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oinonsana · 9 months

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Tactical Combat, Violence Dice and Missing Your Attacks in Gubat Banwa

In this post I talk about game feel and decision points when it comes to the "To-Hit Roll" and the "Damage Roll" in relation to Gubat Banwa's design, the Violence Die.

Let's lay down some groundwork: this post assumes that the reader is familiar and has played with the D&D style of wargame combat common nowadays in TTRPGs, brought about no doubt by the market dominance of a game like D&D. It situates its arguments within that context, because much of new-school design makes these things mostly non-problems. (See: the paradigmatic shift required to play a Powered by the Apocalypse game, that completely changes how combat mechanics are interpreted).

With that done, let's specify even more: D&D 5e and 4e are the forerunners of this kind of game--the tactical grid game that prefers a battlemat. 5e's absolute dominance means that there's a 90% chance that you have played the kind of combat I'll be referring to in this post. The one where you roll a d20, add the relevant modifiers, and try to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number to actually hit. Then when you do hit, you roll dice to deal damage. This has been the way of things since OD&D, and has been a staple of many TTRPG combat systems. It's easy to grasp, and has behemoth cultural momentum. Each 1 on a d20 is a 5% chance, so you can essentially do a d100 with smaller increments and thus easier math (smaller numbers are easier to math than larger numbers, generally).

This is how LANCER works, this is how ICON works, this is how SHADOW OF THE DEMON LORD works, this is how TRESPASSER works, this is how WYRDWOOD WAND works, this is how VALIANT QUEST works, etc. etc. It's a tried and true formula, every D&D player has a d20, it's emblematic of the hobby.

There's been a lot more critical discussion lately on D&D's conventions, especially due to the OGL. Many past D&D only people are branching out of the bubble and into the rest of the TTRPG hobby. It's not a new phenomenon--it's happened before. Back in the 2010s, when Apocalypse World came out while D&D was in its 4th Edition, grappling with Pathfinder. Grappling with its stringent GSL License (funny how circular this all is).

Anyway, all of that is just to put in the groundwork. My problem with D&D Violence (particularly, of the 3e, 4e, and 5e version) is that it's a violence that arises from "default fantasy". Default Fantasy is what comes to mind when you say fantasy: dragons, kings, medieval castles, knights, goblins, trolls. It's that fantasy cultivated by people who's played D&D and thus informs D&D. There is much to be said about the majority of this being an American Samsaric Cycle, and it being tied to the greater commodification agenda of Capitalism, but we won't go into that right now. Anyway, D&D Violence is boring. It thinks of fights in HITS and MISSES and DAMAGE PER SECOND.

A Difference Of Paradigm and Philosophies

I believe this is because it stems from D&D still having one foot in the "grungy dungeon crawler" genre it wants to be and the "combat encounter balance MMO" it also wants to be. What ends up happening is that players play it like an immersive sim, finding ways to "cheese" encounters with spells, instead of interacting with the game as the fiction intended. This is exemplified in something like Baldur's Gate 3 for example: a lot of the strats that people love about it includes cheesing, shooting things before they have the chance to react, instead of doing an in-fiction brawl or fight to the death. It's a pragmatist way of approaching the game, and the mechanics of the game kind of reinforce it. People enjoy that approach, so that's good. I don't. Wuxia and Asian Martial Dramas aren't like that, for the most part.

It must be said that this is my paradigm: that the rules and mechanics of the game is what makes the fiction (that shared collective imagination that binds us, penetrates us) arise. A fiction that arises from a set of mechanics is dependent on those mechanics. There is no fiction that arises independently. This is why I commonly say that the mechanics are the narrative. Even if you try to play a game that completely ignores the rules--as is the case in many OSR games where rules elide--your fiction is still arising from shared cultural tropes, shared ideas, shared interests and consumed media.

So for Gubat Banwa, the philosophy was this: when you spend a resource, something happens. This changes the entire battle state--thus changing the mechanics, thus changing the fiction. In a tactical game, very often, the mechanics are the fiction, barring the moments that you or your Umalagad (or both of you!) have honed creativity enough to take advantage of the fiction without mechanical crutches (ie., trying to justify that cold soup on the table can douse the flames on your Kadungganan if he runs across the table).

The other philosophy was this: we're designing fights that feel like kinetic high flying exchanges between fabled heroes and dirty fighters. In these genres, in these fictions, there was no "he attacked thrice, and one of these attacks missed". Every attack was a move forward.

So Gubat Banwa removed itself from the To-Hit/Damage roll dichotomy. It sought to put itself outside of that paradigm, use game conventions and cultural rituals that exist outside of the current West-dominated space. For combat, I looked to Japanese RPGs for mechanical inspiration: in FINAL FANTASY TACTICS and TACTICS OGRE, missing was rare, and when you did miss it was because you didn't take advantage of your battlefield positioning or was using a kind of weapon that didn't work well against the target's armor. It existed as a fail state to encourage positioning and movement. In wuxia and silat films, fighters are constantly running across the environment and battlefield, trying to find good positioning so that they're not overwhelmed or so that they could have a hand up against the target.

The Violence Die: the Visceral Attacking Roll

Gubat Banwa has THE VIOLENCE DIE: this is the initial die or dice that you roll as part of a specific offensive technique.

In the above example, the Inflict Violence that belongs to the HEAVENSPEAR Discipline, the d8 is the Violence Die. When you roll this die, it can be modified by effects that affect the Violence Die specifically. This becomes an accuracy effect: the more accurate your attack, the more damage you deal against your target's Posture. Mas asintado, mas mapinsala.

You compare your Violence Die roll to your target's EVADE [EVD]. If you rolled equal to or lower than the target's EVD, they avoid that attack completely. There: we keep the tacticality of having to make sure your attack doesn't miss, but also EVD values are very low: often they're just 1, or 2. 4 is very often the highest it can go, and that's with significant investment.

If you rolled higher than that? Then you ignore EVD completely. If you rolled a 3 and the target's EVD was 2, then you deal 3 DMG + relevant modifiers to the DMG. When I wrote this, I had no conception of "removing the To-Hit Roll" or "Just rolling Damage Dice". To me this was the ATTACK, and all attacks wore down your target's capacity to defend themselves until they're completely open to a significant wound. In most fights, a single wound is more than enough to spell certain doom and put you out of the fight, which is the most important distinction here.

In the Thundering Spear example, that targets PARRY [PAR], representing it being blocked by physical means of acuity and quickness. Any damage brought about by the attack is directly reduced by the target's PAR. A means for the target to stay in the fight, actively defending.

But if the attack isn't outright EVADED, then they still suffer its effects. So the target of a Thundering Spear might have reduced the damage of an attack to just 1 (1 is minimum damage), they would still be thrown up to 3 tiles away. It matches that sort of, anime combat thing: they strike Goku, but Goku is still flung back. The game keeps going, the fight keeps going.

On Mechanical Weight

When you miss, the mechanical complexity immediately stops--if you miss, you don't do anything else. Move on. To the next Beat, the next Riff, the next Resound, think about where you could go to better your chances next time.

Otherwise, the attack's other parts are a lot more mechanically involved. If you don't miss: roll add your Attacking Prowess, add extra dice from buffs, roll an extra amount of dice representing battlefield positioning or perhaps other attacks you make, apply the effects of your attack, the statuses connected to your attack. It keeps going, and missing is rare, especially once you've learned the systematic intricacies of Gubat Banwa's THUNDERING TACTICS BATTLE SYSTEM.

So there was a lot of setup in the beginning of this post just to sort of contextualize what I was trying to say here. Gubat Banwa inherently arises from those traditions--as a 4e fan, I would be remiss to ignore that. However, the conclusion I wanted to come up to here is the fact that Gubat Banwa tries to step outside of the many conventions of that design due to that design inherently servicing the deliverance of a specific kind of combat fiction, one that isn't 100% conducive to the constantly exchanging attacks that Gubat Banwa tries to make arise in the imagination.

