Points of Light

Posted on : 22-10-2007 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting, Wild Blue

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Recently I read an article in the electronic version of Dungeon Magazine that talked about a new philosophy present in 4th Edition: Points of Light. This is not a mechanical idea, but an idea that affects story and theme. It goes like this: the world is a dark place. Civilization is comprised of tiny settlements and the occasional large city, mostly isolated from each other and separated by vast expanses of wilderness. They are, effectively, points of light in a sea of darkness. This philosophy is present, they say, to provide more opportunities for adventure, and to make creating your own setting, one point at a time, easier.

It’s an idea that speaks to me, largely because I’m using a similar philosophy in Wild Blue. The Demasne is a new territory, and most of it is unsettled. The capital, Bastion, is a sprawling metropolis, a point of light that burns particularly brightly. There are a few other smallish cities, as well, but most settlements are villages, towns, hamlets, isolated from all but their closest neighbors. The presence of the Folk, a mysterious and frightening race of beings, enhances the feeling of isolation, because a trip through the wilderness is that much more dangerous. The only reasonably safe ways to get from place to place are with a merchant caravan (strength in numbers) or on a skyship (fast, and high above most of the danger).

A quick update

Posted on : 05-10-2007 | By : Brian | In : News, Wild Blue

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Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve posted, hasn’t it. Alright, a quick update as far as thing that you can look forward to seeing on my site in the near future.

1. HeroCard Orc Wars: TableStar sent me the Ranger and Sorceress expansion packs a little while back so I could more thoroughly review the multiplayer aspects of the game. I’m going to do this, but I just moved to a new area about a month ago, and I don’t know very many gamers in the area. I’m going to try to get something going in the next few weeks, and if I can, this will be on the menu. Suffice it to say, the artwork is just as good on these cards as in the core game, and I’m excited to try it out.

2. HeroCard Nightmare: TableStar also sent me this game for review. This will happen, with the same provisos as above: time, location, et cetera. The mechanics in this one look interesting, and it’ll be neat to see how the card battle system interacts with the deduction mechanic at the core of the game.

3. Three-Dragon Ante: I just picked this up a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve played a couple of two-player games with my wife and really enjoyed them (though I lost both times). I’m anxious to get a larger game going, as it supports up to six players.

4. Wild Blue: Things are still progressing here. I have some mechanics ideas that I really want to fiddle around with before I put too much of the setting on paper, but I’m still pretty excited about this project, and I fully intend for it to see the light of day. I may ask if people want to do some playtesting sometime down the road, but that’s a bit premature at the moment.

Working on something new

Posted on : 01-08-2007 | By : Brian | In : Gamecrafting, Saga, Wild Blue

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I’ve been working on something new lately. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ll tell you a few things, if you’re interested. First, it’s based on Saga, in a loose sense. Some of the mechanical ideas are similar, and many of the goals are the same, but I’m going about it in a different way. For one thing, I’m using playing cards instead of dice. I’m trying to simplify and streamline wherever I can, too. Also, I’m designing it with a setting in mind (Wild Blue), so it’s not really a generic system like Saga is intended to be.

One thing that this has shown me is that the simple decision to use cards instead of dice opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. Concepts like face cards and suits create lots of gameplay mechanics that dice simply don’t allow for.

At any rate, I’m having fun creating the system, and hopefully it’ll give me the kick in the ass I need to finish Wild Blue, finally. Time will tell.

A player’s perspective on Saga and Wild Blue

Posted on : 13-06-2007 | By : Brian | In : Gamecrafting, Saga, Session Reports, Wild Blue

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My friend Rich, who was in my Wild Blue playtest this past Saturday, recently posted a comment summing up his feelings on the playtest. I think it’s important that everyone see the player’s side of things rather than just mine, and I realize that not everybody looks at the comments on this blog; so me of you just subscribe to the feed. As such, I’m re-posting his comment in this news post, and I’ll be replying to the comment throughout. Block quotes are Rich’s comments.

