Monk Damage

This weekend I've been thinking about the damage that Monks do with their unarmed attacks, and also the role of Monk weapons in the game. Today I looked up the actual values, and have come to the conclusion that Wizards of the Coast screwed up not once, but twice.

A Medium Monk at 1st level does 1d6 points of damage with an unarmed attack, with a critical of 20 x2. At 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th level, this goes up by one die type. So, 1d8 at 4th level, 1d10 at 8th level, 1d12 at 12th level, and 1d20 at 16th level. A Small Monk at 1st level does 1d4 points of damage, and goes up dice types at the same rate. So, they should do 1d6 at 4th level, 1d8 at 8th level, 1d10 at 12th level, and 1d12 at 16th level. But instead they do 2d6 at 16th level.

According to the DMG, when dealing with scaling weapons up and down in size, the dice type progression basically goes as follows: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 2d6, 2d8...

So, I reckon the damage dice for Medium Monks are wrong. They should get 2d6 at 12th level, and 2d8 at 16th level and above.

That was today's discovery. However, my real reason for considering this whole issue was Monk weapons, which are utterly useless in the game. When fighting with a Monk weapon (kama, nunchaku or siangham), the Monk gets to use his improved UBAB. However, he does the base damage of the weapon in all cases. This being 1d6 damage, with a critical of 20 x2.

What this means, in real terms, is that no Monk in his right mind will actually use a Monk weapon, since they're better off just attacking unarmed (okay, unless they find a magical weapon). And no other character will use one of these weapons, since they're Exotic, and so require a dedicated Feat for use.

Now, frankly, this is just daft. Firstly, there's nothing about the kama (I think - it may be the siangham) that makes it inherently difficult to use. Similarly, the nunchaku is basically just a flail. So, these weapons really should just be Simple or Martial weapons, to match their damage potential and the manner in which they're used. (I'll also advocate giving the nunchaku a 20 x3 critical, because I'd make this a Martial weapon, and the others simple.) This makes these weapons competitive for a non-Monk to use, as well as better reflecting the reality of their use and form.

However, I'd like to see Monks having some sort of a trade-off to make whether to use a weapon or not, and their choice of weapon should really reflect their fighting style. Therefore, I would suggest that a Monk using Monk weapons gets some sort of a special effect. So for instance, perhaps a Monk using Sai (which aren't even in the core book, but would be Simple weapons doing 1d6, 20 x2) might gain the ability to make Disarm attempts without drawing an attack of opportunity. The Monk with nunchaku would simply get the benefit of a greater critical damage. I'd need to check on the other weapons, but I reckon the kama would probably give the effects of the Dodge feat.

In addition, I'd allow a Monk using a Monk weapon to use his unarmed damage rating. To keep fighting unarmed competitive, Monks should be able to treat their unarmed attacks (only) as being magical, as per the Ki Strike special ability.

What do you think?

Star Wars d20

Saturday's game did not go according to plan, or even close. Basically, I botched the game badly (part of the reason why the game ended so early was that I realised after about an hour that it wasn't going well, so got out). And it wasn't that the players did anything to disrupt the plot - I just forgot to include one :-(

So, with that in mind, there's not a whole lot that I can say about the system, without it sounding like sour grapes. But I'm not going to let that stop me:

- Vitality Points are bizarre. You roll to hit, and as a result, your shot doesn't hit. What the hell? This makes even less sense that hit points do.

- Wound Points are worse. We had two critical hits with lightsabers in the game. The first almost killed the target in a single blow, and this despite my rolling really low damage. The second killed the bad-guy, and would have even if he had been unhurt. This just makes the "Improved Critical" feat far too powerful.

- If the goal of d20 is to make the game familiar to new users, it doesn't quite work. Force powers work fine, but they need to be read by players of Jedi before the game begins. Of course, this is really no different than Wizards in D&D, and my lack of familiarity with the rules can hardly be considered to be a flaw in the rules themselves.

- The starship rules suck. But then, we knew that.

- I really need to get myself a copy of the Revised core rulebook. The existence of both new and old books at the game table was a distraction.

Overall, I think d20 is a fairly good fit for the Star Wars setting. It has the appropriately heroic style, and lack of realism, and has nicely iconic character types. However, I'm not too sure of the specific implementation. And my feeling is that if I changed the rules to better fit what I think they should be (bring back hit points, rewrite starships again), I'd probably end up with a house-ruled mess that no-one would want to play.

At some point, I'm still intending to write up what I think the starship rules should look like. Once I've done that, I'll post them (not here, though).

Replacing the Cleric

One interesting comment that Roger made some time ago was that someone had decided to switch from Cleric to Rogue in his game, and that this left us with no Cleric. Whereas previously, we had no Rogue. Naturally, this is a bad thing. However, it really shouldn't be.

According to Wizards of the Coast's own market research, the average group size is 4 players and a DM. So, the typical D&D party would be expected to consist of the classic Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric combination. Of course, you can replace the Fighter with a Paladin, Ranger or Barbarian, and the Wizard can be replaced with a Sorcerer.

Yet, if you try to replace either the Cleric or the Rogue, you find there is no other class that can fill that role. Remove the Cleric, and you automatically lose the bulk of the group's healing capacity (yes, Druids and Paladins can both heal, but these are poor substitutes). Remove the Rogue, and you lose a lot of the group's ability to find traps (other characters cannot find traps with a DC higher than 20). Also, the Rogue is the skills king of the game, having twice as many points as any other class. Granted, Sneak Attack isn't absolutely required, and nor are any of the other Rogue special abilities.

In my opinion, this is a fairly gaping weakness in the game system as written. I think the only suggestion I can offer is the addition of new base classes, that incorporate these key class powers, but change the surrounding elements.

So, for instance, there might be a Mystic class that can heal as well as a Cleric, and has limited access to arcane spells as well, but doesn't have the same martial abilities of the Cleric (the key thing is the healing - everything else is negotiable).

Actually, in the case of Rogues and detecting traps, I'd probably make "Traps Lore" a feat, allowing a character to detect traps of any DC. Naturally, Rogues get this for free at first level, while other characters would have to buy it. I have a suspicion that the skill points of the various classes are going to be changed in the revised edition. (I'm expecting classes with 2 currently will go to 4, classes with 4 will go to 6, and Rogues will stay the same. I'm also hoping that the lists of class skills will be expanded a lot to include some key skills that are on everyone's list - such as Swim. Still, we won't see until July.)

So, whaddya think?

Icons

Speaking of, there was a thread there a few days ago about a character's appearance, which got me thinking about iconic characters in various genres. This was intensified last night when I went to see Equilibrium, and was treated to the latest Pepsi advert, featuring David Beckham as the least convincing Western bad-ass ever.

Anyway, some genres have their particular icons and motifs, such as the mysterious wandered in westerns, the old man in the bar in fantasy, never-ending ammunition in John Woo films, and the girls and gadgets of Bond. Clearly, GMs should remain aware of these icons when creating a game adhering to the genre in question, and be sure to include them.

So, the ever-presents in the western genre (since that's the one I've been thinking about since last night):

Mysterious Stranger
The Lapsed priest/school-teacher (I don't know why this one crops up so often, but it does seem to)
The cocky outlaw
Standoff at noon/dawn
Posses/Gangs
Laconic characters (no-one in a Western ever seems to say much, or else they die really quickly)
Amoral protagonists.

There are others, but this is a good list to work with. Also, not every icon appears in every story. Still, a good number of them should appear in most stories.

Anyway, when writing an adventure within a genre, I think GMs could do a lot worse than sit down and brainstorm the icons of the genre, and make sure he includes a bunch of them. When designing a game in a genre (say Wild West d20), the designer should try to make an effort to include rules for as many of the icons as possible.

(In Wild West d20, I'd probably add a 'Background' section in the place usually taken by 'Race', which covers the kid/retired gunfighter/whatever stereotypes. I'd use the normal d20 Modern classes, with a number of advanced classes for what I'm trying to do, and I'd use the Iaijutsu duelling rules from Oriental Adventures to model the standoff. Oh, and alignment would, of course, be immediately thrown out and trampled on, like a discarded dog-collar. I don't know how I'd add rules for not talking much.)

Description vs Acting

This is a bit of an odd one, since the original post was by Mort, but kicked off some interesting discussion. So I've retained that OP here, with my contributions in the comments...

I've read about this before in roleplaying guides and I noticed it during the weekend games. The difference between describing your actions and acting them out.

i.e 'I want over to the guy and ask him what he knows about this house' vs 'I walk over to the guy: "Hello sir, could you please tell me what you have heard about this particular house?"'

The first being a straight description of your actions and the second being you acting out the conversation.

Personally I prefere the second approach, as I think that is really what roleplaying is all about, of course sometimes you want to speed up things and switch to descriptions, for instance when people want to go shopping and such.

But some people seem to use descriptions all the time, I don't really like it. Then again I guess some people are more comfortable to actually only describe their feelings than act them out in front of a bunch of strangers.

Hmm, I don't think I really have a point here, I'm just rambling on a bit..

Vampire Reverse Trilogy

As per usual, I couldn't sleep on Saturday night, and spent the evening thinking up lots of truly evil ideas for a Vampire game. Or, rather, a reverse trilogy of Vampire games. Essentially, the idea is that the group plays through three Vampire one-offs, one each in the Dark Ages, Victorian Age and Modern Age. Each story would build on elements of the previous ones, so that at the end the whole would be revealed in all its twisted glory. However, I then cunningly decided to twist the idea still further, by running the games in reverse. So, you start with the Modern game, then run the Victorian Age, and finish with Dark Ages.

