The title pretty much sums it up. Don't have much to add here, but with the whole COVID-19 thing I've found myself at home a whole lot more, started a D&D 5E Zoom campaign for a few friends, started working on a short novella based around old-school fantasy gaming tropes, and that kind of dragged me back towards pecking away at the Tankards & Broadswords RPG.
Because Google docs make me happy I haven't lost any of my older material, and I began re-writing some of the material I last worked on in 2013 (!!!). I think I found a better mechanic for bonuses and penalties because I was never really happy with what I'd decided on before. Also brutally streamlining weapon types down to Light, Medium, and Heavy. Same thing with armors. I've cut out almost any form of money mechanics in the game because I've decided that coin-counting is to me antithetical to adventure gameplay.
I also want to focus a lot on what I am loosely referring to as "Tavern Play", which is pretty much how to turn hanging out in Ye Olde Tavern from that boring part in the beginning of the game where you meet the mysterious wizard, into an actual interesting play space where your characters might enjoy hanging out while drinking, flirting, gaming, brawling, gossiping, and in general living the good life.
Fundamentally, I feel like this game isn't so much for me to do a dance and proclaim that I'm now an "indie game designer" so much as it is a platform for me to write my personal gaming manifesto. Pretty sure there isn't much of a market for that, but we'll see. The whole thing is going to be free whenever I get around to putting it someplace because it already beggars belief that I get paid for my fiction writing. I can't imagine anyone paying for my game-related work.
So, we'll see. I'll post more as time goes on.
Showing posts with label Game Mechanics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game Mechanics. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2020
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Thoughts on My First Fifth Edition DnD Campaign
With the regular sessions of the campaign behind me, I wanted to compile some thoughts, in no particular order.
- 5E is my favorite edition/flavor of D&D thus far. It has now beaten out Castles & Crusades as my favorite "flavor" of D&D, mostly due to the flexibility and depth of the character options, and the very loose, yet well-structured way in which pretty much everything is handled (more on the system below). This edition was easy to pick up for old hands and new players alike (one player had essentially never played a pen-and-paper role-playing game before, while another last played 8+ years ago in college). All seemed to enjoy the system, and had no major complaints as to how the mechanics operated.
- We had four players who took their characters up through fourth level (the end of the twelfth session saw enough XP to get the party to 5th). The party consisted of a Half-Elven Rogue who took the Assassin path, a Half-Elven Wild Magic Sorcerer, a Human Paladin who took the Oath of Vengeance, and a Human Monk who took Way of the Empty Hand. Upon reaching fourth level and ending one adventure arc, the Monk's player switched characters and began playing a Human Warlock with a pact to a Great Old One. The mix of magic and muscle served us very well, especially in the last four sessions where we had two spell-casters and two melee experts (the Paladin mostly used her limited spell-casting ability to power various "Smites" in melee).
- I'm glad 5th edition seems to largely set aside the need for multi-classing by allowing variant class paths that enable the use of magic, and has enough race/class combos that you can create a wide blend of magic and non-magical abilities. IIRC, the Barbarian class is the only one that does not have some option or path for casting spells, which makes sense based on the class concept. Everyone else has some way of getting spells if they want.
- I like the power level of Cantrips in this edition. While the Old-Schoolers might balk at a Magic-User that has unlimited access to a few minor magical abilities, I think it does a good job of letting a spell-caster continue to cast minor spells which still have an effect in the game once their big bombs have all been used. And really, a spell like Light or Fire Bolt isn't breaking the magical bank here. There are probably players who'll find ways of "breaking" cantrips, but so far, I am happy with how they work.
- I think the decisions made to eliminate a lot of circumstantial modifiers in favor of Advantage and Disadvantage was the right one. I was leery of the idea at first, but after playing for several months, I found it to be pretty straightforward, and it helped eliminate a lot of that "modifier math" that bogs things down right when you want them moving fast and loose. And, I appreciate that such thinking was really applied system wide, keeping the number of "plusses / minuses" to a minimum. From the way skills work to the mechanics of two-weapon fighting, the mechanics become more of a very fast yes/no logic tree, rather than multiple modifiers all stacking on top of one another to arrive at a modifier that might change by +/-1 every round of a combat.
- I liked how the first two character levels are priced very cheaply, XP-wise. Some DMs might not like it, but I think it lets you put the brakes on throwing first-level characters into the meat grinder too quickly, allowing you to pit them against some very low-powered creatures, of which there are plenty of options. And, if you *do* toss them in the deep end fast, the survivors earn the reward of fast leveling. The biggest complaint I've always heard of D&D is that PCs spend way too much time in the minor leagues, and campaigns end too often before "the good stuff". I think the leveling curve right now works to address this better. I'll note that while it took 12 sessions to get to 5th level for my party, our after-work games were pretty short, maybe only 2 1/2 hours a session, and didn't always have a "big battle", so if those sessions had been longer and more involved, I could easily see the PCs at 6th or 7th at this point.
- I really appreciated the current system's focus on character - the discussion of and variety of races and sub-races, the many and varied classes, as well as the background options available, and even the "trinket roll" made upon character creation. Every player rolled up a unique trinket, and a couple of them took those trinkets and incorporated them into their backgrounds pretty deeply. For example, the Paladin got a small cage with a dead sprite inside it, and built her Oath of Vengeance around a story which came out of this item. Yes, veteran or more creative players don't necessarily need such things written into the rules, but for more novice players (like we had), it was a great springboard for character development.
- Also, in general, I was impressed with the quality of the three core rule books, both in terms of production values as well as content. I think they were really well done, especially in comparison to the 4th edition books, which I'm not all that impressed with, at least content-wise. I also like that WotC is taking their time and not spamming us with "splat books" every month. There's already forty years of material out there, and it's better to put out small numbers of great quality resources than flood the market with garbage "option" books. If we want all those things, there's always...THE INTERNET!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
My RPG Publishing Malaise
Later on in college during the mid- to late '90s, I would often pick up interesting one-off RPGs at the local gaming store and read through them, pondering their mechanics and feeling the beginnings of an interest in designing my own game. In fact, around 1999-2000 I did begin serious work on my own simple gaming engine, one I called SCORE (Suitable for Creating the Optimum Role-playing Experience). There were a couple of early versions that used a 2d10 bell-curve, one of which I used to run a 1920s-era horror game that went for a few sessions until I decided to switch setting gears, and baited the party into a TPK (Total Player Kill - I wiped out the entire party).
Eventually this crime against humanity was forgiven, and I ran a couple of fantasy campaigns with a new incarnation of SCORE, one that used a Rolemaster-esque d100 + rating system. Those games actually went quite well, and we had a lot of fun playing right up to around the end of 2002. I still have most of my notes for those games, along with character sheets, and I still think the system works, at least for a game written at the turn of the century. It's not the sort of system I'd use more than a decade later, but I think it worked well enough.
