So I've been thinking about how I want to do skills. I decided to keep a fairly simple system, with a low scalability factor (that is to say; there is no huge difference between a low-level and a high-level character).
I decided I wanted to have a few major skill groups, each further divided by skills. Each level, the characters get a certain number of points to spend within one or more groups, up to a level cap of 1 point per skill every 3 levels (or something). This means that the difference between a 1st level character and a 30th level character is a +10 skill bonus. The higher level character is at a very large advantage, but even then, it's not a given he'll succeed and the other fail. This seems about right to me. Playtesting will bear it out.
The proposed skills groups are:
Movement, which includes every skill necessary to move around. 4th Ed. only has a few of those skills, and I'll probably return to a more 3.x division of skills: Tumble, Climb, Jump, Balance and Swim. Probably no more than those, though.
Active skills are those that require the player to do something. Picking pockets, handling animals, brewing beer are all active skills. This is a large category, and will probably be left largely up to the player to fill.
Social skills are those that play out the relative inlfuence of two people on each other. Intimidate, Lie (better than bluff), Negotiate (better than diplomacy), Haggle, Sense motive and their ilk. Again fairly specific, each describing a way to deal with people.
Knowledge skills are supposed to represent character knowledge of the world around him. This will probably take the form of History, Etiquette, Culture (by civilisation), Language* and some form of Monster knowlegde.
Magic I'm still not decided about. If I do decided to have magic in the form of skills, they'll just be another category, which only wizards have easy access to.
I'm not sure if I really need Active or Social skills, fearing it'll lead to pidgeon-holing the character's roleplaying. However, I want the charming rogue to have a more than equal chance to fast-talk the barkeeper into giving him free beer, for example. However, I want the dull-witted figther to have a small chance of doing the same, too. For now, they're both in the game.
About absent skills: There's no Gather Information, nor is there some kind of Spot or Perception. Gather information, I never liked,as it can both cut an adventure short or bring it to a stop, when a high or low roll upsets the GM's planned rate of information release.
Any form of perception is absent too, this to make players think independently and to find clues on their own. Some form of passive perception might survive, to see wheter or not enemies succeed in sneaking up on the characters. This is, however, unlikely.
*I've always been unsatisfied by the way D&D treats languages. The only languages apart from common are the species languages, which is unrealistic. Thus I will use a different system. Each culture will have its own language, with common being a sort of trade tongue, or pidgin. A language will have fewer possible ranks than a normal skill, but won't be bound by the level-cap. Similarly, I'll introduce different formalised systems of non-verbal communication (I wanted to say writing systems, but that would left out things like sign language, which also is part of it). The two systems will be separately from each other (that is to say, just because you can speak a language doesn't mean you'll be able to read it).
Spoken languages
0 ranks: Speaker isn't able to form a simple sentence.
1 rank: Speaker can form simple sentences, but can't explain complicated ideas. Many mistakes in grammar and pronounciation.
2 ranks: Speaker can speak well, although with an accent and still the occasional mistake. Complicated ideas are not immediately clear, however; some "dumbing-down" is necessary for that.
3 ranks: Speaker can almost pass for a native speaker. Even complicated ideas are no problem, although an accent remains.
4 ranks: Speaker is completely fluent.
5 ranks: Speaker has an usually high graps of the language, can speak very eloquently. This is the level for those who live by the language (orators, politicians, poets).
Formalised signs
0 ranks: Reader isn't able to interpret signs, and maybe doesn't even know they are supposed to convey a message.
1 rank: Reader can recognise origin of signs and can glean some superficial information from it.
2 ranks: Reader can get gist from message but missing details.
3 ranks: Reader can read the language without problem, to the details.
17.2.10
Hexcrawl [Part 2: System]
I'm planning to cobble a system together for my hexcrawl campaign, since there's no single gaming system that does everything I want it to, so I'll be looking at the different parts that my gaming system needs and what I'll do to fulfill that need.
Combat: I'll use 4th Ed. for this. I like the combat system, which is more than I can say for 3.x, and the ease of building encounters will mean I can focus more on other things.
Magic: Magic is an integral part of fantasy roleplaying. I've been a great fan of Vancian spellcasting in my rpg's. The resource management imposed by it means very few wizards would use their spells outside of direct adventuring, which always seemed a waste to me. After all, if you have the power over reality, would you use it to do nothing but sow death and destruction on your enemies to exclusion of everything else? I know I wouldn't.