Anyway, I've since added this to my list of projects to complete. Once I'm done, I'll either run the games (depending on where we start as regards Roger's game at the time), or simply post what I've done to the net, with a commentary discussing the construction of the game as regards the guidelines above.

One-offs for Convention Play

Running a one-off is always tricky, and running a one-off at a convention doubly so. One problem I see is that a lot of people approach these games as being just like any other game, when the fact is that one-offs have their own challenges and constraints that should be borne in mind for the best gaming experience. (If I'm sounding like a marketing drone today, I apologise. I've been having an oddly successful day here at uni.)

Issues particular to one-offs (at conventions):

1) Time limit. In a regular game, if you run for 20 hours, this isn't a problem since the group can split up and get back together. In a one-off, you may have to fit within 4 hours.

2) Unknown player 'level'. You may be stuck with a group who have never played the system before, a group of rules-experts, or even a mixed group. The latter are the worst, of course. Fortunately, it's rare to get a group who have never played any game before, except when specifically running a demo game, in which case that was the intention, and so not something to worry about.

3) Unknown number of players. Typically, the GM can state a maximum group size, but not a minimum. Alternately, the con organisers might state that all games must accomodate a particular size. Either way, you're not guaranteed you'll get the full number of players.

Solutions:

Note that a lot of what follows goes to my personal method of one-off design, and the rest is just opinion. It's hardly truth from on high.

1) Use the Core Rules only. Always always stick to the core rules. If you get a group a newbies, you'll find it much easier to describe the system. If you get a group of rules-experts, you'll retain at least a chance of being as knowledgeable about the rules as they are. And if you get a mixed group, both apply. Absolutely DO NOT use House Rules, since these take time to explain, and may need explained many times to the experts.

Additionally, in a demo game, use the simplest system you can. Storyteller works really well, especially the Trinity/Exalted version. D&D doesn't work too well, unless you strip right back on the rules.

2) Make the characters both balanced and interesting. For one-offs I try to always insist on pre-generated characters to guarantee these two. Basically, it is vitally important that the characters can all have a reasonable amount of screen time, and that the players can have fun playing their characters.

In a one-off, it is unlikely that someone will enjoy playing Fighter #112301. They probably will enjoy playing the last of the White Howlers, driven to the brink of madness by a near-miss when he was almost forced to dance the Black Spiral, who also happens to be the reincarnated King Arthur in a Wild West setting.

3) Give all the characters something to do. Again, it is vital that everyone has something here. This is why I always design one-offs with a main plot and one sub-plot per two PCs. (Actually, I then try to tie each sub-plot to three of the PCs, to provide some redundancy.) The sub-plots don't need to have the PCs working together - it's entirely acceptable to have the PCs be rivals in this instance, although probably best if they don't end up killing each other.

This is different from campaign play, where individual PCs might have a session in the spotlight, while others are in the shade for a while. In a one-off, you only have one session to allow everyone to shine. Of course, players have an option of completely ignoring your sub-plots. If they end up bored as a result, it sucks to be them.

4) Build in redundancy. Build the main plot so that it can be completed by three PCs. Then, make sure those three are in use. Add the other PCs as necessary to fill out the group, but prioritise the remaining PCs based on how interesting the characters are. So, if your main plot requires characters #1, #2 and #3, these have to be the first three PCs selected. If you have another 5 characters, and 2 more players, make sure the PCs you add are the most interesting ones out of those you have left, since the characters aren't strictly required.

Try also to assign two PCs to any sub-plot before adding a new sub-plot. It's easier to drop sub-plots than it is to deal with a separated group.

5) Try to keep the group together. Vampire is a great game for individual action, plotting and politics. There's no way in hell I'd ever run a game like that for a one-off. Instead, I'd go with a Sabbat game, a Werewolf game, or perhaps a standard horror game, with the group trapped in the archetypal haunted house.

6) Prepare the game in advance, and try to fit in a playtest before the convention. A certain GM of my acquaintance decided to prepare his game on the night before the convention. He grabbed an old one-off plot that he'd used before, pulled in the characters from his regular game (which sucked since two of them were 100 XP monsters, and the other 6 were newly-created), and made up the enemy stats as he went along. By all accounts, his players weren't too happy.

Then again, you don't need to go to the other extreme, where each character has a 10-page character pack, consisting of 2 pages of character sheet, ammo hand-outs, rules for poker, and five pages of background and explanation. However, that game ran like a dream.

7) Don't be afraid of PC death. Lots of GMs shy away from killing of characters, particularly late in a campaign. In a one-off, there's no need to worry. The only concern is that the deaths should probably come as late in the game as possible, unless you have lots of replacement characters available (Call of Cthulhu seems to call out for that sort of set-up).

And that's about it.

My Storyteller House-rules

These are my current working set of House Rules for the Storyteller system. They apply principally to Vampire: the Masquerade, and would require some re-working for other games.

Character Generation

No character can begin play with an Attribute higher than 5, an Ability higher than 4, a Discipline higher than 3, or Willpower or Humanity higher than 9. Characters may only begin play with clan disciplines - Caitiff are exempt from this rule.

The Generation background is not available - all PCs will start at the same generation, this been announced before the game begins.

No Merits and Flaws will be used.

Only the following clans and bloodlines may be considered for PCs:

Clans: Assamite, Brujah, Follower of Set, Gangrel, Giovanni, Lasombra, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Ravnos, Toreador, Tremere, Tzimisce, Ventrue

Bloodlines: Baali, Caitiff, Salubri

Dark Ages: Giovanni is added to the list of Bloodlines. Cappadocian is added to the list of Clans.

No other vampires exist is my setting - these will not be encountered. Additionally, I don't do crossovers.

Dice Rolling

1's do not cancel successes. 10's are not re-rolled.

There is no bonus in having a specialisation declared for a trait, nor is it possible to botch any roll except a Virtue roll.

Characters botch Virtue rolls normally; the only consequence is the acquisition of a derangement.

Damage

All successful attacks do a minimum of 1 damage, before soak.

The claws and bite of a Vampire do Lethal, not Aggravated, damage. This also applies to Vicissitude bone spurs, Serpentis attacks, and the like. Fire summoned by vampiric disciplines still does Aggravated damage.

Characters without Fortitude cannot soak Aggravated damage of any sort. Characters with Fortitude use only their Fortitude dice to soak Aggravated damage. Armour generally does not apply to soak rolls against Aggravated damage.

Abilities

5 dots in an Ability represents the pinnacle of achievement. No vampire, however mighty, can ever achieve 6 dots in Melee.

Dominate and Generation

Dominate affects characters of a higher generation just as effectively as those of low generation. However, woe betide the vampire who tries and fails :-)

Blood Bonds

It is possible to be blood bound to multiple masters.

True Faith

True Faith does not damage vampires. It's major effect is to render the mortal totally immune to vampiric mental influence. Mortals with True Faith are therefore immune to Dominate, Presence, Obfuscate, Chimerstry, and the like. They cannot be Embraced, but can still be torn apart with vampire claws.

Experience

I am very stingy with experience awards. Don't expect to gain more than 2 points a session. Also, there will be no "End of Story" awards.

Experience points can be spent freely on anything except new Disciplines and new Thaumaturgical paths. This includes Humanity.

New disciplines must be taught to a character by a vampire who has the discipline. Most teachers insist their student drink their blood, but this is not strictly required.

All experience costs are Multiplier times New Rating. I suggest you design a character you like, because he won't be changing much over the course of a chronicle.

Languages

The handling of language skills in RPGs troubles me. Mostly because I can't think of a better way to handle them.

There seem to be three basic approaches:

• Either a character knows a language or they don't. Example: D&D. (Some systems encapsulate literacy in a language in this, others handle it seperately.)
• A character has a single Linguistics skill, with the overall rank determining how many languages they know, and the total rank giving the level of proficiency in each. Example: Storyteller.
• A character has a bunch of language skills, one for each language. Each has its own rating. Moreover, the native language of the character has a high rating. Example: Rolemaster, Children of the Sun.

I haven't seen any games that have a skill allowing a linguist to puzzle through an entirely new language, although it seems obvious that this is something that they might well want to do. (Option 2, above, can easily be made to do this, and option 3 can include a Profession: Linguist skill or such-like, so this complaint is not entirely valid.)

The second problem with the systems as used is that typically a character will either blow his linguistics roll, and not be able to communicate at all, or will succeed, and speak perfectly. Now, part of this is for simplicity's sake - who wants to constantly have to deal with communication problems in a game, especially when the GM is trying to pass on a vital clue? Part of it is also just laziness, which is much the same.

It's tricky - other skills in an RPG are basically abstract, since the player doesn't have to describe how his character hacks a security system, or how he swings his sword at the orc's head. However, communication is clearly not abstracted, given that playing an RPG basically consists of a whole lot of talking.

As I said, I don't know of a really good way to handle this. And, unless you're running some sort of deep-space exploration game, there's probably not much call for detailed rules on this issue. Still, it bugs me.

