Just A Thought

A lot of people consider a defining aspect of "Old School" RPGs the fact that they lack a "skills system". Just a few quick thoughts about this with regards to "classic" D&D...

- The idea of "levels" in D&D is, really, a representation of how skilled, overall, a character is in their ability to perform the tasks of their given class.

- A character's ability to hit (call it THAC0 or not, you know what I mean), is a generic "combat skill".

- A character's saving throw numbers represent the skill needed to avoid dangerous effects.

- A cleric's ability to turn undead represents skill in doing said activity.

- A character's hit points, being such an abstract, amorphous concept to begin with, represent skill in turning a sword blow that would have killed them at one point (7 hp damage vs. 6 hp) into a minor injury (7 hp damage vs. 30 hp).

- A dwarf's or elf's ability to spot secret doors, or a halfling's ability to hide...all skills. One might argue that it's not a "skill", but an innate ability, but in any other game system, it would still be treated as a skill, albeit not a "learned" one.

- Any time a DM asks a PC to make a roll vs. an Attribute to accomplish something, that is as much a representation of the PC's skill at doing that as their innate "ability" to do the task. If you ask a Mage to make an Int roll to remember some bit of arcane lore, what you're really doing is making a skill check vs. an "invisible skill" that the Mage has developed over time.

- Do we even need to mention Thief Skills? Yeah, they're not in the white box...so what? They're in every other "old school" version of D&D.

Agree or disagree as you like. These are just some observations I came up with while pondering the idea of D&D being a game that doesn't have "skills". The way I see it, any character ability which A) can increase as the PC grows more powerful, or B) represents some aspect of the character developed through character experience, and C) is a basic function of the PC's career (read: class), is a skill. Just because it's not put into a skills list, and just because it doesn't involve a unified mechanic like percentiles or d20/3E, that doesn't mean it's not a character skill.

CiaB: The Mystery Scrolls

There are a lot of parallels, both good and bad, between the United States and the height of the Roman Empire. I'm not going to get into anything deeply political or social here, but what I am going to focus on is that, when it comes right down to it, Rome makes such a great campaign setting precisely because there are so many parallels to draw on. Your average middle class urbanite probably has a lot more in common with a Roman tradesman circa 40 BC than with some Frankish peasant circa 1200 AD. And yet, for whatever reason, Medieval games seem to be several orders of magnitude more popular that RPGs set in the Roman world.

Therefore, my Campaign in a Bottle for this week is The Mystery Scrolls. Simply put, it is The X-Files meets HBO's Rome. The ancient world was full of supernatural mysteries, mythical creatures, dark magics, and other weirdnesses. You've got heavily built up cities as well as primeval forests, customs and superstitions from dozens of cultures all mixing together and providing lots of interesting avenues of adventure exploration.

My more specific campaign premise would be that the PCs are members of a secret Imperial organization, sanctioned by the Emperor (or the Senate, if you're setting the game pre-Caesar) to investigate instances of dark sorcery, hauntings, attacks by mysterious creatures - anything that the Emperor or the Senate feels more conventional bodies are ill-equipped to handle. Now, this being the Ancient World, there's going to be a more pragmatic viewpoint towards these happenings - after all, at least a good portion of Romans really did have some belief in "magic", and who really did know what was out in some of those ancient Germanic forests?

Just like The X-Files, there is the potential for lots of varied adventures. One session could involve tracking down a vampire who's stalking the streets of Rome at night, feeding on drunken, unwary nobles. Another session might find the PCs on the British frontier, going against a powerful Celtic druid who's frustrating the efforts of the Legions to subdue the populace. Another session might have to deal with the haunting of a Roman villa, while the next might place our PCs in Greece, dealing with a bloodthirsty Minotaur cult that's making trouble for Roman trade interests.

One nice option for a game like this, is that because of the distances involved, it might make sense to use a stable of PCs, rather than a set party, and this would mean that you could have a huge variety of characters, both Roman and foreign. While Rome was a pretty biased, racist state, they certainly were not above employing foreigners, and depending on when exactly the campaign is set, you could have any number of European, African, or Mediterranean PCs of a wide variety of professions. Magic-using PCs, both "wizards" and "priests" (although there was a lot less differentiation back then) would be very handy - in fact, this sort of game would actually lend itself quite well to a D&D-esque four-class party of Fighter/Thief/Mage/Cleric.

