Lessons from The Eberron Code #1: Psionics

Over 25 years of gaming, I have run all of four campaigns that I consider to be truly excellent. That may not sound like much, but it's worth noting that I've run many 'good' campaigns, and can consistently run an entertaining campaign; it's just that these four stand apart. But of course, none of the four are perfect; each has taught me various lessons about gaming. The first, if I'm honest, was a "Lord of the Rings" rip-off based on a far from perfect comprehension of the rules. "Vampire: Rivers of Time" was excellent for a long time, but it ran on far too long, and ran out of steam towards the end. "Shackled City" highlighted a lot of the systematic issues with 3e, especially at higher levels.

Which brings us to "The Eberron Code", my current and ongoing campaign. Which has a number of lessons to share. However, with the campaign still being ongoing, I don't really want to start analysing most of these. One, though, has ceased to be an ongoing component in the campaign, and so can be discussed here: psionics.

This is the first 3.5e campaign I have run to include psionics to any significant degree, with the inclusion of a psionic PC, a number of psionic items, and a few psionic monsters. With the death of that psionic PC, the role of this power source in the campaign is essentially ended.

Frankly, and rather unfortunately, psionics are a waste of time and effort.

It's not a balance issue - if anything, psionics are underpowered compared to magic. There are just a few powers that are overpowered, but compared with some of the abuses possible with a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid (especially with the "Spell Compendium" in play), they're barely worth mentioning.

The problem is that psionics is a bolt-on system to a game with a fairly comprehensive magic system. For just about any psionic power, there's already a spell that does it available to one of the three classes I named.

Additionally, when designing these spells, WotC worked out the lowest level at which the power should reasonably become available, and used that to assign the spell level. Sure, not all casters get all spells at that lowest level - the three types of magic give different effects at different rates. But one of the 'big three' will get every spell at the lowest applicable level.

The effect of these two things is that the psion has virtually no unique powers reserved to himself, and he can't even give earlier access to any existing spell (because one of the 'big three' already gives it at the lowest acceptable level). All the psion can really offer, in terms of the powers available, is a particular mix of powers at their lowest levels. Which would be fine if there were huge disparities in spells available to the 'big three', but there aren't - most often, spells are granted at the same level, or very close to it.

The one thing that the psion does offer is a different spellcasting mechanic. Where the Wizard prepares his spells, and the Sorcerer spontaneously casts a wider number of spells but still uses slots of different levels, the Psion has a pool of points that can be used to power any effect at any time. In effect, the Psion is a mana-based caster, albeit with overnight recharge rather than the more common "points per hour" seen in CRPGs.

That being the case, I'm inclined not to use psionics as such in future campaigns. They just add a bunch of new complexity without really offering anything. Instead, I might be tempted to do three things:

1) Introduce the Mage, a mana-based arcane caster to stand alongside the Wizard and Sorcerer (and perhaps a divine equivalent to stand with the Cleric and Favoured Soul, and perhaps even a primal equivalent to match the Druid). This class would be modelled on the rules of the Psion, but would have access to the existing spell list for the 'parent' class. If nothing else, this gives that character access to the full range of spells in all the expanded supplements, if used.

2) Model 'psionics' using the "spell template" rules from Arcana Evolved - which allows the existing spells to be reskinned as psionic effects, without a need to introduce lots of new powers or huge numbers of new rules to handle them. That's if psionics are to feature in the campaign at all (for Eberron or Dark Sun, I would certainly want to use them; for other campaigns I don't think I'd bother).

3) The vast majority of psionic items can either be easily converted to magic items (as is actually done in the "Magic Item Compendium"). The vast majority of the others can simply be dropped. The one that I think is useful to retain is the Cognizance Crystal, which gives a psion additional power points. This should be easy to convert - when charged, it gives a source of additional Mana. However, a Wizard can also use it to cast a single prepared spell of the given level without expending the spell, or a Sorcerer can use it as an additional slot of the given level. Which, coincidentally, makes this just an additional use of the pearl of power.

And that, I think, is that. I think the next "Lesson" may discuss the use of the "Spell Compendium", but that's going to be a while away...

