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:: New Entries ::

: We're moving on up!!
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: Entry 20, 09/11/19: Team Spirit!
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: Entry 19, 09/11/9: Wealth & Possessions
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: Entry 18, 09/11/5: The Conflict System
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: Entry 17, 09/11/4: Drafts & Lights
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: Entry 16, 09/11/1: Boosting the Game
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: Entry 15, 09/10/30: Genre Review
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: Entry 14, 09/10/28: Pets, Beasts & Monsters
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: Entry 13, 09/10/27: Locations, Locations, Locations
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: Entry 12, 09/10/26: Social Issues
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: Entry 11, 09/10/25: Basic Thoughts on Conflict
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: Entry 10, 09/10/24: Thinking Disabilities
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: Entry 9, 09/10/23: Looking at Gear II
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: Entry 8, 09/10/22: Looking at Gear
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: Entry 7, 09/10/21: First Draft Commences!
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: Entry 6, 09/10/20: Character Creation
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: Entry 5, 09/10/19: Character Growth
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: Entry 4, 09/10/18: Considerations on Style
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: Entry 3, 09/10/17: Dissecting Abilities
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: Entry 2, 09/10/16: Early Thoughts on Dice
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: Entry 1, 09/10/15: Me, The Project & The Site

:: Links ::

: RPG.net thread
: TAYDS (print)
: TAYDS (free download)

:: GURPS (old site) ::

: Organizations
: Alice 2.0

 


The blog is moving to our new website! Please go to www.gears-rpg.com to see the new home of the game. Yes, the name of the game is now finally GEARS!



.::: Entry 20, 2009/11/19 :::.

  Roleplaying is a team sport. Yes, there are options for one-player-one-GM adventures out there, and there are even experiments with solitary games (in the spirit of the old Fighting Fantasy books, often). But the intent with the game being created here is fun for the whole group.

  Oddly enough, while this idea of characters working as teams (typically called a 'party') is fairly old, the focus is still very much on individual characters. Most parties quickly become plug'n'play, in that new party members are simply snapped into the group and function with no greater change over time. This always felt odd to me, and I have been paying close attention whenever articles or game mechanics have dealt with the idea of the characters as a coherent group. I want that to be a part of my game, and have experimented a lot with it.

  :: The Party Sheet ::

  An idea that has popped up its head over and over through the decades I have known this hobby is the idea of having a Party Sheet, which serves the same function for the party as a Character Sheet does for each individual character. Various games have tried various angles on it, but the ones that succeed best are (sadly, in my opinion) the ones that are almost entirely focused on combat; it is simply a powerful and game-compelling gimmick to provide tag-team tactics in combat, allowing special weapons bonuses or unique attacks or defenses when acting as a group. Moreover, it's logical, because history has shown an unbridled creativity in military units for applying the advantages of numbers in a fight.

  The combat angle is thus a no-brainer. Advanced combat will have special tricks and maneuvers, and having some of those require multiple participants is only sensible. That will be included. But I want the team aspects to reach far beyond combat, since combat is not central to the game.

  What becomes the next question is what a group has going for it that is not immediately derived from individual members. The combat maneuver concept can theoretically be expanded very broadly, from courtroom assistance (why else would someone have a legal team instead of just a good lawyer?) and research teams to the classic 'wing man' approach to everything from dating to elaborate cons. The notion of two or more characters being able to rely on each other to such a degree that they are each stronger in the group is very fundamental, and should be taken advantage of.

  But even beyond this idea of two heads being better than one, there are several collective advantages a group might have, which does not require everyone to be doing the same thing. Good leaders and planners only require the group to pay attention to gain from them, certain kinds of gear depends on multiple users to be truly efficient ("yeah, the mainframe is ridiculously big for a computer, but when you have two dozen users on, it's a fraction of the cost and ten times more powerful than the best computers on the market!"), and complex lay-ups between different positions can make for impressive results (one car knocking the target into the scope of the sniper who can slow it down for the second car to powder it, for example).

  A party sheet could hold the maneuvers the characters use as a team, putting the complex interactions together in one place rather than on every single character sheet. The base abilities and such used by each character would still be on that character sheet, but the greater whole is hard to see without a central description.

  :: Unified Image ::

  Other than what is going on in the party itself, the surrounding world might also have something to say on the matter. Many teams are known as teams, not as individual characters. This goes from legendary law enforcement units to rock bands to acrobats. Meeting one member is interesting, but for the full effect to work, all or most members must be present. A company might not hire individual members, wanting the entire team. Or a gang of criminals might not even be recognized one by one in the streets!

  To further cement this, there are plenty of official teams that are required to be collectively present to be accepted. Many military, legal or similar teams cannot be admitted to resources or be given orders or even assistance without proper presence. In some cases, it is a matter of individual team members being formal representation for the team; one member is responsible for strategic communications, one is the equipment acquisitions officer, and so on. A full team has all the access they need, an incomplete team does not. If there are special skills involved, this is even more profound; nobody in their right mind issues heavy explosives to anyone but the demolitions expert, for example.

  There are a lot of interesting options beyond that. A team might be known in a certain way by some people, in another by others. This need not be a matter of secret identities (rock band by day, crimefighters by night, for example), but being seen as one team in one place and another elsewhere is possible. Inside city limits, a military unit might have the role of search and rescue, and the functions of team members can be turned around greatly. A team of technical experts may likewise changed greatly in roles when negotiating with potential clients. In this fashion, one team can be many different teams, and not all members need to be on every version of the team; the new member might be part of the adventuring team, but he has no actual role in the guild enforcement team that the others have been with for a long time. People in general will recognize him as part of the legendary adventuring team, but the guild will not accept him, not yet at least.

  :: Team Resources ::

  For whatever reason, a team might only have access to certain resources as a team. Joint accounts, split passwords, and other methods can make it impossible for one member to grab gear without the others. When the gear is out of this restriction, it might work like any other, or passwords etc. may be continually required.

  One type of team resource is the kind that actually requires multiple operators. The traditional example is a giant robot or advanced spaceship. The usual idea is that the skills required are fairly unique, and collective timing is of the essence. In other words, this exact team is needed to operate it.

  More exotic versions include magical rituals that take multiple participants, psionic mass-mind gestalts, robots joining up, or even complicated weapons (or other gadgets!) capable of being merged. The idea is that multiple team members are needed to tap into these things; with only one or even just too few members, the act is either not living up to its full potential, or it simply won't work at all.

  There are plenty of ways to simulate all these things in a game, depending on what exactly is simulated (someone giving a team access, things being used as a group, etc.). What is important is that the abilities or other things involved explain this, making it not just a 'random requirement', but letting players build this team cohesion into their characters from the start or along the road. The point is to make the team possibilities a part of the characters, not just something that happens to show up along the adventure.

  :: Teamwork Abilities ::

  There are already several game mechanics in the second draft that can be used to build team concepts into characters, perhaps even create the foundation of a 'party sheet' (or several, depending on how the concept is used; different situations may mean they form a different team, as already mentioned). The most immediate option is to make other team members a Specific, perhaps so that it depends on which team members; too many is a problem, as are the wrong! Some method of defining the advantageous team structures will be needed, to make it work well.

  Also, there is plenty of opportunity to make Abilities team-dependent. Some will be only part of a major job, like the character who is an ace at making the spaceship engines work at maximum capacity, or the one who acts as the energy conduit of a large ritual. These abilities may well function only or mainly (or just most dramatically) when the character is handling a certain position in the team. For advanced topics, position-specific abilities (and disabilities, gear, etc.!) can be commonplace, opening whole new frontiers in that field. Some combat only works in groups, as do certain social situations, business negotiations, technical work, and so on.

  :: No I In Team ::

  Of course, one of the chief tasks of teamwork is still to make the players work together. Even if the game is built on dramatic scheming and infighting, roleplaying is a team sport, and methods of making the group want to play together are very valuable. Having a 'team personality' set from the start can make the game much more enjoyable and preempt some problems. The players may be friends, but how are the characters as a group? How do their mentalities match up? Having this in writing gives a way to play the game and stick together through drama and challenges.

  This is what I want. The mechanics may be little more than a few guidelines on that angle, but making sure playing together increases the fun makes the game a better collective experience. Players wanting to play together makes everything better for everybody, after all!

 


.::: Entry 19, 2009/11/9 :::.

  The topic of equipment has already been dealt with in earlier entries, to a certain extent. But what has not really been talked about is how such gear is actually acquired. Both in character creation and in later games, there are more ways of, and more views on, acquiring gear than most assume. I want my game to include a better explanation for characters having their gear than just "they buy stuff" or, even worse, "that kind of character just has that stuff". I do not want purchased gear to be marginalized; buying your things is a logical and meaningful way to get them! But I do not want it to be the universal default, nor do I want to enforce 'the universal shopping list' that many games seem to go by. Even if it is a small part of the character, I want the acquisition of gear to make sense for the character, and reflect the kind of world the character lives in, not to mention his or her place in it.

  It might seem like a lot, but this is not just some insane demand for more detail. While the matter of where a knife was acquired can be painfully uninteresting, a lot of gear can spark up questions, especially when its effects are taken into account. A cybernetic eye enhances eyesight, for example. So does the player pay for it with points during character creation, or with cash? And what if it is surgically installed later on, what then? And what about that 'priceless' magical sword, if it is so priceless, how was it acquired?

  Even beyond such questions, a thoroughly created game world can toss some frustrating questions into the process. If a character is from a certain region, will gear be acquired at the local prices? What if the character was briefly in a city with cheap gear, did he or she go on a shopping spree and get everything the character now has at low, low prices? And just how much can a character afford?

  :: Cash, Card, Credit! ::

  One of the most basic questions when creating a character in almost any game is "how much money does my character have?". Cash allows the characters to get gear either immediately or later on, and it pays for a lot of other things during an adventure, too. I have stuck with a method of character cash for years now, and it works: Buy cash like it is an ability, then multiply the final level with an amount of cash set for the given game world. So if the cash-point value of a game world is 20 doubloons, buying Cash[14] will start a character out at 280 (20 times 14) doubloons. Needless to say, there is no learning or experience for this ability.

  But while cash-in-hand will start the average adventurer character off nicely, some like more advanced options, if nothing else then to simulate real-life options. Two come to mind: Borrowing and earning. Whereas the cash option is just what a character has, these two are more about what that character can get later on. The idea of character income has already been thoroughly tested, and can be molded like cash: Buy an 'ability', and the character gets a weekly income equal to 1/10 of the aforementioned cash-point value. If the value is 20 doubloons, for example, the character gets 2 doubloons per week times the acquired ability. Easy, efficient. 'Credit' has undergone multiple tests, however, and none have shown satisfactory results. Essentially, it would be 'the skill of borrowing money', getting bigger sums at lower costs and for longer terms. The details are still out.

  :: The Tool Ability ::

  Money solves the gear-purchasing problem for shopping-list items. But too many genre conventions involve gear that is not purchased outright, from the magical sword to genius gadgets or inherited books of power and mystery. Without a pricetag, an item cannot be solved by throwing money at it.

  Several existing game systems try to solve this by making the items a part of the character, rather than independent gear. A battlesuit thus becomes a set of abilities acquired for the character, just like that character might acquire the ability to read a language or fly a plane. An item might have unique abilities, or problems of its own, things that would make no sense for a person. Or 'normal' abilities would be somewhat different for an item. But a lot of fascinating and unusual items can be created by viewing an item as a set of abilities 'in a box', especially if 'ability' and 'bonus' are made fairly interchangeable.

  I do have some disagreement with this method, though. There are the strictly practical problems that turn up when a character has his or her abilities 'in a box', which can basically be handed to someone else to use, or even stolen. This set of problems can bog a system down in rules to prevent abuse, all on its own! But beyond even that, I dislike the idea for the simple reason that gear suddenly does not feel like gear any longer. In a superhero game, the idea that a hero (or villain, or whatever) can fire bolts of lightning from the hands can definitely be an ability. If this person needs to wear a funny suit for it to work, I can still see it as an ability, with the suit being like what a sword is to a swordsman: Something that allows an ability to be used. But if it is the suit that fires the lightning, the ability that the character has is merely to use the suit! How the suit has this power is a different thing. And if the suit is not uniquely available to that character only, if the suit can actually be taken by others who will try to activate it, the idea that the bolts are the character's ability goes right out the window for me. I don't even want to get into what would happen if such ability-gear is acquired long after character creation...

  In the grey zone between what is character ability and what is purely a gadget, there are interesting possibilities for whole fields of gear. Abilities can exist to tap into the gear, gear can exist to allow a character to tap into abilities, and so forth, creating amazing bonds between character and gadget (and we haven't even looked at potions or strange energies yet!). But I would like that fascinating complexity to remain uniquely its own, rather than translate items entirely into character traits. This way, the abilities involved also have the chance of being an expanded part of the game world, something to be understood and handled in different ways. Maybe the suit is not the only way to focus an ability. Or maybe the abilities locked in the suit itself can be dismantled, examined, altered... or simply broken!

  :: Point Acquisitions ::

  One method that has been tried and tested thoroughly with a fair degree of success since my work with TAYDS is to have a general rating for items in overall power (which includes things like versatility, ease-of-use, durability and so on). A proper rating system for items allows them to be bought like abilities, setting a 'point cost' pricetag on the item. It works with basic items that do not fit shopping lists, but mainly because those items have a fairly linear progression of power. Once items become complex, typically through multiple uses, complex requirements and so forth, this 'point cost' method begins to break down.

  The question is whether a better system can be built to charge points for items that are acquired at character creation (acquisition later would be handled by whatever in the adventures made it happen). Arguably, the basic notions of the aforementioned 'tool is abilities' may suddenly apply again, but somehow it seems the system would need to be adjusted, or balance goes right out the window; if a tool doing something costs the same as the ability, the idea of losing it will make the natural ability a better choice, and if it cannot be lost, the realism and idea of it being actual tools is ruined. Other flaws in the 'tool is abilities' method follow the same logic, and there remains also the problem of making tools feel less like gear and more like some detached piece of a character.

  Of course, just because items are acquired via points does not mean it has to function this exact way. The idea in the above is to have an item wear a pricetag for what it can do, i.e. pay for power more or less directly. Another option is to pay for having access to certain kinds of gear, and then acquire some of that as a (perhaps) permanent possession. For example, having experimental super-toys might require having access to the labs that make them, something acquired as a presumably social part of the character (friends in the right places, so to speak). Inherited things may require an appropriate family history. This deflects some of the problems with point-acquired gear by making it part of something bigger. How a value-of-purchase figures in is still a harder issue; will it now be worth the investment to get the items, at all?