#gubat banwa #ttrpg #filipino #fantasy #gamedev #writing #rpg #dnd #southeast asia #d&d #d&d 5e #d&d 4e #i will say #that part of the decision away from a d20 (because gb alpha used one)#is sheer hater energy on my part #like i just didn't want to #because its used by all these other games by white people and especially because its used by dnd #there is like #4 instances where you use d20s in this game

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thisisnotthenerd · 3 months

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it’s time to talk mechanics for nsbu

as said previously, this is a homebrewed game system based on kids on bikes/brooms, with some alterations for the sake of this particular story.

documented changes:

instead of six in-game abilities (fight, flight, brains, brawn, charm, grit), there are nine: stunts, brawl, tough, tech, weapons, drive, sneak, wits, and hot. there are a few that match up: wits with brains, fight with brawl, hot with charm, tough with grit, drive and sneak with flight, and stunts with brawn. weapons and tech are typical of the genre and thus new to the system.

all of these abilities start at a d4: this puts the characters on roughly even ground to begin with. if a player rolls the highest number on the die, they explode, and are able to immediately roll the next die up and add it to the result. this also permanently enhances the skill to the next die, until the next explosion. this progresses through the entire suite of dice: d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d20.

adversity tokens are now turbo tokens. they are still earned when a player fails a roll, and can be used to succeed, given the appropriate number of them. if a player does not have enough to succeed, their fellow players can use tokens to help them at a doubled cost, i.e. 2 tokens in place of 1.

turbo tokens can be used to explode if brought to an explosion benchmark, e.g. rolling a 3 on a d4 and using a turbo token to get to a 4, thereby exploding, constituting another roll on a d6.

the tokens can also be used as part of a point buy system for abilities outside of active gameplay. this can include individual abilities as well as group abilities, depending on the progress of the game and what each player wants to do.

since they have entered the movie as archetypal characters, the characters have some knowledge and/or feats that allow them to enhance certain skills. this enables them to succeed more often in their preferred skills and thus have a higher potential to explode those skills.

as of the first episode, the highest anyone has gotten to is a d8 (dang in tough), but as they make more skill checks, we are likely to see some major changes to stats.

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #never stop blowing up #dimension 20 meta #nsbu spoilers

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torchship-rpg · 2 months

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Dev Diary 16 - Aquillians

Hello cosmonauts! I’ve been almost non-stop sick for three months which hasn’t been great for progress, but this can’t be delayed any further. We’re going to try to do more frequent dev diaries again; next week I’ll do a diary on Meta-Campaign mechanics and the current state of character creation, but for now, it’s time to do some lore.

So, let’s talk the biggest alien species in Torchship, our local Space Elves, the Aquillians!

Aquillian Basics

Aquillians are a diverse species of humanoids who superficially resemble, well, green-blooded elves, and they’re very much inspired by taking a few of the greatest hits of sci-fi space elves and shuffling it all up. Torchship might be a deconstruction of a lot of common sci-fi tropes, but it’s also a reconstruction embracing fun ones along the way and wearing inspiration on our sleeves.

Though pretty human-looking on the surface, like all humanoids in Torchship, they look like that because of a mysterious process of directed evolution from very different routes. Humanity’s first inkling of just how dominated Local Space is by the mysterious forces of Star Gods and K2 civilizations was discovering an alien that looked just like them, but had totally different biochemistry, internal anatomy, and evolutionary history. The ancestors of Aquillians were gliding arboreal bird-like pack hunters, sent along the path to sapience by their increasingly complex social dynamics and changing climates on their relatively small, low-gravity homeworld. Flight proved less useful in lean times than dexterous hands and the intelligence to shape the massive, tangled trees into built environments.

Evidence of this ancestry is still present in their constant-volume unidirectional respiration system and energy-conserving metabolism (and fluffy protofeather hair). This is reflected through the only universal Aquillian Trait, which is also part of our new category of Evolutionary Origins Traits; everyone gets to pick one representing the evolutionary lag of their ancestral environment. (Most) Humans now get the Persistence Predator Trait, letting humans take more Strain before experiencing Fatigue penalties.

In contrast, the Efficient Metabolism Trait of the Aquillians allows them to avoid taking Strain on dice rolls if they succeed by a large enough margin; this encourages you to double-down on your specialities and lets you perform low-stress work more or less indefinitely. This was very handy for a species whose path to sapience involved becoming the galaxy’s best tree-pruners.

Aquillians are also generally encouraged to take the various Psychic traits. The thing about psychic powers in Torchship is that while they’re not genetic, they are heritable, in that people raised by or around psychics tend to become psychics themselves. The widespread emergence of psychics is predicated on certain social conditions, but once it’s become widespread in a species it’s unlikely to fade. Thus, nearly all Aquillians possess some level of psychic potential simply because their species has been puttering around all the psychic weirdness of Local Space for so long.

Aquillians are the most widespread and populous species in Local Space by a considerable margin; they’re either the primary species or a sizeable minority in multiple states and are otherwise generally present everywhere. One could make the serious argument that Local Space is defined by being the part of the galaxy that’s Aquillian-majority, and when you come across an independent planet with faster-than-light travel and humanoid aliens, they’re probably Aquillians of some description.

The reason for this is that the Aquillians have been around a very long while, and one way or another have been in a dominant position that entire time. They’ve had FTL travel for forty thousand years, and for at least half the time an Aquillian political body has been either a great power or the undisputed regional superpower. The nature of this dominance has varied massively over time, but it most recently manifested as the Aquillian Empire.

In The Empire/Remnant

If you listen to their propaganda, the Aquillian Empire was/is Local Space’s rightful heirs, existing for forty thousand years of unbroken and absolute rule. Under the guidance of wise Emperors, they did more to preserve interstellar civilization than anyone else with their ruthless enforcement of the Exploration Taboo, their rigid hierarchy of specialised castes and subordinate species, and the wonders of a massive, high-speed web of FTL beacons. They crushed the dangerous Argent Empire, drove the upstart Zinovians from their homeworld, and brought Pax Aquillia to the stars.

In reality, the Empire only existed for about fifteen hundred years, and they just claimed the entirety of their species’ spacefaring history; with total control over the presentation of their own history, it was kind of hard to call them out. 1500 years is still really impressive, as empires go, but it wasn’t quite grand enough for the swelling egos of the ruling class. It’s a bit like saying, “As you can see, Sumer prevails!” while pointing at New York City.

The Aquillian Empire was well-known for their historic use of genetic engineering on both themselves and their enemies, which creates the setting’s taboo on genetic engineering that humans are in blatant violation of. For this reason, Aquillians in the Empire were changed considerably from the ancestral template, modified for life on heavier worlds; their capital isn’t their mineral-poor, low-gravity homeworld, which is instead a bit of a sad backwater now. This gives the Imperial Aquillians and those derived from them the Downweller Gravity Trait, which is in-between the Freefaller Trait used by human spacers and the Heavyworlder Trait of Terrans; it’s the ‘average’ trait with no real strengths or weaknesses.

It also resulted in a degree of artificial phenotypical convergence, as waves of engineering were used to aesthetically modify sections of the species in-line with current fashions. This isn’t universal, but the higher in the hierarchy you go, the more Aquillians tend to be tall, gaunt, and have desaturated skin and hair colours to match their self-reinforcing image of nobility.

The biggest consequence, however, is the clades. The Aquillian Empire’s power structure emerged from a caste structure inherited from one of their precursors, now entrenched with genetic engineering. Initially this was in the form of creating a large number of specialised subspecies for different tasks, but as the Empire grew in strength, automated more infrastructure, and acquired more and more vassals, the priority increasingly became engineering for control, outsourcing labour to client states and modifying their own population for compliance instead of productivity.

At the time the Empire fell, the many specialised groups had been condensed into three diverse Clades; the ruling Nobles, the ruthless Enforcers, and the mass of numbed Commoners, all with their own Traits.