Soon after that game came and went by the wayside, I decided to work on a game with a very strong "Sword & Sorcery" bent, originally named "Legends of Blood and Iron". This game had a lot of good heart, and a lot of flavor to it, but I think mechanically it was a bit of a mess. The world-building portion of the game, and the discussion of what made up a proper S&S campaign, it still I think relevant, and perhaps one day I will dig a few gems out of the work. This was also around the time I found and devoured Ron Edwards' Sorcerer and Sword, a supplement for his Sorcerer RPG. I have no love for the core product, but his supplement is, in my mind, the single best treatise on "Sword & Sorcery" role-playing games I've ever seen.
Over the many intervening years, I have tinkered with a myriad of RPG designs and concepts. I've run a few one-shots here and there to test one mechanic or another, but nothing done with enough time and substance to form any true window into whether or not a specific whole rules set "works" or doesn't work - in short, nor real formal playtesting beyond one or two sessions. I've probably achieved "80%" finished on whatever it is the Tankards & Broadswords RPG might one day be, but that last twenty percent is a real bitch.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder about this RPG publishing malaise. For several years now, the urge to design a game and run a campaign was supplanted by my writing career, which - lets be honest - pays far better than I would ever imagine an RPG might pay. On the other hand, after spending so much cumulative time working towards the nebulous goal of releasing my own RPG - a goal that is easier to achieve than ever, thanks to all the print-on-demand and self-publishing options out there right now - I find it somewhat vexing that I can't approach the goal of writing and publishing an RPG with the same assertiveness that I can approach writing a novel or short story. If I can write a book that gets read by multiple thousands of complete strangers, why can't I write a RPG that might wind up in the hands of - let's be realistic - a few dozen?
Maybe it is because while the majority of readers are just that - readers - who zip through a book once and basically give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, I find that many - if not most - RPG players are constant rules tinkerers, and obsess over almost any aspect of a game. Only a small handful of readers are ever going to pick over any one of my novels to the degree that MOST gamers would pick over a game. So, I feel, the inevitable level of scrutiny - as well as their natural inclination to say "well, if *I* designed this game, I think XYZ should have been ABC..." - keeps me from pulling the trigger.
I don't know. As I type this, I ponder the writing of a small, specific RPG premise. I think that would be the best way to start. From there, if the idea was interesting and well-received, maybe it'd give me more confidence to tackle a larger, more interesting project. It would be a shame to never have a formal sharing of all this idea fodder, but at the same time, there's a right way and a wrong way to do all that, so I need to pick and choose my battlefield carefully, so to speak.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
My First Game of BOLT ACTION WW2 Miniatures Wargaming
Over two years ago (wow!) I picked up the BOLT ACTION core rules book, several Army Books, and a small force of British Commandos (naturally - new readers, look to the left of this article...). I reviewed the game in the abstract over on the Post Modern Pulp Blog, but I figured an actual game report was best suited to this blog (I'll put a "Hey, take a look" post up over on PMP pointing back here as well).
This past Friday, my friend and fellow author Dan Eldredge and I got together to play out a game of Bolt Action for the first time. Neither of us has had the time to fully paint our armies, and we agreed to not do a full battle report (the shame of a formal bat-rep containing unpainted miniatures would be too much for Dan to bear...), but we had the day to get together and enough miniatures to fight a good-sized battle, so we brought together everything that was assembled and decided to just have a go at it and try out as many of the units and rules as possible.
In short, I fielded a mixed force of British Army and Commando forces, with a bunch of weapons teams, a Daimler armored car, and a Sherman tank. Dan fielded a platoon of Panzergrenadiers in half-tracks, along with several weapon teams, a squad of veteran late-war grenadiers carrying StG 44 assault rifles, and a Tiger tank (yikes!). We played an "Envelopment" scenario, where the attacker (Germans) tries to break through the defender's (British) lines. This seemed well suited to our units, since none of my infantry had transports and I had a ton of weapons teams (mortars, AT rifle, Vickers machine gun, etc.), while Dan had mechanized infantry and a powerful tank.
One immediate difference we noticed between Bolt Action and Warhammer 40K (which we've both played a lot over the years) was the effects of pinning and morale. The more a unit takes fire from enemies, the more they are "pinned", and a pinned unit has to take a morale test in order to do...well...almost anything. A unit can get pinned into utter uselessness without taking a single casualty, a situation in stark comparison to 40K, where many armies have very high morale and many units are Fearless or Stubborn or otherwise ignore various morale situations. The mission began with a bombardment of my lines, and although I only suffered one casualty, many of my units suffered pinning and a couple even broke and ran! This caused me quite a bit of trouble early on, as a number of my units couldn't get into the fight for the first couple of turns (thankfully I had a lot of units, so I wasn't completely hampered in this regard).
Dan's Panzergrenadiers made a bold thrust into the center of my lines, determined to punch through my regular infantry and split my forces. My poor infantry section stood their ground for a short while, before weight of fire from several squads of Germans, as well as their support weapons, caused the unit to suffer too many casualties and eventually break and get wiped out. In Bolt Action, if you lose half a unit's models in a turn, and they fail a morale test, the unit is destroyed. This definitely keeps the tempo of a battle going and prevents tiny remnant units running around ineffectually.
Once Dan's infantry had punched a hole in my lines, he also managed to immobilize my Sherman with a single shot from his Tiger. I quickly found myself staring into a lot of enemy gun barrels, and decided some audaciousness was in order. So, I turned to my Commandos and sent them into the teeth of the enemy, bayonets and daggers gleaming, Sten guns blazing away. In Bolt Action, an assault is dangerous - the enemy gets to react by firing on the charging unit if they start far enough away - but there is no draw, just victory or death for the attacker. Thankfully for me, Commandos are "Tough Fighters" and excel at the assault, and so I wiped out one of Dan's squads in a flurry of bullets, blades, and bayonets.
At this point, Dan's officer jumps into the half-track and opens fire on my Commandos with its machine gun, and the other infantry squad also opens fire, as does the advancing Tiger tank. Seeing my center forced open yet again, my Forward Artillery Officer calls down a barrage of artillery fire on the German squad (see the white die with the bulls-eye in the photo above). Unfortunately, the blast radius of the barrage is HUGE, and over the next two rounds, a number of units - both friend and foe - are pinned or damaged, and my poor medic and his stretcher-bearer (the bare metal models in the top-right of the above photo) are killed by a heavy howitzer shell!
Determined to press on, Dan drives his Tiger tank through the bombardment zone and tries to get off of my size of the board, since his infantry are so pinned by the bombardment that they're refusing to embark on their transport. With my Sherman immobilized and out of line-of-sight, and my armored car on the other side of the board (he's been sniping at a German MMG unit and the veteran Grenadiers all game), all I've got to deal with the tiger is my lone PIAT anti-tank gunner, who lost his loader and broke and ran in the opening bombardment. He's finally collected himself and lost his pinning penalties, and he moves forward, finally getting within good range for a shot at the Tiger's flank.
