Random Encounter Montage

Here's a mechanic for determining random encounters.

I've always hated giving the DM sole responsibility for accidentally running into a wandering monster. And when I ran lots of dungeon crawls, I'd always forget to roll. On the other end of the spectrum is one DM I played with who would dramatically roll a d12 for each hour of travel. His encounters were terrible, too. They typically involved an epic battle that completely distracted the party from the main story.

Anyhow, this method puts the chance of encounter in the hands of the PCs. It's a spin off of the 4e Skill Challenge mechanic, and will work well if you want to give your travel a montage feel. For every significant leg of the journey, each player must make a skill check. The DM should determine an appropriate DC/target roll that is consistent for the whole party. The player can choose the skill she wants to employ, as long as she describes how that skill is helping the party along. This is her moment in the montage to detail however she wants. Depending on the size of the group and the pace of the evening, going around the table once or twice should be enough.

Success means the party makes unimpeded progress. Failure means the player gets to play the lead role in a random encounter. Perhaps she is attacked first. Maybe she sets off the trip wire. Maybe she finds the mysterious ring of invisibility.

Alternately, if multiple players fail their checks, the DM could wait until the end of the montage sequence and present an encounter that encompasses the collective failure. That is, Sven's failure means the party will encounter a patrol of goblins, but since Maude also failed, the goblins will have a troll.

They Have a Cave Troll by Otis Frampton

The trick is in finding the balance. You don't want to have too many random encounters turning your evening into a suckfest, like aforementioned bad DM did. On the other hand, the risk of failure is what makes it fun, and putting that risk in the hands of the players makes it all the better.

Real Overland Movement

A friend of mine has been working on a series or articles on the role of beasts of burden in war. First up the camel, and now the mule. They are short and fascinating pieces, not least of all because of the game ideas they can churn up. Take, for example, this excellent chart that has been reproduced from a 19th century British military handbook.

	Animal Speed (Miles per Hour)	Pack Load (Pounds)	Draught Load (Pounds)	Work Day (Distance in Miles)
Camel	2.5	300-600	1,000	20
Elephant	3.5	800-1,200	8,000	15-20
Horse	4.0	250-400	350	15-16
Human	2.5	40-80	120-150	4-8
Mule	4.0	150-300	500	15-16
Ox	2.2	160-200	300-500	4-6
Reindeer	18~90	300	300	50-100 by sleigh

The original source for these figures is The Soldier's Pocket-Book for Field Service by Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley (a Modern Major General with an amazing bio of his own).

One thing that strikes me about this table is how different the numbers are from those given for overland movement in gaming. Take the d20 SRD for example. The mule numbers match up pretty well, but the gaming horses are way faster than the real horses, covering 40 or 48 miles in a day. Of course, Wolseley's numbers have to consider the movement of these animals as part of a large force, but I do wonder how various gaming systems came up with their overland movement rates. There's much more to be explored in this regard.

In general, gaming needs more rules for reindeer. (New York Public Library)

Spins on Elemental Magic

Many months ago, when I first brought up the issue of magic in the land of Kimatarthi, I mentioned that I wanted there to be multiple means to the same end. I would like players to have significant narrative power to use magic however they want to, even though there are existing ways to cast spells. So while the players will be able to tinker with various casting methods, I needed a base to start from. Enter the Classical Elements.

There are a ton of settings that use the Classical Elements as a basis for magic from D&D to GURPS to Codex Alera (which is past due to be made into a role-playing game). The cool thing is that, just as in real ancient history, there are different ways of interpreting the elements.

Classical Greek
The system that most people are familiar with are the Greek elements: Fire, Earth, Water, and Air. There are derivations from that, but it all comes down to the four. You can find this throughout Dungeons and Dragons and all of its spin-offs.

Classical Indian
Interestingly, classical Hindu mythology came to a similar conclusion, but added one more: Fire, Earth, Water, Air, and Ether. It's not so far off from the classical Greek quintessence, but including ether as a basic element should appeal to many (particularly our gang of Ethernauts). I could totally see how  or folks that want to mix a steampunk or weird science or pseudo-Enlightenment kind of vibe into a campaign might be drawn to an Ether element. Can you imagine summoning an Ether Elemental? What would that do?