Back to Rolemaster

Okay, I'm going to raise another objection about the system. Firstly, some good things:

- Lots of narrow skills (since that's what it's trying to do).

- Learning one skill impacts learning on related skills (the whole edged-weapons thing that you discussed with Roger on Saturday).

- Different categories of skills allowing the development both of 'power' skills and 'flavour' skills.

But there remains a weakness in the system. In reality, people have a whole bunch of skills at low levels. This is hardly surprising, and in systems with a small number of skills can be ignored. In a system with lots of skills, though, there should be a mechanism to encourage this. And Rolemaster really doesn't - instead it seems to encourage PCs to develop a small number of skills in each category to a high level.

Then again, I don't really care too much. The Rolemaster system seems reasonably solid at its core, and I can probably live without knowing if my character has developed 1 or 0 ranks in the tie (reef knot) skill :-)

Individual Action

We all know the rule, 'don't split the party'. That's not what I'm about to talk about. After all, many games have times when it makes sense to split the party. What I'm about to talk about is what I consider a design flaw in certain games where, in order for one character to use their specialised skills, the rest of the party HAS to be sidelined.

Example: Deckers in Shadowrun, and their equivalent in every cyberpunk genre game I've ever encountered. Firstly, these characters are forced to spend the bulk of their skill points on things like Computer Use, which makes sense, but also makes them fairly useless outside the Matrix. When they jack in, the rest of the party gets to sit round waiting for them to do their thing.

Example: Astral characters in Vampire (equivalent situations occur in Mage, and some other games). Typically, only one member of the group will have Auspex at high enough levels to enter Astral space. This skill has, of course, been bought at the expense of something else, so you do want to let them use it. Yet when they do, the rest of the group is sidelined. (This is a weaker example than the others, due to the nature of play in Vampire, which tends to encourage individual action.)

Example: Starfighters in Star Wars (and equivalent). It's highly unlikely that all the members of the party are expert pilots, and it's also likely that someone in the group is. In any space battle, it's likely that either the group will be in a single ship (in which case no-one except the pilot and gunner gets in on the action), or some members of the party are in starfighters.

Of course, these all appear in the source material, where characters regularly go off to do their own thing. (Luke at the Battle of Yavin, Tank in the Matrix, Angel when he visits the Powers.) This goes to show, however, that what is good for TV isn't necessarily good for RPGs.

Anyway, it sucks to be part of the group that's left out. Probably more important, it's poor design for a game to be set up so that there are situations where the group HAS to be split in this way, and even worse if certain character types are set up so that to be effective they must be split from the party.

So, how does one go about designing a game where this isn't a problem?

One possibility is to have the players each run several characters, a primary character and a bunch of secondaries. These secondaries don't necessarily have to be valid PCs in their own right - in example 1 they might include daemon processes used by the decker PC. The secondaries also don't need to be lasting characters, allowing for high casualties in the starfighter battle.

The problem (in part) with this approach is that players will typically not care about the secondaries. Additionally, if the list of secondaries changes often, the GM will have a whole lot of extra work to do.

I think a better solution is to ensure that there are no areas in the game where any given character is totally ineffective, or unable to enter, at least by design. (If I want to put in a mages-only club in my D&D campaign, I will, but I don't want the game rules to assume this, thankyou very much.) Granted, different character types may not be as effective in all arenas, but there should be no areas that are absolutely barred.

Example: In Shadowrun, add non-intrusive matrix interfaces, allowing all characters to enter the Matrix without cyberware, and give the standard cyberdeck the ability to jack in many people at once. Naturally, ensure that the modifiers to a character's statistics are such that the decker, not the street samurai, becomes the dominant combat monkey. Also, allow easy entry/exit from the matrix for secondary characters, so that there is little fear of ambush when the whole group jacks in.

Example: Allow characters to easily 'cross-over' their allies. Make the secondaries reliant on the primary in some sense, but allow the option.

Example: Get everyone into a starfighter early and often.

Some of these examples stretch the premise of the game, mutilate the character concepts, or just sound bad. However, they also remove the problems inherent in a game with significant areas of the game world that are off-limits to some characters.

Note: In Star Wars d20, there is absolutely no way to model Luke Skywalker's role in the Battle of Yavin. At the point where he went into combat, he was presumably still low-level, and had never before flown a starfighter. Therefore, it's entirely unreasonable to assume he had the Starfighter Operation feat. Without it, he suffered a -4 penalty to all Pilot rolls, and even with a maxed Pilot skill, he'd have been suffering badly.

Of course, it's also impossible for Darth Vader to have severed his arm, to have blasted R2, or for Greedo to have missed, so we could just let that slide...

Spiffing up D&D combat

This thread was actually started by Mort:

You mentioned doing called shots in D&D and how it is not possible. Basically combat in D&D is pretty much limited to hitting things in a few different ways. I've been pondering how one could make the fights a bit more fun and involved. Of course feats goes a certain way towards doing this, but still not adding that extra oomph to combat.

I was thinking maybe a system like the stunt system from Exalted could be used, where especially cool or clever maneouvers gives you extra dice in your dice pool, but there are a few things that doesn't really fit with D&D.

First off, the stunts in Exalted are serious action style affairs, the more over the top the better, this might fit with D&D oriental adventures, but probably not in Forgotten Realms. So the actuall stunts themselves would have to be toned down a notch or two.

Second things is that D&D doesn't use dice pools at all, so some other bonus would have to be given, perhaps a slightly increased attack bonus/AC depending on the feat, or maybe give a once off access to a feat (improved trip etc for really good stunts.)

Of course, this would give D&D combat a very different feel, which some people might not like, but it would definately take away that old roll, roll, hit, miss, roll damage, wait, roll, roll monotony of combat.

Randomness in d20

One of the most commonly suggested modifications to d20 is to use 2d10 or 3d6 instead of 1d20 for task resolution. On the face of it, this seems quite reasonable. Certainly, it doesn't break the game.

However, this modification fails to take into account the fact that d20 isn't particularly random in the first place. Once you go above the low levels, the modifiers used by characters are so high that they dwarf the 1d20 roll in importance. Therefore, characters perform fairly consistently in most conditions anyway. (The main exception is combat, which should be fairly random anyway) Additionally, for most tasks, characters can be expected to take 10 or take 20, which is totally non-random.

Children of the Sun makes very good use of random and non-random elements in action resolution with its skill/attribute mix. PCs have to trade-off boosting their skills, which consistently adds to their totals, or boosting attributes, which can have a huge benefit, but is much less certain. Of course, after about 3d in any attribute, it's always better to boost your skills (except for the losing dice with each action thing).

Again, I don't think I really have a point here. Just making an observation.

Random Elements that Aren't

Statisticians tell us that adding multiple random generators isn't necessarily a good idea, as it tends not to provide additional randomness, but rather have the contrary effect. (I learned that in an encryption lecture. Go figure.)

Anyway, it seems clear that if you roll 1d6, there are 6 results, each equally likely. If you roll 2d6, there are 11 results, but a result of 7 is 6 times as likely as a result of 2. It is fairly easy to grasp the notion that adding lots of dice gives nice, average results with little deviation.

What isn't quite so obvious is that dice pools and sequences of rolls suffer from the same effect.

Let's consider Storyteller yet again, and assume a roll of difficulty 6, with a 1 cancelling a success on another die. When rolling 1 die, it's obvious that you have a 10% chance of botching, 40% of failing, and 50% of success. The percentages for 2 dice are somewhere below, in my analysis of armour. (Note that I ignore the reroll-10's rule from Storyteller, since it totally screws up the statistics.)

What isn't quite so clear is that each die has a net value of 0.4 (-1*0.1 + 0*0.4 + 1*0.5). When rolling lots of dice, you can get a rough estimate of the number of successes by mutliplying the number of dice by 0.4. Hence, rolling 40 dice will give 16 successes with reasonable consistency (40*0.4 = 16). Naturally, this only works with lots of dice, and the more dice you have, the better it works.

The Exalted system of causing 1 automatic damage for every 3 dice reflects this. (Note that Exalted, with a fixed difficulty of 7, gives each die a value of 0.3.)

Now, let's consider a character with a to-hit pool of 40, using a weapon with a base damage of 25. This is, of course, an absurd example, but I'm using appropriately large numbers to give reasonably good statistics. As we've seen above, 40 dice at 0.4 weighting gives 16 successes pretty consistently. Since excess successes add to the damage pool we roll 25+15 dice for damage. So, we roll another 40 dice, to eventually get an end result of 16 damage.

It's dangerous to try to scale down this method for small dice pools. With only a few dice being rolled, there's still a fairly wide deviation. And, if the opponent has some sort of automatic damage reduction, that deviation may be enough to change the environment from one where you never cause damage to one where you occasionally cause damage. Still, over the course of a campaign, you can expect to see characters with a given dice pool operating at a certain level of effectiveness.

To get to a point, in Storyteller combat we typically have four rolls to make: to-hit, dodge, damage and soak. Each roll is likely to involve several dice. Each takes time, and the end result is quite consistent - small amounts of damage will be taken by each side until eventually one side falls over from attrition, or someone lands a really good blow. The same result could be achieved with a single roll, with appropriate modifiers.

Character Creation

Okay, I've spent significant amounts of time in the last couple of days engaged in character creation for rules-moderate and rules-heavy games (actually, I'm not sure that's true - it could just be my familiarity with d20 leaves me with the impression that it's easier that Rolemaster). This left me with two conclusions:

Firstly, these are the sorts of games where you really need to know the system (at least a bit) to create characters in a reasonably amount of time.