He misses with his first shot due to moving and firing and long range, but the second shot hits. I roll a "5" for damage, enough to cause a penetrating hit, and I get another "5" on the damage table, knocking out the Tiger. With only one infantry squad left, Dan makes a roll to see if the heavily-pinned unit will board its Hanomag half-track, and it fails. At this point, Dan concedes defeat, since he really can't get anyone off my side of the board in the next turn (this was the end of turn 5).
Overall, we both had a lot of fun. The rules move fast once you get the hang of them, and while the game isn't exactingly realistic, there are enough elements that make sense to give it a feeling of completeness and logic. The effects of pinning especially can be very frustrating, but it makes sense that your men aren't just blithely going about their business as shells explode and bullets snap all around them. You also need to make sure you're using your officers' Morale bonuses to their best effect, something I think neither of us paid much attention to during the game.
I'm not sure when we'll have another chance to play, but we're both looking forward to another battle, this time with the game mechanics more firmly understood and a better idea of how the game itself plays out. When we do, I'll be sure to post another report.
Until next time, Cheers!
This past Friday, my friend and fellow author Dan Eldredge and I got together to play out a game of Bolt Action for the first time. Neither of us has had the time to fully paint our armies, and we agreed to not do a full battle report (the shame of a formal bat-rep containing unpainted miniatures would be too much for Dan to bear...), but we had the day to get together and enough miniatures to fight a good-sized battle, so we brought together everything that was assembled and decided to just have a go at it and try out as many of the units and rules as possible.
In short, I fielded a mixed force of British Army and Commando forces, with a bunch of weapons teams, a Daimler armored car, and a Sherman tank. Dan fielded a platoon of Panzergrenadiers in half-tracks, along with several weapon teams, a squad of veteran late-war grenadiers carrying StG 44 assault rifles, and a Tiger tank (yikes!). We played an "Envelopment" scenario, where the attacker (Germans) tries to break through the defender's (British) lines. This seemed well suited to our units, since none of my infantry had transports and I had a ton of weapons teams (mortars, AT rifle, Vickers machine gun, etc.), while Dan had mechanized infantry and a powerful tank.
 |
| British on the near side of the board, Germans on the far side |
One immediate difference we noticed between Bolt Action and Warhammer 40K (which we've both played a lot over the years) was the effects of pinning and morale. The more a unit takes fire from enemies, the more they are "pinned", and a pinned unit has to take a morale test in order to do...well...almost anything. A unit can get pinned into utter uselessness without taking a single casualty, a situation in stark comparison to 40K, where many armies have very high morale and many units are Fearless or Stubborn or otherwise ignore various morale situations. The mission began with a bombardment of my lines, and although I only suffered one casualty, many of my units suffered pinning and a couple even broke and ran! This caused me quite a bit of trouble early on, as a number of my units couldn't get into the fight for the first couple of turns (thankfully I had a lot of units, so I wasn't completely hampered in this regard).
Dan's Panzergrenadiers made a bold thrust into the center of my lines, determined to punch through my regular infantry and split my forces. My poor infantry section stood their ground for a short while, before weight of fire from several squads of Germans, as well as their support weapons, caused the unit to suffer too many casualties and eventually break and get wiped out. In Bolt Action, if you lose half a unit's models in a turn, and they fail a morale test, the unit is destroyed. This definitely keeps the tempo of a battle going and prevents tiny remnant units running around ineffectually.
 |
| The Poor Bloody Infantry, about a turn away from being wiped from the board. Note the Tiger in the distance... |
 |
| An empty shell crater is all that's left of the Panzergrenadier squad, while their mates to the right look away in horror... |
Determined to press on, Dan drives his Tiger tank through the bombardment zone and tries to get off of my size of the board, since his infantry are so pinned by the bombardment that they're refusing to embark on their transport. With my Sherman immobilized and out of line-of-sight, and my armored car on the other side of the board (he's been sniping at a German MMG unit and the veteran Grenadiers all game), all I've got to deal with the tiger is my lone PIAT anti-tank gunner, who lost his loader and broke and ran in the opening bombardment. He's finally collected himself and lost his pinning penalties, and he moves forward, finally getting within good range for a shot at the Tiger's flank.
 |
| Steady hands now, lad! Make it count! |
Overall, we both had a lot of fun. The rules move fast once you get the hang of them, and while the game isn't exactingly realistic, there are enough elements that make sense to give it a feeling of completeness and logic. The effects of pinning especially can be very frustrating, but it makes sense that your men aren't just blithely going about their business as shells explode and bullets snap all around them. You also need to make sure you're using your officers' Morale bonuses to their best effect, something I think neither of us paid much attention to during the game.
I'm not sure when we'll have another chance to play, but we're both looking forward to another battle, this time with the game mechanics more firmly understood and a better idea of how the game itself plays out. When we do, I'll be sure to post another report.
Until next time, Cheers!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Tankards and Broadswords RPG: Playtest Session 2
Last night's game was supposed to have a third player, but he wasn't able to attend, instead, I quickly whipped up an NPC Captain of the Blue Tower Guards, a warrior named Alcarn. One goal of the game is to make sure creating an NPC is quick and painless; I use the "monster" format for these sorts of NPCs. Attack, Defense, Reflexes, Athletics, Detection, and Stealth for skills, plus Peril checks, Health, Damage, and Armor rating. It's 12 quick values, no skill focuses, no Statuses. Mail armor, battle axe, two daggers, and a shield. Maybe not QUITE as fast as throwing together a B/X D&D henchman, but pretty darn close.
In case you didn't see the first session post, here it is.
The PCs have been asked by the Blue Tower to go into the edge of the Cthonian Wood and investigate an abandoned wizard's tower that has been located. The Tower of Arion was well outside the wood before the Cataclysm struck and sent a ravaging storm of magical destruction across the land. Now, the Cthonian Wood is much, much larger and its border has swallowed up many now-forgotten towers and villages. The PCs are going to set out on a "fact finding mission" to the rumored location of the tower and see if it is worth sending a larger expedition. Alcarn will accompany them as a representative of the Blue Tower. The PCs are offered any form of basic gear they wish. Marikh takes some mail armor and a shield, while Jayne grabs up a crossbow, a warhammer, grapple and rope, and a deluxe healer's kit. The party are given horses as well as food, torches, and so forth.
The party rides for one of the many roadside forts located between population centers. Think something along the lines of a frontier stockade; a tall wooden palisade with an elevated walk, a bunkhouse, stable, well, and a fire pit. There's a heavy timber gate that can be barred as well. When the PCs get there, no one is occupying the fort, so they settle down for the night. Watches are set, and near the end of the second watch, Marikh makes a solid Detection roll and notices that a lot of the night sounds have died away, and that the horses are beginning to act nervous. Jayne's cat (while enjoying the hospitality of the Blue Tower, Jayne used her Beastmaster spells to acquire an Animal Ally in the form of a stray cat) tells her it smells like "bad meat" out beyond the stockade. With everyone awake, Marikh and Alcarn take to the battlements, while Jayne remains in the center of the stockade with her crossbow ready.