  A lot of gear can be handled by making it actually equipment, stuff to be bought. The types that are not shop available will need to be defined by their origins, and how the gear is acquired will probably end up building on that. The consequence of this is that there will not be any fixed way of equipping characters: If it's store bought, the cash rules provided will deal with it nicely. If it is special-made, it takes the connections and will be 'priced' according to how the world handles those things, probably handled by social backgrounds. Family heirlooms, strange acquisitions, alien gifts etc. will need their own reasons for being in the possession of the characters.

 


.::: Entry 18, 2009/11/5 :::.

  This entry will be aimed at something more tangible than the usual out-loud thinking. The conflict system is an essential part of any mainstream roleplaying game today, and this one is no exception. In most games, 'conflict' directly translates into 'combat'. While the following will take the viewpoint of combat as an example, the system described is also being tested for use in hacking, mind-probing, vehicle and animal racing, and some other, rather unexpected areas.

  Hopefully, this entry will result in material that can actually be put directly into the second draft. It is the goal that entries from now on will result in more tangible material, for actual use in the game. Not all entries will, but hopefully many.

  :: The Quick System ::

  As mentioned in Entry 17, the game will be built with two main veins running through it: The original system (the actual game) and the 'Quick' System (for newcomers wanting to test the waters before jumping in). The conflict system is no exception to that.

  The Quick Conflict System is pretty simple: Both or all sides pick the appropriate Ability, add any bonuses and subtract any penalties (in the Quick System, tools are likely to be the only modifiers most of the time), and roll that number of dice (or substitute some for 'safe' dice, as explained in Entry 17). Highest number of good dice wins the conflict. Ties mean dramatic standoffs, if it fits the situation, and rerolls may be allowed if it makes sense and the characters have time for it.

  That's it.

  If a bit more detail is wanted, the 'winner' deals damage equal to the difference between the number of good dice. So if one rolls 8 good dice and the other rolls 11, the latter deals 3 damage to the former. In combat, that would probably be some form of hit points (that part of the mechanic has yet to be decided).

  Combined with safe dice, the Quick Conflict System allows any kind of conflict to happen quickly and easily, with minimum consultation of character sheet and with plenty of room for dramatic interpretation (a slight win is a close call, a great win, like 15 good dice superior, is next to a massacre!).

  :: The Full System ::

  Using the Full Conflict System puts a lot more options in the hands of the players. The system is still in heavy testing, and most uses have been combat. Hacking is second (somewhat unrealistic, Hollywood-ish hacking, to be honest), racing third and several more experimental uses beyond that. The philosophy seems solid, but any possible snafus are still being looked for.

  The conflict is set up in turns. Each turn is a second, but that matters very little at this point. Each player involved has an Ability to use. Modifiers are not added yet, not even for tools (like weapons) used. Instead, the player decides how many dice from this 'Ability Pool' are used for attack (and by consequence, how many for defense). Once all players (and the GM) have decided on attack and defense dice, and pointed out their targets, all attacks versus defenses are rolled, one after the other. In these rolls, the modifiers finally come in; anything that is 'circumstantial' (like footing, distraction, injuries, etc.) is applied to both attack and defense. Tools useful in an attack are added to attacks, and the same for defense. Note that rough circumstances may reduce the number of dice to be rolled to below zero; in that case, there simply are no good dice rolled in that roll, period.

  An attack that rolls a greater result than the defense against it hits. Not only that, but the amount of dice rolled better than the defense are noted, because that number may be added to any kind of damage.

  This system is built originally to handle complex tournament fighting, one on one. In multiple-enemy fighting, the defensive dice can be spread out across multiple attackers, at a -2 for each added defense (the first is without the penalty, the second is at -2, the third at -4, etc.). This can make it prudent to hold off on the attacks, allowing better defenses against foes, until something can turn the tide (like assistance, for example).

  The beauty of this system is that it is not limited to attack and defense rolls. Dice may be spread over other things, like sizing up your opponent, charging your special weapon feature (whatever that might be; martial arts sci-fi movies have some funny suggestions!), or other things that can benefit you in the fight. Different weapons, maneuvers, tricks and such can also be used. It even allows multiple attacks per turn, like double punches or other fast techniques!

  As for Specifics, they are added like the other modifiers: On any single roll that dice are invested in from the Ability Pool gets the Specifics added to it that apply. The one difference is that the sum of dice added from Specifics cannot be greater than the number of dice from the pool spent on the roll! So if an attack has 12 dice invested in it, that character can never get more than a +12 from Specifics for that one attack roll. This both adds some realism (there is a limit to how much familiarity will do for you in a fast fight) and balance (players can't simply invest one die in an attack and get 15 from Specifics, then dump the remaining dice from the pool into defense).

  :: Branching Out ::

  The point of this is not just to find a conflict system. There are literally hundreds of ways that two characters may be pitted against each other, and there is nothing to say that the one described is even the best. But it seems the optimum choice for what this is really about: Providing options.

  More precisely, it's about providing options for future expansion and diversification of any conflict that uses this mechanic. As described, moves, tricks and secondary abilities can be fitted in nicely with this system, giving characters with a fair or higher Ability level in the conflict new possibilities. A good fighter can make multiple attacks, do stun-and-strike attacks, and so on. A veteran racer can make several complex, highspeed maneuvers in rapid succession. And so on. There is room for rules branching out to more detailed options in the conflicts, and that detail is what is the actual goal. But instead of producing all of it right off the bat (which is a silly thing to expect from oneself, anyway), the system is simply built for it all to fit neatly into it as it is. Theoretically, a character could even use the extended tricks and maneuvers in a conflict where nobody else knows how to use them; the system allows it!

  Of course, as mentioned, there is still extensive testing going on. The Quick Conflict System is solid, but the Full Conflict System has a wide range of lesser nuances to it that can still trip it up. The base mechanic of the Ability Pool works, but the more complicated conflicts, the ones dealing with hard-to-grasp subjects, involving multiple shifting opponents, and/or changing circumstances, still has some questions to them.

  For now, the above will be refined and included in the second draft. It is clear, it works, and it follows the spirit of the overall game philosophy, so it is the ultimate solution out there. Unless there is a cataclysmic discovery of flaws, any problem will be a question of proper tweaking, as has already been done to other areas in the shift from first to second draft.

 


.::: Entry 17, 2009/11/4 :::.

  The structure of the game core is slowly becoming visible. With the long list of features already described in these last 16 entries,that is a happy thing!

  Because of realizations, tests and discussions (online especially), I feel a need to move the actual drafting work to the next step. This does not in any way mean that the final game will now unfold; any written work worth reading is rewritten dozens of times before it is tentatively called 'a finished product'.

  With certain flaws that have come to light through the writing and testing of the first draft, its continued writing is being stopped. There is no point in creating sample characters, because one of the flaws is in the character creation system. The abilities listed are an incomplete collection, but they will travel easily into the second draft for continuation. This seems like the best way to actually move the writing of the core system forward.

  You can find a copy of the first draft, as PDF, in the top bar, or here.

  :: Current Game Mechanics ::

  The dice pool mechanic has had a great deal of discussion with people both from the gaming and mathematical circles around me. Two results have come from this: My more detailed explanation of why I chose it, and a problem that should now be fixed. The explanation part has apparently not been made clear from the beginning, which is my fault. I chose the dice pool mechanic presented because I want a game that can 'scale', meaning it doesn't matter what level a skill is, the level is still important. Many games have a 'functional range' for skills and other abilities. If the ability gets greater than that range, any increase will either be virtually useless, or distort the dice mechanic of the game. For example, using three six-sided dice means any ability level above 18 will either be unimportant (if the dice have to be rolled below the ability) or make the dice roll worth much less (if the roll is added to reach a set target). Penalties are all that keep such high skills important. I don't want that. I want high skill levels to matter as much as low, and the used dice mechanic lets the game perform that way.

  The problem fixed was surprisingly physical. The dice mechanic allows endless rise in ability, meaning at some point, the number of dice rolled becomes impractical, because there are simply too many! Apparently, other games have had similar problems, and the solution is inspired by theirs: Since the dice have a 50/50 chance of turning up good or bad, the player is always granted the right to cut away a number of dice before rolling. For each two dice cut, one is an automatic good die (the other theoretically being an automatic bad die). Sacrificing two dice for one automatic good die is called one 'safe' die. Thus a roll of 47 dice can be reduced to, for example, 20 'safe' dice (cutting 40 dice before rolling) and 7 dice rolled normally. Now, players decide how much they want to roll, and the more safe dice, the less the maximum possible roll.

  With that in place, the dice mechanic can be slightly edited from the first draft into the second.

  The really big problem is in character creation, and to some extent growth. The concept of one CCP put into an Ability giving a Specific in each of that Ability's categories is highly unbalancing. Not only does it bloat abilities with Specific to the point where the actual Ability becomes a minor component of doing something, it also skews the value of Abilities when one Ability has fewer categories of Specifics than another. While this is a pretty nasty imbalance, the solution seems fairly simple: One CCP equals one raised Specific only, in addition to the Ability itself. The 'background' is rejected as a Specific and now simply becomes a feature added (raised by one) any time a CCP is spent. There will be some rulework about hiding your background later, but for now, 'background' is simply a separate entity that describes how each CCP of Ability was gained. The same is changed in growth from awarded CCPs.

  :: Expanded Core Concerns ::

  One of the major realizations that have hit me from the entries here is that giving every feature its own, unique rules would be horrible overkill. Yes, every topic needs full and thorough treatment, but just whipping up a new rule for everything a character might do or have in the game will end up in books the size of certain legendary, back-in-the-day mega-texts, stocked with a million things to remember. And while it might not seem like it at this point in the process, given the amount of features that are being built into the game, playability is a big issue to me. The game has to be easy. Detail must come from options, not complexity.

  What I am looking at in parallel with the second draft, in my massive heap of notes and player feedback, is a core structure that will make a clear-cut, understandable and most of all manageable set of core rules guide the extended features of the game. By that I do not in any way mean a copy-paste system, where magic is just gunfighting with different names, which in turn is just the mechanics of haggling given a bunch of weapons stats. No, what I am looking for is a guiding philosophy to the rules themselves, making learning the basics a direct portal to understanding the game in general. I don't want magic, gunfighting, haggling and other rules to be vaguely disguised copies of each other. But once someone has understood one of those rules, I want the rest to make sense much, much quicker.

  The jury is still out on the actual methods of this. Without any truly detailed rules covering the more advanced topics, there is no actual complexity to be avoided yet. I am keeping an eye on it, watching for ways to make rules build upon each other, but for now, I only have the knowledge that streamlining will be needed. The dice pool mechanics used for abilities are already being incorporated into disabilities, and even most abilities themselves function according to understandable lines, all based in the same philosophy. The tested game material is less streamlined, but with more rewriting and more testing, it is getting there.

  :: Having It Light ::

  In the playability, ease-of-play vein, I have always been a proponent of easy introduction to new games. We might all just as well face it, nobody wants to read a university textbook of rules just to play a game they don't even know yet. And while this game is not going for the university textbook complexity, having it spelled out in a few pages is a good thing.

  Of course, one cannot commonly create a truly deep set of game rules in a few pages. And there is no way the game will compromise its depth and quality to simplify it. Luckily, there is a third way, and that is an introduction-level version of the game. It is already being prepared, and some main features include no Background/Specifics on Abilities, only the simplified Disabilities, and a very simplified conflict system. Transition from 'game light' to 'game original' is fairly easy, and will be a boost to characters in most, if not all, regards; adding Specifics to the Abilities you already have is only an improvement in what the character can do, after all!

  What this is meant for is to get people going on the game, without mashing deep philosophies of detail into their faces. Many games today seem to either call a 'my way or the highway' mentality on players, forcing them to accept complex rules as they are and just learn to deal, or deliberately make rules so simple they lack fulfilling detail (in this long-time player's humble opinion). Having an easy version of the game seems a good middle road, one that a few games have already dared to venture.

  Of course, this is not just about having a stripped-down version of the game. The goal is two-fold: Having the stripped-down version available for free for easy access and quick examination, perhaps even for use as-is, and also having actual books that encompass everything needed in one, easy-to-use book. that means a complete game, with the rules, a setting and at least one full adventure. One simple book to get a new group started playing. Short versions may even be available for free (short separate adventures, not unended versions of the longer ones). This is a quick easy and cheap way to get into a new game, and it sets the players up to learn the more complex rules that much easier.

  :: Immediate Roadmap ::

  Some of all this is far ahead. Some of it is on the horizon. The important thing becomes how to proceed now. The core game is taking place, and tests are giving good results, especially with the changes that will be implemented in the second draft. There are still glaring omissions, but they are known omissions, and the scaffolding is coming into place for them.

  This production log will continue to hold personal rants on things intended for the game, from the concrete things already in testing to ideal ones still not quite polished to perfection. But it is my hope that things will begin to focus a little more on practical implementation and second (and later) draft content. Once the core mechanics are in place, the things desired can build upon them, and so forth. This includes both rules, non-rule material (of which there will be plenty!), and the overall identity of the game. It will also soon begin to include more concrete examples of settings, advanced abilities, and what else has been promised.

  For now, the second draft is the key, and it will be written ASAP.

 


.::: Entry 16, 2009/10/31 :::.

  However basic it might seem, one thing I have found again and again is that players love bonuses. The idea that something, anything, boosts your character's ability at doing something is very appealing, and often motivates players to venture farther and further than they otherwise would. I have already discussed some ways to promote style in games, back in Entry 4, ways that include awarding points for doing things that match the style. Character growth, as discussed in Entry 5, takes in the classical XP concept, the idea that points used in character improvement come from actions during the game. But the concept of points is very flexible.

  The idea of booster points, or simply 'boosters', is nothing new in RPGs. Abilities, items, even deeds, allegiances or other less tangible things have provided boosts in various games. 'Metagame' boosters, meaning booster points that do not represent anything in the game world at all, have also been seen before. The basic idea is that each player has a portion of points that can be used to boost a character ability or other good thing in a tight spot. At their simplest, a booster works by each spent point giving a +1 on an ability for a single deed or short space of time.