Bite-sized Pieces

Having identified the games that I'm probably going to use for campaign play, my latest RPG project is to build up some useful resources for those games. This is mostly motivated by my realisation that "Black Crusade" really needs some add-ons for it to be less painful to prepare and run, although the game that I'm actually focussing on first is SWSE.

(The games that I've identified for one-shot play won't get the same attention, because they're not really worth the effort. I'll run them as-is, without supplements, without house rules, and without other resources. And that, incidentally, is why I've identified "Black Crusade" as being for campaign play or nothing - it needs the work done to be usable at all, but if it's just for one-shots then it's not worth doing the work.)

At the moment, the tasks I've earmarked for SWSE are as follows:

A new character form: I have an existing character form for the game, but I also have a far better character sheet that I found online. The first task, then, is to convert this sheet into a PDF form, replacing my existing version. (This task is actually complete. Ideally, I should perform some optimisations on the new form to reduce the file size, but as that would require access to a newer version of Acrobat (full version, not the Reader), it will need to wait.)

Item cards: This is my immediate task. Using the Magic Set Editor, it should be possible (nay, easy, if a bit time consuming) to put together cards for all the standard items in the game. I'm starting with the Core Rulebook, but intend to go through the various supplements as and when time permits. That done, I'm also planning to convert the items from the "Arms & Equipment Guide" from the previous edition - although some of the statistics will need to change, the fundamentals should not.

Force Power cards: I already have a set of these cards, and they've proven to be a major boon. However, the cards only cover the Force powers from the Core Rulebook, and I have no means of expanding the set. It is therefore my intention to use the Magic Set Editor (again) to put together a new set of cards from all the Saga Edition books.

Talent cards: As with the above two items, except that the cards generated will detail the various talents available in the game.

"Monster Manual": The set of antagonists available in the Core Rulebook is extremely bare-bones, and although the supplements expand this greatly, the data is spread thinly across a large number of books. Therefore, it is my hope to gradually consolidate this into a single reference document. This can then gradually be added to as I develop new characters, monsters, and other antagonists for various campaigns. The key here is of building an ever-growing resource, rather than simply transcribing the existing data.

That said, the existing antagonists also suffer from one of the classic 'monster' errors - they provide a whole lot of references to talents, feats, and powers, but fail to explain in the text what these mean. In actual play, this leads to too much referencing of books. So, I'm intending to gather all the relevant information into a single place, making for a more useful reference.

The web enhancements: In addition to this, there was a significant amount of web support provided for the game by WotC. At some point, it is my intention to go through all the relevant articles and strip out all the 'resource' elements from them (ignoring the commentary). I'm generally planning to do that last, as I suspect it will be easier to add the various elements to existing documents, rather than trying to generate the documents from the resources and then adding the material from the printed supplements.

The great joy of all of these tasks is that they can be performed a little bit at a time. With RPG projects, it's very easy to take on far too much work, get bored, and abandon the project. And then, next time, to decide to start over with a clean slate. But if instead the items are inherently small scale (one item, one monster... it's just that there are a lot of them), I'm hoping there won't be the same temptation.

And, as an added bonus, much of this work can be done in concert with building resources for one-shots and campaigns using the game - every time I generate a set of stats for a monster, it can and should be added to the manual; any time I generate a character, I can generate the appropriate item cards.

At least, that's the plan.

Not Worth It

I got a bit of a sticker shock at the weekend. We found ourselves in Static in Glasgow, where I had the intention of picking up "Hand of Corruption", the adventure compilation for "Black Crusade". And, indeed, I did pick it up... only to put it down again. Static were charging £27 for the book. (Even Amazon are charging £23, representing a 15% discount.)

Now, "Hand of Corruption" is no doubt a lovely-looking book. It's a reasonably thick hardback, with glossy paper, lots of interior art, and that generally looks awesome. It's also a licensed product, which pushes up the price.

