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Initiative and Decisions, Part 2

2012-01-12T11:49:00.000-09:00

I recently wrote a post about initiative, throwing in some real world experiences. The question I left off on was how to translate this into a workable mechanic.

Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
- Robert Heinlein

As a simple principle, I want the players to be able to make a choice between accuracy, speed, and perhaps power (damage). It may be better to get a wild attack in first, or maybe you need to take your time to line up a fight-ending hit on a tough foe.

Here's a simple rule that would grab some of that idea:

"If not surprised, on the first round of combat, gain +1 to an initiative check (D6), +2 to hit (D20), or +1d6 per three levels damage on any one attack."

This is the carrot approach in that it makes PCs more powerful, unless, of course, you give such an ability to the monsters as well. You could also take another approach, allowing the PCs to "wager" for initiative:

"If not surprised, on the first round of initiative, each side may accept a penalty to hit or damage for the first round of combat. For every -2 to hit or -1d6 per three levels damage penalty, each side gains +1 to an initiative check."

However, subtraction is always harder than addition, so I'd be wary of this approach. One could also invent some sort of "penalty token" that could be gained in various ways (attacks by enemies, curses, fatigue, etc); maybe the penalty tokens give -2 to hit each. In that case you could say, "Gain one penalty token but gain bonus to initiative."

Let's assume we go with the first option -- it seems simplest, and will gain little resistance as it gives the PCs a nice little benefit. Clearly I would not want to reroll initiative every round with this. However, I do want some option to mix things up in the midst of a fight. I see two ways to do this:

(A) Every few rounds, recheck initiative. The easiest way to do this is probably to roll 1d6 at the end of each round and if it comes up as a 1 (or 1-2), it is time to reroll initiative. You could also tie this to spell duration and stop having to track spells in rounds, if you like.

(B) PCs and major NPCs can force new initiative checks. For example, maybe a player can spend a full round action to force a new initiative check for all players. Or, if characters have some sort of "encounter power" (don't get all 4E on me -- remember how a PC could charge only once every turn in 1E? That's arguably an "encounter power," right?) that can be expended on a variety of things, including a new initiative check.

I think either would work fairly well--of course, this needs to be playtested.

Initiative and Decisions, Part 1

2012-01-02T11:48:00.000-09:00

Ars Ludi has an interesting post about initiative, arguing that individual systems where each player has their own initiative check are silent killers for RPGs, causing players to tune out when it isn't their turn.

I tend to agree, and would further agree that the dice rolling orgy that is initiative is a bit silly sometimes. I see a few options, if we assume that you're getting rid of individual initiative.

(1) Roll initiative once in the first round. This is simple and fast. The tradeoff is that the fight is very predictable, with no chance for one side to "seize a tempo" and go twice in a row.

(2) Roll initiative every single round. This can get complicated. I'll admit, I've forgotten to check initiative in the quick "they go/we go" tempo of an OD&D style game. It also results in fairly frequent changes in tempo, but they're totally random.

I don't really find either of those satisfying, although I'll admit that I find the former to be better if for no other reason than it is simpler and faster. If the players are not making any significant choices and the outcomes are totally random, I tend to prefer quick, fast solutions.

While taking a firearms class recently, I thought about seizing the initiative in a fight. There are a few thoughts here. First, acting is better than reacting. When you act you often get a small window that can be exploited through speed, surprise, and violence of action. The Tueller Drill is perhaps an example of this; this drill, named for a police officer, shows that a melee attacker can cover about 7 yards in the time it takes a defender to react, draw a sidearm, and get a shot on target.

In personal experience I've found that getting that optimal reaction time is highly dependent on a vigilant state of alertness. If you're dialed in on the potential threat and postured to react then the reaction is much faster.

I've also found that there is a significant and adjustable tradeoff between speed of response (or action) and the accuracy of that response. For example, I've done some competitive shooting. There is a balance between speed, accuracy, and power. I can get bullseyes at relatively far ranges fairly easily with a low powered weapon and plenty of time. As I push myself to go faster and faster, using a combat-caliber weapon, accuracy degrades. But, accuracy may still be "good enough." For example, in some competition disciplines you get full points for any hit in the vital area or on a steel plate -- it doesn't have to be a bullseye. In this type of competition it is better to go fast and compromise accuracy as long as you're still in the target area.

The question is how to capture this with an efficient, elegant mechanic.

Unique Mechanic: Gluckhaus

2011-12-11T19:55:00.002-09:00

In a previous post I wrote about my need for a third unique mechanic to match up with chess pieces and playing cards. While I definitely agree with the commenter to that post (DL) who emphasized "Verisimilitude over realism," I always prefer to use something with actual history attached to it. It is just easier to create the verisimilitude desired if there's a body of mythology already created. To recap, I'm looking for a mechanic that evokes feelings of building or manipulating one's environment, or of refining raw natural items into worked goods.

One idea I came up with was adopting an old gambling game, "Gluckhaus." Gluckhaus was a German game where soldiers rolled 2d6 and got rewards based on what was rolled. 2 and 12 allowed the player to basically sweep the board, 4 goes to the house, and 7 always goes to the board. Other rolls lead the player to put a coin onto the square (if it is empty) or pick a coin up (if it is not).

My thought is that this arrangement leaves 7 squares unoccupied: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11. This matches up nicely with all the sets of seven I've come up with already. One could allow the player to arrange seven tiles matching up with the seven planets onto the unoccupied board squares once per quest. The player then gets a number of tokens/coins equal to their technique square, analogous to the size of a card player's hand or chess piece army. The player can roll the dice and then put a coin on the corresponding square to occupy it.

Any coin that matches up with one of the seven planets could grant a standing bonus to anything associated with that planet including skills. Sacrifice a coin (remove it from the game altogether) and you can add that element to any scene, or change that sort of element in a scene. The 2 or 12 would clear the board as in the original game and return all coins to the player's hand, allowing the player to place them again. 7s could be used as a sort of generic "wildcard," perhaps offering a generic bonus to all mechanical skills or something of that nature.

This mechanic would allow players to build the "framework" they operate in for each quest. If you think it is going to be a warlike adventure, then Mars should probably go on a high frequency square like 6 or 8. If Water is going to be important, then maybe Venus goes on one of those squares. The player actually "builds" the board they'll play on throughout the adventure.

One downside to this mechanic is that it requires a lot of thought from the player up front: the critical part is arranging the seven bonus squares onto the right numbers, not the actual rolling of the dice. Also, one would have to create some sort of mechanic to prevent the player from just "spamming" everything down at once or multiple times to create the "ideal" setup of coins on the board. For example, you could give an initial large benefit (maybe playing the token allows the player to add something to the scene), then the static existing benefit, then another benefit when the coin is sacrificed.

I am not committed -- this was definitely just an idea for this sort of mechanic. I'm hoping to stumble across a Renaissance game that fits my theme a bit better. Medieval philosophy did not necessarily encourage themes like, "Man can change the physical world through application of human ingenuity," but the Renaissance seems like a better bet for that sort of idea.

A Trifecta of Unique Mechanics

2011-11-17T17:07:00.000-09:00

Regular readers are likely aware that I think mechanics and flavor have a lot to do with reinforcing game themes. There's a huge difference between leagues and kilometers for a medieval fantasy game. Likewise, whatever is gained as far as mechanical simplicity by unified core mechanics for everything loses something in unique flavor for each class or role.

In earlier posts I've written about a system of chess pieces for fighters as well as playing cards for magic. I also wrote about a "gambling" mechanic for roguish types.

Over time I've evolved my idea of major class roles into a trio: one associated with the body and probitates, one with the spirit and the liberal arts, and one with the mind and mechanical arts. I think my systems largely match up well. The chess set links nicely to the probitates, and the playing cards with all their symbolism and allegory to the liberal arts.

The area that does not have a thematic match is the mechanical arts and the mind related category. To me, the whole theme of the mechanical arts and the mind is that through human ingenuinty, man can transform his world. We transform clay into bricks for shelter or fortifications through architecture; we transform lamb's wool into clothes or padded armor through vesteria; we transform raw iron and timber into swords and shields with armaments. That does not imply a truly random, gambling sort of mechanic. Ideally, I'd have a game where the players focus on either transforming items into other items, or in transforming the board itself just as men transform their environment.

The trouble is that there is a rather limited list of medieval games from which to choose. I've already used playing cards and chess pieces. Most of the dice games are derived from knucklebones and are rather random. There are many ball or bowling games (marbles being the most table-appropriate), but I want to steer clear of games which require player physical skill. Other games include: Nine Men's Morris (tic tac toe's precursor), draughts (checkers), tables games (backgammon), the Game of the Goose (chutes and ladders), Tafl (viking chess), and fox & geese chase games.

None of those games really focus on transforming pieces or on changing the board itself. I considered using domineos, which features a "board" created by the players, but it isn't really period.

I have found another game which might fit my criteria, but that will have to wait for another post... In the meantime, if anyone is aware of any other period games which evoke the themes of human industry or transformation of raw material or the environment itself, I'd be very interested!

Air Combat

2011-11-11T13:55:00.002-09:00

I've recently been looking for a decent set of modern air combat rules. I haven't been able to find anything to my liking -- things tend to be really complex, not even close to accurate, and/or otherwise not very good. Does anyone have any pointouts?

Book of War: "They've got a cave troll"

2011-10-22T21:03:00.003-08:00

Tonight we played another round of Book of War, Delta's excellent D&D mass combat game.

DW invested in two units of light infantry fodder, a unit of elite elf archers (invisble), a unit of dwarf heavy crossbows, and finally, some regular elf archers.

I built my 200-point army around one figure of trolls. In addition to the trolls, I had a unit of bugbears, a unit of worg riders, two units of cheap light infantry fodder and two units of cheap shortbowmen.

The map was full of rivers: we had at least two streams that needed to be crossed at any time. I rolled one square of woods, which I used to my advantage by placing on my side of the map. I figured all those nasty elves-es and hobbits would have lots of missile weapons and I needed terrain to hide in.

When the fight began, all I could observe were the dwarves. I rushed half of my fodder and bugbears into the woods and immediately encountered DW's light infantry, concealed in the treeline. I kept half the archers in reserve. The other units began to creep along hte edge of the woods, approaching the first river barrier.

DW's first turn was ugly. A unit of elvish archers popped out of the far side of the woods and another unit of invisible elf archers popped into being on the far side of the first river barrier. My lead units started taking heavy archery fire. My archers in the open were all killed in the first volley, while a column of light infantry somehow survived and kept morale. The troll was wounded.

I had my column of light infantry immediately charge, getting one figure into melee. The wounded troll sprinted for the treeline to regenerate under cover of the woods. The worg riders also moved into the woods. My remaining archers headed for cover in the treeline as well.

Meanwhile, in the woods, the fight turned my way. Between my rabble, the goblin archers (joining the fight in the woods as melee troops), my bugbears, and the newly arrived worg riders, I was able to surround and destroy the remaining light infantry over a few turns. Still, DW was able to decimate my light infantry and rout the archers.

In the open, DW had her elf archers in melee with the light infantry column flee and then killed all of the remaining troops in the open. Still -- those 12 points of light orcs bought valuable time for my valuable units and took one of her archery units out of the fight for a round while they fled.

The situation stabilized with my troll (all healed up) figure, and wounded worgs with bugbears in the woodline facing off against elf archers and dwarves. Rather than waiting for the bugbears -- trailing behind after finishing off the last of the halfling light foot -- I immediately charged the dwarves with my worgs and the non-elite elfs with the troll. The troll could get into melee, but the worgs were not due needing to ford a stream. Still, the worgs were able to get within 3" of the dwarves which meant that my opponent had to deal with friendly fire concerns.

The troll -- as can be expected -- started to tear through the elf archers in the open once in melee. Likewise, the worg riders took some hits but were able to pin the dwarves in melee. The bugbears started a long flanking march to spread out the field of fire, forcing the unengaged elite elf longbowmen to waste moves pivoting around to engage different enemies, which halved their fields of fire.

Things rapidly moved in my favor. The troll finished off the non-elite elf archers then moved to help the worgs with the dwarves, flanking them. The bugbears were able to force the stream and engage the elite archers in melee, and then the worgs and eventually troll surrounded the elite elves and cut them to pieces.

LESSONS LEARNED

This was our most uneven fight. At the end of the battle, I still had over half of my original force (measured in points) left on the table. We spent a few minutes thinking about why and came up with a few answers.

First, my opponent didn't really realize the import of higher HD forces of woe. This was our first fight with elite units. In our past fights, if you hit a chaotic unit with a casualty they would probably fail their morale check (-1 chaotic, -1 for daylight for most units) and rout immediately. The units with more HD often lack the daylight weakness, get inherent bonuses from HD to their checks, and are harder to inflict casualties on in the first place. That makes them much stiffer than the usual rabble of goblins and orcs.

Next, the terrain really helped me out. I was able to strategically place woods as cover within one move on my side of the board as well as covering one of the key stream fords. I then piled more than 80% of my forces (measured by points) into the woods, quickly clearing out her light infantry and shielding me from her archer-heavy force. All of my units which survived to the end used the woods as cover to advance.

Third, the troll figure was very effective. It absorbed around 10 points of damage over the entire battle, but due to regeneration -- as well as being able to hide in the woods to recover HP -- it was barely wounded at the end game. If those ten points had been directed elsewhere, they probably would have been enough to rout off my bugbears and worgs. The thing I realize with the troll is that it is a defensive -- not an offensive -- powerhouse. I spent a bit over 1/3 of my points on this single figure and it attacks with only two dice per turn. Had I bought a horde of light infantry or archers I would have been throwing 25 dice per turn in the attack. However, the troll is really, really hard to kill. The good AC coupled with fast move, 6 HD and regeneration make it a pretty fearsome foe capable of taking a lot of hits. In comparison, the rabble routs as soon as you deal one hit to them.

Overall, a fun -- if lopsided -- battle. THe elves seized an early initiative and had I not had woods conveniently located as cover I think things would have been much different in outcome.

Book of War: First Skirmish

2011-10-09T21:24:00.000-08:00

DW and I just played our first skirmish of Book of War, a mass combat game that faithfully replicates D&D combat odds.

First thoughts: this game was easy to set up. DW and I learned the basic mechanics, set up our armies, built terrain, and played a skirmish in around an hour. Here's the quick AAR.

We used a 75 point buy. I purchased six medium infantry, organized into two platoons of 30 men each, three figures of medium horse (1 troop), and one figure of light infantry. DW purchased a mix of medium and light infantry, two figures of light horse and two of longbowmen.

The terrain ended up being a large open area in the center with forest along the East side and rear areas. On the opening moves, DW advanced her forces into the large open area, anchoring one flank on the woodline to the East. I moved my forces up through the trees -- except for one unit of light horse, lingering in the far south west of the battlefield among some trees. DW then waited for my attack.

I started by rushing out of the woodline with my light horse -- the horse managed to reach the longbowmen who were out on their own on DW's west flank in the open, and I lucked out, mowing down both figures with the initial attack. The longbowmen inflicted one hit as they got taken out, but I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw those highly lethal archers get taken out before they could fire.

My other forces -- slogging through the woods in the east -- were unable to support the light horse, and the poor skirmishers got mobbed and taken out by DW's own horsemen and light infantry the next turn. The light horse were able to inflict losses on the light infantry, though, routing them off the board.

We then mixed it up in the center of the field. Infantry started routing on both sides, but my medium infantry gave a good account against the light infantry before they routed. My forces fell back to the treeline as all of DW's infantry routed but recovered as her horse were preparing to ride them down. I was able to anchor the horse with one platoon of infantry then swing the second around to the flank and rear to finish them off.

At the end game, I had one figure of medium infantry tangling with DW's last figure of medium infantry. My other two figures of medium infantry were just recovering from a rout - -inflicted by the horse -- in the woods near my rear area. So, the battle was close -- 3 figures to 1.

DW and I agreed that the key factor was the fate of the longbowmen at the start of the game. If she had been able to get off one volley -- four dice -- it probably would have meant about two hits against my chain-mail clad forces. That would have brought the end game to a dead-even heat. If she'd gotten off two volleys she'd have had a slight advantage, and three would have made a decisive advantage.

Lessons learned: Horse have a significant movement advantage. More so than you're used to from playing tabletop games on smaller scales, really. My light horse burst from the treeline and ran down the longbowmen in just a single round. DW had left her longbowmen in the open so as to not take penalties for firing over the heads of her own troops, but my light horse really paid off in being able to run them down. Neither one of us really recognized just how fast they could move.

Questions to ponder:

- Just how much cover do trees give? We said that archers could not fire into the deep woods, and fire into the first 1" would incur a -1 to hit penalty from cover. Perhaps -1 to hit per inch would make sense.

- Do units get to attack on the first round they move into contact? That is, if a unit moves, ends its move next to the enemy, can it attack? We assumed yes, treating it like a charge.

Overall, we were quite intrigued. DW felt that routs occured too frequently. BTB, rabble have around a 50/50 chance to rout upon taking casualties. I felt this was ok, personally, but she didn't care for it. I think we'll be playing more!

Book of War

2011-10-05T21:19:00.001-08:00

I have been watching the evolution of Dan Collins' "Book of War" mass-combat system quite eagerly and just purchased a PDF copy. I'm looking forward to playing it and seeing how it works out!

Mini Quests: Thoughts on Team Cohesion

2011-09-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that the mini quests mechanic discussed over the last few weeks has a pattern: two events are related to your patron/deity/faith/god/house, two events are "team player" type things that help out the group, and two have the potential to get a bit angsty. For example, the air events to help friends survive darkest fears (whether they survive or not), the earthy tendency to be a money-grubbing selfish person, the water quests to go investigate places that a character of your level has no right to be, and the fire rewards for rivalry and bossiness could all spur some conflict.

That's intentional.

I get sick of the "special ops commando team" style of D&D play. This is a natural outgrowth of D&D: the game eventually becomes about high-stakes exploration and combat. The consequences for failure are character death, failure to earn XP, and loss of magic items. The mechanical rewards are all driven by being a bunch of ninja-esque badasses who can dungeon crawl as efficiently as possible. Loose cannons, intraparty squabbling, and dissent have no role in such a game. Yes, a good DM can work around those tendencies by rewarding other behaviors, but still, that sort of thing is kind of hardwired into the system.

Septimus explicitly rewards players for dabbling in behaviors that could be considered somewhat disruptive to group cohesion. It gives people reasons to lie or have hidden agendas. Most importantly, it allows them to do so without sacrificing advancement. The players can indulge in some less-than-optimized sessions where they develop their characters and relationships and still get rewarded and make progress towards their metagame goals.

Of course, you don't want too much of that. So, none of the miniquests require you to be a selfish jerk. They just open the door to allow the possibility from time to time. Even that small opening might be enough though to generate a bit of healthy paranoia that then spurs genuine roleplaying as the players feel out each of their character's hidden agendas.

Mini Quests: Sanguines

2011-09-25T18:46:00.000-08:00

Our last and final quest set belongs to the Airey Sanguines. Air types are like Cholerics in that they prefer to deal with other players rather than the game world, but they are also like phlegmatics in that they prefer interaction to action. These were the hardest for me to come up with; traditional RPGs tend to not do a great job of rewarding out of character and in character interactions between players, and this mindset is also opposite of my own (I am more of an Earth "Act on Game World" type, so this approach is very foreign to me).

In the below quests, a "Friend" has a specific game mechanic meaning another player or an important NPC often controlled by another player (henchmen, familiars, and so on).