From a player perspective – Overall a very positive gaming session, lots of fun was had, bad jokes were made, the berserker went berserk and possibly ruined all our plans….*@#$&# berserkers. (not that he shouldn’t of played that way, I mean, after all, he’s a berserker.) Oh, and quite possibly the most important side effect – creation of a new gamer. John really enjoyed himself, and wants to be in on future gaming. But now on to some comments on the system.

It’s always really good to hear that the players had fun, and it’s an even bigger stroke to my ego to know that I’ve helped convert a new player. Viva la hobby!

Things to improve upon -
Kind of hard to learn/So much to keep track of – I haven’t actually read through the rules (but I will soon, and post comments for you) so we all learned from Brian’s explanations. Since I’ve playtested the system before and I’m into working on rules systems and such, I didn’t have too hard of a time grasping the mechanics. Mike faired alright with it, but John was pretty well lost in it all. He was getting confused with all the options for activating skills, why traits don’t always apply, how specialization works, etc. In all, I might say that the system is too complex to recommend for beginners. However, as noted before, John did still have a good time.

I’m really glad John had a good time. Interestingly, my friend Chris played an older iteration of this system and thought it was really good for beginning players because of its focus on narrative over rules. Of course, he’s a big gamer (more board games than RPGs), so he’s pretty familiar with mechanics in general. I have tried to simplify things a bit in the current beta, though.

Character specialization – like most point based character systems, you run into the “highly specialized” issue. This is where characters are very good at what they do, and really bad at the rest. While this can make for some better roleplay (characters who are good at everything are so boring), it can make for excessively challenging conflicts. When the BBEG can attack anyone either Physically, Socially, or Mentally, it gets difficult to mount a suitable defense. The broad interpretation of the skill sets helps counter this, since we saw Academia, Subterfuge, and another skill used against mental attacks and even awareness and legerdemain as physical defense. I guess some of the issue may have come from the lack of knowledge that the players had in creating the characters – we were all mainly focused around physical aspects of the world.
Massive quantities of dice – not necessarily a bad thing, but it really starts to bog down play when counting out 27d6 then hunting for the successes. Play is even more bogged when you run into silly dice superstition like rolling one die at a time.

This is more a function of artifacts of the old style of character creation. Saga is not, strictly speaking, a point-based system, though you get some point-buy elements toward the end of character creation. It has elements of point-buy, but it also uses prioritization of assets and skills instead of point buy, and you get a set number of traits to start. Wild Blue works a little differently, using a sort of narrative character creation instead. In some ways it’s a little more free-form, like a point-buy system. Now, I agree that the system does lend itself somewhat to specialized characters, but it is possible to create a generalist in this game; at least, I think it is. I’ve never actually tried, but I did try to make it possible. Now, as to specialization being a bad thing; I think it can be, in the wrong hands, but I also think that (like you said), it’s boring when the PCs are good at everything. I think that the PCs should have to do something that they’re bad at from time to time, or else they become complacent and, even worse, bored. Challenge is good.

As to the massive quantities of dice, I agree that this is a problem. I’ve tried to remedy that in the most recent beta, though it remains to be seen if I succeeded. I did include a rule that allows you to trade in dice for automatic marks, on a 3-for-1 basis.

The fuzzy line – I’m talking about the one between RPing out an interaction and running a social conflict. In your post, you mention that we didn’t actually “win” any social conflicts – I think this stems in part from the habits we may have from other games – roll a gather information check and what you get is what you get vs. this system’s “roll to see if you break down the defenses, nope, try again, nope, try again, ok, you have worn them down” (it wasn’t quite like that, but in a way) Some of this may be settled by stating clearly “You are now in a battle of wills – if you win the battle, you get the info you want. If you don’t, you won’t get the info and you’ll suffer X as consequences.” Or, as players go along they’ll start to understand what the consequences will be and they no longer need to be spelled out. Since each “round” that we played gave us more info and we were talking a lot of it out, finishing the conflict “per the rules” didn’t seem necessary.