The Clades

The Nobles, or High Aquillians, are the highest Clade, forming a kind of industrialised aristocracy inside the Empire, acting as administrators, military leaders, governors, lawmakers, and scientists. Functionally immortal, fabulously wealthy, and relatively rare, the nobility have an agreement within their own ranks to only produce new Nobles for specific purposes in order to avoid diluting power or creating succession crises. This worked out fairly well historically, but has resulted in every major faction of the currently-simmering civil war in the Divine Empire cloning their own Ideal Monarch(s) for when they overthrow the upstart Empress and seize power (after they win the actively-boiling-over civil wars against the other remnants and crush the humans, of course). Those other remnants are mostly ruled by planetary governors or admirals who have seized power, but a handful are also hard at work in Build-A-Tyrant Workshop.

Each noble is tailored to their role and raised to serve that particular purpose, so as Traits go they are pretty much completely freeform, save encouragement to take Augment and various psychic traits. There’s not a lot of them in the Union for obvious reasons, but that makes playing as one and casting aside your birthright to fight for a fairer world all the more meaningful.

(We’re also playing around with a funny Trait, whose working title is Class Traitor, to represent how even with your defection, there’s a lot of places who still respect the title… and a lot of others who really, really don’t. Renouncing your title doesn’t necessarily destroy your claim; there’s probably a lot of servants and functionaries back home wondering when you’ll get all this communism out of your system and come back to run the planet again.)

The Enforcer clade constitutes the law enforcement, colonial bureaucracy, and military officer class of the Empire, and are as much defined by their upbringing and social isolation as their genetic modification. The Enforcers are descendants of a specialised clade to create the ideal secret police, which unsurprisingly meant they soon infiltrated, dismantled, or took over every other lever of power they could get their hands on and firmly established themselves as the middle managers of society. The only reason they never successfully couped the Nobility is the fact they are categorically incapable of trusting one another.

Enforcers are biologically distinguished by a change in their neurology which rewires the way they experience empathy. While humans initially believed (to their horror) they’d encouraged a subspecies of engineered sociopaths, the truth is more complicated; Enforcers have had their mirror neurons modified to basically receive the alien equivalent of a dopamine hit from understanding the emotions and thoughts of others. Genuine empathy is very difficult when your neurochemistry rewards you for treating other people as fun little puzzles to take apart and put together; it makes them very good interrogators, investigators, and spies, but also means the closest thing to emotional attachment most of them feel is having favourite subjects. This means they historically spend the time they could have used seizing power scheming endlessly with one another instead.

To represent this, Enforcers are recommended the Reserved Trait, which modifies how you interact with Relationships and the Unity system, the Turncoat Trait (because playing as one almost inherently implies defection), and Narrow Socialisation, which lets you select two types of Relationships (in this case Rival and Nemesis) to get a target bonus in social interaction with, while hitting you with a target penalty for all others. You also typically are a Psychic Void; the deeply engrained secrecy and distrust of their artificial anti-society makes them largely invisible to psychic powers as well as making them very difficult to access.

Finally, there are the great masses of Commoners, the dispossessed masses of once-workers who increasingly existed to be ruled in the Empire, acting as an enormous reserve army of labour and potential conscripts to give bulk to the Empire and be selectively employed for economic or military violence. In between those times, the Commoners didn’t really have much to do, and to keep them manageable, they were gradually engineered to be more and more easily controlled and managed.

This involved, essentially, breaking their motivation system by genetically curtailing the natural production of neurotransmitters and replacing these systems with electromechanical implants. If the Empire didn’t need the Commoners for anything, they left them in a state of numb apathy and executive dysfunction; they could get away with just bread without circuses. If they needed labourers, soldiers, or to stop the population declining, they would just start pressing the feel stuff again button as needed to reward useful behaviour. Crude but tragically effective.

Though they believed this made their population a docile and cultureless stockpile of potential labour, the Commoners retain a complex internal culture built around their tactile telepathy, developing a sort of introspective philosophy of dualism, intellectualism, and fatalism. Unable to confront a system that had control over their own neurochemistry, common Aquillians instead developed a parallel culture which existed in their collective shared imaginations, sharing aspects of their thoughts and personalities with one another in a quiet network, with their philosophers living on in transmitted fragments alongside loved ones and comrades.

Commoners also get the Reserved Trait, for different reasons than the Enforcers but with similar effects. Plural System allows you represent transmitted personalities by essentially having Crew NPCs that fortunately don’t take up limited bunk space in your spacecraft, Stiff Upper Lip and Fearless reflects how the limits placed on them also mute strong reactions to pain and fear, and Prodigy simulates having cybernetic modifications which reward pursuing certain work.

This system survived a very long time in the Empire, and persists in its Remnants. Once you get outside them, though, it gets interesting.

In the Breakaways

The Aquillian Breakaway states are the Union-aligned or neutral bodies which broke away from the Empire during the civil conflicts which ended the Aquillian-Human War. Some of these still function more or less like the Remnant before them, but the majority are revolutionary states of some kind which have elevated Commoners to the top of the pack. You’re probably not playing an Enforcer or Noble; they, uh, aren’t too well liked there for obvious reasons.

If you play an Aquillian from one of these states, you’re probably playing a Commoner who still has the above modifications (as these states have very strong taboos against further genetic engineering they are still struggling with), but who now has their hands on the remote control for their emotions.

This ties into one of the core principles of Torchship; you can always change your character’s Identity at any time you like, at no mechanical cost, provided you have a narrative reason. Your character’s external neurology interface is a special use of the Cultural Tool Trait which acts as that narrative reason to turn on and off many of the common Traits listed above whenever you like, as is advantageous to you. Of course, that also does mean there’s a remote control with your emotional state on speed-dial which is just lying around, taking up an equipment slot and just begging to be stolen for the sake of drama.

Regrettably, while the chances of experiencing Spock’s Brain are low, they are never zero.

In The Union

There are quite a few Aquillians in the Star Union, making up the largest alien minority by a significant margin (larger even than the Koath). These are a mixture of refugees taken on during and after the war, immigrants flocking to a place which might be able to undo the genetic modifications done to them, war orphans who wound up in the Union through various dubious humanitarian programs or ad-hoc adoption, and the former prisoners of war of Camp Aldrin on Earth’s moon. In fits and starts, they’ve largely undone or changed the way their various genetic modifications affect them to suit their needs better.

These groups live all over the Sol system now, and many of them have integrated into the various human cultures and, in so doing, have often taken on some of the genetic alterations used by those groups (seeing as they self-select for ‘cool with some level of genetic modification’). So one of the ways you can play an Aquillian, particularly a young one who has largely or entirely grown up in the Union, is by basically making a Terran, Martian, Spacer, etc, just swapping out Persistence Predator for Efficient Metabolism. It’s increasingly common to meet Aquillians in Star Patrol with the flag of their adoptive home country on their sleeve and no more connection to the Empire than peers of their age, for good or ill.

If you’re playing somebody from Camp Aldrin (first or second generation), then it gets a little more interesting, because these Aquillians aren’t being directly assimilated into human cultures, instead creating their own experimental one in their lunar enclave, with an abolition of the clades and an attempt to create a more egalitarian society. Any older Camp Aldrin Aquillian is going to be a Turncoat and War Veteran from the Imperial military, and traits like Augments or Prosthetics are quite appropriate.

This is also where you’d most likely find former members of the Enforcer or Noble clades, taken prisoner during the war. Though Solar Patrol developed a bad habit of pushing Enforcers they captured out of airlocks during the middle period of the war, they still captured an awful lot of them, and the process of many Aquillian Breakaways forming was made a lot smoother by the Union offering asylum to Nobles in exchange for laying down their arms. These groups, who don’t usually see their genetic modifications as burdens like the Commoners do, will have an interesting time figuring out where they fit in a more egalitarian world.

In the CNFT

Outside the Empire’s successors, the largest concentration of Aquillians are found in the multicultural capitalist empire of the CNFT, where they form a plurality of the population with a historical position of social and economic dominance. This is because the CNFT’s origins; about two and a half thousand years ago they were a colony of one of the Empire’s precursors. They took advantage of changing interstellar geography (astrography?) to declare independence, forming a network of political bodies which eventually solidified into an increasingly multicultural capitalist state.

