Itemized Expenses in RPGs

We've all suffered from under the thumb of GMs who have made us account for every copper spent, every arrow shot, every ration consumed (every half-elf prostitute back-alley murdered, GTA-style), and I'm sure a lot of people are exhausted of the concept of all-consuming accounting when what players most want to do at the table is have their characters shoot arrows into shady fantasy hookers while making it rain and eating the D&D equivalent of filet mignon and then seamlessly move on to ever more glorious acts of simulated sociopathy.

As a player, I tend to agree with the above. As much as I treasure Chargen, I feel that when I sit at a table in front of a GM, the only time I should have to break out the calculator app on my phone is during new character generation or, very occasionally, after a milestone level up is achieved. Having to deal with the minutiae of everyday expenses is tedious enough in the real world, and on those few occasions I actually have the bravery to look at an itemized credit card account statement I feel like the child that is eternally decomposing inside my now-adult psyche just sloughed off another layer of ability to feel pure, unadulterated joy.

That said- and it may come as a surprise to people- but there are players out there that might seek to take advantage of the fact that very few tables tend to enforce even the barest sense of bookkeeping at the table. They purchase expensive weapons in low-money campaigns and fire hails of bullets cast from silvered plutonium. Their materiel expenses per-round can rival a city's yearly operating costs, and they get away with it, too, either in the name of narrative or because we, as GMs, just don't really care to call them on it.

Whether or not this constitutes a problem to you depends on the type of GM you are, and there are all types out there.

Lately, I've become more of a stickler GM. I've begun to sweat the small things, and I've started calling out situations in games where established rules would make some player actions impossible, according to the mechanics of the game.

I'm not saying this to start some kind of discussion over whether or not games are meant to be run RAW (rules as written) or RAI (rules as interpreted). I'm pretty sure those are the proper acronyms...

Actually, quite the opposite. I'm thinking of attempting to figure out a way to ease the burden of bookkeeping so that a middle-ground can be reached. I am reminded of the Pendragon system- possibly due to the fact that I am playing in a weekly Pendragon game- where every year, an accounting phase occurs, called the Winter Phase. It is organized, there are sheets, and charts, and everything else needed to accommodate this potentially-tedious game phase. I am thinking of pirating that line of thinking for my own purposes; definitely not to the extent of the manner that Pendragon does, though.

Rather, what comes to mind is the creation of a sort of itemized expense sheet. Form-fillable, consisting of the monthly cost of room and board, equipment upkeep (included ammunition expenses), and miscellaneous expenses (too many potential draws on income to list here, but also good ways for players to inform as to what they end up doing in their downtime).

This would also be an appropriate location to put in miscellaneous income, for those characters that might have professional skills, in order to offset the drain their expenses come from. This would create a final tally, whereby players know exactly how much surplus money they have each month for carousing, or splurging on equipment; it also means that if their expenses result in a deficit, it shows how much reward/loot money from in-game plot quests they actually accrue.

This would create a simple form that would only need to be updated in the event of a significant character upgrade (in either equipage or status), but would also give the player some sense of bargaining in systems where they were unfamiliar with the value of their currency.

For example, in the IKRPG, an average room in an inn costs 1gc for the night, and each meal at that inn costs 1gc. This may seem high or low or inconsequential (depending on how one is doling out monetary rewards in-game), but it informs that a player living at this level would expect to be paying 120gc for room and board each month in an average living situation. Now, imagine that player's GM were to offer them a job that would take them more than two weeks to conceivably accomplish, but only pay them, say 150gc for it. That might seem like a decent offer, until one realizes that 150gc is to be split between a party of four players.

Suddenly players actually know what their time is worth, GMs know what kind of rewards are actually appropriate towards their players' party, and as such they know what kind of jobs, and the danger associated with those jobs, is likely to be on offer to them.

Just some food for thought. Appropriately enough, I'll be broaching this topic to my IKRPG players hopefully this week, and perhaps we'll see how they take it.

Cinematic Combat: Replacing Passion with Intuition

GM: "There's an orc guarding this storeroom. He's armed with a shield and a battleaxe."

Player 1: "I attack him with my sword."

GM: "Roll to hit."

P1: "Ugh, 12."

GM: "That misses. He retaliates, attacking you with his axe. He...um...misses, too. Next round?"