I think it’s probably a good idea to set down the parameters of a conflict before it happens, so everyone knows what to expect, and I’ll try to incorporate that into the game at some point in the future, for those who think similarly. Also, I should mention that while you didn’t “win” that social conflict with the old lady, you didn’t “lose” either. It ended prematurely, because John got information through alternative means. Which is fine. It actually worked out quite well, in the long run.

Kismet – What is this Kismet stuff, really? And why should it make damage into a 50/50 good/bad toss-up? I’d consider that every mark on a kismet roll can be spark, but every other result is doom.

I’ve made kismet a little more bad and a little less good. Hitches (1′s and 2′s) are always bad. Marks (5′s and 6′s) are only good if you have no hitches. This still might not be enough. I do like your idea of making everything below a mark a bad result, but that might increase player mortality rate a bit more than I want it to. Originally kismet was always bad, and I found that nobody ever used it. That’s why I made it sometimes good; to make it something of a gamble. You might come out ahead, but you might wind up bringing yourself that much closer to your Doom, too.

Wow, I can really get to typing sometimes, huh?

Yep. Welcome to the club.

What to definitely keep – FUN. We had fun. Therefore it was good. But more specifically -
Character creation – I had some fun with this, especially coming up with new traits and specializations. It’s also cool to see how you can use the traits in new and exciting ways once play has started.
Drives – While we saw very little in the way of mechanical “gain” for the players from the drives, I think it was very helpful for everyone to have these defined on paper, right in front of them. While I initially was opposed to the idea of a mechanical drive aspect that allows players to gain bonuses from the kind of roleplaying that they “should” do anyways, I found that having it there really was encouraging to all of us to try and fulfill those drives.

That was pretty much what I was going for. I wanted traits to be both a way for you to get out of tight spots or to hedge your bet, and a way for you to define your character in both narrative and mechanical terms. Rather than having a list of attributes that describe you physically and mentally, you just say, “this is what I can do.”

Drives came from the idea that I wanted to be able to give characters nudges in specific directions, as well as to give them some direction that they could define and follow themselves. I also wanted the most potent reward structure to be based off of what was important to individual characters. Rather than saying, “you get XP for killing things or completing quests”, I wanted characters to get rewarded for doing things that their characters would find rewarding, and gain confidence from.

“Spark” – used for narrative control and story effect was pretty cool, but might have had less impact than I would have liked. At one point it seemed that we would spend spark to undo things that could have been undone with fortune instead. It may be worthwhile to investigate the possibility of drive-generated spark for storytelling only, and scenario based XP or similar for character improvement.

I see what you mean about spending Spark when fortune would have done the trick, and I think that’s something that players and GMs will have to suss out for themselves. You guys could probably have spent fortune to make the darkness go away. Forcing the BBEG to stay in one form was definitely a job for Spark, though. As far as story-related Spark rewards, I had thought of that. I didn’t want Spark rewards to just be a way for the GM to say “good job”, though. I wanted Spark gain to be somewhat at the players’ control, even if the GM has the ultimate say (though a good GM will pick up on his players’ cues).

Story driven – the ability to run a game that everyone is into despite the lack of “overt conflict” is a real accomplishment. Not sure if this is more a reflection of the GM or the system or both, but whatever it was, it worked, and we’re all looking forward to playing again.

Thank you. Just, thank you. This is high praise, particularly in light of the fact that I ran the game and created the system and setting. Thanks. I’m really glad you had fun; I had a blast.

Skill usage – already been mentioned once or twice, but the ability to use almost any skill that can be made relevant in some way. Another great way that encourages some creative thinking and RP.

What I’ve found is that this particular aspect of the game really encourages players to describe their actions rather than just saying “I attack with my axe,” or whatever. I ran a playtest a while ago that was entirely combat, but there was a lot of description and improvisation going on, and it wound up being really memorable. For me, at least.

