March Madness OGBC: Day 25

"Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?"

I've talked before, somewhat maliciously and long-windedly, about how D&D 4e strove to adopt aspects of wargaming and by doing so, court some long-standing members of that genre. I also mentioned that the plan failed pretty miserably, the system being a schizophrenic Frankenstein's monster of MMORPG and boardgame elements.

Now time to talk about a game that used a similar strategy and actually succeeded, at least in the gameplay mechanics. Only time will tell if the system takes off commercially; but personally, I really hope it does.

It's Iron Kingdoms again!

As I've likely mentioned before, Iron Kingdoms began as a D&D setting, then evolved into the wargame Warmachine, which became pretty popular, and inspired them to return to the RPG format. Thus: Iron Kingdoms RPG.

While I find that the system prevails over D&D 4e in many places, I'm going to focus on  Combat and Roleplaying.

Combat:

While 4e had the tendency to grind to a halt due to the morass of class powers and level glut, with each combat taking anywhere from one to three hours to complete while feeling like they were taking twice as long to complete (especially with larger parties), Iron Kingdoms feels swift and streamlined, utilizing the same engine as WarmaHordes, which has proved to be a popular and easy system to learn and use.

Tracking abilities can occasionally be a hassle when you first acquire them, but each is fully defined and becomes second nature once you've acclimated to it, and you're never inundated with new skills or abilities: each come at a steady pace, even slowing down once you reach higher experience levels. And if you want, you never really have to choose new abilities, there are always alternate options when leveling. The option to determine your character's battle complexity is a fantastic way to ensure even novice gamers can pick up and play.

Roleplaying:

Obviously, in just about any roleplaying game you have the ability to, well, play a role, and there are indeed some systems that have mechanics that actively encourage this by providing a mechanical means by which to assist in player decision making, or even in creating in-game backstory plot points that can be utilized by the GM for developing stories.

Iron Kingdoms has a tiny bit of the latter, with your characters' careers somewhat defining how they've spent their lives up to this point. However, what I'm really appreciative about the system is that it doesn't have barriers to roleplaying. Experience is doled out for player action, not for killing enemies. For a RPG based off a wargame, this is a fantastic step for Privateer Press to take, utilizing a storytelling experience reward system, rather than something combat or loot-based. This allows players who abhor combat encounters to improve by resolving intrigues or investigating mysteries, rather than looking for the next piñata to beat xp out of.

Iron Kingdoms is a fantastic example of a gaming system that has evolved beyond its roots, and I look forward to every time I can sit at a table and play it.

Hard-to-Kill: Figuring out Healing

This post is in response to Keith Davies' article On Hit Points and Healing, as well as his follow-up. I'll be approaching from a BRP standpoint, as I'm currently converting 2e AD&D Dark Sun to a BRP system, and am willing to take whatever help I can get to create a unique feel to the conversion while retaining the cinematic edge that I so enjoy infusing into my games. I'll be aping some of the format of the original articles, to hopefully add cohesion for those who want to read them all.

The original blogs create the concept of Hit Points as Hard-To-Kill points, a measure of when a character has taken so much minor physical abuse that the next attack would strike a vital spot on them. It's a unique way of solving the issue of the massive amounts of hit points higher-tier D&D characters obtain through level bonuses, and I was curious to see how it converted to BRP.

To summarize: in theory, there are two types of damage; described as 'normal' and 'real' damage. Because my most recently played videogame was Resonance of Fate, I'll be calling them 'scratch' and 'direct' damage.

Normal/Scratch damage is light, superficial injury that hinders you and wears down your ability to defend yourself effectively from attacks. This can take the form of unarmed strikes (being punched in the face), armed attacks (a leg gash from a sword, a ringing blow on your shield arm from a mace, etc), or even energy attacks (being singed by dragon's breath). Your hit points, in this case, aren't just a buffer of meat or fat for soaking hits, they also represent your ability to turn lethal strikes into grazes. You still bleed, but your organs remain intact. For the time being.

Real/Direct damage is what happens when your Hard-To-Kill runs out or is circumvented somehow, whether through a critical hit or an attack that you are particularly vulnerable to. In BRP, I'd argue that impaling attacks, critical hits, and attacks dealing enough damage to cause a major wound would fall under Direct Damage.

In most games, you'll be taking Scratch damage more frequently than Direct damage, and the argument posited by Keith Davies is that with each short breather you recover your Scratch through rest or light care, but Direct damage requires actual healing to be performed (or in-game healing mechanics to take over) to recover hit points.

Those are the basics, let's jump in!