What about Consciousness as an Element? Here it's represented as a King.

Classical Chinese
Another system that identifies five elements is Chinese: Fire, Earth, Water, Wood, Metal. I guess air was dropped, as it is not a substance. Interestingly enough, Jim Butcher throws Air back into the mix in Codex Alera. This kicks much ass.

Classical Bhuddism
There is a concept of seven centers of vital energy (chakras) in Bhuddism and Hinduism that is similar to the elements. These are identified as Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Ether/Sound, Light/Dark, Time/Space. This is a really cool concept. I can totally picture a Tech Level 11 Mage slinging around hexes that twist space-time.

That also brings up the point that in all of these mythologies, the elements are tied to different emotions, temperaments, body parts, planets, etc. My basic point is that there are so many different ways to parse our reality, why can't elemental magic draw upon any of those categories? What about a mage that draws upon actual elements? You know... a Carbon Mage.

Well they can. Play my game.

Factions in the Sandbox

My recent post on the Bakdunis family has me thinking again about tools a DM can use to run a successful sandbox campaign. Anyone who has run a campaign has faced the challenge of balancing between railroading the players into the game that has been prepared and giving them the agency to make the decisions they want. I think most railroading happens because the DM is unprepared to deal with the players' choices.

A central way to avoid having to force the players down a path (or force your path down the players' throats) is to have a rich setting. Having a bunch of different options and bounding your players with ample choices will keep you from having to force one choice on them. A resource like Vornheim, chock full of tricks, tables, and quick outs, is a great tool to have on hand.

One way that I'm making Kimatarthi a rich setting is by laying out a canvass of factions for the players to deal with. The Bakdunis are the ruling family that came to power through a coup. Perhaps it was warranted, but no one pulls that off without making enemies. The city they rule has also become a mixing bowl of refugees from all across the land, different classes of people, different backgrounds, different customs... different expectations. All this creates friction.

Markaz is not just the ruling family and their supporters. There are the old elite families that the Bakdunis deposed and the non-elites who suddenly found themselves in competition with the world's refugees. There are the elites that were deposed by rampaging goblins and reestablished themselves in Markaz. There are the descendents of refugees, some of whom did well, others not as well. There are new elites, charismatic populists, clergy, merchants, kings and queens of the black market, and time lords crime lords. The Markaz Guard are not the only military organization in town, a development that always makes things interesting. And, of course, there are the Mages.

The PCs will start off as conscripted grunts in the Markaz Guard, but it will soon be clear that they will have the opportunity for freelancing, moonlighting, and the pursuit of their own separate interests. If these interests happen to run contradictory to their current jobs, well, that just makes for good plot hooks. They're bound to make friends, allies, rivals, and enemies. So if they don't want to take the job that's being offered one week, that's fine. This decision will, no doubt, put them in some other interesting position.

So what's the advantage of having a plethora of factions, as opposed to other tools for building the sandbox? Simply, it's because of the relationships. By creating a scenario in which the characters build relationships it will self-generate plot hooks and constraining factors, thus removing the need for the DM to railroad them into a particular storyline. The players can build trust and affiliations. They can build animosity that creates its own challenges. Our group's Slaying Solomon campaign has this dynamic, which played out in a major way this past week (...as I have learned. I had a "kid" to "take care of" and couldn't "go play games this weekend."), and I think it's a great way to keep things rolling and make up some great stories along the way.

D6 Homebrew Character Sheets

Check it out. I modified the old D6 Fantasy character sheets.

If I'm going to run a homebrew D6 campaign that splices in some narrative aspects that I like about FATE, then the conventional D6 Fantasy character sheets just ain't gonna cut it. So I dropped the Advantages / Disadvantages section in favor of a place to write in Aspects.

 I made a few other changes, too. Some of the basic Skills that were listed on the old sheets would prove less useful in my campaign, so I got rid of them, and added some other skills that I think will be useful.

Also, there were a couple of little things I didn't quite like in the old sheets. One was that the skills you need most often for combat are scattered all across the paper. So, I consolidated them into one box - sure it's a bit redundant, but I think it'll make things easier on the player. It also annoyed me just a little bit that the lines for writing in your weapons alternated between melee and missile weapons. I just sorted it so your weapon types are all together. There are a couple other little changes too.

