A Star Wars Mini-Campaign: By the Numbers

I'm in the process of noodling through some ideas for a Star Wars d6 mini-campaign. This may or may not happen, and as a consequence I won't be putting up any spoilers here for the time being. However, I have a few ideas, so here goes:

Three parts, three sessions each, four acts each: The mini-campaign is expected to be a trilogy of adventures, where each adventure is split into three sessions (though I'm not sure if these should be 'regular' 3-hour sessions or extended 6-hour 'weekend' sessions). And, as is my wont, each session would be split into four acts: introduction, rising action to the midpoint, falling action, denouement.

Three set-pieces: In addition, it's quite noticable that each of the Star Wars films has three big action scenes of varying scope. This ties in very nicely to my 3x3 structure, in that it strongly suggests that each session should be built around one of those action sequences.

On the PCs: four humans, one alien, one droid, one Force-sensitive but zero Jedi. The game is intentionally taking significant influence from "Rogue One" (hence the d6 system), which means focussing very much on the Rebellion, but also avoiding turning it into another episode of the "Jedi soap-opera".

(But that does leave me in a quandary: this all 'feels' like it should have pre-generated characters supplied, but I'm very much of the opinion that campaigns should allow players to create their own characters - pre-gens are best reserved for one-shot games. Which obviously is something of a contradiction. I'll need to think on this some more - a one-shot might be a better idea anyway, or maybe I can start with a char-gen session. But either way, I'm pretty sure on the "no more than one alien, one droid, one Force-sensitive, and no Jedi" thing.)

Seven locations: each of the three parts will make use of three locations, ideally being two planets and one space-based. However, one of the features of a trilogy is that the third part should revisit many of the themes and conflicts introduced in the first part, which means revisiting some of the locations. Consequently, part one would use three distinct locations, part two a further three distinct locations, and then part three would open with one new location but then return to locations visited in part one.

And that's where I am right now. In future posts I may flesh out some more of the details, or I may start presenting the character profiles for the pre-gens. (Though, first, I need to resolve that "one-shot with pre-gens, or campaign with custom characters" question!)

Slaying a Sacred Cow: No Character Advancement?

One of the great innovations of D&D is the level system, and especially the way the game advances in nice, big steps. This is a huge boon to new players, in particular, because it provides an immediate and obvious motivation for playing - you adventure to level up.

Of course, it's all a bit circular, since the big advantage of levelling up is that you can then go on tougher adventures in order to level up again, in order to go on tougher adventures, in order...

(The same is true of treasure, as well - you get magic items to make your character better so you can face tougher challenges to get better magic items.)

However, in a great many of the stories the game is emulating, characters don't really advance in anything like this manner. Yes, Luke Skywalker goes through the Hero's Journey and is vastly more powerful at the end of RotJ than at the start of SW (none of this "A New Hope" nonsense for me!). But the same isn't true of Han, Leia, Chewie, Wedge, or the others. Likewise, in "The Matrix", Neo gets advanced training to go from newbie to The One, but Morpheus and Trinity don't. And there are plenty of other examples.

So I'm wondering if many campaigns shouldn't just ditch character advancement entirely. Start the characters at 5th level (or whatever), and leave them there for the duration. (Even better in non-level-based systems, of course.) You'd probably need some sort of mechanism for tweaking the character over time, to allow for changes in focus, retraining, and the like, but these could simply be a matter of rearranging skills rather than adding them (because there are only so many hours in the day, and unused skills become rusty - spending hours training with weights will increase Strength, but it means you're not spending hours practicing Spanish and so that skill will fade).

I certainly wouldn't recommend this for every campaign, and I probably wouldn't even recommend a game omit character advancement entirely. But for some campaigns and some systems, it may be just the thing - strip out one more unneeded complication.

Proposed House Rule: A Fixed DC

I've been gradually coming around to the notion that D&D, and especially 5e, should use a fixed DC for all skill checks. Obviously, this wouldn't include attack rolls, saving throws, or most other combat-related rolls, but for skill checks, and especially non-combat skill checks, I think it's worth considering.

The reason for this is that, looking back, I'm not convinced my assessment of appropriate DCs hasn't been significantly influenced by the capability of the PCs under question - with better PCs facing a higher DC than a less-skilled PC would for the same challenge. In which case, as in much of 4e, you have a whole host of benefits and upgrades, and the associated rules... that then boil down to "roll a 10 or more".

So I'm leaning to a simpler assessment of difficulty, in that the DM would ask the question, "can this be done?" There would be three answers:

Yes, of course! If the task is trivially easy, such that anyone remotely capable could do it, no roll is necessary - success is automatic.
• No, that's impossible. Conversely, if the task is simply not possible, no roll is necessary - success is impossible.
• Maybe. In the third case, roll against a fixed DC of 15.

The big advantages of this is that it's a somewhat more objective judge of difficulty (no modifying DCs to suit), and it's obviously faster than having an extra step of asking the DC. On the other hand, it doesn't have much scope for tasks of different difficulty.

Except...

The rules do have one other tool for affecting difficulty: dis/advantage. If the situation is such that the task is much harder than normal, but not impossible, then disadvantage can be applied. Likewise, if the situation is such that it's much easier than normal, apply advantage. Job done.

(I'm further inclined to think that everything else should be handled by the character's innate abilities, with no "circumstantial bonuses" or the like. Especially since such bonuses don't work at all well with dis/advantage.)

