"Essential Clues"

This one's going to be a bit of a rant. I'm sure you're overjoyed to read that. But I've just read something that really bugged me, and I was trying to sort out just why that was.

The topic in question was the GUMSHOE mechanic whereby characters are just given the appropriate clues if they investigate a scene - if the Medic examines the corpse then he just gets told about the disparity between the gunshot wound and the time of death, or whatever. Fair enough - I actually think that's a pretty good idea.

But what bugged me was the discussion of the opposite approach, where the player is required to roll, and how a "good GM" will operate in the GUMSHOE manner anyway.

The argument goes as follows: if the ongoing story requires the PCs to find an essential clue, and they have to roll for it, the game comes to a shuddering halt if they fail that roll. Therefore, the GM must either arrange things so the player can reroll until he succeeds, or otherwise arrange for that information to fall into their laps. In effect, he's having to bypass the roll anyway. And, since that just wastes time and generates frustration, the "good GM" will simply skip all that and give the PCs the essential clue.

That's fine as far as it goes, except for one thing: "if the ongoing story requires the PCs to find an essential clue..."

What we have here is a form of railroading. Whatever else happens in the game, the PCs must do something. They must visit a certain location or they must talk to a particular NPC, or whatever. You've created a choke-point in the adventure. To proceed, they must go this way. And each essential clue represents another choke-point - the PCs have to hit A, and B, and C to proceed; all that matters is the order (ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA). That's not a railroad in the classical sense, but it's not far off it.

The key thing is that the "good GM" in the roll-for version of the game would not have any essential clues in the first place. Instead, he'd have liberally scattered lots of clues about the place, any of which might or might not be found (but where, statistically, something like 70% will be found assuming 'good' play), and where a suitable subset will give rise to the right conclusions.

And, actually, the "good GM" in the roll-for version would also not require that the players come to the 'right' conclusions anyway. If they decide to proceed against the wrong man, well that's their business - it just leads to another set of circumstances, no more or less valid than the other. (Specifically, it most likely results in the real villain getting away to strike again, the PCs creating a new enemy, and the PCs losing some of their hard-earned prestige. None of which is ideal from this adventure, but in terms of the wider campaign it's not actually all that bad a thing.)

Now, you'll note that I've not said you must play this way. And, indeed, if you are going to have essential clues in the game then I agree you really should just give them to the PCs. I'm just not convinced about the need for essential clues.

Untested Death and Dying Rule (also healing!)

This is actually aimed at Nutshell Fantasy, my never-actually-to-be-completed pet d20 system, but it's adaptable to other d20 games, so here it is.

As noted, characters have a number of hit points per level: 7 for 'tough' classes, 5 for 'medium' classes, and 3 for 'weak' classes (in D&D, Fighters, Rogues, Wizards, respectively). In addition, they have a 'recovery die' assigned by their class: d12 for 'tough' classes, d8 for 'medium' classes, and d4 for 'weak' classes. Characters then 1 die at 1st level, plus 1 die at each odd-numbered level thereafter (so a 3rd level Fighter would have 2d12).

(Multiclass characters are a bit tricky - I'm not sure whether they should simply use the biggest recovery die, or if they should maintain a mixed pool. My gut feeling is the former would be better.)

Damage works as normal. In particular, note that in Nutshell a character who takes damage (except from "friendly fire") may choose to become Bloodied - this moves him 1 step down the Condition Track, but also allows him to be healed.

At the end of the combat, a character who is Bloodied and takes a short rest regains hit points automatically - roll one (and only one) Recovery Die* and add this to his total. Then remove the Bloodied condition.

The other use of the Recovery Pool comes when a character is knocked unconscious. Immediately on reaching 0 hit points, and each round thereafter on his turn, he must roll his entire Recovery Pool (so, 2d12 for that 3rd level Fighter). Any dice that come up a '1' are removed from his pool until he takes an Overnight Rest. Otherwise, this roll has no effect... until the character's last Recovery Die is removed, at which point he dies.

(If the character takes further damage while unconscious, he must make an immediate, additional roll of his Recovery Pool. This is done instead of tracking negative hit points, which are just a pain.)

* Other types of healing would likewise allow the character to regain hit points by rolling a number of Recovery Dice - 2 dice for cure light wounds, 3 for cure moderate wounds and so on. This closes up the oddity where a tougher character actually benefits less as a percentage of his total from healing spells than does a weaker one.

So, About Those Weapon Proficiencies...

SWSE, being at heart a d20 system game, inherits the weapon and armour proficiency rules from most d20 systems - you get a bunch of proficiencies from your class, you can buy more using feats if you want, and if you use an item without the proficiency you suffer a penalty. That's all reasonable enough.

Where it falls down is in the groupings of proficiencies, and in who has them.

Here's the thing: in the six Star Wars films (not to mention all the EU material I've seen), there is precisely one instance of a character using a weapon without proficiency, excluding scenes where the character is specifically shown to be training. That scene occurs in "Empire Strikes Back", when Han uses Luke's lightsaber to cut open his dead Tauntaun.