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Help a Friend complete a minor quest successfully
2	Discover something about a Friend that they didn't even know
3	Help a Friend face a darkest fear (whether or not they succeed... or survive...)
4	Discover something about a Friend that they don't want anyone to know
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

Note that the air type gets a lot of mileage out of helping the other players be forthcoming about their characters, as well as from fleshing out the other character's backstory. The Air character also has a lot of influence over the story; some of the quests revolve around essentially adding elements to the backstory of others. That serves as a potent check on the "acting" types who might otherwise be bossy.

Mini Quests: Cholerics

2011-09-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

Fire characters -- or cholerics -- are similar to the earthy types in that they both like direct action. Unlike the earth types who focus on the game world, however, cholerics focus on their fellow players. These are the players who enjoy hatching the team plan, being a leader, or just plain being a bit bossy.

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Convince your allies to try to complete a major quest using your own plan
2	Identify another player who has misled others about a personal minor quest or objective, exploiting their allies for personal gain
3	Beat one of your Friends in a competition, duel, or wager of consequence
4	Complete another open minor quest of your own with help from your Friends
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

As such, their requests reward them for taking a proactive role. Note that there is no requirement to be open about your mini-quests. For example, the water person could get rewarded for researching Nosnra then lie to the party about the danger, spinning a 9 HD hill giant off as some lame 4 HD ogre. Either way it goes do, the water person gets their reward.

However, the fire types will end up with a quest to call out someone who has been misleading 1/6 of the time, so there is a minor "inquisition effect." That will serve as a check to keep the intrigue somewhat honest as well as reward the fire person for getting in the other player's chili from time to time.

Note that the fire person gets rewarded for being bossy, not just success: for example, quest #1 results in reward for the fire person whether the overall plan succeeds or not. However, in the long run, the fire person will probably be best off developing positive leadership techniques -- if they continually exploit the other players, they will find it hard to get the cooperation and competition that they need for further advancement.

Mini Quests: Phlegmatics

2011-09-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

Water-prime characters or phlegmatics interact with the environment. Whereas melancholics are interested in dominating the game world, water-types want to understand and explore.

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Explore a unique terrain feature (steps down, mountain peak, magic pool, etc)
2	Solve a puzzle, riddle, or conspiracy
3	Discover and research a specific monster at least two tiers higher than you
4	Gain access to a forbidden, secret, or hidden area
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

As such, the water quests are all about exploration. You don't have to defeat a hill giant as a level 2 character; you just have to find out everything interesting there is to know about some big dude named Nosnra who lives back in the woods. Unlike the earth quest to blaze a path and secure a trail/area, the water quest is just to explore or find a new feature. These types of topics should be familiar to D&D players as the core D&D rewards system focuses pretty heavily on these sorts of activities.

Mini Quests: Melancholics

2011-09-16T18:30:00.000-08:00

Earthy Melancholic characters should be played by players who like to act on the game world. Your standard "world builder" player who loves strongholds, dominating monsters, and hiring flunkies fits this mold.

The mini-quest table looks like this:

Roll	Quest Idea
1	Be the first to reach or secure a terrain feature (ascend to the peak of Mt. Doom, clear the NE quadrant of level 3 of the dungeon)
2	Defeat a specific monster
3	Blaze a trail between two locations (discover, clear, map, and escort)
4	Accumulate at least 3 coins of the tier higher than yours
5	Complete task in accordance with your ruling planet or patron
6	Complete task in accordance with your exalted planet or patron

The last two items would be related to your faith/god/patron. So if your character works for Poseidon, he might ask you to go do some stuff related to horses or the ocean. Pretty straightforward.

The DM should be expected to fill in the details of the quests. They should be level appropriate but not too easy, either. For example, it would be appropriate to have the second quest be, "Defeat Ragnar the Ogre," for a first or second level fighter. It is something that the character could feasibly do on their own, but it will be a lot easier if they can get some teamwork to help them out.

Notice that the quests all involve acting on the environment or dominating it in some way. The player is taming the wilderness, overcoming NPCs, or hoarding resources. If a player enjoys those tasks, then the system will reward them for doing them.

Mini Quests

2011-09-14T18:23:00.004-08:00

In Septimus, one of the ability scores/traits is related to the classical elements or humours which were said to have defined a person's disposition. These traits affect the character but they're intended to be selected based on player preference; there should be little in game detriment to a group that fails to "cover all the bases" as far as the four humours go, unlike, say, playing a party with no cleric.

Part of this subsystem involves rewarding players for doing things that they find fun and interesting. One of the problems in traditional D&D is that the reward system revolves around interacting with and usually dominating the game world. You get XP for exploring dungeons and eventually for building strongholds. You do not get XP for helping your fellow players develop the story or for sowing interesting and dramatic strife among the team. You're basically leaving out rewards for half of your players out there.

Hence, the idea of mini-quests. Mini-quests are tied to one's humour. You get to open one quest for free in your primary humour. You can spend a perk (you'll have 1 to 3 perks if you have an above-average score in a trait) in any trait to open more if you like. Completing a quest yields XP (or perhaps some other benefit, like "Fate Points" if you care to use them). However, if you abandon a quest, however, there's a chance you'll lose an ability score point (you can get them back upon level up), similar to the effects of a grievous wound or major defeat.

Over the next few days I'll post my tables for each of the four humours.

Game of Thrones

2011-08-10T10:58:00.002-08:00

I just discovered the HBO mini-series "Game of Thrones." It is really awesome, and I highly endorse it if you can find access (HBO, annoyingly, refuses to embrace Netflix, Hulu, or any sort of pay-on-demand service if you don't have a traditional cable subscription). I never read the Song of Fire and Ice books but it is really a very compelling world. I've ordered book #2 for my Kindle so I can continue onward.

In other news, I haven't abandoned this blog. After a long vacation "off the grid" with little access, I have been working 60-90 hours most weeks these days, so between the two of them my posting has been very light and will probably continue to be light to non-existent until Christmas or so when hopefully work lets up. For now I am focusing on sleeping, eating, clothing myself, and spending what little time I have with family so gaming is not even really on the priorities list although I do have some ideas still rattling around.

Phases for Combat Rounds

2011-06-05T20:51:00.004-08:00

I had an interesting thought recently about an innovative way to do combat rounds and actions. The problem with OD&D is that it is too simple: they-go/we-go means a lot of action happens all at once, combat gets swingy, and it is hard to adjudicate exactly how many actions are too many.

AD&D is a far end of the spectrum in that it has far too many rules to keep it simple. You need a college degree (well, maybe a minor) in D&D to run it properly. 3.5 and many other games use iterative one-after-the-another initiative which is a "silent killer."

The following thoughts are my attempt to keep the best of all worlds. Each round is divided into three phases: Fight, Move, and Communicate. I've done some tactical work and those are the three things you need to be effective on a battlefield (well, really it is shoot instead of fight, but hey, close enough), and those are the things that should be happening regularly in combat, so that's what our system will care about.

INITIATIVE

At the start of the round, we check initiative and then generally go in an "us and them" fashion each phase as such (assuming A wins initiative):

FIGHT -- Side A

FIGHT -- Side B

MOVE -- Side A

MOVE -- Side B

COMMUNICATE -- Side A

COMMUNICATE -- Side B

If there are three or more factions then just extrapolate. The key is that everyone resolves a phase before moving on. Very few things will break our "sequencing."

ACTIONS

Each character gets one simple action per phase. They generally get to upgrade one simple action to a complex action each round. A simple action involves precalculated, rapidly used scores. There are no situational modifiers (unless they apply to the whole side) nor are there any random dice tossed. Complex actions involve situational modifiers and randomized dice throwing. Thus, players will need to decide in which phase they want to use their complex action.

PROFICIENCY

Characters have a derived proficiency score for each key action. For example, in the fight phase, we have:

Melee
Shoot (Range)
Dodge

If using a dice pool system, the proficiency score is the size of dice in the pool, capped at 6; the pool has to get to 21 dice to get a simple score of 7 (unlikely to say the least). If using a D20 system, it should be a fixed number representing a somewhat less than average roll (for example, 7+THAC0 level-based to-hit bonus). I'll use my dice pool system (which has Target Numbers from 3 to 8 for the most part, for reference's sake) in further examples.

So, our character -- let's say he's a swashbuckler -- might have Melee 3, Shoot 2, Dodge 3. If taking a simple action, he can automatically hit anything with an AC or Target Number of 3 using his melee attack. He misses if it is 4 or higher. So, our swashbuckler can skewer rats or zombies all day, similar to the "fighter sweep" of yore. This frees up his complex action for rapid movement or lots of special communication.

However, say, he's up against a nimble, worthy opponent, like, say, an unusually aggressive lion. Hitting TN 3 won't cut it. In this case, he uses a complex action. Instead of just taking a "3," he gets to roll 3d6 and retain the highest (using my core mechanic). On average he'll hit around TN 4.75 or so, with a possibility to hit TN 8! The player can even argue for a situational bonus, perhaps due to terrain or some other circumstances.

Of course, if he uses his "complex action" in the fight phase, then when we get to movement, he's relatively anchored. He's stuck with moving two or three hexes -- whatever his simple move score is -- instead of rolling 2d6 or 3d6 to move several more.

The communicate phase encompasses all other actions. Rallying followers, giving orders to mooks, casting spells, using many other skills, and so on.

Wrinkle: Free Dice. As a wrinkle, each player begins an encounter with one "Free Die." This die may be added to any active die roll, or it can increase a simple score by one. If a player ends a round without using a complex action, they gain one free die. If they end a phase without spending a simple action, there is a 1/6 chance they gain a free die. Players may not accumulate more free dice than some number between 1 and 7 (tied to an attribute or something). The DM also gets free dice, and furthermore, he can share them freely among monsters to minimize bookkeeping.

Wrinkle: Extra Action. You could occasionally grant extra complex actions. This is a pretty sizable boon. Of course, you don't get extra dice. The character can spend both complex actions in the same round but must split his available dice however he wishes. I'm still thinking this through, and wondering if the extra action should only translate to a simple action (thus, you could have a Complex & a Simple action in the same phase, or two complex actions in two different phases).

Wrinkle: Minions & Actions. Minions don't often get to take complex actions. Instead, they can either take a simple action or they can lend their dice to another's pool, encouraging them to gang up on foes. Some "leader" type monsters may grant an action to a nearby minion, which then makes the players decide whether they need to take out the leader (to cut off the actions) or take out minions (easier to kill, rapidly reduces the dice thrown at them each round and reduces the odds of a hit). Bodyguards for players and other such NPCs work the same way.

EFFECTS & VARIATIONS

This system has several effects. First, it forces players to dynamically allocate limited resources. Each round they must decide where to take their complex action. They must also manage free dice, and decide when it is best to sit tight, do nothing, and take a breather (to get more free dice) and when to go for broke.

This also evens out "screen time." Calculating situational modifiers, rolling dice, and then evaluating the results are by far more time consuming. This is a common complaint for many fighter types in OD&D and AD&D; they get to roll one d20 and if they hit they get to roll damage, once per round. Meanwhile, clerics are chucking 2d6 to turn undead, mages are throwing fireballs for fistfuls of D6 of damage, and in general it feels like everyone else is rolling more dice. With this system everyone gets about the same number of random rolls to play with each round, regardless of how good they are at a specific task.

We get rid of most of the need for AD&D's rules about weapon length, ranged attacks, etc. The "fight" phase goes first, so if you aren't in melee when the round begins, you pretty clearly don't get a chance to strike unless you have a ranged weapon handy, unless we implement some sort of "charge" action in the move phase, or unless we have some sort of rules for readying or holding actions in reserve "out of phase." A really simple one would be, "You can take an inappropriate action during a phase, however, it must be fueled by free dice." Another would be allowing common sense "readied" actions (for example, readying to receive a charge by striking however runs in, or readying to swat someone if they try to cast a spell). If your action never triggers at least you get the comfort of building up your free dice pool.

I think it would be interesting to present different options to players. For example, you could play one of these three variants:

All proactively used simple scores (and thus all dice pools for active rolls) are increased by one, all the time.
You get (A) one extra simple action or (B) may upgrade one simple action to a complex one, every round.
All reactively used simple scores -- such as Dodge -- are increased by one, all the time. This also increases dice pools when using these skills actively, as when one is doing a "full round dodge."

2011-05-17T22:02:00.003-08:00

I recently wrote about the trouble of dice pool mechanics with large number of participants to roll for. I presented some solutions such as using a new mechanic, changing the way you roll for things (using "rerolls," for example), or just not giving mooks situational modifiers.

I think there may be a more creative way to attack this issue: allow mooks (and/or others) to combine their dice pools. One of the great things about the Septimus core mechanic is that it has diminishing returns built in. Adding new dice -- especially beyond three or four in the pool -- has fairly negligible results. It will never hurt the players to let the monsters pool their attacks.

So, say we have five goblin archers that all throw two dice in the attack. Instead of having them roll six attacks with two dice each, you could have them roll one attack with 10 dice. They're almost certain to hit (avg result of 6.648, 98% of hitting TN5, 83.84% of hitting TN6, 51.54% of hitting TN7), but will only inflict one wound. Let's compare the number of successes when (1) rolling five attacks of 2d6 and (2) rolling one attack of 10d6.

	4	5	6	7	8
5x2d6	3.75	2.75	1.50	0.14	0.00
1x10d6	1.00	0.98	0.83	0.52	0.23

As you can see, the DM is much better off rolling separate attacks until the TN gets to 7. Then he's best off with one giant 10d6 dice pool to try and land a hit. That's the diminishing returns in action. The plus is that it is a "bank error in the PCs" favor. I'm generally ok with those. The downside is that there's no incentive to economize time at the table under most circumstances, and if the DM decides to screw the players he could all of a sudden land three times as much damage as they're expecting.

One way to control this is possibly through the economy of actions. Maybe the DM gets a limited number of attacks to split amongst all the monsters however he wishes, the number being based on the leadership and morale of the enemy force. If he only has three attacks, and he's got the five goblin archers, a cave troll, and a worg to play with, he'll probably want to attack once with the troll, once with the worg, then pool all the goblins together. This has the nice effect of modeling "fog and friction" and rewarding effective command and control "force multipliers." For example, say the DM could also add a non-combatant shaman that gives his force one extra attack each round. Now the PCs have a strategic choice: do they take out mooks to reduce the number of attacks getting chucked at them, target the leader-shaman to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy's dice, or hit the heavy hitters to take them out of the fight?

\\

Another option is to let the players roll. For example, maybe instead of having monsters roll to hit a player, the player needs to roll against a fixed TN to "dodge" the monster. A very accurate monster might have a higher TN, whereas a weaker or less precise one might have a lower TN. I like putting rolls into the hands of players quite a bit, but this can lead to some wonkiness if there are players on both sides of a conflict.

It also doesn't solve the time consuming need to roll many dice pools over and over; in fact, it might make it worse (especially with a slow player!), although players might not mind slowing down the action if they throw more dice. You could introduce a rule that says that adding more monsters increases the TN. For example, maybe dodging an arrow from one goblin archer is TN4, but two is TN5, four archers in TN6, eight archers is TN7, and so on. I'd have to work out the math to see exactly how that progression should work out.

Mechanics and Efficiency

2011-05-17T20:50:00.002-08:00

I really like the math behind my proposed core mechanic (in short: roll a pool of D6s, retain the highest, boxcars = 7). It works great for PCs and singleton foes. However, in a playtest I came up against a problem: it doesn't work well for hordes of mooks.

In traditional D&D, if you have a half dozen goblin archers you just roll six D20s to see if they hit. Likewise, if the wizard hits a squad of orcs with a fireball, you just roll a fistful of D20s to see if they save. With the dice pool mechanic, you generally have to roll one monster at a time unless they have a pool of "one;" if you color code your D6s, perhaps 2-3 at a time.

One work around would be to treat the dice pool as a "reroll." For example, say each monster has a dice pool of 2D. You could roll 1d6 for each of them and then reroll for any that failed on the first check. That is probably faster than setting up a color coded dice pool but still requires two steps. Another "solution" would be to limit situational bonuses or modifiers given to mooks; maybe part of being a mook is that you don't get modifiers to your dice pool.

I also recently thought of another simple dice mechanic that uses D6s but gives a bit more fidelity at the top of the scale: Exploding dice.

Roll a D6 vs. a TN.
If you roll a 6, roll again. If you get a 5 or a 6, then add 1 to your result. If you get another 6, roll again.

That gives an approximately 1/20 chance of getting a 7, and a 1% of getting an 8. That is, setting a TN of "7" is basically like saying, "You need a hail-mary natural 20 to hit this TN."

Distribution:
1 (16%)
2 (16%)
3 (16%)
4 (16%)
5 (16%)
6 (10%)
7 (5%)
8 (1%)

The problem is that it doesn't scale well with modifiers. A straight +1 modifier is fairly huge, as it doubles the chances of getting a 7 and quintuples the chance of getting an 8. You could reduce the number at which a highly skilled individual's dice "explode." For example, if you get to roll again on a 5 or a 6 then the distribution looks like this:

1 (16%)
2 (16%)
3 (16%)
4 (16%)
5 (10%)
6 (15%)
7 (5%)
8 (1%)

That leads to a somewhat wonky distribution, though, where 6 is more likely than 5.

Math
Odds of getting a 6: .166
Odds of getting a 5 or a 6: .333
.166 * .333 = 5.5%

Alternate OD&D Fighting Man

2011-04-10T19:31:00.008-08:00

Here is a Fighter I've been working on for some time. It is currently oriented towards a Swords & Wizardy power level -- and I'll use that nomenclature -- although it could be easily modified for AD&D.

The Fighting Man (Alternate)
XP: As stock Fighting Man with 10% XP penalty.
Hit Dice: As stock Cleric.
Saves: As stock Fighting Man.
Technique: Technique measures the sophistication of a fighting man's "bag of tricks." In general, new players (i.e., beginners) should start with low technique scores. Advanced players should begin with moderate to high Technique. There are thus two ways to handle this attribute.

Technique as a Derivative of Wisdom (w/ Advanced Group): Utilize the fighter's Wisdom score for Technique. Convert the 3-18 WIS score to a modifier per the following conversions: 0-1 (1), 3-5 (2), 6-8 (3), 9-12 (4), 13-15 (5), 16-18 (6), 19-21 (7). Using this option, the DM should consider allowing Wisdom scores to be increased over the course of the campaign or supplying items which increase the derived Technique attribute as player skill improves.
Technique as a function of Level (w/ Basic Group): Utilize the fighter's level divided by two +1 to determine the Technique score. For example, Level 1-2 (1), 3-4 (2), 5-6 (3), 7-8 (4), 9-10 (5), 11-12 (6), 13-14 (7), etc. If the campaign will progress to higher levels (for example, ~20) then use intervals of three levels to spread out progression so that technique tops out around 7.

Reserve: At the start of each major adventure or quest, place one entire side of a chess set (i.e. all white or all black pieces) into a bag or pool and shuffle them. These pieces are known as the "reserve." When the reserve is gone, it is gone, so a player must be careful to ration their pieces throughout the adventure.
Draw Hand: At the start of the quest, the player randomly draws a number of pieces equal to their technique score from their reserve into their "hand." Special: For each henchman in the fighter's employ, reduce the initial hand size by one.
Put Pieces into Play: Players may put pieces into play out of their hand in three ways. First, they may use them to hire retainers. Second, they may deploy them to provide static benefits.
Recruit: Throughout an adventure, players have an opportunity to draw new pieces from their pool into their hand. Whenever a milestone is reached, the player rolls 1d6. If the die roll is greater than or equal to their Technique score, then they may draw a new piece from their reserve into their hand. A milestone should occur approximately six times per Adventure/Major Quest. The GM may also allow a recruitment roll to occur after appropriate rest has occurred. The size of the hand may not exceed the Technique score (i.e. it is beneficial to use pieces regularly); if the hand is too large to draw a new piece, the player may see what they drew and put a piece in their hand back into the Reserve (i.e., swap them).
The Graveyard: Once a piece is in the graveyard, it is out of play for the adventure. It cannot be put back into the reserve until the next quest. Note that pawns can be promoted into any piece, but it may take time.