One other thing: I'm inclined to also include some notion of extraordinary success, where the roll hits 20, 25, or higher. For some tasks, notably things like knowledge checks, it may be worth adding graduated results for better rolls. But, even so, I'd leave the basic success level at DC 15, with each step above that giving some additional benefit, rather than changing the DC itself.

(This does also mean that things like knowledge skills should probably be restricted to general "what do I know about...?" questions, rather than specifics - otherwise, those specifics would tie the DM into the fixed DC of 15!)

I'll need to give this one a go to see how it plays before making any solid decision on it, though.

Rogues

Over on Part Four, I noted that George R.R. Martin's introduction to the anthology "Rogues" had changed some of my DMing philosophy.

In that introduction, GRRM noted that stories tended to be more satisfying if they starred a character who was in some sense an outsider: the Private Investigator rather than the cop, the "Dirty Harry" type rather than the straight arrow, Wolverine rather than Cyclops (and Batman rather than Superman), a woman in a man's job (or, in the case of Shaft, a black man rubbing up against a white establishment - it's essentially the same conflict). Likewise, one of the strengths of "Star Trek" is that although the Enterprise is one ship in a mighty fleet, they spend the majority of their time right on the frontier and thus unable to call for help quickly - and also empowered to solve issues as they see fit. Bernard Cornwell plays with this same thing again and again - Sharpe is a commoner raised to rank amongst nobles; Uhtred is a pagan amongst Christians; and it's Prince Arthur rather than king - in his telling, Mordred is the rightful heir.

I think there are two big factors to this. Firstly, the protagonists invariably have key skills that make them indispensible to the powers-that-be (or, at the very least, mean they can't be disregarded entirely), and secondly those powers-that-be don't really approve of the protagonists. And so, Dirty Harry keeps getting chewed out by his captain, keeps hitting up against intenal investigations, and so on... but at the same time, he's also the one guy who is able to make actual progress, so he's not simply sacked and replaced.

The application of this to role-playing is nice and simple - the PCs obviously have specialised skills that mean they will remain useful to the powers-that-be, which means it's just a matter of putting foils in their way.

Of course, the key thing here is not to be too agressive in applying those foils. If the PCs are constantly finding they can't make headway, or they're constantly being thwarted, the players are likely to become frustrated. And, in particular, although the foils may frustrate the PCs socially, it's probably very important that they be given free rein to solve problems in their own way - Dirty Harry may have issues with his superiors, but when it comes to "Do I feel lucky?" he's alone with the gun, and can pull the trigger or not.

(Indeed, I suspect this is why Paladins are so often such a problem - they're the guy who does stand there telling their friends "you can't do that!"... and they're in the guise of a PC and so cannot just be ditched by the rest.)

And so, when establishing a campaign, I think I'm going to ask, and address, two key questions:

1. What is it that the PCs can do for their patrons? Why can't those patrons deal with it themselves? Why are they going to be indispensible?
2. What is it that makes those PCs outsiders, rather than the establishment? Who are they at odds with? Who are the foils?

(Obviously, that's more than two questions! But the two groups each address one side of my concern above, so I'm calling it two.)

Artifice - Power Sources

Following on from my discussion of how (mechanically speaking) I might be inclined to handle item crafting, I thought I'd quickly discuss power sources. I always felt that these were one of the better ideas from 4e (along with class and, especially, monster roles), and I'm inclined to think they should be applied to items as well. And, as with class power sources, I'm inclined to think an items power source should be mostly irrelevant - what something does is more important than how it does it. However, sometimes it matters, especially when dealing with dead-magic zones and the like.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards the following power sources:

• Intrinsic: This would be the same power source that Fighters, Rogues and other non-magical characters use (that is, what 4e called "Martial"). In terms of items, it mostly represents items that are better by virtue of their construction - dwarven plate that is simply better-made, mithral shirts that are constructed of sterner stuff, and that sort of thing. Items with an intrinsic power source are not strictly magical, and as such are not affected by anti-magic or the like (but whether intrinsically-powered weapons can affect creatures that require magic items to hit is debatable!).
• Mechanical: These are items powered by clockwork, numerology, alchemy, and other pseudo-sciences in the setting. This would also include things like gunpowder weapons. (But these are not necessarily real-world devices, or indeed anything that could exist at all - hence pseudo-sciences.) As with intrinsically-powered items, mechanical ones are not strictly magical.
• Arcane: The widest-ranging category, these are the classic 'magic items' - anything that is powered by arcane magic, rather than that derived from the gods, the elements, or pseudo-science. This includes the classic scrying pool, the flying carpet, and the like.
• Divine: Anything powered by the gods comes here. The holy avenger is probably the classic item of this kind. Divine items are usually dedicated to a specific god, and heavily marked by divine sigils and marks.
• Primal: Items derived from nature, including planar and elemental magics.
• Psionic: Probably the rarest of items, psionic items generally serve to focus or direct the user's own power. Psionic items mostly have a crystal basis or are made of jade, as both these seem to have an affinity with the power source.
• Composite: It is fairly rare, though not unheard-of for items to combine two power sources (but no more than two). This allows for the combination of effects that wouldn't normally come together into a single item. However, there is a catch: items with a composite power source can only draw on one source at a time, meaning that if the arcane effects are in use, the intrinsic qualities are unavailable.

(Not coincidentally, the power-sources I envisage for character classes are much the same - Intrinsic, Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic, and Artifice.)

Of course, all that's largely irrelevant, since I doubt I would ever do anything with it. Still, it's fun to noodle around ideas sometimes.