Cogito, ergo ludo.

(It stands for Worldwide adventure writing month.) I’ll be trying to write something of an adventure. It might not work really well. The writing will be happening in this blog, starting now.

Assumptions

This adventure assumes a fantasy setting where humans live among other humans and where what is nonhuman is actually different from humans. The two central monsters of the adventure, goblins and ogres, are demons from spirit realms. If your game has them in another role, rename the creatures inhabiting this adventure. It is further assumed that player characters, if any, are not powerful enough to slay (large groups of) goblins and ogres with impunity.

There is some advice towards particular ways of approaching the adventure, but at its heart it is a dynamic situation, not a rigidly railroaded series of encounters. This all assuming I can actually write the damn thing.

The core idea

There’s a human town, not a particularly large one, somewhat separated from civilisation.

There’s a series of caves inhabited by goblins and ogres, divided by internal strife.

These two communities are not very compatible.

Goblins and ogres

Goblins are small, clawed and twisted creatures. They are the personification of children fearing the unknown and other people. They sneak around during nights and steal human children, taking them to their underground lairs and with vile magic transforming them into more goblins.

Ogres are how goblins see adults: Big, clumsy, inattentive, protective to the point of being misguided. To humans they are malformed, with various and evidently random parts of their body being out of proportion with the rest of it. They are strong, clumsy and dense. Ogres are created when goblins get their hands on an adult and apply the goblin-making sorcery on them. They see all goblins and all children as their little ones, whom they will protect to the best of their ability from any and all possible or imagined sources of risk. They do not have particularly good imagination.

Humans

A town populated with people who have nowhere else to go, with the likes of beggars, killers, thieves, thugs and few idealistic ones here and there. Some merchants looking for sources of easy income. A noble or three ruling the place mostly as a punishment.

Conflicts

The obvious one is that goblins want to steal human children. Humans do not want their children to be stolen, generally speaking. From human perspective only poor children have thus far disappeared, which means that the nobles and rich merchants are not terribly worried. A slaver or two would even object to anyone investigating the disappearance of poor people.

The goblins are essentially cruel and clever children. They want to have all the toys and friends and pets for themselves. The goblin shamans who transform children into goblins have many friends and hold power, but there’s more than one of them. Only one is necessary for the community to function. There may be other goblins with power, too.

Why do goblins live in caves?

The rituals require specific circumstances which can’t happen in sunlight. A slimy pool and cave fungi, say.

The origin of the caverns is as of yet undetermined. The human town is likely to be a mining town, which would provide a nice explanation for abandoned mines nearby.

I created a fantasy game and played a session with Gastogh and Nakano. Here’s the somewhat updated rules. The combat rules were inspired by Tunnels and Trolls (which I have never played or read).

Chargen

Starting characters have 10 points to divide among hit points, power and miscellaneous. 10 points creates potentially somewhat exceptional characters, but not powerful ones. (A random orc has at least 12 points in it.)

Hit points

All characters must have at least 1 hit point. More will be useful. At least 2 is recommended. Hit points are temporarily reduced in combat, due to some poisons and generally hurting oneself. They can be healed in town (or other fairly calm and pleasant location) at one hp per day, assuming a skilled healer is present. Otherwise one hp per week.

Power

Power is used notably in combat, but also whenever something needs to be rolled. It is the generic competence and heroism of the character. Roll a die with sides equal to the power attribute. If you don’t have a d7 nearby, use a d6 instead (and so on). Using a die roller can get past such problems.

Miscellanous

This is the actual meat of the system. Misc points need not be assigned at chargen and the unassigned ones can, at GM’s discretion, be assigned once adventuring. Use one point to get any of the following and feel free to develop new ones and get them okayed by the GM and other players who care.

• A cohort: Character built on half the PC’s points. Reasonably loyal, wants money, slows advancement.
• Followers: 3 characters, all built on one third the PC’s points.
• Backstabbing: When attacking from surprise roll power twice. (E.g. d6 power => 2d6 when attacking from surprise.)
• Archer: +2 power when using ranged weapon from distance.
• Brawler: Suffer no penalty for fighting unarmed.
• Tough: No penalty for being unarmoured.
• Spellcaster: Start one school of magic as detailed below, with single spell known. Additional points give new spell each.
• Hunter/Gatherer: Support one person in wilderness that contains sufficient food and water (not in desert, yes in forest). Additional points support one person each.
• Heirloom: Start with a powerful, potentially magical toy. Negotiate details with the GM. Selling it is bad form.
• Contact: Know a potentially powerful ally who can be negotiated with for favours, information and missions/quests.
• Healer: Offer skilled healing: Stabilise someone dying due to loss of hp, allow recovery of 1 hp per day in good conditions.
• Fast draw: Once a round change weapon without spending the entire round doing so.

Inventory

In addition to the above starting characters have d6 copper coins, food and drink for 3 days, a knife, some clothes, tools for making a fire and a short pice of rope. Maybe some camping equipment. Also, each character can pick two options from the list below (selling these is bad form):

• A poor weapon. If ranged, ammunition for 3 fights or one extended fight is included. Shield may be included but does not change the statistics in any way.
• A poor armour.
• Torches, rope, a ten foot pole.
• A lousy horse not trained for war.
• Spellbook or other magical implement.
• Other stuff you get by asking the GM.

Profession

Each character has a profession/trade/class, which tells what kinds of stuff the character can generally accomplish. A scholar can know ancient lore, a woodsman can climb trees and track, and so on. It generally gives no mechanical benefits. (Namely, mercenaries and soldiers do not get extra power in combat.) The purpose of professions is to offer a way of knowing if the characters can or can’t do a particular task.

Actual rules

Character generation was above. In actual play the rules should be used in combat and maybe in other situations where there is risk involved and the outcome of events in uncertain. These rules do work for negotiations and playing hide and seek and whatever else, but using them for that is completely optional. I didn’t.

Combat

All characters take a -2 penalty (minimum 1) to power in combat unless they are sufficiently armed. Poor weapon from chargen qualifies. Gauntlets or a stone do not. Sharpened stick is an edge case. All characters take 1 extra damage during a combat round if they are not armoured and take any damage.

Process and example

I am assuming two sides fighting against each other. Example: Three goblins (3hp, 3 power) against two adventurers (3 hp, 2 power and 3 hp, 6 power). All are assumed to have proper equipment (of poor quality, but proper none the less).