Secondly, I would pay handsomely for a really good, really intuitive graphical character creator, provided it had the ability to print directly to my choice of character form. Which is, of course, an impossible goal (unless I write it myself). Especially since my requirements include full and easy customisation, and I'm not willing to accept anything less than full complaince with my requirements (since if I have to correct characters for the tool, the tool eases to be properly useful).

Alas, there's no easy way around the second problem, and the first is a feature, not a bug.

Realism and Complexity

Heh, I love how some games, in the name of realism, have stacks and stacks of exceedingly complex rules that successfully reduce a round of combat to an unmanageable mess of calculations that take forever to sort out and a slide rule to compute. They then trumpet this as a success, being realistic when, in fact, it in no way resembles the confused reality of combat. In fact, in some ways it's less realistic, because the amount of real time required to model a very short period of game time removes any element of spontenaeity and chaos from the mix.

D&D and Storyteller don't have unrealistic combat rules because the rules aren't complex enough. They don't have realistic combat rules because they don't want to model such things. I don't think a rules-light or even rules-moderate game is going to have the resolution to model the difference between a .38 and .50 round. However, I don't think that having that resolution necessarily makes a game more realistic - just more complex.

You may now proceed to tell me not only that I'm wrong, but that I'm so wrong I should be put down for the good of mankind.

Starship Rules in Star Wars d20

I was creating Star Wars d20 characters yesterday (for no real reason), and thinking about the change in scale between character-level interactions and starship-level interactions. My thoughts on the mechs for the Singularity Campaign come into this as well. Anyway, I think they placed the change in scale at the wrong place.

I think star fighters should probably function much like characters, with many of their characteristics derived from the pilot, and the choices he makes. This then provides scope for the player to juggle things like whether the power plant should direct energy to replenishing the shields, provide additional speed, or rechange the weapons. The pilot skill would cap some of the other skills possible in the fighter, with the starship operation feat giving a simple -4 penalty to hit with fighter weapons and a -4 defense penalty.

The basic notion is that starfighters would basically work like a template that wraps around whatever character happens to be piloting it at the time, providing speed on the starship scale, defense and vitality point bonuses, and additional fixed weapons. However, the ship still works like a character in almost all respects.

These aren't new rules - I swiped them from "Mecha Crusade", one of the d20 mini-games found in Dungeon magazine. I don't have original thoughts, I just put things together in new ways :-)

Above starfighter level (I'm not quite sure just how far above the change should be made) ships should become single entities with the individuals on board having little impact on the overall impact on the operation of the ship. After all, the silliness of the manual control scene in Insurrection aside, when does a single character in Star Trek make a meaningful change to the capabilities of the Enterprise? (I'm aware that jumping from Wars to Trek in this matter is likely to get me burned at the stake, but I think the analogy is valid.)

The problem with this idea is that PCs on board a capital ship will want to make a meaningful contribution to starship combat. Additionally, you there are probably problems when dealing with objects on both scales at the same time.

More on Storyteller Combat

Since I'm on the subject, I just thought I'd mention that my current thinking with Vampire was that I'd consider stripping out the combat system entirely, and replacing physical conflict with a handful of opposed rolls, which would then quickly determine the outcome without playing it out. The end result would be a more narrative game.

It would also totally screw over the munchkins, of course.

Alas, I could never figure out a way to make it work. Certainly not one that could possibly reflect all the possible combinations of disciplines and tactics that are possible.

Comic Relief

In the field of "what were they thinking?" I'd like to raise the comic relief elements of the Vampire: the Masquerade game. This being, allegedly, a deep game of personal horror where PCs struggle to appease the Beast without falling prey to it's clutches.

So, they included the Malkavians, the Ravnos and the botch mechanic.

Now, I'm quite sure Malkavians weren't intended as a mechanism for immature munchkins to wreak havok on a million unsuspecting games, but that's certainly what happened. And, when told to stop ruining the game, they inevitably respond by saying, "I'm only running my character they way he would behave." Well, fine. In that case, the Storyteller should have the primogen act the way they would, and kill the offender. The Camarilla is not a nice society where everyone sits round having drinks of chilled blood, reminiscing about the old days, and laughing at those kookie Malkavians. It's a society of predators, driven by unholy lusts for blood and power, and if you aren't functional in that society, or you make too many enemies, you die. Simple as that.

The sad thing is, mental illness can be genuinely scary.

The Ravnos are a lesser problem, although that may be because they are much less common. However, there is a danger with them that they'll turn into the classic D&D thief, who constantly robs from his fellow PCs, just for kicks. Sorry, not horrific at all. Nor, frankly, is it funny. Worse still is the statement in the book that if a Ravnos is ejected from a domain (or, one would presume, killed) a whole bunch of other Ravnos will descend on the domain to express their displeasure.

Of course, both of the above problems I've mentioned exist in D&D, in the form of the Chaotic Neutral alignment and the classic thief. However, D&D doesn't claim to be a horror game.

Then, of course, there is the botch mechanic. In theory, a nice idea, since it provide a mechanism for things just going wrong. Ignoring for the moment the fact that botches are unrealistically common in any Storyteller game, let's consider what happens when a player rolls a botch: the player's laugh.

Okay, that's not always the reaction. Sometimes there's terrible outrage, despair at things going wrong at just the wrong time, or resignation. But, in my experience, the most common reaction is laughter. Very horrific.

Then again, in my experience more Vampire games are played as superheroes with fangs than creatures of darkness, so perhaps these elements are entirely appropriate, and it's the horror elements that are out of place.

My World-building Strategy

When creating the world of Choriim, I made use of a new strategy for actually putting the thing together. When I finally completed Choriim, I assumed that this was the end of my design troubles, and gleefully adopted it for all my projects. Since then, my d20 cyberpunk and Singularity Campaign projects collapsed, which indicates that my grand scheme may have worked through sheer luck.

Anyway, here's how I go about writing up a setting:

(Note: sections of this I swiped whole-cloth from other sources. Almost none of it is original. And the three-document strategy comes from the Wizards of the Coast setting search, which I didn't enter, but used as a limited form of guidance.)

The first thing that I do is work out the basic concepts of the setting. This can usually be condensed into a short sentence or two. I then write it down, and put it in a prominent place. I also determine the heroes and major villains of the setting, consider what's new about it, compared with other things I've done, and consider the nature of supernatural/sci-fi elements of the setting. These all go into a single document, which typically is only a single page long. (This is all taken directly from that WotC setting search.)

Example: The basic concept of the Singularity Campaign is that in the medium-term future mankind's extra-solar colonies have mysterious come under attack from an alien enemy dubbed "The Kurge". The starfighters usually flown by Earth's pilots have proven ineffective against the Kurge, but it has been determined that properly piloted mechs can oppose this enemy. Unfortunately, in order to be effective, the mechs must be piloted through a direct cybernetic interface, and it has been found that implanting such ware into adult hosts causes seizures and madness. Therefore, Earth has desperately recruited a force of adolescent prodigies to pilot the mechs against the Kurge. (Yes, it's inspired by about a hundred giant-robot anime shows. No, I didn't claim it was original.)

Having completed the campaign overview, I start work on two more documents, one describing the rules to use and the other detailing the setting. Ideally, the first will have all the rules data required, with the second will have no rules content at all. I seem to unconsciously aim for a total page count of about 120 pages between the two documents, but I don't really know why that is.

Naturally, having a single setting document, even one running 100 pages in length, doesn't allow much opportunity to flesh out a world. That's a project for later, preferrably done during actual campaign play.

There are three more things I try to bear in mind when writing these things up:

1. The setting overview is there for a reason. Anything that doesn't support the setting doesn't belong in the documents being written.
2. The rules exist to further the setting, and not the other way around. Therefore, I will write as many house rules as it requires to get that done. That said, I also try to keep the number of house rules to a minimum, since each such rule makes the setting harder to run.
3. Every major campaign block (every race, every region, every society, every character) should have some sort of unrevealed secret. These serve to give the GM material to work with when running the campaign, and give players things to investigate. I also try to make sure I never repeat a secret. (And, as the above implies, I am pretentious enough to write my material with the view that someone else would be running the campaign. Since I try to avoid using pre-generated worlds, this seems rather foolish, but there it is.)

Crucially, I don't edit my work while I'm still creating. Only once I'm done will I consider re-writing chunks of it. Otherwise, I just get locked in a cycle of constantly revising one problematic section of the setting.

I doubt this is at all useful, and I probably sound a hell of a lot more pompous than I did previously. Oh well.

World-building Woes

I expend a whole lot more effort on world design than I really should. Every couple of months or so, I go off on some sort of tangent, creating a whole bunch of game material that I won't ever use. Most often, this comes crashing to a halt when I lose interest in the topic, something drags me away or, worst of all, I decide halfway through that several of the underlying assumptions are utterly crap, and that the whole thing needs a re-write.

If you looked at my website for the Terafa campaign I ran, you would have noticed a brief spell when things were appearing, followed by nothing more. This represents about the seventh time I've tried to write the damn thing since I started creating the world back in '89.