Benefits of Pieces

Hiring Retainers: First, players may expend pieces from their hand in order to hire a retainer. In order to do this, play the piece directly onto the board and expend a salary in silver pieces equal to the below formula:
Level ^ 2 per Day (Hazard Pay) or per Week (Garrison Pay)

The new retainer has a 1 in 6 chance of showing up each combat round (dice until they arrive if it is relevant). They will be appropriate to the setting. In the underdark, they might be an escaped slave or defecting foe. In a village, it might be a militiaman. In any event, the combat statistics will generally adhere to those below.

PAWN (Light Infantry): Pawns are light foot troops representing lightly armed and armored militia, peltasts and other such expendable rabble. Still, even an inexperienced militiaman can show promise and be promoted.

HP: 1 (always; a passed save that normally results in 1/2 damage results in no damage to a pawn). Save: As fighter -4. To Hit: As fighter -4. Damage: Level/3 + 1 (ranged, short range hurled weapons only), Level/3 + 1d6 (melee). AC: 13 + 1/3 Level. Move: 12"/4 spaces. Special: Promotion, Sacrifice, Formation, and Fodder.

Promotion (Special): Each time a Milestone occurs, there is a 1 in six chance that a Pawn may be promoted to another piece.
Formation (Special): Pawns gain +1 to hit, +1 saves, and +1 AC for each adjacent Pawn. This stacks with multiple pawns.
Fodder (Special): Cost 1/2 normal wages to recruit.
Sacrifice (Special): At any time, sacrifice a Pawn. Another piece regains 1d6 HP per three levels.
BISHOP (Archer): Bishops represent missile troops such as archers, crossbowman, slingers, and so on.

HP: 1/level. Save: As fighter -2. To Hit: As fighter -2. Damage: Level/3 + 1d6 (ranged, medium range projectiles), Level/3 (melee). AC: 13 + 1/3 Level. Move: 9"/4 spaces. Special: Select either Fodder, Longbowman, Crossbowman, or Provide Arms.

Fodder (Special): Cost 1/2 normal wages to recruit. Represents slingers with non-specialized arms.
Longbowman (Special): Use long range projectiles instead of medium.
Crossbowman (Special): +2 to hit vs. armored targets.
Provide Arms (Special): Sacrifice the Bishop. Another piece on the board gains a ranged attack equal to the base Bishop.
KNIGHT (Light Horse): Knights represent light horsemen, or, if dismounted, light skirmishers.

HP: 2/level. Save: As fighter -2. To Hit: As fighter -2. Damage: Level/3 (ranged, short range projectiles), Level/3 + 1d6 (melee). AC: 13 + 1/3 Level. Move: 24"/8 spaces (outdoors), 12"/4 spaces (indoors), +2 AC vs. Opportunity Attacks. Special: Provide Mount, Charge.

Provide Mount (Sacrifice): Sacrifice the Knight. Another piece on the board gains the Knight's movement rate and AC bonus vs. Opportunity Attacks.
Charge: The Knight charges, gaining +1d6 damage on a single melee attacks. This power may only be used once.
Rook (Shield Bearer): Rooks represent heavily armored, slow moving troops that protect others. Equipped with only light weapons, they wear chain and bear heavy shields.

HP: 2/level. Save: As fighter -2. To Hit: As fighter -2. Damage: Level/3 (ranged, short range projectiles), Level/3 (melee). AC: 15 + 1/3 Level. Move: 9"/3 spaces. Special: Provide Cover, Shield Wall.

Provide Cover (Sacrifice): Sacrifice the Rook. Another piece may reroll a failed saving throw or negate 1d6 damage/three levels.
Shield Wall: One ally adjacent to the Rook gains +2 AC.
Queen (Heavy Infantry): Queens represent heavy troops, armed and armored with the best available gear.

HP: 3/level. Save: As fighter -2. To Hit: As fighter -2. Damage: Level/3 (ranged, short range projectiles), Level/3 + 1d6 (melee). AC: 17 + 1/3 Level. Move: 6"/2 spaces. Special (Choose one): Pikes, Swords, Maces, Two-Hander, Fodder.

Swords: +1 to hit.
Pikes: -1 AC. The Queen uses a polearm, gaining reach (first strike) as well as any other benefits accorded to spears, such as double damage vs. charging foes.
Maces: +2 to hit vs. heavily armored foes.
Two Hander: -1 AC. +1d6 melee damage. Represents massive two handed weapons.
King (Specialist): Kings are something of a wildcard. They may represent specialists who don't always have a combat role. While physically frail they can have interesting benefits. They represent inspiring prophets to be protected, archaeologists exploring ruins, and other unique and interesting individuals who may provide benefits if they can be kept alive. The DM and player are encouraged to be creative when a King is put into play. The king still costs funds to recruit and maintain; this represents money spent keeping the finicky specialist happy.

HP: 1/level. Save: As fighter -4. To Hit: As fighter -4. Damage: Level/3 (ranged, short range projectiles), Level/3 (melee). AC: 12 + 1/3 Level. Move: 9"/3 spaces. Special: Inspiring, Reward.

Fodder (Special): Cost 1/2 normal wages to recruit.
Inspiring: Adjacent allies gain +2 damage, +2 saves.
Reward: For each milestone reached while the king is deployed and actively adventuring with the party, place 1 token on the king. During any rest, remove a token for a benefit. Some example benefits:

The King represents a merchant couriering valuable goods. He rewards the party with Level ^ 2 in SP.
The King represents an archaeologist interested in exploring ruins. He rewards the party by answering one question or providing a clue, similar to a Commune/Legend Lore spell.
The King represents an alchemist. He gladly hands over a useful portion or item.
The King represents a sacred prophet. The party gains extra XP for escorting him.

Deploying Pieces: A Fighting Man may also deploy pawns to gain a static benefit which is usually a "buff." These pawns cannot be directly attacked or otherwise affected. The player may voluntarily sacrifice any deployed piece at any time. In this case, the player immediately gains a significant benefit but the piece goes to the graveyard. There is no limit to the number of pieces deployed at any given time, but benefits do not stack.

Pawn: Gain a bonus when dealing with any non-combat skill check.

En Passant (Sacrifice): Make an Opportunity Attack (yes, you can make a second). If your game doesn't use OA's, then the DM will allow this to be used whenever an adjacent foe opens themselves to an attack (fumbles, moves uncautiously, uses a ranged attack in melee, etc).
Promote (Special): Each time a Milestone occurs, there is a one in six chance that a Pawn may be promoted to another piece.
Knight: Gain +2 AC vs. Opportunity Attacks.

Dash (Sacrifice): Make a full move, immediately, at any time. The +2 bonus vs. AC increases to +4.
Bishop: Gain +2 damage on all ranged attacks.

Sharpshooter (Sacrifice): During your turn, make an extra ranged attack. The attack ignores all penalties from cover and concealment. If it hits, it deals +1d6 damage. You may not move during this turn unless it is a charge.
Rook: Gain +2 to saves and +2 to AC.

Shields Shall be Splintered (Sacrifice): An enemy that just hit you must reroll their successful attack.
Second Chance (Sacrifice): If you just failed a save, roll again.
Queen: Roll initiative twice each round and take the result you prefer. If your DM does not reroll initiative each round, then you are considered to have "first strike" and may go first each combat.

Gambit (Sacrifice): During your turn, make an extra melee attack with +2 to hit. If it hits, the attack deals +1d6 damage. You may not move during this turn unless it is a charge.
King: All adjacent allies gain +2 to saves.

King's Castle (Sacrifice): Also requires a Rook to be Sacrificed. Swap places with an ally or piece no more than 1/2 your speed away. You and the ally both regain 1 HP per level and gain +2 AC until the end of your next turn.
Rally the Troops (Sacrifice): Roll 1d6 for every three levels. Heal allies you can see by this amount. Apportion D6s of healing however you see fit. Any troops which have failed morale are entitled to a new check to rally.

DM Notes

Milestone Placement: Placing milestones is the most important aspect of this variant fighter and requires careful thought. In general, six milestones per quest is the breakeven point for different Technique levels. If there are more than six milestones, then lower Technique scores have somewhat of an advantage as they will pull ahead due to their superior ability to recuit. If there are few milestones, then high Technique scores which start with many chessmen in the hand will be superior.

Examples of Milestones include defeating any opponent with a name (i.e. hated foes, sub-bosses, etc), achieving a secondary objective, particularly good play, as rewards similar to treasure, etc. The DM should consider placing at least 2d6 milestones throughout their dungeon key, expecting the players to actually find approximately 1/3 of them, and be willing to occasionally throw in 1-2 milestones per session "ad hoc." Milestones should not be automatic rewards for surviving combats. Indeed, they should not be awarded for most wandering monster encounters. Milestones should be viewed as a reward that motivates players to achieve secondary objectives which further the plot and adventure.

It is not inappropriate to hint (appropriately, in game) that certain achievements may result in a milestone award in order to steer players that way. For example, the elves may speak of a pool in the forest which has restorative properties if drunk from by a weary traveler. Finding this pool is a milestone, regardless of whether the players fight three random encounters on the way there or none at all.

If you are stingy with awarding milestones for in-game objectives, consider granting milestones for rest. Very stingy DMs or those running free-form campaigns with few obvious objectives might award a milestone for every full night or day of rest. DMs that prefer an action-packed campaign with defined plot might only award rest for a full day of rest (taking Sunday off), a longer period like a week, or even a restorative stay at an inn in town (also a good way to siphon money from adventurers!).

The Power of the Dark Side (Optional Rule): This system may be tied to alignment.

Chaotic characters may only use the black pieces. Retainers will tend to be chaotic ne'er dowells (rogues, brigands, humanoids, mongrels, etc) with all the social consequences that entails. All chaotic hired retainers gain +2 damage. If a Fighting Man has any black piece deployed, he exudes an aura of dread equal to his charisma score in inches that gives -2 to saving throws. This aura includes allies.
Lawful characters may only use the white pieces. Retainers will tend to be law and order types such as militia, men-at-arms, good demihumans, etc. All lawful hired retainers gain +2 morale and +2 to saves. If a Fighting Man has any white piece deployed, he exudes an aura of charity equal to his charisma score in inches. He may allow any ally within this aura to gain the benefit of his deployed piece instead of himself. The benefit may be changed from round to round by taking time equal to a normal move.
Neutral characters may use either set of chess pieces, but they must select one army at the start of the adventure and use it until the conclusion of the adventure. Their aura radius is halved and the bonus to damage/morale/saves is halved (+1 instead of +2), however. Excessive use of one army or the other may change the character's alignment.

Specialization (Option): The player may choose to specialize in any type of piece (except for pawns). Whenever a milestone occurs, the player may declare that they are promoting normally (1/6 chance to convert a pawn into any piece) or they may declare a specialist promote, in which case there is a 2/6 chance to promote the pawn into the designated specialist piece. For example, an archer could specialize in Bishops. This makes it easy for them to rapidly promote pawns into Bishops which aid their ranged attacks.

Fighters and Unique Mechanics

2011-04-06T20:21:00.002-08:00

I'm really happy with the unique mechanics I've developed for "elemental" (clerical?) magic as well as roguish gamblers. They aren't perfect, but I think they do a great job of using unique mechanics to support a special "feeling" for each character class or role.

I came up with another for "fighting men:" chess pieces! Chess pieces are great because they are very common gaming equipment as well as inexpensive: a set of basic plastic chessmen can be had for <$5. Basically, the fighting man starts with a 1/2 set worth of chessmen (i.e. all the blacks or all the whites). The fighting man may deploy a piece in order to gain a static, lasting benefit. He may sacrifice the piece in order to gain a burst benefit. And finally, he can deploy a piece to "summon" a hireling, man-at-arms, or other helpful ally.

The number of pieces that can be present at any given time should be limited, probably to an attribute -3.

However, once a piece is deployed, it cannot be "recalled;" if the player wants to get rid of it, it must be sacrificed. I'm not exactly sure how pieces should be restored; I am inclined to think that it should only be between adventures. After all, there are 20 pieces so they should last awhile.

Here's an example:

PAWN: Representative of foot soldiers. Some medieval scholars likened each pawn to a medieval profession, usually those of a commoner or artisan.

Deployed: +1D to any mechanical art. At the end of each encounter, there is a 1/3 chance that a deployed pawn can be promoted to any other piece.
Sacrifice: En-Passant. Lash out at a foe that disregards your zone of control and gain +1D on an opportunity attack.
Summon: Minion, basic man-at-arms

One could also do something with the white vs. black pieces, similar to the red vs. black cards.

Civ V Gameplay Report: The Good

2011-03-23T19:08:00.004-08:00

I haven't been posting much lately. Work has been extremely busy, I'm working on some night school, and we may be moving in the near future. Plus, I got Civilization V. As fans of the series know, the Civ games are very good at destroying your free time. Here's some notes on gameplay.

First off, the good.

City States. The first iterations of Civ had barbarians that roamed the land; they generally had no cities unless they managed to capture one from a player (rare). In Civ 4, we saw Barbarian Cities. If left alone in an unexplored corner of the map, the Barbarians would set up an actual bonafide city that could be captured. The problem with this is that you couldn't interact with them, and everyone was at war with them all the time.

Civ V introduces minor players called "city states." City States can be interacted with diplomatically. They always like gold and gifts of units, but they will also ask for you to complete missions like connecting to them with roads, defending them from predatory Civs, or doing their dirty work to take out another City State. They are also actually useful to have around: militaristic ones give you up-to-date useful military units and tend to pump out a lot of units that will fight on your side against your enemies, cultured ones give your empire culture which can otherwise be hard to get, and maritime civs give you food.

If you are allied with a city state, they will also give you access to strategic resources. This is great; in previous iterations of the game, if your empire didn't have a key resource like Coal you could bet dollars to donuts you'd better go to war to get it or risk losing. Now, you can maintain relations with a City State that has the right resource.
Barbarians. Rather than spawning out of the fog of war, barbarians come from camps which pretty actively spew out units. This makes it much more strategic to set up a defensive line rather than just exploring like crazy.
Fewer Cities. In the past, generally the more cities you had, the better, unless corruption became crippling. Small empires can be quite viable in Civ 5, which is nice if you don't care to manage two dozen cities. Cities also work a larger area which means that they tend to be further apart, which also means fewer cities are viable.
Less strongly specialized cities. Civ IV used "National Wonders" which each civ could build once to encourage specialized cities. This was encouraged because each city could only build two and they had major multipliers tied to them. That is, you'd have a science city, a money city, a factory city, etc. I always stressed out about making sure I put the right wonder in the right place, and often waited until too late in the game to make sure that my ironworks was next to coal, iron, or both. Civ V still has national wonders but most of them just provide a static bonus ("+X gold") as opposed to a multiplier. You can also build as many as you want in one city, again making a one-city game viable. This is a good balance, I think.
Military. Unit stacking and the stack of doom is gone. Ranged units actually have a range. Units don't battle to the death, and may survive two or three attacks (or more, if dug in and having combat advantages). There are now strategic, operational, and tactical elements to combat. Additionally, units out of garrison cost a lot more in upkeep than units in garrison. This creates a quite realistic "mobilization" phase to many conflicts; in peacetime, you want your units spread out garrisoning cities, but in war you need to spend a few turns to mobilize and get them to the front. All in all I'm fairly pleased with the changes.
Infrastructure upkeep. Roads now cost gold to maintain. This keeps you from spamming roads everywhere, which is not realistic and also is annoying.

All of the elements come together to form some really interesting interactions. Here's an anecdote from a recent game.

The War with England

I was on a continent with England, Russia, and three minor city states. Russia and I had ganged up on England all game (with me egging Russia on to bleed Russia dry while I focused on my economy), but failed to conquer her. I eventually got a tactical edge and swept in for the kill, sweeping up London, which was quite a prize with many wonders of the world.

However, England had a city state allied with her, Budapest; Budapest (as England's client) was waging a proxy war with Genoa, who looked to me as their patron (and whose benefits I rather enjoyed). When England collapsed, Russia moved in with a sizable bribe and asserted protection over England's old ward, and the city-states continued to fight. I kind of wanted Budapest for myself, but was willing to let Russia run it for now; besides, I swept up the third city state -- Helsinki -- which was also a defunct English client shopping for a new patron, which happened to flank Russia and provide uranium which I figured might be useful in the future as I didn't have any other supplies.

Proxy War

However, I had a problem: Budapest was kicking Genoa's butt. Forever, their war was like a fight on the short bus; lots of flailing but not much damage. But, after England went down the tubes, I think Russia began funneling units to them. I began to give my older units into my client and the proxy war started to escalate. Eventually, things got desperate and my client was on the verge of collapse. I talked to Russia, gave them a small bribe, then entered the war against Budapest on behalf of my little buddy, delivering punishing airstrikes on Budapest's front line units, dropping paratroops into a defensive position next to the city, and pounding front units with naval fires (sound familiar?) in order to save Genoa.

I quickly dealt with Budapest's attack. Russia, alarmed, warned me that they weren't happy. At this point, I got greedy and went for the gold ring of capturing Budapest itself which I had wanted for some time rather than signing a cease fire or pulling back. I calculated that the Russians were not willing to risk war to protect their new client, and told Catherine to take a hike, as I figured I would complete the war in a turn before she could intervene. My economy was not in great shape as I was still assimilating the English cities so I used air power and a few tanks to quickly seize Budapest, leaving most of my heavy armor units in garrison in the cities, with a token border patrol force dug in on my border with Russia.

Russia Strikes

I miscalculated: Russia freaked out and declared war as her client folded. Additionally, America and another overseas power took exception to my actions and entered the fight with Russia. They saw me crush a major civ then roll over a minor city state and thought that I was a "bloodthirsty menace to the world;" plus, I think Russia put them up to it. Russia opened up with a nuke on my left flank followed by an armored column through the gap, driving towards the recently conquered city of London. The initial attack tore a whole in the left flank of my border watch, and my small navy was largely caught out in the open and badly mauled by Catherine's new allies.

Knocked back on my heels, I fought a slow delaying action that ended up against the walls of London until my armor could get mobilized out of the cities; I also struck back with my sizable but exhausted and damaged air force. After the two minor campaigns to defend Genoa and seize Budapest, a lot of the bomber and fighter wings were in the "yellow" already. Still, I had no options other than to call in airstrike after airstrike as Catherine's units threatened to break through in the center and right and as they surged up against city walls on the left.

Catherine also sent a large naval task force up against my ally with uranium. She pounded the city into oblivion and captured it within a few turns; I funneled a few units to Helsinki but they could only slow the inevitable. Still, with Catherine's navy busy up North, I managed to get a submarine and battleship out to sea, and using them to scout I managed to sink a few battleships that were foolhardy enough to venture within land-based air coverage as she sent her forces south. At this point, I abandoned the Manhattan project and threw the production into more conventional units.

Counterattack

It took me about three turns to bring up my armor divisions and artillery which was just in time, as my exhausted air wings were starting to be destroyed. A great general spawned just in time to help the armor units counterattack and cut off Catherine's advanced forces on the left flank and destroy the rear-echelon artillery and anti-aircraft guns. My armor then dug in and spent the next three turns bombarding the cut off forces into oblivion. I also managed to catch an American expeditionary force off the coast and savaged their convoy with air and submarine attacks before most of them could land to relieve Catherine's isolated army, which was crushed as I closed the pocket.