The key problem is that none of these things actually do anything to improve the utility of the book. The content that is of interest is the three-part adventure, and that would be just the same presented in a softback, with little or no interior art, and in black-and-white. (But not the incompetent black-and-white that WotC used in "Scourge of the Howling Horde", which features light grey text in a dark grey box because the book was clearly conceived in full colour and then printed in greyscale!)

Now, for me the problem isn't the raw price of the thing. After all, I paid considerably more than that for the "Black Crusade" core rulebook, and indeed paid full price for it. And, despite only using the book twice thus far, I don't consider that an unreasonable expense.

But there's a difference between a core rulebook that will be used again and again, a supplement that will be used in parts and occasionally, and an adventure which will only be used once. And while £40 for a core rulebook is steep but acceptable, anything over £25 for a supplement is pushing it, and adventures really shouldn't venture above £20 without very good reason.

This book (and indeed the entire line of WH40k RPG supplements) leaves me looking at it, thinking about a purchase, and then thinking about all the other things I could spend the money on instead. Fundamentally, they've priced me out of the market.

(And, for what it's worth, WotC have done the same with their line of reprints. The reprinted "Spell Compendium" is set for sale at $60, the compilation of the Slavers modules A1-4 is set at $50, and so on. They're undeniably nice products, and the "Spell Compendium" in particular is tempting, but the price is just too high to justify buying them instead of something else.)

In the event, I may yet pick up a copy of "Hand of Corruption", thanks in no small part to having an Amazon voucher available for the purpose (and due to really wanting to like the game). But it's becoming increasingly apparent that this is no longer a cheap hobby, and when I already have more material than I will ever use, those new and expensive books are becoming ever-less appealing.

One-shot or Campaign Play

I've been considering some more my list of "Games to Run". In particular, I've rethought some of the entries - I'm inclined to add "Adventure!" and "Red Dwarf" to the list of possibilities (because both are fun one-shot games), while I'm now thinking I'm less inclined to run "Savage Worlds" (though I'll very happily play it). Likewise, all "Babylon 5" and "Armageddon 2089" were left on the list, the truth is that I'll almost certainly never run them.

I've also been musing about the respective needs of one-shot and campaign play. See, it seems to me that for a one-shot, the ideal system is something lightweight (so it can be explained to the players quickly), something that can be picked up and used as-is (no 'required' supplements, accessories, or house-rules), and something that you don't feel the need to do lots of work with.

By contrast, for campaign play, something with a bit more 'bite' is preferable - there's more tolerance for both the GM and indeed the players doing 'work' outside of the sessions, a bit of complexity in the rules is actually beneficial (as it maintains interest), and if the game can be improved with some supplements and/or house rules, so much the better.

So, with that in mind, here's my current thinking on games to run...

For Campaign Play:

D&D 3.5e: Unless and until I get "Nutshell Fantasy" into a form it can be used (which is looking increasingly like never happening), or if 5e wows me, 3.5e will remain my D&D of choice (except if I decide to run a Pathfinder Adventure Path, in which case I'll use Pathfinder, of course). After the end of my "Eberron Code" campaign, I'm going to take a long break from this game, but I daresay I'll be back. I'll also not be running D&D as a one-shot game, except perhaps as an "introductory scenario" - more on this in another post.

Star Wars Saga Edition: I've resolved not to even look at the upcoming Star Wars games from Fantasy Flight (two deal-breakers: funky dice mechanics, and no PDFs ever - which was borderline acceptable when SWSE was new, but isn't even that now). So SWSE will remain my Star Wars game of choice, and it's a good one. I have both a one-shot and a campaign scheduled for this, and expect to do more of both in the future.

Black Crusade: This game is somewhat borderline - I'm not 100% sold on it as-is, but I really want to like it. So I'm going to pick up the currently-available pregen adventure, and see if that sways me. It's also a game that I think could be massively improved by putting together some key resources - a "Monster Manual", a new character form, action cards, item cards, and psychic power cards. So, if the pregen adventure doesn't persuade me to run this game in "campaign mode", I'll drop it entirely - the required work is too much for "one-shot mode", but I don't think I'd want to run it at all without doing that work.