Hunkered down behind the palisade, Marikh suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a ghoulish creature that'd silently scaled the outside of the wooden wall. It swipes for his face with its taloned hand, but Marikh fends it off with the hilt of his sword, then proceeds to bisect its head with his first stroke.
What followed was a fairly brief battle against half a dozen more of these ghoulish Flesh Hunters. Some quick observations about the combat:
The next day the PCs set out and make it to the edge of the Wood by late afternoon. Wisely deciding to stay the night outside the border of the forest, the night is uneventful except for a few "movement sounds" from the forest. Entering the Wood the next morning, the PCs find it pretty rough going (poor Athletics checks) and take more time than they should getting through the thick undergrowth. What's more, they get lost (poor navigational Survival checks) and turned around, and don't find Arion's tower until mid afternoon. The tower is about sixty feet in diameter and about that high, made of dark stone and windowless as far as can be discerned. The whole tower is covered in thick ivy, vines, moss, and other vegetation. The doors are opened a bit, and no movement can be seen or heard.
The PCs decide to move inside. Within, they make out a semi-circular room about thirty feet deep and close to twenty feet tall. Flanking the doorway there are a pair of statues depicting a well-dressed man and woman, but the statues are overgrown, cracked, and broken. The room itself is filled with vegetation and plant growth, almost to an unnatural degree; both corners of the room are completely overrun with vines and what seems to be small stunted trees growing right out of the stone floor. Marikh goes to investigate the overgrowth to the left of the door, when the plants seem to rustle and some noises are discerned. He backs off, only to hear the same from the right, and soon, five Winged Apes burst out of the two locations. The battle is short but fierce, leaving the PCs triumphant with only a couple of minor wounds. Marikh did try a Feint maneuver and his opponent failed miserably to detect it; the resulting attack bonus let Marikh kill the creature with ease.
The evening was getting late so we called the game at this point. Plenty more of exploring to be done, so next time we'll begin to get into the heart of the tower. Playtest-wise, so far so good...
In case you didn't see the first session post, here it is.
The PCs have been asked by the Blue Tower to go into the edge of the Cthonian Wood and investigate an abandoned wizard's tower that has been located. The Tower of Arion was well outside the wood before the Cataclysm struck and sent a ravaging storm of magical destruction across the land. Now, the Cthonian Wood is much, much larger and its border has swallowed up many now-forgotten towers and villages. The PCs are going to set out on a "fact finding mission" to the rumored location of the tower and see if it is worth sending a larger expedition. Alcarn will accompany them as a representative of the Blue Tower. The PCs are offered any form of basic gear they wish. Marikh takes some mail armor and a shield, while Jayne grabs up a crossbow, a warhammer, grapple and rope, and a deluxe healer's kit. The party are given horses as well as food, torches, and so forth.
The party rides for one of the many roadside forts located between population centers. Think something along the lines of a frontier stockade; a tall wooden palisade with an elevated walk, a bunkhouse, stable, well, and a fire pit. There's a heavy timber gate that can be barred as well. When the PCs get there, no one is occupying the fort, so they settle down for the night. Watches are set, and near the end of the second watch, Marikh makes a solid Detection roll and notices that a lot of the night sounds have died away, and that the horses are beginning to act nervous. Jayne's cat (while enjoying the hospitality of the Blue Tower, Jayne used her Beastmaster spells to acquire an Animal Ally in the form of a stray cat) tells her it smells like "bad meat" out beyond the stockade. With everyone awake, Marikh and Alcarn take to the battlements, while Jayne remains in the center of the stockade with her crossbow ready.
Hunkered down behind the palisade, Marikh suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a ghoulish creature that'd silently scaled the outside of the wooden wall. It swipes for his face with its taloned hand, but Marikh fends it off with the hilt of his sword, then proceeds to bisect its head with his first stroke.
What followed was a fairly brief battle against half a dozen more of these ghoulish Flesh Hunters. Some quick observations about the combat:
- Wearing armor made a huge difference. Marikh and Alcarn were both wearing mail, and while they took some damage apiece, it would have been far worse without the damage absorbing abilities of the armor. Rolling 1d + Balance for damage, several of the Flesh Hunter's successful attacks were completely ineffective damage-wise thanks to the mail armor worn by these two characters.
- Combat maneuvers made things a lot more interesting. Faced with two opponents several times, Marikh used "Web of Death" to attack both at the same time. He also suffered a Charge Attack from one of the Hunters, and whiffed his Athletics check badly; the resulting huge bonus for the Hunter allowed it to deliver Marikh's only real wound of the fight.
- You have to really pay attention to Initiative. Because every attack is an attack roll vs. a defense roll, it is easy to forget who actually attacked in a round and who only defended. I found writing down everyone's order of operations, then checking off their number when they acted was a helpful visual aid.
- The Healing Skill works almost too well. A good healer with a deluxe healer's kit tests against a BP of 7, and a starting character with Medicine of 3, +1 for First aid, +1 for the deluxe kit, essentially can't fail a healing check. When I make my post-playtest changes, I may remove the extra 1d from healing and just make points recovered equal to the Balance of the roll.
The next day the PCs set out and make it to the edge of the Wood by late afternoon. Wisely deciding to stay the night outside the border of the forest, the night is uneventful except for a few "movement sounds" from the forest. Entering the Wood the next morning, the PCs find it pretty rough going (poor Athletics checks) and take more time than they should getting through the thick undergrowth. What's more, they get lost (poor navigational Survival checks) and turned around, and don't find Arion's tower until mid afternoon. The tower is about sixty feet in diameter and about that high, made of dark stone and windowless as far as can be discerned. The whole tower is covered in thick ivy, vines, moss, and other vegetation. The doors are opened a bit, and no movement can be seen or heard.
The PCs decide to move inside. Within, they make out a semi-circular room about thirty feet deep and close to twenty feet tall. Flanking the doorway there are a pair of statues depicting a well-dressed man and woman, but the statues are overgrown, cracked, and broken. The room itself is filled with vegetation and plant growth, almost to an unnatural degree; both corners of the room are completely overrun with vines and what seems to be small stunted trees growing right out of the stone floor. Marikh goes to investigate the overgrowth to the left of the door, when the plants seem to rustle and some noises are discerned. He backs off, only to hear the same from the right, and soon, five Winged Apes burst out of the two locations. The battle is short but fierce, leaving the PCs triumphant with only a couple of minor wounds. Marikh did try a Feint maneuver and his opponent failed miserably to detect it; the resulting attack bonus let Marikh kill the creature with ease.
The evening was getting late so we called the game at this point. Plenty more of exploring to be done, so next time we'll begin to get into the heart of the tower. Playtest-wise, so far so good...