At this point, my armor divisons were damaged but my air, paratroops, and artillery were sound, and my navy was rapidly gaining superiority and forcing Russia's boats to hole up in an inland sea with only one entrance to the ocean. I surged forward and marched straight for Moscow, using massive artillery and airstrikes to wear down the city as my paratroops dug in on key high ground held off Catherine's relief column from reinforcing the city. As I seized Moscow, Catherine's war allies backed out on her and sued for peace on fair terms. Catherine also offered an olive branch but was not willing to give much up. I rejected her offer; she replied by dropping a second nuke on her own recently lost territory, which vaporized some of my paratroopers. It was too little too late though, and my mechanized units had dug in by the time her troops reached the doorstep.

Cut off from uranium, I had abandoned my Manhattan Project. I decided that a cease fire with Russia would just give her time to build more nukes, which was unacceptable. We had both taken a pounding but she had a sizeable navy holed up and a lot of ground forces up north racing down in my direction. With her continental monopoly on uranium, I would be at a major strategic disadvantage if she could catch her breath.

Total War

The war went on for some time, but accelerated as more major cities fell. I was careful to avoid alienating any of the other civs, and I think Russia's nuke attack backfired somewhat as others were hesitant to enter the war. Cut off from her fickle allies, having lost her capital, and having lost air superiority, I gained the upper hand. Her navy was destroyed in port as my land forces overran the coast; any ships that dared to sail were caught in the trap of the narrow strait and mercilessly ambushed by a waiting submarine wolfpack. Eventually, Helsinki was liberated and Catherine's last city fell.

While I fell behind the rest of the world in technology while duking it out with Catherine, the addition of her cities provided a boost to my economy once they were integrated. I managed to eventually eke out a space race victory.

So, all in all, there are some interesting interactions. The entire war came about unintentionally. Russia and I had been fairly firm allies all game. Even some squabbling over influence over city states and picking up the pieces of the English empire wasn't enough to destroy the entire relationship. However, ultimately a skirmish between our clients which grew into a "cold war" style proxy conflict eventually erupted into a full on war.

The elements of nuclear deterrence were also present. Russia knew I had no uranium and thus no nukes, so Catherine nuked me at the outset of the war. Why not? I had no good deterrent. She nuked me again once she was desperate for survival. I'll try to hit some of the bad and ugly points about Civ V later.

Real World Data -- Loads

2011-02-24T22:46:00.003-09:00

I recently read a newspaper article on the heavy loads carried by combat soldiers and the impact thereof.

The key point was that carrying loads of 100 lbs in combat on a regular basis -- even when the bearer is a young, physically fit male -- causes injuries. A USMC after-action-report finds that heavy loads limit the mobility of riflemen with tactical consequences.

Note how well this maps to the rule of 7; a 100 lb load is around 7 stones, and that is apparently beyond the max load that can be carried safely. It also hints at some possible mechanical consequences to heavy loads beyond speed penalties. Perhaps there is a risk of long-term ability score damage or other long-term consequences to carrying such extreme burdens in combat conditions.

Morale

2011-02-06T10:38:00.005-09:00

Delta recently had a great post on cavalry. It is worth reading.

It also made me think about morale. I love the idea of the AD&D morale rules. In the real world, most combats are not to the death; they are merely until one side or the other breaks and runs. Cavalry was integral to this process. A massed cavalry charge or unanswerable arrows from horse archers were both bad for morale. Likewise, cavalry made a fight decisive because after a foe broke and ran, pursuit horsemen could run down the routed enemy and finish them.

The trouble with morale is that it is far too cumbersome to use. We need a simple, faster system. Here's my initial hack.

THE MORALE CHECK
A morale check is a dice pool against TN5. The pool consists of:

Base die (1) -- you get one for free
If within Leader's Command Radius (4+/-FIRE, or just 4 for OD&D types), add Leader's Spirit Primacy or 1, whichever is greater
Spirit Primacy, if any (apply any penalties if Spirit Damage has been taken); for mooks that don't have all their detailed stats noted out, this is either zero or one (if you decide the troops are elite or otherwise high morale)
Unit's Quality in relation to the Current Phase (in the first phase of a fight, add the Cardinal primacy, for example)

The TN is adjusted as normal; that is, for a threat or source of difficulty a tier higher than the unit, increase the TN by one per tier. For example, a normal man facing an orc is TN5. Against an ogre, that'd be TN6. And against a hill giant would be TN7. Use the worst or scariest threat impacting the unit.

WHO MAKES MORALE CHECKS
In general, each PC should be controlling 4+/-3 other figures, maximum. This limits the number of morale checks that need to be made. Larger numbers of very weak followers should be combined into one figure.

Likewise, on the foe side, designate a few monsters as "leaders" (no more than one per PC or so) Each leader should have no more than 4+/-3 other figures under its command. If there are a lot of "mook" or minion types then combine them into larger figures.

Example: A pair of high level PCs goes into a goblin's lair. There are 16 goblins, but the DM batches them into groups of four under a goblin lieutenant. There are also three worg riders; the DM decides that they are important enough to dice for individually.

Generally, players decide what their characters will do. Players should check morale as anyone else. However, a PC can ignore the results of a roll and act exactly as their player decides. If, prior to rolling the dice, the player agrees to follow their results, then the DM should grant a bonus to such actions (for example, if the player takes their chances and ends up with "fight," give a bonus to hit).

WHEN TO MAKE MORALE CHECKS

At the start of each phase (each battle has three phases which occur every 5 rounds or so), make a morale check. Note that you make a check to see if a new phase begins whenever someone with a name goes down (including PCs, enemy leaders, etc) so that may trigger a round of morale checks via this mechanic.
If its leader quits the field or is hors de combat. Yes, this may mean double jeopardy.
When subjected to certain attacks that inspire fear: Cavalry charges or firearms would certainly qualify.
When suddenly plunged into darkness (surface creatures) or bright light (underdark creatures): Have you ever been suddenly plunged into total black inky darkness? It can be scary, especially if you're in combat and someone is also trying to kill you. This also makes spells like the lowly "light" spell perhaps quite useful in certain cases because it can provoke a morale check.
Unit observes other nearby unit out of control.
Unit receives a critical hit.
Whenever anything else that may be terrifying occurs, at the DM's discretion.

COMMUNICATIONS
By default, troops are "in communications" until they fail their first morale check. Troops which are "in communications" act basically as their leader wants them to. Even if the leader doesn't have direct line of sight to the troops, they remain under the player's control simulating the unit following prebriefed orders under effective NCO leadership.

Once a unit fails a check, then it goes "Out of Communications." A unit which is out of communications is on "autopilot" and rolls randomly to see what it does based on either its quality or doctrine:

	Generic No Doctrine	Cardinal Offensive	Fixed Defensive	Mutable Flexible
Fight	1-2	1-3	1	1
Freeze	3-4	4-5	2-5	2-3
Flee	5-6	6	6	4-6

Example: A unit of impetuous knights (Cardinal/Offensive!) waits upon a grassy knoll overlooking a battle. Their leader has ordered them to wait to charge in until he blows a horn; he's planning on using them as a decisive force to crush the foe late in a battle. A new phase occurs and the unit checks morale -- and fails! The GM then rolls on the autopilot table to see what they do each round. The first round they hold in place (4), but then the DM rolls a (2) -- they charge, springing the trap early!

For a unit out of command, interpret the above results as follows:

FIGHT: Unit attacks in an intelligent manner (archers shoot arrows, they don't move to melee). Unit will attack a foe it is engaged with first, then a hated foe if within charging range, or the nearest foe otherwise. If no foes can be attacked in a given round, then the unit will move aggressively to set up an offensive posture.
FREEZE: Unit holds position in an intelligent manner. Unit will continue to melee if engaged, or consider parrying to hold a line or setting against a charge. If unengaged, unit may consider moving to nearby defensible terrain if that is a good idea. Unit may use missile weapons against a foe but will not seek to melee unless it is already engaged.
FLEE: Unit retires in an intelligent manner. If engaged in battle, unit will seek to withdraw and disengage. Unit will retire in good order towards the nearest visible leader, away from the worst visible foes, or towards a known place of safety--whichever is wisest.

COMMAND
A unit which is out of communications and fails a second check is out of command as well. Continue to dice for reactions as above. However, all reactions will be more extreme.

FIGHT: Unit will aggressively charge to engage (1) a hated for and then (2) the nearest foe. Unit will not be careful or cautious and may attack in a berserk manner.
FREEZE: Unit is struck with indecision. Unlike above when it chose a reasonable and intelligent course of action, the DM should now dice for a random reaction instead of picking one which makes sense: hold position and set vs. charge, use missile weapons, do nothing, etc.
FLEE: Instead of an orderly retirement, the unit retreats. The unit will move as quickly as possible (1-2) away from the nearest foe, (3-4) towards their leader or (5-6) to a place of known safety. The unit may provoke some attacks with this movement but it is barely controlled.

CONTROL
A unit which is out of command and fails a third check is out of control. Continue to dice each round for its action but consider the most extreme result. Also, out of control units are bad for their side's morale. Whenever anyone else sees an out of control unit they must check morale themselves. Thus, a clan of orcs can quickly devolve into a bloodfrenzied "fight," or an army can rapidly rout out of control in a chain reaction.

FIGHT: The unit blindly and berserkly attacks with wild abandon and no concern for its own welfare. It may inadvertently attack other friendly units. It may fight to the death.
FREEZE: The unit is absolutely paralyzed and takes no actions, even ones which can be accomplished in relative safety.
FLEE: The unit routs in panic. First it will flee from the nearest foe in the most direct manner possible, then towards its leader (if visible), or finally, to a known place of safety. It is possible for units to flee into an even more dangerous situation (for example, the fastest way away from a foe is deeper into a dungeon).

RALLYING
It is clear how a unit moves down the Communications-->Command-->Control slippery slope. But how does it climb back up the ladder?

First, a leader may direct the unit's reaction even while it is out of comms/command/control. To do this, the unit must be within the command radius of the leader. The leader then spends an action on a Quality+Spirit check (specializations in Rhetoric may be helpful), TN source of the fear. If succesful, the unit disregards its randomly rolled response and attacks (if the leader rolled cardinal), freezes (fixed), or flees (mutable).

Next, a leader may rally the unit. To do this, the unit must be within the command radius of the leader. The leader then spends an action on a Mutable+Spirit check (specializations in Rhetoric may be helpful). Success moves the unit back up the chain one step.

Finally, the unit may improve of its own accord. Any time the unit heals, move it up the morale chain one step for each hit healed. For example, if the unit uses a second wind or gets a break out of combat it will recover its composure. Healing from allies or magic may also have this effect.

I'm not quite dead yet!

2011-02-05T21:50:00.000-09:00

Wow! It has been a month since I posted here! Lest anyone think I've given up the blog, I haven't. We actually spent a lot of time playing and talking about a S&W White Box set from Xmas. I've also been crazy busy with work, with little time for ye olde blog of late.

I do plan on getting back into the swing of things... Eventually. Sorry for the delay.

Divine Intervention, Part II

2010-12-29T23:24:00.006-09:00

In a previous post I talked about a new magic system for clerics. Here's the next big chunk, the face cards. In this system, Face cards always have a "cost" of 10 to play. They may be played in one of two forms.

SUMMONS

A face card may summon a creature to aid the caster. The creature persists for one phase of combat or until it is slain, whichever comes first. Each class of card will basically have a set stat block to reference and allow a stock critter to be thrown down easily.

JACK: Cardinal "Striker"
KING: Fixed "Tank"
QUEEN: Mutable "Special Team"

The suit of the card is also relevant. In any event, the creature has the associated Element attached to it. For example, a Club summons some sort of Fire creature. Any other effect that plays off of fire will affect the creature accordingly. Next, there is a default creature type (although the GM/player should feel free to change this to a pantheon specific critter). Finally, when the creature is voluntarily dispelled by the caster prior to the spell's normal expiration, there is an aftereffect which occurs immediately; it is equal to an Effect 1 card of the same suit. For example, if a Fire Salamander (Club) summon is dispelled, then a Smite dealing 1 damage immediately goes off.

HEARTS: Water. Nymph.
DIAMONDS: Earth. Gnome.
SPADES: Air. Sylph.
CLUBS: Fire. Salamander.

ASPECT

Face cards may also be used to invoke potent aspects. These generally effect the caster themselves and have an aftereffect which lasts until the end of the phase.

JACKS (Version A): When played, treat the jack as a normal number card with an effect of "4." Aftereffect: The caster is considered to have an ace of the same suit in their hand until the end of the phase.
JACKS (Version B): Any creatures targeted by the caster within an area of effect are subjected to the magic, which is identical to a potency 1 version of the same suit (for example, the Jack of Clubs creates an AOE equal to the caster's Fire score). The area of effect is equal to the caster's relevant elemental attribute. Aftereffect: The caster is considered to have an ace of the same suit in their hand until the end of the phase.
KINGS: Kings generate a powerful aura surrounding the caster. The aura's size is equal in hexes to the relevant elemental attribute (for example, the King of Clubs creates an aura equal to the caster's Fire score). The caster may choose to allow the spell to effect any creatures he or she wishes within the aura.
- Hearts (Water): +1D to all saving throws to avoid taking damage
- Clubs (Fire): +1D to all attack rolls
- Diamonds (Earth): +1 to Dodge Score
- Spades (Air): Move the creature one square.
QUEENS: Queens unleash powerful transformative forces within the caster and represent potent self-buffs. First, the result of the "cost" roll changes the caster's relevant Elemental Attribute to the result if it is higher as well as all derived attributes. For example, casting the Queen of Diamonds might allow a caster to perform a superhuman feat of strength as their ENC load limit increases with a higher EARTH score. Next, the caster gains the following benefit:
- Hearts (Water): Regenerate 1 wound every round
- Clubs (Fire): +1 Damage
- Diamonds (Earth): +1 Soak
- Spades (Air): +1 Speed and +1 to Dodge Score vs. OAs; +1D to any evasive moves

WHAT DO WE HAVE?

I think we have a relatively compact system that covers all your basic combat magic. There are two broad classes of magic: Red/Defensive and Black/Offensive (named for the suits). Those subdivide down into the suits: Healing (Hearts), Warding (Diamonds), Smiting (Clubs), and Command/Movement (Spades). Within each suit, there are five types of spells: A standard, common numerical version, a summoning spell (with three variants), a self-buff, a nova/AOE, and a group buff.

The standard, common numerical version should be most common as it has the lowest cost. The other spells are potent but will likely allow the GM to retaliate later.

I think this meets the Rule of 7. The broad outlines can be remembered without reference to a table. I expect a table to be needed for face cards and summons but even those are pretty straightforward (especially the jacks). With some tweaking I may be able to make the others more standard as well.

Divine Intervention

2010-12-28T22:01:00.003-09:00

I recently finished some thinking about an adaptation of a cleric type unique mechanic, just like my recent discussion of rogues.

Draw Seven Cards. At the start of each encounter, the cleric draws seven cards from a standard deck. The cards represent divine boons or favors which have been bestowed by their patron.

Invoke Boon Once Per Round Using Tactical Points. Once per round, the cleric may invoke a divine boon by expending a tactical point and playing a card. Divine boons always work (barring extraordinary circumstances) and do not require any check. If the effect is greater than one, it may be split among as many recipients as the cleric desires. For example a "Smite 3" can deal 3 points of damage to one target or 1 point of damage to three targets, or 2 to one and the third to a second.
Determine Effects. Apply any effects of the boon. See below.
Determine Cost. The TN for this check is equal to the number on the card (Ace = 1, Deuce = 2, etc). Face cards cost 10. Make a check to determine if the Invocation is free (without consequence) or if it invokes a cost. Roll Element + Ruling Planet + Archetypal Planet (See Below) using a standard dice pool against the TN. Success means the spell was free. Failure means that the DM gets to a token. Tokens may be traded in at a later time for benefits that help the opposition (more on this later).

Archetypal Correspondences: Add the following dice to a pool to determine the cost of an Invocation. Use both the Ruling Planet and the Exalted Archetype. Remember to also add a Character's primary element.
Saturn: Diamonds +1D, Spades +1D
Jupiter: Hearts +1D, Clubs +1D
Sun: Clubs +2D
Mars: Hearts +1D, Clubs +1D
Venus: Diamonds +1D, Spades +1D
Mercury: Diamonds +1D, Spades +1D
Moon: Hearts +2D

How to Read a Card:

Effect: For any number card, count the number of columns of symbols. For example, aces, deuces, and threes have the symbols arranged in one column. Fours have the symbols arranged in two columns. The only exception are fives; even though fives have three columns on the card, they are only worth "two" for effect.
Cost: The TN for the cost check is denoted by the actual number on the card.
Face Cards: Face cards are unique and special. They always have a cost of 10.

Invocations and Suits: Each suit represents a type of invocation. The red suits are generally boonful and are often best cast on allies. The black suits are often baneful and usually best to cast on enemies, although Command may be useful on allies at times.

Diamonds: Shield! Add Effect to Dodge for the duration of the phase.
Hearts: Heal! Instantly heal Effect wounds.
Clubs: Smite! Deal Effect wounds to targets. This blue bolt from the heavens strikes its target unerringly.
Spades: Command! This invocation has two variations. In the first form, slide the target(s) Effect hexes. In the second form, give effect targets a command (Fight, Freeze, or Flee). The targets must follow this command until they pass a Spirit Saving Throw (Spirit + Fixed, TN based on your relative level); they get a save at the end of each of their turns. In any event the command lapses at the end of the phase.

Gamblin' Man

2010-12-20T11:09:00.002-09:00

I just got back from another trip to Vegas. While sitting at the Blackjack table I had an idea about how to work this into a game a bit more elegantly than I've proposed before.

Right now, assume that every character has some sort of "tactics points." The default use of a tactics point is to get a bonus on a check. Classes may also have a specific bonus that they can get if they spend a tactics point; for example a wizard might spend a point to sling a spell or a warrior to land a crushing blow. In general, tactics points are a ticket for the player to do something at the table that takes a little extra time and puts them in the limelight. They should also use a special, unique, non-standard mechanic.

Rogues gain the use of a gambling technique.

BLACKJACK

Ante: The rogue immediately antes up a bid. Generally the bid is in tactics points. The rogue may also offer up Hit Points. HP may be especially likely to be anted when doubling down or splitting.
Pairs: The rogue may also put a bid on their first two cards being a pair.
Play Blackjack: Also known as 21. The rogue may double down or split as per the normal Blackjack rules. Dealer must hit soft 17s.
Payouts: If the rogue wins, they keep their bid it costs their foe. If they push (tie), the rogue keeps his bid and nothing happens. If the rogue gets a blackjack, then they win and it pays out 3:2. If the rogue gets a pair, his bid pays out 10:1. If it is a suited pair, it pays out 15:1.

What you can do with it:

Backstab. The Rogue lands a brutal blow. All payout comes from the adversary's hit points. For example, if a rogue anted up 2 tactics points to start and wins, then the rogue keeps his 2 tactics points and the enemy loses 2 HP of his own (although the rogue does not gain them). If the rogue loses then he is just out his tactics points.
Pick Pockets. The Rogue cleverly pilfers small items. Each point of payout is either 1/6 of a stone of ENC or one coin of an appropriate tier (copper/silver/gold). For example, if the rogue antes up 2 tactics points and wins, he either gets two coins from the victim or items up to 1/3 of a stone (usually chosen randomly).
Quicksilver: The Rogue seizes the initiative. All payout comes from the adversary's initiative score. The rogue's initiative score increases by the given amount. For example, say the Rogue antes up two points and wins; the foe's score drops by two and the rogue's increases by two.

Blackjack is a quick game, well suited for rapid resolution of tasks.