What to rattle around in your head -
Magic system – magic systems are tricky to nail down. I liked the broad, sweeping definitions vs. specific spells and effects. I like the idea of resonance. I didn’t like the seeming lack of effect that magic had (and some of that may have been that I wasn’t applying it to skills appropriately). I didn’t like the way resonance works – almost too arbitrary, and with more than one magic user, a GM would have to be painstakingly careful not to invoke resonance on one more that the others. May I suggest – Whenever a magic ability is used, a character gains resonance – For a discreet use, one resonance token is gained; Continued use in a conflict situation accumulates 1 resonance per round; Using a gift for an entire scene causes a character to gain 3 resonance. Whenever a character gains resonance, they make a resonance roll. Each mark causes the character to lose one resonance token. Each 1 or 2 invokes one of their drawbacks and causes them to lose a resonance token. A 3 or 4 has no effect. A character automatically loses 1 resonance at the end of each scene, but must make a resonance roll at the start of the next scene. As an option for GMs, each time a character gets a 1 or 2 on their roll, instead of immediately activating a drawback, they can pool those dice for use at an appropriate time in the game.

I like your ideas a lot. The magic system is still in its infancy. Saga, itself, doesn’t have a magic system, since it’s meant to be generic. The magic system I used was something I hammered out for Wild Blue specifically, and I’ll be the first to admit that it really does need some work. On paper, I thought the idea of building up a pool of tokens that the GM could use to hamper you with weirdness was a cool idea, but in play I think it creates an unnecessarily adversarial relationship between GM and magic-using players, and I often avoided using Resonance for just that reason. There’s a similar problem with traits in that I can invert them to hamper you, but you at least get a fortune token out of the deal if I do that. I’m thinking about putting that more in the players’ hands, allowing you to voluntarily invert a trait in order to get a fortune token (though I think I’ll retain the GM’s ability to do it, too).

Lastly, inverted traits – Allowing inverted traits to be bought off by fortune points is fine, but it’s also good to offer an alternative method – “I need a drink” should be able to be bought off by taking a round of conflict to do nothing but get out the bottle and take a swig. Lawman could be uninverted by intentionally commiting a crime (in view of those for whom lawman was a negative quality)

Yeah, that’s a good idea. I might pilfer that.

Thanks, Rich, for all the feedback; I think it’ll ultimately be very helpful. Go ahead and shoot me an email about the other stuff you wanted to talk about.

Thinking versus Doing

Posted on : 12-06-2007 | By : Brian | In : Links, Wild Blue

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I agree with this post up to a point. I think that story fudging can be a lot of fun. I did a lot of that in my Wild Blue playtest on Saturday, in fact. There were a number of points during the story when I had one thing planned but, whether it was because the PCs came up with a better idea or because something occurred to me that something else would be more fun, I changed things. Of course, Saga and, by extension, Wild Blue is sort of intended to be played that way.

But that’s not really what I’m talking about when I infer that there are things about this post that I disagree with. I do not disagree that a simple dungeon crawl done in broad strokes can be extremely fun. It can, and I’ve had lots of fun in the past in those exact kinds of sessions. I do disagree that there’s something inherently more fun about them than more involved, intricate storylines with deep characterization and rich plots. Again, in the Wild Blue playtest, there was really only one battle (at the end), but the game was a blast because the players were really into their characters and were playing them to the hilt, and they were really into the story, too. If I had played it more like a simple point-a-to-point-b slugfest, it would have suffered considerably for it.

I think that, fundamentally, it depends on the mood of the group and their preferences. I think that a melding of both is, ultimately, my preferred style of play. And I do realize that Mearls is simply stating his preference in this post; that’s not lost on me. I just thought I’d counter with mine.