  Rationing booster points thus become a big deal in these games, and the way they are handed to the players will determine a lot about how those players play the game. Awarding them for certain deeds will push the game towards those deeds, while awarding them at specific intervals (either in the game world (like one point per day the characters go through) or in the real world (like one point per session that the game is played)) will make them something to watch carefully. Whether they can be hoarded or need to be spent to make room for new points also affects things greatly.

  :: Basic Mechanics ::

  The standard mechanic of a booster is to let a player spend points to add a bonus to some ability during the game. Thus, spending 8 booster points adds +8 to some ability for an action or a period defined in advance. One variation is when the boost is required to use the ability at all; only when points are spent will it work, and the rest of the time, the character just needs to work with whatever else is available. This works best with very special abilities. The two main versions are '1 point, one use' and '1 point, 1 level'. The former means that the character has the ability, at some predefined level, all the time. It just cannot be used without spending one such point. The other version means that the character probably does not have, and cannot have, the ability separately. The amount of points define the level of the ability, for that one use (or period) only!

  :: Game Boosters ::

  The highest thematic level of boosters are those that are meant to affect the game as a whole. They may be given at the beginning of an adventure or a session, or they may even be fixed at character creation; when spent, they are gone!

  A game booster is meant for very special situations, like when the character(s) is in a bind or when something great is at stake, possibly the happy end of the entire adventure. The purpose for them is to be scarce, to be something that has to be considered carefully before use. More often than not, they will tip a/the scale in the adventure.

  This sort of booster is rarely explained in terms of the actual game world; it exists because it benefits the game (it's a so-called 'metagame trait'). Restrictions may apply to its use, often based either on the type of game run or the type of character the player has. Such restrictions will most likely be on what it can be used for, but it might also be in the form of consequences beyond having spent the point. For example, every point spent might make the gods less likely to heed the character's call, if that fits the game.

  :: Risky Boosters ::

  An interesting twist on the above booster points is the idea that the players actually do not know their number of points at the start, probably due to some random element in deciding the number (if there is a system, the average players in an extended campaign will soon figure it out). The risk involved is that the players may suddenly try to spend one or more points... and there are none left! In a dire situation, that could be quite bad. Alternately, spending points when there are none left might even provoke a punishment, like the intended bonus becoming a penalty, or some components of the game world turning against the characters; overspending might attract evil spirits, bad luck, or even such concrete things as the wrath of your boss (in such cases, there should probably be a rational connection between the points and the aforementioned boss, or it will just be, well, silly).

  There are several reasons risky boosters can be interesting in a game. Firstly, it will make players wary about spending points, even when they know they have them. The idea that they do not know when they will run out promotes careful use, since every point spent is another push towards an unseen catastrophe. Calculation in boosters thus all but goes straight out the window, making it suspenseful nearly every time. Players will learn to rely on their characters' abilities, and only draw on points when things are really dark. Or maybe not even there; if spending a point risks disaster, maybe they will only spend them when they feel they can get out of any disaster coming! Every player might have his or her own philosophy on spending points, because it's suddenly about nerve and evaluation your situation.

  :: Earned Boosters ::

  Rather than just handing out X amount of booster points at regular intervals, the game can include ways for players to actively earn the points during play. The idea of awarded points has been considered in Entry 5 for the purpose of character growth, but similar methods can be used for earning booster points for later use. Having the method of earning them be doing something that matches the genre or promotes the game allows the GM to encourage certain behaviors or goals for the adventure.

  Earned boosters can quickly dominate a game. The more important they are for success, the more players are likely to strive to earn them. How good a thing that is depends on the game and the players. If they are important the game basically becomes about earning them more than anything else, and the fewer things will earn points, the fewer things the players will be doing. Less importance on points will make them a thing worthy of considerations but in the end weighed against so many other things, and a wider variety of ways to earn them will widen the amount of things that characters do to obtain them.

  One option is to make the methods of earning points character-centric. This works best if the ways of earning them are tied to the kind of character played. For example, a warrior might earn them for brave fights, while a religious person might earn it for doing good (or evil!) work. This can help define characters, not just by what he can do but what the players will want to be doing. Assuming that the point earning methods are chosen as part of character creation, players can pick the kind of play they wish to support.

  I like this method. The idea of promoting the concepts intended in characters matches up with my aims for the game, and adding details to actions by letting them enhance other action sounds good. My one worry is the method of implementation, as every ability can't be made a booster ability.

  One other option is to have the earning of booster points come from less controlled events during the adventures. Successes in certain deeds, or even failures, can trigger the earning of points. This offers some options for the implementation, since the point-earning abilities need not be purchased directly. The technical aspects of it still elude me somewhat, though.

  :: Situational Boosters ::

  The final option that comes to mind is to let points be earned by circumstances that characters are pulled into. Like earned points, the circumstances can be universal (every character gets points for the same things) or individual (what a character gets points for depends on the character). This can be used to heighten the intensity of certain situations in much the same way that the standard earned points can heighten the value of certain deeds. Situational booster points can thus improve the storytelling value of scenes, which fits my idea of how I would like to see the game. It can be used, for example, to make powerful emotions stand out, offering a boost when characters are angry or frightened or even exhilarated. Booster drugs or potions are a standard concept in sci-fi and fantasy, but situations may act the same.

  Using situational booster points brings up the question of not only what they can be used for, but how long they are available. The situations may be the period for use, as well, or the idea of situations might not be as plausible. If the situation is, say, being angry, it only makes sense that the points must be spent while still angry. Adding the option that unused points may slowly decay as the situation evaporates might be worth considering, but even without it, there is the motivation that the player will simply spend the points when he or she sees the situation run out. This allows for some explosive ends to the situations.

  Again, the problem becomes implementation. The trouble of adding earned booster points to a character is not diminished by the boosters being based on situations. The big problem is whether or not situational booster points are a good or a bad thing, since some will require the character to get into bad situations to be of use. If they even require something bad to happen directly ot the character, such as injury or broken will, it only makes the positive versus negative issue harder to judge.

  In spite of the challenges in implementing these booster points, I feel that they will add enough to the game to define one or more methods to make them a part of the game, though possibly optional.

 


.::: Entry 15, 2009/10/30 :::.

  With the fairly general topics I have been chewing on these last two weeks, it might be time to take a look at something a little more concrete. While I am still not anywhere near being able to put together functional rules for everything, I am able to consider actual game content examples in light of what I have already thought over in the first 14 entries.

  Incidentally, the following considerations will probably look a lot like what one might find in genre books for other games. This is, of course, no surprise, since such books ask similar questions. What is important here is to explore similar ideas within the framework of what I have already written in previous entries, and what my further thoughts for the game are. Looking at genres at this early stage allows me to check for obvious holes in my concepts.

  :: Styles ::

  Style has already been handled in general in Entry 4, with ideas on what rules can do in keeping track of important or dramatic concepts, and the idea of rewards for adhering to the style of the game. But beyond that, style is a matter of what is available in the game world; action and violence is signified by a game world full of weapons and a lot of detail on conflicts like combat, chases and the like. Details on explosions are also a good idea. A style emphasizing conspiracies and intrigue will be heavy on organizations in both number and detail.

  But how will a game system reflect that?

  The easy answer is 'detailed rules', but that is not really enough at this point. I want to put the answer in the perspective of what has already been described as my early thoughts on the game. So 'detailed conflicts/combat' would mean multiple 'extended hit points' (Entry 11) and Specifics for weapons abilities (Entry 3). Explosions would probably be related to gear (Entry 8 & 9), with descriptions of what explodes and when, and with some of those extended hit points to see the effects on characters. Something on how big explosions affect places (Entry 13) would also be good, to see if other things blow up from them (boom goes the armory, or gas station, or...). Style points of some sort may be involved, or some other Style concept to emulate the wild things that happen in action movie explosions. As for organizations, Entry 12 is all about them, and resources, structures and the like would be in great demand, especially as relates directly to the characters.

  But even those are just minor examples. The concept can be expanded, like something based on psionic battles requiring something like what was just described for regular combat, only molded for psionics. As for genres, well...

  :: Fantasy ::

  The grand old daddy of roleplaying, based loosely on Tolkiensian fantasy fiction. It is impossible to do fantasy without looking closely at magic, of course, and that brings in both abilities (for spells of all sorts) and gear (for enchanted items). The difficult trick concerning magic is that there are no hard and fast rules for how it works, and thus it leaves everything up to the designer (me) to determine. On the positive side, that means I can utilize available rules as I see fit.

  What I am aiming for is to reproduce the idea that magic is a complex and demanding craft. Small spell components, as in learning very simple spells before going on to anything more dramatic, is my basic idea, as is the thought of having certain abilities improve on spells rather than be entirely new and separate spells. And as things are now, that is pretty well covered in the abilities entry (Entry 3). The existing ideas surrounding talents can be brought in to simulate deeper knowledge of magic, and 'alternate hit points' open up a range of ways mages can fuel their powers if they need to. I do envision magic as not one canonical system, but as a framework of spells and effects (and the aforementioned improving abilities) that can be reassembled, with a few complete systems of spells pre-made for use.

  Magical artifacts can basically be handled as any advanced gear. The bonds between character and gear, even if highly magical in nature, is probably part of character creation more than item, though the actual magic used may require explanation as spells or the like. Brands and compatibility is largely the same as for other gear; some creations are made to work together, some are not, and it might depend on who made them. What interests me most amongst the subjects in Entry 8 and 9 and magical items is really the modding. Gadgets have all kinds of modification gear available, but magical items may have some strange things. This is especially true when they have to interact with other fantasy elements, like dragons and ghosts. Maybe your ruby sphere will strike down water elementals, but how can it be made to react with a rain demon?? Such mods may be about additional items, like gadgets so often are, or it might be about new spells enchanted into the item (a little like updating your gadget's software, I guess).

  There are no doubt many other elements of magic worth a look, but I now feel confident that the basics can be covered with ideas already on the table, or ideas that can be made from what exists. Another topic is races. Elves, dwarves, orcs and the like are integral to the fantasy experience, at least the traditional one. How does the game allow races to be considered unique beings?

  The easy answer is abilities and disabilities given to a race from start. Arguably, other characters can copy those things and make a member that is very like that particular race. Very unusual, perhaps even unique, abilities and especially disabilities may void that, giving elves access to some unusual phobias or forest abilities, for example. Organizations are even more useful in depicting a gulf between races, as it would take some serious explaining to get a human inside an old Elven circle of enchanters! Gear and animals, especially magical or exotic ones, can also have a special affinity for one race over the other. I would like to find a fairly straight forward way of making races special already at abilities and disabilities, though.

  :: Deep Space ::

  Arguably a bit of a leap from fantasy, this is the genre of traveling to other planets, of space stations and gigantic starships, whether it is near-hard science fiction or space opera. The funny thing is that many elements of it are conceptually similar to fantasy: Alien races, amazing gadgets (sometimes of ancient, poorly understood origins), even the occasional monster. Robots add to the mix (possibly substituting magically created creatures), as do disembodied artificial intelligences (spirits?).

  Life in space is the big difference, and to make it stand out, many ideas of locations can be used. The way gear functions differently in such places, and what gear and actions are even tolerable, can make things very interesting! Also, the line between locations and gear become blurry if life support or technical systems suddenly become important to an adventure, like when a vessel is dead in space and the characters need a way to survive until they can get rescued!

  But many stranger things exist in deep space fiction, worth considering. Nanotechnology, force fields, plasma 'swords', many vehicles (in space and on a planet), and so forth. The thoughts on gear provide some material for these, but some will need special treatment (nanotech might resemble magic more than gadgets!). That treatment seems, from my current point of view, to be in the extent of details, not the type. What has been discussed should cover it, in terms of game mechanics.

  :: Cyberpunk ::

  The genre of high-tech dystopian futures has quite a few things that deserve special attention. The two most influential ones are cybernetics and hacking. Cybernetics will probably draw some on gear, but they are still part of the character's body, and a subsystem of simple rules should be available to mimic that. Brands are a hot topic in the genre, and different makes will definitely exist, with different effects! Consequences for the body and mind are also interesting to examine, especially if genetic manipulation is added to the mix.

  Hacking, especially in cyberpunk, is a whole field for itself. At its core, it would be another type of conflict, a cyberspace version of combat, complete with moves and weapons based on software. It would probably be different in its various incarnations, the two most typical ones being the hacker sitting with a keyboard or other computer interface, and the full virtual reality version popular with movies. But more than a 'computer combat conflict system', hacking in both/all its forms would probably be a world within the world, with things to be encountered and computer systems to be scoped out before approach. Meeting places, public and private information systems and much more would make it more than just the hack itself, and the creation of software to assist the hacker would parallel the creation and modding of gear. Hacking, if taken serious in the game, would be a wide field onto itself. The tools to recreate it, in vivid detail, seem to be already thought of, though.

  Needless to say (but I will, anyway), the archetypical corporations of cyberpunk are prime subjects for the organization treatment, complete with internal conflicts and hidden agendas.

  :: Mecha ::

  A relatively new genre gaining popularity, mecha is the world of insanely powerful gear in the form of robots and exosuits and the like. It is all (usually) still powered by humans or other sentient pilots, but personal abilities are outshone by abilities to use these mecha. Most mecha games are at least partially military, but mecha police or even comical mecha high school dramas are also popular.

  The key to the genre is the mecha itself, and it falls squarely in the category of gear. Some of it might be advanced enough to seem like magic (some mecha stories have really strange technologies, or a big psionic component), but it is still gear at its core, technological marvels for people to use against other people. As such, the rules needed to bring mecha to life in a game would be the things in gears, from the functions and problems of various mecha, to the abilities involved in handling them. Both these subjects, and various lesser ones, need extensive detail. With the appearance of prototypes and themes like 'old tech vs. new tech' featuring prominently in mecha stories, bonds may also come in.

  Anyone wanting to take the mecha genre into more advanced territory (something gaining cyclic interest amongst the fans of the stories) can add social issues to the brew. Organizations will be the ones with the resources and the challenges needed to warrant mecha production and purchases, and anyone wanting to go beyond the field clashes and personal troubles of mecha pilots and their friends will need to look at organizations. Mercenary or rebel units are strong examples of this, but someone just wanting to play the center stage to acquire new and better mecha or influence the spread of technology or the kind of things the machines are used for, would be facing powerful industrial, political, corporate, military and perhaps even popular or religious organizations, all depending on how the world around the mecha concept is put together.