Odds: The house edge (DM's edge) for pairs is around 10% (using a fresh deck every time) or 35% (using one deck without shuffling). For Blackjack it is around 0.17%, making this about 50/50. This makes Blackjack a particularly attractive option against foes that are otherwise tough to affect. For example, if the Rogue normally has a 5% chance of affecting a foe, opting to play Blackjack just increased his chances significantly!

TEXAS KLONDIKE

For more involved scenarios, Texas Klondike may be more appropriate.

ANTE: The Rogue and GM each bid 1 or 2 points (Rogue's choice) as a blind. The GM's points come from HP, gold/ENC (pick pockets), or initiative score (Rogue's choice depending on technique). The Rogue's points come from Tactics Points or HP.
PLAY: Each player secretly rolls two dice as their "hole" cards.
BID AGAIN: Conduct a round of bidding.
THE FLOP: Roll three dice in the center of the table as a community pool.
BID AGAIN: Conduct a round of bidding.
THE TURN: Add a fourth die to the center of the table.
BIG AGAIN: Conduct a round of bidding.
THE RIVER: Add a fifth die to the center of the table.
FINAL BIDS: One more round of bidding ensues.
DETERMINE WINNER: Whoever can assemble the best five-die "hand" wins. Use standard poker styled hierarchy of precedence: 5-of-a-kind, 4-of-a-kind, full house, 3-of-a-kind, two pairs, one pair. Winner takes the pot.

In Texas Klondike, the GM may wager other items if it is deemed acceptable. For example, if the game is being played to try and see if the Rogue can gain access to a den of thieves, each point the DM wagers up could be admission for another one of the Rogue's party members.

QUICK KLONDIKE:

As above, however, there is only one round of bidding.

ANTE: The Rogue and GM each bid 1 point as above.
PLAY: Each player secretly rolls five dice as a hand.
BID: Conduct a round of bidding.
SHOW 'EW: Each player reveals their hand. Winner takes the pot.

Read on Kindle

2010-11-22T22:17:00.003-09:00

I recently acquired a Kindle. As a side note, I love it. I'm a frequent traveler and for road warriors I think it is hard to beat. The ability to pack around a library in my hand is awesome. Moreover, the screen is actually great for reading, unlike most e-readers or computers.

Gamers might be interested to find out that the Kindle can display PDF files. I pulled S&W Core, S&W Whitebook, AD&D 1E and a few other PDFs onto the device and they displayed alright. More graphically intense files tend to have slow load times but it is tolerable. While it isn't ideal for rapidly paging through books, it is serviceable in a pinch, especially if you "tab out" the books first with bookmarks so you can quickly jump to key pages.

In any event, I am doing a lot of reading on the Kindle so I went ahead and had the Potion Shop hosted on the Kindle Store. If you have a Kindle this lets you pull down the blog in an easy to read format for a nominal fee every month. Note that I only get a small fraction, most of the subscription goes to Amazon and AT&T. I'm not doing this for the money; it is more as a convenience for any of my readers that may also appreciate being able to read blogs in Kindle format. I still do this primarily for me and as you may be used to, there may be gaps in posting. So don't be PO'd if you pay your $0.99 and I don't post every day!

Rethinking Ability Score Generation

2010-11-16T17:47:00.003-09:00

After some consideration of the TROLL charts and the probabilities involved, I realized that I lost the skewed bell curve with my above and below average charts.

Here's some new rules:

Standard/Average: Roll 3d6. Discard the highest and lowest. Retain the remaining die.
Below Average: Roll 4d6. Discard the highest and lowest. Retain the lowest of the 2d6 that remain.
Above Average: Roll 4d6. Discard the highest and lowest. Retain the highest of the 2d6 that remain. Boxcars = 7.
Way Above Average: Roll 5d6. Discard the highest and lowest. Retain the highest of the 3d6 that remain. Boxcars = 7, 666 = 8.

The "discard highest & lowest" rule preserves the bell curve effect. For example, here's "below average" (invert for above average):

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph

13.194

100.000

27.546

86.806

28.009

59.259

20.139

31.250

9.491

11.111

1.620

Average =	2.90046296296
Spread =	1.2329578139
Mean deviation =	0.997599451303

Compare that to the modifiers created by 4d6 drop the highest:

Probability distribution:

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph 1 5.787 100.000 2 29.707 94.213 3 37.577 64.506 4 21.219 26.929 5 5.324 5.710 6 0.386 0.386 Average = 2.9174382716 Spread = 0.990762073825 Mean deviation = 0.767008649596
The curves aren't identical but they preserve a similar average and a similar shape, specifically, the significant decrease in a likelihood of getting a "6."

We could create a smoother curve that closer approximates the 4d6 drop the lowest curve by doing something like "roll 6d6; drop the two highest and the two lowest; take the highest of the two that remain." However, I think you start to get into diminishing returns as far as time involved and perceived complexity. It will also increase player frustration to throw away their TWO highest rolls.

Alternate Character Statistic Generation

2010-11-14T15:32:00.007-09:00

When I started out on Septimus I just adopted the traditional 3d6, 3-18 ability score regime we're all familiar with. However, I don't really care for it. It requires translation via a table to get ability score modifiers, it uses a totally unique dice mechanic separate from anything else in the game, and it has a lot of baggage. When someone sees that they've got a 7 for a stat they look sad. They may think they need 18s in their primary stats to succeed. While those aren't true in Septimus, it is a perception issue.

So, this is the variant system I'm toying with.

Roll 3d6. Drop the lowest and the highest. The remaining score is your ability score. Caveats:

If the attribute is your "prime" then roll 2d6 and pick the highest number. If you rolled boxcars, the score is 7!
If the attribute is a double prime, then roll 3d6 and pick the highest number (i.e. drop nothing). Boxcars = 7, 666 = 8.
If the attribute is a "flaw" then roll 2d6 and pick the lowest remaining number. If you rolled snake eyes, the score is 0!
Any "4+MOD" factor in the old system (generating a range from 1 to 7) is simply "equal to your attribute."
Any "1+MOD" factor in the old system (generating a range from 0 to 4) is "equal to your attribute -3."
Improving attributes: Roll the exact same dice pool as used in character creation. If the result is greater than the current score, increase the current score by one.

The main downside of this system is that there is less granularity. Under the old system, it took three rolls before you'd go up a modifier. However, in play test, DW was actually quite unhappy about this; it felt like there was too little progress. Also, extreme results are slightly more likely. I think I'm willing to live with that however.

The upsides include:

No baggage.
Rapid stat generation; no need to cross reference a table to convert a 3-18 score to a modifier.
More noticeable effects at level-up/stat improvement time.
Commonality of mechanic.

UPDATE:

What do these distributions look like (courtesy of troll)?

AVERAGE RUN OF THE MILL ABILITY SCORE

Old School, 3d6 convert to Modifier (1 = -3, 6 = +2):

Average =	3.5
Spread =	1.02288625775
Mean deviation =	0.861111111111

1.852

100.000

14.352

98.148

33.796

83.796

33.796

50.000

14.352

16.204

1.852

New -- "Normal" (3d6 take the middle)

Average =	3.5
Spread =	1.37099585325
Mean deviation =	1.16666666667

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph

7.407

100.000

18.519

92.593

24.074

74.074

24.074

50.000

18.519

25.926

7.407

Distribution roughly appears like a bell curve, although it is really parabolic, without the aracteristic tapering at the ends. It is roughly equivalent, though; the odds of getting a 16-18 on 3d6 (the same as my "6" above) are about 5%. We're in the same ballpark above.

ABOVE AVERAGE ABILITY SCORE

Old School: 4d6 drop the lowest (then convert to modifiers)

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph

0.386

100.000

5.324

99.614

21.219

94.290

37.577

73.071

29.707

35.494

5.787

Average =	4.0825617284
Spread =	0.990762073825
Mean deviation =	0.767008649596

The odds for a Prime are the same as my core mechanic, although obviously inverted for Flawed scores. That is, the mean increases by one (3.5 --> 4.5) and lower numbers become very unlikely.

Average =	4.47222222222
Spread =	1.40408355068
Mean deviation =	1.1975308642

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph

2.778

100.000

8.333

97.222

13.889

88.889

19.444

75.000

25.000

55.556

30.556

The chart doesn't reflect my "Boxcars = 7" rule, but Boxcars should occur 1/36 of the time (2.7%), and it would reduce the percentage of the time that you get a "6" as one six is a prereq for boxcars.

WAY ABOVE AVERAGE ABILITY SCORE

Old School: 5d6 drop the lowest two yields...

Probability distribution:

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph 1 0.077 100.000 2 1.878 99.923 3 12.037 98.045 4 33.449 86.008 5 41.165 52.559 6 11.394 11.394 Average = 4.47929526749 Spread = 0.916573125002 Mean deviation = 0.775236687698

And finally, for a so-called "Double Prime," you get this.

Average =	4.95833333333
Spread =	1.14387458844
Mean deviation =	0.901234567901

Value % = % ≥ Probability graph

0.463

100.000

3.241

99.537

8.796

96.296

17.130

87.500

28.241

70.370

42.130

Septimus Test Drive

2010-11-13T14:12:00.004-09:00

A few weeks ago before I left on the current business trip I actually ran a quick dry-run of Septimus, the code name for my homebrew system. It is nowhere near even a true "Alpha" run; it is definitely pre-Alpha. However, for me it was a major milestone to put many of these abstract thoughts on paper and roll dice with them.

Here's a quick run down on the key themes and core terminology that is emerging:

What is it: Septimus is a role playing game that focuses on exploration of archetypal themes in the context of a "generic fantasy" milleu. If using the "what if" terminology, you could say, "What if D&D was heavily influenced by gnostic thought?"

How are characters defined: Characters are defined by a series of archetypal roles and symbols. There are 10 attributes in three categories. Here is a brief overview of the character creation process.

Select prime Element (Air/Water/Earth/Fire): Put one point into one of these four elements. The elements are stand-ins for player psychology and each element should appeal to a different type of player. It is very viable for one player to always pick the same element, and there is no need to "balance" a party by including all of the elements.
Select prime Quality (Cardinal/Fixed/Mutable): Put one point into one of these four elements. DW suggests that I need to change the names of these, and I likely will, but for now I'm keeping the classic astrological names to keep them easy to remember. I am thinking of renaming them to figures from playing cards (Knight/King/Queen) but am leery of introducing gender-specific terms. These are the classic "roles" of an RPG party. You could relate them to offense, defense, and special teams. A balanced party should have one of each role. Luckily there are only three of them!
Derive Astrological Sign. In astrology, element + quality = sign. For example, Leo is the sign of high-summer, a Fixed Fire sign. Signs are old and potent archetypes. If players want to select a sign first and then go back to derive the element/quality pairs, they can certainly do that.
Derive Ruling and Detrimental Planets. Each sign is ruled by a planet, which exerts unusually strong influence. There is also a planet which is uncomfortable within each sign. Planets govern things such as skills (the arts) and other certain actions. They also govern Matter, Mind, and Spirit and the relations between them, which are important attributes.
Select your Guide. All of the previous steps could be described as "nature." Your character may have been born under a certain set of stars, raised in a certain type of home, or otherwise shaped by powerful influences largely beyond their control. The Guide is the "nurture" part, often actively selected by the character. It may be a specialty, an object of worship, or an ideal.

The Guide is another planet from the list of seven in a default setting. The planets are each associated with Classical deities so it may also be linked to those gods. For example, a player may select either Jupiter or Zeus as their Guide; either way they are equivalent, mechanically. In the future I may break this out more closely, and say that the particular aspect you identify with has additional mechanical effects (for example, "clerics" may focus on Zeus, "mages" on the planet Jupiter, and so on). You could easily have players start without a Guide and discover one through the course of play, for example, a spirit quest, meeting a hermit, or any other similar adventure.

It is not necessary for a party to cover all of the planets although it would probably be helpful to cover a wide variety of them just to get access to a wider variety of skills and other perks. Most teams of three will tend to cover a majority of the planets without trying too hard even without coordinating their selections.
Fill in Derived Matter/Mind/Spirit information: Each planet governs one of these elements. For example, Saturn is the dominance of Matter over Mind, thus you'd put a point into Matter if Saturn is either your Guide or Ruling planet. Thus you'll put two points on these attributes.
Roll Dice to Generate Attribute Scores: You will now generate Attribute scores for Matter, Mind, and Spirit; Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable; and Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Roll 3d6 and total them to generate a score for each. For each point you've put into a category, add an extra die but total only the highest three. For example, if Earth is your Prime element, you'd roll 4d6 and take the highest three when generating your Earth score. Convert all ability scores to a modifier from -3 to +3 using the standard table. Optional: After rolling, reduce any score by -3 to add +2 to a "prime" score in the same category.
Make all derived picks: Most of the Attributes have things associated with them that you can select in order to customize your character. Usually they are things like "pick 1+/-MOD" or "pick 4+/-MOD." Usually 1+/-MOD are more consequential and involved choices, so if you don't want to deal with them simply trade that attribute score down using the rules above. Some derived picks will be made for you; for example, each planet has skills associated with it, so your Ruling Planet and Guide will select two skills in each category for you.
Finishing Touches: Select equipment, round out details, and tie up any odds and ends.

Options:

Difficulty: There are three packages for difficulty, Basic, Advanced, and Expert. Each generally is equivalent in power. Expert will give more choices and be more difficult to play effectively than Basic. This is a choice based on player skill level. New players should start with Basic and move up later if desired.
Primes & Flaws: You may designate any ability within a category as "Flawed." If you do so, you get one more point to spend in that category. For example, you could designate Water as "Flawed" and get two points to spend in Elements rather than one. Both could go into one element (for example, you could double tap Fire) or you can spread them out (Fire & Earth). Instead of rolling 3d6 to generate the Flawed score, roll 4d6 and total the three lowest dice. If an attribute is double tapped, then roll 5d6 and total the three highest. When trading down scores, you may subtract 3 from the Flaw and add +1 to each Prime if preferred.

It sounds complicated but really goes quite rapidly. There are relatively few choices that neatly funnel you into the next choice. You never have to choose from a list longer than around seven options and the derived attributes flow rapidly from a few initial choices.

Example:

In test I was pleased how archetypes flowed from initial choices. DW selected "water" as the element most aligned with her personality and play style, and then selected "cardinal" as she wanted an aggressive character that started things. We referenced a quick table and determined that the Cardinal Water sign is Cancer which is ruled by the Moon with Saturn in detriment. She then selected Mars as her Guide as she likes to smack stuff around.

This led to some derived skill specializations which we rapidly filled in on the character sheet (all the arts are arranged in rows by their ruling planet, so you just check off an entire row at a time). Her character was good at music, armament, and fighting due to Mars and Grammar, Hunting, and Shooting due to the Moon. She was deficient at Astronomy, Agriculture, and Riding which are the provenance of Saturn which as we recall is in Detriment in Cancer. She got +1 Matter and +1 Mind from her planets, making her a character well grounded in the physical and mental realms but perhaps less cognizant of spiritual or divine concerns.

So what did we have? Before making any fiddling choices, just focusing on the emergent core archetypes from the first few key selections, we had an introverted, energetic militant huntress. Reading articles on Cancer, Diana (of the Moon), and Mars would give lots of role playing ideas. These archetypes were supported by the mechanics of the game rather than just being a roleplaying label on paper only.

I think this also has a ton of potential for generating NPCs. You can either rapidly step through the process to rapidly generate archetypes, or if you have an archetype in mind already, start with the sign then work backwards. There is a rich tapestry of material associated with all of these elements so it is easy to find archetypal associations to explore.

What is the core mechanic: The core mechanic is a simple dice pool system based on D6s. Some sub systems utilize other mechanics but in general everything uses D6s.

Building Dice Pools: A general dice pool is constructed by adding +1 die for each relevant "prime" or specialty. For example, if our character above had to roll Earth + Cardinal, she'd get +1 die because Cardinal is prime but she does not have Earth prime. If an attribute is Flawed or a skill is a Detriment then subtract one from the Dice Pool. Dice Pools for core adventuring abilities like melee attacks are carefully controlled to keep them from getting out of control. The mechanic has diminishing returns built in to reduce the impact of "stacking" too many dice.
Reading Dice Pools: The highest die showing is normally the result of the dice pool. Each additional six adds one to the result (so boxcars = 7). Sometimes, the number of dice showing the number is relevant; for example, getting a pair of 5s would = 2.

They're called "Reserve Feats"

2010-11-13T14:04:00.002-09:00

An interesting post over at Grognardia. James takes a brief segue into mechanics-land (something he doesn't do too often). I hadn't thought about 3.5 lately, but one of the later innovations that I actually really liked was Reserve Feats. If I played an AD&D or OD&D game with Vancian casting this is one thing I definitely think I would keep in.

A few ways you could handle it:

Each and every spell has a rider effect that kicks in if still memorized, either baneful or boonful. The downside to this is that you must individually balance each spell. It also gets to be a lot to keep track of at higher levels.
As above, but cap the number of active effects. This has fewer but still significant issues.
Introduce "reserve feats" a la 3.5. Basically, in 3.5, you could take feats that said things like, "Throw a mini-fireball, affects one creature, deals 1d6 damage per spell level of the highest Fire spell you have memorized." You could come up with a list of 7+/-2 Reserve Feats then let players select them. I would either allow a number of feats equal to MU Weapon Profs (so 1 at level 1, then another at level 7), or perhaps a number based on INT score + extra ones with weapon profs (to create growth with level). I'd also consider allowing players to "retrain" their Reserve feat every level up.

The advantage to this system is that it beefs up low level casters without unduly affecting higher level ones, is easy to run, and creates great "specialty" caster flavor. For example, you could actually make the schools of magic significant; someone with the Divination reserve feat would sure want to have a Divination spell memorized every day!

Key Assumptions for a Spacefaring Game

2010-11-06T13:21:00.005-08:00

I've been doing more brainstorming about a spacefaring game. These are some key assumptions I'd make about the setting in order to facilitate play.

SUB-LIGHT INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL

ION DRIVES. The characters have access to highly efficient Ion Drive (or similar) technology allowing constant acceleration of typical spaceships from 0.1 to 1 G (or so). This makes interplanetary travel fairly rapid. For example, with constant acceleration at 1G, you can travel from Earth to Mars in a matter of days. This allows you to basically assume that players enter any tactical encounter with any reasonable relative velocity vector that they want. It could also be used in tactical encounters to generate very small thrust (say, 0.5 to 1 or even 1.5 Gs).

Reaction mass expended in an enhanced ion drive for interplanetary travel purposes is essentially negligible because we are assuming an incredibly efficient thruster (many orders of magnitude more powerful than exists today). The downside is that these drives require a lot of energy to function, from, say, a fusion reactor. Less powerful variants might be powered with fission or solar sources.

Here's a useful rule of thumb to calculate travel time: If you accelerate at A gravities to midpoint, then turnover and then decelerate at A gravities to your destination, elapsed time is approximately 4 SQRT (D/A) days, with D in astronomical units.

So to travel from Earth (1 AU) to Mars (1.5 AU) at constant acceleration of 1g, it would take: 4 * SqRt (0.5 / 1) = 2.8 days.

SOLAR SAIL. A less expensive (and lower energy) variant of the ion drive is mature solar sail technology. The advantage to this is that it is theoretically fast. It also requires very little energy and thus is probably less expensive. The downside is that it is not very maneuverable. This could be an option for players on a budget but it would prevent them from entering encounters with whatever velocity they want.

