Twenty-Sided Yes or No

by dither on May 20, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Posted In: Roguelike DnD, Start in a Tavern

Do you get what you’re after?

My die of choice is of the twenty-sided variety, so success requires something more than the average. “Just passing” is in the double-digits, with true success being in the mid-to-upper levels of that. I showed you the d6 chart, here’s my d20 chart:

19-20 – Yes And (10%)
15-18 – Just Yes (20%)
10-14 – Yes But (25%)
05-09 – No But (25%)
02-04 – Just No (15%)
00-01 – No And (5%)

Why are there more “yeses” than “nos?”

This is initially based on my experience with improvisational theater — never say no. Saying no isn’t really so horrible — it’s just that when you do, the onus is on you to come up with alternatives. That can be a real pain on stage.

Too many “nos” and you don’t have a scene — you have an argument. This is intended to make things less taxing on your imagination — you want to tell a story, not fuss with straws. Also, while I’m technically talking about a whole bunch of things at the same time, the focus here is on the Single-Player Roleplaying Game.

There’s other reasons too, these numbers were partly chosen for a certain amount of recognize-ability — you might not easily succeed on the roll of a five to fourteen, but you can certainly tell the milestones from one another:

5-9 means you did “five or better, but less than ten.”

10-14 means you did “double-digits but less than fifteen.”

The result of “one or less” takes some doing, but when you manage it, something goes catastrophically wrong. Maybe you think failure should be more probable — I’d have to disagree. I’ve seen lots of it, and when things start going bad they tend to keep going downhill easily enough without help.

If there’s a resemblance to the pass-fail difficulty classes of D&D, that’s a little bit coincidence and a little bit intentional. They’re already recognizable numbers, but they’ve been tweaked ever so slightly to be easier to spot and read, and to modify the probability in the players’ favor. D&D usually manages to get one of these right.

All told, you have a fifty-percent probability that things will take a little more effort than maybe you were expecting — and yet you are slightly more likely to succeed than fail. You have what you were after and then you have to decide what to do next.

└ Tags: , ,
  Comment

Yes And No But Just No

by dither on May 20, 2013 at 11:33 am
Posted In: Running the Asylum, Start in a Tavern

I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my Roguelike Tabletop posts, which is encouraging. Tabletop Shop Talk linked to my post from the earlier this month, and I think there’s definitely something to the idea of “thinking for two people.”

I wasn’t familiar with Dungeon World, which they described in the post — I’m glancing over it while I write this post — but the post got me thinking back on Arkham Horror, which is a game you could almost play by yourself, that has roleplaying potential.

Back at the end of 2011, I revised and condensed the Arkham Horror location encounters because I was tired of hauling around and shuffling cards.

Arkham Horror Revised Location Encounters (Dec 30, 2011)

I’ve been meaning to update my location encounters almost since the day I finished them. That should come as no surprise, I think. Whenever you work hard on something you make mistakes and learn new things along the way — hardly any project seems to be done the way you want it by the time you finish it.

Now, I did finally find a better avenue for revising the encounters, but I needed something else. I needed to really know what the characters were trying to do.

…Ugh, and here I searched my blog to reference an older post only to eventually discover I never published it. I can’t begin to describe how frustrating it is for me to search my post drafts for something I barely remembered well enough to search of the site for, so here’s the short version which is drawn from another gaming website.

(Edit: Then I found it.)
Movement and Exploration (Mar 27, 2013)

I’m posting it anyway because it’s helpful to have multiple copies.

“You have a scene, in which you have a goal. You roll a six-sided die to determine whether you achieve your goal:”

1) Yes And
2) Just Yes
3) Yes But
4) No But
5) Just No
6) No And

This is a system for determining whether the player characters get what they want from a given scene of roleplaying. It could be a fight, a negotiation, or whatever.