Every combatant chooses one of the following actions during each round: Fight, run (screaming recommended), or do something else. Both sides can choose a goal related to positioning (like “We hold the door so only few can come in at a time.”), assuming the group considers them sensible. Specific targets to attack are not selected (but see surprise below). Example: People would choose positioning now, but this combat obviously takes place in a flat room with no interesting features. Every combatant fights.

All combatants who actually fight roll power. Both sides sum their totals. If the combat totals of both sides are equal, every combatant takes 1 damage. Otherwise one side is winning and has the higher result. Example: Goblins roll 3, 2, 2 for total of 7, adventurers roll 1 and 4 for total of 5.

The winning side achieves whatever positioning it was doing and deals damage to the losing side. If NPCs are losing, the GM chooses the order in which they take damage. NPC is reduced to 0 hp, drops and the next takes the remaining damage until all damage is dealt. If PCs are losing, players can divide the damage among their characters as they will (default: Everyone takes equal damage, rounded up if no agreement is reached). Any character reduced to 0 hp is dying and requires skilled aid within a few hours or dies. Example: Player chars take a total of 2 points of damage. Both take 1. Another round: Goblins roll 1, 2, 1 for total of 4. Players roll 1 and 6 for total of 7. One goblin (GM’s pick) takes 3 damage and falls.

Miscellaneous actions include combat magic, sneaking, shooting burning arrows at the oil pit, toppling statues to crush enemies, and so on. It is resolved after normal fighting. Magic and other tasks requiring concentration can be interrupted if the magus takes any damage.

Any fleeing character gets away if it has any hp left at the end of the round, unless pursued as per positioning (or after combat by other means).

A list of ways to spend a round

• Fight
• Run
• Change/draw a weapon
• Cast a combat spell
• Keep watch over a handful of people
• Wake up
• Get up
• Prepare heavy or improvised weaponry for use
• Give an item to someone

Sneaking and surprise

To remain undetected a character must have two benefits: The character must be hiding and not actively searched for. “Hiding” means that the character must be hidden from sight, not make loud or uncharacteristic (wrt the situation) noises, have masked scent of approach from downwind when that is relevant, and so on. Active searching means exactly that and takes great attention. A guard watching a door qualifies. A lone guardsman at night in a forest can only keep a small section of the woods under active attention; two or more sneaks can surprise one guardsman. Keeping watch is a misc action in combat and prevents active participation in the fight.

A group of characters, or part of such a group, can do a surprise attack if they are undetected as per above. The benefits are simple: The surprising side can select the order in which their targets take damage. This is also true when the PCs are being surprised. It may hurt. Additional benefits: Opponents are often unarmed or sleeping or mounted or have some other reason for wasting actions.

Ranged weapons

Weapons are of 3 types: Melee, thrown or ranged. Melee weapons do good and reliable work at melee range. They can be thrown at -2 power. Thrown weapons work at short range. Round of fighting involves throwing such and preparing more to be thrown or using one in melee, which destroys the weapons or means losing it, requiring an action to equip a new weapon (or being quite good at drawing weapons or fighting at -2 penalty or being a skilled brawler). Ranged weapons work at long range (thrown ones do not), at short range and at melee with -2 power lost as thrown ones are.

It takes a successful positioning or relevant spell to move from long to short range or from short to melee.

Magic

There’s two kinds of magic: Combat and noncombat (ritual) magic. Combat magic usually takes one round to cast. It takes effect at the end of the round. Noncombat magic generally takes at least an hour to use, but often much longer.

Combat spells are either instantaneous or have duration of single combat (few minutes of noncombat). Combat spells should do damage or buff or curse. Ritual magic varies greatly, up to permanent and world-shattering events.

Schools of magic

All mages must select one school of magic. It defines the way they acquire magic, the magic they can acquire, the way it is used and the price for it.

Learning: From books and tomes and scrolls, by natural talent, through mentoring, as a natural ability (can’t learn more magic), by a deal with spirits, by dissecting ancient artifacts, …

Source of power: The fabric of reality, the very bones of earth, the deep oceans, the darkest shadows, death itself, …

Method: Chanting and drawing patterns into air, by brewing potions, by drawing (suitable) energy from the surroundings and releasing it, by inscribing actual runes on targets, by self-mutilation, through extreme concentration, commanding spirits, crafting magical objects, …

Price: Live sacrifices, lengthy preparation ahead of time, self-mutilation, hostile spirits waiting for the opportunity to strike, slow transformation into an undead of other monster, paralysing headache, …

The above should be mixed (and more created) so as to create flavourful and not too powerful mages. Namely, magic from reading is fairly hard to improve and can be powerful in other ways, natural magic can have quite low price (if any), crafting potions and such should be able to achieve great results as it is takes foresight and resources to achieve. Source of power should create mages such as elementalists and necromancers. The fabric of reality as a source of power should be more-or-less limited to book mages and those similarly limited. It is boring.

Spells

• Healing: Ritual. Casting time one hour: Roll power, target heals 1 hit point but not above the roll or normal maximum. Two hours: Roll power four times, take the best. Target heals 2 hit points but not above the roll or normal maximum. n hours: Roll n^2 times, take the best. Target heals n points but not above the roll or maximum hp.
• Strength: Combat. Casting takes one action, target gets +2 power to fighting. Duration: One combat or few minutes.

Some foes

Orc: 5 hp, power d6, armed with javelins, spears or axes, possibly poisoned to do 1 damage every hour for d6 hours. Sees in dark.

Hellhound: 10 hp, d6, can have nasty poison or unhealing bites of fiery bites or whatever. Sees in dark, through smoke and flames, good sense of smell.

Human soldier, professional: d4, 5 hp.

Rewards

Characters get 1 experience point for every gold piece they acquire through adventuring and spend. The characters must divide the gold they spend and hence the experience they gain. Source: Brian’s Trollsmyth.

Once a character has a number of exp equal to current point value +1 (starting characters are worth 10 points and hence need 11 xp), they get one extra point to use as they will. It must be used immediately on power or hp (no justification necessary or can be transferred into misc points which can be used at will. Such expenditures must be explained. Downtime is a good generic explanation.

One silver piece is worth 3d6 copper pieces. One gold piece is worth 5d20 silver pieces. These ratios are specific to a town or other similar economic unit. They will likely change as time passes, too.