Which magic system I'll use in place I don't know yet. I like the Ars Magica system, which is flexible enough for my liking. However, there's nothing to prevent a wizard from using, for example, Perdo Corpus to kill his foes in combat. I could rewrite all the wizard powers so they're the equivalent of the Ars Magica action/substance combinations, with a minimum skill requirement, but that's more work than I really like, even taken into account that no single wizard would have access to every possible combination.
For now, I'll keep my eyes open, in the hopes that something turns up. If not, I'll grit my teeth and use Ars Magica.
Skills: I'll be doing away with skill challenges. Never liked them much. I might not use the normal D&D skill system at all. I might invent my own system. For some reason, this is the part of any gaming system that I have the least difficulty tampering with. More on this in a later post. Suffice to say that'll it have to be simple, so as to fit in with both the combat rules and the magic rules.
Mass combat: I'm not sure I'm going to be needing these rules, but I'd like to have them handy. The most elegant ones I've seen so far are in the Lord of the Rings RPG by Decipher. They're simple and general, leaving place for individual combat where dramatically appropriate, so I see no problem stealing them.
Apart from these elements, I need only random tables for all the following:
Terrain (probably, depending on which of two different starting points I use)
Weather
Encounters (different ones by climate, terrain and civilisation level)
Events (in case my players decide to become rules)
Next time, I'll elaborate on how I'll implement skills.
Combat: I'll use 4th Ed. for this. I like the combat system, which is more than I can say for 3.x, and the ease of building encounters will mean I can focus more on other things.
Magic: Magic is an integral part of fantasy roleplaying. I've been a great fan of Vancian spellcasting in my rpg's. The resource management imposed by it means very few wizards would use their spells outside of direct adventuring, which always seemed a waste to me. After all, if you have the power over reality, would you use it to do nothing but sow death and destruction on your enemies to exclusion of everything else? I know I wouldn't.
Which magic system I'll use in place I don't know yet. I like the Ars Magica system, which is flexible enough for my liking. However, there's nothing to prevent a wizard from using, for example, Perdo Corpus to kill his foes in combat. I could rewrite all the wizard powers so they're the equivalent of the Ars Magica action/substance combinations, with a minimum skill requirement, but that's more work than I really like, even taken into account that no single wizard would have access to every possible combination.
For now, I'll keep my eyes open, in the hopes that something turns up. If not, I'll grit my teeth and use Ars Magica.
Skills: I'll be doing away with skill challenges. Never liked them much. I might not use the normal D&D skill system at all. I might invent my own system. For some reason, this is the part of any gaming system that I have the least difficulty tampering with. More on this in a later post. Suffice to say that'll it have to be simple, so as to fit in with both the combat rules and the magic rules.
Mass combat: I'm not sure I'm going to be needing these rules, but I'd like to have them handy. The most elegant ones I've seen so far are in the Lord of the Rings RPG by Decipher. They're simple and general, leaving place for individual combat where dramatically appropriate, so I see no problem stealing them.
Apart from these elements, I need only random tables for all the following:
Terrain (probably, depending on which of two different starting points I use)
Weather
Encounters (different ones by climate, terrain and civilisation level)
Events (in case my players decide to become rules)
Next time, I'll elaborate on how I'll implement skills.
16.2.10
Hexcrawl [Part 1: Introduction]
This is something I've been thinking about for the last few weeks, and actually one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place.
My goal with the hexcrawl is to run a random sandbox campaign. I want a larger theme of exploration, too. This is as much a desire to come as close as possible to a campaign with an Old School flavour as possible, without actually going back to the old editions of D&D.
Why not? Because of a few things. First, I don't own OD&D, in any form, and I'm not going to be able to easily get it; I can't buy it online (being broke, and hating to buy things online), and there's no FLGS that stocks a decent selection of rpgs.
Second, my players (and I!) like the new D&D. We like having choices beyond picking a class in shaping our characters, apart from the superficial things like equipment. Stricktly necessary? Not at all, but I prefer it, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Next part: system
My goal with the hexcrawl is to run a random sandbox campaign. I want a larger theme of exploration, too. This is as much a desire to come as close as possible to a campaign with an Old School flavour as possible, without actually going back to the old editions of D&D.