*Shudder.*

People are probably familiar with this type of exchange. It's what combat tends to devolve into after the first few (or even one) round of combat. An exchange of blows, followed by another and another. Like a round of Rock'em Sock'em robots. Except more dull, because even if you're using miniatures, all they do is stand there while you constantly lament how much your dice hate you.

This is something I've dealt with on a continuous basis when running combat games, and it's a drag. Combat becomes a slog, players who aren't up start yawning and checking their phones. The only interesting thing happens when you strike the killing blow, and all of a sudden, "You plunge your sword into the orc's trachea, and he falls to the floor, gurgling and drowning in his own blood."

Now, I'm not objecting to GMs providing flavor text to combat, it's the natural first step to something better, something more interesting than a static boxing match.

I've been playing, for this last year, in a long-running Pendragon game, and being immersed in this system means I've had plenty of time to think about its pros and cons. One of the most highly-touted pros is the combat system. Standard knights deal about 5d6 damage with a regular swing of a sword, and double that if they manage to Crit, which happens a lot more frequently than 5% of the time with the Passion mechanic in play.

Game Mechanic Blurb: Pendragon is a d20-based system, where skills, attributes, traits, and passions are (generally) rated between 1 and 20. You succeed when you roll below your skill, fail when you roll above it, fumble if you roll a 20, and crit if you roll exactly your skill. HOWEVER, this is only the base mechanic of Pendragon, because there are ways to increase your skills above 20. The most common (temporary) way to increase a skill above 20 is with a successful Passion roll, which adds 10 to a single skill for the duration you need it for. And for any skill above 20, the critical threat range is increased by however many points it is above 20, and fumbles become impossible. So, say, your base Sword skill is 15. Under normal circumstances, you would succeed on a roll of a 1-14, fail on a roll of 16-19, fumble on a roll of 20, and crit on a roll of 15. However, if you successfully impassion your character's sword skill, it gains a temporary 10 points and becomes a 25-rating skill. This means that you succeed on a roll of 1-14, never fail, never fumble, and crit on a roll of 15-20. Or perhaps you crit your passion, gaining 20 points in your sword skill, bringing it to a 35. You now succeed on a roll of 1-4, and crit on a roll of 5-20. Suddenly it becomes quite easy to get double damage, doesn't it?

What does this mean? Basically, it means that combat has the high chance of moving speedily along with Pendragon. It's an unlikely and unusual situation for a player to be squaring off for multiple rounds against the same foe. This past week was the first time in ages that it took us more than one or two rounds to dispatch our foes, due to a series of hefty penalties, and instead of creating a depressing slog, we were more engaged than ever, because it was an unusual situation.

So, looking at a system already has mechanics to move combat along speedily, why do anything more? Well, Pendragon is a system where you're supposed to mow through enemies like a scythe. It's also super deadly in the fact that some enemies may also gain bonuses from their passions, and mow through you.

But where does the cinematic flavor come in? How about just before the GM tells you that you stab an orc in the throat? What if, rather than attempting to gain bonuses from a Passion, there was instead a substituted mechanic called Intuition? Instead of thinking really hard about who your player characters are striking their next blow to protect, or how much this really hate this one asshole and his entire culture, the PC discerns the fighting style of his opponent the orc, or realize that his foe's bulky armor prevents him from defending effectively against overhead attacks, or that certain predatory animals have difficulty sensing danger above them.

Try this:

GM: "There's an orc guarding this storeroom. He's armed with a shield and a battleaxe. Is there an Intuition you can utilize?"

Player 1: "I roll my Tactics: Hand-to-Hand...14, success."

GM: "You gauge that with the bulk of his weapon, it's unlikely the orc will be able to utilize it well in extreme close quarters. His use of a shield indicates that he will fight more defensively, and will likely not make the first move. What's your action?"

Player1: "Alright, I charge forward and slam into his defense, forcing him back against the storeroom door, wrench the shield down, and stab, aiming high. With Intuition, my Sword skill is now a 26, and I roll a 16: a crit! 49 damage!"

GM: "The orc fails his roll outright, so your tactic works, the shield drops enough for you to force the end of your blade into his throat with a satisfying crunch. The orc gurgles and slides to the floor, dropping his axe with a clatter."

Now, this sounds like a lot of work, and to be honest, it likely will be the first few times you try it. However, make sure you include your players in this mechanic. Chances are they'll jump at the chance to do something other than stand toe to toe and wail on something for hours on end.

March Madness OGBC: Day 31

"What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?"

 Because I don't want to pay $100 on a hardcover sourcebook for this game.