Food and drink for a day is worth a copper. A poor weapon is worth 10 to 15. Equipment of quality is priced in silver (or even gold). Gold is rare. Outside towns and such people usually trade goods for goods or favours. Money is not frequently used, but is generally accepted.

(I will accept criticism and advice on pricing things, but I also am too lazy to do research.)

Items of quality, perhaps of magical nature, are another assumed reward. Such weapons give bonus to power when used in combat (and may do something interesting, too). Armours reduce damage taken, but never below 1, so they can’t completely negate it. Healing potions work like the healing spell, varying parameters, foul taste.

Running and playing the game

The point of the game, for characters, is to get rich and powerful. For players it is to come up with imaginative solutions to presented problems. Avoiding fair fights is recommended. For game master it is to create a problematic situation, often a dungeon, and to adjudicate how the fiction works once players get their characters involved in it.

To be explicit: There is a lot of rules material focused on combat. This material is not very interesting to play with. The point is to allow characters who shine at combat and to heavily discourage attacking superior foes, while encouraging attacking inferior foes.

Skills it takes to run this game

Running this game actually takes preparation. I’m not used to preparing games. Namely, I think the following should be prepared ahead of time: The general nature of the problem, the motivations of key figures and groups, the resources they have and the information they have. Vague idea of a map is useful. Should a dungeon be involved, mapping it to some degree is advised. At least as a flowchart with some notable things placed where they should be.

Dungeoncraft

An interesting dungeon should be constructed as follows: There should be internal schisms or outright fighting among the residents. It should be possible to negotiate with intelligent residents and to use the unintelligent ones. There should always be at least three ways to get to any place of importance, though some should be hidden or dangerous. This is a variant of the three clue rule, most recently written about by the Alexandrian.

Random encounters, dynamic dungeons, or other means of discouraging player characters from simply doing hit-and-run tactics, on foe at a time, are advised.

Getting player characters into the adventure

Some GMs may want to prepare several adventures. (Using prepublished adventures takes preparation.) Some will want to only prepare one. I recommend the following methods of getting player characters into the adventure:

• I have prepared this adventure. We’ll play it or some other game. Here’s the plot hook.
• As above, but replace the final sentence with “Come up with a plot hook.”
• Schrödinger’s dungeon: Have the adventure be where the player characters go to. Take care to not nullify player choices; that is, if they specifically want to avoid an adventure or an encounter, let them have a fair chance of doing so, if it is at all reasonable. This is to avoid railroading.

Random, unrelated stuff

My sister shall, as of this autumn, be studying biology in the university of Jyväskylä, where I also study mathematics.

I will (very probably) be offline starting tomorrow, ending near the end of the week.

This is rules design idea, untested.

Assume a game where characters have some mystic powers, like, say, ability to breath fire or cast a magic missile twice a day or such. All roleplaying games I can name out of hand that try to simulate the setting handle these very much on the personal scale: A mage can cast 3 first level spells a day, or such. This is because most such games are focused on the achievements, triumphs and defeats of a single person or few people.

The problem

This approach works fine until someone starts building a world and thinks about what the magic would do on large scale. The costs are often personal; D&D is a very bad offender due to making magic essentially a renewable resource.

This results in magic-as-technology settings, like Eberron, or ignoring and handwaving it all, like many settings that look like historical settings with few individuals who are mages or priests here and there. Personally, I find magic-rich settings to be aesthetically unpleasing (YMMV). The second option is unsatisfying in games that happen on larger scale.

The solution

(Other solutions: Magic with price, unpredictable magic, bizarre cultures that burn all mystic, …)

One way to deal with the problem is to realise that even if people have no problem, say, running a short distance quite fast, doing the same for long distance is much harder. Likewise: Even if a character may be able to make a field of grain grow at double the speed for a month, there may be reasons for this not working properly if the character is doing it for every field in riding distance.

The idea itself: Instead of hardcoding these limitations into the specific mystical tricks, which means something will be forgotten, create entirely separate rules for larger scale magics. The benefit is twofold: First, the large-scale effects of personal-level magic can be ignored. Second: People who are not interested on the large scale need not worry about arbitrary restrictions and rules bloat on the level that matters to them.

Example

There’s a bunch of miners trying to create a tunnel to a valley on the other side of the mountain. There’s a mage who can bolster, say, their strength, stamina and speed. How large an effect can the mage have? This is quite hard to judge. (Try judging it in D&D, where profession (miner) is a wisdom-based skill.)

Were I running or designing such a game I would instead create a spell that specifically makes miners more effective through physical enhancements; it would be a long and arduous ritual to cast, but would have duration to the effect of “until the mountain is breached”. And as a bonus the mage can fight random stone giants who awaken due to the loud mining with no concern of “how many times have a cast haste today”.

In other words: Make the ritual an adventure, if desired, then stop bothering about random details and get to the good stuff the play is about, be that politics or giant-slaying.

Vincent Baker a.k.a. Lumpley has published a game called In a Wicked Age. Being the cheap bastard I am, I won’t buy it (unless Arkkikivi/Arkenstone stocks it, at least), but will rather hack together something vaguely similar and play it.

What makes the process fun is that I have neither played nor read IAWA.

Components

The parts are, in no particular order, the List, the mechanics, the way resolution is used, and the random generator. Their implementation is explained after first explaining the components on more general level. And, as before, there’ll be one GM as a default assumption.

The list

This is stolen more-or-less directly from IAWA. Whenever a certain condition is met, the relevant character is added to the bottom of the list. Character can be crossed off the list by the player of that character to get a bonus. Whenever a game is played and the list is not empty, a number of characters from the top of the list are automatically in the game and their names are crossed off.

A (short) list might look like the following, with the character name first and player name in parenthesis after it. One entry has been crossed over. (Usually, there would be a huge swarm of entries crossed over in the beginning, but that is not very illustrative.)

• Kisfal (Gastogh)
• Ceosinnax (Tommi)
• Kisfal (Gastogh)
• Mori (Thalin)
• Animagynth (Gastogh)

The random generator

The idea behind having a random generator is that at the start of every session/scenario/story/game (choose whichever is appropriate) a number of entries is generated and those are used to build the starting situation. I personally use Abulafia, but other generators can fit the bill. If one wishes to be independent of computers writing down or printing out a suitable list is advised. Number it, use dice or playing cards or whatever.