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Neverwinter Nights: D&D 3E Done Right
So after writing my Sword & Sorcery short, I started jonesing for some kind of video game hack-and-slash action. I had played Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition a few years ago, but didn't get all that far in it. I decided to get back on the wagon and play again. I of course created "Nanok the Barbarian" and gave him a Weapon Focus in Greatsword (like you do). I put the game on Easy because smacking the crap out of AI goons is just that much more fun, and I began to loot and pillage to my heart's content.
For those not in the know, Neverwinter Nights is a video game that came out a while back that uses the D&D 3.0 rules to run everything. It is actually explicitly 3.0, not 3.5, so certain things might seem a little odd if 3.5 was your 3E of choice. I'm not a huge computer game person, but I do like the occasional FPS or RPG-style computer game (Deus Ex is one of my favorite CRPGs of all time). When I do play a game like this, I am one of those people who gets really "crunchy" with my character - what weapon do I take, tweaking stats, skills, etc.. I'm not a WoW or other MMO type player, so don't get that far into it, but I do like the ability to "fiddle" with my character like that.
One of the more pervasive criticisms, I felt, of D&D 3.X was that there was far too much crunch - people wanted more customizability, but not THAT much more. With class and race abilities and mods, skills, feats, various types of bonuses, and so forth, if you weren't more of a hardcore "crunchy gamer", and just someone who wanted to build a character to beat up orcs, you were faced with something of a choice-explosion. What's worse is that, if you weren't at least semi-intelligent as to how you created your character, you could really do yourself a disservice and make choices that definitely dropped you down the backward slope of the power curve.
Now, I'm not going to go on a tirade about how this is why older editions were better or why 3E sucks. I actually enjoyed a lot of my 3E gaming, but I can see arguments for and against. It was a "modernization" of the D&D mechanics, which I didn't have a problem with, but I think it just got over engineered; Castles & Crusades, in my mind, is a much better approach and still makes the game a lot more "modern" (unified core mechanic, so on and so forth).
But for a CRPG, D&D 3.0 is great. It provides the computer with a very tightly-woven, crunchy, almost-every-situation-covered rules framework, something that a lot of CRPGs were already going for at the time and the player based love it (see Deus Ex...). Also, because of the way a computer can offer up (or hide) information to the user, a lof of that "choice-explosion" goes away. When it's time to pick a feat, it only shows you feats that you can actually take. When you pick up a weapon in the game, you're told immediately whether you can use it or not. You can see all your relevant modifiers worked into the final bonuses or penalties without doing the math yourself.
At the end of the day, 3.0 might have been passed by these days, but I still think that generation of D&D rules were perfect as transition fodder for moving people back and forth from video games to RPGs and so on, because the rules could work in both media quite well, and one reinforced the other. I'm curious (because I don't know) if there have been any video games based around 4E rules - my guess is no, but if someone can say for certain, I'd appreciate it.
For those not in the know, Neverwinter Nights is a video game that came out a while back that uses the D&D 3.0 rules to run everything. It is actually explicitly 3.0, not 3.5, so certain things might seem a little odd if 3.5 was your 3E of choice. I'm not a huge computer game person, but I do like the occasional FPS or RPG-style computer game (Deus Ex is one of my favorite CRPGs of all time). When I do play a game like this, I am one of those people who gets really "crunchy" with my character - what weapon do I take, tweaking stats, skills, etc.. I'm not a WoW or other MMO type player, so don't get that far into it, but I do like the ability to "fiddle" with my character like that.
One of the more pervasive criticisms, I felt, of D&D 3.X was that there was far too much crunch - people wanted more customizability, but not THAT much more. With class and race abilities and mods, skills, feats, various types of bonuses, and so forth, if you weren't more of a hardcore "crunchy gamer", and just someone who wanted to build a character to beat up orcs, you were faced with something of a choice-explosion. What's worse is that, if you weren't at least semi-intelligent as to how you created your character, you could really do yourself a disservice and make choices that definitely dropped you down the backward slope of the power curve.
Now, I'm not going to go on a tirade about how this is why older editions were better or why 3E sucks. I actually enjoyed a lot of my 3E gaming, but I can see arguments for and against. It was a "modernization" of the D&D mechanics, which I didn't have a problem with, but I think it just got over engineered; Castles & Crusades, in my mind, is a much better approach and still makes the game a lot more "modern" (unified core mechanic, so on and so forth).
But for a CRPG, D&D 3.0 is great. It provides the computer with a very tightly-woven, crunchy, almost-every-situation-covered rules framework, something that a lot of CRPGs were already going for at the time and the player based love it (see Deus Ex...). Also, because of the way a computer can offer up (or hide) information to the user, a lof of that "choice-explosion" goes away. When it's time to pick a feat, it only shows you feats that you can actually take. When you pick up a weapon in the game, you're told immediately whether you can use it or not. You can see all your relevant modifiers worked into the final bonuses or penalties without doing the math yourself.
At the end of the day, 3.0 might have been passed by these days, but I still think that generation of D&D rules were perfect as transition fodder for moving people back and forth from video games to RPGs and so on, because the rules could work in both media quite well, and one reinforced the other. I'm curious (because I don't know) if there have been any video games based around 4E rules - my guess is no, but if someone can say for certain, I'd appreciate it.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tankards and Broadswords RPG: Playtest Session 1
So last night I ran my first playtest of the TnB rules. It went well, better than I expected actually. I'll provide a brief rundown of what happened and a few observations at the conclusion.
There were only two players in last night's playtest, Scott and Grace. Both had been exposed to the rules before through casual discussion and a few much older tidbits, but this was the first time either had put pen to paper.
Scott settled on a Fighter archetype, putting 4 ranks in Melee with a Focus on Longsword. He also took a Defense of 3 with a focus on Armed Parry and a Reflexes of 3 with a focus on Melee Combat. His Carousing of 3 had a Focus on Drinking, and Persuasion 3 with a Focus on Diplomacy. In his Scholar skills his only real standout was a Research of 2. There were other skill ranks scattered here and there but those were the really notable skills. Interestingly, he gave his character 3 ranks in Resist, 2 in Endure, and 1 in Avoid, meaning he'd be quite resistant to mental attacks. Finally, he put a single point in Wealth and two points in Infamy, giving his character a bit of a bad(ass) reputation. Overall, Marikh of No Place in Particular was a young disenfranchised minor nobleman who was skilled with a blade and the ways of a noble's court.
Grace went the opposite route. She settled on a Scholar, and put 3 ranks apiece in Healing (First Aid), Arcana (Magic), Linguistics (Magic) and Research (Magic). She also took 3 ranks in Carousing, also with a Focus in Drinking, and two ranks apiece in Stealth and Thievery, and in terms of combat, put two ranks apiece into Defense, Ranged, and Reflexes. Once the skills were squared away, she distributed her Peril ranks evenly across all three options, then put all of her Status ranks into Wealth, giving her a max of 3. All her freebie Character Tokens went into a Magic skill of 3, and she picked up three Magic Books: Healer (which became her Magic skill Focus), Beastmaster, and Infiltrator. In essence, her character is a Magical Healer/Thief, an interesting combo that complimented Scott's character quite well.