  :: Apocalyptic ::

  Whether played in The End Days (call it what you will; the disaster, the apocalypse, the plagues, the final war. It is when the world finally burns) or some time after, this genre deals with the world as we know it, or some other world we can imagine, being destroyed. The theme becomes survival and, in the more optimistic cases, rebuilding.

  One thing becomes instantly important in this genre: Repairing gear. The world is in pieces, so putting junk together into working gear becomes a prime ability. It would need extensive rules on not just gear but gear components to simulate that properly, as well as the abilities involved in using it. This is a sub-concept of gear that has only been touched upon slightly in Entry 9, about gear condition, maintenance and repair. Significant extension on it would be needed, and perhaps even a few added rules building blocks. In a way, this could be an addition worth using beyond the genre, too, as cyberpunk techheads patch together their own gear from scrounged parts, or experimental enchantments. It could be considered an extreme variant of modding, just to give it something to lean on until it has a full concept of its own!

  Another apocalyptic darling is mutation, typically from radiation or disease. While mutations are a very real thing, the genre has a tendency to view them rather unrealistically, making them a twist on superpowers. The typical mutant is deformed but has strange abilities as a kind of compensation. The balance between deformity and power often sets the tone of mutations in the game, from severe skin conditions compensated by near-godly powers, to painful illnesses closely tied to heightened senses or enhanced digestion (the latter being very handy in a world with no supermarkets).

  Mutations are going to be a combination of abilities and disabilities, most likely. Disabilities may have to be extended with some examples to handle certain mutation effects, such as unintentionally scaring people, but painful sensitivity to different things and mental problems can already be handled. The abilities aspect will rely on abilities being designed that are not just trained skills but something more genetic. Such abilities already need attention in other genres, to create different races. The big problem is tying these things together, to create mutations where there is a powerful relation between the disabilities and abilities! This has not really been considered yet, and it could easily be of use outside the genre, as well (malfunctioning cybernetics, psychotic characters, complex curses, etc.)

  The part about rebuilding, as well as whatever fights are going on for the destroyed world, would fall into organizations if needing great detail.

  :: Horror ::

  The genre of horror has diversified over the years, and today there seem to be three major veins: Kingsian/Cravenesque, Lovecraftian, and Gothic.

  Kingsian/Cranesque horror, named from novel and movie writers Stephen King and Wes Craven, are typically about some monster or monster-like phenomenon that threatens the main characters. They may have gone looking for trouble (perhaps even professionally), or be hapless victims drawn into it. But they end up trying to understand the monster, in order to destroy or deter it. Sometimes, there is a moral tale involved (don't build on Indian graveyards, for example), but that is more common in fiction than in games.

  Lovecraftian horror, named for the writer H.P. Lovecraft, is far less rigidly structured, and an essential part of it is that the main characters will rarely ever get the fullpicture. Monsters exist, but they are vast and incomprehensible, and the maddening effects of their mere existence is typically the story, rather than the monsters themselves. Ancient mysteries and insane cults dominate the immediate scene, and the story is told through their actions.

  Gothic horror is fairly new as a sub-genre. It takes the main characters and involve them, often very emotionally, in the life of the 'monsters'. Quite often, they actually play the monsters, seeing the world from that side! The feeling of isolation and shunning by society at large and the torments that are inherent in the life of their particular kind of monster, typically compounded by harsh societies of their own, make it an exploration of 'the dark side' of an already dark genre.

  Since horror is where the Sanity mechanic that has inspired several of the advanced rules here came from, it is no surprise that this method will be a big part of making horror come to life. Other than going insane, risks involve pain, general fear, slow injuries and bleeding, and even less concrete topics like dark powers and magical or psionic energies slowly affecting the characters. All of this can build on the idea of 'alternate hit points', which drain slowly and painfully.

  A second angle is the monsters themselves. In Kingsian/Cravenesque horror, they can be considered advanced (or not even advanced) animals a great deal of the time. Actual characters as monsters are possible, but the immediate confrontations will typically be with the animal-type monsters. The exception is usually slasher-horror, in which one or a few powerful monsters, fully sentient but horribly warped (mentally and/or physically) stalk and torment the characters, to kill them or someone they protect. The entries on animals and, to a lesser extend, abilities are useful, but I still need something on alien mindsets. Mental disabilities are a start, but more is needed to make a full impact.

  The monsters in Gothic horror need very special attention, since the whole point of the genre is to experience their torments. Abilities are important for the immediate game, but organizations need some detail to put the monsters into a greater context of monsters. The mindsets described above will need even greater detail, because players will now need to know how to act upon them. Using various 'alternate hit points' to indicate what is tormenting them and how badly gives a running guideline for it, but the focus has to be on continual effects, not just what happens when the points run out. Other things are as important as in other genres, perhaps with some emphasis on the mythology (anicent artifacts, secret tomes, etc.) of the monsters.

  :: Supers ::

  Nothing really prevents the basic elements of the game as they are now to be used to create powerful abilities. Abilities to affect those abilities can be an interesting addition, which has not been considered much yet (for example, being able to fire blazing discs, and then use another ability to make them bounce off walls or fly around corners). Disabilities already exist to emulate the powerful Achilles Heels that are commonplace in comicbooks, and some elements exist on gear that can be used for super-gear, most notably 'perfect fit'.

  What is still lacking is a way to make the actual conflicts in the genre as earthshattering as they are usually supposed to be. Collateral damage, endangered bystanders, and other classics of the genre are still left to the imagination, when perfectly usable guidelines could be made. 'Mega-damage', as experienced between gigantic monsters, doomsday tanks and the like would probably be an extension of combat conflict, but the effects of conflicts beyond those involved is still an empty page.

  More complicated samples of the genre also put a lot of unusual detail into the backstory of the super abilities, and by extension that often affects the complexity of (some of) the characters that have them. This can easily become a complex combination of either the concepts considered in fantasy for magic and the needs for creating original new races, or a combination of very complex gear and those same races. Because such cases are typically about how origins, abilities, gear and social situation (and perhaps even more!) are intrinsically linked and co-dependent, it operates at a level of complexity that cannot be predicted with the material currently available. When more concrete detail exists, that field of work will have to be revisited.

  :: The Missing Pieces ::

  There are plenty more genres, from the realistic war drama or detective story to the fantastic steampunk adventure, but the major hitters are the ones above. While this entry has in no way provided a roadmap to recreating them, and definitely not in the detail intended, this way of reviewing what has been considered already is good to see where pieces are missing and work needs to be done (or rather, thoughts need to be thought).

  Races are the big, glaring hole. Character creation has all that is needed to make interesting characters, but there is little to make a race stand out, aside from some abilities that can be racially unique. Special options include organizations and gear that is tied specifically to that race. This will handle races that resemble humans, but I have to admit that I am a bit more ambitious than that. That includes not just physiologies, but also the alien mindset.

  I will need something to make the process of creating a race a bigger deal than making just a new kind of character.

  Furthermore, the genre check has brought my thoughts to something I have left out of the gear entries: Faulty gear! Apart from compatibility issues and general condition, I have not addressed the idea of gear having problems, be it from damage, age and poor maintenance, or just factory flaws. Luckily, it is something I have dealt with already in TAYDS, to some degree, and I should be able to port over the basics.

 


.::: Entry 14, 2009/10/28 :::.

  Back when I was writing about gear, my thought was that animals were basically gear. They serve a purpose, helping a character get somewhere or, in more advanced cases, fight by the character's side or helps do things the character would not be able to or want to do. They were tools to be used by the character.

  When I started writing about social issues, my thoughts jumped to animals again, every now and then, remembering the close bonds between many notable animals and their masters in stories I know, from the lovable sidekick to the faithful steed. Animals were companions to characters, not tools. They were able to act on their own and in the master's interests.

  And then as locations became the topic, I started to see animals as part of places, as the beasts living in the wild, the guardians of places, the monsters in the dungeon. These were a different type of beasts altogether, the kind that were obstacles and dangers to the characters, not the ones trusted by their sides.

  The only conclusion I can draw is that, deep down, I view animals as all of that, and yet neither.

  :: The Mind of the Beast ::

  What puts animals in such an odd place, adventure- and story-wise, is probably the way they are living beings but not persons in the sense that a character is. At times, the distinction between primitive characters and smart beasts gets blurred for that very reason, and in many fairytales, creatures that we would today interpret as primitive or unintelligent people were actually seen as little more than beasts. Trolls, gremlins, goblins, orcs, all of them seem to be only 'people' based on their ability to walk on two legs and handle tools.

  The best distinction I can offer up for what is an animal and what is not has to be that: Behavior built around using tools. True, a clever animal can learn to push some clumsy buttons or open doors, but they are not built for it, and it is not their typical way. They do not understand tools as 'real people' do. They also do not speak, at least not in a complex language that allows anyone to explain the tools to them. Some will accept basic commands, but conversations are going to be rather one-sided!

  And that is where the tool comparison comes into play, the fact that animals cannot be communed with on a peron-to-person level. But they are still independent, and can decide for themselves what they do. That is what is companions in them, the ability to act on their own and, to some extend, understand their surroundings and even place in them. The tie to places comes when they are not tied to a master, but pick a place to dwell. The traditional dungeon inhabitant is a bit far fetched for my taste, but creatures living in caves or alleys are nothing out of the plausible, and supernatural beasts may live in the oddest of places.

  For a game that takes animals serious on any level (humor can still take them more seriously than old school dungeon adventures do!), the instincts that guide them must be a fundamental piece in their roles. And if it is so important, I feel it is what should be explored, more than how long their claws or how thick their hides are!

  In the most basic sense, animals are survival machines: They do whatever they do as a way to ensure the survival of themselves and, sometimes, their offspring. Animals doing someone's bidding do it from being used to rewards or punishments, or some combination thereof. The old advice that animals in the wild attack only to defend themselves (most animals attack only smaller prey for food) is not entirely untrue, the problem is only what they see as threats! A single person might not seem threatening, while a group would. Someone walking around an area far from the animal's den might seem harmless, while some poor fool walking to the wrong cave would be an instant enemy.

  But in a RPG, it can be taken even further! A deathhound might not pay much attention to the group of people walking through its woods, until they use magic. Then, it will kill anyone displaying signs of magic, the idea being that its nature is to fear magic! In a similar manner, feral dogs in a ruin city might only growl at strangers, until they try to pick up a dead body (presumably for examination, plunder, or something in that vein). Seeing the intruders as rivals for their food, the dogs attack!

  On the other hand, animals do not know the world as intelligent people do, or see it in the same way. A loud noise can scare a dangerous beast away, after all. Different animals have different reactions like that, some running away from rumbling engines or puffing hydraulics, others possessed by a strange interest. Pack rats and certain birds are attracted to shiny things, and cats will sleep on anything warm (like computers. Or engine hoods). Animals may seek out the strangest things, to the annoyance or benefit of those who actually know what it is.

  The basics of using animals thus becomes an idea of what they fear, defend, seek and in other instinctive ways react to. That alone can make an animal immensely interesting, a pain, a running gag, or a useful observation. And it goes for monsters and wildlife as much as it goes for companions! The mighty wolf that a character has at his side might be a feared creature, and nobody would approach the character without the animal's consent. But a place with certain smells, perhaps not even notable to humans, would keep it away, even if its master enters. Meanwhile, the demon bunny that can smell ghosts has a bad habit of darting off whenever it gets a scent of spicy cooking. Not that it fears it. It loves it! Which causes great problems at Cajun cook-offs the characters visit...

  :: What Nature Gave Them ::

  One result of being without the ability to use tools is that animals are greatly defined by their natural abilities. Most games fixate heavily on fighting abilities, which in their own right can be both impressive and exotic, from spikes and spitting darts or venoms to sending out horrific smells or whipping up small dust clouds. And that's just what real animals can do!

  But animals are so much more. Bloodhounds are a common idea in the real world, and having animals track other things (pigs finding troffels, for example, or insects actually being trained to find and eat drug-producing plants!) can give some interesting results, especially in more esoteric game worlds.

  Combining this with animal behavior can make them part of an arms race, either side trying to make the animals of the other useless, no matter what the central conflict is; drug-sniffing dogs are one example of a fearful arms race! But when things are less controlled, it also makes for some interesting adventure opportunities, when animals run off to do what they are basically trained to do, at the most inopportune moment. A fierce steed and companion might suddenly tear through a small town to hunt down some other beast that it is used to protect its master against, or happily scare everybody just because it has caught the scent of something it likes! This lets animals take an interesting part in adventures, becoming the somewhat unpredictable assets that have useful abilities, but are impossible to get a clear fox on the mind of. They can be seen as highly capable characters with (possibly unique) abilities but no ability to simply inform people of what the hell they are doing!

  But just as much, animal abilities can creep out, surprise, amuse or confuse people. Certain real-world birds, for example, survive by mimicking the sounds of things in their environment. This lets them attract food or scare predators. It also lets them confuse tourists, when a bird suddenly and perfectly mimics a cell phone or the sounds it caught by a lumber camp! This minor incident might be good for only a short laugh, but if the animal starts following the characters, and suddenly gives off sounds that are of a more sinister nature, it turns into a living and very hard-to-handle clue, or even an omen! Other animals may attract attention by how they react to the characters themselves, to their gear, or any animals traveling with them. Of course, the most disturbing case is when players begin to suspect that what seems like a dumb beast is capable of some level of plotting, and is not playing their game. Some animals survive by luring the inattentive into an ambush, or worse...

  :: Proper Usage ::

  No, I am not insinuating that animals have one specific way they should be used in games. But animals do require an understanding by the characters, or they will be more trouble than good. Even a horse takes some knowledge to handle properly, or it will kick you and run off. More complex animals may require more complex handling, and being the kind of character capable of handling them can be a great boon!

  This might be one of the few places where rules specifically needed for animals come into play. The abilities animals have need not be any different from character abilities, whether they be for fighting, tracking, avoiding or otherwise handling things. But for a character to make use of an animal, or be able to solve whatever problems the animal might cause, that character will need abilities. And animal handling can quickly become complex; a beast that is by your side might need attention, or its loyalty will fade. It could even end up turning against you! In a sense, a beast's loyalty, calm, restraint or any other factor in its behavior could be measured as closely as its hit points, and when a factor drops low enough, the beast becomes a burden or a danger. Riders know this just as much as lion tamers. The proper skills and resources can keep that from happening, be it feeding, petting, or keeping things around the animal from getting outside its comfort zone. Add to that the idea of training an animal, teaching it to not act on its instincts (not chase smaller animals or run from loud noises, for example) becomes another factor. Animals that are hard to train can become continued projects for characters who want them for the good they can do anyway. And knowing how to trick animals (and how not to!) is always practical.