Out-of Combat Healing in BRP

Now, there are three 'normal' ways for a character to be healed in BRP outside of combat: First Aid, Natural Healing, and Medicine.
-First Aid: For each separate wound, a character can attempt a First Aid roll to immediately heal 1d3 points of damage.
-Natural Healing: At the end of an in-game week, a character recovers (potentially another) 1d3 hit points.
-Medicine: Each week as the in-game healing is rolled, a character can use Medicine on a wounded character to give them an additional 1d3 hit points recovered that week.

Therefore, the first week after the injuries are sustained, a character can regain 3d3 hit points, followed by a further 2d3 per week until fully healed.

This method of healing is workable for protracted campaigns where there can be a goodly amount of downtime between combats, but in high-battle systems like D&D (or Dark Sun), you'll be taking consistent wounds and needing to track the days between healing rolls, creating a significant amount of crunch not only for the player to track, but the GM as well. Incorporating Scratch damage that heals during one's first breather outside of battle is an concept that's been touched on in systems like 4e, where a short rest and expenditure of healing surges gets you back to full health.

But at the same time I hate 4e, and the way it incorporates healing is stupid, because I hate it. Nyah.

Recovering Hard-to-Kill (or Scratch Damage)

In all seriousness, 4e's short rest is decent-enough mechanic blanketed under convoluted terminology, and I want to make it better. Luckily, with enough house-ruling, anything can be made better. So let's look at this scratch damage, and this resting time frame. Obviously, a person needs a goodly amount of rest to catch their wind when they're wiped. You don't fully recover from a 400 meter sprint or 3 minute round of intense boxing in just five minutes. So let's change that to a minute of rest per Scratch damage HP being healed. There isn't much worry to be had there in terms of time-constraints, as hit points don't increase in BRP like they do in D&D, and therefore the time it takes a person to get their second wind (groan) shouldn't change much over the course of their career.

Taking Hits (Scratch vs. Direct Damage)

So if we have a mechanic to separate types of damage and how each are healed, we should have a set of qualifiers for when a character would take each type of damage.

Scratch Damage: A character potentially takes scratch damage any time an attack connects with them. Whether that damage is registered as Direct Damage is determined by a series of qualifiers.

Direct Damage: Attacks that should deal direct damage are as follows:
-Critical Hits; the attack was either executed skillfully or your character botched their defensive roll. A blade slips between the plates of your armor or you accidentally weave into the strike, instead of away from it.
-Impales; similar to above, except only with piercing weapons. Your armor/technique is ineffective and did not prevent the weapon from driving into your innards. Heh, innards.
-Major Wounds; attacks that deal damage equal to half a character's total hit points. These attacks, if they had a little less force behind them, could have been Scratch Damage, but the inertia behind the blow transfers so much power that it slams into a shield arm or through a barrier of armor, severely damaging the body part beneath.
-Kryptonite; Not literally, of course, but attacks that deal damage that a particular character is vulnerable to obviously deal direct damage.

Moving on.

Hit Points as Mana

Now this is a gem in itself, perfectly lending itself to the Dark Sun setting (and even to BRP a bit, as well). The original descriptor was of a mage using his own life force to fuel his spells, and to be fair, the original D&D games don't have a "Mana" mechanic. But BRP does. Magic Points are equal to your POW, but what if you expend all your MP and still want to cast spells? Well, then you dredge them from your life, of course. And, of course, this always causes Direct Damage, because you're eating into your life essence to do so.

This works even more amazingly with the concept of Defiling in Dark Sun, because casters can drain the life from others around them to fuel their spells. A POW vs POW on the resistance table can represent who successfully resists being defiled, but the rest of the surrounding figures take damage. This has the potential to be overpowered because you could drain HP from enemies with the casting of the spell as well as the spell itself, but on Athas, everyone wants to kill mages. You might get one spell off before everyone in your immediate area swarms you under or pincushions you with arrows. Hell, your own group might murder you.

Final Thoughts

Obviously, this type of modification to the hit point rules requires a re-think of how much fluff you want in your games, because you'll need to describe in more detail what's happening with each attack. However, I'm optimistic about its use, and don't mind going the extra mile, especially when, say, you can use hit location dice to assist in your descriptions. It's likely there will be some things to iron out during gameplay, but chances are they won't be too strenuous, and the new hit point system won't make BRP too easy. Because if it does, well, I'm just going to have to post again and fix that, wont I?

March Madness OGBC: Day 1

So here we are, starting off a month of non-D&D gaming trivia about my sordid roleplaying past. What dark secrets will be revealed over the next 30 days?

Fucked if I know.

"What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?"