Why not? Because of a few things. First, I don't own OD&D, in any form, and I'm not going to be able to easily get it; I can't buy it online (being broke, and hating to buy things online), and there's no FLGS that stocks a decent selection of rpgs.
Second, my players (and I!) like the new D&D. We like having choices beyond picking a class in shaping our characters, apart from the superficial things like equipment. Stricktly necessary? Not at all, but I prefer it, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Next part: system
Character concept
I've always been fascinated by the Rohirrim. There's something about the image about them that attracts me to them. I'm not sure why, but I suppose it's a combination of fact. First there is the fact they are much like vikings, but on horses, making them even cooler than regular vikings. Maybe it's because they are normal men, but still are firmly on the side of good. Compared to the people of Gondor, they're not descended from higher men, untouched by the other world. I also wanted to play one in as rpg for as long as I can remember. For some reason, though, I never did.
Then, two days ago, Tim was mailing me the character creation guidelines, among them the fact that he encouraged us to pick mounts. My mind immediately raced back to those horse-men of Rohan. Perhaps this would be the chance to finally play one!
However, I hit a block. I had decided that, for every one-shot in 4E I would play in, I would play something new, as a self-imposed challenge; a new class or a new race. A Rohirrim would be a human, obviously. However, I've played a human before, so that meant I had to try a new class. A fighter was out, unfortunately, having played one before. Looking over other fighter type, nothing seemed appealing. A paladin could work, but they're made for wearing heavier armour than the chainmail of the Rohirrim. I didn't even look at arcane classes. That left me with few options, certainly when I also looked at the armour options of the other classes. I was seriously considering playing a ranger with the heaviest armour possible.
Then it dawned on me: a cleric! They're able to wear chainmail armour and pretty good in close combat. If I were to dedicate myself to Kord and take as many powers that involve hitting my enemies as possible, I would be indistinguishable from a proud warrior of Rohan. My healing would take the form of spurring on my allies to do their best, akin to the singing on the Pellenor fields.
On the crunch side, that means using a lot of feats on weapon and shield proficiency (one for shields, one for sword, maybe more for axes and/or spears). That would be worth it, though.
Yes, I see something taking shape here.
Then, two days ago, Tim was mailing me the character creation guidelines, among them the fact that he encouraged us to pick mounts. My mind immediately raced back to those horse-men of Rohan. Perhaps this would be the chance to finally play one!
However, I hit a block. I had decided that, for every one-shot in 4E I would play in, I would play something new, as a self-imposed challenge; a new class or a new race. A Rohirrim would be a human, obviously. However, I've played a human before, so that meant I had to try a new class. A fighter was out, unfortunately, having played one before. Looking over other fighter type, nothing seemed appealing. A paladin could work, but they're made for wearing heavier armour than the chainmail of the Rohirrim. I didn't even look at arcane classes. That left me with few options, certainly when I also looked at the armour options of the other classes. I was seriously considering playing a ranger with the heaviest armour possible.
Then it dawned on me: a cleric! They're able to wear chainmail armour and pretty good in close combat. If I were to dedicate myself to Kord and take as many powers that involve hitting my enemies as possible, I would be indistinguishable from a proud warrior of Rohan. My healing would take the form of spurring on my allies to do their best, akin to the singing on the Pellenor fields.
On the crunch side, that means using a lot of feats on weapon and shield proficiency (one for shields, one for sword, maybe more for axes and/or spears). That would be worth it, though.
Yes, I see something taking shape here.
14.2.10
Youth and gamers
I've been reading a lot of comments among the OSC (Old School Renaissance) that are worried about the future of gaming. There seems to be a fear that young people aren't introduced to the game by them, meaning the average gamer gets older and older. Furthermore, if they are somehow introduced to gaming apart from existing groups, it would be the most obvious choice; the latest edition of D&D.
However, in my experience, this isn't true. I have been introduced by another gamer, Devid, who was a few years older than me. Through him, Kevin, his grilfriend, my sister, and I were all introduced to gaming. Not only D&D, but also Deadlands, Rifts and Ars Magica (possibly more, but if there were, I've forgotten them). From them, only Kevin and I are still regular gamers, but that's life. In the meantime, Devid has also mostly stepped away from gaming, altough he still keeps his Rifts and Deadlands books close.