Hunter: the Vigil: This is also a slightly odd one, because I expect to run 'hunter' one-shots as well, and indeed may not get to a campaign at all. However, if I run it as a one-shot, I think I'll just use the underlying "World of Darkness" rules as-is, without layering on the "Hunter: the Vigil" book as well. But for campaign play, I'll want to add the 'full' version of the rules.

And it's worth noting that it is a very good game, so I'm certainly considering the possibilities.

Mutants & Masterminds: This is here as a placeholder for now. I'm running a one-shot of this next month, after which I'll slot it in properly. My gut feeling, though, is that it's too much work for much one-shot play, so it'll be suitable for "campaign mode", or not one to use at all.

d20 Modern: This is very borderline. It's too much work for a one-shot, but it may suit if I have a particular idea for a campaign that needs a 'toolkit' rules set to run. So we'll see.

For One-Shot Play:

Adventure!: I was watching "The Mummy" at the weekend, and it reminded me of what attracted me to this game in the first place. It does something very similar to "Savage Worlds", and does it well. The upshot is that I'm inclined to put this one back into contention, for use when running the specific type of game it supports.

Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade: I like the concept of this game, and would quite like to run it. However, it's probably not something I would want to bother with a campaign for. Fortunately, it's ideal one-shot material.

Red Dwarf: There's a proposed camping trip which will no doubt feature a certain amount of alcohol and a certain amount of gaming late at night. This game is perfect for that - it requires minimal character creation and minimal preparation, and is a good laugh. And for that use, and for that use only, it's on the list.

Serenity: I thought quite carefully about this one, and considered adding it to the 'campaigns' list. Ultimately, though, I decided that the system isn't really robust enough for that use, and that the story options are almost ideal for one-shot use but probably not robust enough for campaign use. So I've decided to drop any plans for a Serenity campaign, but to keep it on the list for one-shots.

Vampire: the Victorian Age: I've decided to reinstate this onto the list "full time" purely because of the setting. I won't run a campaign again, but I don't want to discount it entirely. Barring my potential "reverse trilogy" one-shot idea, though, I won't bother with any of the other versions of the game.

World of Darkness: The more I think on this game, the more impressed I am. Although supposedly a horror game, the system here is almost generic in nature. So I think that this will be my one-shot 'toolkit' game of choice, the game to pull out for things like my 'Musketeer' or 'Terminator' games. And, indeed, for that 'Hunter' game that I mentioned.

And the Rest...

That leaves three games that were not quite bumped from the previous list, and are not quite written off now, but which may well never see the light of day again...

Armageddon 2089: I don't really have the interest to run a full campaign, but it's too much work for a one-shot. So this game is essentially gone.

Babylon 5: I'm planning to rewatch the series next year, at which point I may well decide I simply must run a campaign using this game. But barring that, it's done - between Star Wars and Serenity, I'm fine for licensed sci-fi settings.

Savage Worlds: It's a good game, and there are lots of nice settings. But... I think this is one I'll let others run, and confine myself to playing. Unless I have an idea that simply must be run using it.

Probability and Algebra

On Saturday, one of our pre-game conversations came to the topic of THAC0, that old 2nd Edition abbreviation.

For those who don't know, THAC0 meant "To Hit Armour Class 0" - this was the number that had to be scored (by d20 roll + modifiers) to hit a target with an AC of 0.

What this meant in practice was that you rolled your attack, added your modifiers, and then subtracted that total from your THAC0 to get the AC that you actually hit. Which actually isn't all that difficult mathematically - it's just an addition and a subtraction.

(Incidentally, THAC0 is almost but not quite the same (in effect) as the 1st Edition rule, which had attack tables for each AC. The key difference there, though, was that the attack tables would have 6 twenties in a row, followed by a '21' - to hit such a target you required a natural 20 on the die, and had to be using a +1 magic weapon.)

Now, while THAC0 actually isn't all that complex, a little algebra gives us an objectively better method for achieving the same results:

AC hit = d20 + BAB + other modifiers

That is, the 3e/4e/5e system.