IAWA was what sold me to the concept of using random generators like this. (Actually, a random thread or two about IAWA, but the point remains unchanged.)

The mechanics

Characters are composed of a (finite) number of freeform traits. At least one should be an archetype or profession or something similar. Each trait has a numerical value, which directly determines how many dice it is worth in conflicts where it is directly and unambiguously applicable. Halve the number for somewhat applicable traits. (The idea of freeform traits is originally from Over the Edge; the numeric value corresponding to number of dice is from somewhere.)

When two characters are in conflict they get dice as above. Not all of the dice need to be claimed at once; it is possible and recommended to first roll whatever is most relevant and then add more dice from other traits if necessary. This bit stolen from Thalin’s current victorian game, where it is not really doing anything due to there being too few traits per character. Any flaws give dice to the opposing side. If side 1 has no applicable traits, other sides have their pools doubled and side 1 gets a single die. Good luck.

Once dice are rolled and both sides as satisfied, or have run out of traits they intend to use, the dice are compared as per a method I have used before: First remove opposing and equal dice, then the side with highest remaining die is the winner, margin of success equals the number of dice that are higher than all the dice of the opposing side.

This didn’t really work in the previous incarnation, largely because there were too few dice on the table and I used too few dice for the opposition. The lack of a sufficient number of interesting traits also made it stale. Hopefully this attempt will work out better.

One should note that the resolution is very chaotic; it is possible for a single die to turn a minor defeat into a major victory. This is very much intended, so that one who is just about to win a conflict will be tempted to use all traits, even the ones that are of a somewhat questionable nature.

The resolution

After dice have been rolled (as above), the winning participant (player or GM) suggests what happens; the losing side either accepts that suggestion or takes harm equal to the margin of failure in the conflict. This, again, is from IAWA. The idea is that the winning participant needs to suggest something the losing participant finds interesting (or be content dealing harm, which won’t actually solve anything).

The resolution generalises to several participants: Whoever wins has a total margin of success that can be divided among the opposing sides. Every side with successes above the opposition can do this. All the dice can be targeted at single opponent or they can be divided in arbitrary way among the opposition that was beaten.

This we will play(test)

This is an explanation or example of play, which reveals details not included above. Assume everything written above still applies.

In the beginning

I mixed several appropriate generators on Abulafia to create the fantasy oracle compilation I’ll be using in this game. The oracle seems to generate too few actual characters; I’ll have to see if that is an actual problem. An example of output:

Ore which seems to whisper with incoherent voices.

The guardian spirit of a foolhardy, naive, reckless and impressionable young person.

A genius of flame, imprisoned within a brass mirror. (Might be a typo; maybe should be a genie.)

Forest of Eternal Peril

What is relevant is that there are explicit and implied characters generated. There’s the piece of ore or whatever resides inside it, if anything. There’s the guardian spirit and the foolhardy youngling. There’s the fire genie. And there’s whatever, if anything, that resides in the forest of eternal peril, whatever that is.

Part of the list may be ignored; namely, if a player is not present, all entries keyed to that player are simply ignored. If the list is empty (of relevant entries), every player selects something implicitly or explicitly generated by the oracle. If there is something relevant on the list, take half the number of participants, rounds down. This many different characters, counting from the top, are included in this session. The other players take characters implied by the oracle.

Assuming three players and one GM, the cast of player characters might be as follows, with traits and their values listed in parenthesis. Starting limitations: Up to three traits, up to six dice per trait. Scaling: 1 and 2 are minor, 3 and 4 significant, 5 quite powerful, 6 a bit too powerful to be used very often.

• An efreet (genie 5, essence of flame 4, entrapped 3)
• A kid (street kid 4, naive 3, “The stone guides me.” 2)
• A guardian spirit (unseen 5, protect the kid 6, mute 4)

The starting situation could be: The kid, following the whispers of the stone she carries have taken the kid to the forest of eternal peril, where she discovered a beautiful brass mirror lying on the bottom of a pond. Her guardian spirit could only watch as she scrubbed it clean…

The next task is to determine something for the characters or the players to strive for. This can be formal (a trait) or informal, but the characters should bump into each other frequently.

The play

Characters done and the starting situation established it is time to play. Feel free to skip the next paragraph; it is mostly dry mechanics.

There’s the normal narration and roleplay and so forth until a clear conflict emerges; at least two entities, named or not, are in conflict more severe than mere discussion (arguments, intimidation, swindling, … are not mere discussion). For example, the efreet wants the kid to free it. Efreets are good at bargaining (that’s their purpose), so the efreet starts with 5 dice. The kid starts with 3 dice for the entrapment, the power of which makes it harder for the efreet to be released. Efreet: {6, 4, 3, 3, 2}, kid {3, 2, 1}. After putting the matching dice aside, one is left with {6, 4, 3} for the efreet and {1} for the kid, with {3, 2} aside from the efreet and the kid. The guardian spirit protects the kid from the vile efreet’s influence: 6 dice for protecting the kid. Dice show {4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1}. Since the kid and the guardian are allied and not the same entity, one 3 and one 2 the spirit rolled is set aside, as the kid and the efreet also lost one of both. Then another 3 and 4 are cancelled from both the efreet and the spirit. This means that the relevant sets are efreet {6}, spirit {2, 1}, kid {1}, aside several (which I won’t write down; this is a lot easier when there are actual dice on an actual table and they are moved and grouped). To make matters worse, the kid is naieve, which the efreet’s player can draw upon, giving extra three dice, which show {5, 4, 2}. Other traits are not claimed, so the final result is efreet {6, 5, 4}, guardian spirit {1}, kid {1}. The efreet has 3 successes over both opponents, the others have none. The dice are biased tonight.

So, the efreeti has total 3 successes over the kid and the kid’s guardian spirit. Efreet’s player offers that the efreet is released from the mirror, owes the kid three wishes, but the kid does not know that with mere 1 die to back it up. To the other involved player the efreet’s player suggest that the efreet can see and interact with the guardian and does not seem an immediate threat, backed with the remaining 2 dice. Both suggestions are cordially accepted. Efreet’s player changes the trait “entrapped 3″ to be “Those who imprisoned me shall burn! 3″, which seems appropriate, so the GM and other participants accept. There would naturally be some roleplay involved in describing these events.