I've already done a semi-retrospective of this March Madness, and honestly I can't think of a sourcebook I'd really like to have back in 'publication,' because DriveThruRPG exists and they sell .pdfs of everything I can literally think of. I mean, Mouseguard goes for $20 bucks on their site. I think I just want a hard copy of the book because I like having them.

Zing, I know.

Regardless, I've had a really great time blogging this month about what I'm just realizing is a sore lack of a spanning gaming experience, and am looking forward to rectifying this for what will hopefully be a yearly 31-day challenge.

Next month, look forward to me possibly following through on at least campaign planning for Magic World and beginning conversions for Dark Tower Pendragon (Working title Arthur Eld: The Dark Tower).

Thanks for reading, I'm sure some of my posts were likely spastic and incoherent, but I appreciate all the input!

See you next month!

March Madness OGBC: Day 21

"What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?"

Yeah, definitely Pendragon. A genre of RPG that exists entirely to run games set in Arthurian legend, where if you're not a knight (or at least landed), your life is hella boring, meaning you're an NPC.

And god is it fun.

There's always that adage about how restrictions having the ability to enhance creativity, and man does that ever work with Pendragon. Everything from rolling randomly to see how your family have interacted with the last hundred years of backstory, to creating your own coat of arms, to roleplaying within the strictures of the trait/passion system, if you have a player who doesn't exactly know 'how' to roleplay, I'd seriously suggest initiating them with Pendragon, or at least taking some of its mechanics with you to the rest of your games. And, because it's d100/d20 based, it works well with both BRP and D&D (also Pathfinder, D&D's bastard genius prodigy).

And, of course, if you're going to run Pendragon, you should totally run the Great Pendragon Campaign, which I'm totally playing in right now and you should all go and listen to it.

March Madness OGBC: Day 3

"Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?"

As a CharGen fanatic, it would be difficult for me to find a character generation rule I disliked, so I suppose I'll focus on the game with the  most enjoyable character generation I've experienced. And, because I've enjoyed it so recently, I'm going to go with Pendragon's Knight creation.

Pendragon was a BRP mod before it took on a life of its own, and that may contribute to my utter enjoyment of the CharGen. There is seemingly less glut with the character sheet, as most of the dice rolls are based off a d20, so you'll be working with a range of 1-20 for each Skill, Trait, Passion, and Attribute. But first, let's go over each, because just about everything in Pendragon's character generation informs some of your player Knight's backstory and family history.

Traits:
Pendragon is the first game I've seen to utilize an alignment mechanic more in-depth than Lawful/Chaotic/etc. In Pendragon, your "alignment" is based off a series of dichotomous traits that range from Chaste/Lustful to Valorous/Cowardly. Each trait is given a set number x between 1 and 20, and the opposing trait receives a value equal to 20 - x so, for instance, Sir Pace has a Lustful of 13 and a Chaste of 7. Each trait informs you of how your character's actions would default in certain instances.

Passions:
Arthurian Legend is all about passion, being swept up in one's love for their lady or liege, or their hate of a certain dismembered black-armored knight voiced by John Cleese. Passions indicate who or what your character feels strongly about, whether the Love of your family drives you or the defense of your Honor, and it can empower your abilities on occasion to superhuman levels.

Skills:
Skills are pretty standard fare now in RPGs, and thus are grasped easily. A higher number is a skill is always better, and lets you know how effective you are (on a scale of 1-20, remember) at performing a certain activity, like Hunting or Flirting. What I really enjoy are the eclectic skills that seem to have little value at first. Falconry is a personal favorite: utilizing birds of prey in the hunt is a fantastic touch of the setting, as is the in-game recognition of the differences between Flirting and Romance, two completely different skill sets.

Attributes:
Lastly, attributes are brought in from BRP almost entirely, with the notable exception of the INT attribute, which has been excised in favor of a player using their own, out-of-character intelligence. Of note, however, is the APP attribute, which was originally in BRP as a throwaway attribute; it is now almost a necessary attribute because a negative APP costs you honor in Pendragon, which is basically the system's XP.

Now, along with the big 4 character creation sections, there is also the option to randomly determine your wealth level, family traits, vassal and family knights, and the ability to generate a home manor for your character, which evolves throughout gameplay.

So yeah, Pendragon is kind of awesome in the CharGen sense in that you're performing light CharGen almost every single session. So cool.