Now, I think this system is just fantastic. Super-fantastic even. What it mostly lacks is what those “ands” and “buts” are supposed to be. Hypothetically speaking you could determine them on a scene-by-scene basis, but you know, that’s always been part of the game master’s job — and you’ve only got yourself, right?

So here’s the thing, in Arkham Horror the player characters are investigators, and they’re trying to unravel a mystery and prevent the awakening of the Ancient One. Was that too fast? Because I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time.

Clues. I don’t know why that was so hard. I had to really think about it — and only recently did it occur to me what it meant and what to do about it. Arkham Horror gives you some Clue tokens in the beginning of the game, largely as incentives to explore.

But not enough to win the game. Those you have to come up with on your own.

So that’s it — that’s the goal of some ninety-plus percent of the encounters (that number’s off the top of my head) but the locations determine the Yes-No success of those encounters on a place-by-place basis. Some locations have so little bearing on the game however, there’s no way they have clues — like the General Store.

There are several next steps to take, which I will try to elaborate on uh, next.

└ Tags: , ,
  Comment

Research: Ozolian Locris

by dither on May 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Posted In: Inspiring Norvendae, Seven States Cosmology

The other day I completed a new region for my map of mythical Greece. The region reflects an area known in Antiquity as “Ozolian Locris,” home of the western Locrians. Legends suggest there was once a larger Locrian state that spanned eastern and western Locris, but they weren’t known for doing a whole lot as a people.

Locris was effectively bisected by the regions of Doris and Phocis in ancient times — but these regions weren’t really known for anything they produced so much as they were known for their cultural significance. There were several important oracles in the string of mountain ranges running through Phocis and Locris.

Now, the significance of my completion of this region is more to do with the fact that it’s one of the intermediate maps between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese. It set off a couple instances of re-mapping for regions I’d already finished — Phocis and Boeotia. The former, a bit more substantial than the latter.

When I started mapping the regions, I began with Boeotia and tried to find a certain minimum number of ancient settlements to frame the area around. This was important for a couple reasons, not the least of which was the research into various locales and customs throughout Greece. I got better with each map, but Phocis was second.

I did a really bad job with my map of Phocis. I tried to research a number of towns and settlements but the biggest deal there seemed to be Delphi, and everything else kind of fell by the wayside. I did what I could, and left the rest to deal with later.

Of course after a year of running adventures in and around Phocis (and Boeotia, and the northern Peloponnese), I finally feel like I might have a better idea of how places connect and interact. So it was time to revise, and revise I did!

The region of Phocis changed a lot — I added a town or two and dropped a couple towns. The landscape changed as I moved a couple mountains over to be in other regions. Boeotia changed a lot less — most of the changes were in the landscape, rather than the settlements. Now I feel ready to tackle some new regions.

Soon I hope to finalize a map that includes Calydon, and another that includes Lamia. I’m slowly working my way northward, toward Mount Olympus. The region just north of Phocis will have the mountain where the Titans camped out during their war with the Olympians. That’s a pretty cool prospect, I must say.

└ Tags: , ,

Game of Roles: Revised Captain

by dither on May 13, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

The Captain (Apr 2, 2013)

About a month and a half ago, I wrote up the basics for the Captain (Warlord) and posted them for all the Internet to see. Around the middle of April I wrote up Heroic progression for the Warlord, but didn’t share that because I still wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with it yet. I’ve learned quite a bit in the last month.

Here’s the new Heroic Captain class:
Download: Essentials Captain (Warlord) v.2

Changes to the original start with basic traits — minor revisions to the skill list to incorporate the Acrobatics and Heal skills instead of Intimidate. The captain now receives a +2 bonus to Will and prefers either Strength or Dexterity, depending on whether the player prefers melee or ranged combat.

Versatile Commander really helps to underscore the choice, permitting players to pick scale armor (plus heavy shields) or proficiency with military ranged weapons.

