there is a lot of gold in a game world/concept regardless of the rules. I could see me running a game in the amethyst game world using any of the familiar rulesets that I have become accustomed to over the years. Or if my DM buddy would get his $#!& together and want to start up our tabletop game (which was supposed to use 4th edition rules- since this DM likes 4th edition and convinced all us "old-timers" to try it but then never started the game all winter long after we made characters in November)

Maybe, just maybe I could convince him to run this game-world instead of the standard fantasy world he had been thinking of running a campaign in.

Who knows, I may go rogue and pick up a copy after all. If I watch that YouTube video about the art one more time I'll probably fail my saving throw and cave in to a moment of consumer weakness :)

RPG Lite PubCrawl 3: SLUG

Yep, slug ---- this stands for Simple Laid-back Universal Game system. This is about as rules light as it gets. The rules fit on one page. There are a bunch of games like it. They are usually put out there with comedy gaming in mind or for when you just want to do some cooperative story telling with some minor injection of rules and randomness. I'm going to make this overview as light as this game is. Lets get right into the elements analysis:

Elements:

Explanation - in SLUG, you can make your character any way that you choose as long as the GM can understand what you are good /bad at.

Action Resolution - if the GM isn’t certain that you will automatically succeed you grab some dice (any kind or number really) - higher is better. The GM decides by the result how good you did and adds in factors from your character description to modify this.

Development - throughout the game if you think it makes sense you can add ideas to your character if the GM agrees.

Adaptability (5 out of 10) - while in theory you could run any kind of game with this type of system - this kind of light hearted system

Feather Scale (10 for 10) - there is only one page of rules - nuff said.

Combat (2 out of 10) - There really aren’t any specific combat rules. I guess if you really wanted to have a combat you would have to make them up. I think following in the spirit of the game you would just have the two contestants each roll some dice and you would modify the rolls with modifiers based on the character sheet. Whoever comes up with the best total would “win” the round. You could employ the magic rule of 3 and say if one character “wins” 3 times in combat he has dispatched his foe. You could be free form and let the winner decide what that means (death, grievous wound, or in “combats” that are non-violent, verbal, or really more a skill contest you could be creative, maybe the loser has lost self esteem or finances or something) with GM approval.

Longevity (5 out of 10) when you feel that you character has been practicing a skill in the game or you have revealed something new and important about the character’s past - if you can convince the GM that it should be added you just put it down on the character sheet.

SLUG is a fun idea and I think you could actually use it to play roleplaying games with very little additional development. The players and GM have to be on the same page with their interpretation of the character and the spirit of the game.

First Stop on the Pub Crawl: Fudge

Fudge a game not just a chocolaty treat - it is a "way"of thinking about running games. I personally love Fudge and I’ve used it to run several games in the past. My favorite Fudge game I ever played was a low power level supers game where one PC had the ability to split himself into a molecular fog and then recombine and the other PC had perfect aim (he couldn’t miss with a ranged attack). Fudge is really easy to learn and is very rules light. Well lets get started with elements analysis:

Trait Levels (instead of having numbers to describe how good you are at something you get adjectives, good, terrible, superb, etc.), Attributes - the gm will specify how many of these - they describe physical or mental qualities for characters in a game world where almost all characters should have a description for how good they are in this area, examples, Strength, Agility, etc... Skills - these described abilites that are typically trained, where attributes are something determined by Genes. Skills are not connected to attributes in standard fudge so you can run games without attributes if you wanted. Gifts - these are character qualities describing particularly good traits or benefits that a character has, examples include wealthy, good looking, quick reflexes. Flaws - a trait that limits a characters behavior, abilities, or other peoples reactions to the character - opposite from the gifts. Fudge Points - I think these were an integral part to the game which made the game special. Fudge points allowed a character to manipulate fate to some extent in the game. In a critical moment they could use these to change the outcome of dice. Wound Levels - wound levels were the default method for tracking damage from combat in fudge - this is something I would modify if I was ever to run fudge again. Since the trait levels are so granular, a great swordsman has a huge edge on a good swordsman, so in a combat between the two the great swordsman will land a few blows which will penalize the opponents future attacks and soon the fight is over. I’ll talk about the benefits of this and the penalties later in this post. Super Powers - self explanatory - magic, psionics, etc... Fudge Dice - fudge dice are cool. They are d6’s with two sides marked -1, two sides marked 0, and two sides marked +1. You can roll multiple fudge dice to create a distribution of +/-X where X=the number of dice rolled and the center of the probability curve is always zero. The default for most fudge rolls is 4dF giving you a +4 to -4 range to modify the result of a skill or attribute check.

Adaptability: (8 out of 10)

Fudge can be used to run almost any game genre imaginable. There are certain genres where it doesn’t perform as well. I’d say games where the focus will be on hack n slash - fudge is lacking. The combat system is meant to be quick and deadly - not detailed or multifaceted. You can’t really run combats where the contestants rock back and forth in a duel. Instead, one opponent will quickly gain the edge and the other will death spiral. Another area that fudge is lacking is rules for technology - so sci fi games would be hard to run without a lot of modification of the core rules. I personally like technological items to be quantitatively described with all their features, not just a “good magnetic accerator”. I could see fudge used to describe a “firefly” or serenity type of sci fi where the technology sits in the background for the most part. Another neat thing about fudge is that things can be ported into the game easily and almost all the rules that I described so far could be modified or removed :) to create exactly the game that you want.

Feather Scale: (7 out of 10)

This game is pretty light. Anybody can create a character pretty quickly - although you could also spend hours creating a character if you want to be really detailed about it. You can add more and more rules to Fudge and bog it down to maybe a 3 on this scale or you could strip everything back and be close to an 8 or 9. I picked 7 on the feather scale as representative of the average fudge game using the rules as presented with few changes. There are some nice pre-thought through versions of Fudge like: Five Point Fudge, or Fate which already give you a less fuzzy version of the game rules and clearer descriptions of how to get from point A to B.

Combat (7 out of 10)

I’ve already described combat in fudge a bit so I won’t spend much time here. The attacker rolls his attacking skill in a contest vs. the defenders defense skill (or against a dodge check). You roll 4dF as a contest against your opponent - rounds can be dealt with using a turn system or via a simultaneous system. I always used an agglomerate of both. The combat system is quick and lethal although there are ways to adapt it toward more combat focused game by altering the wound system and by adding little intermediate levels in between the ranks to spread out the scale a bit and add more variation to the ranks.

Longevity (7 out of 10)

Fudge can easily be used to run a long campaign. There is a system of giving out experience or you can just work subjectively to improve characters based on agreement between the GM and the players.

Overall

Fudge is a great game system. It is rules light, adaptable, and the rules are very familiar since the use of adjectives makes it so everyone can understand the level of ability. I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game and I think aspects of this game system have shown up in many newer systems. Remember the golden rule, if you don't have a rule to cover it - just fudge it...

Rulz Light Pub Crawl

I think the next thing up on my blog agenda is a rulez light pub crawl. I'm going to cover all the rules sets that I have a special love for. I'm thinking of rating them on a couple of metrics - some quantitative and some categorical:

Elements analysis (what are the core elements of the game - does it have skills? does it have classes? is there a probability mechanic and what is it like?

Adaptibility (a measure of how many different kinds of games you can run with this rules system.

Feather Scale (1-10 scale with 10 being totally Free-Form-almost-no-rules gaming)

Combat (a description of how they handle combat and what to expect from combat in this game)

Longevity (how does the game handle long campaigns, or is it more suited for short gaming sessions)

If anybody has other ideas of aspects that I should cover - let me know :)