At the beginning of the game, I asked both players to make Intermission Rolls. This is a random roll that provides the character with some boon or danger at the beginning of an adventure, carried on from their time in between "episodes". In a lot of heroic fantasy, the story begins in medias res, with the character fleeing from some danger, or flush with victory from some event off camera that provides a hook into what is about to happen. Since I had almost no idea of where I wanted the characters to go or do for their first adventure, I decided to leave the decision in the hands of the dice gods.
And the Dice Gods delivered, big time. Both characters rolled 2d and got results of 9: Pauper. This means the character starts the game with no starting currency and gets nothing from their Wealth stat. Normally, at the start of every adventure, the character only begins with Signature Items; these are weapons or other pieces of equipment that the character has bought at character creation which are effectively part of the character - think Xena's chakram, or Elric's Black Sword. Every other piece of gear is up to the whims of fortune as to whether the character will have it or not; the player rolls 2d6 and adds their Wealth rating; the result are the number of Treasure Tokens they have to spend on armor, weapons, and so forth.
Well, Pauper prevents you from doing that - you've got your Signature Items, and nothing else. For Marikh, that was a longsword; for Jayne, that was just her spellbooks. With their Carousing Focuses in Drinking, we decided the perfect way for them both to start the game would be to wake up bleary-eyed and penniless, sitting in a tavern at the crack of dawn. They had agreed to start in Urgh, a very "Lawful-Neutral" city-state where there is a fine, tax, fee, bylaw, etc. for everything. I related to the players that Urgh had such things as vagrancy fees, unemployment fees, and so forth, so it wasn't a good town to get caught in while penniless; the fighting pits, slave labor camps, or some other unpleasantness would be their fate.
So the PCs decided to make a break for it. Outside the tavern, they ducked into an alleyway and stepped over a drunk; Jayne picked the drunk's pocket and found a coin. They discovered the wooden manhole cover to the sewer, and Jayne used her Book of the Infiltrator to cast "Lockwork", popping the lock. Both of them scrounged to find tools; Marikh fashioned a torch from a broken crate and straw, while Jayne got herself a makeshift club. Down into the sewers they went, and after a couple of Survival rolls, aligned their bearings well enough to head for the outflow grate by the docks.
Down into the sewers, eh? Doesn't sound like a particularly safe place to wander. After splashing around for a while, neither PC noticed a large, predatory shape gliding through the sewer waters towards them. With full surprise, a massive sewer alligator leaped from the water and latched onto Jayne's leg, hurting her badly. Marikh jumped to her aid, plunging his sword into the creature's back, and causing it to turn on him, biting and inflicting an even more savage wound. Jayne tried to cast a healing spell on Marikh, but the spell fizzles. The Alligator strikes again but misses, and this time both Jayne and Marikh make contact; Jayne beats on it with her club, while Marikh hacks its head off with his sword. Jayne takes a few rounds to heal them both, and they continue on to the sewer grate, and escape the city of Urgh.
The two characters make their way north along the shoreline, determined to seek the Blue Wizard's Tower and offer their services for employment. During the day they both find sufficient food and water, and even discover a body washed up on shore, wearing a dagger and carrying a purse with two coins. At nightfall, unable to find a good shelter, they decide to build a campfire on the beach and stay there the night before heading inland.
In the middle of the first watch, Marikh hears the "flapping of leathery wings" in the air around the camp, and wakes Jayne. Fears that it might be a larger creature are dispelled, and assuming they are bats, Jayne uses a Beastmaster spell, Beast Speech, to try and talk to them. However, all they get are hisses and cackles from the air. Deciding to make a break for it, they move away from the fire and head inland, only to be immediately pounced on and attacked by a pair of winged apes. Jayne is badly mauled by one, but Marikh quickly kills his opponent, and after Jayne drubs hers with her club, Merikh slices it in half. Further spellcasting brings Jayne back to full health.
Come the morning the two journey inland, and encounter no more troubles along the way. Eventually they reach a mile-wide clearing and see, in the center, the thousand-foot high, hourglass-shaped blue crystal tower of the Blue Wizards. Concerned that just walking to the tower might be ill advised, the duo make their way around the clearing to a watchtower at the point where the road to the tower enters the clearing. Approaching, they are hailed by a half-dozen guards, each bearing a long sword, shield, and mail hauberk, and wearing the blue surcoat of their masters. The duo introduce themselves, and Scott decides that Marikh will attempt to use his Infamy as an "in". He rolls very well, and the guards have heard that "He's that guy, who did that thing, to that other guy, and the blood never came clean from the walls...". The Sergeant-at-Arms decides to put Marikh to a little "test" and engages in a little swordplay; Marikh parries with laughable ease and knocks the Sergeant into the dust with the flat of his blade. Credentials confirmed...
To conclude the evening, the chagrined Sergeant orders to of his men to escort the duo to the Tower, where they are given a change of clothes, allowed to clean up, are fed and watered, and provided any comforts they need. An hour later, they are escorted to an audience with Herik, Wizard of the Fourth Circle, who welcomes them as guests and offers the two of them accommodations for the day, and an audience with his superior the next day. A servant was assigned to handle their needs, and they were dismissed.
This is where we ended the session.
A few observations...
There were only two players in last night's playtest, Scott and Grace. Both had been exposed to the rules before through casual discussion and a few much older tidbits, but this was the first time either had put pen to paper.
Scott settled on a Fighter archetype, putting 4 ranks in Melee with a Focus on Longsword. He also took a Defense of 3 with a focus on Armed Parry and a Reflexes of 3 with a focus on Melee Combat. His Carousing of 3 had a Focus on Drinking, and Persuasion 3 with a Focus on Diplomacy. In his Scholar skills his only real standout was a Research of 2. There were other skill ranks scattered here and there but those were the really notable skills. Interestingly, he gave his character 3 ranks in Resist, 2 in Endure, and 1 in Avoid, meaning he'd be quite resistant to mental attacks. Finally, he put a single point in Wealth and two points in Infamy, giving his character a bit of a bad(ass) reputation. Overall, Marikh of No Place in Particular was a young disenfranchised minor nobleman who was skilled with a blade and the ways of a noble's court.
Grace went the opposite route. She settled on a Scholar, and put 3 ranks apiece in Healing (First Aid), Arcana (Magic), Linguistics (Magic) and Research (Magic). She also took 3 ranks in Carousing, also with a Focus in Drinking, and two ranks apiece in Stealth and Thievery, and in terms of combat, put two ranks apiece into Defense, Ranged, and Reflexes. Once the skills were squared away, she distributed her Peril ranks evenly across all three options, then put all of her Status ranks into Wealth, giving her a max of 3. All her freebie Character Tokens went into a Magic skill of 3, and she picked up three Magic Books: Healer (which became her Magic skill Focus), Beastmaster, and Infiltrator. In essence, her character is a Magical Healer/Thief, an interesting combo that complimented Scott's character quite well.