What if one of the players had not accepted the suggestions? Their characters would have taken 1 or 2 harm (kid and spirit, respectively). The meaning of harm: One can only use traits with value exceeding the total harm suffered. That is: Harm 4 and only traits with 5 or more dice can be used. This does not affect opponents using weaknesses, but does affect the harmed character exploiting the weaknessses of others. Harm is recovered only when the session/story ends, and is then recovered completely. Harm equaling or exceeding the character’s highest trait (or all traits, same thing) implies that the character is unable to do anything meaningful; maybe dead, maybe imprisoned, maybe searching for more peaceful lands elsewhere. Such characters, if they are on the list, can be encountered later.

The list, right. Current idea is that any character losing a conflict gets on the list. This condition may be too lenient, but only play(testing) will tell. More restrictive conditions in the same spirit: Only when when actually suffering consequences for losing a conflict (marginally more restrictive), only when losing a conflict and accepting the interesting consequences suggested by the other participant (as opposed to taking harm; if people take harm too often, I’ll implement this), only when taking harm (feels too limited and encourages taking harm, which I assume will not be that interesting). Crossing the name of the character you are currently playing has the following effect: If the name is on top of the list (of the characters whose players are present), get 3 extra dice. This is typically a very significant lucky incident or divine favour. If crossing the name on the bottom of the list, get 1 die. For any other location on the list, get 2 dice. This can be done exactly once per conflict per character. These dice are not restricted by harm. Alternatively, the player can choose to cross over all places where the character is on the list. This gives single die per name, and hence should not be used unless there are at least three names of that particular character present. Note that this has a significant chance of permanently removing the character from play. Take care, use wisely.

In the example, the guardian spirit and the kid get on the list. I think their order will be first the spirit and then the kid; this because the spirit risked 2 harm. If this is not sufficient to determine the order, remaining draws are handled by the GM by pure fiat (which may include asking the players if they have preferences).

A character can get on the list if and only if the character is named.

Character change

When participant feels a character has changed in some significant way, he ought to tell that to the other players and any relevant change in traits should happen immediately. Training is suitable. Saying the character has practiced something during his or her downtime is likewise suitable.

One of the more interesting possibilities is trait change due to losing conflicts: The winning participant may suggest changing, adding or removing a trait. For example, an assassination attempt could lead to traits like “crippled”, “wounded”, “They all are out to get me!” or “nervous”.

The end

Game master gathers character sheets and the list. They are persistent from session to session. Any detail generated about the game world should likewise be recorded somewhere, because emergent fantasy setting are fun and useful.

A note on design

This is very much bricolage-style design; that is, building from old parts, mixing them together and hoping they interact in good ways. The purpose is to create a game that I can play with, well, anyone, even if the groups of people change, there is irregular attendance, or otherwise separate groups are brought together in, say, Ropecon. Episodic gaming, pretty much.

Levi Kornelsen wrote a post about using rpg rules as a toy when playing. I find the idea intriguing, having done something similar as a gamemaster of several homebrew games.

The idea is that playing with the rules (as opposed to by the rules) is part of the fun: Assume a game does not have mass combat system. A large combat occurs with a player character leading one side. How to handle it? Or maybe the game doesn’t have good rules for climbing on a dragon and stabbing it to death while riding it. Or whatever.

My gut reaction is that d20 would be particularly suited for this kind of play, because it has many moving parts. Climbing on a dragon and then scewering it could mean bypassing natural armour, getting automatic critical threats (for a particularly weak spot), doing it extra con damage, having it treated as flat-footed against your char, or a myriad of other possibilities.

Combine this idea with Ryan Stoughton’s little pdf named Raising the Stakes (direct link), which is a free download on the E6-wiki. The relevant part of the PDF is that players can suggest extra effects for their rolls, but they also have to suggest the heightened negative consequences for failing the roll. GM can accept or decline the suggestion. Like: “I raise the dragon being flat-footed against me falling prone right next to it”, in context of aforementioned climbing. GM accepts or declines.

This will not work when some participants are not familiar enough with the rules. Further, a common standard for the kind of fiction to create is necessary: If some players are going for extremely gritty style and others high-action anime combats, there will be some disagreements ahead (this is true in general, but even more so in case where this variant is used).

It would be possible to even build a little d20 variant around this. Say, generic classes that get one ability/feat/whatever per level. Stunts would work as per raising stakes above, the feats/class abilities would be essentially stunts the character has mastered (and can use at will without explicit GM permission).

My sister and a friend of hers visited my humble apartment. We played more than a bit of Fluxx. Here’s some reflection on that and on the numerous Uno games I have played along my short life.

Accessibility

Uno is extremely easy for even young people. Fluxx requires fair amount of skill with English (even my father had problems, surprisingly). I think they both are casual games. There’s a few factors that affect this.

Unpredictability

Fluxx is the epitome of a chaotic game. This chaos is amplified when there are several people. With two or three people, your play actually has a visible effect on your next turn; with six, it does not have too much of an effect. There’s some, but not enough to count on.

Uno has few variants that are played among the circles where I have played it: First is to draw one or two cards when you can’t play any, second is to draw up to three cards until you can play one (and immediately play that). The third is to draw cards until you can play at least one of them and then play that. The first are least unpredictable, the third most. Also, the number of players has a large effect: Usually it is possible to meaningfully affect the next player or maybe two, again depending on the rules used (stacking “draw”-cards either affect only the next player or each player gets one effect until all cards are used). As in Fluxx, the state of game can vary significantly between the turns of an individual player. This is almost the norm when there are many players.

Why do I think unpredictability is good? First, it reduces stress; you can always blame the luck and will often be correct. In addition, both games can take new players in midplay and not make a significant splash. Further, one can take a pause from the game when the others are doing their turns and often not a lot has been missed.

No death spiral

Fluxx tends towards equality among the players due to the numerous hand limits and keeper limits, as well as rules reset. Further, winning the game is always possible by shifting the goal, stealing or scrambling keepers (and the changing the goal), or just picking the correct keepers and playing them. If you’ve got no keepers, hope someone will put a limit on them. Fluxx doesn’t so much balance itself as it screws everyone equally and always keeps victory a possiblity.