My latest casualty appears to be my d20 Vampire project, which was going well until I got to the translations of the disciplines, which is actual work. Previously, I've ditched my "Singularity Campaign", a funky d20 mecha campaign, about eight D&D worlds that started off as fun but collapsed into a morass of house rules and trivia, and full re-writes of just about every system I've ever played. (I did a massive re-write of AD&D 2nd edition that completely eliminated mental and social traits. I'd just finished re-writing every single kit from the Complete * Handbook series when I decided the whole thing was utterly unplayable, and ditched it. Then Player's Option came out, and I realised even professionals have bad ideas. I haven't tried a full re-write of 3rd Edition, because if I did I'd probably end up having to attend Britney Spears concerts just to recover a little sanity.)

The only project I've managed to see through to completion lately is my Choriim campaign setting, which I was really proud of when I finished and uploaded to the site. I've since started thinking that I should revise it to become compliant with the d20 license. Please shoot me.

Character Sheets vs Character Forms

It may not have been obvious before, but when I was talking about character forms, I was referring to auto-calculating character sheets. These are usually produced using Adobe Acrobat forms, Excel worksheets, or the like. As opposed to character sheets that you fill in by hand with pencil, where you have to do all the calculations yourself. I'm just lazy enough to want a sheet to do all my calculations for me.

Computer Support

The two big companies, Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, have both attempted to put out software to help people run their games. This has taken various forms, but generally includes a character creation utility, mapping software, cheat sheets, and possibly on-line rulebooks.

Universally, the official tools have utterly sucked. The mapping software has been clunky, the on-line rulebooks are in bizarre formats and hard to access (probably in a bid to protect against piracy), and generally don't include anything even vaguely up-to-date, the character creators don't allow easy customisation with house rules (and it's a rare game indeed that doesn't use any), the cheat sheets are usually better done in Word or equivalent, and they tend to be slow and hard to use in general. (And I haven't even mentioned the bugs that often infest these tools, not the fact that they tend to be released long after the game they're supposed to be supporting.)

There are, of course, unofficial software products to help DMs. I haven't tried any of these, but I suspect some are quite good. Without official backing, though, they're definately labours of love, and likely to be patchy in places.

I was about to say this is infuriating, that companies should do better, or something to that effect. The truth is, though, that I have no idea what I would want from a support product, or at least one that it would be feasible to produce. Other than good character forms, that is :-)

Dice Protocol

I have of late been pondering the notion of randomness in dice rolls, largely becuase Johannes joined the group. Since everyone else rolls their dice by hand, while he has a rolling cup, it is likely that his dice rolls are more random than anyone else's, and all this without anyone trying to cheat, or even realising that the rolls aren't totally random.

Truth be told, this isn't an issue I see any need to consider at length, since it's so trivial an issue as to be irrelevant, since bringing up anything of this sort is a friendship-ender, since you would need to be a fairly sad individual to cheat in an RPG anyway, and since the only two ways I know of to guarantee random results are more trouble than their worth. (One requires the enforced use of a cup, with minimum shake durations and protocols for witnessing rolls and so on, while the other needs a craps table.)

I just thought it was worth rambling about. Not that I'm bored or anything...

Oh, and I probably wouldn't have given the subject a second thought, except that I witnessed three rolls in immediate succession where the player picked up the dice and immediately threw them down again, generating three almost identical results. But I'm definately not going to say any more on that one, for all the reasons above.

Character Management

I completely forgot the single easiest way to reduce the complexity inherent in D&D. This is also a method that would work well for a lot of rules-heavy games where the bulk of the complexity lies in character management.

The solution: A really good character form.

I use the Mad Irishman's character forms for D&D and Star Wars d20 (which I got from rpgsheets.com). These are, quite simply, a godsend, automatically calculating skill bonuses, AC values, and the like. Unfortunately, they require the full version of Acrobat to save, and the sheets have a very few small weaknesses (such as not handling half-ranks in skills). Still, simply by using these forms it becomes much easier to manage characters in complex RPGs. Frankly, I'm sidling over to the view that any company serious about web-support for their game should make available a really good charcter form for players to use.

Multiclassing: Saves and BAB

Okay, having just made a case for simplifying multiclassing, here's a way to make it more complicated again. This one traps the problems with the Fighter/Ranger multiclass, and a few others, where adding a single level of each of two classes with a good save in common gains the character a huge bonus in that save. It also leaves the character weak in other saves, which can be seen as a bad thing.

The adoption of this rule needs to be carefully considered by the DM, as it can drastically change some of the character design decisions: the first level of a new class is no longer quite so desirable, and characters can end up rather different than in the core books. Proceed with caution.

Behind the curtain, each class is rated with a BAB at "good", "medium" or "poor", and three saves each rated either "good" or "poor". So, Fighters have good BAB and Fort save, but poor Ref and Will. Monks have medium BAB and three good saves.

• Good BAB classes give a +1 bonus per level. This can be seen on the Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger and Paladin advancement tables.
• Medium BAB classes give a +3/4 bonus per level, rounded down. This applies to Bards, Clerics, Druids and Monks.
• Poor BAB classes gave a +1/2 bonus per level, again rounded down. This applies to Sorcerers and Wizards.

• Good saves get a bonus of +1/2 per level, but also gain an additional +2 at 1st level.
• Poor saves get a bonus of +1/3 per level.

So, the house rule I'd propose is that multiclass characters add up how many levels they have each of good, medium and poor BAB, and good and poor saves, and calculate the bonuses accordingly.

Example: A Wizard 1/Sorcerer 1 has 2 poor BAB levels, 2 good Will levels, and 2 poor Fort and Ref levels. The appropriate BAB, then, is (+1/2 +1/2 = ) +1, while the Will save is (+2 + 2* 1/2 = ) +3, and the Fort and Ref saves are (+1/3 * 2 = ) +0. This contrasts with the current arrangement of +0 BAB, +4 Will, and +0 Fort and Ref.

Example 2: A Fighter 6/Cleric 4/Rogue 2 has 6 good and 6 medium BAB levels (bonus +1 * 6 +3/4 * 6 = +10), 10 good and 2 poor Fort levels (+2 +1/2 *10 +1/3 *2 = +7), 2 good and 10 poor Ref levels (+2 +1/2 *2 +1/3 *10 = +6), 4 good and 8 poor Will levels (+2 +1/2 *4 +1/3 *8 = +6). The current arrangement is +10 BAB (+6+3+1), +9 Fort (+5+4+0), +6 Ref (+2+1+3), +6 (+2+4+0).

The net result of this house rule appears to be that characters are a bit better balanced (one save cannot run away from the others to the same extent as before), but about the same overall power level. However, for the most part, characters will end up looking almost exactly the same.

Conclusion: Only do this if the current arrangement bothers you (particularly things like Fighter/Ranger/Barbarian/Paladin combinations). Otherwise, it's too much effort to bother with.

Multiclassing and Favoured Classes

Another rule that can be removed from D&D easily is the favoured class rule, and the associated penalty for unbalanced multiclassing. The motivation for doing so is a (slight) reduction in complexity.

The motivation for the existing rule is to provide a clear delineation of class roles by reducing multiclassing, while at the same time allowing non-humans limited free multiclassing to promote the concept of elves as master wizards, dwarves as doughty fighters, and so on. The idea was that most elves would pick up a couple of incidental levels of wizard, and so on.

From a balance perspective, there's no reason for a race having one favoured class over another. Is there anything inherently better about a dwarven rogue/wizard as opposed to a fighter/rogue? What about an elven fighter/rogue as opposed to a rogue/wizard? The answer to both is probably "no" (except that the combinations listed are actually rather poor, but this has nothing to do with the races involved).

Of course, this leads to the charge that lots of people will pick up single levels of classes for the free benefits. This may be true. That said, who really cares? For a spell-caster, even a single level of another class leads to a huge reduction in their spell-casting ability. If one restricts oneself to the non-spell-casting classes, a lot of the worries disappear.

The biggest fear people seem to have is the single level of Ranger for the two-weapon feats. As my analysis below shows, two-weapon fighting really isn't that good, unless you're also a Rogue. And, if you are a Rogue, what third class would you take? The reason for this last question is that if you play a human, half-elf or halfling, the Rogue n/Ranger 1 is a perfectly valid class combination anyway - it's only when adding a third class that the current rules balk.

Any such worries disappear very quickly anyway. It's only at relatively low levels that adding a new class adds a lot to a character. For most characters at medium to high level, it's generally better to remain single-classed or add a Prestige Class anyway. And, of course, neither of these have any risk of causing XP penalties.

There remain problems with the multiclassing rules, particularly as regards spell-casters. However, the favoured class rule and the XP penalties don't really do anything to correct the issues inherent in the Fighter 1/Ranger 1/Paladin 1/Barbarian 1 combination (which has a Fort save of +8, Ref +0 and Will +0 - it really should be corrected to +4/+1/+1 to match a Fighter 4). I'll get back to how I might fix that.

Flavour Restrictions

In the 3rd Edition, D&D got rid of a lot of the sillier rules from 2nd Edition. Things like level limits, strict weapon and armour restrictions, and dual-classing vanished. However, the job was left uncomplete, and the existing classes have four (maybe five) flavour restrictions still in place. These really should be eliminated.