My Saga playtest, and another rules update

Posted on : 11-06-2007 | By : Brian | In : Downloads, Gamecrafting, Saga, Session Reports, Wild Blue

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On Saturday, I got together with my friends Mike and Rich, and Rich’s friend John, and we played some Saga/Wild Blue. All three players were Wardens (a sort of jurisdiction-transcending lawman), and were sent to investigate a series of murders in a tiny village called Tom’s Crossing. Mike played Thor, a hulking berserker formally of the Tribes of the Dragon but now a Warden. He didn’t say much, but what he said carried a lot of weight with those he talked to. Rich played Cristof, a nobleman’s son with some magical powers who wanted nothing more than to redeem his family’s tarnished name. John played Mason, a cunning thief-turned-Warden whose primary goals were sex, greed, and proving himself (probably in that order).

There was a lot (and I do mean a lot) of talking and investigating, and only one big fight at the end. There were a few minor social conflicts throughout, but overall I think I could have made the game more challenging, rules-wise; most of the NPCs were pushovers (though the PCs never actually won one of the social conflicts; it ended in a stalemate, but they found information through . . . alternative means). The final, climactic battle went pretty well, I think. There was some physical combat and one big push of mental combat toward the end that did some serious damage to the PCs. They wound up winning, but I think they doubted that they would for a second there.

Things I took away from the game were that the rules on pushing needed to be revised, clarified, and made more useful (which I did in Beta 3, yesterday). I also looked at kismet damage and how it works, and revised it to make it a little more deadly. I also noticed that the PCs tended to roll huge handfuls of dice when they were playing to their strengths. As in, 20 or more. A few too many, in my opinion. So, I’ve done two things in Beta 4 to combat this issue. First, I’ve made a few changes to the way assets work that, I think, will make them easier to use, will reduce the number of dice rolled somewhat, and will make conflicts a little more challenging for the PCs (all goals I had in mind when I made the change). I also added a rule whereby you can trade in three dice for an automatic mark.

At any rate, here’s Beta 4. Hope you like it. Really, these changes should have been in Beta 3, yesterday, but I didn’t think of them then. It was 1am, after all.

Saga, Version Beta 4

Saga Update

Posted on : 10-06-2007 | By : Brian | In : Downloads, News, Saga, Wild Blue

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Following a largely successful and very fun playtest of Saga using the Wild Blue setting on Saturday, I’ve made some minor updates to the core system. Of note is the fact that I changed the way pushing works in the game; rather than being based off of spending additional tokens, it’s based on how many net marks you roll. Pushing also has more specific effects, and is generally (I think) more useful. I also removed the concept of burning a token from the game to eliminate confusion; you now always spend tokens, but you regain tokens at different rates in and out of a conflict. Also, since the version on Lulu is free, too, I’m just going to point you there (after all, you get cover art that way).

At any rate, here’s the new revision:

Saga, Version Beta 3

Fudging the Dice

Posted on : 11-05-2007 | By : Brian | In : GMing Methodology

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Treasure Tables posted an article, complete with lengthy commentary, on fudging die rolls. As has been mentioned in that article, the topic of fudging is something of a hot-button in the RPG world. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Why is it so important that other people game the same way you do? There is no “right” way to game, and ultimately any group is going to game in whatever way works for them, regardless of what forum-goers think. I think a lot of the argument comes from (on one hand) the misconception that GMs are always fudging die rolls against the players, and (on the other hand) that GMs are simply allowing players to die willy-nilly because it’s what the dice told them to do.

I’ve already made my opinions clear as far as fudging goes, but I’m going to expand on that a little bit now. My previous post aside, saying that I’m “pro fudging” or “pro cheating” is a gross oversimplification. Ninety-five percent of the time I roll the dice, and I go with the result. Sometimes, though, the result of the dice would either bog down the game and ruin it for everyone, or kill the players and bring the game to a halt. Is this the result of poor planning on my part? Maybe. I’m not perfect, and I don’t profess to be. Regardless, my players shouldn’t suffer for my poor planning if there’s something I can do about it in the moment.