I have these in .pdf, too, but I can't be bothered right now to set up somewhere for a download. If anyone's actually interested, just let me know and I'll send you copies.

Update: I had the idea that I could probably just link it to a copy in Google Docs. So I did that instead of the crappy .jpg. Enjoy!

Hit Points and Consequences

Risus Monkey wrote recently about the utility of using consequences as a component of games. While he was talking specifically about Risus, it’s a useful tool that can be used in a wide variety of narrative games, and one that I’ve incorporated into my own “D6F” house rules.

 

The way I’ve chose to do it, however, is a bit of an experiment, so I’m excited to see how it flies in game play. While the standard options for gameplay are usually either use a stress scale with consequences or use hit points, I choose both. I want to have my hit points and eat them, too. Here’s how it’ll work:

All characters have hit points. But whenever a character takes damage, her player will have the option to take that damage as a consequence comparable to the amount of hit point damage, rather than as actual hit points. So, for example, she could opt for either “Stunned” or 3 points of damage, “Busted arm (Wounded)” or 7 points, “Incapacitated” or 20 points, etc.

Consequences are taken as a temporary Aspect, but the severity of the consequence determines how long the Aspect persists. I haven’t worked out an exact scale yet, but something like “Stunned” will only last a round or two, whereas “Incapacitated” could last several weeks or months of game time. It could even lead to a permanent Aspect, such as “Gammy leg” or "Hook" if it were serious enough.

Buster should have taken the damage...

I anticipate that players will choose to take light consequences early in the fight, since they will wear off quickly, and more serious consequences only when their characters are truly threatened with death. Effectively, this will give players a way to avoid death by a thousand paper cuts and hopefully lead to bigger, more dramatic climactic battles. At least that’s the idea.

There may very well be good reasons why system designers give the option to do either a scale or hit points. Maybe it gets too complicated during actual play. Who knows? The only way to find out is game testing. It seems totally manageable, though, and should bring some interesting, imaginative, and fun choices to the table.

On Points

As I discussed in my last post, I’ll be using an Open D6 + FATE rules combo (D6F) for my upcoming Kimatarthi campaign. One of the main points of convergence that I see is in the use of Character Points (or FATE points, as it were…). In both systems, points can be spent to gain bonuses, modify scenes, or otherwise moderately impact the game narrative.  As per the Open D6 rules, D6F will manifest the bonuses as an extra wild die added for each character point spent, and will also use Character Points for character development. As per FATE, spending a Character Point will be related to a character’s Aspects. Where D6 and FATE depart is in how the points are earned, so this gives me some room for tinkering.

In D6F, I see three ways to earn Character Points. The inclusion of Aspects, as per FATE, gives players the ability to earn character points when their Aspects are compelled or when they create in-game drama. Character Points will also be earned for successfully completing adventures and otherwise moving the story along. But the third way to earn points is ripped from a totally different source – Old School Hack.

Oh yes. In addition to normal rewards and compels, character points will also be distributed by the players, among the players like Awesome Points in OSH. Because who doesn’t love a bowlful of awesome? Our group loves OSH, and part of what makes the sessions so much fun is chucking candy rewards at each other for entertaining the rest of us.  Awesome points keep players engaged in the story, keep them striving to perform, and provide serious incentive for the players to work as a group. Too often in games, players tune out their comrades while planning out their next perfect, damage-dealing move – something that it impossible if you need to keep your teammates invested in your character to level up. Awesome Points are one of the crowning features of OSH, and I really think they will contribute to the fun factor of any campaign.

D6F - Playing to Disadvantages (and Advantages)

As noted in my previous post, I’ve decided to run my campaign with a base D6 rule set, but with some good stuff from FATE grafted on - a beast I like to call D6F. The main thing I’m taking from FATE is the use of Aspects, which describe what a character is like, and give bonuses for using them in relevant situations.

The D6 system does have a similar mechanic in its use of Advantages and Disadvantages, but I find it unsatisfying. There are a lot of systems that incorporate the idea of character flaws into the game, but do so for the purposes of character depth only. FATE, on the other hand, makes disadvantages a critical part of game play and players are rewarded with FATE points for making their lives more difficult. So there’s a payoff beyond plain game flavor.