And to further sweeten the pot, just like The X-Files, there's nothing preventing a clever GM from mixing "conspiracy" sessions with "creature features". the Roman world was rife with conspiracies, and it would be almost impossible for some of the PC's missions to not be politically motivated. Taken even further up the Weirdness Scale, you could start working in, dare I say it, the "Alien Menace". Hmmm, Stargate, anyone? After all, if the sandal fits...why not wear it?

Questions, Comments, Suggestions?

New Feature: Campaign in a Bottle

I'm one of those GMs who, for whatever reason, always has a slew of campaign ideas running through my head at any given time. It's probably one of the reason I tend to run short campaigns of about a year or so - I latch onto one great idea, run with it, and within a few months, start getting fish-hooked by another "great idea". I eventually wind down the current campaign, and dive into the new idea - wash, rinse, repeat.

So, since I can't constantly be running games left right and center, I figured I'd start sharing some of my ideas with all of you - thus was born Campaign in a Bottle. I'll try to post a semi-regular campaign premise, something not too terribly original but perhaps an idea with a little bit of a twist on it - I've got a few ideas bubbling away in the still, ready to be 'bottled' and posted. I'll try to get one of them up either today or tomorrow, and put up another one every week or two.

And yes, that song by The Police is going through my head too. Sorry about that.

Who Blinks First?

So, say you've got a RPG campaign going on. After some time, it becomes evident to pretty much everyone that there's some indefinable miscommunication happening, because the game that the GM proposed and is trying to run just doesn't seem to be the sort of game the players are trying to play, and even among the players, there seems to be a disagreement as to how the game is/should be played out. Perhaps the GM wants a game that's more like Lord of the Rings, while some players are looking for Conan and others are trying for Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser.

In these sorts of situations, who blinks first? Assuming that each viewpoint is what that person considers "fun", and they aren't really interested in another person's "vision" of the game (for example, the GM doesn't want to do Conan and the players aren't really Epic Quest sorts of players, but more into Ale & Whores sorts of gaming), who gives in? Personally, I've always felt that the ultimate goal of the Game Master is to ensure that the players have fun. If the players aren't enjoying themselves, the GM isn't doing their job right. This doesn't mean always giving in to every whim of the PCs/Players, but more a matter of filtering out what the players really want from what they say they want, and responding appropriately.

On the other hand, if the GM was smart and approached the Players with a good pre-game proposal for what the campaign would be like, and the players agreed, then the players should really be respecting the time and effort the GM put into preparing and planning for the game, and get into the spirit of things. If you agreed that LotR-esque fantasy gaming would be an acceptable campaign premise for you, don't show up to the game and immediately ask where the taverns and wenches are, all while battle-axing any grimy peasant who doesn't move out of your way fast enough. You're probably smart enough to know that Grogbash the Barbarian isn't an appropriate character to have wandering around the Faire and Noble Kingdome of Hondore.

So under these circumstances, I ask you, gentle readers, who blinks first? Which side of the GM's screen caves and gives the other side what they want? Or should they just agree to disagree and pick something else to play?

Wraith Recon RPG Setting

It took me a few moments to "get" the title of this new fantasy setting for 4E D&D, put out by Mongoose Publishing. Now, I'm a big fan of the original Ghost Recon game. Actually, I was a big fan of the original Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear computer games, and Ghost Recon took my enthusiasm to a whole new level. I would play GR for hours upon hours, my whole world nothing but my 19" monitor and my headphones (definitely one of the first games for me where the usefulness of stereo sound was critical - you could actually tell where voices and footsteps and gunfire was coming from just by listening). I never played GR 2, and GRAW (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter) has been long neglected but is currently on deck for the next time I get the video gaming bug. In terms of FPS video games, I think Ghost Recon is one of the best for an overall sense of realism, tension, and just plain attention to detail. There are better looking games and more advanced games, but Ghost Recon is for me the standard against which all other FPS's are judged.