HOHMANN TRANSFERS: Interplanetary Travel without constant acceleration is done on Hohmann Transfers. Generally, for game play purposes, it is not necessary to understand how these work: it is a long time, and you can do it with limited thrust (generally two burns suffice; an initial and a final burn). Hohmann transfers are used for a few gameplay purposes:

Bulk cargo shipments from one orbit to another often use Hohmann transfers. For example, maybe the PCs get involved in an asteroid mining operation and need to get their bulk wares to somewhere else in the system inexpensively.
Sometimes a system might have a space station or other useful object on a Hohmann transfer orbit.
The PCs might be absurdly poor or limited on funds/local tech to old-school solid or chemical rocket technology.
Escape capsules might use Hohmann Transfer Orbits. This is a nice penalty for "death:" if you have to eject from your crippled spaceship, the escape pod has just enough thrust to put you into a transfer orbit. It basically means that the penalty for "death" is weeks or months of inactivity while you sit in your life raft and think about failure (or pay for a lift from an ion-drive equipped salvage ship).

You can estimate the time required for one relatively easily, however:

P^2 = A^3 (where P = time in years and A = distance in AUs)
Steps to solve (example is Earth to Mars):

Add the distance of the first planet from the sun to the distance of the second planet from the sun (1 AU + ~1.5 AU)
Find the semi-major axis of the transfer orbit by dividing this number in half. (2.5 AU / 2 = 1.25 AU)
Solve the above equation. Use a calculator... (P = ~1.4 years)
The equation gives you the time for a full orbit (i.e., Earth to Mars and back). Divide this by two to get the one way travel time. (0.7 years or around 8 months)

CHEMICAL DRIVES: Liquid and solid fuel rockets are still useful. They provide very high impulse. They are also cheap. This makes them great for tactical maneuvering on a "fighter" type spacecraft; generating 1G on an Ion Drive is not going to stack up favorably against a fighter maneuvering at 9Gs. Additionally, they are cheap and simple to operate.

The downside is that they require a lot of mass for fuel.

SUB-LIGHT INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

ION DRIVES. The Ion Drive can also be used for interstellar travel. In general, the amount of time it takes to get from one system to another with constant acceleration at >0.5G is the distance in light years plus one. So, to travel two parcsecs (about 6 LY) takes about 7 years with an ion drive. Mass consumption is significant at these distances and should probably be checked for each parsec of travel.

Over long journeys, relativistic effects can occur; for example, it traveling 3 LY (1 parsec), people on the planets age 5 years but those on the ship age only 4. if traveling 6 LY (2 parsecs), planet dwellers age 13 years and those on the ship experience only 13. The bottom line is that I don't expect PCs to travel this way most of the time, so it isn't a factor other than to understand abstractly; there may be "gypsies" that travel from system to system with ion drives at velocities which are high percentages of C that essentially accept that everything they once knew on a planet will be left behind.

SLEEPER SHIPS. Cryogenic technology allows passengers to be put into suspended animation. This allows a ship to burn up to a significant fraction of C (say, 0.05 to 0.1) but only twice (to accelerate then decelerate). Travel in this method takes decades or centuries to go even a few parsecs. The PCs might occasionally come across an old sleeper ship. Under very rare circumstances they might be forced to travel this way due to limited technology or funds. Travel in this manner might be a good way to basically start a new campaign.

FASTER-THAN-LIGHT INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

There are three FTL technologies available for interstellar travel. Any or all of these may be unavailable in any given campaign. In particular, jump drives and warp drives work in a very similar manner and could easily be combined, i.e., there could be man-made wormholes. These technologies are useful within a globular cluster of systems or a spiral arm, about 20-30 parsecs in diameter.

JUMP DRIVES. Special jump drives allow travel between systems by exploiting "temporary" wormholes. The wormholes link nearby systems forming "space lanes." While temporary in astronomical terms, they generally remain stable for long durations in human terms. This allows the GM to add or remove space lanes occasionally. The wormhole is great because it allows travel that might normally be measured in parsecs to be completed in days. The downside is that both ends must be charted in order to safely jump. Additionally, these routes are predictable, which means that pirates and others often prey on them. Finally, the jump points are not always conveniently located.

More powerful jump drives allow longer jumps to occur, on the order of 1-9 parsecs. Regardless of the length of the jump, travel time is always the same (around a week). Ships in the wormhole cannot generally interact with anything outside the wormhole, and interactions within wormholes are very rare and unpredictable.

WARP DRIVE. This is based on the Alcubierre Drive. It works just like a wormhole except that the infrastructure to travel is man-made, not reliant on natural phenomena. Ships in warp drive cannot interact with the outside universe outside their warp bubbles.

HYPER DRIVES. Hyper drives allow a ship to "sidestep" into an alternative dimension (hyperspace) where travel at FTL speeds is possible. The advantage of hyperdrives is that unlike Jump or Warp drives, one can travel anywhere independently of Wormhole entrances or Warp Drive infrastructure. With a hyperdrive, it takes a number of days to travel somewhere equal to the number of lightyears + 1 (thus to go two parsecs takes a week). Hyper drive is popular with scouts and explorers (as well as pirates, recluses, or others who want to travel to obscure backwaters or avoid chokepoints and checkpoints). There are several downsides to hyperdrives:

Expense.
Fuel consumption; the vessel is constantly accelerating within the hyperspace bubble, requiring fuel expenditure.
Limited mass. There should be a non-linear energy cost to bring objects into hyperspace, preventing it from being useful for mass commerce.
Need for precise calculations. There is a significant chance, especially over longer jumps, that the ship will not end up exactly where intended. This effectively caps safe travel ranges at 1-9 parsecs per jump. The ship will likely need to drop out of hyperspace for navigational fixes on a regular basis.
Gravity Well sensitivity: Hyper Drives cannot be safely used close to stars or other major gravity wells. While some systems have Warp infrastructure or Wormholes at more convenient locations, a hyper-drive equipped vessel always needs to navigate to the outer edges of a system in order to safely jump. Of course, under extreme circumstances, a hyper jump can occur (for example, to escape), with unpredictable results...
Time. Hyperdrives can be faster for short trips of 1-2 parsecs, but anything longer is faster to do with a Jump or Warp drive.

FASTER-THAN-LIGHT INTRAGALACTIC TRAVEL

The three technologies above are ideal for travelling distances of 1-9 parsecs at a go. They are good for traveling within one spiral arm or globular cluster of a galaxy. Travel across a galaxy requires movement rates in Kiloparsecs. Some obscure, rare, and expensive technology might allow such travel. As an example, the milky way is 30 kpc in diameter.

This technology should be rare and expensive with perhaps limited usage or requiring highly specialized ships. Alternatively, very rare natural phenomena such as the Deep Space Nine wormhole might allow such travel.

FASTER-THAN-LIGHT INTERGALACTIC TRAVEL

Travel between galaxies is exceedingly rare. Intergalactic travel should be a one-time event leading to dramatic changes in the campaign. Intergalactic travel is measured in megaparsecs. For example, the nearest other galaxy to the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 0.77 mega parsecs (770 kpc).

ALIENS ARE RARE OR NONEXISTANT

There are not many sentient alien life forms. The explored systems are decidedly humanocentric. As humanity has spread out, some humans have adapted to different local conditions, such as high or low gravity, but they are still decidedly homo sapiens. The exact reason for this is unknown.

EARTH IS DISTANT

The game occurs in a different "neighborhood" of the galaxy than Earth. Maybe it is a different spiral arm or globular cluster. In any event, due to the travel limitations described above, each globular cluster is fairly isolated with limited travel between them.

Alternatively, Earth has been destroyed by some cataclysmic disaster.

In any event, the theme should either be one of a fallen empire or of an isolated backwater sector.

MOORE'S LAW IS DEAD

Moore's Law states that computing power doubles every 18 months. Starting in the early 21st century, computing technology rapidly leveled off as in an S-curve. While it has advanced since that time, computing power is not exceedingly greater.

Additionally, there are strong taboos against various forms of artificial intelligence, especially AI for controlling weapons or other potentially lethal systems as well as any sort of interstellar FTL travel. Perhaps there is a history of Earth being destroyed by rogue Unmanned Systems. There is a chance that AI used for FTL travel pilotage will for some reason malfunction with potentially disastrous consequences.

PLANETARY LIFT IS LIMITED

There are a few ways to get stuff from the surface of a planet into orbit. They are limited. Generally, player spacecraft are not great at operating freely in an atmosphere or strong gravity well. The purpose of this is to keep the focus of action in space, not on planets. Travel to planetary surfaces should be the exception, not the rule.

Space Elevators: Very developed planets that regularly move large masses to orbit may have a space elevator established. This allows the PCs to pick up and drop off cargos from orbit.
Mass Drivers: Lower gravity planets may have large mass drivers to launch objects violently into orbit. While not good for fragile cargos, this method is highly efficient for bulk materials. A mass driver might even be able to place cargo into a Hohmann Transfer orbit.
Space Stations: Many planets may establish space stations as way points. For example, if traveling from a planet to its moon, it would make sense to have a station in Earth Orbit and another in Lunar orbit. Shuttles to and from the earth are designed to operate in atmosphere; those between the stations can be designed for pure vacuum operations; the final link to the lunar surface can be designed for lunar landing. If regular commerce occurs it is more viable to have a station, even a small one, and specialized rockets than to try and build a multipurpose space vehicle. Heck, even Earth today has a small manned station in low orbit.
Occasional orbital shuttles: The least populous and most backwards planets may just run an occasional shuttle to orbit. Cargoes might be launched with single-use rockets as needed.

FTL COMMUNICATIONS DON'T EXIST

In general, there are no faster than light communications. Interstellar FTL comms are limited to mail runs on FTL-drive equipped ships. Due to the prohibition on AI FTL drive operation, generally mail runs are carried on manned ships. This means that systems are relatively isolated from one another, making decisive local action important, and gives the PCs something important to do (carry mail and act as couriers). It also limits the scope/size of any sort of interstellar authority and forces decentralization.

G-Limits

2010-11-03T17:54:00.004-08:00

I just had a lecture on human G-limits and some training. I'm not an aviator but I have flown in some high performance aircraft and pulled significant Gs. It isn't easy, and equipment/training helps.

Here's some rules of thumb for sustained Gs:

1-3 Gs: Generally no problem for people in average health
4-6 Gs: Gray out occurs. Untrained personnel or unprepared people can black out or suffer G-LOC.
7-9 Gs: Without G-training and equipment, blackout or G-LOC is likely. Even trained people will find this challenging.
10+ Gs: Generally leads to G-LOC

Partial G Suit: +1.5G
Full G Suit: Add +2.5G
Anti-G Straining: Add +3G
Adjusting seat tilt from 30 degrees to 65 degrees: +2G

Negative G is much harder to deal with; humans can handle about 1/2 that G-Load.

What this means for a Game?

As previously discussed, acceleration is the key thing for a space game that should determine scales, not velocity. Let's assume a system where 3 Gs = 1 square of movement, 6 is 2 squares, and so on. If you are accelerating at less than 3 Gs (say, a gentle 1G push) then you have a 2/6 chance of accelerating one square. A super-gentle 1/2 G push would be but a 1/6 chance.

If you assume a one minute turn, then 3G acceleration gets your velocity increased by about 1800 meters. Round it off to two clicks to make the math easy, or down to 1 click and use ~30 second turns instead of one minute turns.

With this sort of system, you'd be able to make a light burn to add 1 hex to your velocity, a moderate burn to add 2 hexes, and a strong burn to add 3. We could postulate some sort of enhancements to human physiology/g-suit technology that might make burns of10-12 G's possible that would allow adding 4 hexes to your velocity.

Alternatively, you can use an alternate G-scale (perhaps going in units of four or six instead of three). This would allow much higher velocities to be rapidly attained, and basically assume that a combination of properly reclined seats, improved G-suits, and perhaps sci-fi tech is in play to allow those greater accelerations. This would basically require hexes of 3 or 4 KM in size rather than 2 KM.

Modeling G-LOC

You could say that 1-3 Gs is no problem. Once you hit 4Gs, then you need to start making some sort of check or take damage. Bonuses to the check could be obtained from a hardy constitution/good health and high-G training (G-straining maneuvers). Moreover, appropriate equipment could give bonuses to the G's you can handle without trouble. For example, maybe having a G-Suit gives you another +3Gs of tolerance and having an acceleration couch designed for high G gives you another +3G. That would let a pilot of an optimized high-G spacecraft to pull up to 9Gs (3 hexes) without making a single check.

The G-LOC "damage" track might have three hits, or combined with some sort of "stunning" damage:

First Strike: Greyout. Minor impairment.
Second Strike: Blackout. Vision severely impaired. Other functions severely impaired.
Third Strike: G-LOC. You're out.

You could require folks to make one save for each category of acceleration they're exceeding their safe threshold by. So, say you are just an average Joe in a Space Civic. You have no G-protection devices. Your safe max G is 3. You initiate a maneuver that pumps you up to 9 Gs. You're going to go from just fine to "blackout" if you fail your tolerance checks. So, an experienced high-G pilot who knows how to G-strain and is in good shape might be able to take it, but the average Joe is going to be mighty close to passing out. Heck, even that simulation is pretty generous I think because most folks would actually pass out if rapidly accelerated to 9G with no protection.

Character Builder is Dead... Long live Character Builder!

2010-11-03T15:10:00.004-08:00

I've got a DDI subscription which I got for a web based campaign that is stuttering off the runway. One of the tools I appreciated most is the Character Builder application. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a standalone little program WOTC put together which lets you easily and quickly build PCs. It actually works pretty well and is basically the only way short of reviewing the 4E Char Op boards to build a character in 4E. It honestly makes buying splat books irrelevant, which is nice.

Of course, I'm sure I'm not the only one that realized that you could get a short subscription, download Char Builder, and then cancel your DDI subscription. Every few months you could get a new subscription to download new updates. WOTC tried to crush this by limiting updates to a handful per month (so you can't spam it to a bunch of computers) and by scaling their pricing scheme to reward you for longer quarterly or annual subscriptions.

However, WOTC has announced an "upgrade," in that the old standalone character builder will now be dead. Instead, you get an internet based application. There are some actual improvements. However, I have mixed feelings about getting rid of the standalone application. I liked the utility of being able to build a character anywhere: on an airplane, while deployed, or just generally away from the internet. Now, you can only use DDI when there is internet handy. I suppose as wifi becomes more and more prevalent this is less of an issue but still, I don't love it.

From the business side, they now lock you into a continious subscription as you have no standalone option anymore. You can't pay for a one-month subscription to get the jewel in DDI's crown. You need to pay for an annual subscription to keep access to your character sheet.

I'm also concerned that they will freak out on me for sharing an account with Mrs. Nittany. If I'm traveling for work and log on from some random place and she logs on at home, will WOTC get upset at us? Who knows!

Anyways, we'll see. I'm not sure I love this new release. I think that WOTC should consider two tier pricing: a DM price that gives access to all content and a player price that just gives you the Compendium and Character Builder. I don't know if I'm willing to pay $60/year to play 4E D&D.

Space RPGS: Flight Models II

2010-11-02T14:57:00.003-08:00

In my previous post I wrote about some considerations for spaceflight models, and identified the key variable as acceleration rather than velocity. I did some more thinking and research and came up with a few implementable options. Adding vectors is fun!

Ignore Momentum. I don't like this as it is totally unrealistic and makes a space RPG feel like any other wargame or token-based RPG.
Abstract Movement. You could go with a early CRPG style representation: one side lines up on the left side of the board, the other on the right, and they fight in a very abstract manner. You could have rules for maneuvering which could help for dodging attacks, or maybe range categories ("Close, Far, Disengaged...").
Track Each Vector's Values: You can track the speed associated with each vector for each token. For example, you could represent something's velocity as follows: "North 2, East 1, West 0, South 0." If the vehicle accelerated to the North 2 and West 1, then you'd modify the numbers to 3/0/0/0. Each turn the vessel moves in the appropriate number of squares. This works great for a small number of tokens. However, if you have multiple tokens it gets troublesome to keep track of as you basically need a separate worksheet for each vessel. Additionally, I think it is necessary to go for at least a hex based system to smooth things out. However, it is probably the easiest way to deal with 3-D movement. It is also easier to deal with higher speeds as you can just subtract X from everyone's speed in a certain direction without changing any of the relative velocities.
Use Two Tokens for Each Vessel: You can also use two tokens to represent velocity. In my previous example, you'd have one token representing where the ship is and a second representing where it is going, two squares to the North and one to the West. After acceleration, you'd move the second token one space to the East and one space to the North. Before moving the ship, drop a third token 3 squares to the north of the second one. The advantage of this system is that you can keep track of larger numbers of vessels with relatively little difficulty. The trouble is that you need multiple tokens/minis to run it all and as velocities get larger there is a greater chance for error to occur.
Trigonometry: You could use trigonometric functions to add vectors. I think this would likely require a table of look up values. It would allow you to play without minis, however.

Space RPGs: Flight Models

2010-10-27T18:03:00.006-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about a space RPG lately. I never played Traveller, but I've reviewed it, and it is far too complicated. I know that Traveller spawned Elite, which in turn spawned Privateer (which was a childhood favorite game of mine), but it is just too much for me to want to run as far as rules go these days.

One problem that I've been putting some brain bytes towards is how to handle space combat. There are two approaches: realistic physics or arcade style. Video games had to deal with this too. Arcade style is popular because it is easier to grok, even if it is unrealistic. An example would be violating the law of conservation of momentum, capping maximum speeds in a vacuum at something significantly less than C (speed of light), and so on.

An RPG could go with the same sort of idea: each turn, a sub-light ship moves X squares and can make Y changes in direction. This effectively taps maximum speed at X squares. You could even justify it by saying that the sub-light technology has some sort of special property that perhaps cancels out inertia or momentum (converting velocity to heat or something).

However, this totally disregards some unique aspects of spaceflight. For example, if a ship continually accelerates at 1 MPH, its velocity will eventually get to be significantly greater than 1 MPH! One of the advantages of traveling in a vacuum is that you can get up to a great speed, especially if you have enough fuel/energy to generate thrust for 1/2 your trip. I think the solution is somewhere in between: use pseudo-newtonian rules that feel unique and space-shipish but are easy to implement.

I think the key is to focus on acceleration, not velocity. After all, if the relative velocity of the combatants is zero, you might as well be stationary.

The two things that help a lot as far as limiting factors go are:

Limited Acceleration due to Gs: The human body can take about 9 Gs before G-LOC occurs. Much equipment may not be able to handle that much. For example, a spindly vacuum-only ship may only be able to take 1/2 to 1 G. While that is not a limit on velocity, it does significantly limit acceleration. 1 G is about 10 m/s^2, or approx 22 MPH (so if you could accelerate from 0 to 65 MPH in one second you'd feel three gees). In another example, the Apollo trans-lunar velocity was something like 25K MPH, which is about 11,000 M/S. A 3G (30 m/s^2) burn would have to burn for something like 6 minutes to get you up to that speed.

Note that a human body can take something like 45Gs without breaking under certain conditions. However, if you're talking about sustained, fighting capability -- 9 Gs is a good rule of thumb.
Limited Fuel: Unless you posit a never-ending energy source for your sci-fi world, then fuel will not be unlimited. Say your spaceship is 2000 tons, about the size of the space shuttle. Kinetic Energy = (1/2) mass * velocity ^2. A mass of 2000 tons is close to 2,000,000 kg, and the desired velocity for a 3-day moon shot is 11,000 m/s, so the energy wrapped up in that enterprise is 121,000,000,000,000 joules. By my rough reckoning that's about the amount of energy in a million gallons of gasoline, 7.5 million lbs of coal, -- assuming 100% perfect efficiency in the engine! If you could assume that you can crack uranium-235, it'd be much less (about 7.5 lbs), but the mass of the reactor would have to get added to your 2000 ton spaceship! With the exception of drives like Ion Drives or Solar Rocket Engines which are highly efficient as far as propellent usage goes (but provide very low thrust -- and thus are not tactically interesting for most PCs...), most of the other options use a ton of fuel and are propellant inefficient (TANSTAAFL). So, the bottom line is that if you limit fuel, then it will limit the "burns" that a ship can do, which limits maneuvering and acceleration.