Take, for example, my character in our GURPS Knights of the Astral Seas game. I took a handful of disadvantages in order to get a few more character creation points, but they basically mean nothing now. Honestly, I’m not even sure what they are off the top of my head because I don’t ever use them. There’s no penalty for not playing them, and when I have role-played to them, it has often felt like a forced non-sequitur.

To its credit, D6 does give the Advantages/Disadvantages rule set some real in game purpose, but at the end of the day, it's still just a matter of character depth. I’m a real believer that human behavior responds to incentives—both in the free market economy and in gaming.

So, by making the D6 Advantage/Disadvantages into FATE Aspects, the mechanic will become an active part of play. What does this mean? Well, FATE’s FATE Points easily become the D6 Character Points (note: don’t confuse FATE Points with the D6 system’s Fate Points – ugh.) Players in my D6F system will have to spend character points to invoke the advantage of an Aspect they have. Similarly, they will earn Character Points for invoking a disadvantage or by subjecting themselves to a compel.

But wait – there’s more! In the D6 system, Character Points are not only used for doing cool stuff during the game, they are the mechanism for character development. So by taking disadvantages and creating more trouble for themselves during play, the players will actually be earning points to build their skills and attributes.

So now, instead of simply having to play out a character’s “Misogynist” Aspect with periodic derisive comments, they can actually earn Character Points to buy new skills or do awesome stuff simply by reminding the GM that bartering with the lady shopkeep may not go as smoothly as anticipated.

I think this blend of the systems nicely captures the best mechanics of both. Naturally, there are a number of corollaries that follow from this marriage, so stay tuned!

And the System is...

One of the reasons I decided to start this blog was to give me an outlet to think critically about turning my imagined campaign setting into an actual campaign. One of the biggest matters I had to resolve was figuring out which system I wanted to use to play it. So I’ve been thinking about it for the past two months, and I think I’ve made up my mind.

The verdict is in: I plan to use D6 Fantasy, augmented with some narrative FATE rules. Since everyone who blogs has to make up terms and systems and stuff, I’m going to call this hybrid system of mine D6F (pretty clever, eh?).

D6 is pretty basic, but the main thing I added from the FATE system is the use of Aspects that will replace the Advantages and Disadvantages of D6, and be central to doing cool stuff and leveling up. I plan to expound on how it all will work in subsequent posts, but let me first explain why I’m keen on D6 Fantasy as my base system.

I’m familiar with it and it's easy

D6 is a super-easy, skill-based gaming system. Having played the old Star Wars D6 back in the day, I always found it to be straightforward and playable. We even recruited several non-gamers to play with us, which I attribute to both the accessibility of the system and our group’s general awesomeness (“Trust me, no one on Coruscant will be looking for a shaved Bothan!”). I also tried to adapt it to a fantasy setting a few years before West End Games published the D6 Fantasy rule set. It wasn’t nearly as good, but it also didn’t lose nearly as much money. (Sorry. Too soon?)

It’s cinematic, yet narrative

One of the great things about the D6 system is that it lends itself to quick-action, cinematic games. This is why I recently suggested it to Oddysey for her Summer ’11 Grimdark, Cyberpunk, Racing Campaign (HAWT!). While the system inherently leaves room to incorporate as much or as little narrative gaming as the group would like, I hope encourage more of this by grafting on the FATE rules.

…And flexible

Like many narrative games, there is ample space for players to develop the characters they want without being tightly bound by preset templates. Want to play a Fighter or Assassin? Sure. Want to play a Samurai Landscape Artist, a Mind-Flayer Graham Cracker Merchant, or Cthulhu’s Tech Support (so he can place that Call)? No problem! This will surely make people like Risus Monkey happy, but it also avoids the “Risus death spiral” that irks some folks I game with.

It's got plenty of dice rollin'

I like rolling dice. I like rolling eight dice at a time. I like exploding wild dice.  I like being able to cash in points to buy more exploding wild dice – even if they all only have six sides. Unlike some narrative games, there is still plenty of crunchiness in the D6 rules that means lots of dice to roll for skills and difficulty levels and stuff.