Barbarians: starting barbarian characters are illiterate. This reflects their life in a barbaric society, which doesn't place a high value on such things as written language. To get rid of this penalty, they must spend 2 skill points, or take a level in any other class. Of course, since illiteracy doesn't affect combat, this weakness is barely evident. Additionally, it makes no sense - a Fighter from the same culture is assumed to be literate. This detail really should go, replaced by illiteracy dependent on culture, and decided by the DM.

Druids: the only class with strict weapon and armour limits, the druid is also the only class that can never get around these limits. Now, the reason for the spiritual oaths is clearly spelled out, and makes sense from a flavour perspective. That said, why should the game dictate even something like this to the DM? Surely, it's for the DM to decide what weapons druids (and clerics and paladins, for that matter) can and cannot use?

From a pure balance perspective, there is absolutely no harm in allowing the druid to use "banned" weapons - since the martial weapons are all balanced, once you've allowed one (scimitar), you might as well allow them all. Note that I'm not advocating giving proficiency in these weapons - that would still have to be purchased normally. The argument with armour is a bit more complex, since hide armour is the "worst" of the medium armours, so allowing metal armour could cause a significant jump in druid AC values. I would probably advocate reducing the druid to proficiency only in light armour and shields to counter this. However, I do think that the restriction should go.

Monks and Paladins: Two restrictions in one, featuring the limited multiclassing allowed to these characters. This allegedly reflects the greater dedication required to follow the paths of these characters. This is fair enough, but it's a pure flavour thing, and has no place in a 'generic' game. If Monks and Paladins multiclass rather to well with other characters, that's a problem with the class design, and should be changed. But, isn't a Rogue 6/Paladin 3 equally powerful regardless of when he picked up his Paladin levels?

Alignment Restrictions: Finally, and arguably, we have the alignment restrictions assigned to Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Monks and, especially, Paladins. These are somewhat trickier to deal with, as removing the Cleric and Paladin restrictions seriously impacts these classes. Therefore, I will defer discussion of this issue until I feel more like it.

Magazines

Despite Saturday's brief discussion of the number of bullets in a Glock 17 clip, I have never, ever seen a PC (or NPC for that matter) stop in the middle of combat to re-load his weapon. And, in this case, I really do mean I have never seen this happen. It seems RPG characters live in some sort of wierd John Woo-esque game where guns never run out of bullets.

Now, there are some reasons this doesn't bother me as much as it might:

• Less micromanagement and more fun has to be good, in general.
• It's safe to assume most PCs reload their weapons between combats.
• Many modern weapons have large clips, so are not too likely to run out in most combats.

However, the third assumption flies out the window once we're talking shotguns, revolvers, and weapons used on burst and autofire modes. Additionally, if the damage ratings for weapons are quite close (as they should be - frankly where you get hit is likely to be as relevant to most damage calculations as the size of the round), the clip size should be one of the munchkin differentiators of choice (more bullets = more carnage = better weapon).

So, what's the best way to track ammunition in weapons? Specialised ammo tracking sheets?

Finding GMs/Players

It can be difficult finding people willing to play the games you want to run, or GMs willing to run the games you want to play. And this is one of the problems that's become amplified by the d20 system, which makes it almost easy to find d20 players/GMs, but nigh-on impossible to find same for other systems. Not that I have any suggestions for how one might fix this.

Simplifying Assumptions: Lifestyle

Another thing I would like to see gone from D&D is the tracking of annoying consumables like lamp oil, trail rations, and the copper pieces it costs to stay in an inn. I'm terribly sorry, but tracking such things isn't why I signed on to play the game.

So, stealing a page from Shadowrun, I propose the following:

Each character purchases a monthly "lifestyle" for a certain amount of money. This covers them for trail rations, standard clothing, inn fees and the like for all the time they are in civilised lands. This includes foreign (but still civilised) lands, since the character is assumed to have small change to cover whatever he needs. Thereafter, you only track food and water in lands where the character can't buy them as he goes, such as on an epic quest to Mordor (even then, there's no need until the Fellowship is broken, or thenabouts). Of course, if there were extreme circumstances, such as a culture who's entire diet happens to be poisonous to humans, there would be a need to track supplies.

Likewise, there should be assembled an "adventure kit" of gear that every PC requires. This should include consumables like lamp oil, iron spikes, caltrops, spell components pouches, weapon and armour upkeep, and so on and so forth. Again, this can be assessed monthly, or once per adventure, or at whatever interval seems appropriate. Then, as long as the player pays this, he needn't track consumables unless he's out of touch for a significant length of time. Perhaps different levels of care here, reflecting the different wants and needs of different characters?

Long-running Games

I ran an epic five-year (real time) Vampire campaign. After the second year it became a mess, as the characters were too powerful, the whole thing ran out of steam, and things just started to suck.

My point? Know when to stop.

Removing Encumberance

The D&D rules are probably overly complex, so rather than looking for more rules and options to layer on top, I quite like trying to find areas that can be stripped out and streamlined without damaging the system too much. One of the areas that is quite easy to remove is encumberance, not least because it never seems to be spplied rigorously anyway.

In 3rd Edition, encumberance is just the total weight of all equipment carried. There are three breakpoints assigned by the strength of a character. Up to the first point, the character is Lightly encumbered, and suffers no penalties. Up to the second, the character has Medium encumberance, and moves more slowly, suffers an armour check penalty, and loses some special abilities (Ranger two-weapon fighting, Barbarian fast movement, Monk unarmed combat. I may be wrong about any of these, and there may be others). Up to the third point, the character has worse penalties, and runs at x3 normal rate, not x4.

In general, the effects of encumberance mirror the effects of armour of the same level. Additionally, there is a Swim modifier based on the weight of equipment carried, unaffected by armour.

Of course, no-one ever keeps their encumberance up to date. Most groups keep a post-it note with treasure carried, but no record of where it's carried, which can lead to groups lugging two tons of gold with them. Since the rule is not properly applied, it is fit for removal.

My proposed encumberance fix is simply to ditch it. Armour check penalties will come only from armour worn. The swim modifier will just be double the normal armour check penalty. And, that's it.

This has a couple of balance effects. Firstly, no more will the Ranger/Rogue have to juggle his weight carried to be able to dual-wield. As long as he sticks to leather armour, he'll be fine. There's nothing stopping the Wizard from carrying 300 bolts for his crossbow. Basically, this change benefits low Strength characters more than high Strength ones. Especially when you consider that the high Strength ones were usually either wearing light armour, and so Lightly encumbered, or wearing heavy armour, and so still suffer the same penalties as before.

You might say, "well, we'll keep an eye on it, and if you're carrying an absurd amount of kit, we'll assign encumberance penalties". In my experience, this penalises the strong characters more than the weak ones, since what constitutes an absurd amount for a weak character is a lot less than it is for a strong one. And, it seems to be very difficult to realise just how great the disparity is.

Gosh, that was awfully long just to say, "we're ditching encumberance", wasn't it?

Unwritten Rules

One of my pet peeves in RPGs (the other big one being the "I'm GM and therefore god" thing) is when a GM runs a game (particularly a well-known game) with extensive House Rules, but doesn't write these down. So, you're left in a position where the game is almost familiar, but not quite. This makes character management damn hard, since the assumptions you might make aren't necessarily valid.

One example I heard about: in a D&D game, a character was designed with high ranks in Concentration and the Combat Casting feat. The player intended the character to cast defensively quite often. (Never mind that the rules make this almost pointless - better just to take a 5 foot step away from your foe before casting.) What the player didn't know, until the first time he tried this, was that the DM didn't like defensive casting, and so had removed it. So, the feat and skill ranks were wasted, the character took an attack of opportunity, and nearly died. And all because the DM didn't write down the house rules.

Subsequently, the player of this character lobbied to be allowed to re-allocate the skill points and feat based on the fact that they were now useless. The DM agreed. However, the tale of woe doesn't end there. Some weeks later, the same DM, in the same campaign, decided that defensive casting wasn't as bad as he feared, and changed his mind. The player (and it really wasn't me) was livid. I think that game has since collapsed.

So, I think every campaign should really have some sort of written record of house rules. This should include everything that has been fixed, a note that anything that hasn't been fixed may change, and details of what happens if a new house rule breaks an existing character. Said record should also include a note of which supplements are in use, and which parts of these supplements are allowed. Naturally, as more things are allowed and banned, the record should be updated.

So, a typical record for one of my games might read:

Ruleset: D&D 3rd Edition
Supplements:

• Psionics Handbook (all)
• Oriental Adventures (use classes as per OA)
• Banned: Everything else
• House Rules: No Prestige Classes, Multiclassing Rule (I won't repeat it, since it's given below; normally the record would have to quote it), Check "Choriim Rules Digest" for races, equipment, etc (again, this is a long document, so I won't quote it here. It can be found on my website).

Opinions? Arguments?

Multiclassing House-rule in d20

A little while ago, Roger mentioned my house-rule for multiclassing in the d20 system. Additionally, while creating Star Wars characters last night, the very situation came up. I thought I'd take a chace to explain this rule, to invite comment.

The rule comes about because of the bonuses characters get at 1st level that don't apply above that level - quadruple skill points and maximum hit points. This means that some combinations are better if the classes are acquired in one order than another. The most obvious example of this is the Rogue/Wizard.

If one takes first level as a Wizard, the character receives 4 hit points and 8 skill points. Bonuses for high ability scores apply, but are irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion. If the character then takes a level of Rogue, he gains 1d6 more hit points and a further 8 skill points, for a total of 1d6+4 (average 7.5) hit points and 16 skill points.