This means that the Aquillians of the CNFT are, largely, pre-genetic modification Aquillians, predating the clades. They’re visually quite distinct, with vibrant multicoloured hair, much more diverse phenotypes, and a preference for low-gravity worlds that give them back their ancestral Freefallers Trait. A lot of them are even totally unmodified Baseliners, because their ancestors were displaced off the increasingly-irrelevant Aquillian homeworld and went looking for places that suited them. Being the dominant group in the Territories, they’re also recommended Foreign Connections with their former markets, and Driven, because being a workaholic is how you survive under Space Capitalism.

There’s also various Imperial Aquillians who ended up in the CNFT as refugees, in the recent war or earlier. They’re distinctly an underclass there, with little in the way of resources or help… well, except for the Nobles, who usually arrive with shiploads of antimatter and set themselves up nicely as investors.

Others

Being so common, so widespread, and having been around so long, you’ll stumble across Aquillians of one sort or another a lot across Local Space. They’re more or less the default, the alien you should reach for if you haven’t got anything else in mind.

Aquillians form a portion of the population on a lot of former Aquillian client worlds, which aren’t really breakaways in the traditional sense but where the Aquillian settlers still form powerful political blocs. Defusing tensions caused by these arrangements is a pretty common job for Star Patrol missions operating inside the Union’s de facto space.

There’s an awful lot of Aquillian pirates out in Local Space now, given they had the largest fleet in the region by a considerable margin and the fall of the Empire saw a lot of them cut off with nothing but a very powerful warship at their disposal. Many of these pirates are privateers who still mostly work for a Remnant power to keep up the wars against the Star Union and Universal Republic, but save their patron power money by also picking off civilian convoys for profit along the way. Others are now without allegiance, just hitting whoever they can and taking shelter around sympathetic planets. Some even side with Breakaways and prey on their former Imperial comrades. It’s equally likely you’ll be fighting them, scaring them off, or helping them.

Finally, the Aquillian presence in space is so old, and their history so distorted by successive waves of authoritarian censorship and purges, that there are many, many colonies that just slipped through the cracks. You’ll very often come across planets at just about any imaginable stage of technological and social development that were settled thousands or even tens of thousands of years prior by Aquillians, and were then cut off by some long-forgotten political cataclysm and left to develop or decay on their own. Sometimes it feels like you can’t turn over a rock without finding another weird space elf.

#torchship #ttrpg #dev diary #torchship ttrpg #rpg

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vintagerpg · 1 year

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When I think of Osprey Publishing, I think of military history. Specifically, I think of their huge, beautifully illustrated series detailing military uniforms and equipment for specific regions, unit and time periods (Angus McBride of MERP fame illustrated quite a few of them during his career). So when I heard Osprey was producing RPGs, I figured they would be stuffy, if pretty, things, focusing on military style play. Twilight 2000 through the ages, or some such. Nope! Not at all. Totally wrong.

This is Paleomythic (2019), and it release alongside Romance of the Perilous Land as Osprey’s first RPG. Author Graham Rose calls it “stone and sorcery” and it is a compact system that powers play peppered with ideas not often touched on in RPGs. The mechanics are very similar to Year Zero Engine — attributes and skills translate to a number of six-sided dice that a rolled for checks, sixes count as successes. Injuries reduce attributes, and thus the number of dice rolled. A number of character templates offer special abilities or magic (all of which, rather than having discrete systems, have effects tied to attributes). The low tech increases the importance of equipment, which is limited and mostly utilitarian (containers are a big deal, for instance). Combat is quick and easy, with weapons having keyword traits that determine their effects.

The whole thing is lean and fast; the focus of the game is on survival and exploration in a stone age setting not often explored in RPGs. The rest of the book gives the GM tools to create the world and populate it with monsters, hazards, tribal groups and pockets of civilization. Again, the low tech makes even the most mundane RPG scenario seed feel like an epic undertaking. I didn’t think this would feel so exciting, but it does! Gimme a wood club, a bow and a need to find some specific herbs for the tribal elder and I’m all set, I guess. The fact that the art and layout is gorgeous help a lot, as does the sample adventure.

#roleplaying game #ttrpg #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #d&d #rpg #Osprey Publishing #Paleomythic

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heelycular-manslaughter · 3 months

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new hellbreak this ones about some freaks again

Hellbreak is the working title for my Hades-inspired ttrpg, in which the PCs are residents (likely prisoners) of hell attempting to break out, and finding support from various gods in the setting's pantheon. While most of the gods that give you boons do so on their own, there's a pair that don't really have that option.

Remis, God of Rats + Salvo, Goddess of Plagues

Remis goes by it/they, Salvo goes by he/him

Remis & Salvo have two conflicting stories to how they became gods; Remis says that it became the god of rats just before the mortals blamed the species for starting a disease among their kind, and Salvo thus formed from one of its veins. Salvo says that he found Remis while he was between hosts, and infected them, thus becoming a god and causing the mortal plague.

Remis is frenetic, almost constantly stressed about something, exuding a nervous energy that is unseen in every other member of the pantheon. Salvo does not help with their anxiety, constantly whispering things that could go wrong, presenting himself as getting a twisted joy from it, hiding the deep fear of everything he has as well.

Remis usually takes the form of a small, thin, vaguely humanoid creature with pale gray skin covered in thin patches of hair and beady eyes on their palms. They have a light, jittery tone of voice. Salvo often likes to change how he appears on the body, if at all, but his favorites include bright red spots, a writhing ring under the skin, blackened veins, or a golden halo.

Remis and Salvo help runners because they were tasked with establishing a trade route with the 4th layer of hell, but both have been too scared to meet with the Lord Mistress, and instead ask the runners to relay information when they see her.

Core Mechanics: Rats & Infection

Rats will help you do various actions better, like adding harm to attacks or dice to attribute rolls.

Infected enemies take harm at the end of each round.

Boons of Remis & Salvo

Rabid: +2d6 to Wrath.

Scurry: +2d6 to Greed.

Protective: +2d6 to Pride.

Quick Reaction: You can use a cast to instead dodge the first attack on the GM turn.

Scurry: Gain +1 movement if at least 5 enemies are infected.

Rat's Weight: (requires weapon slot) Using your weapon action pushes you back 1 range

Rat-Toss: (requires cast slot) Your cast turns into a rat that will scurry towards any other enemies after being thrown, moving 1 range toward the nearest enemy and dealing 1 harm on each turn until the next round

Bloodborne: (requires weapon slot) Weapon attack infects target for 1 harm

Contagious: (requires move slot) When you move into Close range of an enemy, that enemy is infected for 1 harm

Bug: Your cast deals -2 harm, but inflicts infection for 2 harm

Spread: Infected enemies can infect other enemies if in Close range for 2 turns

Superspreader: For each rat boon you have, infection deals +1 harm

The rat boons do involve literal rats you just have to use your imagination ok

previous god

hey thanks. thank you for reading all that. would you like to read any more? i have plenty. no pressure though. okay. thank you. love you

prev update (Puppet Daggers)

#hellbreak #remis and salvo #ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #oc #lumen #ttrpg character

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thydungeongal · 2 months

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Okay so as I posted earlier, I picked up Holveja & Hirviöitä, a Finnish retroclone/OSR game at the con last night. I do want to write about it in a bit more depth. This post is probably not going to be useful to any of you unless you can read Finnish, because there's probably no way this game will get translated: it specifically exists because the author saw a demand for an old-school D&D clone written in Finnish, inspired by the existence of Legendoja & Lohikäärmeitä (an unofficial Finnish translation and evolution of D&D 5e).