Which brings us back to Wraith Recon. Now, I'm not super obsessed with fantasy being kept as "traditional" fantasy, but there's just something that rubs me the wrong way here. Granted, most PC parties are like a Special Forces A-Team - you've got specialists, you've got cross-trained generalists, you've got recon and medics and heavy support and all that fun stuff, just in a fantasy PC group. BUT, to take this idea and carry it to what may or may not be a natural conclusion just sits a little bit wrong with me. I usually don't mind a little cross-pollenation of my gaming genres, but it has to be done with a certain sly-wink attitude so that I know it's all done for the sake of a good laugh and a little bit of "hey, that's sweet!". This setting just seems a little too close to serious to give me that vibe. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right, who knows.

I ask that you take a look, and judge for yourselves. Comments?

More BRP Comments

More things to discuss about BRP - this time a little more systematic. One of the things I'm really liking about this rulebook is that while there is a "standard" rule for everything, most of the major rules have one (or more) optional rules for doing things as well as comments on how the optional method may affect your game - and even comments on how it will affect it differently in other play styles. So not only are there a number of built-in "house rules", but the writers take the time to explain how these house rules will affect game play.

Other thoughts...

Characters: The rules give you the standard 3d6/2d6+6 method for rolling attributes, as well as a point-based optional method. There are other optional rules here, such as not one but two ways of generating attribute-based skill modifiers. Profession packages are provided and are generic enough to span most settings - the Soldier profession could cover a Roman Legionary as well as an Army Ranger or a Space Commando. There are also guidelines for designing your own Professions if the ones in the book don't suit you.

Skills: There are rules for determining how many points get distributed across skills for each campaign "power level". Points are distributed across your professional skills, as well as INT based points that can be spent on anything, representing non-profession based "hobby" skills (which can be of any skill level - just not limited to your profession). The skills are generic enough to be widely applied, but are still pretty clear as to what they accomplish.

Powers: There are five different "Powers" in the core book. Magic Spells, Psychic Powers, Mutations (think X-Men), Sorcery, and Superpowers. Magic spells function as skill based spells you roll to see if you cast, while Sorcery works more like a D&D style "fire and forget" system where you can load up on a certain number of spells at certain power levels up to your POW limit in "points". So if you have 12 POW points, you can have six spells at level 2, two spells at level 2 and two spells at level 4, etc. etc.. Psychic powers are essentially skills much like Magic Spells. Mutations are in general effects that are almost always "on", while Superpowers are somewhat like Mutations but more controllable. Given these five types of "powers", it would be trivial to mix and match to get whatever flavor of supernatural ability you want in a campaign. Again, very handy and very flexible.

Combat: The one thing I've always been a little shaky on is how combat - especially attacking and defending - works in BRP. For instance, is it better to parry a melee weapon, use your shield, or dodge out of the way? Which makes more sense in any given situation can be a little confusing - for example, since you can attack and parry with a melee weapon once a round without one penalizing the other, there is little need for a shield or dodge if you're good enough to parry with your weapon. However, there are certain attacks you can't parry (like missile weapons), and some weapons are better at parrying than others. There are other optional rules for things like dodging bullets (because you're dodging the aim of the attacker, not the actual bullet flying through the air...) and even parrying missiles such as arrows in more cinematic campaigns. Deciding which combat rules you're going to use and which to leave behind will probably be one of the more difficult problems facing a BRP GM, but this is little different from any other universal system (such as GURPS). There are also optional rules for things like Hit Points (giving PCs more, or everyone more in general), as well as optional rules for variable Armor Values (because otherwise a character even in mail and a helmet is all but invulnerable to most weapons that don't score critical successes). It short, go ahead and cherry-pick the rules you want based on the sort of campaign you want to run, and go with them.

Equipment: There is a pretty generic, but comprehensive listing of weapons, armor, vehicles, and other generic pieces of equipment. As mentioned in my previous post, BRP keeps things nice and general ("Assault Rifle" or "Light Revolver") so that you're not having players agonize over range brackets for THIS model of light assault rifle rather than THAT model, etc. etc.. You can easily go in and design a more detailed range of stats if you so choose, or just leave things where they are. I'm typically of the opinion that while equipment lists are "fun" and it's nice to give your PC some cool gear to kick ass with, worrying too much about all the nitty-gritty of equipment very quickly drains the fun out of things.