Uno self-balancing in a very elegant way: The more cards one has, the faster one can get rid of them by playing many at the same time. Also, as one gets more cards, the chance of drawing cards that match them in symbol only increases. (People rarely forgetting to say Uno is also something of a balancing mechanism, though very weak one).

The lack of death spiral means that skilled players don’t seem to dominate, because they could be toppled at any moment.

General observations

Take any system where participants have turns, take some action during a turn, then wait for the next one (examples: Heroes of might and magic n, most rpg combats, ADOM, roleplay with a split party). How much does a single turn matter?

Number of actions

Obviously, the number of actions one can take are very important. If one can somehow get more actions or deprive opponents of theirs, such abilities often are extremely valuable. For example: Haste in D&D 3rd, reflexes in Burning Wheel. If the number of actions or action points that are used when doing anything can be altered, one would do well to start with a fair number of them. If everyone starts with single action, getting another is worth very much. If everyone has 10 action points, getting 1 extra is very nice, but won’t as easily break things. Getting 5 or more does break things.

Whiff chance

There may be a chance that the actions one takes simply have no effect. High whiff chance is undesirable, because it tends to be frustrating (I want to hear a counter-example for this one). Further: With a significant whiff chance, the system becomes more chaotic; a given amount of play may give no results or be hugely effective, depending on luck. Obviously low number of actions and high whiff are a bad combination.

Power

One has actions and does not whiff. What happens? In all examples I can recall right now the power of different actions (choices) is different. This may be balanced by different costs (in actions or other resources), different whiff chances (magic missile always hits), or other factors.

Memory

Memory may not be quite as obvious a factor as the others. In a system with long memory the effects of the choices one makes linger for long. They may change or weaken but one can easily see that a particular effect is there due to a particular choice made. System with short memory obfuscates these relations: The status of the system changes rabidly or radically. Or maybe there is a large number of choices made, so that the effects of single one are effectively buried. Or maybe there is a strong attractor the system tends towards, so choices tend to be lost as the attractor is approached again.

In roleplaying context: Traditionally, system has long memory with regards to character generation. Choices there count for a lot (hence the flames around point-buy vs. rolling and the tendency to let people do minor changes after actually playing a little). Character death is another event that games tend to remember for long.

Gamers try to avoid effects that are harmful and have long memory: D&D examples are level drains and ability drain/damage (prior to plentiful restorative magics). In the Mountain Witch the wounds that have duration for “rest of the game” tend to be nasty (this one is from experience), even if that duration is rarely more than three sessions. Generally speaking, permanently disfiguring a character is something that many gamers really dislike (exceptions abound). In some games, losing items is more harmful than character being wounded, because healing is fast and wounds matter little in the long run.

An interesting rules element

Whenever a player loses a conflict/roll (as suits the game and situation in play) any participant can suggest a permanent consequence, or at least one with long memory. If the player does not want that, damage time, for whatever values of damage the system recognises.

Example the first: A troll subdued the would-be trollslayer. Options: Take the harm (given the circumstances, may very well be death unless there is help coming) or take a semi-permanent nasty effect, such as a trollslayer cast into the river from which he is rescued with only his clothes on (or so the villagers insist), or the troll consuming the slayer’s right hand and leaving the slayer to die, not liking the taste.

Example the second: Negotiations with the high king. A failed diplomacy check. Options: Beaten up and thrown away from the castle, a humble apology (and charisma damage due to the humilation and loss of confidence), the ire and later assassins of the high king, losing some allies from the local nobility, being branded an outlaw, …

During brief discussion with Phil I verbalised the idea of good game design not being the same things as good rpg design. This is obvious when discussing, say, Chess. I argue that it is also true when discussing roleplaying games, given the way I define good game design.

The definitions have my bias clearly articulated; they are there for all to see. If you have different base assumptions or definitions, your conclusions may also be different.

Definitions

Game design is building a (semi-formal) system where players can make mechanical choices that have mechanical consequences. Good game design makes this process of decision-making interesting: There are few null choices that have no effect and the best choice is often enough very hard or impossible to see, if it even exists and is unique.

Rpg design is building a fiction and a system that describes how the choices the players make affect the fiction. Good rpg design makes the process of play interesting: There are actual choices to be made, they are about something the player cares about, and there are several roughly as lucrative alternative ways of making many choices (in this paragraph several can be arbitrarily large, but not too small).

Good rpg/game design does not imply that the game itself is good, because there are numerous other factories related to that. As such, if one is only interested in how much enjoyment can be derived from a (roleplaying) game, fixating too much on the quality of the (rp)g is not advised. There is correlation: On average, well-designed stuff is more enjoyable.

Do note that the other kinds of design are immensely important (and not part of the above definitions): Designing the game so that it has a suitable social footprint (the time, effort and commitment gaming takes), building the game so that it encourages the creation of certain kinds of fiction, building functional character sheets, elegance and other usability issues, and doubtless other factors. I may someday extend this post to explicitly include some or all of those things. This is not that day.

The thesis

My thesis is that good game design and good rpg design, as defined above, are not very tightly linked. One can have an rpg that is well-designed game but not very interesting fiction-wise; likewise, a well-designed rpg need not have interesting mechanical elements.

What I am not saying is that the two design issues are orthogonal; they certainly affect each other. I am also not saying that they are independent; the quality of one factor tends to influence the other for the positive, because it is common to link certain fictional and system-level effects together.

Examples in the abstract

Assume a game with very complicated (and intense and fun) combat system. Assume the output of the system is the amount of hit points the participants have at the end of the combat. All other variables that change only affect the single combat encounter and any used resources are recovered with a moment of rest or such. This combat system is (one can assume) good an instance of game design, because it has many (mechanical) choices that are interesting. It is not good rpg design, because none of those juicy choices are persistent; all that remains is the number of hit points one is left with. To be honest, there are other potential choices one can make: Which opponent to kill, how much of one’s abilities to reveal, for example, but they are pretty minor and would work with almost all combat systems.

A game where each (player) character has a number of memories (some of which are utilitarian, some have emotional value, some both) and the character can sacrifice them to demons in order to get wishes or other benefits could be well-designed, rpg-design-wise; if the character sacrifices too much, that character can no longer enjoy from the achieved victories; if too little, something bad will happen. OTOH, sacrificing the utilitarian memories (where was the artifact hidden again?) can have much the same effect as sacrificing nothing: Failure at preventing the bad things. Game-design would only make this interesting if the memories with emotional value gave some sort of benefit; otherwise they are like spell points.