Welp, it's time to harken back about five years and talk about Pathfinder. Or is that too close to D&D, being basically 3.75?

Fine. Then let's go back four years and talk about Call of Cthulhu. I honestly don't remember how I got into CoC, it's a blank spot in my memory that likely has to do with Yog Sothoth's Bradford Players actual plays. I was happily enjoying alternating my time between 4e and Pathfinder, and listening to Actual Plays by Penny Arcade about Keep on the Shadowfell, and decided to look for other RPG podcasts. And I found Horror on the Orient Express, which was fantastic. Characters that weren't heroic, trying to stave off madness and indescribable horrors, while solving mysteries in 1920s Europe?

Sign me the fuck up.

Speaking of HotOE, I'm super looking forward to the re-release of the campaign, and will be playing through it later this year, courtesy of the Esoteric Order of Roleplayers. Along with Call of Cthulhu 7th, which is another landmark for me, an updated system that I'm actually looking forward to, because it doesn't entirely throw out the previous system's rules.

Oh man, I can't even go through a non-D&D blog without sniping D&D. I may have a problem.

The Vilification of 4e: Setting Things Straight

So, I've mentioned before that I co-host a bi-weekly podcast called Unabashed Gaming. This essentially gives me a soapbox to yell from every 14 days, and I seem to yell an awful lot about how much I really dislike D&D 4th Edition, 4e for short. The amusing part of all this is that I started gaming with 4th Edition about six years ago, so nostalgia plays a part of what I remember about the game.

Unfortunately, that nostalgia is a double-edged sword, because when I compare my gaming today with my gaming of yesteryears, I wonder what exactly I liked about the game. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't.

Here are a few preconceptions/critiques of 4th Edition, and my thoughts on them.

1. It's Basically World of Warcraft

Short response: Eh, sort of.

(Fine, I'll give a ) Longer response: In essence, it's understandable that WotC would want to make their game similar to WoW or Wargaming. As a company interested in making money, they were following industry trends, which showed a massive market for MMO players. So, fiscally, it makes sense that 4th Edition would ape some of their mechanics to try and bribe some new players into the fold. However, as evidenced by the rapidly approaching release date of D&D Next, we should probably realize that WotC either didn't get the conversions they were hoping for, didn't please existing fans enough, or both. Probably both.

How is 4e like World of Warcraft? Part of it is likely the art style, now very comic/anime-esque- Interjection here, I'm a fan of this art style, so I don't believe this is a negative aspect of 4e- part of it is the introduction of the Powers system, which I'll get to in a minute. But other pieces of the game system bring out that aspect of WoW/MMOs as well.

The monster design, for one. D&D 4e breaks down monsters into categories, Artillery, Controller, Brute, and Soldier. I may be missing one or two, but basically that's what you've got to work with as a DM. Two 'plinky' creature types and two 'stabby' creature types. These are slightly varied by Minions and Solos, and that other creature type which is basically half a Solo. Elites.

However, Minions, Elites, and Solos still fall under the ACBS categories, so there's still a 50% chance that one will stab you versus shooting you. This tends to create combat encounters that feel less like actual roleplaying and more like moving pieces on a board or clicking something until it dies. The monster combat 'roles' basically generate a static AI for the DM to run, a set of triggers where trigger A leads to action B, or stimuli C leads to power D. There's an interesting rant on Caffeinated Symposium regarding 3.5 vs 4e, and despite not being too much into TL/DR, the author makes a point about running Kobold encounters, where in prior versions of D&D they were designed to be like guerilla forces, setting traps and using environmental hazards to combat players. However, using just the base Monster Manual rules for Kobolds in 4e, they basically turn into low-level cannon fodder, with certain 'buffed' variations offering a challenge to your beatstick characters. There's slight mention of them setting traps and ambushes, but no hints on how a Kobold trap might function or look; rather, the MM1 spends the rest of its time talking about the combat mechanics of this very non-combat-oriented monster race.

The elimination, or sidelining, of monstrous culture, can definitely have 4e feeling like a video game or even board game, especially with the new variations with distance and area-effect powers. No longer using measurements in inches or feet for powers/weapons, they've started using 5-foot squares as units of measurement, further necessitating the purchase of miniatures (or character tiles). Now, there's nothing wrong with using minis in RPGs; it brings back fond memories of Hero's Quest and Dragonstrike for me, but the appeal for a lot of RPG fans is the ability to sidestep rules in order to facilitate better storytelling.

With the new combat rules, it almost feels like 4e is sidestepping storytelling in order to facilitate a better board game.