Kevin and I moved on, recruiting new gamers from our mutual friends. It took me a couple of years before I realized there were other gaming groups out there, playing in the same city, even frequenting the same FLGS. For some reason, I never knew they were out there, and if wouldn't have made any difference if it did. The other groups were older gamers and I didn't really want to be the "baby players" among them. I doubt they knew of our group before I was aware of them.
A few years later, and I'm in SWAMP (Society of Weird and Mad People). Every year, we see new people joining up in our society. Every time, we found out that among them are a few (not many, one or two) rpg'ers. Most of them are not interested in joining one of our on-campus groups, as they are happy playing with their current group. They're not all D&D players, either, although they're usually D&D, d20 or WoD-based.
In all, I'd say that there is a steady influx of new gamers into the hobby. Not enough to ever make ours a mainstream hobby, but enough to ensure its survival. There is probably a difference in style (which can be expected), the hobby will survive. In a different shape, maybe not old school, but rpgs anyway, which is the main thing. The style of rpg doesn't matter, since in the end, the game's the thing.
However, in my experience, this isn't true. I have been introduced by another gamer, Devid, who was a few years older than me. Through him, Kevin, his grilfriend, my sister, and I were all introduced to gaming. Not only D&D, but also Deadlands, Rifts and Ars Magica (possibly more, but if there were, I've forgotten them). From them, only Kevin and I are still regular gamers, but that's life. In the meantime, Devid has also mostly stepped away from gaming, altough he still keeps his Rifts and Deadlands books close.
Kevin and I moved on, recruiting new gamers from our mutual friends. It took me a couple of years before I realized there were other gaming groups out there, playing in the same city, even frequenting the same FLGS. For some reason, I never knew they were out there, and if wouldn't have made any difference if it did. The other groups were older gamers and I didn't really want to be the "baby players" among them. I doubt they knew of our group before I was aware of them.
A few years later, and I'm in SWAMP (Society of Weird and Mad People). Every year, we see new people joining up in our society. Every time, we found out that among them are a few (not many, one or two) rpg'ers. Most of them are not interested in joining one of our on-campus groups, as they are happy playing with their current group. They're not all D&D players, either, although they're usually D&D, d20 or WoD-based.
In all, I'd say that there is a steady influx of new gamers into the hobby. Not enough to ever make ours a mainstream hobby, but enough to ensure its survival. There is probably a difference in style (which can be expected), the hobby will survive. In a different shape, maybe not old school, but rpgs anyway, which is the main thing. The style of rpg doesn't matter, since in the end, the game's the thing.
Online campaign is go
Okay, so we did our test run with maptools last night. It went swimmingly. Although I'm not completely satisfied with some things, I realize I was expecting more than I realistically could expect from it. After all, the main reason I'd be using the program was to simulate a battlemap, and it did that perfectly. The things I wanted extra were just that; extras.
It took us about one hour for everyone to be up and running both Maptools and Teamspeak (so we could talk instead of typing everything in the chat window). Character generation took us another hour or so, made slightly aggravating by the fact one of our players didn't have the PHB with him. A character sheet was found online and copied.
As for the game itself, I kept it very simple. A bunch of goblinoids had invaded a local wizard's tower and the heroes were just the people to clear them out. So, they kicked down the door and started a melee against every single foe inside at the same time. They found out pretty quickly that that wasn't a good idea, and started using their brains. While the dwarf warrior (Brf Grrr, don't ask me to pronounce it) held the door, the two rogues (Marielle le Rouge and Varis Darkstrider) were shooting inside, targetting the stronger foes first.
The bugbear leader of the bandits, annoyed at being shot at continuously, charged outside, dragging a few of his minions with him. While Brf was holding the portal as much as he could, Marielle and Varis were in a fight to the death. They eventually prevailed, thanks to well-placed uses of flanking and sneak attack, and hurried back to Brf, who was slowly being overwhelmed by the sheer number of foes. Eventually, though, the managed to break the morale of the remaining goblins, who scattered, never to return.
Once they searched inside, they found a note, detailing that the goblins had been hunting for a band of kobolds, who had stolen the Eye of Gruumsh...
We ended the session there, as I hadn't prepared more than the one encounter.