Iron Kingdoms RPG: Creating a Family Tree

Recently I've begun an undertaking of colossal proportions: creating a fictional Cygnaran house for an Iron Kingdoms RPG.  This process has become very much akin to creating a family in Pendragon, except I'm certifiably insane, so I decided that instead of just making a current family, I'd go back about four hundred years and start there.  And because I'm really certifiably insane, and because Iron Kingdoms is a feudal society, I decided that most people begin breeding in their late teens to early twenties.  And because I just bought a really sweet Warmachine Cygnaran d6 dice set, I figured I'd use them to generate the family.

The character I made for that Iron Kingdoms game is 18th generation.  18 generations in 400 years.  So I thought I'd share my methods, in case someone else out there wanted to hurt their brain.

Step 1) Begin with some kind of ancestor, choose what year they are born in, and determine their eventual spouse.

I chose to create my ultimate ancestor so that he would be active during the evacuation of the Orgoth forces, in an event called the Scourge.  Therefore, my character's ultimate grandfather was born in AR162.

Once you have chosen this, determine where they marry in the hierarchy of nobility.  Roll 1d6, and consult the table below.

Marriage Roll:
1 - Roll again
2 - Viscount/Viscountess
3 - Earl/Countess
4 - Margrave/Margravine
5 - Marquess/Marchioness
6 - Roll again

If you roll either a 1 or a 6, your ancestor has married either above or below a certain station.  Consult the tables below for each.

Rolled a 1:
1-3 - Knight/Dame
4-5 - Baronet/Dowager Baroness
6 - Baron/Baroness

Rolled a 6:
1-3 - Duke/Duchess
4-5 - Prince/Princess
6 - King/Queen

Step 2) Determine the age at which the selected ancestor first had a child.

To accomplish this, roll 2d6.  If the chosen ancestor is male, add the 2d6 to the age of 20.  If the ancestor is female, add the 2d6 to the age of fifteen.  Dice can ace (a nifty mechanic from Savage Worlds/World of Darkness), so if you roll a six on one or more dice, roll them again.

Not only will this determine when your ancestor first breeds, but also when the next generation possibly begins.  I say possibly, because...

Step 3) Roll for survival for the mother/child.

Roll 1d6 once each for both the mother and child. If you roll a 1 for the mother, she dies in childbirth.  If you roll a 1 for the child, it is born sickly, and you must roll another 1d6 to determine how long it lasts.  This die can also ace, and if it aces enough times that the child reaches at least 15, he or she has overcome their childhood illness and can now bear/produce children of their own.  If you roll a 1 for this survival time, the child is stillborn.

Step 4) More info on child survival roll.

The 1d6 roll for the child's survival also indicates its gender and aptitude.  Consult the table below for information on the results.

Child Survival and Aptitude Roll:
1 - Child is female, but sickly.
2 - Child is male, but sickly.
3 - Child is female, and healthy.
4 - Child is male, and healthy.
5 - Child is female, and superior.
6 - Child is male, and superior.

Step 4b) Determine Superiority of Child

If a superior child is born, it has the potential to accomplish great feats.  In game mechanic terms, this means the child could possibly be a Player Character, and so they need to choose an archetype.  If you so desire, you may choose the archetype for them or roll 2d6 and consult the chart below.

Child Superiorty Roll:
1-3 - The child has been Gifted with the ability to manipulate arcane forces.
4-6 - The child is to be an Intellectual, with a quick wit and discerning mind.5-9 - The child is Mighty, displaying great physical strength and endurance at an early age.
10-12 - The child proves to be Skilled, showing a flair in combat training and great dexterity.

Step 5) Determine successor for family.

In classic medieval settings, only a firstborn male child could be heir.  However, in the Iron Kingdoms, it's not unusual to hear about female heads of households, so simply choose the first surviving heir to determine who will continue the family's line.

Repeat steps 2-5, until you just can't anymore.

Playerwoes: Why I Don't Reroll an Imperfect Character

I believe there is a sort of maturity that comes with extensive playing of tabletop RPGs, a hard-learned lesson that players more familiar with computer/console games needs to learn before they truly enjoy themselves in true roleplaying.  Something even I've only recently grasped.

Tabletop RPGs are designed to allow you to create an avatar for yourself, unfortunately there is often the assumption that this avatar is a perfect creation, even when dice rolls dictate otherwise.  I mean, it makes sense.  Why would you want to pretend to be a fallible being in a fantastic setting?  We've all read books or watched movies where the main character never loses, or at least never loses for long.  And in games, the only time the player loses canonically is when control is stripped from us.