If one takes first level as a Rogue, the character receives 6 hit points and 32 skill points. If the character then takes a level of Wizard, he gains 1d4 more hit points and a further 2 skill points, for a total of 1d4+6 (average 8.5) hit points and 34 skill points. Clearly, the latter character is better, at least numerically.

My house rule to correct for this is that if a character picks up first level in a new class, he may gain a bonus to hit points or skill points gained to bring him into line with where he would be had he taken this class first. Naturally, this bonus only applies if moving to a class with a higher hit die and/or more skill points that the highest of the previous classes.

If a character picks up the first level of a class with a higher hit die than any of his previous classes, he gains bonus hit points equal to the difference in the die type, and rolls hit points using the lower of the two dice. A character with three (or more) classes compares the new hit die with the highest of his existing dice. Obviously, when moving to a class with a lower hit die, this rule is unnecessary.

So, a Wizard who takes a level of Rogue gains (6-4=) 2 bonus hit points, but only rolls a d4 for hit points. A Rogue/Monk who picks up a level of Barbarian gains (12-8=) 4 bonus hit points, and rolls a d8 for hit points. A Rogue who picks up a level of Wizard just rolls a d4 for hit points.

The second half of the rule applies when moving to a class with more skill points than the highest of any existing classes. Once again, it compares the new number of skill points with the highest number awarded by any existing class, and doesn't apply when moving to a class with fewer skill points than the current highest class. In this instance, the character gets the full allocation for his new level, plus 3 times the difference between the new and old allocations. These additional points must be spent immediately, and are spent as skill points for the new class. Note that no bonus is assigned for high Intelligence, since this was already received at first character level.

So, a Wizard who takes a level of Rogue gains (8 + 3*6 = ) 26 skill points. A Fighter/Ranger who picks up a level of Rogue gains (8 + 3*4 = ) 20 skill points. A Rogue who picks up a level of Wizard gains 2 skill points.

Returning to the first example above, then, the Wizard who takes a level of Rogue will have 4+2+1d4 (average 8.5) hit points, and 8+8+3*6 = 34 skill points, thus becoming equal to the Rogue who takes a level of Wizard.

Systems vs. Genre

Okay, we've discussed d20 and d6 Star Wars. In the past, we've talked about d20 Call of Cthulhu. We've just started discussing the oddities of D&D balance as regards saturation of magic items in a setting. The effect of which is that you can't really model Lord of the Rings in D&D as it stands, since the Fellowship just don't have enough magic items. (Unless, of course, Tolkien cut the scene where Boromir finally decides to turn on the party not because Frodo has a nifty ring of invisibility, but because he's stuck with a lousy longsword +3, while Anduril is a bastard sword +5 of flaming burst.)

That said, D&D does Conan rather better, and is pretty decent at a general high fantasy.

So, the question I've been working towards is: to what extent do the system in use constrain the genre of the game? Conversely, how thoroughly should the intended genre influence the rules of the resulting game?

I've heard it said that a good GM can run any style of game well with any system. This is surely garbage: try running a grim 'n' gritty noir game using Toon, or a light and fast swashbuckler using Rolemaster. Granted, you could try, but there comes a point where you might be as well sticking hot pins in your fingers for kicks.

Magic Items in General

Further to what I've just posted, I think there should be some sort of trade-off between the "interest factor" between a character's class and his magic items. So, high level Wizards are interesting enough as it is, so they could fairly be loaded with potions, wands and scrolls, those being items that allow them to do more of what they can do anyway. Meanwhile, the high level Fighter, having a lower "interest factor" should have easy access to more interesting items, such as "Wyrmdrinker", a magical longsword that gains its power by being bathed in the blood of dragons.

Of course, in a one-off, this is quite easy (except that the magic item lists favour spell-casters - not surprising since spell-casters create the magic items). In the course of a campaign, the spell-casters can create what they want, while the Fighter is stuck with whatever they can persuade the wizards to make for them, or the DM gives them.

I'm also something of a believer in the philosophy that there should be very few magic items in the campaign, and that those that exist should be quite powerful. I typically attenuate this with a concession that there should also be plenty of cheap one-shot items like potions, wands and scrolls.

In modelling this sort of a game, I'd restrict access to the Item Creation Feats except for Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion and Craft Wand. The rest (of the Feats) would have to be learned through special question, in tomes of secret lore, or through the use of a special Prestige Class (the Artificer, or somesuch).

Unfortunately, this would throw the 3rd Edition god of balance out of whack, which is annoying. Also, the easy crafting of magic items is, ironically, one of my favourite changes in the 3rd Edition.

I'm pretty damn certain that Craft Wondrous Item is unbalanced, though, since effectively it allows the replacement of almost any other item creation feat.

To help re-balance it, I'd assign two caveats:

1) If it functions like another item, you need the feat for that item. So, a Sock of Protection (that works like the Ring) requires Craft Magic Ring.

2) By default, only the items listed in the DMG are known. Other items can be learned, but the instructions must be researched or found. Treat this as the task of scribing a spell of a level equal to the item caster level divided by 2 (round down).

In truth, I'd prefer to see Craft Wondrous Item to be removed, and replaced with a number of sub-feats. Don't see that happening, though.

Introductory RPGs

Modern RPGs are too complicated. The thought of having to read a 200-page game book before starting play must be off-putting for many people, and the quick-start rules for various games tend to only be available on-line, where they aren't necessarily obvious to many people.

Therefore, what I reckon we need is a nice introductory game, along the lines of the old D&D red box, or the more recent "The Adventure Begins" boxed set for the new D&D. Unfortunately, this latter product is now out of print. Such a product would then serve as a gateway for new players to move on to the full version of the theoretical game it is tied to, bringing in a whole new group of players.

Or, alternatively, there could be a board game designed that incorporated both co-operative and competitive play, wherein players adopt markers called simple "the Fighter", "the Wizard", "the Cleric" and "the Rogue". They would engage in the exploration of a pre-mapped or random dungeon, killing things and taking their stuff, without the need for a DM. Construct the rules to be simple enough to fit on the lid, ensure they bear at least a little resemblance to d20 rules (perhaps find some use for funky dice), and call it the "Dungeons & Dragons Board Game".

And, for goodness sake, advertise the thing.

This all assumes, of course, that we want lots of new players in the game...

Cool Toys

In D&D, a 20th level Fighter can't really do anything that a 1st level Fighter can't do, he can just do it a hell of a lot better. By contrast, a 20th level Wizard can do many more things than a 1st level Wizard. In theory, these classes are balanced against one another at both level extremes, and all points in between (the reality, of course, is somewhat different, but let's not worry about that for now).

The point being that high level Wizards are more interesting to play than high level Fighters.

Similarly, we could consider the disciplines of Celerity and Dominate in Vampire, only the latter of which gets more interesting as it gains ranks. The other just does the same things better.

So, given that we want players to remain interested in playing their characters over the course of a campaign (averaging months), shouldn't an effort be made to ensure that all characters get access to cool toys? (Not necessarily the same toys, of course.)

We need a good topic for a nice rules argument...

Jedi and Samurai

Here's an annoyance I have with d20, particularly if one uses Prestige Classes: over-specific character classes.

In Star Wars d20, there are two base Jedi classes, not to mention the Force Adept class. In Oriental Adventures, there's the Samurai class. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Samurai pretty much just a social caste of warriors in medieval Japan? In which case, shouldn't they be modelled using the Fighter class? Or, perhaps, the Ranger or Paladin classes if one wants a different style of Samurai. Add on prestige classes, to model different types of Samurai, and you get loads of variety of characters.

The Star Wars situation is a bit different, in that there are no real Jedi (census polls notwithstanding), and the only Jedi shown in the films do fit neatly into one of the two classes. That said, the Expanded Universe posits a whole host of force traditions that are not necessarily Jedi, and which now have to fit within a single class. Additionally, we have about a dozen published Jedi prestige classes, any of which has just as much validity as a base class as do the Consular and Guardian.

Of course, there are also the Barbarian and Paladin in base d20, which at least somewhat assume a social role for the character.

To my mind, base classes should be general enough to fit a broad array of character types (assuming the Prestige Classes are in use, of course). Prestige Classes should then be used to provide the social role for the character, if this is desired and considered necessary.

Or, put another way, you should be able to construct a whole host of character concepts, including ones from every playable race, without laughing, in order to allow a base class. The Fighter has that sort of utility. The Samurai does not.

Skill-based Systems

Okay, I threatened to rant about skill-based systems, so here it is: I don't like them.

My reasoning has nothing to do with skill-based systems in and of themselves, but rather has to do with the way they are used, which almost inevitably gives way to munchkinism (and, yes, I'm well aware of the irony of a D&D rules-lawyer ranting about munchkinism).

See, the complaint against class systems I've heard most often goes along the lines of "yes, hours of killing goblins is definately going to make me better at picking locks", or words to that effect. In other words, the complaint that, since the level gives benefits out in a package, some of the corner cases are really silly. It IS stupid that the book-worm arch-mage should necessarily be a bad-ass combatant simply because the system requires him to be high level to cast high level spells, but high level characters are all tough. And, again, the ninja grandmother falls into this category as well.