That's it, that's the only one. Padme, who in "Phantom Menace" is a pampered child politician with no formal training, quite happily makes use of blaster pistols in the assault on the palace. Luke is shown to be "good in a fight" - knowing how to use blaster rifles, blaster pistols, and even the weapons on an X-Wing without any difficulties. And Obi-Wan, in "Revenge of the Sith", is able to swallow his contempt, pick up a discarded blaster, and shoot Grievous in the heart several times, all while hanging off the edge of a platform.

So, that's one issue I have with the weapon proficiency rules in SWSE.

The other issue concerns the groupings: weapons are listed as pistols, or rifles, or whatever. Once you have proficiency with the group, you can use all weapons in the group without penalty. Now that's fine, mostly. But when the group contains both a blaster pistol and a heavy blaster pistol, where the latter is strictly better than the former - more damage, access to autofire, with the same range and same magazine capacity. There's a very slight differential in cost (but given the priorities of most players, not enough), and a differential in 'legality' (which never shows up in-game). So, the 'standard' version of the weapon is just redundant.

IMO, a better solution would be revert to the standard three-level proficiency arrangement - character's can be proficient in 'normal' weapons, 'military' weapons, and 'signature' weapons.

The 'normal' weapons designation would include all simple weapons, all the so-called "advanced melee weapons", and also the 'normal' uses of pistols and rifles - that is "point and shoot". However, switching the weapon's mode (set to normal vs set to stun) would require a standard action, and they'd remain non-proficient in autofire (and burst fire). All classes would give this level of proficiency.

The 'military' weapons designation allows the character to switch the weapon's mode as a swift action, and grants proficiency in autofire. Only the soldier class would gain this proficiency for free.

Finally, the 'signature' weapons are heavy weapons, lightsabers, and similar. And they work as you would expect - without a proficiency you take a -5 penalty on attack rolls; with the proficiency you do not. Done.

As for the weapons themselves... these should be separated out into 'civilian' weapons and 'military' weapons. The civilian weapons would have a single mode (normal damage or stun damage or ion damage), would be limited to the lower damage level (3d6 for pistols; 3d8 for rifles), and would not have autofire. Military weapons, by contrast, could support multiple modes, grant more damage, and allow autofire. In general, PCs should only be allowed to buy military-grade weapons if they're actively in military service or via the black market (at a hefty mark-up, say x5 cost).

For the record, I'm pretty much happy with the way armour and armour proficiencies work in SWSE - armour is basically useless, but that's in keeping with the depiction in the films.

Happy Birthday D&D!

Apparently, today marks the 40th anniversary of the day when Gary Gygax invited the world (presumably, the movers and shakers in the wargames business) to come and experience Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. In effect, this is as close to a birthday as something like D&D has.

So, happy birthday D&D!

Surprising Errata

The rules for stunning weapons are a bit tricky in SWSE. It seems that somewhere along the line, someone decided they should work differently, and didn't change everything consistently.

Most of the blasters in the game have two damage ratings listed: one for 'real' damage and one for stun damage. So far, so good. When used on stun setting, first compare the damage rolled with the Damage Threshold (and if it beats it, move -2 steps down), then halve the damage and subtract it from the target's hit points. That's not too difficult.

However, in the errata, they make one significant change to this: instead of listing separate damage for the two types, weapons instead simply have a damage rating and an annotation "Yes" to indicate they have a stun mode. Pretty much everything else remains the same. That's also not too hard - in fact, it's a bit easier.

But where it gets wierd is this: all the weapons published after the Core Rulebook promptly ignore the errata, and go back to having two different damage codes for the two modes.

So I'm confused. Did they try the errata and find they didn't like it? Did they simply forget that they'd changed that? Or did the change cause so much confusion that they quietly abandoned it?

--

For what it's worth, I would instead prefer the following:

Weapons have a single damage rating. Some weapons have a single fixed mode (normal, stun, ion), while some can switch between them, though at any time a weapon can only be in one of the three modes.

When firing in stun mode:

1. Roll an attack vs Fortitude (not Reflex!)
2. On a hit, move the target -1 step down the Condition Track.
3. Roll damage, and divide by 2. (Remember to round fractions down.)
4. Subtract the (halved) damage from the target's hit points. If reduced to 0 hit points, the target is knocked unconscious.
5. Compare the (halved) damage with the Damage Threshold. If it is higher, move a further -1 step down the Condition Track.

(Ion weapons, when used against vehicles, droids, or cyborgs, work exactly like stun weapons. When used against organic creatures ignore step 2 above.)

This of course introduces a slightly oddity to the rules, in that almost all attacks target Reflex where this one attacks Fortitude, but I think it's a small enough discrepancy to ignore in favour of speed. (Plus, SWSE probably puts too much emphasis on Reflex, so applying stuff to the other defences is A Good Thing.) In trade, however, it gives a guaranteed effect for a successful stun attack, where currently there's likely to be no meaningful effect, and once you've halved the damage it actually works (almost) exactly like a normal attack - the only slight difference being that a normal attack can kill where a stun attack merely stuns.