First of all, the full title of the book isn't just Holveja & Hirviöitä. It's Holveja & Hirviöitä: Pelaajan opas, the subtitle roughly translating to "Player's Guide." The book thus contains just the player-facing rules: character creation, combat, adventuring, spells, advancement, and so on. You won't find rules for monsters or designing adventures in this book. The author, Tuomas J. Salo, has spoken elsewhere about the fact that the game is likely not going to find purchase among anyone but people already invested in the OSR, and those people likely already have more GM's books than they need. I understand that rationale, but honestly I do hope he puts out a separate Game Master's Guide, because even in its current state there is a lot to love about H&H and I would love to see it expanded into a wholly standalone game. Also, I want to support Finnish language gaming. Even though I mostly hang out on the anglophone side of the RPG internet, I also happen to think that my first language is pretty cool and it'd be cool to play RPGs in Finnish with my homies.

H&H isn't a direct retroclone of any particular version of D&D nor is it a Finnish translation of any previously established OSR game. It is more like a best-of of the author's favorite elements of the OSR, picked from multiple different games and blog posts. It is most recognizably based on B/X, but it differs from that one too.

Here are some features of the game:

Four classes, corresponding to Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief. No demihumans classes, and in fact no rules for playing demihumans at all.

Characters get a class and level-based attack bonus. Fighters get a full +1 per level, other classes varying slower rates.

No class-based restrictions on weapons and armor, but there are limitations on the use of magic and skills when unencumbered.

To make Fighters (Soturi, warrior) still stand out as the best weapon users, besides their higher attack bonus they also increase all weapon damage dice by one type (a sword that deals 1d8 damage becomes a 1d10 and so on).

Magic-Users (Velho, wizard) are vancian casters, nothing surprising there.

Clerics (Pyhimys, saint) use a spell-casting system based on expending a resource called Suosio (Favor). After casting a spell a player rolls a number of d6 equal to their character's current Favor, and if at least a number of dice equal to the spell's level come up 4+ their Favor stays the same. Otherwise it drops by one. I have no idea how well it works in practice but I like the idea of differentiating between Magic-Users and Clerics mechanically.

Thieves (Taituri, master, expert) are clearly more in line with LotFP's Experts than B/X Thieves. Skills are a 1 of 6 chance by default and unlike other characters they get 4 extra points to divide between "pips" in various skills to increase their chance of success, with more skill points unlocked at each level.

Characters have a single saving throw number (16-level) which is further modified by the highest of two stat modifiers for a total of three different saving throws. If I'm not entirely mistaken, this is also how Sine Nomine's more recent games handle saving throws.

Besides just rules for adventuring and combat there are very specific rules for owning property and investing in business venture to gamble with your character's resources between sessions. These also seem pretty much lifted wholesale from LotFP.

The three alignments are as they always have been, but renamed to work better in Finnish. Specifically, Law isn't Laki which would sound dumb as hell, it's Kohtalo, or Fate. I think Fate vs Chaos is much more evocative, and it also reinforces how alignment in this game is cosmic and not just a shorthand for "is your character good or bad."

All in all there's very little here that I don't like. I mean, except for the fact that unarmored AC is 12 and AC goes up which is just bullshit. Again, there is nothing remarkable about this game in the context of other OSR games, as most of its rules have appeared elsewhere, but the translation of often clumsy gaming terms into Finnish is solid. (I especially love that Hit Points are just called Sisu, a word that would roughly translate into English as "guts, moxie, pep.")

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 month

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Do you have any recommendations for games with fantasy pirates and tactical combat? I've really been enjoying running Pirate Borg, but I'm missing my crunchy strategy mini games. Thanks for everything you do for the community!

Theme: Tactical Pirate Fantasy

Hello friend, so by ‘tactical’ my best guess as to what you’re looking for is games that provide your characters with multiple options when it comes to resolving conflicts, with some options being better than others. This may or may not include maps in combat, but I think it might also include environmental considerations, buffs or de-buffs for using specific pieces of gear, and accounting for range or position when firing a gun.

However, really tactical games are much harder for me to find, probably because there’s so much math that goes into them. I did my best to give you a range of options, but I’m not entirely sure how well any one of these pirate games match your definition of ‘tactical’.

Bilge Rats, by Games by Cass.

Take to The Sea of Mischief and gamble your life away on high seas adventures as ratfolk pirates. Chase buried treasure, hunt wannabe pirate lords, and engage in some all together unsavoury action in Bilge Rats: A Sea of Mischief. This 78 page guide has everything you need to get your adventures on The Sea of Mischief up and running--except for the d6 dice, cups, and pencils you're gonna need. So, dust off your tricorn caps, get your cutlass shined, and get ready to set sail!

Bilge Rats’ form of strategy is probably unlike what you think of when you think of a tactical game, but I think it’s interesting and worth taking a look at! The basic system is centred around a game called “Liar’s Dice”, which involves rolling, bluffing if you don’t succeed, and calling other’s bluffs. You roll a pool of d6’s, with the difficulty being determined by a) the minimum number to beat to be considered a success and b) the number of successes you need to do the thing. As a player you’ll have to decide when a roll is worth bluffing, and if you enter PVP, it’s also about determining when your opponent is bluffing - challenge someone when they’re right, and you’ll pay the cost!

That being said, I think the most tactical part of this game comes into play during naval battles. Your character type is called a “Duty”, which determines your role upon the ship, your order of initiative, and a number of skill values. You’ll also have to consider wind speed, wind direction, and the roughness of the waves every time you engage in combat on a boat, so making strategic choices to improve your odds is probably pretty important.

The Runed Age, by Stormforge Productions.

In a world where magic and technology have fused together, where the limits that man is capable of have been broken, where a man can destroy the world with a stroke of a pen, the poor starve and the rich prosper off the blood of innocence. A world that should be a utopia has been turned by greed and pride into a battlefield where the poor wage war in the shadows for the ambitions of the wealthy. You are one of these scoundrels, these rogues, these pirates who struggle for the sport of the rich to achieve the glory, the riches, the power to break your chains and surpass the limits of The Runed Age.

The Runed Age is built on the Sigil System, a robust d100 roll-under system that allows you to play as narratively or simulationist as you want. The d100 genre of systems is a tried a true roleplaying method, and what sets the Sigil System (and thus the Ruined Age) apart from the rest is its combat and wounds system, which reflects the stresses and rigours of combat on the body to make combat as realistic as possible. This means that every fight in the Runed Age is a gritty, epic and lethal struggle for survival where you need to be prepared to do your best just to outlive your opponent.

The Runed Age is saturated with magic, using Runes as a mechanic to write your own spells. The openness of the system means that players have a lot of control over what they do with their magic, but the game definitely rewards system mastery because every time you try to write a spell, you’ll have to consider fiddly bits like power, range, and control.

When it comes to rolling dice, the system is heavily inspired by Call of Cthulhu. One review I found for this game mentions a possibility for tactical play, so I’m assuming that combat is more survival than CoC. If you want magic to be a significant part of the game, you probably want to check out The Runed Age.

Blood & Thunder, by Black Flag Printing Press.

You are a cutthroat aboard a pirate ship, seeking the fortune and glory that awaits those strong enough to take it. Brave the waterways of Erda and get rich or die trying in this nautical piracy TTRPG.

Lethal combat meets reactive gameplay at the infantry scale. Board, capture, or sink enemy vessels with naval play. Boasting rules for three dimensional range-finding and movement, even a regular swim in the ocean can become a deadly hazard as you're ripped apart by sharks, sea monsters, or something far worse.

Blood & Thunder is definitely fantastical, just judging from the races that you can choose from. Like D&D, your character choices are pre-packaged with stat bonuses and special abilities, but unlike D&D, you us a d100 for most of your rolls. Difficulty levels range from 0-100, with a limit on what you can even attempt to do depending on how high your skill rating is. If you can roll, you’ll aim to roll under your max skill rating.

Character levelling is also strategic; you need to meet certain requirements to take specific careers. Combat is also pretty dependent on a grid map, which I interpret to mean that range and positioning are two factors that you’ll have to consider, as well as an action economy that ensures that you’ll have to make your moves count.