  Having the idea of animal complexity enter a game will not only make it interesting to have a lot of variation in the abilities that characters use to handle the animals, it will also make it more important for players themselves to understand how animals work. A player expecting any animal to either flee or fight a character would be very confused when small animals start trying to eat through the character's backpack, spit smelly fluids in his face, or bring him strange fruits to eat that make him sick. Knowing how to act around such beings will be a little like handling a strange culture, and the characters may end up trying to actually trade things with playful monkeys or convince wildlife to lead them places. The animals are not intelligent in the way people are, but knowing how to interact with them can give just as interesting results.

  :: Bonds ::

  The idea that an animal is a living being can be a powerful element, even in a completely fictional game. Again, animals fall somewhere between tools and characters, in that they can feel both practical and friendly at the same time. The big, dumb beast that nonetheless protected you from bandits can become a trusted ally.

  This opens the possibility of string ties between animals and their masters, companions or whatever the characters can be seen as. This means a character can be designed to care about the animal, protecting it in return, having an almost personal relationship to it, as much as to any other traveling companion. An animal like that which gets hurt can become a priority for the character, important enough to abandon other tasks or even threaten people for. And someone who threatens the animal, even when it is unhurt, can become a mortal enemy. Perhaps in part because they are not fully sentient and self-aware people, animals can become powerful extensions of a character, a friend that is loyal to the character without needing to have a full life and social circles of its own. A 'simple friend', so to speak, and perhaps that much more pure for it.

  Having animal companions become vulnerable parts of a character is an important thought to consider hen they become greater elements of a game. This is not to mean that animals become the way that a strong character can be humbled, but rather a way in which the character can be tied to the world. If the animal has certain feelings about people and places, the character (and thus, the player) suddenly has to take them serious. This could mean avoiding or sticking to places, doing or not doing certain things, even interacting more or less with certain other people in the world. And animals with a past that the character doe snot know can be mysteries walking right by their side, the signs of which can be many. It might even culminate at some point, as whoever tormented or loved the animal appears, or some event in its past becomes clear.

  :: The Other Beasts ::

  In all of the above, the idea of an 'animal' has been a typical, flesh-and-bone creature, not unlike the animals we know from our own world. But the idea of animals can be extended beyond that, to things we would not typically think of as animals, but which can act and mean just about the same. A simple example is robots, which at some point in the future may become advanced enough to behave almost like a separate breed of animals. In the right setting, a character might rely on intelligent drones with simplistic minds and odd operational protocols of their own. they are not animals, but when they start doing things they are not asked to and both care for their owner and cause trouble, the distinction can become blurred. Artificial intelligences living inside computers and computerized equipment could become the parrot on the pirate's shoulder or the dog at the wanderer's side. Faulty intelligences, in particular, could develop some funny mentalities, and some of those may actually be marketed as regular gear!

  Some of them might even speak, the limited intelligence making conversations as disturbing as they are practical, or perhaps even more so...

  And there are plenty of other possibilities, such as intangible spirits following a character around, dealing with magical events and things in their surroundings, or lesser divinities that are primitive enough to act like animals might. Ghosts may deteriorate, becoming more animalistic over time, or humans may take that path after disastrous diseases are unleashed on the world. Alien or very futuristic gear might actually be organic, with the animal mentality being simply an inescapable or somehow even practical part of the design. Some important elements of society can be naturally animalistic; the first natural portals between the stars ('jumpgates') may seem oddly alive, and be best handled as if animals. If such effects can function on a personal level, important people may be followed around by little jumpgates or the like with minds of their own! Depending on what is found around the cosmos, how things develop, or how a completely different world is designed, the idea of 'animal' could permeate everything that characters deal with, from the smallest gadget to the greatest city.

 


.::: Entry 13, 2009/10/27 :::.

  Most of the things I have looked at over the last twelve entries have been things that are inherent to RPGs, or at least found in many of them. One subject that is much less touched upon is locations. True, maps are a staple of gaming, from the little overview maps of a tavern or the main street in a western shootout to dungeons larger than medium-sized cities! But maps are a very poor representation of locations for anything except knowing where in them you are.

  Taking a location beyond merely a map allows the GM to define in depth how it affects an adventure. Factories are an old favorite of mine, complex and busy places with multitudes of chances to injure yourself or others, send heavy machinery spiraling out of control, things falling, breaking, even the occasional explosion. They are chaotic places, and conveying that chaos to players is a beautiful thing.

  But one factory is not the same as the other, even if maps are ignored. Heavy machinery vs. sterile rooms, dirt vs. clean, people vs. automatic, chemicals vs. solid tools vs. lasers, etc. Anyone who has spent time in different factories will know that they give off different atmospheres and present seriously different challenges. Some are no challenge at all. Some are akin to the Minotaur's Maze.

  Ideally, any larger location, and many small ones, should be interesting enough that a full adventure could be run there. Anything larger than an apartment building should have enough opportunities to build a full campaign around!

  :: Places & People ::

  No, I am not referring to what people exist in a place, though that is a factor, too (discussed later here!). I am referring to how places are fit or unfit for people. And when I say 'how' and not 'whether', there is a reason for it! One reason I have a special thing for factories is that they blend so much together. In this case, there are the clearly marked and safety inspected paths for people to travel in, areas marked off for technicians and specialists (who know how to act safely there!), special paths for special teams, places not meant for humans in general (vents, shafts and many other places players are no doubt going to see as perfect ways to get in. They may be right. Or wrong), outright hazardous areas (dangerous machines, toxic fumes, etc.) and so on. How 'fit' a factory is for humans often depends on exactly where you are in it, and the definition of 'fit' changes from carefree to hardhat to full safety gear to just don't go there.

  Of course, factories in other times or just different regions are different, and that alone can make the place stand out. The clear safety markings may not be there, or rules are enforced by someone with a big gun. In some places, everyone is a specialist, not because they have special education but because it takes skill just to get around. Oil rigs in certain parts of the world are death traps, and poorly kept facilities are... interesting. And while factories are prime examples, anything can really go that way, from the servant quarters in a castle in the Dark Ages to hazardous interstates in a future of massive overpopulation and a fetish for fast vehicles!

  This all makes for ways that characters can integrate with places: Knowing how to act around them. Knowing what goes and what does not in a starport bazaar gives you an advantage, something thieves and lowlifes constantly thrive on. Tricking someone into an area you can handle but they cannot can be as effective as any armed ambush! Thus, building a character around the idea that the character knows certain kinds of places well opens for opportunities to truly use the landscape to your advantage, or to end up in very dangerous territory, right in the middle of a normal town.

  Flipping the subject on its head, people also become a depiction of the places they spend their time. Someone used to dirt and dust will not be scared of filth, whereas someone who has never set foot outside clean homes and hotels will probably be somewhat interested in appearances. Danger, noise, crowds, unsafe grounds and so forth all turn people into something that fits the places, or they perish (which need not mean 'they die', but simply 'they leave' or the like).

  :: Enemy of the Estate ::

  Of course, one good reason to be nervous about a location is if it is actually built to keep people out, or in, or to simply kill whoever comes by; fortresses, secure compounds, prisons, minefields, there are a whole host of possibilities in just our basic, real world. Such a place becomes the equivalent of a massive monster, often with mazes and all sorts of problems built right into it. The dungeon runs that are so integral to some game systems work because a large and inhospitable place screams adventure, but dungeons are far from the only options for that effect; intrusions, prison breaks, getting through places, there are endless options for making the location the challenge.

  This poses the overall question of how not only people handle places, but how places handle people? Any advanced methods, from clever mechanics and hidden key mechanisms to guardian spells and sentient buildings can be made to interact on their own with those in and around them. While a security system is typically represented as something meant to just keep people out, that is not what it really is: It is meant to keep certain people out, and let certain people in. How it sorts them can wary greatly, and might include a human (or similar sentient) operator somewhere, possibly but not necessarily on the grounds.

  And taking that a step further comes the question of how a location will handle people unknown and unexpected, perhaps people it has no way to know how to react to. The Frankenstein monster concept can translate to a location quite easily.

  If a location is complex enough, it can require handling in a way not unlike a person; it can have its quirks and preferences, its habits and routines, and when things get out of hands, it might even throw the building equivalent of a tantrum, controlled guns or magical effects trying desperately to handle what they were not set up for by way of overkill!

  On the other hand, some places are deliberately made to pamper to people.

  :: Home Turf ::

  One aspect of location that is as much an aspect of character creation is the idea that a special place or area has special meaning to the character. Someone who has lived a long time somewhere, or is a frequent visitor, might know all the little ins and outs of the place. This goes much farther than simply knowing how to act in a certain place; anyone might know how to act around a suburban neighborhood, but a long-time resident, especially an adventurous one, might know every shortcut and hiding place, and be able to use home court advantage against a much more powerful pursuer. Someone who has used the time living there to set up special little caches or spots, not to mention traps, will be able to do a lot of damage, or a lot of good.

  Giving a character home turf is not limited to one per character, either. Some people instinctively begin to make themselves familiar with places they frequent, and anyone who spends some time on the road might have a few such places. With advanced communications and friends in the right spots, someone could even become fairly familiar with turf they have never physically explored!

  The exact benefits of home turf will depend on the turf and the character. How to build it into a character is hard to say, but it could easily follow lines not unlike those that will end up governing friends and close acquaintances or 'perfect fit' gear, as discussed in Entry 12 and 8, respectively.

  :: Property ::

  Of course, some players are no doubt going to grow keen on the idea of spending character wealth on property, building their own places. This is quite likely going to involve shopping lists of rooms and contents for those rooms, be they labs, lairs, lobbies or lounges. And such a place can be something that the characters will continue to build on, expanding it for a multitude of purposes! As discussed in Entry 12, it is even possible to use property like this to affect status, from the fear of a man with his own dungeon chambers to the suave cool of a large pool and massive recreation rooms. Characters with multiple such places can move the concept of impressive property (or property that defines them in ways not quite to be called 'impressive', like dark drug dens or spartan safehouses).

  But even more so, property can be an extension of tools, something that shows the benefit of work gear too big to bring along on adventures. A well-stocked garage is a typical example, building perhaps a bit on the Bat Cave concept. Similar things could work for space vehicles, power suits, even stables for riding wolves, griffons and dragons!

  A property that is actually part of some operation adds another layer, be it adventure related (HQ for the rebels, for example) or not (earning an income by running a hotel or store, for example). Property uses locations to move parts of the background story into a greater light, and the fact that it is an actual location means the adventure could easily spread there; when the villain comes for them, it might take place in the very place they own! Unlike the average dungeon or other random shooting gallery, a character's property will have value to the player(s), but they will also most likely have access to all the functions of it they would usually be the victims of, like traps and hidden doorways. Having an adventure spread to a character's property turns the tables, making the characters the ones running the maze...

  :: The Wild Places ::

  All of this leans towards the idea of locations as buildings, or at least highly equipped lairs of some kind. But a lot of adventures, both in games and other media, take place in vast, untamed nature spots. From caves to deserts to canyon rivers, they offer great opportunities for affecting adventures. Any such place could be home turf to a character, and someone who has lived there long will have adapted somewhat to the risks and opportunities inherent to the place. It could even be owned, like a natural park or private resort!

  Of course, setting up a natural area makes the standardized 'shopping list' approach to filling the place a little less logical to use. Whether it would take simply a variant of that concept, or a whole new approach to creating a place, is impossible to say at this point.

  :: And Fun ::

  The purpose here is to make exploration and travel a more entertaining and perhaps even dramatic part of the game, by making different places truly different. That means different dangers, different options, different encounters and so on. The real challenge actually seems to be to make those differences work as a display of where the characters are; what kind of dangers etc. would make a factory feel like a factory and a swamp feel like a swamp? In the end, a part of this will no doubt rely on a strong gallery of things to put in places, in addition to what is inherent about the places itself. It is even possible that places will have to be assembled from different lesser things that actually provide the differences, like a particular swamp being not made special from scratch, but being a special blend of pre-designed terrains, creatures and features.

  What is important is that the location work becomes a boon on the game without being a drain on the GM and players. That balance looks to be the greatest challenge.

 


.::: Entry 12, 2009/10/26 :::.

  With many of the 'inner' characteristics mulled over already, I feel it is time to start thinking about 'outer' ones. Social character concepts actually go right from the very central (charm, appearance and people skills) to the very fringe of the character (who the character grew up with, or even works for at this point). Hence, there are many layers of social matters that are worth thinking about. And this seems like the time to do it!

  :: Me in the World ::

  Social abilities need only a brief thought at this point. The ability to talk to someone in their own language, to socialize and even manipulate, can be built around the concepts already defined for abilities. Disabilities also come with a built-in understanding of how to relate to the world (in the case of disabilities, that would be 'poorly'); hating certain people, fearing others, admiring even others and feeling a compulsion to interact with or even seduce (romantically, ideologically, etc.) even more, it can all be handled by even the basic disability model mentioned in Entry 10. What characters can and cannot do based on mind (and arguably, body) alone has already been looked hard at.

  But behavior does not create the character entirely, socially speaking. The real world has an obsession with status of all kinds, from fame (and infamy) through (dis)respect to clear-cut ranking on professional ladders, it all comes down to how people judge you, whatever they might be basing it on. The benefits, of course, will be accordingly; being wanted or even chosen can be both good and bad, and to many degrees. It can even be both, or some even stranger mixed blessing.

  The first problem arises in the varied ways that such status works. Rank in most cases is a fixed feature, in that a higher rank directly signifies greater influence. When used to back up an argument, it becomes part of abilities. And how people react to it varies, from those who will greatly respect or fear it to those who will despise the character for it. Fame would typically be something that can back up arguments or aid requests, but almost like a security clearance, it can be a determinator for getting into VIP events, but that is even more subject to personal interpretation; who decides how much fame is how much, and what kind of fame will be in demand?

  Other ways exist that social issues can arise from something defined in the character itself, and many of them can function in the ways mentioned. It should be possible to define these social issues according to a compact set of simple rules and describe individual kinds of status according to them.