In Final Fantasy VII, any time a party member dies, you can use an item called a Phoenix Down to resurrect them.  Unfortunately, you're unable to do this very simple, system-canon approach when Aeris is killed.  Every other time, you are in control, and you win.

Tabletop RPGs are different, though.  Because they depend on dice rolls and chance instead of automatic success or infinite retries, you can never make a character that can hit a target at one hundred paces, one hundred percent of the time.  Your expert marksman will, eventually fail horribly.  He'll also likely be terrible at other things.  Those skills he attained to become a crack shot mean nothing in delicate social situations, where saying the wrong thing could have far worse repercussions than missing a target at a competition.  Your circus strongman will not be able to make heads nor toes of the Dewey decimal system.  But those are to be expected.  What isn't expected, when you make this character, is that the marksman will miss, or the strongman will be unable to lift something, or that the mathematical genius will be unable to figure out a simple Sudoku-style puzzle that is locking a door.

Let me tell you the story of Sir Blaen of the Pendragon RPG.  Sir Blaen was an able horseman, strong with the lance, better at hunting.  He 'graduated' into knighthood, assumed control of his heritage household, and was sent to various tourneys, where he was utterly trounced in the joust.  After perhaps ten to twelve sessions of playing as Sir Blaen, he ended up having the absolute worst tourney record in the game setting.  Sir Blaen is the type of cursed character that would have failed in a joust against a small child armed with a piece of driftwood and a toothpick, seated on a rocking chair.  He was routinely trounced in the melee, and in his only duel he lost all will to fight before his opponent had even drawn his sword.

Sir Blaen was a knight of constant sorrow, is what I'm saying, and I occasionally had a horrible time playing him, because when I created him I was envisioning a master horseman, unparallelled with the lance.  He could track a hawk on a cloudy day, if he could only roll well enough to.

Which brings us to the issue.

With dice rolling, there is no 100% success rate.  No one stays on their horse 10 out of 10 times at the lists.  That gallant knight I created, ended up being covered in shame (and likely horseshit) by the time our campaign finished.  The times I arrived for the game, I came for the story, because I knew what would happen with Sir Blaen.  He would fail, and I wouldn't have any enjoyment from his failing, because I desperately wanted him not to.

This hope was different than other types of hoping for good rolls.  Occasionally there will be something important in a game, and you'll need to roll.  And you'll want that roll to succeed.  Imagine arriving to a game, and rolling, and hoping that any roll will succeed.  Sir Blaen was a fun character, and I got some enjoyment out of roleplaying just how much of a failure he really was, but I still wanted him to win, because that is what I created him to do.

Let's talk about another character now.  A portly, dorky, uncoordinated virgin named Jordan Antimonius Baxter of the Solar Patrol.  Jordan was born-or created, if you will-to be an utter failure.  His back-story set him as a middle child of a military family, underachieving in his life, and being a disappointment to a father who, in desperation, sent him out to die in the Solar Patrol.  As a black sheep, I had no expectations for Jordan to succeed consistently.  In fact, I had set up his character in such a way that I deemed it a success every time he lived to the end of a play session.

His occasional successes suddenly became points of pride for me.  Every time he failed to fail at a task, I was enjoying myself.  Every time he failed, I enjoyed myself, because the dice were roleplaying to the character.  This character was an absolute success for me, because I never expected him to succeed.  My conceptions about him colored the bad rolls and skill checks in an understanding light, and every time he exceeded my expectations I felt like I was watching a Mighty Ducks film.

However, neither of these characters was ideal to play.  First of all, no one wants an aspiring loser like Blaen as their character, or even a whole party of Blaens.  And likewise, no one wants an entire party of Jordans.  Or an entire party of Eeyores.  Or Chris Farleys.

With characters like Blaen and Jordan, you never get your hopes up during play.  You're always expecting failure, and being "pleasantly surprised" when you get success instead.  Gameplay needs tension, and risks, and that hope that this dice roll will succeed.

There needs to be a balance, not just in dice rolls, and not just in character traits, but in the player's perception of his character.  Perfection is, without cheating, impossible in tabletop games.  Therefore, creating a character that is meant to be perfect is an exercise in self-induced slow burn insanity.

Instead, think about creating characters with realistic flaws, similar to what exists in the real world.  You'll be better off for it, I think.