Pirates and Musketeers, by Andrezj Buhlak.

The 17th century was rich in interesting events, political intrigues, bloody wars, and sea voyages. This book is a gateway to this fascinating period of history. If "dry history" is not enough for you, you can spice it up with fantastic assumptions, including vampires, werewolves, sea monsters and ancient ruins.

Pirates and Musketeers uses the Year Zero engine, which provides you with a number of d6s to roll that come from your base traits, character skills, and character gear. You have the ability to “push” your roll should your initial effort fail, which you will likely do often, as only 6’s are considered a success. However, should you “push” (or “re-roll”) your roll, any 1’s that you roll will also inflict penalties, doing damage to a stat or your gear. This means that in many stages of game-play, players will be balancing how much they value success against how many consequences they’re willing to face.

Language-wise, I’m not really a big fan of the way the game uses the term “savages.” The time period in this game is at the strength of many colonial empires, and some of that definitely bleeds through, so pick up this game with caution.

Caraval Crew, by iotsov.

A low fantasy TTRPG that focuses on sailing ships.

Right now, as far as I can tell, Caravel Crew is untested, but it has a lot of pieces for you to pick up and fiddle with. Combat has a lot of different kinds of options for your characters to exploit, with different outcomes if you bash, stab, shoot, parry, grapple, etc. There’s different weapons that are useful for different skills, and getting new weapons costs gold - an important resource to track. You’ll have a number of resources that you’ll need to keep track of and monitor, including hit points and something called EP.

On top of that, there’s also social and survival rules, so if you want a game that gives you engaging combat while still giving thought to other parts of the game, maybe pick up Caraval Crew and take it for a test drive!

24XX Skeleton Crew, by Jonah Boyd.

Dead men DO tell tales… on the other side. Skeleton Crew takes place in the sailor’s purgatory, Davy Jones’ Locker. When one dies at sea, their soul is brought to the Locker for a vast voyage to judge their fate. Some sailors only spend a few days in the Locker, but many form swashbuckling crews to preserve their non-lives for weeks, months, or years before judgement calls.

24XX games are another approach to the OSR (the same house of game design that fuels Pirate Borg), but use different-sized dice to represent a larger skill. I think there’s still more chance than strategy here, but again, this is a game that you could probably pull things from and then put into another system if you’re looking flavour.

The few fiddly bits that do exist in this game are things like different kinds of ships and different toys to put onto the ship - two things that you might be able to tack onto a game that doesn’t currently think about them, and thus opening up more pieces to consider should you get into a fight. Your ship could also come with flaws - what happens if you get in a fire-fight with a ship that has misfiring cannons? How might that complicate the battlefield?

You can also combine this game with another similar 24XX game, such as 14XX Golden Age to broaden your character origins or give yourself a few extra rules toys to play with.

Islands of the Far Sea, by Kindred Spirits, and Lilliputian, by ManaDawn Tabletop Games.

Islands of the Far Sea is a pirate-themed hack of Chris McDowell's Into the Odd, taking place in the Islands of the Oddworld. Play as one of seven Failed Careers in your new days as a Treasure-Hunter!

Lilliputian: Adventure on the Open Seas is an adventure game about exploring the vast and expansive ocean, filled with uncharted islands, hidden treasure, weird weather and unspeakable horrors. Character creation is fast, fun and random, classless, and relies on fictional advancement. It is based on Mausritter by Isaac Williams, Into The Odd by Chris McDowall and Cairn by Yochai Gal, as-well-as so many more.

Into the Odd and Mausritter use the same bones, and both of these game books acknowledge that inspiration, although Lilliputian also draws quite a bit from Cairn. I don’t consider either of these games to be tactical games - but what they do have is possibilities that can be imported into other games. The Failed Careers from Islands of the Far Sea are packaged skills and gear that you can give a character to start with. They will then have to figure out how to make their kit work for the problems they walk into.

Lilliputian also has specific rules for naval combat, as well as lots and lots of random tables. I think more than anything it communicates a specific vibe, but taking a little bit from one game and a little bit from another is one way to customize your experience - as well as give your players more options when trying to figure out how to tackle their next salty obstacle.

#pirates #seafaring #sailing #indie ttrpgs #tabletop games #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg

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ogradyfilm · 1 month

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Disco Elysium: The Game That Plays You

Disco Elysium is a rare and precious gem indeed: a video game that utilizes the language of the medium to its full potential. Interactivity is woven into the very fabric of the narrative, as fundamental and inextricable as words and images. There is no separation between “gameplay” and “storytelling”—they’re one and the same, synonymous and indistinguishable.

Its systems are deceptively simple: in basic terms, the designers combine mechanics from point-and-click adventures, RPGs, and visual novels into a perfectly harmonious genre hybrid. The player must navigate sprawling, labyrinthine dialogue trees, gathering clues to solve a murder mystery. Completing certain objectives earns experience points, which are used to level up your character’s attributes (divided among four branches: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics); equipping articles of clothing and other miscellaneous items further increases these stats. Depending on how you “build” the protagonist, these upgrades may make him more perceptive, charismatic, or intimidating, opening new avenues of exploration and investigation—and providing a crucial advantage during the D&D-style “skill checks."

Seems easy enough, right? Just min-max your abilities, exhaust every conceivable dialogue option, and save scum frequently to circumvent the fickle RNG—the usual cheap, brute-force strategies. Or so I mistakenly believed—until a magnificently structured set piece totally subverted my expectations. I won’t discuss the twist in detail here; it’s far too delicious to spoil. Suffice it to say that your skills—which manifest as literal disembodied voices, dispensing hints, guidance, and nuggets of wisdom that you’ve been conditioned to trust without question or skepticism—are revealed to be fallible; they’re akin to unreliable narrators, subject to biases and prejudices. Even successful dice rolls don’t necessarily guarantee accurate information or favorable outcomes—a blatant weaponization of the user interface that irrevocably alters how the player engages with the material. You can’t merely tap buttons and skim through flavor text until the end credits roll; achieving victory will require you to actually pay attention, exercise a degree of critical thinking and logical reasoning, and make judgments based on your own personal values (rather than blindly following the advice of the flawed hero's internal monologue)—thus lending your choices (and the consequences thereof) a greater sense of urgency, gravity, and emotional significance.

And that is what makes Disco Elysium so special: it constantly deconstructs itself, recontextualizing its relationship with the audience. You don’t play this game; it plays you.

#Disco Elysium #Harry Du Bois #Kim Kitsuragi #video game #video games #gaming #adventure game #role playing game #RPG #review #analysis #writing

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hand-of-devotion · 11 months

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The take that Ashton should be punished/"nerfed" by losing his dunamantic abilities and having the hypothetical elemental themed ones replace it is? So wild to me tbh.

Like. If we're being honest, the titan abilities could literally be ANYTHING. So instead of introducing an entire new set of abilities for a functionally new subclass while getting rid of the ones we've been seeing all campaign? If the rewards would really make a single character THAT unbalanced? It would probably be 100 times easier to just nerf/adjust whatever hypothetical abilities they were supposed to be adding in the first place to make it more "fair".

Because they already have the Ka'mort shard and the only mechanics "benefit" it's given thus far is the fact that it changed Ashton's pre-campaign race from half-elf to earth genasi. Which is arguably not even a benefit because he didn't keep the features/traits of a half-elf. Then the only known narrative benefit has been the fact that they seem to have an unnaturally heightened connection to nature/eidolons. Which has only ever been for ultimately inconsequential narrative implications or adding a little spice to explain/"justify" the effect of certain dice rolls.

So we have no real established expectations for what the "awakened titan" abilities will be. It'll be sad to have them watered down but would make way more sense than just scrapping an entire homebrew subclass's mechanics?