Here's my rough estimate of how to figure out "useful" scales for tactical ship-to-ship combat. Let's assume that primary weapons are energy weapons, mass drivers/cannons, and missiles/rockets.

Energy: A light-second is 300,000 km. Particle weapons would travel much more slowly than C, but for lasers, 300,000 km is probably a reasonable maximum range. Anything longer than that and you'll start to have aiming problems. Note that this is a problem with sensors, too; a radar or lidar pulse needs to travel two ways (out and back), and the maximum unambigious range is likely going to be much less depending on waveforms and whatnot. There are also problems with sensor range due to the formula for a sphere; the returning energy pulse is reduced by a power of 4*PI*R^2 so you need VERY sensitive receivers to detect a returning pulse from extremely distant targets, even without atmospheric attenuation.

I also imagine that you'd have trouble with dispersal reducing the power level of the beam as it spreads over distance. You'd need a very tight, focused beam and the power will attenuate over distance. The YAL-1, a megawatt class laser, has range of ~600 KM vs. thin skinned targets in an atmosphere. Here's a quick back of the envelope calculation:

Power Density = Transmitted Power / 4 * Pi * R^2
Power Density = 1 megawatt / 12.56 * 600 KM^2
Power Density = 1 megawatt / 4,521,600 KM

So, I think something on the order of ~1000 KM is reasonable for desired weapons effects with a megawatt-class laser weapon in a vacuum. If you assumed that a sci fi laser would be a giga-watt class system (1000 times more powerful than the YAL-1), then perhaps closer to 20,000 KM as a WAG, although I'm sure an engineer would tell me how far off I am.

Power Density = Transmitted Power / 4 * Pi * R^2
1 megawatt / 4,521,600 KM = 1000 megawatts / 12.56 * R^2
12.56 megawatts / 4,521,600 KM = 1000 megawatts / R^2
R^2 * 2.7777777777777777777777777777778e-6 = 1000 megawatts
R^2 = 360000000
R = 18973
(Sorry I got lazy and dropped the units... this is a WAG anyways...)

Likewise, if you went DOWN to a kilowatt laser, then range would shrink to something like 50 KM vs. a thin skinned target.
Projectiles: Range is effectively infinite due to Newton's First Law. However, against a maneuvering target, there might be problems with anything at longer ranges. If you assume a mid-case 6G manuevering target, then in one second that target can change velocity by 60 meters/second^2. A bullet usually goes at a velocity on the order of 1500 meters/second; artillery shells are much slower (hundreds of m/s) but we're in the ballpark. If you want to be able to hit a 10 meter sized "kill zone" on a maneuvering target, then your projectile needs to arrive in 1/6 of a second or you need to really be able to guess where it will be. That makes the effective range about 250 meters! That makes sense, though; ~750 feet is the heart of the envelope for a fighter aircraft trying to gun another fighter, which has similar acceleration and size issues; atmospherics don't even really come into it.

If you're going after a 100 meter vital zone on a 3G target, then your bullet has 3.3 seconds, so max effective range would be ~4000 meters.
Missiles: Like mass drivers/projectiles, range is effectively unlimited. In fact, it is greater because a missile (A) accelerates after launch and (B) can correct its course with terminal guidance. The only issue is how long it takes to get to the target, and if it has sufficient maneuvering ability to catch a maneuvering target.

So, really, tactical space combat scales can be smaller than you might think. Hexes as small as 250 meters might make sense! Remember, velocity doesn't matter; the only thing that matters is DELTA V (the difference in velocity between combatants). If you went with a 500 meter hex then you'd get the following:

Guns vs. Maneuvering Point Targets: 1 hex range
Guns vs. Non-Maneuvering Area Target: 8 hex range
Megawatt Class Laser vs. Thin Skin Target: 2000 hex range (effectively infinite)
Megawatt Class Laser vs. Medium Skin Target: 1000 hex range (still effectively infinite)
Kilowatt Class Laser vs. Thin Skin Target: 100 hex range (still effectively infinite)
Kilowatt Class Laser vs. Medium Skin Target: 50 hex range
Note that if you posit armored targets, or better yet, some sort of energy shields, then you could shrink the ranges significantly, especially for a kilowatt class laser. The YAL-1 takes up an entire 747. I understand that sci-tech will make major strides in a sci-fi setting, but if you're talking about a laser that can sit inside a turret like you see in Star Wars, that's a LOT of miniaturization. So saying that small turret-based weapons are kilowatt class is reasonable. A megawatt class laser might be something like a mining cutting laser or a destroyer (not fighter) class weapon.
1G acceleration over a one minute period of time: ~1 hex delta vee (and this relationship holds fairly steady, so 9Gs = 9 hexes of delta vee)

The last bullet there is actually a good argument for using a 600 meter hex for tactical spaceship combat. It would basically create a 1G acceleration = 1 hex movement direct relationship, which is pretty sweet; it wouldn't really affect the maximum weapons ranges much, except that the guns vs. maneuvering targets is getting a bit optimistic. I can also think of some cool things you could do with a D6 and 600 meter hexes. The 500 meter hex is easier to extrapolate to greater ranges, however, and you could assume there are some inefficiencies in the burn or something that keeps acceleration from being perfect.

Alternatively, you could go with some multiple (2-3G) for the hex, which would lead you to 1200 or 1800 meter hexes. You could just round to 1KM, 1.5KM, or 2KM. That basically reduces movement rates for very rapidly accelerating objects such as guided missiles, but it also reduces movement rates for the typical player-controlled ship. If you think that a 3-5G rated ship is "typical" with 9-10Gs being a peak manned combat vehicle, then using 1800 meter hexes means that the typical ship only moves 1-2 hexes, which may not be very satisfying.

Remember, the key is acceleration capability in a fight, not velocity. Assuming that the combatants are intentionally getting into a fight, then one of them has matched velocity with the other. The aggressor in that case should basically be able to enter the fight with whatever starting relative velocity they want. For example, if they enter the fight with an advantage of +3600 KM/HR, then they'll have a velocity delta of 60,000 m/s, or 100 hexes. So, they'll blow through the engagement and only get one pass, which may be what they want. They'll have to do a long ~10 plus minute burn after blowing through to come around for another run which burns a lot of fuel.

It is much more fuel efficient to basically match velocities and enter the fight with manageable Delta Vee. That way you're not burning a bunch of mass to get up to high speed then burning yet more to rapidly decelerate. So letting the aggressor pick their starting relative Delta Vee advantage makes a lot of sense. In a more reasonable and tactical scenario, the aggressor could enter the engagement with a delta vee of +260 KM/HR, which gives them 10 hexes of movement. They could then make a pass on the victim, do a 9G braking burn, and be drifting along one hex faster than the target for round two of the fight -- a manageable place to be! It is a little more complicated than that because they could apply angular delta vee but still, you could come up with rules of thumb to keep it simple and manageable.

I'm going to stop now before I embarrass myself further. It has been a long time since I took physics. But I think that with some careful thought you can create a pseudo-Newtonian feel to the system fairly easily.

Correspondences of Seven

2010-10-17T12:32:00.004-08:00

I've been coming up with a table of correspondences for the number seven, which is core to "Septimus." This is what I have thus far.

Quality of Associated Signs: Each planet is associated with astrological signs as a "ruler." I've extracted the quality (fixed, mutable, or cardinal) of those signs.
Elements of Associated Signs: Each planet is associated with astrological signs. I've extracted the element (air, earth, water, fire) of those signs.
Humour: Each planet is often aligned with one of the four humours.
Roman Deity: Each planet is associated with a Roman deity.
Liberal Art: Dante Alleghri (yes, that Dante) associated each planet with a liberal art.
Mechanical Art: I've matched up the planets with the mechanical arts.
Probitate: I've also matched up each planet with a probitate.
Metal: Each planet has an alchemical association to a metal.
Primacy of Matter, Mind, and Spirit: Each planet has one of these three over another. For example, "Matter over Mind." You can extract it from the symbol for the planet.

	SATURN	JUPITER	SUN	MARS	VENUS	MERCURY	MOON
Sign	Capricorn	Sagittarius	Leo	Aries	Taurus	Gemini	Cancer
Sign	Aquarius	Pisces		Scorpio	Libra	Virgo
Humour	Melancholic	Sanguine	Choleric	Choleric	Phlegmatic	Variable (Melancholic)	Melancholic
Dante's Virtue	Contemplatives	Kings	Theologians	Warriors	Love & Friendship	Good for Fame	Virtue
Vice	Sloth	Pride	Greed	Wrath	Lust	Lying	Envy
Metal	Lead	Tin	Gold	Iron	Copper	Quicksilver	Silver
Roman God	Saturn	Jupiter	Apollo	Mars	Venus	Mercury	Diana
Greek God	Cronus	Zeus	Helios	Ares	Aphrodite	Hermes	Selene
Quality: FIXED	X		X	X	X
Quality: CARDINAL	X			X	X		X
Quality: MUTABLE		X				X
Element: EARTH	X				X	X
Element: WATER		X		X			X
Element: AIR	X				X	X
Element: FIRE		X	X	X
Primacy (Over)	Matter	Mind	Spirit	Matter	Spirit	Mind	Mind
Primacy (Under)	Mind	Matter		Spirit	Matter	Spirit
Primacy (Not Present)	Spirit	Spirit		Mind	Mind	Matter
Liberal Art	Astronomy	Geometry	Arithmetic	Music	Rhetoric	Dialectic	Grammar
Mechanical Art	Agriculture	Architecture	Medicine	Armament	Fabric Making	Commerce	Hunting
Probitate	Riding	Jousting	Climbing	Fighting	Swimming	Dancing	Shooting

Most of the linkages are straightforward. I'll explain the ones that aren't directly from the classical sources.

The mechanical arts:

Agriculture: Saturn has a clear link to Agriculture. Heck, Saturn's symbol even looks like a scythe. This one is easy.
Medicine: The sun is associated with Apollo, the god of the sun. Historically, the sun has been associated with positive, healthful things like the healing arts.
Armament: This one wasn't perfect, but I thought a correspondence to Mars was appropriate. Traditionally, Hephaestus was the god of smiths. However, given the martial bent of Mars and the strong association with Fire, Mars is appropriate enough. I would prefer Fire + Earth.
Commerce: Mercury is traditionally associated with Mercatura.
Hunting: Diana, the huntress, is the patron of hunting. Easy.
Fabric Making: Traditionally, Athena is the goddess of weaving. However, she doesn't have a planetary association, although she is sometimes linked to Venus. I ended up linking it to Venus almost by default.
Architecture: This, like Fabric Making, was "left over" after I matched up all the other arts with their obvious associations. I paired it with Jupiter as Jupiter is associated with kingship, mind, and matter.

The probitates:

Riding: I linked this with Saturn due to the agricultural association. However, the Roman God of horses was Neptune which could lead to a weak linkage with the element of water, which would be a reason to put riding elsewhere.
Jousting: Linked with Jupiter. This was a "left over" as well and I dropped it here due to the linkage with kings. I thought about replacing it with Chess (tactics) as well.
Climbing: Linked with sun. This was also a weak association, based solely on the idea of vertical ascent. It isn't bad, though, as Helios was known for climbing across the sky in his chariot every day. It would also be appropriate to use "Poetry & Music" here as Apollo was well regarded as a patron of both.
Fighting: An easy linkage to Mars.
Swimming: I paired this with Venus primarily based on the strong presence of the element water. Venus is the only Phlegmatic planet and has the strongest association with water.
Dancing: This was matched with Mercury. Mercury was known for being fleet of foot as well as being very social, which is a nice match with dancing.
Shooting: The link between archery and the huntress seems straightforward and natural.

Gamer Typology

2010-10-08T19:47:00.005-08:00

Earlier I mentioned tailoring characters to player psychology. I think this is worth elaborating on a bit. There are many different player typologies. There seem to be a few different examples:

Frivolous. Some are clearly more interested in humor than any serious typology.
Anecdotal. These typologies sort players into groups based on experience and perceived common traits. However, there is no correlation between them implied. For example, one group may not be the opposite of another. They are very qualitative. Some examples might be Robin Law's typology, or this typology from the 80s.
Systematic. These typologies set up defined axises, then define the player groups based on how they fit to the axis. An example is the Bartle classification (Player/World vs. Action/Interaction) or the WOTC survey (Long Term/Short Term vs. Tactical/Story).

I like the systematic approach because there is an underlying theory that can be generalized. The anecdotal system may be useful as well, but there's really no reason that you can't add or subtract types at a whim.

There are many real-world typologies for people that describe their temperament. You may be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Temperment Indicator, Keirsey Temperment Sorter, the Big 5, Enneagram, or many of the other ones. Because of my penchant for archaic systems, I like Galen's old theory of "Humorism" which many of the other four-category systems evolved from. I also like that the four categories are easy to grok; using shades between the categories gives you up to eight.

Humorism relies on the interaction of two factors. One measured "length of response" (rapid & hot vs. slow & cold) and the other measured "duration of response" (long & dry vs. short & wet). For example, a choleric, who has a short (hot) and lengthy (dry) response, may be quick to anger and long to hold a grudge. Of course, the four humours were correlated to the classical elements, and all the correlations that entails. Modern psychology has related the former axis to either emotional stability or to task vs. relationship orientation. The latter axis has been related to extraversion vs. introversion.

I think that you can relate these to the Bartle and WOTC typologies as well. Bartle himself admitted that his original pairing of typologies to card suits was done without knowledge of the ancient correlations and that tieing his theory to humourism is viable. So, how would you relate them?

EXTRAVERT/INTROVERT: I link this axis to the Bartle Player vs. World focus or the WOTC Short vs. Long term. In this linkage, extraverts tend to be interested in the other players and short term outcomes. Introverts tend to get absorbed in the imaginery world and require less immediate stimulus.
TASK/RELATIONSHIP ORIENTED: I have linked this axis to the Bartle action vs. interaction and the WOTC Tactic vs. Story distinction.

That gives you these four typologies:

CHOLERIC (FIRE): Power Gamer (Short Term Tactical) / Killer (Acting on Players)
MELANCHOLIC (EARTH): Thinker (Long Term Tactical) / Achiever (Acting on World)
PHLEGMATIC (WATER): Storyteller (Long Term Story) / Explorer (Interacting with World)
SANGUINE (AIR): Character Actor (Short Term Story) / Socializer (Interacting with Players)

Are these perfect typologies? No, certainly not. However, it is clear that the idea of these enduring archetypes has been entrancing us for millenia. Plus, in a role playing game, even the idea of archetypes is helpful, I think. If nothing else, they are fun to think about.

What does this suggest about each "element's" powers?

FIRE: This school should focus on short term effects. It should also allow action on the other allied player characters. One might think of certain leaders from 4E that can actually slide their allies around, give them attacks, and so on. You're helping your team, but you are in the driver's seat. One can also imagine some mechanics that allow Fire to get their team involved in quests -- thus giving the Fire focused character a limited amount of control over the background/narrative of the other characters! The player is likely task oriented and should be rewarded for completing somewhat shorter term tasks.
EARTH: This school focuses on long term effects. It should allow action on the world. This sort of player would likely enjoy controlling fiefdoms and larger numbers of obedient soldiers or hirelings. The player is likely goal oriented and should be rewarded for achieving long term tasks.
WATER: This school also has a long term focus, however, unlike earth, it is expert at interaction with the world and story rather than imposing action. Water is about learning, divination, and subtlety. The player is likely relationship oriented and should be rewarded for developing genuine long term relationships.
AIR: This school, like fire, is short term in focus but instead of being focused on imposing or acting on the other PCs it focuses on interaction with them. An air character might be interested in conducting multiple quests, coming up with new and novel ways to communicate or share experiences and information. The player may actually be interested in interacting out of character with other players or be particularly theatrical. This character should literally be a breath of fresh air, and the player may want to be able to act somewhat irresponsibly without dooming the party or their character. The player should be rewarded for entertaining and engaging others.

Defining Characters

2010-10-02T09:38:00.004-08:00

About a year ago, Dave Noonan, one of the 4E designers, posted a series on roles in D&D. While he got some of his history wrong and was much derided by some of the OSR types, I thought there were some interesting things to think about.

How did OD&D mechanically define characters? Sidebar: I don't care about roleplaying differentiation. Obviously you can play one fighter as a noble knight errant and another as a thieving brigand. I am referring to the system's actual crunchy differentiation.

Class: Fighter / Magic-User / Cleric. This differentiation defined a lot of your mechanics used, abilities, and so on. I would argue that the most important thing determining what class a player should pick is their experience. Novice players would have the most success with fighters, which were relatively simple and easy to play. High level fighters had access to magic swords which made them a little more interesting. Middling players could pick clerics, who started to introduce some special abilities like turn undead and spells, although a level 1 cleric had no spells. Finally, advanced players might select a magic-user, which was definitely a challenge to keep alive but theoretically had the most power if played wisely. A party didn't necessarily need all three roles filled but it helps a lot. Dwarves are basically a subclass of fighters, and elves are the "fifth wheel" jack of all trades, switching as needed between fighters and magic-users.
Primary Ability Score: Your best ability score largely drove what class you should pick. You'd get an XP bonus and sometimes other minor bonuses based on this score. Sure, you could play a fighter with 17 INT and 10 STR but it probably isn't smart. This basically allocates roles randomly if you use random ability score generation. This is good with an experienced crew because it ensures all the key roles are filled, but it is bad because the roles may not be allocated according to player skill.
Other Ability Scores: Other abilities had minor effects which served to differentiate characters of hte same class. A fighter with 18 DEX might play a little differently than a fighter with 18 CHA.
Spells or Equipment: Magic Users could pick different spells which made them different from any other MU; martial types could use different weapons or armor.

AD&D expanded on this somewhat, but not fundamentally. You basically had four core roles (Ftr/MU/Cleric/Thief) which were still based on player skill. I'd argue that fighters and then clerics are the easiest to pick up, and thieves and mages the hardest to play well. Ability score generation might allow you to arrange the scores to taste which gave the player more control over the character generated; a mixed blessing because you might end up stuck in one role ("Well, your cleric just died... But we really need a cleric on the team... So why don't you drop that 17 in WIS and make another one?"). More subclasses and more important ability score riders basically improved differentiation between the roles, as well as some cross over. A paladin and fighter both filled the same role but the paladin had a bit of cleric flavor too. Race also became a seperate thing; this doesn't seem to have a systematic effect on the system, however. Multi and dual classing allowed a bit more mixing between previously rigid niches.

4E is the most radical departure in some ways. In 4E, characters are broken out as follows:

Role: Defender, Leader, Striker/Controller (DPS). This is the key thing that a party needs one of each to be balanced. There is also some relationship to ability scores. For example, leaders generally don't use DEX (and often prefer CHA).
Power Source: Martial, Arcane, Divine, Primal, Etc. This determines the flavor that a character uses to accomplish their role's responsibilities. It also has a loose relationship to ability scores. For example, many arcane characters favor INT (but not all). This actually encourages a party to all pick different power sources so as to cover all the different ability scores.
Race: Races sometimes have a slight leaning towards a role. For example, Half-Elves feel like leaders. However, there is no strong niche protection. Every party doesn't need an elf; every party does need a defender though.
Class: A combination of Role + Power Source. For example, a Divine Leader is a cleric. A Martial Leader is a warlord. Sometimes there are two options within a given combination; rogues and rangers are both Martial Strikers. Thus, class provides some degree of differentiation, almost like subclasses did in AD&D.
Primary Ability Scores: Each character usually has two primary ability scores that they are pumping throughout their career. One will be mandatory and determined by their class. Most classes then offer two other options to pick from which will have your character "lean" towards another role. For example, all shamans will be wise leaders; you can pick INT to lean towards striker though or CON to lean towards defender.
Other Ability Scores: These provide minor differentiation.
Feats: These provide differentiation between characters so that no two Rangers play the exact same.
Powers: Similar to spell and equipment selection in previous edition, these differentiate between characters so that no two Rangers play the exact same.