  :: Invested Recognition ::

  Where status starts to become complex is when it is not clearly defined by the character itself. Recognition often has to do with actions and who or what you surround yourself with, and especially in games where characters might want to appear to be something they are not, this is important.

  A simple example is status earned by being successful. A business man, a politician, an artist and many others can be defined more by what they have than what they have truly earned. Looking successful, by having vast mansions and many servants, can be more important to the status than the truth. This becomes even more true when taking into account that those reacting to the characters will often only have known them briefly, and will judge them by what they see. Status can be only skin deep! Another layer is the status that a character projects when someone looks into them, like checking the actual wealth of the business man or the fanbase of an artist to see what is real and what is false, or even what is real but fickle (perhaps based on something false!). Status is such a man-made concept that it has long ago become as layered as human society itself, and some will play on that. Some will to appear more influential. Some will to appear less significant and more harmless.

  :: Organized Positions ::

  The above is mainly concerned with how the world reacts to characters on a spontaneous, case by case level. The rules that will end up existing on the matter are meant for characters using their (possibly perceived) status with people they will most likely never see again, like lab researchers they need to trick information out of. The mental reactions of the 'victims' will be a defining part of the results, good, bad or something entirely different.

  Things may be more organized than that, quite literally! RPGs have a habit of assuming that characters, especially PCs, are some form of free agents. They may be the typical wandering heroes, but they may just as easily be independent professionals such as private eyes or similar troubleshooters. Even when part of an organization, such as government agents, they have an unusual amount of freedom, but are also surprisingly cut off from agency resources. I like the idea that a spy might call in for satellite images or equipment drops or inside information, or that mercenaries can ask their company for assistance in handling some 'hostile negotiations'. But just as much I like the idea that the characters are active parts of an organization (or several, perhaps not even sharing the same organized background!), which affects the game. But in currently available games, that seems to rely on the GM being good at adjusting described organizations on the fly, to produce plausible reactions.

  To me, designing an organization around a character is as interesting as designing magical abilities or complex gear. There is power at a trade-off, most often by submitting to scrutiny and duties. And like adherence to a faith or deity, an organization can instill purpose, values and more in a character. Being a 'company man' is not ust a term for being employed, it is a nudge to a way of thinking that defines the character.

  Having properly designed and detailed organizations as part of characters makes it routine to have characters draw on larger resources, deal with matters through channels specially open to them. It lets tasks, duties and favors become a part of adventures. It even kicks open the doors to organization intrigue, with departmental conflicts and internal rivalries and feuds over positions and resources. But even more, it lets adventures revolve tightly around infiltrating organizations and/or vying for power and influence. It also opens the notion of taking down large foes by cracking their organizations, hitting them on the resources and their routine connections. This need not be about bringing down the Evil Empire or Corrupt Corporation, it might just as well be to bring someone in bad standards in their organizations, revealing their corruption or even just showing that their actions are counter to the larger goals of an organization. The possibilities are vast.

  Also, the idea of creating organizations for a game world (for use with either characters (as player) or adventures (as GM)), on par with creating fully designed vehicles or even characters, appeals to me!

  :: Fixed Relations ::

  Up till now, the talk has been on things that are rather fluid and dynamical. Status is something that is widely recognized, even if reactions to it vary, and organizations are large beasts with plenty of room for maneuvering. But some of the coolest carriers in fiction have been those not on center stage, but rather connected to those main characters in an important way. Singular characters playing a large role. This goes from the mentor to the close buddy to the expert advisor over to even the close rival or the emotionally (or magically!) bonded enemy. In some cases, mysteries about the bond conceal all but the fact that there is a bond, making the connected character an important enigma, one that the audience is dying to know the truth behind!

  Such a relation to another character seems powerful to me. The whole drama and advantage/disadvantage perspective aside, it allows a player to create another character that is not built to be of the traditional adventurer mold. A decrepit, isolated and bitter character could play a vital role in the adventure, without the player having to actually play that character. Someone locked away in a place of great influence or resources, but with no real option of adventure, can be created in detail and be an active part of the adventure through the characters that are actually out adventuring. A relation becomes the opportunity to make the characters we want to see but not play.

  Other than the actual character, of course, is the matter of the relation. Most relations to a character that has a role in the game will be stories of interest and, if I can make it happen, meaningful influence on the game. I have mostly seen the background story of a connected character used as inspiration for banter between the player in character mode and the GM as the other character. Having the nature of the relation play as much a role as the connected character seems interesting to me, and I have no doubt adventures could be spun on it, and definitely side-quests.

  :: Dealing With Friends ::

  At this point I should probably note that I have a habit of watching the habits and routines of characters in movies, books and television almost as much as I watch the story itself. As i have stated before, I enjoy when a character tells a story as much by just being the character as by participating in the plot. And watching characters like that, I have grown fascinated by the way especially characters in suspense and political drama (which, in my opinion, includes many modern stories about agents dealing with agency or 'office' politics) manage their social networks.

  Back in Entry 9 I mentioned gear maintenance, and there are some similarities between that and how a good (fictional) networker handles social connections. This goes from the mafia snitch to personal friends to work associates. Taking care of a network, keeping in touch and keeping people happy is often a small byline to stories, but it is interesting (to me) and has a lot of adventure potential. Getting unexpected information while checking up on someone while on the road seems a satisfying variation on checking with contacts, and having to take care of valuable sources of anything adds a great deal to the sense of the character actually existing in a world with other people and having ties to them! Like a wizard spending time on practicing magic, a clever socialite or organizer will spend a phone call here and there, or an actual face-to-face meeting keeping friends and associates close. It even gives places to go, when a character invites people along to meet someone who is not essential to a plot but might be interesting nonetheless. It makes other people seem more like a real part of the world, and the characters.

  Something similar goes for unpleasant acquaintances. Being on the run means keeping a tab on whoever is hunting you, whatever the methods might be. I have always found it far more chilling when someone hunting a character calls or passes on a message letting the prey know that the noose is closing, more so than just showing up, dueling it out, and the character escaping to continue being the fugitive. Foreshadowing by indirect methods adds suspense, making actual clashes far more climactic.

  :: Characters Amongst Characters ::

  The ultimate incarnation of social issues in the game would be adventures that are handled almost exclusively in the interaction with social connections. Like a movie or book all set inside a command center, or one that takes place in the relations between an isolated group, it would be about pulling strings, exchanging favors, knowing people and them knowing you. Depending on the details, a character might be attacking multiple targets in as many places simultaneously, while researching a background mystery and putting together resources, all through intermediaries.

  Such games are not exactly what I strive for, but I would like the opportunity for them to exist. Having characters in the game whose foremost strength is ties to characters in the world around them is as fascinating to me as a mystic empowered by spirits and deities. It adds a layer to a game which, while not essential for a game to be playable, opens up a lot of doors. A character being the sum of organized and private relations, status and influences, and the totality of a complex social network is a fascinating opportunity for adventures and roleplaying.

  :: Cross-Pollination ::

  It is not uncommon for fiction to interweave topics across the board, and social matters can have ties to very different things. One example is gear. A classical example is the sword or talisman that causes people around the carrier to react. Like so many other things mentioned, it can be a good or a bad reaction, depending on what the item signifies and how the surroundings view that. Uniforms, certain tools ("you use a SHM-48? Oh, and I like the red stripe!"), actions (a martial arts style, using a magic spell), looks and much more can function as a vessel of the reactions described here. Even reading a particular type of books can cause reactions (Ayn Rand, "Mein Kampf", Mao's Red Book, etc.). The effect can even turn on itself, as reactions to a character can be influenced by what people they are seen with!

  There are no doubt plenty of things that can cross-pollinate with social matters (or with one another!), and I would like not only for them to be possible, but for things I cannot foresee, as well. This implies that any rules made are not tied undeniably to subjects, instead there should be a core rule or rules that can handle this sort of matters. If the basics are used, status and friendships and the like can simply be locked in an item or an action, possibly even increasing with the amount of them (a full set of certain collectible items, multiple moves from a fighting style, etc.). More complex relations are still left for when further thought is given to the matter.

  :: The Mechanics ::

  As stated, status of varies kinds have some mechanics available for them, in that a character can 'simply' be built with ranks and reputations. At first glance, it might not even be much different from an ability, the 'ability' would simply be to draw on a connection, or to add a bonus to rolls made for social skills. The way different people react to different reputations and the like requires some additional handling, though, and will most likely be as much a part of how people in general are designed than with just the character with the status.

  What will be a lot more challenging is to make it all fit together as coherent social background for a character. This goes double when the greater social picture is to be included. Organizations have relations to one another, and your social relations may not feel about each other as they do about you. In fact, many of your friends might not like each other at all, and the same could easily be the case for social relations; the mechanic who does illegal upgrades to your car and the police officer you secretly swap information with will probably have some disagreements, and personalities alone can result in blood being spilled! This is ironically even worse for many skilled networkers, as the clever socialite will be able to stay on good terms with many very different kinds of people.

  At this point, another thing that is starting to concern me is the overall cohesion of rules. Having rules match up one on one is one thing, but for optimum results, rules for abilities, disabilities, gear and social issues all need to mesh together, and line up with various conflicts. While it is too early to expect everything to just fit nicely, it is probably smart to start being on the look-out for concepts central enough that they can be the glue that keeps the rest together and compatible. Add style to the equation, things become interesting.

 


.::: Entry 11, 2009/10/25 :::.

  As stated before, and this is no great revelation to anyone, I have casually noted that combat seems fairly integral to the roleplaying experience. Or at least, no ruleset can be without a combat system, unless it is actually built around the idea of 'no combat'. Which remains a pretty experimental idea still.

  While I have no particular beef with combat or combat rules in a RPG, I feel the focus it is given is excessive. What probably bothers me most is that combat gets such unique and separate treatment from everything else; massive rule resources get put into it, and it alone!

  In my game, I would like combat to be treated as an equal to other methods of direct conflict. The other methods could be racing, dance-offs (has street dancing contents ever been treated in a RPG, I wonder?), psychic attacks (to hurt, dominate, read minds, etc.), hostile negotiations, and so on. A basic underlying system should be possible to create for all such direct conflicts, with each specific conflict adding its own details. So maybe a knife thrust is not the least similar to will penetration or an aggressive in-curve overtake, but the way these actions are used in their respective type of conflict is similar enough that knowing one set of rules will let the player understand them all. The rest is strategy and, as always, details.

  :: The Essentials of Conflict ::

  To get a broader conflict system, I need some things universal to conflicts. A few off the top of my head:

  - It's about pitting abilities against one another. In combat, it's weapons skills and basic physical moves, in racing it's car maneuvers, and in exotic conflicts, it's something about those exotic abilities. Opposing abilities must be compatible to allow an actual conflict; you cannot solve a gunfight through hacking, nor can you hack a computer by shooting it (hacking is a conflict between hacker and security designer).

  - The objective is to either get out of the conflict or win it. The former could mean fleeing or actually convincing the opponent(s) to stop the fight. Winning usually means picking away at the opponent(s) until a decisive defeat is possible. Hit points, in many shapes and sizes, may provide a way to determine victories. They have worked for combat for years!

  These two, the opposition of abilities and the indications of defeat, seem at the core of any conflict system. So at the very basic level, I will need the skills used in a fight (like weapon use), and something to cut the opposition down through (like hit points).

  :: Extensions of Conflict ::

  That only covers the bare necessities, though. Around that core, I would like to see more aspects of a conflict to be implemented. Even in combat, the reduction of the conflict to blow-by-blow attacks is overly simplistic to me, and definitely lacks a lot of drama, a lot of options, and a lot of (I am so sorry about the repetition) details.

  Let's stick with combat for a moment. You only need to watch a few dueling or fighting tournaments (or, if that is your taste, get in a a few fights) to see that opponents do not simply trade blows in an equal and balanced fashion. Most of the time in a fight actually involves opponents scoping each other out, looking for a way in, and then making some initial blows that hardly anyone believes are meant to do serious damage. They try to open up the defenses of their opponents, get the opponent off his or her guard. Feints, pokes, jabs, and other physically weak maneuvers reveal the opponent's fighting ways and holes in the defense, and gets the opponent to act like the fighter wants it. Of course, the opponent is probably going for the same. The exception is vicious, brutal fights in which fighters just go straight for each other, and even then, the fight is about getting through to a soft spot without letting the opponent get control of the action. The difference is that the fighters are already at each other's throats, probably quite literally!

  This method of fighting is surprisingly universal! Hackers scope out security systems which are monitoring strange activity and relaying to the system administrator. Racers poke and spoof rivals into making bad turns or overlooking good ones while they get an idea of the machine the other is riding. Even court engagements and chess use preliminary moves to get a feel for where the opposition is, mentally. In short, there are plenty of conflict skills to get the upper hand without trading actual blows, literally or figuratively speaking.

  Hit point have also been a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Not that they are used, but that they seem to be the sole measure of success in combat. Throwing someone off balance, causing pain, causing frustration or even fear, it all erodes the opponent's ability to fight, and a lot of it is easier to get at than what physical constitution hit points may represent. Even the core functionality of hit points seems a bit shallow; people are not just cut down and then die, they bleed and suffer, the initial damage almost less important than lack of treatment afterwards. Most people who die from fights bleed to death, externally or internally. Ironically, many who die without bleeding to death (i.e. die spontaneously inside the fight) die from incapacitating injuries, often to the spine, and hit points really do not matter much against and elbow planted hard between two vulnerable vertebra. The importance of hit points in all those combat systems seems to almost be a fighter's agreement: "We fight by cutting each other's bodies apart until one of us drops from having been sufficiently turned to mulch".

  Again, there are parallels to other conflicts. Provoking a race car driver into a flameout is a death blow that ignores position and vehicle condition. A 'smoking gun' in a court case does pretty much the same. And the 'alternate hit points' (pain, confusion, etc.) have their equals, too. Come to think about it, death blows often have to do with getting the right position for it and then executing it, so position, or equivalents, can perhaps be seen as yet another kind of hit points, even if they disappear the instant the fight is over. Similar concepts should be available in other forms of conflict.

  :: Tension, Drama, Action! ::

  As I have hopefully made obvious over these last many posts, my obsession with detail is not an attempt at creating some master behemoth, the most complicated game system alive. I find that details add to the sensation of a game, and by making the system itself support and structure details, that load is taken off the GM's mind quite a bit. After all, few would expect a GM to wing combat in a dungeon crawl, and then expect him to get everything right. Rules make it possible. Likewise, if the tension of watching vital gear slowly fail as you fight to survive, the drama of characters struggling against inner demons, or the action of trying to make your magic mesh with the surroundings for optimum power are of interest, having rules to handle the details will let you keep it up without constantly having to improv your way out of it.