At the beginning of the game, I asked both players to make Intermission Rolls. This is a random roll that provides the character with some boon or danger at the beginning of an adventure, carried on from their time in between "episodes". In a lot of heroic fantasy, the story begins in medias res, with the character fleeing from some danger, or flush with victory from some event off camera that provides a hook into what is about to happen. Since I had almost no idea of where I wanted the characters to go or do for their first adventure, I decided to leave the decision in the hands of the dice gods.
And the Dice Gods delivered, big time. Both characters rolled 2d and got results of 9: Pauper. This means the character starts the game with no starting currency and gets nothing from their Wealth stat. Normally, at the start of every adventure, the character only begins with Signature Items; these are weapons or other pieces of equipment that the character has bought at character creation which are effectively part of the character - think Xena's chakram, or Elric's Black Sword. Every other piece of gear is up to the whims of fortune as to whether the character will have it or not; the player rolls 2d6 and adds their Wealth rating; the result are the number of Treasure Tokens they have to spend on armor, weapons, and so forth.
Well, Pauper prevents you from doing that - you've got your Signature Items, and nothing else. For Marikh, that was a longsword; for Jayne, that was just her spellbooks. With their Carousing Focuses in Drinking, we decided the perfect way for them both to start the game would be to wake up bleary-eyed and penniless, sitting in a tavern at the crack of dawn. They had agreed to start in Urgh, a very "Lawful-Neutral" city-state where there is a fine, tax, fee, bylaw, etc. for everything. I related to the players that Urgh had such things as vagrancy fees, unemployment fees, and so forth, so it wasn't a good town to get caught in while penniless; the fighting pits, slave labor camps, or some other unpleasantness would be their fate.
So the PCs decided to make a break for it. Outside the tavern, they ducked into an alleyway and stepped over a drunk; Jayne picked the drunk's pocket and found a coin. They discovered the wooden manhole cover to the sewer, and Jayne used her Book of the Infiltrator to cast "Lockwork", popping the lock. Both of them scrounged to find tools; Marikh fashioned a torch from a broken crate and straw, while Jayne got herself a makeshift club. Down into the sewers they went, and after a couple of Survival rolls, aligned their bearings well enough to head for the outflow grate by the docks.
Down into the sewers, eh? Doesn't sound like a particularly safe place to wander. After splashing around for a while, neither PC noticed a large, predatory shape gliding through the sewer waters towards them. With full surprise, a massive sewer alligator leaped from the water and latched onto Jayne's leg, hurting her badly. Marikh jumped to her aid, plunging his sword into the creature's back, and causing it to turn on him, biting and inflicting an even more savage wound. Jayne tried to cast a healing spell on Marikh, but the spell fizzles. The Alligator strikes again but misses, and this time both Jayne and Marikh make contact; Jayne beats on it with her club, while Marikh hacks its head off with his sword. Jayne takes a few rounds to heal them both, and they continue on to the sewer grate, and escape the city of Urgh.
The two characters make their way north along the shoreline, determined to seek the Blue Wizard's Tower and offer their services for employment. During the day they both find sufficient food and water, and even discover a body washed up on shore, wearing a dagger and carrying a purse with two coins. At nightfall, unable to find a good shelter, they decide to build a campfire on the beach and stay there the night before heading inland.
In the middle of the first watch, Marikh hears the "flapping of leathery wings" in the air around the camp, and wakes Jayne. Fears that it might be a larger creature are dispelled, and assuming they are bats, Jayne uses a Beastmaster spell, Beast Speech, to try and talk to them. However, all they get are hisses and cackles from the air. Deciding to make a break for it, they move away from the fire and head inland, only to be immediately pounced on and attacked by a pair of winged apes. Jayne is badly mauled by one, but Marikh quickly kills his opponent, and after Jayne drubs hers with her club, Merikh slices it in half. Further spellcasting brings Jayne back to full health.
Come the morning the two journey inland, and encounter no more troubles along the way. Eventually they reach a mile-wide clearing and see, in the center, the thousand-foot high, hourglass-shaped blue crystal tower of the Blue Wizards. Concerned that just walking to the tower might be ill advised, the duo make their way around the clearing to a watchtower at the point where the road to the tower enters the clearing. Approaching, they are hailed by a half-dozen guards, each bearing a long sword, shield, and mail hauberk, and wearing the blue surcoat of their masters. The duo introduce themselves, and Scott decides that Marikh will attempt to use his Infamy as an "in". He rolls very well, and the guards have heard that "He's that guy, who did that thing, to that other guy, and the blood never came clean from the walls...". The Sergeant-at-Arms decides to put Marikh to a little "test" and engages in a little swordplay; Marikh parries with laughable ease and knocks the Sergeant into the dust with the flat of his blade. Credentials confirmed...
To conclude the evening, the chagrined Sergeant orders to of his men to escort the duo to the Tower, where they are given a change of clothes, allowed to clean up, are fed and watered, and provided any comforts they need. An hour later, they are escorted to an audience with Herik, Wizard of the Fourth Circle, who welcomes them as guests and offers the two of them accommodations for the day, and an audience with his superior the next day. A servant was assigned to handle their needs, and they were dismissed.
This is where we ended the session.
A few observations...
- The Intermission Roll couldn't have worked better. I designed them to be a possible jumping-off point for adventures, and in this case, that's exactly what it provided. I came to the table with almost no idea of what the adventure was going to be, but the Pauper result for both characters gave us exactly what we needed; an impetus for action. Perhaps it wouldn't happen every adventure, but the players liked the idea that it we were able to weave the result into their Carousing skills, which made everyone happy.
- Combat, while ill-equipped, can be very dangerous. Only Marikh had a real weapon, Jayne had no offensive spells, and neither character was wearing armor. The result was that in both fights, against opponents who weren't terribly powerful, one or both of the characters got mauled. Typically it was because the attacker got a really good attack roll and the defender rolled terribly, giving the attacker a very high Balance for the attack, which gave the damage roll a massive bonus. Having no armor to soak some of that damage hurt...a lot.
- Being able to give very generic skills much narrower skill Focuses helped make the skill feel more specialized. Marikh wasn't just a good Melee fighter, he was a swordsman. Likewise, focusing all of Jayne's Scholar skills towards magic, and her Magic skill towards Healer, kept a lot of flavor in the mix.
- I need to draft up some form of encounter rules. I was just rolling 2d6 and if it was a really high roll, "something happened". Having a 2d roll that went from "nothing", to "friendly", "neutral" and "dangerous" would help this.
- There was little problem with leaving most skills open to a broad interpretation. Survival becomes crucial for any cross-country travel, useful for scrounging, navigating, finding food, water, and shelter - you name it. And we were clearly able to differentiate between Survival and Naturalism; one was living off the land, the other was an academic understanding of the land, flora, and fauna.