However, the other game design system posits a set of skills for characters and a pool of XP that can then be spent to increase the skills that the player wants to focus on. (Okay, there is a third advancement scheme, but it's less common. I'll get to it later.)

The problem with the skill-based system in practice is that players will inevitably determine the most "useful" skills. Where useful is defined based on the character they want to play. So, for the combat machine it will be the brawl and firearms skills. For the decker it will be the computer skills, and so on. Either way, there will be a small set of skills chosen, and every single XP that is awarded will then necessarily be placed into these core skills. Everything else will be ignored.

For me, the system that most shows this trait is Vampire, where in almost every game I've ever run or played, every single XP gained went towards the next discipline point, or to one of the skills used to activate those disciplines. In general, combat bunnies started with good skills, and then boosted their characters through disciplines. Occultists started with good occult skills, then added lots of disciplines, and so on. The only exceptions I can recall (and these really are the only ones) came about because the Storyteller was really tight with XP. As a result, it became pointless to try to boost disciplines, since the game would be over before you got anywhere.

Pretty soon you've got a combat machine who is unkillable in combat, but who is likely to crash a stationary car. The decker can solve the P=NP problem before breakfast, but can't tie his own shoe-laces. And the mage can cast an infinite number of wishes per day, but if you ask him to recount some of the basic points from those esoteric tomes he had to study to get this level of skill, he can't, because "Arcane Lore" is a skill that never actualy gets rolled. (Throw in merits and flaws, and the problems get even more rediculous, but that's another rant entirely.)

This would be fine for a few characters, since such specialists do crop up occasionally. However, when it's every character in every game that is so specialised, it becomes irritating. Furthermore, with such specialised characters it becomes difficult to design appropriate challenges. To challenge the combat bunny in a firefight, you need opponents who will slaughter the decker and the mage in an instant. A computer system that challenges the decker is impossible for anyone else. And woe betide the group that needs to rely on their back-up mage because John's kid is sick and he can't make it to the game.

Finally, there is no way to create a viable generalist in such a system, since the munchkins will just roll over you.

I did mention another advancement scheme. This is the one where a critical success on a skill roll naturally increases that skill. Over time, such rolls cause the skill to organically increase. Thus, the skills that get used go up, while the rest stay static. Most such systems also allocate a general pool of XP, which can be spent as above.

These games tend to be slightly better, but only just. The problem here is that a character is specialised by what he does, so instead of identifying the most useful skills and pouring all XP into those, the player just lets the system do it for him. That said, since most characters do make use of non-core skills, these do increase somewhat as well. Still, before too long you can get to the same state, with a group of specialists so skilled that they can't be challenged in their field, but are horribly vulnerable outwith that field.

Anyway, that's my problem with skill-based games in a nutshell.

How would I solve this? I'm inclined to think that skills need to be rated as "core", "non-core" and "incidental". XP is then awarded in three pools. 65% of XP could be assigned to core skills, 25% to non-core, and 10% to incidental skills. XP could be dropped down from more important to less important skills, but not moved the other way. So, core XP could be assigned to non-core skills, but not the other way around. This forces players to pay some attention to the less useful skills, and thus to build more rounded characters.

There are several problems with such a system. Firstly, the definitions of core, non-core and incidental skills are arguable. What if the player and GM disagree? Secondly, there need to be rules controlling how high these skills can become, since a clever munchkin would declare his selected "useful" skills as incidentals, and pour all XP into them, thus bypassing the system. Thirdly, there needs to be a mechanism whereby a core skill becomes non-core, or a non-core skill becomes a core skill. It is not unreasonable to expect people to change over time. Finally, this system is tending back towards class-based design, since all combat bunnies will have a lot of core skills in common, as will all deckers, mages, or whatever.

Thoughts?

Two-weapon Fighting

In response to a brief discussion of two-weapon fighting on Saturday (and sorry about the length, skip to the bottom for the conclusion):

An analysis of two-weapon fighting:

Let's consider a 5th level Fighter. We'll assume he's purchased the Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting feats. He's now considering his weapon options. Let's assume he's picked up enough bonuses from feats and the like to boost his attack bonue to +10 (for ease of calculation), and we'll assume he has a Strength bonus to damage of +2.

He's now considering two combat options. Option 1 is a Greatsword (2d6+3 damage, 19-20 critical), while option 2 is the longsword/shortsword pairing (-2 to hit with each, 1d8+2 and 1d6+1 damage, 19-20 critical).

Clearly, since everything else is equal, the key determinant on whether to go for two-weapon fighting or not is the average damage caused.

The average damage caused with option 1 is 10 points on a successful hit. With option 2, the longsword does 6.5 hit points, while the shortsword does 4.5. All values are doubled on a critical hit.

For AC 1 - 10, all attacks hit 95% of the time. Thereafter, the attacks of option 2 are 5% less likely to hit for every AC point up to AC 28, at which it reaches 5%. Thereafter, it remains stable. Additionally, option 2 threatens a critical hit 10% of the time, except at AC 28 and above, when the chance drops to 5%.

For AC 1 - 12, the attacks of option 1 are 95% likely to hit. This then decreases by 5% for each point of AC up to AC 30, at which point the chance of a hit is 5%. Thereafter, it remains 5%. Additionally, option 1 threatens a critical hit 10% of the time, except at AC 30 and above, when the chance drops to 5%.

For a given attack, then, the damage caused is:

(hit% * damage) + (crit% * hit% * damage) = (hit% * damage)(1 + crit%)

So, at AC 10:
Option 1: (0.95 * 10)(1 + 0.1) = 10.45 hit points
Option 2: (0.95 * 6.5)(1 + 0.1) + (0.95 * 4.5)(1 + 0.1) = 11.495

At AC 11:
Option 1: 10.45 hit points
Option 2: (0.90 * 6.5)(1 + 0.1) + (0.90 * 4.5)(1 + 0.1) = 10.89 hit points

At AC 12:
Option 1: 10.45 hit points
Option 2: (0.85 * 6.5)(1 + 0.1) + (0.85 * 4.5)(1 + 0.1) = 10.285 hit points

At AC 13:
Option 1: (0.90 * 10)(1 + 0.1) = 9.9 hit points
Option 2: (0.80 * 6.5)(1 + 0.1) + (0.80 * 4.5)(1 + 0.1) = 9.68 hit points

Thereafter, option 1 decreases by 0.55 hit points per point of AC, while option 2 drops by 0.605. In other words, the gap just continues to increase, until AC 27:

At AC 27:
Option 1: (0.2 * 10)(1 + 0.1) = 2.2 hit points
Option 2: (0.1 * 6.5)(1 + 0.1) + (0.1 * 4.5)(1 + 0.1) = 1.21 hit points

At AC 28:
Option 1: (0.15 * 10)(1 + 0.1) = 1.65 hit points
Option 2: (0.05 * 6.5)(1 + 0.05) + (0.05 * 4.5)(1 + 0.05) = 0.5775 hit points

At AC 29:
Option 1: (0.10 * 10)(1 + 0.1) = 1.1 hit points
Option 2: 0.5775 hit points

At AC 30 and above:
Option 1: (0.05 * 10)(1 + 0.05) = 0.525 hit points
Option 2: 0.5775 hit points

So, the end result is that Option 2 is better for AC 10 and 11, and for AC 30 and above. However, for everything in between, it's worse.

Now, there is an additional wrinkle thrown in once the Fighter gets to 6th level, in that he gains an additional attack. Moreover, the two-weapon fighter might consider purchasing the Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feat at this point, to get yet another additional attack. Between them, these issues make the calculations more complicated. The mathematics are left as an exercise for the reader, or until I next get bored.

The conclusion that I draw from this calculation is that even for the Ranger (who gets the two required feats for free), two-weapon fighting is a poor option, except when fighting extremely weak or extremely powerful creatures. This conclusion is reinforced when one considers the effect of feats such as Improved Critical or Weapon Specialisation, which apply only a single weapon, and would need to be bought twice by the two-weapon fighter. Additionally, it is obviously more cost-effective to equip a fighter with a single magical weapon than two, as would be required by the two-weapon fighter.

That said, there are a few cases in which two-weapon fighting is the way to go:

• Double weapons avoid Improved Critical issue that has just been mentioned. However, they still cost double to have enchanted. Additionally, most double weapons require yet another feat to use effectively.
• If the character has additional damage dice from any source (such as a Rogue's Sneak Attack), having more attacks is obviously of greater benefit than fewer, more powerful ones. In this regard, the Ranger/Rogue combination must be considered extremely powerful, to the extent that every Rogue should at least consider picking up a level of Ranger to complement his Sneak Attack.

On House Rules

A philosophical question: what's your opinion of House Rules? And by this I don't just mean the ones we come up with on our own, but also the ones published in the million-and-one supplements that seem to flood the market for every game (they tend to be barely play-tested, so are little more than official house rules).

My own rant is that house rules tend to screw up the game, which is fine if that's what people want to do. However, when most people screw up the game they don't think, "Whoops, I didn't want to do that." Rather, they think, "stupid, crappy game."

Actually, I first noticed this with Monopoly, where I had a group of friends refuse to play it because it "takes too long." When they did finally play the game, what do I discover? Why, they didn't use the auction rule because "it's more fun this way", and they used the free parking rule, because "we like it like that."

Of course, those two rules between them add about three hours to the length of the average game.

Sorry, I've ranted too long. So, how do you turn this thing off?