March Madness OGBC: Day 5

"What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?"

To be honest, as a new inductee to the RPG genre, I haven't had the experience with older RPGs that many of my contemporary bloggers have; however, the above question doesn't specify old school roleplaying game- it just says game.

And so I'm calling back to my childhood and HeroQuest.

HeroQuest is basically the reason I'm into roleplaying games today. It featured adventurers delving into dungeons and ruined keeps to accomplish simple quests and escape with loot. Characters were carried over, and each player received a character sheet for their trouble, so I naturally spent every second I wasn't playing HeroQuest reading through the DM's booklet and checking out equipment tables, magic spells, and dungeon setups.

Looking back, I probably spent more time learning how to play HeroQuest than actually playing it, and looking for it today on Amazon makes me sad it never saw a larger audience, because there's no way in hell I'm paying 400 bucks for it now.

I think the reason HeroQuest failed was because it was filling a niche that didn't really need any more filling. Anyone who was interested in playing that type of game was probably already playing D&D, and therefore didn't really see the point in dumbing down their experience. Hopefully a good number of people used it as a springboard for their eventual run in tabletop RPGs, but at the time of its release, when someone said 'board game', everyone else thought Monopoly. Which sucks.

Monopoly sucks, guys.

March Madness OGBC: Day 4

"What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?"

I'd definitely have to go with Sandy Petersen, principal author on the Call of Cthulhu ruleset. While impressed with the breadth of material he could pull from the mythos while still adding in enough crunch to make a game, what's really impressed me is that despite being a Mormon, he publishes these amazing games in a medium that has been demonized by the media as leading to satanism and suicide. I think this quote pretty much sums up a) why he sounds like a pretty cool guy and b) what people who have a problem with these types of games should be thinking about. He's talking about Doom in this quote, but it can translate to Call of Cthulhu pretty easily as well.

"I have no problems with the demons in the game. They're just cartoons. And, anyway, they're the bad guys."

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 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.

March Madness OGBC: Day 2

"In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?"

Again it seems I'm going to have to dodge my inclination to talk about Pathfinder and the absolutely epic tale of Alfonse Mycroft, because of my still-held belief that Pathfinder is still basically D&D, but empirically better.

Therefore, I'm going to talk about my first game of Call of Cthulhu as a player, where I ran a shipping magnate named Simon Bailey with David Larkins of the RPG Corner as the Keeper of Arcane Lore.

The first deviation from playing a D&D character came with the setting, 1920's San Francisco. The second deviation was when I realized that I could use actual historical knowledge to create a backstory for the character; and thus Simon Bailey started with a 50% in rifle (which he never used), because he served in the French Foreign Legion during the Great War.

Playing an investigator, rather than an adventurer, opens up different avenues for character interaction, as you're focused more on negotiating relationships and solving mysteries with your wits, rather than your sword blade. Brute force is all-but passé in the 1920's, after all. I spent more time thinking about Simon's daily life as well, because as a Call of Cthulhu character you choose an Occupation for your toon, or PC, or 'guy', and therefore- unlike D&D- your occupation is not "adventurer" or "investigator" (usually). Chances are, you're investigating in your free time, and the rest of your days you're working as an antiquarian or professor or beat cop. It's a dichotomy that presents an interesting requirement for roleplaying that isn't commonly utilized in Call of Cthulhu games, mainly because most of them are short-form.

Finally, playing a Call of Cthulhu investigator incites various emotions to its player, as you're essentially running a doomed character. Madness increases throughout play, especially as you delve deeper and deeper into the Mythos, and your range of control over them becomes smaller and smaller as sanity rules take over your play more and more.

All in all, it's a great deviation from the D&D "norm" of roleplaying.

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 Drunken Duck: Your First Session

"You convene in the Drunken Duck..."

In many iterations of your games, the characters your players create will most likely very little, if not absolutely nothing, in common with the other PCs. Your city campaign may very well have a woodland hermit, a mercenary knight, an itinerant bard, a streetwise pickpocket, and a princess in disguise composing the adventuring party, and the most common way to have them all get into bed together- not literally, unless that's what your campaign is about, and if so...giggity- is to throw them into a crowded tavern where the only empty seats around a table are (surprise) with the rest of the soon to be group!

A common occurrence five minutes after each player character has consumed at least one ale.

