A Couple of Canon Points

On the cloning of Jedi:

1. There is no indication in the movies that it is possible to clone Jedi. However, there is no indication in the movies that it is not possible to clone them either. The only character we know can be cloned is Jango Fett, though since the Kaminoans are known as cloners it is likely that he is not unique.
2. If you admit materials from the Expanded Universe, then it's pretty clear that Jedi can be cloned: Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy (generally regarded as the pinnacle of EU materials) features a cloned Jedi named Joruus C'Baoth, as well as a clone of Luke grown from the hand he lost at Bespin. Plus, of course, there's also the Emperor's clones in "Dark Empire", but we try not to think about such things...

On the Empire's handling of slavery:

It is mentioned in "The Phantom Menace" that the Republic has outlawed slavery and that the Republic doesn't hold any real sway on Tattooine. Actually, both things are mentioned, hence Anakin's position as a slave.

By the time of "Star Wars", it's reasonably clear that the Empire (the successor to the Republic) does hold sway on Tattooine. And there's also no evidence of human slavery continuing - we know that Jabba still keeps Twi'lek girls as slaves, but no indication of human slavery. It's actually not at all a stretch to think that that is one of the actual benefits that the Empire has brought about - and it's entirely possible that this agenda was largely driven by Lord Vader himself, as a response to his own experiences as a boy.

Of course, we also know that the Empire itself makes use of slave labour - particularly Wookiee slaves used to build the Death Star and Mon Calamari slaves used to build the fleet. (Though, of course, even that is EU material - it's never mentioned in the films.) Hard to imagine that a xenophobic evil empire would be hypocritical, isn't it?

Neither of these is really a definitive answer to the questions asked, of course, merely one interpretation (specifically, mine). However, I'm comfortable that I'm on reasonably solid ground on both of these!

This is not gonna work...

Another player dropped out of my "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" campaign yesterday, taking us back to three players. This came at a point where I was again in the midst of a not-very-good week, but also at a time when I felt the game was starting to pick up again.

Last night's session was not one of my best. It was okay, but it was no better than okay. My biggest issue was that I went into the session just too tired, and under-prepared, and it really showed in play. (Plus, I wasn't too keen on getting into a canon argument over whether you can clone Jedi. But that's another rant.)

I've written before that I'm not entirely happy with the way the campaign has been going, and although it had picked up a lot recently that's still mostly true - it's not the campaign I had envisaged (which is fine), but it's also not a campaign I think I can really make the most of.

So, having thought about it, I've decided to wrap things up. I'm not just going to drop the campaign entirely, but there's an opportunity to take it straight into its last story arc - bring the final showdown forward, and thus bring it to at least a conclusion. It's not ideal, especially since I'd just dropped in quite a lot of story seeds, but I think it's better than just dragging it on. I suspect this means there will be three more sessions, taking the total to 11. That's not terrible - just under half of the total I had expected going in.

Once the campaign is done, it is not my intention to start a new one any time soon. There doesn't seem to be a quorum of players with free time to support one anyway, but the main reason is that at the moment I don't have any great ideas bubbling away in the background. So, rather than running something for the sake of running something, I think I'll focus on 'just' playing for a time. Which isn't exactly the worst thing in the world!

A Second Thought

Following on from yesterday's post on encumbrance, I think it's actually more complex than it really needs to be - I don't think the limit on "specified items" is actually needed. Better, I think, just to let the player define a "reasonable number" of specified items and leave the rest undefined. There's not even a need for armour to count double (or whatever) - armour already has the appropriate effects so doesn't need to do any more.

Of course, all of this would only apply in a game where equipment wasn't all that important anyway - in a game where it is important, issues like encumbrance are much more important so you can't really handwave it anyway.

A Thought on Encumbrance: How About This...

How about, instead of the player carefully selecting all his gear, then laboriously calculating the weight, comparing it with a threshold, and thus determining encumbrance, why not do it the other way around: the player selects an encumbrance level, and from this he gets both a "select X specific items" and also a "percentage of possession"?

When the question gets asked "do you have...?", then if you've declared it as a specific item then the answer is yes, otherwise you roll for it. (And if the dice come up "yes", you can then either switch one of your existing specific items for this new thing, or take your chances next time.)

You'd probably want to base both on the character's race and/or Strength, so how about this:

Light encumbrance: Select 3+Str mod specific items (minimum 1). You have a chance of having any other item equal to 10+(5 x Str mod)% (minimum 5%).