(For a certain breed of old-school players, that's an actively heretical statement, by the way, because the old ways are sacrosanct. And there's another breed of online debaters who would likewise take exception to my use of the word 'objectively', claiming that that's just my opinion. Such people are, quite simply, wrong. Moving all the known values and calculations to one side of the equation, and eliminating the subtraction in favour of an addition means we get exactly the same result with reduced complexity. Mathematically, computationally, and pedagogically, that is better. Fact.)

Anyway, that's all a lengthy tangent around what I'm actually wanting to talk about, which is innovations in RPG systems, which ties into a comment I made over on Brindy's blog. There, I noted that most new RPGs are actually developed not because the designer has a new and exciting mathematical construct to reveal, but rather because the designer has a new setting that he wants to present.

Which is cool - I have absolutely no problem with that. What I take exception to is the creation of new RPG systems to support these new settings when an existing ruleset (either used 'straight' or modified) would do the job just as well.

See, here's the thing: with very few exceptions, RPG systems fall into a handful of moulds:

Single Die vs Target: This is the method familiar from D&D - you roll a d20, add modifiers, and compare with a target number. Your competence in a task is expressed as a modifier to your roll, which is added to the single die rolled.

Dice Pool, count successes: This is the method used in World of Darkness, Shadowrun, and Ubiquity - you roll a number of dice, compare each die with a target to get a number of 'successes', count those successes, and that detemines overall success or failure. Your competence in a task is expressed in the form of a larger number of dice.

Dice Pool, accumulate vs target: This is the method used in the Star Wars d6 game - you roll a number of dice, accumulate the total, and compare it with a target number. Your competence in a task is expressed as a bigger number of dice.

(A key variant of this is seen in Serenity - here you roll two dice, total, and compare with a target number. Your competence is expressed in the size of the dice.)

Roll-under: This is the system used in most percentile-based games, such as Call of Cthulhu or the Warhammer games (excluding WFRP 3e). Here, you roll a fixed dice pool, hoping to score under your individual skill threshold. Competence is expressed in an increase in your chance at a given task.

(I'm not sure I've ever seen a version of this system that wasn't percentile-based, though I daresay they're out there. The key cognitive problems I have with these systems is the question of where difficulty modifiers should be applied, and that values of greater than 100% are easily attained.)

(However, one could readily envisage a game where you rolled different dice based on the difficulty of the task (d4 for trivial, d6 for normal, etc), and competence was given as a taget - with normal people having '3' in most things.)

It's worth noting that converting from CoC's percentile system to a d20 roll is easy - divide the %ages by 5, subtract 1, and roll d20 + this modifier vs DC 20. Of course, that's not quite what CoC d20 did, nor is the change in dice type the reason CoC d20 didn't work out.

Other Systems: There are some few systems that do something different, with WFRP 3e being a notable instance (with a 'luck' and 'skill' axis on successes). Such efforts should be applauded, of course.

Anyway, the thing is, having boiled RPG systems down to a handful of basic cases, I have to question the value in developing new ones. In virtually every case, it's just a matter of using algebra to rearrange the terms, and tinkering with the probabilities, probably in ways you don't understand terribly well. The World of Darkness system is almost exactly the same as the Shadowrun system (one uses d6 and a fixed threshold of 5, the other uses d10s and a fixed threshold of 8... but reroll 10s. In both cases, each die has a 'value' of one-third), so why bother with both? Why create a new system for Numenera, when instead you can reuse the d20 system (or Savage Worlds, or whatever), and instead spend those energies on either optimising the system or on further developing the setting? Either way, rather than reinventing the wheel, you've instead made a better product.

(And, as a corollary to this, why do we not have implementations of all the various forms already available via the OGL? Copyright doesn't apply to game rules, only to their specific expression, and the various retro-clones have shown the way in this light. So, where are the kernels of the four key systems for people to tinker with?)

Death of a PC

Isn't it funny - you wait over a year for a PC fatality, and then two come within a week.