It has open-ended, skill-based rules for magic

Here’s the big one. D6 Fantasy outlines four basic magic skills that govern casting, and the players are given considerable leeway to determine how their spells manifest. However, the system is flexible enough that totally different casting skills can be used. This is important because magic in my world is a new and unknown phenomenon. It will be rare and uncertain at the beginning of the campaign, but I want to give the players enough freedom to explore and invent their own ways of tapping into the arcane. I think the simplicity and flexibility of this system will give my players considerable room for interesting and creative innovation.

D6 uses metric!

To hell with you and your 5’ squares! Who needs 25 square feet of personal space, anyhow? It’s all about meters and liters and grams, baby. It’s the only way to measure.

I’m pretty excited to give this a whirl, and I look forward to discussing how this will work in coming posts. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions, I’m happy to hear them!

Let's Play Geography!

Let’s take minute to talk mechanics. Let’s face it: if you’re into creating worlds for gaming, you’re probably into the process as much as anything. I love geography and am fascinated by geology (I love those How the Earth Was Made documentaries – they’re like nerd crack!), which is part of the reason I enjoy creating worlds so much. So, as I’ve created this world I’ve given a great deal of attention to the physical structure of the land itself. These things require some thought.

It’s a few years old, but Rich Burlew (the Giant in the Playground himself) gives an interesting discussion of the logic of building the geography of a fantasy world. He emphasizes the inherent logic of how elevation, water, and civilization work together.

After I read this, I went back to my old maps of Kimatarthi, and I found that my treatment of the issue was very similar to his in that there is an underlying logic for how everything fits together. You can’t just slap together mountains and swamps and rivers and cities and expect it to be a coherent thing. Kimatarthi itself has been affected by plate tectonics, volcanism, and erosion. Its people are influenced by climate, terrain, economics, and natural disasters, such as ravenous goblin hordes.

So, when I made an initial sketch of the world, it was clear that the shape suggested two plateaus separated by a long valley. I decided that the heights would be rather dramatic and unlivable. Therefore, civilization has to exist at the lower elevations. Water also flows down, and it seems that if there’s just one main valley almost all of the smaller streams would eventually come together at a central river. I decided to make this river run south until it fans out into a marsh and goes over Land’s End.

The positions of the cities are defined by this geography as well. Down south, Bryss benefits from substantial glacial runoff, and is protected from the desert by mountains. Also, its higher elevation keeps it a bit cooler.

In the east, Mudun can also take advantage of water, elevation and arable land, but it’s vulnerable to attack. Everything in the east was destroyed during the Goblin War, and that whole region is still goblin territory.

Though everything west of the Great Rift is mostly desert, the gap all the way up north is the only passage to Bryss. Caravans making that long journey would have to outfit themselves, and so Markaz developed into a trade hub at the last inhabitable point beyond the Western Desert. These positions also suggest a relationship among the cities that feeds into the larger political environment… but that’s something I’ll explore later.

I have always enjoyed the mental exercise that comes with figuring out why things are the way they are – both in real life and in pretend. The nice thing about inventing a world, though, is that you can follow an interesting idea and see where it leads. When you run to a dead end, you can just think up another string that makes sense. I once read that Tolkien reported that he felt that he was exploring a world more than inventing one. And I can see how he’d feel that way.

Magic

In descriptive terms, I have a good idea of how magic works in Kimatarthi. As I noted in my last post, however, I’m less sure of how to capture that feel with a gaming mechanic.

So here’s the deal.

In the days before the Goblin Wars, magic was unknown. Kimatarthi was very much like our own world. There was superstition, religion, belief in spirits – but no magic. When the goblin armies arrived, however, they decimated the world with an ability to could conjure fire, wind, and lightning. They brought a powerful and destructive new force with them, true magic.

Though mankind eventually turned back the onslaught, the world’s collective psyche was scarred by the horror of the dark “goblin arts.”  They considered it evil and associated it as one and the same as the scourge that had wiped out cites, towns, and villages by the score. Yet there was a small contingent of people who became convinced that magic was not purely evil. These taught that magic was a natural force that could be studied and harnessed not only for destruction, but for the good of society.