Medium encumbrance: Select 5+Str mod specific items (minimum 1). You have a chance of having any other item equal to 30+(10 x Str mod)% (minimum 5%)

Heavy encumbrance: Select 7+Str mod specific items (minimum 1). You have a chance of having any other item equal to 50+(15 x Str mod)% (minimum 5%)

Thus, if Frodo (Str 8) chooses to have only light encumbrance, he gets to select only 2 specific items to carry and has a 5% chance of having some other item. Conversely, Sam (Str 14) chooses to be heavily encumbered, and so gets to choose 9 specific items and has a 80% chance of having some other item in his pack.

(Note that weapons, but not ammunition, would always have to be listed as specific items. As for armour, light armour would count as 1 item, medium armour as 2, and heavy armour as 3. Again, such things would have to be listed as specific items.)

Any thoughts? Or is the whole thing just mad?

(Hmm... as a thought, each successful check should probably reduce the character's %age chance for further equipment. So, the more you dig into the pack, the more your reserves get used up...)

GUMSHOE: First Impressions

I was lucky enough to have a chance to play a session of GUMSHOE yesterday. GUMSHOE being an RPG intended for a much more investigative style of play than a 'standard' RPG, where the major difference is that characters tend to just be given clues to solve the mystery, rather than having to roll everything and thus missing out on things.

Or, at least, that's the one-sentence summary. It's actually a bit more complex than that - it apppears your characters training gives you various points, and you can then use those points to 'buy' clues where they appear (with the caveat that if there's no clue there, you don't pay). This is rather better than I'd envisaged, in that it allows the character easy access to the clue, but still has something of an associated cost. (I also liked our GM's enhancement of a small pool of 'floating' skills.)

The game itself was based on a TV series I haven't ever seen. But it seemed to be pretty much "X-Files" meets Indiana Jones - there was the episodic report of weirdness happening, so off we went to investigate and eventually find some artifact of historical interest. Fortunately, there are loads of shows like that, and they all pretty much work the same way, so although I didn't 'get' the characters (due to lack of viewing), I was able to 'get' the concepts easily enough.

And it all worked out pretty well. The adventure was well-designed - plenty of mysteries to tease out, plenty of clues for those mysteries, and a compelling premise. Good stuff.

The one thing I didn't really care for was the combat system, but that was perhaps inevitable - it's just not the focus of the game. I suspect that GUMSHOE may well be best handled if the characters just don't go into combat often: most shows in the genre tend to lead to a climax where the bad guy is unmasked and thus 'trapped' - they end up revealing their motive/underlying pain/general nastiness, and then they get led away by the relevant authorities. (But, on the other hand, that's much less true of the pilot episode, which invariably has a gunfight at the end, so that was appropriate here, too.)

I don't have much more to say, really. I would definitely be happy to play GUMSHOE again, but I fear it's a game that virtually necessitates some serious preparation work from the GM. I also suspect that a lot of the underlying principles can be adapted very easily to other games - indeed, the "spend a point..." concept is much like Numenera's concept of 'effort', and most of the rest is stylistic rather than mechanical anyway.

Anyway, good game.

For Players: Two Things About Skills

#1: Roll Already!

Many of the skills on the character sheet are pretty obvious - Gather Information, Perception, the Knowledge skills, Jump... This means that very often, if you say, "I'm going to X", you can be pretty sure the DM will immediately reply, "Okay, make a Y check." (For example, "Can I see any tracks?", "Okay, make a Perception check.")

So... why wait? You know what the appropriate skill is, you know the DM is going to ask for it, so just go ahead and roll. That way, when you ask you can also announce the result of the roll right away.

#2: Don't be afraid to ask the real question

Quite often, your PC might be talking to an NPC and you want to find out what he knows about the shield generator. Or you're searching for a trap. Or, in whatever case, there's something you want to know. And maybe you're not entirely sure how best to move the conversation around to what you want to know. Or you don't know quite what the best question is to ask, or whatever.

In such cases, don't be afraid to say to the DM directly, "I'm trying to find a trap. Is there one?" or "I want to find out what he knows about the shield generator, but real tactful." Or whatever - just simply what you are really trying to achieve, and perhaps something about how you approach it.

Because, yes, I would generally prefer that you try to stay in character, but let's face it: you are not your character. With the best will in the world, you simply don't know the intricate details of how Star Wars technology works (and neither do I!). You can't see the million-and-one body language cues that your character would probably pick up on. And sometimes you just can't find the words. That's all fine.