The first occurred on Saturday, in the "Heresy of Angels" one-shot. The player of the Sorcerer, sick and tired of being totally ineffectual, elected to use his Doombolt at Push level - boosting the power but guaranteeing that a Psychic Phenomena would result. He rolled on the appropriate table, scored more than the 76 that moved him to the higher-scale Warp Mishap table, and then rolled the 1-in-a-hundred chance that he would be slain outright. That was probably the single most entertaining moment in that entire game.

The second occurred on Tuesday, in my regular "Eberron Code" campaign, in which the party were faced by a single Giant Skeleton - a CR 7 encounter against three EL 9 PCs, which should have been a fairly easy challenge.

Unfortunately, the fight did not go well. The party defender was hit twice in quick succession, losing most of his hit points. He backed away to avoid dying, causing the skeleton to instead split its next round of attacks between the Wizard and the Psion, both of whom had low AC and fairly low hit points. The Wizard took a mighty but survivable blow. The Psion, injured from the previous session, was slain outright - reduced from 18 to -11 hit points at a stroke.

Two very different deaths in two different situations and two very different games. But, in both cases, there are lessons to be learned...

1. PC Death is Fun

I think this is something that gets forgotten about quite easily, but actually character death is no less a part of the fun than what the characters do while they're alive. This was immediately obvious in the case of the Sorcerer, where it was a one-shot, it was a freak set of dice results, and it was actually quite funny. But it was also true in the case of the Psion - although unfortunate, the death of that character changed the content of the session significantly, taking it in directions that it otherwise would not have gone.

2. PC Death is a Pain

Ironically, this is also entirely true at the same time as the above. In both cases, the loss of the character left a player with a sense of "now what do I do?" Plot threads and storylines needed to be rejigged. And, of course, there was/is a need to work in a replacement PC. It genuinely is a pain.

3. PC Death is Necessary

Of course, with it being such a pain, there's a huge temptation to fudge the dice rolls - to rule that the attack does a few points fewer damage, or that the Warp doesn't slay the Sorcerer, or whatever.

But that would have been a huge mistake. As noted, the death of the Sorcerer was the highlight of that game. And while the death of the Psion was unfortunate, had I instead dropped that character to a near-death state, the most likely outcome would actually have been a Total Party Kill - had Jag not been dead, the other PCs would likely have gone to her aid, giving the Giant more attacks, where each PC had too few hit points to survive even one more attack.

But there are two wider principles at stake:

Unfortunate as they were, both of those character deaths were undeniably fair. All the dice were rolled out in the open, it was clear that I wasn't undul targetting any one PC, and it was clear that I hadn't fudged anything. And the skeleton, in particular, was a 'balanced' encounter for the PCs.

So, had I fudged the rolls so that Turiel survived or so that Jag survived, that would very clearly have set a precedent of unfairness. And so, the next time a PC 'dies', I have to do the same. The net effect is that I could never kill off a PC, ever. Not to mention - if I cheat on this, what else might I cheat on?

And if it's a foregone conclusion that a PC can never die, it's no longer a game. There's no risk, there's no possibility that the PCs might, in the final analysis, lose. At worst, they'll only ever suffer a setback, but in the end the world will be saved. It's like playing a video game in God Mode - sure, it's fun for a while, but it quickly pales as any 'achievements' become nothing of the sort.

4. Thank Goodness I Play with Adults!

There are horror stories out there of players who lose a character and throw a tantrum. Heck, I've even heard horror stories about players who throw a tantrum if their PCs suffer damage! Thankfully, I don't play with any such players. When the PCs died, including the character who had been painstakingly built up from 1st level over more than a year of play, the player simply accepted it and we moved on.

Huzzah for playing with adults! Huzzah!

5. Always Have a Back-up Plan

If PCs can die, you should plan assuming that they will die. And that means you should have a plan for that eventuality. Perhaps there's a spare character you can fade in. Perhaps there's a henchman that you can promote (Planchett in "The Three Musketeers", Lewis in "Morse", etc). Perhaps the PCs encounter a new guy with suspiciously similar abilities ("I see your party has no Mage..."). Or, of course, they PCs could just go into the local town and hire a suitable mercenary type to join them - presumably one with exceptional references.