Noonan writes, "the roles came from somewhere, but they didn't inevitably emerge from player psychology. Players are all too happy to hop roles whenever they get the chance." That is true, in some cases.

In older versions of D&D, I think the most succesful role hopping was in order as player skill improved: Fighter --> Cleric/Thief --> Magic-User. Assuming a group of equally skilled players, however, players might hop roles whenever they got the chance. AD&D encourages this somewhat by making it relatively easy to replace fighters with henchmen, hirelings, and even summoned creatures. There are also several more complicated subclasses for the meatshield role (Defenders/Rangers; more than any other set of sub-class!). That way a group of very experienced players could basically leave out plain fighters in order to play more complicated (and to them, interesting) characters. AD&D also allowed players to arrange ability scores to taste in many cases, which gave players more control over what they played.

In 4E, role hopping isn't really based on player skill. You do need to fill all four roles (although some argue that controller/striker are redundant), though. While there is some preference, I do think that most players are happy to hop roles when they get the chance.

Where does this get us? Well, I've got some thoughts on how to bring this together in a more coherent manner.

ROLE: Roles basically serve as niche protection. They are specialties that your character is the best at. Some examples might be Defender/DPS/Healer, or Pilot/Engineer/Gunner. A game that has niche protection needs at least two different niches. However, if each niche is vitally important (and they should be; who wants to play a role that doesn't matter?) then the more niches you have, the larger the player group must be. For example, 4E is predicated on a group of five players; thus there are four roles to fill. I personally think that a group size of 3-4 players is most reasonable and attainable, especially these days, so something like three niche roles is probably good.

I think some games have a problem with too many niches. For example, Shadowrun has Street Samurai, Adepts, Faces, Hackers/Deckers, Riggers, and Magicians. You'd need six players to cover each role. Plus, the roles are so highly specialized and use unique rule space that I think it makes it hard to have a coherent and interesting adventure. The rigger -- specialized in operating vehicles -- will love a car chase but the adept will probably suck at it.

You can have more niches with smaller groups by using some contrivances:

Make some niches easily replaceable. AD&D does this with fighters. It is easy to find meatshields.
Make it easier to cover multiple niches. In AD&D, multi and dual classing allows some covering of multiple niches with one character. Interestingly, the dual-classing mechanics make it very easy to cover the fighter role (hrm... poor fighter...). Many of the best dual-classes start as fighters or clerics then switch to something else.
Have sub-classes that lean towards a second niche. AD&D has a paladin (fighter leaning cleric) and ranger (argueably a fighter leaning thief). 4E explicitly has many classes lean towards different sub roles. Paladins (defenders) can lean striker or leader, for example. If you're missing a key niche, then having two characters minor in it can help cover. For example, if an AD&D party is missing a pure cleric, then you could cover for it by having a paladin and a multiclass cleric around.

MEANS: The means that a character uses are how they fill their role. This, I argue, should be based on player typology. I think you could either use the Bartle CARD roles or the WOTC player roles study or Myers Briggs types. In theory, a given player will probably have a preference for one means over another -- and that's ok. In theory, players who are interested in social interaction with their other players should be rewarded by the system for that. Allowing some bleed over between roles isn't a bad idea as not every player can be easily pigeon holed.

PLAYER SKILL LEVEL: You should be able to set gamplay to easy for a new guy or hard for an experienced veteran. I think everyone's seen a novice player struggle with playing a magic-user at the AD&D table and get frustrated with the experience; they just want to sling spells and they keep dying and getting expected to carefully ration resources! Ideally, I think there'd by a way to move from an easy set up to a harder set up throughout play. THat was, as a player gains experience, they can dial up the difficulty without making a new character. These are some ways to control difficulty of play:

Survivability: Easy means more surviveable. Fighters have D10s; magic users had D4s.
Nova: Easy means that the player has little control over how quickly their offensive resources are used up. Fighters have a good THAC0 chart and good AC all the time, but find it hard to dish out a ton of hurt in a short period of time. A harder play style requires the player to carefully dish out resources at critical moments. A first level magic-user only gets one Sleep bomb. It is like a nuke, but the player must carefully decide when to drop it.
Choice: Easy means fewer choices. Fighters choose what armor to wear and what weapon to wield and that's about it. Moreover, in OD&D, weapon choice doesn't even really matter that much. AD&D introduces some bad choices (fighters shouldn't specialize in clubs) but fighters still have few options. Hard means more choices. Spell casters must carefully assemble their spell books and choose what to memorize each day.
Mobility: Easy characters are not very mobile. They don't derive much benefit from positioning (i.e. it doesn't matter where they are) and can't get around very easily. Hard characters derive a lot of benefits from being in the right place in the right time and have the mobility needed to make it happen.
Mechanics: Easy characters use one unified mechanic. Roll high on a D20. Hard characters may require players to do more complicated dice gymnastics.

POWER SOURCE: How does the character accomplish their role? What are the "special effects" associated with their actions? Some examples might be arcane, divine, martial, etc. In a sci-fi game, maybe it is Hacking, Cybernetics, Psionics, or Vehicles. I think this is more campaign dependent than anything else. You could overlap this with one of the other factors above as desired. For example, AD&D overlaps power source with Player Skill (Arcane = Hard, Divine = Medium, Martial = Easy). I think it would also be cool to allow players to change power sources in play. For example, if you want to make magic rare and special, it could be something that can be gained only later in a character's career after a special quest rather than from level 1 on up. As another example, perhaps Primal power can only be obtained after going on a Spirit or Vision Quest.

DIFFERENTIATION: How are otherwise identical characters differentiated? Are there little unique traits associated with ability scores, feats, or other choices?

Put all this together and what do you get?

ROLE (3: tank/healer/DPS, or something else) x MEANS (4: CARD or WOTC or Myers Briggs) x PLAYER SKILL LEVEL (3: easy/medium/hard) x POWER SOURCE (4+/-3 choices; could be random, campaign dependent) x DIFFERENTIATION (4+/-3 choices; could be random).

That gives you 36 different combinations before factoring in power sources or differentiation, or any options to "hybrid" or multiclass. For example, if you have no feats/ability scores for differentiation, and only one power source, then you can have 36 combinations. You might have a Thinker Easy Tank, or an Explorer Hard DPS.

Sundog the RPG

2010-09-26T21:28:00.006-08:00

As a kid, I spent many happy hours playing Sundog on our Atari computer. In a nutshell, it was a great little space trading game that really maximized the potential of that early computer. It operated on four scales; travel on foot, travel in your ground rover pod, and of course, space based travel both within systems and between systems. I think that it might make a great pen and pencil game. There's still dedicated fans today, and that speaks to how much fun that game could be!

What do characters do?
The overarching goal of the game is to help a fledgling colony stand up on its feet by delivering needed supplies. In order to do this, characters will need to acquire money, explore planets, and fight off pirates.

What is the scale of the action?
Play occurs on four scales.

Individual/street level. Players wander city streets, visiting bars, hotels, banks, warehouses, tube transit stations, and stores. They have to deal with muggers.
Travel Pod/planet level. Players drive their ship's landing pod(s) on the planet's surface. The original game had no threats other than starvation and the main challenge here was a navigational puzzle to find your way from one location to the next by expending minimal resources. One could easily include some ground-based combat action in the ship's pod. Early in the game, you could only land on a planet's main spaceport. If you wanted to explore elsewhere, you needed to drive the pod.
Spaceship/Solar. The SunDog could fly from planet to planet within a system. The primary threat here was pirate attackers. Pirates could be fast talked, bribed, or fought off, or you could run for the nearest planet to land or outside the star's gravity well to make a hyper jump. A risk is running out of fuel; you can always charter a rescue ship to deliver fuel to your vessel, but that is costly and while you're waiting you are a sitting duck.
Spaceship/Interstellar: The ship can jump from star system to star system. Each star system has different trading opportunities. The primary risks here are much the same as in solar travel.

What do players do?

This is a game where one can easily institute some "niche protection" via classes or templates. As much of the action occurs in vehicles, it makes sense to have roles related to the vehicle. There should only be 2-3 critical roles so as to allow smaller groups to viably crew the ship. Here are some possible roles:

Engineer
Pilot
Gunner
Sensors Operator

I avoid a Captain explicitly as that should be something for the players to work out among themselves. One can imagine exciting action sequences with something for each player to do each round; the pilot is navigating the vessel towards the nearest planet as fast as possible, the gunner is holding off a pilot raider, and the engineer is trying to keep patched-together systems viable as long as possible. It might sound boring to be doing anything other than shooting; however, I recall some tense sequences where the ship was shaking and shuddering around my character while I frantically rummaged through the parts locker for a shunt to get the warp drive back online for that jump to hyperspace.

On the ground, the same roles translate pretty well to the pod. However, navigation becomes more important as the game transitions to more of an exploration mode.

Finally, on foot, the individuals will need ways to deal with muggers. They'll also have the opportunity to go shopping, to make deals in bars, and to role play with other NPCs.

Anyways, I'm kind of excited about this game. I think it could be fairly simple to design and I'm going to put some more thought into it. At least it is different from the D&D stuff I've been thinking about lately!

Here are some notes about the key features of the game for future reference:

Character's Ability Scores: Charisma, Luck, Dexterity, Stamina
Character's Stats: Hunger, Vigor, Rest, Health
Character Items: Rapidheal, Shield, Stinger, Scatter Gun, Burger, Beer, Peptab, Dextboost, Charmer, Nutrapack
Ship's Systems: Sub-C Engines, Warp Engines, Pilotage, Guns, Tactical, Shields

Specialty Clerics: Fharlanghn

2010-09-25T16:01:00.002-08:00

Fharlanghn, the Dweller on the Horizon, is the Oeridian god of Horizons, Distance, Travel, and Roads. He is a well-known deity on the world of Oerth. He wanders that world in person, his petitioners present in spirit form at crossroads and in mysterious oases. His symbol is a disk with a curved line representing the horizon, and an upturned crescent above that.
- Per Wikipedia

New Prime Requisite: CON
Alignment: TN
XP Penalty: 5%
Level 2: Bonus Language, Enchanted Quarterstaff
Level 6: Mount
Level 12: Bonus Language
Special: Traveller's Luck
Special: Overland Speed Bonus

Description of Benefits:

Bonus Languages: At the designated levels, clerics of Fharlanghn may learn an additional language due to their propensity to wander and meet individuals from all over the realm. This ability is hard to evaluate in cost according to our rubric; one could argue that mastery of languages is a magic-user class feature, but if it is, it is a weak one. -1.25%.
Enchanted Quarterstaff: The cleric may use the magic-user's spell Enchanted Weapon, but only on quarterstaves. Note that the quarterstaff is generally an inferior weapon except for magic staves which can be excellent; this allows a cleric of Fharlanghn to use his deity's favored weapon without it being a totally sub-par choice. Normally a spell costs -2.5%. However, this is a very limited application of the spell, so 1/2 seems appropriate.
Mount: Clerics of Fharlanghn may cast the mount spell as a bonus spell. This enhances their mobility and ability to wander. This is a useful travel and utility spell, and worth the full -2.5%.
Traveller's Luck: The cleric enjoys a percentage chane equal to their level that a baneful overland travel or random encounter is avoided. The DM should secretly roll, and if the dice show a result lower than the cleric's level, the encounter does not occur or is replaced with a neutral or friendly encounter. This is another hard to evaluate ability that nicely scales with level and is useful at all times in the cleric's career. We could argue that classes like the Ranger also have an ability to avoid baneful encounters, and this is a more limited application of that. 2.5%.
Overland Speed Bonus: The cleric gains a bonus to overland speed in inches equal to their level divided by four when marching on foot. Thus a 5th level cleric of Fharlanghn with a normal move of 9" enjoys an overland travel speed of 10". This allows a cleric of Fharlanghn to wear heavier armor yet keep up with lightly-clad and fast moving groups. This is another quite limited benefit, difficult to evaluate. Perhaps worth 1.25%.

This gives us a total of 10% in costs, -2.5% for the blanket offset for a total of 7.5%. However, because few of the abilities are really directly combat related, I will reduce it to a 5% XP penalty.

An interesting twist

2010-09-24T23:36:00.001-08:00

I'm not always a huge fan of the DF Workshop because all too often it is just a repository of an endless stream of new monsters, magic items, and spells. I already have more of each of those than can be used.

Here's a person's twist on a variant version of D&D. Not saying I love it but it is interesting and a breath of fresh air!

AD&D Specialty Clerics Series

2010-09-19T14:04:00.003-08:00

Sorry for the light posting! It has been a busy and beautiful summer in Alaska. Given that we're still in the midst of hunting season I expect posting to remain light until the winter closes in on us.

As a holdover for my loyal readers (and Chinese Gold Farming Comment Bots) I'm going to start a weekly series that discusses specialty clerics for AD&D. The purpose of specialty priests is to differentiate the different types of priesthoods. It also slightly power-ups the cleric class. Clerics are already very formidable -- I think they are the most potent class in the game. However, there is usually no surplus of them at the gaming table. Nobody wants to be the "medic" or "heal bot." However, clerics are the heart and soul of a party. I'm alright with "souping them up" if it means they are more popular.

Expect these posts about once per week.

GYGAX'S SPECIALTY PRIESTS

Specialty clerics have long been thought about for AD&D; in A Guide to the World of Greyhawk (Gygax, 1983), Gary introduced a series of specialty clerics. These variants on the core class gave specialized benefits at the cost of XP penalties. Unfortunately, there are problems with implementation.

Gary's benefits are not evenly spread out. Some are front loaded (i.e., you get all the goodies in early levels) and others are delayed until name level or later, when they won't really come into play at all. For example, the Cleric of Heironious puts up with a 10% XP penalty his entire career to get a 1x/week bolt of energy (which is pretty awesome) at level 11. That's great if you're playing a name level campaign but useless if the campaign will end by level 7. Others are front loaded, which makes them prime candidates for a quick dual-class dip.

As previously mentioned, Gygax imposes XP penalties on clerics who take advantage of their special abilities. After some analysis, this is the rule of thumb I've drawn from his work:

Adding a Class Function from another class: -5% XP
Adding a Bonus Spell, perhaps from another class: -2.5%
Blanket Offset: +2.5% (this basically means a specialty cleric gets "something for nothing")

Thus, clerics are generally souped up a small amount by Gary's work, at least gaining a spell for free. These are VERY approximate formulas, and I don't know how much Gary tested them out.

MY METHODOLOGY

I've added abilities to clerics in exchange for XP penalties, similar in broad terms to what Gary pioneered. However, I have spread out the abilities to fill in "dead" levels where an AD&D cleric traditionally gets nothing. Here's an analysis of the AD&D cleric and what they get at each level:

Level I Spells
Nothing
Level II Spells
New THAC0 and saves
Level III spells, weapon proficiency
Nothing
Level IV spells, new THAC0 and saves, Scribe Scrolls
Followers
Level V spells, Weapon Proficiency, Stronghold, Penultimate Turn Undead Chart, Last HD
Level 10 - New THAC0 & saves
Level VI spells, Make Magic Items
Nothing
New THAC0 & saves, Proficiency
Nothing
Nothing
Level VII spells, new THAC0 & saves

Abilities have been placed to fill "dead levels" as much as possible, or to provide growing benefits over the entire career of the cleric to discourage dual-class dips. "Front loading" abilities at level 2 allows clerics to quickly get a definitive ability. Level 12 abilities should be rare capstones. The exception are deities -- often evil -- which are really intended more for shamans or multiclasses (like half orcs). In this case, they remain front loaded. This is intentional, as it allows those shamans to access the benefits and it encourages a short sighted dual class dip to get power -- at the cost of alignment.

Abilities have also been selected with an eye towards maximizing underused spells and weapons. For example, the Battleaxe rarely gets much love as it is inferior to the longsword, making it ideal for a specialty priest. The same goes for many underutilized spells.

In addition to an XP penalty, each specialty priest adds a few new requirements.

New Prime Requisite: Wisdom is the default prime requisite of a cleric. It remains so with specialty clerics, but they also usually add a second prime requisite, similar to other subclasses (Paladins need CHA, etc). A specialty cleric must have at least a score of 15 in the new Prime Requisite. They must have greater than 15 for bonus XP. This is actually often a significant cost as it prevents clerics from putting scores in more useful abilities. If the new prime req is WIS, then it requires a 15 WIS (i.e., you can't be a specialty cleric with marginal WIS).
Alignment: A Specialty Cleric's alignment must exactly match that of their deity.

In general, all mentioned abilities are bonuses. So, if a spell is listed, that is a bonus spell slot which does not tie up a cleric's daily memorized quota, although it must be memorized as any other spell must be (time to rest, time for prayer, etc). A weapon proficiency or other feature is also a bonus, unless otherwise mentioned.

EXAMPLES

Here is the example cleric of Pelor, the NG Sun God.

New Prime Requisite: CHA
Alignment: NG
XP Penalty: 10%
Light (2), Cure Disease 1x/week & Lay on Hands as Paladin (2), Cloak of Bravery (6), Sunbeam (12)

At level 2, Clerics of Pelor take on their two primary roles: That of servants of the Sun (light), and that of exceptional healers. The minor paladin-like abilities grow throughout the cleric's career, encouraging progression in the cleric class.
At level 6 -- normally a dead level -- clerics of Pelor are able to cast Cloak of Bravery one level before they would otherwise. This spell allows them to confront evil. Moreover, this is a spell which is rarely memorized.
At level 12, the cleric gains a capstone ability that really symbolizes his class, the power of the sun and the ability to vanquish the undead.
A -10% XP penalty is paid to offset the three bonus spells and paladin abilities. Calculated, it should be -15%; three spells (-7.5%), two class functions (-10%), and the blanket offset (+2.5%). Consequently, 10% may seem generous. However, the cleric only gains one new non-cleric spell (Sunbeam) at a high level. Also, the Remove Disease paladin ability, which costs 5% is essentially obsolete by level 5 when it can be easily memorized far more than once per week and by level 7 when it can easily be scribed onto a scroll. Given that most of the spells are clerical -- i.e., little access to out of class powers -- and the cure disease feature is of limited utility past the lower levels, 10% seems appropriate.

Here's another cleric, one of Erynthul:

New Prime Requisite: STR
Alignment: CE
XP Penalty: 10%
Scare (2)

This minor ability fills a dead level. It also is a low-level ability, allowing shamans or half-orc clerics to take advantage of it. No XP penalty is needed to pay for this very minor ability.

Perfection Point

2010-09-18T18:21:00.002-08:00

I saw an interesting blurb in a magazine about a new book, The Perfection Point: Sport Science Predicts the Fastest Man, the Highest Jump, and the Limits of Athletic Performance
. It is about the physical theoretical human limits of athletic performance. For example, the author comes up with some of these estimates:

100 meter dash: Record 9.58 seconds, theoretical max 8.99 seconds
Longest golf drive: Record 418 yards, theoretical max 543 yards
Highest dunk: Record 12 feet, theoretical max 14' 5"

I don't have the book yet but it seems like it could be quite interesting for game design if you want to know what the "best of the best" mortal performance should be.

Average =	2.9174382716
Spread =	0.990762073825
Mean deviation =	0.767008649596

Average =	4.47929526749
Spread =	0.916573125002
Mean deviation =	0.775236687698