2. Combat Powers

Occasionally I think about going back to 4th Edition and running a few games, and what tends to stop me is the absolute glut that is the combat powers system. If anything felt like D&D turning into a MMO, it had to be this new change, where you no longer just hit someone with your sword, you did something 'special' at the same time. At first glance, it seems to be an interesting attempt to add some of the prior versions of D&D's combat feats/abilities to more standardized combat, but in the end it seemed to take on a definite bloat, especially in the bookkeeping aspect of the game. This nightmare of numbers comes from the concept of buffing/nerfing, which a goodly number of powers (and combat mechanics) in 4e have the ability to do. When it takes each player an addition minute each turn to determine their attack bonus because they need to figure out the interactions between flanking, invisibility, power attack, that buff their wizard cast on them, that nerf the enemy controller cast on them, cover, concealment, and any racial/class power they have access to this turn, things get busy really and are hardly ever 100% accurate.

Compound this with the concept of At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers, and suddenly if you want combat to actually matter or feel difficult in 4th Edition, you have to pace and plot every encounter so that:

a) your players don't have an opportunity to take an 8-hour rest between fights where they just blow dailies and destroy every enemy in the first round of every combat.

b) your players retain an opportunity to heal to full after every encounter, because monsters tend to have equal or more hit points than characters, and they start at full hp at each fight.

c) you don't set up encounters a) and b) in such a way that subsequent ones make it impossible for the weakened characters to win.

Combat powers also have a hand in my next point, which is...

 3. Combat is a Slog

Standard procedure when plotting out a game session in 4e is to set aside an hour for Each. Combat. Encounter.  And that's just in the early game. Once your players start getting utility powers that activate on minor or move actions, suddenly their turns take three times as long, because they have to look up the rules for three different powers. Then, of course, monsters also have powers, and those can also be minor and standard actions. This is in addition to all the calculations of nerfs/buffs, and suddenly that super-easy math for leveling up your characters doesn't mean shit because every other aspect is a math SAT word problem, and seriously? fuck word problems. Fuck them so much.

I mentioned in my last point that if you want to have combat matter, you need to plot out at least two, possibly three, probably more than that combat encounters (especially once you've reached paragon and epic tiers) if you want to keep your players on their toes, because with one combat encounter in a game's day cycle, there's nothing stopping the players from blowing through Dailies on round one (and two, once you reach level 5. And hey, round three at level 10!) That's right, unless you throw a freaking higher-level Solo at them as their only combat encounter for a 24 hour period, they're going to waltz through anything your random encounter table can generate.

This may work well in standard fantasy settings: after all, goblins don't tend to mess with higher-level parties traveling around doing good and all, but what about alternate settings that WotC actually published material forin 4e? What about Dark Sun? EVERYTHING is supposed to be able to kill you in Dark Sun. Plants can kill you in Dark Sun! The fucking SUN is supposed to be able to kill you. There aren't mooks in Dark Sun; when you're traveling around Athas, it's supposed to be a terrifying experience, not knowing if Dune Reapers or Kestrekel or an ID Fiend is waiting for you to walk right into their waiting traps. I ran an Athas campaign that eventually had characters reach level 20, and I had to stop trying to make shit attack them in the desert, because nothing in the Dark Sun Creature Catalog aside from Sorceror Kings or the fucking Dragon could scratch them!

And if you decide to fill an entire day of travel with combat encounters to up the difficulty? Well, that's 3+ hours of combat; for many gaming groups that's their entire session. And treacherous journeys like that can take weeks to traverse. Even with a combat encounter every 3-5 days, that's still about 3-4 sessions of only combat.

Tell me again how 4e is slated toward roleplaying.

4. 4 > 3.5, Because Math

There are indeed advocates for D&D 4th edition, and (very) occasionally I'm one of them. It hasn't even been six months since my last purchase of a 4e core book: the Eberron Campaign setting. I like D&D. They have good worlds, good world-building. Occasionally, I may even take some players through a dungeon crawl.

But that's all I can see doing with 4e. Playing it like an advanced version of Descent, or HeroQuest, or any other dungeon-robbing board game. It's not a viable platform for continued storytelling. Which is probably why I'm converting Dark Sun for playing in another game system. Because Athas deserves a game system where death is always imminent, and it's your wits, rather than massive amounts of hit points, that keep you alive.

I was going to say more in 4e's favor, but I really don't feel like it anymore. If you want to introduce someone to D&D and all you have are the 4th Edition books, go ahead.

But, just so you know: Pathfinder is free.