  And if there is an area that should be ripe with these things, it most certainly is conflicts. The added rules will need to exist to promote this feeling, and there should always be quick and easy alternatives for games that do not care about a specific kind of conflict and therefore must resolve it quickly. More than in any other area of the game, there has to be a quick option in conflicts, so the game can focus on conflicts that the players enjoy!

  Overall, conflicts will hopefully encompass many of the things described in other entries, and many of the concerns discussed there will take on a whole new light when they become part of a conflict situation.

 


.::: Entry 10, 2009/10/24 :::.

  The first draft is coming along nicely. In fact, only the sample characters are now missing. But until they are written up, I will continue with more general concerns about the game and its contents.

  This entry will take a look at disabilities. While abilities are things the character can do, disabilities are situations the character cannot handle. The basic example is a phobia: When the character is exposed to whatever the phobia is about, he or she will risk freaking out and doing something stupid, or simply be unable to do what was being done. This can be comical, annoying, deadly or the like, all depending on circumstances.

  :: Basic Disabilities ::

  Ever since I first worked on TAYDS, I have had a method for constructing disabilities that is both simple and flexible:

  - Any disability consists of a trigger and a reaction. When the trigger is encountered by the character, roll for the disability. The greater a 'success' the disability rolls, the greater the reaction. Triggers can be spiders, food, foreigners or basically anything. It can even be the use of an ability category (like magic, or combat). Reactions can be fear, cravings, anger, confusion, or the like. So being around food could give cravings for it, being around foreigners could make the character angry at them, etc.

  - Disabilities are built along the basic lines for abilities. CCPs are earned from how many and how bad the disabilities are. Rolling for a disability, as described above, is like rolling for an ability, but rolling a 'success' means the disability kicks in. This is to allow a higher level of disability to directly mean a character suffering worse from it.

  This method allows a recreation of a long range of disabilities; phobias, greed and gluttony, obsessions, racism, allergies and seizures, and so forth.

  :: Advanced Disabilities ::

  It should come as no surprise that I would like this game to be a little more detailed. I have used the above basic disabilities extensively in games, and they work. They even make many things more fluent than the many other games that use some sort of disabilities nowadays, because everything is just "if trigger A is present (or, in some disabilities, if it is not), check for reaction B".

  But certain things are harder to emulate, especially things that are directly reflected in the character's other traits. The deeper impact of a character's beliefs such as values and understanding of the world are an example, and one that fiction uses heavily, especially in drama and humor (the latter would of course indicate very strange beliefs). Complex ailments that influence abilities can also be a bother, for example when using an ability causes harmful effects and pressing to fight it makes things worse. Ailments that change under specific circumstances are practically impossible.

  To make matters worse, I have begun thinking about gear, and am starting to consider social issues and relations. A disability linked to gear, especially if there is an interaction between the gear and the disability (an overly strong character causing damage to sensitive gear, which in turn causes difficulties for the character, for example) will be hard to simulate. I have too little definitive material on social abilities and issues to really draw on that.

  What I will no doubt need to do is define a sample disability of the sort described. In fact, probably a few. My hope is to somehow use the methods in the ability system to do this, to reduce the overall amount of new rules for the player to learn, but I have the feeling that it will be more like the expectations I have on gear. That is, I think disabilities will have to be made from a set of lesser, simple rules combined into custom disabilities. On the upside, that means the complexity of disabilities can vary according to need, and thus that simple disabilities can be made according to the very compact and fairly simple method described under Basic Disabilities.

  :: And Fun... ::

  Of course, too much focus on disabilities will detract from a game, and the kind of game played will determine what kind of disabilities will be appropriate. A simple dungeon-style game makes the basic disabilities a logical choice, letting players create characters that will fear certain dungeon contents, crave others when they spot them (can you say 'bait'?) and rage instinctively against others. A wartime drama, psychological thriller or other either grand or highly introspective style will be a better fit for complex disabilities, or a style that focuses intently on a specific subject that could use disabilities ('mecha' games are ripe for disabilities with already complex gear). As previously stated, humorous games can also be a breeding ground for weird disabilities interesting enough to make a bigger deal out of.

  What worries me most is whether basic and advanced disabilities will be sufficiently compatible that they can both be used in the same game. After all, there are likely to be players that want one and players that want the other, and even players that want none at all in their characters, all in the same game! The constant risk with such fundamentally diverse options (letting each player decide what level of complexity he or she wants in the character) is that characters become horribly unbalanced.

  The fundamental idea with disabilities is, of course, that they provide the character with some compensation for having them. The original assumptions up until very recently has been that building disabilities into a character is rewarded with additional CCPs to build abilities. That way, having a level 8 disability gives the points to add an additional 8 points worth of abilities. Lately, however, another option has been presented to me, one that interests me. Essentially, the disabilities give nothing at character creation. Instead, whenever the disability is played on by the player, it can earn the player additional points. I have already discussed points awarded during play, and it would fit with that notion. Whether the final form of the disabilities will support this method is a different question altogether, but I can keep it in mind as I structure any system for advanced disabilities. The basic disabilities do look like they could work with it, though the rules for inclusion in character creation will take a little thought when not based on CCP compensation.

 


.::: Entry 9, 2009/10/23 :::.

  Thinking about gear in the last entry made my mind completely race on the subject. Firstly, I think I have a rough idea of how the whole 'perfect fit' thing could work, and it is pretty simple: Skills already have the Specific dealing with weapon type, like Swordfighting being learned with, say, a broadsword, and therefore getting the bonus from that Specific when a broadsword is being used (if a character has the ability Swordfighting[14] and the Specific Broadsword[8], that character would fight with a total ability of 22 whenever wielding a broadsword). The perfect fit works on the same principle, except the weapon Specific is the actual weapon fitted! It might seem insane to waste a Specific on a weapon that there is probably only one of in all existence, but that unique weapon would have a significant bonus from being built or tuned to fitting the character so perfectly. And it is not illogical to want the boost of a Specific for a weapon that is already handing you a bonus. And even if the character does not start with that, character growth will be based on the weapon used, so using the weapon extensively is likely to end up with the character learning that Specific. Of course, the weapon might also be a standard type weapon at the same time, like a broadsword that has simply been made to fit the character. So to really work, it might take the unique Specific to use the added bonus for the fit. Okay, the details are still a bit rough, but I think there is something there.

  Anyway, on to the topic of this entry. Which is gear. Yes, gear again!

  I got a lot of thoughts out on the topic of gear in the last entry, but more have surfaced, and I feel I should round the topic off as much as possible before stumbling on to the next one.

  :: Modding ::

  I think the term is taken from computer games, and I am not using it in the meaning it has there. But I am fascinated by the option of endlessly modifying gear, to improve it, adapt it to new circumstances, add uses to it, or fit it to new uses, variant uses (like having a tool used for fixing cybernetic eyes still be used for that, but for a very different model), or just trying out new ideas. Any kind of gear could theoretically be subject to this, from filing down a screwdriver to fit different screws to reprogramming a spaceship to handle a strapped-on hyperdrive rather than provide life support to empty passenger quarters.

  There are already plenty of game systems that allow some or all (interesting) gear to be custom built, and I hope to draw some inspiration from it. GURPS Vehicles is an example, and I know of books for other systems that modify guns or swords. What is important to me is to look for overall system ideas that I can turn into a brief set of central game mechanics for use with all gear. Yes. different gear will have different modifications (heck, some different brands will offer unique modifications!), but the underlying principle should be the same.

  The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly. players should not relearn the system for each kind of gear, that's a given. But secondly, I want gear to keep the door open for unexpected cross-customization! Weapons made should integrate easily with vehicles, not just being mounted but becoming actual components. Vehicles, again, should be usable as robot bodies by just adding a mind and some control, and anything with hands should have some option for using hand tools. And yes, robots should be integratable with any other machine and vice versa. But biological technologies should fit into the paradigm if the setting demands it, too! This could be bio-gadgets, advanced cyborging, or mad science. And magical artifacts should be on the same or a highly compatible system, if someone has a setting of arcane robots and spell-powered gizmos. All these things should not be identical (magic is still magical and technology technological, for example), but they should fit together seamlessly, as should other, more bizarre gear. If I can fit it all together with character creation somehow (maybe they want to play those arcane robots), I will be happy!

  :: Maintenance, Condition & Repairs ::

  Most games assume an item either can withstand anything or is simply broken at a certain point. I have seen a few systems consider damage given to items, especially weapons, some keeping a score until the item breaks, others just lowering the quality or the like of the weapon by fiat when something damages it hard enough. I'd like something more pervasive and, above all, elegant.

  I do have something powerful against me, of course: Players. Few players like something like the condition of gear looming over them like a chore. However, most players like bonuses. So well-kept gear can simply work better, and players suddenly get to use character action (well, spending quiet time at the inn on taking care of weapons and the like) to boost their gear. But what catches me most about this is the option to define gear that wears fast or is fragile. It makes it more real to me and adds personality to (usually) inanimate things. Players may invest in disposable gear to get temporary boosts, then shift back to durable stuff for the long haul. Until they can afford the Good Stuff, of course!

  And when the condition of the gear is beyond maintenance, repairs may rescue the valued items, while the rest are scrapped in favor of a shopping spree. Or sold for scrap, or harvested for something else. Or modded to serve other functions. Gear can be so much.

  :: Brands & Compatibilities ::

  In the very real, modern world, there are two groups of people with a strange, typically lighthearted animosity against each other. When dealing with a particular field of work, they swear by different rules and designs, and only in a few cases will their tools work for the other. I talk, of course, of Mac and Windows users (Linux folk do their cackling amongst themselves, more thrilled by their tools than the world). In what one would think was a unified field (computers), the Mac/Win divide is astoundingly profound, both in the actual gear and the mindsets. I have never seen this emulated in a RPG.

  Speaking strictly of the gear, compatibility issues can be astoundingly entertaining, and surprisingly challenging! Brands, makes and models that interact poorly or not at all with each other can offer some interesting twists, making a standard facility almost a mystery to someone used to dealing with standards not supported. Some facilities will no doubt be this way intentionally!

  What I have seen, sadly, is humans using human-made computers to hack alien systems. That gets to me. Not just because it is insanely silly, but because having to overcome the gear-gap can be an interesting story of its own! WWII had a complete gear-race going to penetrate the communications standards of the enemy, after all. Characters having to deal with brands and technologies that work differently fascinates me, and if anything says tech-wiz to me, it's the specialist who can somehow use tool A with tool B to control system C, all of different brands and technology, by clever adapters and modifications.

  I want that. I want specialists in related fields to swear by different standards and argue and banter about it in crisis situations, and I want clever characters to circumvent bizarre systems with clever trickery. I want Mac starships to frustrate Windows captains while the Linux passenger slaps together his own hack to take the whole vessel hostage!

  :: Detailed Operation ::

  Of all gear, the most advanced game mechanisms for use I typically see are weapons. Occasionally, a spell or other supernatural power will have a similar complexity, but it seems more the exception than the rule. In my opinion, there are a lot of interesting details about items that get ignored in the name of simplicity. Not that including many of them need even drag the use of the items out, but it would take a deeper look into the rules and realities (true or perceived) of the items. I would like to see where that could bring me.

  Things like recoil are not entirely unknown in weapons rules. Most enforce penalties on continuous fire. But anyone who has ever fired a gun knows that recoil is also hell on hand and arm, particularly if that hand and arm is not trained for the impact, if the firearm is poorly fitted, or if the user is simply unready. On the other hand, knowing how to carefully set up a tripod can improve aim, as can firing handguns from supportive poses (as the police are trained to). The idea of items having pitfalls and opportunities depending on training and use appeals to me, as it provides additional uniqueness and flavor. Pushing an exosuit to perform beyond expectation by knowing how to balance heat build-up and power consumption while avoiding to fry yourself, rigging an artifact to adjust for the magical energies that you have scouted out around the temple, even having the right adapters to fix the alien's cybernetics.

  Any detail added to the operation of items will depend highly upon each type of gear. As with anything else, my hope is to find some governing mechanism that allows a standard set of rules to be applied as needed to a range of gear categories. In this case, however, I am worried if that will be possible.

  :: The Battle Plan ::

  As stated in Entry 8, there is a lot of ground to be covered with gear if I am to live up to my goals. A lot of it is no doubt going to be in the form of added options in gear, for customizing individual items. I am hoping the general concept of Specifics can be adapted to fit a gear mentality in roughly the same way it does character abilities, but I have no way of knowing how much ground such a method can cover without actually putting it together, and I would like to wait with that until the first draft is finished.

  Even more, I need to get a good feel for the character ability side before starting on the features that bridge the gap between character and gear. This goes for the whole 'perfect fit' idea as much as it does the emotional and social ties that an item might hold. I will probably need the detailed items first, but making them with the character-gear connection in mind is probably not a bad idea!

  Whether or not steeds and other animal companions fit the 'gear' category is also becoming a bit uncertain, but for now I will keep it there.

  :: Last Note! ::

  As usual, writing about my thoughts and concerns has given me an idea for a solution, in this case to the mechanism dealing with compatibility (brands, technologies, etc.). Every item has a Difficulty rating, a single number that describes how complex the item is to deal with (big things, like a spaceship or a really complex item with multiple purposes, may have more than one Difficulty, but that's for another time). When trying to make two or more items work together, add up their Difficulties. Whichever ability is used to handle them, that is the Difficulty for hooking them together and making them work.

  But all items also have Specifics. These define how much of the item is built on certain principle that the character might recognize. If both/all items share a Specific, the lowest one is added as a bonus for the character. So if two machine parts have, respectively, the Difficulties 20 and 15, making them work as one requires an ability roll with a Difficulty of 35. If both items have the Specific Cybernetic, at 12 and 7, a +7 bonus (the lowest of the matching Specifics) is given. And if they also both have the Specific Torex Inc. (a brand), at 9 and 5, an additional bonus of +5 is applied! So the more things sync up, the easier the roll to make them work together. And the bonus can be greater than the Difficulty; sometimes, things just fit like hand in glove.

  Now I even start wondering if the Specifics for character abilities could be handled in a similar way... But that's for the second draft, not the first!