Society is society, however… and society would have none of it. Magic was born of evil and was a direct challenge to the authority of the gods. Anyone who dabbled in this blasphemy was hunted down. If they were not torn to pieces and burned by enraged mobs, they were tortured and publicly executed by the authorities. The use of magic was unequivocally declared illegal, and magic-users were forced underground.

I plan to incorporate this tension into the campaign. I would hope that the players would want to join the underground subversives dedicated to exploring this wondrous new phenomenon. Yet, they will have a choice, and they may choose to support the law and the righteousness of the old ways. They may choose to work to eliminate this devilry from the world. Or it may be something on the edges of the campaign that falls into the background. But magic is an integral part of the setting.

Regardless, I have a gaming tension to resolve. Magic is a natural phenomenon that clearly the goblins have mastered. This implies a complete magical ontology with schools and libraries of spells of many varieties. In game terms, the goblins could be working directly from the Players Handbook. On the other hand, this aspect of the cosmos is completely foreign to the PCs, who are exploring it and perhaps redefining it as they go long. As a gaming mechanic, this lends itself to a more narrative style of magic use, where the players have more freedom to describe the effect they want to create.

So I am faced with this dilemma. I want magic to be open to a wide segment of characters, rather than tied to an innate ability or years of study in a guild. So, I want to find a system where Magic-use could be as easy as adding an aspect or a feat, but then particular methods of wielding it could be skills. I think I would like to base magic use on skills, perhaps with spells nested inside other skills, much like specializations. Then of course, the system also has to serve as a guide for determining the difficulty of spells -  starting a camp fire as opposed to casting a fireball, for example.

This post has definitely been helpful in helping me to articulate what I want out of a magic system. I need to stew over this for a bit more, though. If anyone has any suggestions for a cool, flexible game mechanic for playing magic, I’d welcome your thoughts.

What System?

Everyone who has posted comments so far has asked a simple and sensible question: what system do I plan to run? Ok... so Risus Monkey is the first and only commenter at this point, but it’s a good question, and one’s that worth a post. So far, this world has been nothing more than my mental sandbox, and I haven’t yet played a game in the setting. But I have given a lot of thought to the matter… I just haven’t come up with a good answer yet.

When the first ideas that eventually became Kimatarthi came to me, I was thinking about it in terms of AD&D 2^nd edition, which is what I grew up with. This coincided with the first sizable gap in my gaming life, so it’s the best I knew of until I learned about D&D 3.5. I actually have notes packed away discussing how I’d run the game in one of these systems. Still, they didn’t quite work for me. My first hesitation was that the playable characters of Kimatarthi are too limited for anything of the Gygax pedigree. This setting has no elves, dwarves, halflings, kenders, or anything else. PCs can only be human. Also, there are no magic-users or clerics as such (see Magic), so I really felt like I would be cheating anyone who signed up to play D&D. Seriously, when was the last time someone played D&D with all human party… without magic?

I also gradually began to envision a campaign that wasn’t just dungeon-diving and goblin-bashing, but could also include interesting interpersonal conflict with politics and intrigue. D&D is not the best system out there for all that drama stuff. Other systems, like FATE are better equipped for this. FATE has a lot of good aspects, and I particularly like its in-game character creation mechanic. By developing characters over several rounds that potentially cover years at a time, it is possible to add years (decades?) of social history to Kimatarthi over, say, an hour of gaming. That would be awesome.

Another system that has some cool rules for “social battle” and intrigue is the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying.  But although I like that dynamic, I’m not sure that’s the right system as a whole. Plus, I don’t necessarily want my players associating Kimatarthi with Game of Thrones all the time.

But the big hang up with both of these is the rules for magic and spells. I have to say that I’m not in love with the FATE rules for magic rules. FATE variants offer some hope. I think there is some great stuff in the Dresden Files RPG, but overall it’s too cumbersome for the game I’d like to run. I did find some interesting FATE magic rules called Spirit of Steam and Sorcery, which may could work nicely.

Then again, I could just whip up some basic d20 rules, add a bit of homebrew, and wing it.

Really, as I think that the setting itself will not be impacted very much by whatever system I choose to run a game. As I see it, the stories we tell will be the stories that get told. The gaming system is just the medium for telling those stories. And that’s the fun of gaming.