But you probably shouldn't sent your PCs off on a thousand-mile expedition with a fully-detailed crew of allies, and with no real ability to meet or contact anyone who isn't about to try to kill them...

(You would not believe just how fortuitious the timing of this most recent death actually is. I may tell you in a couple of weeks.)

6. PC Death Should be Appropriately Rare

One PC death in a year of campaign play is a pretty good rate. In general, it's good if the party can spend much of their time teetering right on the edge of disaster, but generally without slipping over. The risk should be real, always, but there's a gap between that and the reality.

Now, who's next...?

No Shows

One of the great frustrations of pipe bands and RPG groups both is that events rely on people showing up. If people can't make it, pretty soon you don't have a band or you don't have a game.

And, of course, people live busy lives. It's entirely understandable that on any given day, an individual member may well not be available. And, in fact, on any given day you might not be able to field a band, or might have to cancel a game. It's unfortunate, but it happens, and there's nothing can be done about it. All of that is fair enough.

But where it all gets really distressing is when people say one thing and then do another. With pipe bands, this typically happens because people don't want to disappoint the pipe major (or, in many cases, because they know that if they tell the PM "no", there will proceed to be an inquest into just why they can't make it). With game groups, it tends to be much more a matter of people meaning well, but finding their ability to sign up far outstrips their actual ability to attend.

Of course, that sort of no-show can be a real disaster. Especially with a pipe band, there is a minimum size of band required for events, and if you're being paid for the band to attend, it's important to deliver. For that reason, whenever I've been running a band, I've tried very hard to make that point clearly - if you're available then we need you to attend, but if you're not then we do understand. I don't ask people why they can't attend a given event, because I'm happy to accept that they have a good reason... but they must tell me up-front and in good time so that I can plan accordingly.

With RPGs, it's much less of an issue, of course. Usually, if someone fails to show up, the game just goes ahead with fewer players. But in the worst case, it gets cancelled after people have travelled to the game, and that's really not fair. (And, of course, if the game had a limited number of spots, and there was someone on the waiting list who would have liked to take your spot, that's also really bad.)

But even so, shit happens. Perhaps you were on your way and your car broke down. Or you woke up that morning feeling like crap. Or an old friend suddenly showed up out of the blue. Or whatever. There are, just occasionally, really good reasons why you can't attend where you honestly, genuinely intended to do so. Even that's understandable and acceptable... occasionally.

But what isn't acceptable, in anything but the most extreme cases, is for you to simply not show up having previously said you would, and failing to let people know. In a world of mobile phones and email, and entire websites dedicated to scheduling game sessions, and the like, it is utterly unacceptable to fail to let people know that you won't be in attendance. Virtually the only excuse for such behaviour is if you're on your way to hospital (either for yourself, or with someone else).

Doing so is one of the few things guaranteed to piss me off. It's also a quick way to find yourself uninvited to any future games that I run - if you can't be relied upon to show up, or at least to let me know that you're not coming, then I'm going to find someone else to fill your spot.

(Now, all that said, the no-show on Saturday does not fall into that category. For various reasons too long to go into, it's entirely possible that the person involved simply didn't know that a spot had opened up for him. In which case, he can hardly be faulted for not attending!)

Heresy of Angels in Review

Before the game, we were discussing impressions of "Black Crusade" as a whole, and the general feeling could be summed up as "I really want to like it a lot more than I actually do". The book is exceptionally well-presented, it contains probably the most polished variant on the ruleset, and it's built upon a very good setting with a lot of flavour. But...

That same impression really sums up my feelings about the one-shot itself. There wasn't much technically wrong with it, but I was left feeling I could and should have done a better job with the material. And yet, the group seemed to have a good time, and there were questions as to whether there would be a "part two". So it's an odd one, really.

(Before I go on: the rest of this post may seem rather negative. It's not, really. The purpose of this review is not to beat myself up, or complain about the cruelties of fate, or anything like that. Instead, the goal is to help things go better next time - the goal is to do more of the things that went well and to fix the things that went badly. Ultimately, I'm reasonably pleased with Saturday's game... but it's given me a lot to think about.)