I renamed stuff. Tactical Supremacy is now Expert Commander. I think it better reflects the naming convention suggested by the hunter’s power suite. I revised Inspire Confidence to replace the Vigorous Assault power, and I tweaked both Guide the Strike and Strike and Stand to read a little better.

Commanding Presence exists to offset the removal of the leader heal. Part of the reasoning here is the Captain enables allies to move on his turn, and attack on his turn, which leaves them with the option to heal on their turn if they need it.

The feature Flanking Maneuver is based on the Beast Mastery feature from the Guild Wars Ranger (version 2) I designed, and helps make the captain a master of ally positioning. Coordinated Assault remains almost entirely untouched.

Interesting features await the captain as he progresses through the heroic tier. At 2nd level, the captain provides superior First Aid — once per round as a minor action, as a matter of fact. Additionally, the captain can enable the recharge of second wind.

Later on, Heroic Commander enables a greater boost to the extra healing provided via Commanding Presence — in a manner similar to the Mighty Slayer/Paragon Slayer damage bonuses. Here, it’s a utility replacement instead of a daily replacement.

I wound up dropping Massive Damage because it seemed too good not to use. It’s a power that’s so useful you have to wonder why it’s a power and not simply a class feature of some type. Strictly speaking, it’s more useful than Power Strike, and that makes things less fun for the slayer in the party. Not good.

I like the new captain. I hope you like it too.

└ Tags: , ,
  Comment

Using Healing as a Theme

by dither on May 13, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons provided a new avenue for character customization with the release of Dark Sun: the character theme. Later printed supplements and the online magazines expanded on this concept of themes.

As I understand them, character themes are really not so different from the alternate class features of 3.x or sub-classes and specializations of previous editions. They’re another level of character classification beyond the race-and-class package.

Interestingly enough, character themes contribute rules bloat to a part of the game that’s already crowded with class features and powers. Adding a theme to one of the “classic” classes found in any of the three Player’s Handbooks can add an additional page of character options at even the lowest levels (especially to an arcanist).

But what does a character theme actually contribute to a character? That’s really hard to say. Every theme is almost totally different from every other theme printed in every other supplement. Some expand class powers, some expand racial powers, some replace feats, and some contribute almost no perceptible benefit to the player.

Here’s a question I think I can answer though: what should a theme contribute to a character? My answer is “something basic a race or class might overlook.”

Certainly, a character theme can and should be used to expand on some concepts found at the race or class level, and races and classes are the most effective ways to explore or expand design space within the game rules — but themes are not.

Character themes are not an area to introduce new rules. I think my first grievances are probably with a few of the themes introduced in the Dungeon Survival handbook. Trapsmith is a cool theme, but it lacks the kind of support that would make it truly effective because it was created in a void. Other classes don’t use traps.

“Trip the Trap” is a power that deserves a class built around it, and probably its own associated keyword. Traps are so difficult to effectively integrate into the 4e combat system as presented, I think a “trap” keyword is something GMs could have used a long, long time ago — it’s something that could have used system development.

So how does that bring us to “healing as a keyword?” Well, unlike the trap keyword I just suggested, healing has received tons of system development. Every leader class has at least one major healing power hard-coded into it, whether they need it or not.

While it’s true that healing is an important aspect of teamwork and party survival, it’s been “done to death,” and seriously — not every leader needs to be able to heal. Further, the other roles need not be denied the ability to heal.

Ironically perhaps, one of the most effective leader classes — the warlord — grants attacks to allies and has access to some of the most effective healing powers. Only one of those is necessary for a warlord to do a good job — and it isn’t healing.

It seems to me now that every good character class comes with a built-in theme. That’s where the majority of utility powers come from (this based on my investigation of utility powers and their connection to themes). But themes provide important alternatives.

Sometimes a party needs more healing, but adding a leader class would disrupt the functioning of the party. Sometimes a party needs a backup healer but lacks an adequate number of players. And that is where you use healing themes.

└ Tags: , ,
  Comment