There’s also the fact that (I suspect) many people who would balk at fudging die rolls wouldn’t have a problem with making an NPC attack a different PC when the one they’ve been pounding on is almost dead. Is this different? I don’t think so. Ultimately, when I’m running a game, I’m always thinking about what I believe will be most fun for everyone. If the result of the dice is going to cause one of the players to not have a good time, then I consider that a failure on the part of the dice, and I’ll correct it. If the result of the dice would serve to heighten dramatic tension in the game, then I’ll let it stand; this is what happens most of the time, as I’ve already mentioned.

I guess the bottom line, as far as my way of thinking goes, is that I’m not infallible as a GM, so I use dice to resolve most disputes (since they’re impartial). However, dice aren’t infallible either (since they have no capacity to perceive how much fun the players are having), so sometimes I bend the results a little. I should note that it’s very, very rare for me to ignore the dice completely. If a monster scores a critical hit that would kill a PC outright, I won’t turn that into a miss. Instead, I’d probably cause that hit to significantly cripple the PC for the rest of the fight, but at least the PC would get the opportunity to live to fight another day.

One final thought: it’s a common argument that, while GMs think it’s OK for them to cheat, they don’t allow their players to cheat. My counter-argument is that a good GM (particularly one who’s open to fudging) should either be cheating on behalf of the players at least as much as on behalf of the NPCs, or should allow the PCs a mechanic that allows them to “cheat within the rules”. This is exactly why I use mechanics like story tokens, even when such mechanics aren’t in the core rules of the game. If I give the players a means by which they can pull their own bacon out of the fire, then I don’t have to do it for them when they make a silly mistake or bite off a little more than they can chew.

At any rate, that’s how I GM. And if it’s wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.

Skullduggery Playtest

Posted on : 29-04-2007 | By : Brian | In : Gamecrafting, Session Reports

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Some of you may recall that, a while ago, I was working on a card game called Skullduggery. Well, it’s still under construction, and I had a playtest session with my friends Tad and Chris on Friday night. It went pretty well. There were some unclear rules and some things that needed to be shored up, but overall I was pretty pleased with how it went. It seems like I’m starting to get it to where I want it to be: fast-playing, easy to learn, easy to play.

My intention is for it to be more a casual, beer ‘n’ pretzels kind of game than a hardcore game; as such, there’s a fair amount of luck involved, and you don’t necessarily have to pay attention to every little thing that happens. There is some skill involved, mostly involving good timing of a heist and minimizing your risk before attempting one. I’m also thinking of introducing an element of gambling to the game, allowing you to wager Infamy on a heist in order to reap greater rewards (but at the risk of greater penalty for failure, and greater potentiality for your opponents to screw you). I’m not completely sold on the idea yet, though.

Saga

Posted on : 21-04-2007 | By : Brian | In : Downloads, Gamecraft 2.0, News, Saga

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Alright, some news: Gamecraft 2.0 is no more.

Wow. That was misleading. What I mean to say is, the project is still happening, but the name is changing. Gamecraft 2.0 has always been a working title for me, and I’ve been wanting to change it for a while; it’s too wordy, and the system has never really been that similar to the original Gamecraft System. More a spiritual successor than an actual successor. Thus, I’ve changed the name to Saga.

Oh, and one more thing: it’s done. Sort of. The system is mechanically complete, but still under development. To put it in computer terminology, it’s entered beta phase, and is ready for open testing. As such, I’m releasing it on this website, in this very post. Feel free to download it, peruse it, play with it, and give me feedback on it (please). Also note that it’s being released under a different Creative Commons license from everything else on this site; effectively, you can use it, modify it, and create and sell a commercial product with it, as long as you give me credit for its original inception (the full license is in the document, itself). Anyway, here you go:

The Saga Rules System (Version Beta 2)

The Saga Character Sheet

[Edit 5/18/07: Saga has been updated; specifically, the rules on using skills and tokens outside of conflicts have changed.]
[Edit 6/10/07: Another Saga update. Mainly rules clarifications, but the rules for pushing have been improved, too.]
[Edit 2/6/09: The file that you used to be able to download from Lulu was corrupted somehow, and I'm unable to replace it. I'm now hosting the file directly on this website.]