Game-Mastering: There's a nice big section in the back of the book about GMing, and while I haven't given it a very hard look, there'a s lot of advice in there useful to both newbie GMs and even older vets. Again, chock full of optional rules and suggestions. There's also a section on Settings, with a bunch of various examples - High Fantasy, Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Victorian, Renaissance, Gothic Horror, etc., each example listing some good inspirational material the GM and players can read to help capture the mood.

Bestiary: The book contains a modest but well-planned selection of creatures, from classic fantasy monsters such as orcs, dragons, unicorns, dwarves and the like, to common beasts such as bears, lions, and snakes, as well as a couple of Sci-Fi creatures and Horror monsters like vampires and mummies. There are enough creatures here to get a good toe-hold into monster design for pretty much any campaign setting you're looking at running.

In the end, my best compliment towards BRP is that it provides a clear backbone to work from while at the same time also providing a wide variety of good optional rules that let you tailor your game the way you want to run it. And in the end, the BRP system in general is so basic that picking up gameplay is almost trivial - just about everyone has a grip on how percentages work, making the core mechanic more intuitive to new players than some other system mechanics (I for one still find it hard to mentally process what skill ratings in GURPS mean in terms of percentage chances of success, or how Savage Worlds die codes translate into a chance of success for my character).

If I had one complaint about this book, it would be that, like the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane RPG, it is a pretty massive publication and carries with it an equally impressive price tag. I'd rather see this book broken down into two volumes - one for Players, and another just for GMs. This would not be that difficult, and would reduce a lot of the "sticker shock" involved when you ask a player (or players) to shell out $40 for a new system, instead of, perhaps, only about $20-25 for a player's handbook. This would have been completely doable in my opinion, and would make the book a lot more accessible as a system to bring in new players/GMs. A gaming group's interest in a new system is often directly related to how easily they can all acquire the player-based rules. And also, as a general preference, I've got a bit of a problem with core rulebooks, meant for players and GM's alike, that present things like monster stats and other "GMing tidbits". This was especially bad in the Solomon Kane RPG where an entire mini-campaign is in the back of the book (something which has no business being in a core book, and taking that out would probably have cut the book down by a third, at least). Yeah, you can put a little notice at the beginning of the section that says "Players shouldn't read beyond this point!", but we all know how useful that is.

Ok, venting complete. I'll have more to say about BRP in the coming months I'm sure, but that's it for now. Comments/Questions welcome!

BRP Has Arrived

The BRP rulebook arrived yesterday. Although I wasn't able to give it more than a 20 minute lookover last night, what I saw looked good. A few highlights:

* For a 400 page softcover rulebook, it is remarkably compact. Several other large softcovers I have in my collection are as thick or thicker and don't have nearly the page count, so I think for the most part my worries over such a thick book being softcover are (for the moment) gone.

* The book looks good. I'm neutral on a lot of the art inside, but some of it is pretty nice. All black and white, which is fine by me. Although the book has plenty of that "So, you're new to RPGs, eh?" stuff here and there, it's obviously marketed towards people who (like most GURPS players) care more about the substance than tons of full-color art and cool page border graphics. This book is pretty dense and there isn't a lot of space wasted by over-complicated, snazzy layouts.

* For a generic, multi-setting rulebook, I think there's plenty to choose from in terms of generic skills, equipment lists, and abilities. There are five types of "Powers" - Magic, Psychic, Sorcery, Supers, and Mutations - plenty to at least build a solid framework for most types of settings. The equipment list also has a pretty good variety of generic weapon types, keeping it simple with things like "Light Pistol" or "Heavy Revolver" or "Assault Rifle". BRP isn't worrying about whether or not the gas-operated design and muzzle break on your M-16A2 is going to give you less of a Recoil penalty than the H&K G-36K...because it's aimed towards the kind of players who just aren't that worried about it. And as always, for players who want some extra detail, it would be trivial to make a little tweak here and there to give certain weapons a little extra flavor.

* There's a short but sweet Bestiary in the back of the book. Again, like the Powers and Equipment sections, BRP is giving enough examples and rules so that you can use what's in the book, and if you want, you can easily alter or create creatures to your taste. Like all things BRP, one of the beauties of the system is that you can strip it down or build it up as much as you like, and its easy to do what you like with it.

More to come, but so far, I like what I'm seeing. My next step will be to make up a few sample characters and see how they shape up.

Anyone else take a look at the rulebook and have comments, or does anyone have questions i can answer?