Now, there are a variety of reasons why this can make sense; partially because of alcohol's tendency to break down social barriers and foster camaraderie between total strangers which, when combined with a sudden outbreak of taproom hostilities, can enable a quick plot-line that railroads players into cooperating with each other, despite their characters' lack of mutual familiarity. Now, this is a tried and true method of sticking characters together at the start of a game. Unfortunately, it's also a trope, which is both why it works so much and also why it occasionally doesn't. Because a trope is only effective when it is acknowledged and accepted, it is subject to a variety of fail states.

-Perhaps you have a character that isn't feeling particularly sociable, like the Woodland Hermit, and thus decides to subvert the bar room meeting by finding a quieter locale.
-Maybe one of the characters is a local to the city, and has her own spot reserved at the bar counter, putting her on the outskirts of the ensuing chaos, giving her the option to simply dodge the rail-roady team-building exercise you have planned. The Streetwise Pickpocket is the most likely candidate for this particular derailing gambit.
-There's also the possibility of getting a brand new player in the game, who is inexperienced not only in-game, but out of game as well, and thus fails to recognize this setup. The Princess in Disguise, unwise in the way of campaign tactics, simply buys a room at the inn and takes an early night in.

Now, there are a variety of different ways a GM can angle CharGen so that they can dodge the tavern meet up or, if they have their hearts set on it for nostalgic/plot purposes, hedge their bets enough to ensure characters have actual reasons to sit together. I'll list a few off, with amusing mission names because I feel like it.

Tactic 1: Operation Venn Diagram
In character creation, have each player create a relationship with one or two other players' characters. They can be as simple or complex as players like, but the end results substantially increase the quality of your roleplaying. Creating connections allows players to create backstory for their characters, even if its simplistic, it gives them a jumping off point to think about their characters' motives, history, and possibly momentary aspirations.

-Perhaps the Itinerant Bard encountered the Woodland Hermit's shack and regaled him with enough stories of the outside world that the hermit decided to see what has changed since he left society behind.
-A long time ago, the Streetwise Pickpocket and Itinerant Bard ran confidence scams in another city, but were forced to vacate and go their separate ways some years ago.
-The Princess in Disguise hired the Mercenary Knight to escort her to this city. She has fled her home in search of her uncle, who abdicated the throne years ago and turned to the life of a Woodland Hermit.
-The Mercenary Knight has secretly discovered the Princess in Disguise's true identity and doesn't wish to leave her service, and thus must discover a way to lengthen their contract without spilling the beans. He has also had run-ins with the Streetwise Pickpocket previously, and it seems like the unscrupulous thief has also realized who his employer really is.

This kind of cooperative storytelling is my favorite for CharGen, as it gives the GM various plot hooks to integrate into his overall machinations, along with allowing players to create bits of story that run alongside the overarching plot of the game.

Tactic 2: Operation In Media Res
Sometimes films and books begin in the midst of a pivotal scene. A robbery, a battle, an invasion; things are happening and there's little time for idle conversation or setup. This circumvents the "You meet in a tavern" trope entirely, establishing the idea that even if such an event did occur in the past, its events proceeded in such a way as to lead to the characters being together in their current situation. This type of first game requires a certain amount of GM input in terms of the current status quo and mutual character history, but sidesteps any possibility that any character could miss the bus.

It also allows for the implementation of in-game flashbacks, which have the potential to be interesting side-stories or paradox-generating nightmares. Or both. If I catch myself using in media res, I ignore the idea of flashbacks.

Tactic 3: Operation Plot it Out
This last option isn't exactly a method used to 'dodge' the tavern meet trope entirely; rather, it's a way to ensure it proceeds in the direction the GM wants it to. Essentially, the GM creates a reason for each character to be in the tavern. It differs from Operation Venn Diagram in the sense that the Game Master isn't creating character backstory, he's creating plot reasons for players to be where they are. Plot hooks, they're usually called. Everyone receives a letter of invitation, or a mutual friend asks them to come together for a job.

This method still has the potential to be derailed by determined players, because a) they're still meeting in a tavern and b) because, well, they're players; but if you put work into writing something instead of just throwing everyone into an enclosed space with copious amounts of alcohol, at least some of them might feel guilty taking things in a weird direction.

The operating word there, of course, is might. They're players, remember?