Everyone agreed however, that the system worked mighty fine and that a campaign over the internet is a real option. The question now is; what do I run? I have an idea for a sandbox campiagn, but it's far frombeing ready to run. With schoolwork and SWAMP, I don't think I'll be able to get it ready in the week or two we have before the campaign takes off.
Another thing is that some of my players want to keep playing the same character as in the testrun, but that includes an elf, while my first idea for the sandbox is to start of human-only. Decisions, decisions.
It took us about one hour for everyone to be up and running both Maptools and Teamspeak (so we could talk instead of typing everything in the chat window). Character generation took us another hour or so, made slightly aggravating by the fact one of our players didn't have the PHB with him. A character sheet was found online and copied.
As for the game itself, I kept it very simple. A bunch of goblinoids had invaded a local wizard's tower and the heroes were just the people to clear them out. So, they kicked down the door and started a melee against every single foe inside at the same time. They found out pretty quickly that that wasn't a good idea, and started using their brains. While the dwarf warrior (Brf Grrr, don't ask me to pronounce it) held the door, the two rogues (Marielle le Rouge and Varis Darkstrider) were shooting inside, targetting the stronger foes first.
The bugbear leader of the bandits, annoyed at being shot at continuously, charged outside, dragging a few of his minions with him. While Brf was holding the portal as much as he could, Marielle and Varis were in a fight to the death. They eventually prevailed, thanks to well-placed uses of flanking and sneak attack, and hurried back to Brf, who was slowly being overwhelmed by the sheer number of foes. Eventually, though, the managed to break the morale of the remaining goblins, who scattered, never to return.
Once they searched inside, they found a note, detailing that the goblins had been hunting for a band of kobolds, who had stolen the Eye of Gruumsh...
We ended the session there, as I hadn't prepared more than the one encounter.
Everyone agreed however, that the system worked mighty fine and that a campaign over the internet is a real option. The question now is; what do I run? I have an idea for a sandbox campiagn, but it's far frombeing ready to run. With schoolwork and SWAMP, I don't think I'll be able to get it ready in the week or two we have before the campaign takes off.
Another thing is that some of my players want to keep playing the same character as in the testrun, but that includes an elf, while my first idea for the sandbox is to start of human-only. Decisions, decisions.
11.2.10
Online gaming
Well, the online game is looking like it'll make a start soon enough.
Over the past month, I've been learning to use a nifty computer program called Maptools. It's a nifty online substitution for a battle map. I also recently found the dice generator, initiative tracker and state indicator. All in all, a pretty cool thing, and far handier than I first suspected.
Of course, there are a few quibles I have. The first being the fairly steep learning curve. It took me a month to be able to get the most out of the program, which is quite a lot. I'm the first to admit I'm not the most technically inclined of people, but still, that's quite a long while.
Furthermore, I can't get the blasted fog of war to work properly. While I don't really need one, the fact it takes some time to do a good layout of the terrain would make things far simpler. Instead of showing them the whole dungeon at once, I could reveal it bit by bit as the characters explore. The fact that monsters only show up in line of sight convinces me there must a way to make this work, but I haven't figured out how.
Finally, there seems to be no way to make a distinction between different kinds of terrain; a character on the map treats rubbel or a raging river the same as a patch of grass or a road.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the program for now. More on it as I use it.
Over the past month, I've been learning to use a nifty computer program called Maptools. It's a nifty online substitution for a battle map. I also recently found the dice generator, initiative tracker and state indicator. All in all, a pretty cool thing, and far handier than I first suspected.
Of course, there are a few quibles I have. The first being the fairly steep learning curve. It took me a month to be able to get the most out of the program, which is quite a lot. I'm the first to admit I'm not the most technically inclined of people, but still, that's quite a long while.
Furthermore, I can't get the blasted fog of war to work properly. While I don't really need one, the fact it takes some time to do a good layout of the terrain would make things far simpler. Instead of showing them the whole dungeon at once, I could reveal it bit by bit as the characters explore. The fact that monsters only show up in line of sight convinces me there must a way to make this work, but I haven't figured out how.
Finally, there seems to be no way to make a distinction between different kinds of terrain; a character on the map treats rubbel or a raging river the same as a patch of grass or a road.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the program for now. More on it as I use it.
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