Comfort Food: Running the Same Game Twice (or More)

Most consumable media is offered with the promise of re-playability.  We listen to music over and over again, we re-watch films.  Re-read favorite books.  Something that rarely happens in the tabletop RPG world is the re-running of games.  There's really not much point to it, after all.  With the exception of tournament/convention games or elimination-style games like Tomb of Horrors, most RPG modules are meant to be played once by a group of people and left behind, the experience attained and then progressed past.

But what about GMs?  Before this year(ish), I'd never run a game more than once.  Now, barely a month in, and I've managed to take a second group of players through the iconic Call of Cthulhu scenario "The Haunting," as well as the Quickstart rule scenario "Nightmare at Hill Manor" for the World of Darkness ruleset.

The Haunting (Call of Cthulhu)

I first ran Haunting for a group of three in 2009, I believe, so returning to the story this past December was a welcome experience, and though I was only barely able to remember some of the details about the first group of investigators, while I ran the most recent game, I found myself recalling some anecdotes about the original run-through.

2009: This game was played live on the radio, within a two-hour time slot, which meant that I was under constraints to keep things moving as swiftly as possible. This restriction actually served to increase the enjoyment for the players, as they were forced to make more rushed, immediate decisions, rather than engage in the all-too-common strategy of spending seemingly endless minutes vacillating over one choice or another.

As an introductory scenario, I was dealing with new players (and I believe it was also the first game I ever ran in Call of Cthulhu), so there was a very minimal amount of rules introduction, as well as some time coming to terms with the dice rolls. It was through this experience that I eventually started minimizing dice rolls, a practice that has continued to this day, to degrees of varying effectiveness.

The three players portrayed a war-weary Jewish journalist who had seen too much of the Great War to ever be normal again, a 1920s lounge singer, and a professor of Archaeology (or possibly Astronomy) at Miskatonic University. This trio stumbled and scraped their way through the twists and turns of the very, very, very haunted Corbit house, eventually burning the place to the ground. I'm still trying to piece back the memory of how they accomplished the conflagration, but gasoline was most certainly involved. This game served as an effective reminder to me for the rest of my Game Mastering career: when one faces something they can't outwit or outfight, they will straight-up light it on fire.

2013: Compared to the first time I ran it, this game was played off the air, away from any recording device whatsoever, but again with novice players. Again, the group was small, just three players, and they ran with pre-generated characters I'd pulled from the back of Call of Cthulhu's rulebook. A lawyer, a private investigator, and a bored dilettante were approached by a landlord who needed a home inspected. Apparently, some fool claimed this house, the Corbit manor, was haunted. Because I was under no time constraints for this game, I was able to introduce the setting and scenario much more slowly to the players, while allowing them to roleplay their relationships and establish in-game bonds.

Also, this time no one set anything on fire. Spoilers.

Coming back to "The Haunting" after three years of experience with its parent ruleset, BRP, enabled me to continue my practice of minimizing dice rolls, and it seemed to engage the players more, especially toward the beginning of the session where they most needed the freedom to stretch, you might say. What I found interesting was that the action never really slowed down while the characters were in the house, only when they took breathers from it to investigate more. This difference in kind, you might call it, is a great way of increasing dread for investigators who must once again venture into the unknown or return to places they've already experienced fear. I find it quite appropriate that even the resting periods serve to amplify the tension of horror games, and I look forward to experimenting with the concept more in the future.

Nightmare at Hill Manor (World of Darkness)

Comparatively, I ran "Hill Manor" for two different gaming groups within five days of each other.  This exercise--combined with the proximity of the two sessions--allowed me to learn more, if not about the scenario itself, about the players and their gaming habits. One group saw a series of problems as unassailable obstacles that required story progression to bypass, while the other used ingenuity and real-world know-how to overcome them.

As both groups were somewhat new to the World of Darkness ruleset, having them run pre-generated characters was an excellent way to get them past the occasional mire of character creation and move right along to the basic mechanics of the game. I'm growing fonder of pre-gens and pre-written campaigns as system introductions because they are designed for players to see a vertical slice of the nuts and bolts of the game system, as well as figure out where they would focus on a character of their own making. Moving through the narrative, you notice (as both a player and GM) what skill rolls are most important or most common, what attributes are called for most frequently, and you get a feel for how you could tailor your play style to the mechanics, in a way that just reading a rulebook would not accomplish.

I found that returning to both games and game systems turned out to be a fantastic way for myself to grow as a GM, as the varying approaches by my players required me to re-think my methods of running each game. In the end, though both basically followed the same plot points, each group encountered completely different events leading up to each story's climax.  The exercise was fantastic for my improvisation, and I'm curious to see where more repeats of previously run material might take me.