- Aside from being dangerous, combat moved smoothly. We would have to see how larger fights work out; perhaps having a Reflexes roll just once at the start of the fight would result in a lot less bookkeeping.
- One of the players was a little disappointed when told how long it takes to progress skills after character creation, but as the characters can start off with up to 4 ranks in a skill - "Veteran" status - the need to advance more quickly isn't, in my mind, much of an issue. We'll see how that attitude fares later on in the gameplay.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
New Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game Surge
You can find the listed books by clicking here.
I've picked up the Free Peoples book, and I like what I see. There was a discrepancy for a while between some of the models that only had rules under the War of the Ring game (for example, the Dwarf King's Champion). Now, every model and unit has a SBG entry, with a few rules tweaks that make sense to me. For example, there is little point nothing that every model comes with a hand weapon since by default all models come with one, so the only wargear listed is that which the model possesses that stands out from the "default". In addition, where there are multiple versions of the same character model (In particular, Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond).
In the end, it is easy enough to ignore this complication. Many of the scenarios in the other books have a detailed listing of what sort of forces should be fielded, and the Warbands rule is mainly intended for "pickup games" (read: Tournaments). It gives a certain level of standardization to the game, but I still feel like one of the appeals of the SBG was how every model mattered, and each model was a Hero in its own right, if it fought well enough and turned the tide of battle from defeat to victory for its side.
This "surge" in SBG models and books is no doubt in preparation for the Hobbit movie, which comes out in December. GW will no doubt be releasing a slew of miniatures and some new books, and I guess some standardization was in order. I'm looking forward to the new releases, and I'm sure to be commenting on them here as time goes on.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Game Mechanics: Smoke Em If You Got Em
Over this past week’s vacation from work, I broke down and picked up a first-person shooter for myself. I’m not much of a console gamer - there’s something about using console controllers that I just find awkward, and if one is using the TV to play a console game then no one else can use the TV for it’s more common purpose. So I tend to prefer computer games, especially for FPS-style games (I find the reaction time and precision afforded with a mouse and a keyboard way better than a console controller).
Anyhow, I picked up Rogue Warrior, a so-so computer game I bought mostly because I think Richard Marcinko is a hardcore throat-stomper who’s more or less made a second successful career out of being a well-marketed bona-fide badass after his first career as a Navy SEAL ended at the hands of a wrathful US government-delivered jail sentence. the FPS game would have been decent maybe ten years ago, around the era of Rainbow Six and the like, but these days is woefully outclassed. However, since I don’t play a lot of video games, the novelty of a new game, filled with ridiculous profanity and all sorts of gratuitously brutal “kill moves” kept me entertained for a handful of evenings.
And yes, I’m getting to a point...
One thing I noticed was that every level I played, there were opportunities for utilizing some of the little perks of the game. For example, the beginning of every mission, your enemies aren’t aware you’re there, and you have the option of taking out the first half dozen or so bad guys in hand-to-hand “kill moves” which are pretty entertaining. Most every mission also has at least one area where you could enjoy yourself sniping at the bad guys with a handily available sniper rifle. There’s also at least one close-quarters battle area where a shotgun or SMG can be very handy.
Now, the cool part is that you don’t HAVE to kill people quietly in the beginning of the mission, or snipe at them at another point in the game, etc. etc., but there is an option to use these features and while you don’t have to, it makes it fun to do so.
This got me thinking about role-playing game mechanics. While it is perfectly possible to play an all-human, no-spellcasters game of D&D where there is no magic and no magic items, and no one ever goes into a “dungeon”, you’d be hard pressed to give me a reason why this is a good idea. Similarly, playing a Traveller game where you never leave the low-tech planet you’re on, or a Shadowrun game where there’s no cybernetics, or an Ars Magica game where no one plays a mage. There’s nothing stopping you from ignoring the primary “draw” of a certain RPG, but it gives me pause to consider it because if you ignore what makes that game unique, I feel there’s little point in using that game in favor of another, far more generic and flavorless system.
Of course, this is different than “picking and choosing rules” or coming up with homebrew solutions. I’m talking more about ignoring whole reasons why the game was created. Using my own homebrew Tankards & Broadswords RPG as an example, I’ve designed the game from the beginning to facilitate episodic play. For someone to take the game and use it in a linear campaign wouldn’t be “doing it wrong”, but on the other hand, why pick my RPG out of all the hundreds out there and then not use that which helps set it apart a little from its peers?
So my question to the reader is, when would you or when have you taken a game system and then completely ignored or thrown out that which most strongly defines that system, and why would you or did you do this?
Anyhow, I picked up Rogue Warrior, a so-so computer game I bought mostly because I think Richard Marcinko is a hardcore throat-stomper who’s more or less made a second successful career out of being a well-marketed bona-fide badass after his first career as a Navy SEAL ended at the hands of a wrathful US government-delivered jail sentence. the FPS game would have been decent maybe ten years ago, around the era of Rainbow Six and the like, but these days is woefully outclassed. However, since I don’t play a lot of video games, the novelty of a new game, filled with ridiculous profanity and all sorts of gratuitously brutal “kill moves” kept me entertained for a handful of evenings.
And yes, I’m getting to a point...
One thing I noticed was that every level I played, there were opportunities for utilizing some of the little perks of the game. For example, the beginning of every mission, your enemies aren’t aware you’re there, and you have the option of taking out the first half dozen or so bad guys in hand-to-hand “kill moves” which are pretty entertaining. Most every mission also has at least one area where you could enjoy yourself sniping at the bad guys with a handily available sniper rifle. There’s also at least one close-quarters battle area where a shotgun or SMG can be very handy.
Now, the cool part is that you don’t HAVE to kill people quietly in the beginning of the mission, or snipe at them at another point in the game, etc. etc., but there is an option to use these features and while you don’t have to, it makes it fun to do so.
This got me thinking about role-playing game mechanics. While it is perfectly possible to play an all-human, no-spellcasters game of D&D where there is no magic and no magic items, and no one ever goes into a “dungeon”, you’d be hard pressed to give me a reason why this is a good idea. Similarly, playing a Traveller game where you never leave the low-tech planet you’re on, or a Shadowrun game where there’s no cybernetics, or an Ars Magica game where no one plays a mage. There’s nothing stopping you from ignoring the primary “draw” of a certain RPG, but it gives me pause to consider it because if you ignore what makes that game unique, I feel there’s little point in using that game in favor of another, far more generic and flavorless system.
Of course, this is different than “picking and choosing rules” or coming up with homebrew solutions. I’m talking more about ignoring whole reasons why the game was created. Using my own homebrew Tankards & Broadswords RPG as an example, I’ve designed the game from the beginning to facilitate episodic play. For someone to take the game and use it in a linear campaign wouldn’t be “doing it wrong”, but on the other hand, why pick my RPG out of all the hundreds out there and then not use that which helps set it apart a little from its peers?
So my question to the reader is, when would you or when have you taken a game system and then completely ignored or thrown out that which most strongly defines that system, and why would you or did you do this?
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