On D&D 4th

From what I have read, 4e is focused on encounters and the designer are doing game design. What about rpg design? No idea. Experience for achieving certain story points could do that, but I am more than slightly doubtful. This does not mean that “there will be no roleplay in D&D 4th”. The system just will probably not do all that much to promote the kind of roleplay I am looking for.

Bonus: Proof by antithesis

Assume that all good rpg design is always good game design. See the two example above. They are non-trivial counter-examples to the antithesis and hence the antithesis is wrong, from which it follows that the thesis is true. QED.

There is a philosophical problem called the mind-body problem. Basically, it is about the nature of human mind: Is it physical, emergent from what is physical, or entirely separate? If separate, how does it connect to the body? This piece of setting metaphysics is somewhat influenced by that problem.

Originally I developed these as a metaphysical structure for my traditional fantasy setting, the current form of which is not written down anywhere. Some assumptions: Certain sorts of magic are at least possible. There are spirits everywhere; that is, animism is correct. Dragons are the most mighty creature there is by their nature.

The three realms

The reality is neatly divided into three level, or dimensions, or planes, realms, or whatever name is desired for them. Some creatures only exist on specific levels, others are defined as the places where the levels interact.

Body

The physical level, realm of body, is much like the physical world around us. The world may be a planet, or a disc riding atop elephants riding on a turtle swimming around space, or the world may be an infinite plane, or whatever. The physical realm is associated with persistency and stability; if something exists on the level of body, removing it without a trace is difficult.

Dream

The realm of dream is where emotions, ambitions, inspiration and dreaming happen. It is an ever-changing realm where distance is determined by familiarity and will; know something and it is easy to find, and it will have easy time finding you. Those with strong will can mold the dreaming with little trouble. Spirits, fey, demons and angels (all are the same thing) are creatures of the dreaming. All emotions and feelings live in the dreaming, and like attracts like; if one sleeps and is afraid, something that lives off, enjoys, or is fear may be attracted.

One moves in the dreaming by wanting to be somewhere. Walking, closing one’s eyes, or other such gesture often helps travelling; people are not used to their environment changing with little warning, and being panicked in the realm of fae is a definite risk; those attracted by panic tend to not be friendly and helpful. A person is sad when the region around the person contains much sadness; likewise, the surroundings of a sad person will become sad. The power of these interactions is determined by the strength of will of those involved.

Mind

The mental level, realm of mind, is where all knowledge and experience is. It is an immense, mayhaps infinite, collection of knowledge. When person thinks something, he is in the corresponding part of the realm of mind. Learning something means finding, or building, quick paths and ways between regions of the mental realm. One can likewise construct barriers and drive entities away from certain regions, though they are by no means simple tasks.

The human nature

Humans are creatures that connect all the three realms, yet have difficulty focusing on more than one at a time. Human presence drifts between the three realms. When the presence is in the physical realm, humans can be skilled athletes, precise craftsmen, or careful observers. When the presence is elsewhere, body does what it should be doing; keeps walking, is inactive, remains in one place, relaxes, is paralysed.

One’s presence is on the level of dream if one is feeling a strong emotion or sleeping. One who is friendly inspires others around him to act in a friendly way; one who is depressed provokes negative reactions. The confidence of a leader makes those around her confident of their abilities. Persuading or threatening someone means pushing one’s will and dreams against theirs until they give up. Intimidation is the brute force version; persuasion means emphasising their emotions that already agree with out while dampening the parts that do not. People in shock cut the dreaming away from themselves so as to not feel the pain. So do those who deny some emotionally powerful thing.

Presence in the mental realm indicates deep thought, perhaps solving a problem, trying to remember something, learning or communicating. Recalling means trying to find the lost pathway, while learning and solving problems is the process of discoring or constructing new ways, respectively. Communication is trying to describe some landmarks and guidelines so that the other person might find a way to the desired region of the mental level. Person who is quick-witted has fast methods of getting to the desired place. Someone who is intelligent can has discovered powerful methods of finding new paths. People who know a lot have mapped large areas of the realm. When one’s presence is not on the level of mind, deep thought does not happen.

Other beings

Inanimate objects have a very alien presence on the mental realm (some would say very limited), to such extent that communication with them is next to impossible. Their emotional presence can be strong. Old forests are peaceful, because the trees are calm; at night they can be menacing, for the trees do not enjoy the fire in their midst. The sense of wonderment that natural wonders can evoke is another effect of their significant emotional presence.

Most animal, likewise, have fairly strange ways of thinking. Many mammals are so alike people that rudimentary communication, or at least one-way understanding, is possible.

Stranger things

The denizens of dreaming are known by many names: Angels, demons, spirits, fey. Their physical presence varies from none through normal everyday object and animals to unique forms. Their mental presence likewise varies from sapient to mere instincts that the nameless spirits have. Even the least of feykind can mold the dreaming wtih great ability; the most pitiful imp has little trouble tricking an average dreamer (that’s why nightmares are common). The powerful lords of the dreaming can incite bloody rebellions or even wars with their mere presence.

Dragons are unique in that their presence never really leaves any realm. Dragon does not merely wonder about your name; its mental presence makes you want to say it out loud and when you do, it is already listening at you. Dragon does not merely try to eat you; when it bites at you, you willingly jump into its mouth and it has additionally determined your possible reactions, as well as how it will respond to each. An angry dragon flying overhead creates a storm by provoking the spirits of clouds and air; people will flee, faint, or kill each other. (Younger dragons are less powerful, but only in scope and force of the effect.)

Design notes

The original setting metaphysics were a mess similar to Platon’s ideas. It did not work well because there existed a god of fire, of mountains, of a vulcano, of lava, of heat, … Most of them were mere disembodied spirits, some were dragons, the most powerful actual gods. It became too much of a mess to understand.

That there are three realms is a matter of design history; the original had at least dreaming and physical world. Neither of those worked like deep thinking does, so I decided for it to be the third one. This is somewhat similar to BESM, actually, which I disliked way back then because it had only three stats (all strong people are also dexterous, for example).

Bricolage is a term used here and there. Over the Forge, it was some time ago suggested to be the key concept of simulationist play. It was also suggested to be the key concept of all play. I think I agree with the former stance, as I think bricolage is an important part of human thinking.