There are a couple of other nits I wish to pick with the weapon rules, but that's another rant...

Result!

Last night we had the first session of the "Imperial Fist" campaign for 2014, and it proved to be far more satisfying than the three sessions to date.

Some highlights:

• The issue with the unreliable player has been resolved, with him dropping out of the campaign. This is obviously not the ideal resolution, but at least it is a resolution, and something I can now plan for accordingly.
• The session was much more action-packed than previously. And I think the idea of going for a much more fringe-based campaign is also better. (Coincidentally, this should also allow for a more sandbox-style play, which is something that has been mentioned recently...)
• The 4e-style stat blocks, and the associated methodology, is a massive boon. For the most part, it works indistinguishably from the 'real thing', only it's much easier to prepare for and it allows for some combat stuff that isn't really supported by the rules as written.

Having said that, there were two things that became apparent:

• Vehicular combat doesn't quite work. One of my realisations when setting up the 4e-style stat-blocks was that an enemy on a vehicle could be considered to be nothing other than a 'threat', albeit one with a higher movement rate than normal (and perhaps a few other combat options). Certainly, though, it didn't require a full rewrite of the stat block. However, this only works if PC vehicles work the same way - if the PCs benefit from much higher defences, much higher hit points, and a high level of DR when they get into a vehicle, then they're working on an entirely different scale from the threats, and the system fails. So that will need to be my next fix.
• The game works okay with three players, but it would almost certainly work better with at least one more. Indeed, a full complement of five would probably be best. That said, it seems highly unlikely that that will happen, so I'm going to plan for three going forward. This may or may not result in the campaign being curtailed somewhat compared with my original vision, but that's not necessarily a problem.

All in all, I was well pleased with the way this session went. My hope for the next session is to tie up the current plot-line and set things up for the revised campaign outline, so that the PCs can move forward in a somewhat less constrained manner. This may well involve having them level up a bit sooner than initially expected, but I doubt they'll mind that too much either!

The End of White Dwarf

So, back in April I posted about having bought White Dwarf #400, in which I commented that it was a travesty that it had reached 400 issues while Dragon ended at #359. It appears that Games Workshop agreed, because they have decided to kill off White Dwarf. Well, sort of. What they've actually done is decided to turn White Dwarf into a weekly mag available only through themselves, while also launching a new "Warhammer: Visions" monthly magazine that will be a direct (albeit larger) replacement for the existing magazine.

Someone should probably have told them about the internet, and how it's busy killing off printed magazines.

They will no doubt deny it, but I'm reasonably sure that the new WD weekly magazine will mostly be adverts for their new releases, adverts for the new releases for the next week, and then some rules material that is nothing more than early access to whatever is going to be in a book one or more months down the line. I don't think the magazine can offer unique rules, because that's a quick way to make the game unmanageable (as WotC and Paizo found out with D&D 3.5e). This means that the weekly magazine is essentially without value - the adverts are better accessed online, while if you're interested in the new rules you're better off waiting for the 'real' book anyway - that way, you get the playtested version, rather than the one they've just slapped together.

Meanwhile, the new monthly magazine, "Warhammer: Visions" is a new magazine, and will suffer accordingly. While those few people who still buy actual magazines knew to look for "White Dwarf", the same isn't true of "Warhammer: Visions". And so, they'll lose a lot of their casual readers. They'll also be fighting for space alongside all the video games and sci-fi magazines, most of which will sell better. Basically, only a fool launches a new print magazine these days. (And, incidentally, that's why the printed Dragon will never, or at least should never, be back.)

The other problem they have to deal with is that both these magazines will be competing with their own online versions. This puts them in line for the exact problem D&D 4e had with the DDI and its printed books: in order to keep costs down, you need as large a print run as possible (many of the costs of a print run are fixed, whether you do 100 copies of 10,000), but you also can't afford to have lots of leftover copies, because that's wasted money.

The likely consequence of offering both a printed and online version is that they'll see a split in the customer base - some people will buy print (and refuse to buy online), while some will buy online. Virtually nobody will buy both. Pretty quickly, then, it will become apparent that the print version is a non-starter - enough people are buying online, and thus enough print sales are lost, that it's just not worth printing (and if they push up the cost to compensate, they lose yet more sales, and enter a detah spiral).

But when they take the inevitable step of cancelling print and going online-only, they'll find that the sales of that alone aren't enough to justify all the effort of making it - to be worthwhile, it needs the people who were buying the print version. Alas, they'll find that there are plenty of luddites who would buy print, but who will not buy an electronic magazine.

(Actually, that's not entirely unreasonable. An online mag has to compete with a whole lot of other online material, great swathes of it free, and some of it of very high quality indeed. A physical product, to a certain extent, can sidestep this. So, while the physical copy might offer enough value-add to be worth paying for, the electronic version has to compete with free offerings that are 'good enough', and probably can't. And that's also why the internet is going to kill quality newspapers, but that's another rant.)

So farewell Grombindal. Looks like you finally found a dragon (or troll, vampire, or whatever) you couldn't Slay.