What went well:

• Despite having several players who knew the system, and three copies of the rulebook at the table, there weren't any big rules disputes. And that despite one or two... questionable... calls on my part. Plus, the game didn't lag badly at any point, despite the book requiring extensive reference (and not having a good index).
  
• Most of the players were manifestly having a good time. There was plenty of banter, a good atmosphere around the table, and it was generally fun.
  
• The moment where the Sorcerer decided to use his Doombolt on 'push', thus causing a guaranteed psychic phenomenon, was brilliant. There was a very small chance that the character would be annihilated outright, with no chance of recovery. Indeed, in campaign play, that's the sort of thing people would love to talk about, but that most GMs would promptly fudge. Naturally, the dice fell just right, and the character died. Oops!

What didn't go so well:

• Too much combat. I mean, I was able to keep the combats fluid, and I think they were suitably varied, so that combats themselves weren't the problem. But the balance between combat encounters and non-combat challenges was off. And when some characters are combat monsters and some are comparitive weaklings, that's a problem. (And that's my biggest concern with "Black Crusade" long-term - with a mixed party, how do you ensure everyone gets a fair crack of the whip.)
  
• One of the players seemed bored. Now, I don't know him terribly well, so I might have been mis-reading the situation, but if he was indeed bored then that's an issue.
  
• The "mature themes" thing was a waste of time. The game was only marginally different from anything else I might have run. I don't think that's actually a problem, since I'm happy with the tone, but I think I'll be removing that tag from the corresponding game next year.
  
• I prepared way too much material. Fortunately, because things could be hit in any order, the party skipped to the most likely climax at just the right time, but it was still a little unfortunate that so much had to be skipped.
  
• Speaking of skipping stuff, I failed to bring out most of the storyline. There were distinct hints about the rift in the Sisters of Battle, and the players managed to pick up on quite a lot of it, but not enough to save it from feeling a bit too much like a disjointed sequence of combats. Part of that was due to the PCs managing to miss just about every "exposition" roll throughout the game, part of it was that I had too much material (so they missed interacting with either of the two big groups of SoB), and a lot of it was that there was too much combat and not enough roleplay.

Overall, I think the game was a moderate success, but it certainly wasn't on a par with the Mirror Universe "Star Wars" game that was my previous one-shot. And, probably more importantly, there is an awful lot that I think I can do better next time.

Regarding "Black Crusade" - there's a lot of interest from people in playing this again. I'm halfway inclined, though, to add it to the list of games that I'm leaving to other people to run. I just don't have the grounding in the setting that many others do. On the other hand, there's something there that I really like. So I'm torn.

Some specific things:

• The game desperately needs some sort of "Monster Manual". And it probably needs an in-depth "Setting Primer", and probably significant expansions to the lists of gear and psychic powers. Oh, and a much better index, and PDFs of everything.
  
• The character sheet is a disgrace. I was using a PDF form, which made creating the characters reasonably easy. The problem is that the sheet is designed with a lovely, ornate border, and a detailed background image, and a section of white text on a black background (which only applies to half the characters, as well). The net effect is that a filled sheet is 2.5Mb in size, for 3 pages! What this ultimately meant was that printing the sheets was a major hassle - what I ideally wanted was to open all 10 sheets, set up the printer for two-sided work, and print pages 1-2 of each sheet in turn. But that overran the memory available for my system, causing the whole thing to work for several minutes only to conclude that it couldn't print! Add to that that the sheet really didn't make it easy to include all the required information on the sheet directly...

  Basically, it's probably the worst character sheet I've used recently. If I find myself running this game again, I'll have to do a redesign (which, fortunately, shouldn't be too bad).
  

• I'm sorely tempted to pick up the pre-generated Adventure Path for the game, to see an example of how the writers envisage the game being used. The only major problem with this is that another GM may want to run that campaign at some point, and if I were playing I wouldn't want to have read it. So that's a difficult one. (Shame there's only one Adventure Path out there...)

It's a fascinating, frustrating game. Perhaps "Fantasy Flight" are evil geniuses...