#critical role spoilers #cr discourse #critical role discourse #i didnt look too hard into the handful of folks i saw regurgitating that take #but i absolutely wouldnt be surprised to find theyre the same chunk of audience that has a vengeance against the idea of dunamancy #or that they're upset the shard didnt just kill ash completely #i will say id love for this to have lasting negative effects. just that the total loss of that aspect of the character seems like a boring #solution. on the other hand having their titan and dunamancy shit at WAR seems very fun and potentially destructive/dangerous #maybe lean MORE into the fact that the subclass was based around the fact that tal found wild magic barbarians 'not chaotic enough'#(which again would likely be about ADJUSTING instead of throwing everything in the garbage)

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itbeleeeee · 4 months

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Just finished Fantasy High: Junior Year, which was once again a great feat of storytelling on both Brennan, the Heroes, and the art department's parts. This season was really clean in terms of dealing with upper level D&D, and the story and the battles were done very well. I enjoyed it a lot, and it did make me tear up in some moments, which was what I was expecting because the Bad Kids do hold a very dear place in my heart, and everyone that takes part in this story does their job with so much precision and love that we can all see it.

Specifically in terms of story I do think focusing on the school part of this universe, and how Brennan did downtime was a good change of pace because it was different to how we'd seen the world of Spyre before. As an American and having experienced my own junior year, this was all very accurate and did make me cringe in places because it DID hit a little too close to home, so good job on Brennan for that. I also think the Heroes did really good with figuring out where their story would go, and how different they all went with it (Adaine needing money vs Fabian trying to become the most popular guy in school). You go through a lot of change junior year because it's the prelude to becoming an Actual Adult so there's so much thrown at you at once, and both the mechanic and the character choices all reflected that super well.

I also thought all the battles were super good, especially the Last Stand. There is nothing I love more than seeing the Heroes flex their battle muscles, and showing how well they all understand the mechanics and the characters they've built. It's always a joy to watch people do something they're good at, so that will always make watching them flip through sheets of paper and roll some dice an enjoyable time.

In general, this was the Heroes at their peak. They've stepped it up every time, and I expect that for the next season, if/when they choose to do one. I devoured this season like I have past ones, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Seeing the Bad Kids in action is always a treat, and I give my love to everyone who worked on this season, because they deserve every bit of it. Wonderful job gang <3

Here is the ranking thus far (in chronological order):

Fantasy High: 8/10

Fantasy High Sophomore Year: 9/10

Fantasy High Junior Year: 10/10

Unsleeping City: 7/10

Unsleeping City II: 8/10

A Crown of Candy: 9/10

A Starstruck Odyssey: 10/10

Neverafter: 10/10

#dimension20 #d20 #fantasy high #fantasy high junior year #fhjy #loved this season #loved the baddies too tbh #the mystery was very fun to experience #i did get spoilers from here but i was STILL surprised with the twists #the evolution of characters was great #the battles were great #the ART!!!! I LOVE THE ART DEPT!!!!!#gorgug is still my fave idc <3 #senior year will be interesting thats for sure!#love the bad kids <33333 #i give all my love to the heroes and brennan for making this wonderful story <333

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prokopetz · 1 year

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One of the bits of rules tech in Eat God that I'm particularly proud of is how it handles effects that could potentially mess with player agency.

Basically, the rules are never going to unilaterally dictate how your character behaves. The choice always rests with the player. However, if you run into a situation where you're not sure how your character would react, or if you're okay with leaving it to chance, you can make what the rules half-jokingly term a Saving Throw.

To make a Saving Throw, you roll a single die flat against whatever Facet seems most appropriate. Does my character anticipate the obvious consequences of what they're about to do? Roll Ethos. Does my character give in to peer pressure? Roll Pathos. And so forth.

If you succeed, your character does the smart thing. If you fail, your character does the dumb thing. However, it's not just a roleplaying aid because you still get the effects of making a test, too: most importantly, if you fail (and are thus obliged to do the dumb thing), you regain a point of Obstinacy, the game's primary meta currency, just like you would any other failed test.

Thus, it's still 100% optional – you never have to let the dice dictate how your character behaves – but there's a soft incentive to do so because you get more resources that way, and it avoids the sense of arbitrariness that often accompanies "good roleplaying" incentives by a. leaving it in the player's hands when to invoke it, and b. attaching the potential reward to a concrete mechanical outcome.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #eat god #game design

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thehomelybrewster · 9 months

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Stealth in TTRPGs - A Micro Essay

Who doesn't love having the option in games to sneak around, move around hostile forces undetected, and maybe get a potshot off against an unsuspecting foe for extra damage?

A lot of TTRPGs involve Stealth as a mechanic, and I just wanted to provide a small overview over how varying games do it and what that means for those games:

Dungeons & Dragons 5e - Varying Target Numbers

In 5e, you have a distinct Stealth skill, used for both hiding and sneaking around. Characters make their Stealth checks, add their relevant modifiers, and then the GM compares that to either an arbitrary target number/DC, often the Passive Perception of the most frequent type of enemy in a location. This means that player characters don't know if they succeeded or failed, while still performing their own dice roll, which creates a rather unique sense of dread about hopefully having rolled high enough.

Stealth checks are also often made as group checks, meaning at least half the party must succeed on a roll to be successful, and if you play with a paladin wearing plate, chances are high the group will fail.

Dungeons & Dragons B/X - GM-Facing Roll w. Set Target Numbers

In earlier D&D editions, such as the Basic/Expert sets, stealth was handled with a d100 roll, with the player(s) telling the GM their odds, and then the GM rolls. If the results are below their odds, they succeed, but if not, the GM will soon describe how they failed. Officially the GM is not supposed to tell the players if they succeeded or not until the consequences of that roll reveal themselves.

Also, at least in the 1983 B/X rules, there are no stealth rules for non-thief and non-halfling characters. However, since the base "move silently" chance for thieves is 20 percent, most GMs might allow characters to also attempt it but at a lower percentage, with no improvements as a character gains levels (unless these levels are in the thief class).

While mysterious, this method removes the dice roll from the player characters, and is thus not ideal to emulate.

Call of Cthulhu - Roll Under w. Binary Success

The Call of Cthulhu games, using a d100 system, use a very simple system for stealth: You roll a d100, compare that result to your Stealth skill (in e.g. the 6th edition a minimum of 10), and if the result is lower, you succeed. The GM doesn't need to make any rolls or improvise a target number, it's very straight-forward.

OSR games that use roll under-systems also use this sort of system (e.g. Knave & Cairn). It significantly reduces the burden on the GM, but it gives players a sense of certainty that may be detrimental for suspense.

Pathfinder 2e - GM-Facing Roll w. Flexible Target Numbers & Degrees of Success

Pathfinder 2e uses a rather interesting system for stealth. Players declare that they intend to sneak, then give the GM their bonus to Stealth checks. The GM then rolls the Stealth check for the player character against the Perception DCs of any creature the player intends to sneak past, then narrates the result.

The trademark Critical Success - Success - Failure - Critical Failure system still applies here, though Critical Successes have the same effect as regular successes, and only Critical Failures result in you getting spotted. A normal failure just results in the creatures noticing you without being able to pinpoint your location or being able to see you but guessing your current location.

This system is mechanically pretty dense and offers suspense, but it, like the system used in B/X, doesn't involve a player-facing roll, at least not rules-as-written. However the player can probably still make this roll if the GM allows it. As with all things Pathfinder, the rules are very clear, but complex.

Anyway, just a small thought I had that I wanted to share here.