So if it comes to it, don't be afraid just to cut to the chase - "I want to know X", and leave it at that. I promise I won't judge!

(More to the point: I have no interest in adversarial play. Believe it or not, I don't adjust NPC strategy based on the PCs declared actions, or fiendishly concoct plans to thwart the players' best laid plans. So the players really should feel confident discussing strategy in front of the DM, because the DM is supposed to be an impartial adjudicator, not the advocate for the NPCs. Unfortunately, a lot of players simply don't believe that, because of far too many bad DMs back in the day. So, it's okay to tell me what you're trying to do, without agonising that I'm going to use that knowledge somehow to screw your character over!)

Unthinkable? Ditching Auto-Success and Failure

For an age, indeed probably since the pre-history of D&D, it has been a convention that "a 20 always hits". Okay, this was not actually quite true, because in the 1st Ed DMG there were actually combat tables that required you to roll a 21 on d20 to score a hit but these were really extreme - and that oddity was removed for 2nd Edition and beyond.

So, a natural-20 always hits and a natural-1 always fails. And that is good, that is the way it has always been, and that is the way it always shall be.

But maybe it shouldn't.

See, here's the thing: the rule about a natural-20 always hitting only matters in those cases where a 20 wouldn't be enough to score a hit - if you have +4 on your attack rolls and the enemy has AC 25 or more. In which case that nat-20 represents the hugely lucky hit against all odds. Which is cool enough, I guess... except that in that case it almost certainly means that the PCs are badly overmatched anyway, and really need to run away - and scoring one lucky hit won't change that. (And if the target has hit points appropriate to such a high AC, the PCs really aren't going to whittle it down with those one-in-twenty lucky hits.)

Likewise, the rule that a natural-1 always misses only applies in those cases where a 1 wouldn't otherwise miss - in which case the challenge is trivial anyway, so might as well be skipped.

In fact, Blizzard (makers of WoW) did some extensive analysis of success thresholds, and they concluded that a success rate of ~68% (IIRC) gave rise to the most satisfying game experience - that is, a character who is 'good' at something should succeed at level-appropriate challenges on a roll of 7+ on the d20. That probably means that a 'hard' challenge for such a PC should succeed on a 12+ (45%) while an 'easy' challenge for such a PC should succeed on a 2+ (95%). A character who is merely 'average' (not good) at the task should change those thresholds to 7/12/17 for easy/average/hard tasks, while one who is 'poor' should change them to 12/17/22.

In other words, the only time (in the normal order of things) that the auto-success/failure rule should apply anyway would be when a character who is 'poor' at something attempts a 'hard' task - and, in that case, I have no problem whatsoever in simply ruling that the task is beyond his capabilities.

(Of course, in actual use there will be more variation of success values than I've indicated above. After all, 'good', 'average', and 'poor'; and 'easy', 'average' and, 'hard' are all rather nebulous and ill-defined terms. But the principle remains - if you're good enough, and the task easy enough, that you'd succeed on a '1' anyway, there's probably very little interest in that 5% chance of failure; conversely, if you're sufficiently outmatched that even a '20' isn't really enough to score a success, why bother rolling?)

So, I'm inclined to think that that's actually a rule that would be better consigned to history.

Numenera: Third Thoughts

We played Numenera for the third time yesterday. That being the case, I have some third thoughts...

Actually, I have very little to say. The game was much more satisfying than either of the previous two sessions. The move up to tier two characters made things much more enjoyable, as characters were just that bit more capable - it looks like Numenera, like most versions of D&D, very definitely has a 'sweet spot' for play.

The only slight complaint I might make concerns one "GM intrusion", where the PCs were clearing away some metallic 'spider' webs and the intrusion was that we hurt ourselves in doing so. My complaint there was not because there's anything wrong with the concept of intrusions, with an intrusion in that situation, or in taking damage. It's just that that intrusion at that time was, frankly, a bit dull. Taking four damage, just before we have a chance to heal with no real penalty to do so, isn't really worth the time - it would be like costing a D&D 4e character a healing surge right before he takes an Extended Rest.

But that's a very, very minor thing. Otherwise... good times.

(As an aside: would I recommend Numenera? Yes, I would. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but it's a fun game. Will I be buying Numenera? No, I don't plan to - in general I only buy a game if I intend to run it, and I think I'm more interested in discovering Numenera from the players' side of the screen.)