Bricolage

Bricolage essentially means building something new (or repairing something) with recycled materials. A table is not very stable, so some innocent bundle of newspaper is jammed under one leg. That’s bricolage. Or creating a house system that is an unholy union of Runequest and Spirit of the Century. So: Using stuff with history so that the history remains relevant, though is changed. Term learned from Chris Lehrich’s essay, which is fairly heavy reading (by my standards).

On the elegance of engineering

Suppose I want a roleplaying game that does certain things; for example, is a communal story-creation engine and has a fast and exciting combat system. Maybe something Bourne-like. What can I do? The first option is to build it from scratch; player characters should be fugitive agents, so something that measures if they are about to be caught or get in trouble should be there. They should have some very personal goals to achieve. The natural time limit sets pressure on the goals. (Somebody make this game.) The point is that this is not easy and the end result is likely to not be familiar to the intended audience (the local gaming group, say). This approach can be called engineering. (This is of course also bricolage, but to a lesser degree, or at least of a different kind.)

The second option is to take an existing system that is close to what is wanted and to houserule it (or build a highly derivative system; same thing). The rumours tell that Savage Worlds has pretty fast combat system, so it could probably be hacked into something suitable with minor changes such as tactical renaming of character abilities and tweaking the costs of those, maybe building some new ones or banning unsuitable material. A lot easier and faster; plus, assuming the group is already familiar with Savage Worlds and enjoys it, picking up the new version is easy and likely to end up being fun. This is bricolage, as the end result is heavily defined by the original design of Savage Worlds, which is the relevant history here.

Elegance. Right. I’ll claim that usually an engineered game is more elegant than one constructed via heavy bricolage. A game engineered for specifically this purpose will not have too many irrelevant bits (assuming a good design; adding irrelevant bits is not good design; this is my bias speaking, but I think this is also fairly uncontroversial). The purpose may be very broad; a D&D-like experience with less book-keeping and prep time, for instance, is a totally valid design goal. Heavy bricolage, OTOH, always carries on the assumptions of the original game or games due to retaining their fundamental structure. Often some parts of this fundamental structure are irrelevant to the current game at hand, and hence a source of inelegancy.

So, every game should be engineered to provide a more elegant design

Personally, I don’t think so. Building upon an existing game means a strong foundation and a formidable tradition with answers to several questions that might come up. Watching bricolage in action is something I find fascinating. The end result may be infuriating, though. Witness the parts of your culture you hate the most. Also, those you love the most.

I am prone to always saying that people should design whatever they are doing from the ground up and not mod their favourite game. This is my mistake, as it usually is not true. What people should do is to broaden their toolbox; play and read several different roleplaying games and some other games as a seasoning. The larger set of tools (and places to steal from) allow for better or at least more interesting works. Originality is stealing from sufficiently different sources at the same time.

An important point is that the items one uses for bricolage (games, in this case) will significantly shape the outcome. It follows that using different games as a starting point for design leads to different ways of achieving roughly the same effect. They end results will often feel significantly different, as in the difference between D&D 3rd and Donjon. This is a good thing.

This is another highly abstract rambling about a highly abstract matter of systems, in no way limited to roleplaying, though still applied to them. You were warned.

Definition

My working definition for system is that it must have at least the following qualities:

• A means of input.
• An output.
• A process that uses the input to produce the output.

Trivial (and, hence, boring) systems are a legion. Some notable cases: Systems with fixed output are kind of boring. Systems where the input and output are independent (as in, knowing one tells nothing about the other; that is, they don’t affect each other) are random (or have fixed output).

As one can see, the concept is exceedingly broad. This is intentional.

The good, the bad and the aesthetically interesting

A system is well-designed (towards particular goal) if it produces the outputs that the goal says it should produce. Bad system produces outcomes contradictory with the goal. Elegant systems produce relevant outputs (with regards to the goal) and do so with as minimal a process as is possible.

A game of chess, for example, is a system. It has inputs (moving the playing pieces, social aspects), outputs (victory, defeat, draw, emotional responses of players) and processes (rules, the way humans work). The desired outputs are victory for one player, defeat to the other one, and an intellectually stimulating game for both. Draws are not a desired outcome but rather an annoying side effect of the rules. (Aside: It is also possible to build a strategy in chess such that the starting player will always win or a draw will happen; it is just so complicated nobody has done it yet, to my knowledge, but it is certainly possible.) Chess is not completely elegant: It has a number of rules for specific circumstances. One could argue that Go is as good as chess at its goals and more elegant, which would make Go a better game for someone with the stated goals (intellectual stimulation, determining a winner). Chess is still better for other goals, namely for learning to, say, play chess.

The voting system has the goal of finding out the opinion of people about (say) who should be in power and further giving those people the power. Personally, I’d vote for the Social democratic party and the Green party. I can’t vote for both. Hence, the system can’t take that information into consideration, which weakens it and biases it towards those already in power.

As it applies to roleplaying games

Roleplayers want different things out of their games. There are some things that most players don’t mind: Consistency of the fiction and of the rules and something resembling a story. (I am not saying that people always play for story or for consistency, but rather that they wouldn’t usually mind if the game remained as good in other aspects and had better story or was more consistent; the possibility of this is a different subject entirely.)

An elegant roleplaying game is one that has a set of design goals, is good for the kinds of gaming those include and has little material that is redundant to the design goals. Many Forge-games (as in, indie games coming from the community around or nearby the Forge) are elegant. This means that they are utterly focused. One can see this as a good or a bad point. Compare and contrast to euro games in boardgaming scene.

Clearly inelegant design methodology is the exception-based design one can see in D&D 3rd and MtG; in both, most cards/feats/class powers are exceptions of the general rules. Some like this, some dislike. Generally speaking, one can get a similar experience with a leaner design over a short period of time.

Good roleplaying games, bad roleplaying games

Elegance or inelegance, though loaded words, are not the grounds for saying that a particular system is bad or good (barring extremes). Personally I do prefer elegant systems, but that is my call.

I’d say an rpg is badly-designed in so far as the processes work against some of the goals. For example, if one assumes that the new World of Darkness core book is supposed to be used in investigative horror gaming, the specific combat feats merits seem to be bad design by encouraging combative characters and focusing attention there. (If one considers how WoD is likely to actually be played, they are not that bad a choice, after all.)