#thehomelybrewster #rant tag #ttrpg design #dnd dm advice #gm advice #dnd 5e #dungeons and dragons #call of cthulhu #pathfinder 2e

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thisisnotthenerd · 2 months

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active stat tracking for never stop blowing up: episode 5

click here for the spreadsheet

we're still at a d10 for our minimum highest die value, with kingskin holding that line, though we saw a few different level ups to d10s this episode.

vic still has the best average distribution, with 8 skills blown up: 3d6, 1d8, 3d10, and 1d12. greg stocks isn't far off of vic's distribution, but kingskin also has 8 skills blown up: 5d6 and 3d10.

in contrast to last episode, we saw a lot of progression in wits and hot, just based on the activity. everyone has blown up in both skills at least once. for next episode, it's possible the everyone will blow up in stunts, tough, and weapons, with jennifer and g13 as our holdouts in that respect. the 'worst' skills as a party are brawl and sneak, with jennifer as the highest leveled in both skills. by die value, the best average is still drive, with 2d4, 1d10, 2d12, and 1d20.

kingskin takes the cake for explosions in this episode, leveling up in three skills (brawl, wits, hot), though everyone blew up at least one skill.

in terms of distribution, we're looking at 6-8 skills per character. vic and kingskin both have 8, greg has 7, and the rest (jack, jennifer, g13) all have 6. those with fewer skills are the specialists, though kingskin kind of follows the pattern with 3d10.

we also saw some non-dice related mechanical discoveries this episode:

the tape works with time dilation; every time one enters, they can spend as much time as they want in-world, and externally 94 minutes will have passed

each person who enters is assigned an avatar and retains that avatar with subsequent entries

each avatar has an associated MacGuffin that allows them to exit the tape safely. these items are generally extremely significant to the character. if destroyed, a person cannot leave the world of nsbu

when someone dies in the movie, they die in real life, and their body is chewed up inside of a nonexistent human-sized vhs machine

j-kwon and bad bunny were both sucked in with barsimmeon and lost their macguffins, thus condemning them to eternity within nsbu

if a group of people enter the movie, they must exit together or not at all

mentioning the outside world or the fact that they're living in a movie to a non avatar character can destabilize them and cause them to be struck down; this can be ameliorated by convincing the character that the statement was false, e.g. lying about it being slam poetry.

also sidenote: shoutout to izzy for stone-cold guessing that the skulker was jack's son. insane read from her.

paula donvalson / jack manhattan

abilities: duelist, burglar, trained (brawl), quick healing

stunts: d6

brawl: d4

tough: d8

tech: d4

weapons: d12

drive: d4

sneak: d6

wits: d10

hot: d8

liv skyler / kingskin

abilities: wealthy, menacing, demolitions

stunts: d6

brawl: d6

tough: d6

tech: d10

weapons: d6

drive: d10

sneak: d4

wits: d6

hot: d10

andy 'dang' litefoot / greg stocks

abilities: trained (brawl), studied (weapons), smokin'

stunts: d10

brawl: d4

tough: d10

tech: d8

weapons: d6

drive: d12

sneak: d4

wits: d6

hot: d6

wendell morris / vic ethanol

abilities: transporter, protector, trouble maker

stunts: d10

brawl: d8

tough: d10

tech: d6

weapons: d6

drive: d12

sneak: d4

wits: d6

hot: d10

russell feeld / jennifer drips

abilities: trained (hot), neck snapper, quick healing

stunts: d4

brawl: d10

tough: d8

tech: d4

weapons: d6

drive: d4

sneak: d12

wits: d10

hot: d8

usha rao / g13

abilities: transporter, hacker, trained (wits), quick healing

stunts: d6

brawl: d4

tough: d4

tech: d20

weapons: d4

drive: d20

sneak: d6

wits: d10

hot: d6

group abilities: la familia (stepping in for a tough roll, lending tokens at a 1:1, sharing skill dice for optimization)

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willknightauthor · 2 days

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I'm so stoked! I've had so many breakthroughs simultaneously on this system!

I've been churning through RPG after RPG, trying to find everything useful, see every way it's been done. It's been a whirlwind, and I'm still in the middle of it, but I've been surprised at how little variation there is. Even the free form, "roleplaying forward," GM-less jam games do a lot of the same things as each other. Even if the mechanics are technically different, using different dice, the goals and ethos of the designs are identical. And we're all aware of the hoard of OSR/NSR games.

It started out with my fascination with balancing simulation and character-driven storytelling in a fun way, eventually becoming a desire to fix my frustrations with the World of Darkness. While I enjoy the campy, B-movie side of horror in the World of Darkness, I myself am more of an A24 type of writer. The worlds I like to build, even when surreal, have solid internal logic. I crave that balance between the impossible and the gritty, between the beautiful and the horrifying.

I figured out how to tie everything to one health system, which itself is tied to one 10d6 dice pool. Now stress and health are one thing, and it directly affects what type of dice you roll, which changes odds and side effects. Your stats and your combat exhaustion determine the number of dice rolled, which means the more you do in combat, the fewer dice you have, and the lower your odds of success.

Because it's a d6 pool with success on one 6, the probability changes roughly linearly compared to other dice pool systems. Because there's only one vector for probability--more or less dice--difficulty is an easy thing for the GM to determine, and the probability of the roll quickly judged.

youtube

By tying actions to the dice pool via fatigue, I realized I can encourage scrappy, gritty, tactical combat by rewarding players with a second wind, meaning they get dice back. Now there's momentum between attackers and defenders. If you get backed into a corner with no options you start getting exhausted, but if you find a way to scramble out of it, jab them in the eyes, utilize the environment, make them hit their ally, then you recover and turn the tables. Even the initiative system ties into this scrappy back-and-forth, since initiative changes non-randomly during combat. And this is all in a zone-based “theater of the mind” combat system.

I've completely eliminated experience. Instead when you do difficult things and take risks, you get temporary boosts to that skill for future rolls. To permanently advance it you must engage in training, either as a side activity or during down time, over a realistic amount of time. At the highest levels you have to go on personal quests to advance your skills. Thus your skill advancement is tied to roleplaying.

Going up a single point in anything is very difficult though. Most of the "character advancement" instead is about character change. You gain new skills and abandon others, and via your new skills you can acquire a new "class." Basic advancement is quantitative, but all significant advancement is qualitative, using skills themselves as currency. You don’t just advance, you adapt.

Your "class" is advanced through a customizable narrative achievement tree. Thus to become a better mage, you must pursue life goals, narrative turning points, and personal transformations, based on their own ambitions and your ambitions for them as a character.

Almost every stat is an abstract representation of the character's internal qualities and state. Those internal states then have mechanical effects during the game if you can roleplay them: goals, passions, memories, knowledge, social ties, reputation, etc. It's conceptual, but it's not the loosy-goosy LARP style. There are mechanics with numerical and statistical effects, they're just tied to qualitative stats driven by roleplaying.

Importantly, there are many hooks for alternate or additional systems, especially weird and supernatural ones. I hate it when "magic" just amounts to a list of very narrow spells and their usages. Now there are many mechanical hooks for supernatural things tied to capabilities, knowledge, motivations, social role, self-image, core memories, etc.

I designed it backwards from multiple future games which will be very weird and abstract. The system as it stands represents the gritty foundation of any number of future games emphasizing social intrigue, personal horror, heart-pounding combat, and Lovecraftian worldbuilding. It's the ruleset for the regular, mortal humans, doing possible things in the real world… but with mechanical possibilities for much more.

Here are the games which inspired or influenced the design. I think it gives you a sense of how diverse and specific the design choices are.

Wraith: The Oblivion

Alien RPG

Over the Edge

Heart

The Wildsea

The Burning Wheel

Fate

Thousand Year Old Vampire

Na Ratunek Marsowi

Feng Shui

Barbarians of Lemuria

Mythras

Exalted

Fireborn

Delta Green

Reign

Gumshoe

Shock: Social Science Fiction

The True OSR: Obsolete Shitty Rules

The Devil, John Moulton

Cyberpunk RED

Dune RPG

Mothership

Streets of Peril

His Majesty the Worm

The Cypher System

Next I need to look into more (genuinely) experimental systems, especially ones involving memory and investigation. "The Between" and "Brindlewood Bay" are next on my list. The closest vibe design-wise I've gotten is from "Broken Empires" (which I'm so stoked for).

It's getting to the point where the overall rules are all set enough that I can drill down to specific numbers for everything, make some premade characters, and start playtesting. Fuck yeah.

#TTRPG #roleplaying #tabletop roleplaying #table top role playing game #game design #combat #action #Youtube #World of Darkness

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