 


.::: Entry 8, 2009/10/22 :::.

  So... gear?

  While the first draft is still brewing, I thought the logical next topic to handle would be something close to characters, but not actually characters. Seeing how big a role equipment tends to play, it seemed like a good place to dig in.

  My experience with character gear largely boils the topic down to three kinds of gear: The routine, the useful, and the powerful. Routine gear is usually something like a horse or even clothes, stuff that is needed for certain things but are not really very adventurous to discuss. Characters buy them if they need them. Horses have rarely become more than transportation devices in campaigns I have experienced, to the point that you even forget they are there (like, forgetting that they should be stabled somewhere when not in use, or that they should be fed). They are rarely mentioned when players talk about a session later. But they are needed to maintain some realism.

  The useful are the ones that get most screen time. Weapons are common examples, and characters do a lot of shopping on weapons and other usefuls. Some usefuls border on routine, like medkits and healing potions, but players still worry about them and look for good ones, sometimes even in bulk, or they look into more effective alternatives. Anything that a player quickly asks about a bonus/penalty on is usually a useful item. They do not really make the adventure, but they do determine a lot about what characters can and dare do, and they feature on character sheets alongside abilities, with as much or even more concern given to them.

  The powerfuls are game changers, and typically play a role in an adventure or even an entire campaign. Magical artifacts, supertech, alien devices, enigmatic mixtures and so on may give users tremendous power, or powers may simply encircle the item like a constant whirlwind. They need not be an absolute boon, though; sometimes, the big challenge is surviving the powerful item, or even getting rid of it! Some are complex, but far from all. Some have deep secrets, from a password to activate or deactivate it to what it is trying to 'accomplish'. Players do talk about them, and GMs worry that their influence on the game might get out of control. Sometimes, the powerful item is not even with any characters directly involved, but the effect is still there, and it might be useful or problematic. And some are specifically powerful against the players' characters, their own personal kryptonite!

  I doubt there is one piece of gear in all my years of gaming that does not fit into one of these categories, and its essential function will probably fit the brief description pretty nicely. A few may have double roles, like a perfectly normal gun that can be used in a fight and such. Basically, a useful. But its historical significance makes it a powerful at the same time, since some groups will lay waste to small towns to get a hold of it. To the character, just a gun, but something that can be bargained with and used to turn powerful heads. But that's about the most advanced example of a game function I think I have truly seen in a game, or in any game rules. Well, that and things that are just there for a quick laugh or flashy effect.

  Of course, I might simply not have had the same luck and experiences as others.

  :: The Significance of Gear ::

  The three categories above actually seem to fit a lot of the gear I have seen in movies or read about in books, too. Which makes me a bit sad. The role of tools and items in our lives, and throughout history, should give them a more significant place in fiction. Thinking about items that serve other roles actually took a bit of pondering, but there are still quite a few things that come up, and I could even imagine creative players or GMs using them, even if I have never seen them in games as such.

  The sentimental trinket comes up. How many movies do not have long camera shots of a character holding up a necklace or crumbled picture that means the world to the character! Some are memories of lost loves, others are material representations of dark promises (I like Sawyer's letter to the man he blames for his dead family, in the series LOST). The item becomes a symbol of an emotion. This is perhaps more important in such a visually dependent media as movies, though books also sometimes use them to let the writer describe an emotion with physical action.

  Another concept I am even more fond of is what I would call 'the perfect fit'. It is an item that is perfectly suited to the character, by sheer luck, through long experience with it, or from extensive customization. The item often starts out fairly standard, like the usefuls above, but over time, it becomes something unique to that particular character. Other characters will rarely be able to get the same from it, or even clearly understand the bond between character and item, and the character cannot easily replace it, even though it is not a unique item as such. The impact of the item is not the item itself, but the fit. It is such a part of the character that it is hard to say, philosophically, where the character ends and the item begins. Some favorites are the weapon that the warrior has modified until it is a perfect representation of himself, the extensive notebook of a researcher, letting him understand things in a way that nobody else can glance from the pages, or the vehicle that is practically an extension of the character's body when she rides it.

  And yet another that I only find rarely is the puzzle obsession. Most games have puzzles, in fact they date as far back as the first RPGs to be made. But an item that one or more characters is constantly trying to figure out, an in-game challenge unrelated from an immediate adventure plot, that I truly miss. It could be a magical artifact that clearly does something, but making it work or figuring it out is a constant challenge, and the characters only learn to understand it and its mysteries bit by bit. Typically, such items are meant to be figured out quickly, or their secrets are just revealed over the course of a campaign ("This ancient book says if we dip the staff in water, it will glow for an hour"). I would like to see usefuls that get more useful bit by bit as they are understood better, or dangerous items that are still kept for some reason, and the character(s) circumventing or disarming the threats bit by bit, letting them handle and perhaps even use it in new ways.

  On a more complex note, I like the idea of items that somehow play a role in the past of a character, or in the current situation, but without being just an outright tool. One example I keep thinking of is the car in Gone In 60 Seconds that the main character is obsessed about, because he has tried to steal it so many times. The car is not even his, and it actively haunts him! An item that one or more characters (not all players) are constantly trying to get from one another, an item that gives the character access to goods and bads from his/her past, the strange object (or seemingly perfectly normal one!) that keeps showing up and the handling of which always seems to influence what happens to or around a character. In general, items that are not just for use, nor the focus of an adventure, but which always seem to become a or the center of attention, dramatic or otherwise.

  There are probably dozens of other roles for gear to play in a game, but I cannot list everything, and I should probably do something with what I already have before going off on a rant. Reading over them again, I may have spotted a few such items in various games over the years, but they have been very sketchy and have had no real game mechanics to support their role. Mainly, it has been the daring and creativity of a clever GM that has brought them about, and I'd like to think that a game should be built to support and promote such thinking. I know I want my game to.

  :: How? ::

  As mentioned, I only know of such items, a precious few of them, as the brainchildren of creative GMs. The links between game systems and narrative story elements (that is, actual things in the story that help tell the story, or another story like a character background) tend to be fairly weak; games are mostly based on actions, not story significance. That makes it hard to whip out some established game mechanic to emulate the kinds of items I have described. The 'perfect fit' item could perhaps be created by inserting options for adapting items to specific characters, giving them a bonus or something that no other character would get. But that seems a little weak, not like the special bond that I have seen in so many movies! In the same way, a puzzle obsession might simply be an item that has a bunch of challenges in it, with different Difficulties that improved abilities or new discoveries, or even acquired tools, can help deal with. But again, it seems too cheap, not fulfilling at all!

  Looking at it from a slightly different angle, maybe I should not be entirely focused on the gear, but just as much on the character involved with it. Abilities could be tied to certain items, and once I start working with disabilities, they could tie in, too. The sentimental possession would be a candidate for an item tied to a disability. And the 'link to the past' object might be tied to some social connections of the character, both good and bad, or even release some abilities (he is a good car thief. But when he sees that one car within his grasp, he becomes a fantastic car thief!). With a possible exception in rules for cybernetics, I have little I can really build such character-gear relations from, though. And to stay in the versatile spirit of the game, it should be one or more mechanisms that can be used widely.

  The answers are not clear to me yet, and I should probably have both the first draft written and some idea on disabilities before I can really tackle it. But having some concrete goals does start ideas flowing!

 


.::: Entry 7, 2009/10/21 :::.

  This is it. The first draft version of a core mechanic for my still unnamed game. But before I get to that part (yes, I am a tease), two things: A small revelation and some words on my vision.

  Firstly, after writing Entry 6, the thought on the whole "levels in a point-buy system" kept swirling around in my head. Things do that. Like songs that you can't get out? Anyway, I have a solution! If character creation is based on spending X amount of points, and character growth is based on a combination of the same and increases of 1 on abilities in case of a 'learning roll', we can keep a pretty clear account of the total points in a character: 1 per point actively spent, 1 per 'learning roll'. So in addition to the usual point spending sprees, we can see when the character passes 100 points, 250 points, and so on. The level-up experience? Every time a certain, predefined amount of points is passed, the player gets to add 1 level in some kind of special ability. That special ability is an indication of some of the greater insights about life, the universe and pro wrestling that people get during a life time. It falls outside usual abilities somehow, and no points are actually 'spent' on it. It comes along every time another amount is passed in the total point count. And different 'life discoveries' like this can be made, some depending on what background and experience the character has. Essentially, the level-up experience without the restricting level system.

  I just thought I would share that. I'm kinda proud of it.

  Next, the vision thing. The three guiding points have already been described firmly: Versatility, Detail and Ease-of-Play. But they are very general, not anything that could really be considered an ambition, and definitely not unique (okay, the Detail part might be a bit unusual, but that's about it). Beyond that, there are more solid things I want from the game...

  - Grand people. I always hated making a character just as a vessel for a couple of weapons and supporting skills. Where are the epic lives, the tormenting secrets, the complicated ambitions that we see in grand legends? Even during character creation, I want life stories to unfold as an inevitable consequence of what and who is being made. If I see another player slap together five cool skills and look vacantly at me when I ask how the character became the person it is, I swear I will cry.

  - Grand stories. Something does not become an epic by having the protagonists kill a very powerful villain or save the kingdom, the world or the Galactic Federation. Epics are made from complicated struggles against threats that are hard to even understand at first, and the size of which only becomes truly clear when the fight is already raging. If the threat is sinister and complicated enough, it can be an invading armada or the fear of solitude, it will still be a grand story.

  - Powerful bonds. It can be characters that have ties made of a force stronger than any steel, the loyalty of a trusty steed, or even the deep appreciation of an enduring possession, as long as it means something. Games toss powerful artifacts left and right, dumping mighty technologies in characters' hands like it was candy. A magical sword should not be cool merely because it gives a +7 burning attack, it should be cool because it is magic, and because it means something to the character! An old friend is not just a source of information, and the old motorcycle or battle-hardened horse are not just means of transport. They are important parts of the character, and valuable parts of the story that he or she tells.

  - Grand deeds. I always wondered why characters so rarely have something important that drives them, aside from going on adventures and whacking bad guys. The wizard has no dark knowledge to seek? The sniper has no old score to settle? The merchant has no mercantile empire to build? These things are added as sidenotes to games, if even that. Most simply state that they are good ideas to include in adventures and leave it there. I'd like to see them be an integral part of the game, and in as much detail as one can possibly stand.

  Yes, I have lofty ambitions. And I just deleted a whole paragraph on childhood imagination for fear of getting too melodramatic.

  Well, those are a few more things on the todo list. But I need a starting point, and with a bit of luck, it's the core mechanic I'll try and put together here!

  :: The Basics ::

  Let's first list the pieces we've got on the table, shall we?

  #1: A dice pool mechanic based on ability level as the number of (six-sided) dice rolled, and success measured in the number of dice rolling 4 or more. I guess there is a Difficulty model implicitly in there; how hard it is to do something is defined by how many 'good dice' are needed.

  #2: Ability levels are acquired by spending points during character creation, and by spending earned points or rolling 'learning rolls' (success or failure no greater than the appropriate learning ability) during the game.

  #3: The most (possibly only) unusual feature this far is that 'buying' any ability means buying a set of Specifics along with it, like the [Terrain] Experience and so forth that comes with Swordfighting. Each category of abilities will need its own Specifics. How big those categories are will inevitably vary.

  Those three points seem to make up the core mechanics. The discussion on style in Entry 4 was very premature, which I already knew then, but hey, when inspiration strikes. In any event, it will not be pulled in at this point, at all.

  :: Setup & Phrasing ::

  If you assume that you have no prior knowledge of all of this, how do I present it to you in an efficient, understandable, entertaining and soothing fashion? Let me try:

  "Take 12 regular dice in your hand and roll them on the table. How many rolled 4 or higher? Those are the 'good dice'. If you have 5 or more good dice, your character just succeeded at something.

  This is the basis of the rules. The only two things that really change much is how many dice you roll, and how many good dice you need to end up with. Your character has abilities written with a number next to each. That number is the 'level' of the ability, and the higher, the better, because that is how many dice you roll! The other number, the one that was 5 in the example, that's the Difficulty. The GM decides that, using some descriptions he or she has about how hard things are to do.

  So, to have your character do anything, check how 'high' the ability used is, roll that many dice, and ask the GM how many good dice you need."

  Sums up #1 pretty nicely. For #2, I am going to assume that there is a list of abilities, complete with Specifics, already written.

  "You create your character by 'buying' abilities. For all abilities, the cost is 1 Creation Point per level of the ability. So if you want Japanese at 15, it will cost you 15 Creation Points. How many Creation Points you have to spend is decided by the GM, but everyone should have the same amount.

  Whenever you buy an ability, you have to pick some details about how you learned that ability. Those are called Specifics, and every type of ability has its own. In the description of the ability, it says what kinds of Specifics you must pick, and you get just as many 'levels' in each Specific as you got in the ability itself. For example, when you pick a fighting ability, you must pick the Specifics terrain, sword and engagement. If your character learned swordfighting to a level of 15 while fighting in the army with a cheap shortsword in the marshes, your three Specifics are Marshland, Cheap Shortsword and Military. Each of those three also get a level of 15!

  When your character uses an ability, make sure to check if it is in a way that fits any of your Specifics! If a character with the above ability gets into a swordfight in a city with a cheap shortsword in a duel, the terrain (city) and engagement (duel) mean nothing to you. But the shortsword is one of your Specifics, and therefore you can add the 15 levels of Cheap Shortsword to the 15 levels of the Swordfight ability. Because you are fighting with a weapon you are familiar with, your ability in this fight is 30 rather than 15. Had the duel been in marshland, you could have added another 15 from the Specific called Marshland!"

  Something will have to be added about buying the same ability with different Specifics, but the basics look okay for now. And that actually took care of #3, as well! It only handled character creation, though, and not growth. Growth by spending earned points can simply refer to the above explanation, but something is needed for growth by learning ability:

  "Whenever you use an ability, be sure to check how many good dice you rolled more than you had to (called the 'amount of success'), or how many you rolled too few (called the 'amount of failure'). If either is equal to or less than 1/10 of the 'learning ability' your character has for that particular ability, you get to raise the ability by 1! You also get to raise the Specifics that match what your character was doing by 1. So if it happens while in a swordfight in the forest with a broadsword and as part of a small group, you raise the Specifics Forest, Broadsword and Group by one each. If any one of those is a Specific your character does not have, then he or she simply gets it, at a level of 1!"

  That all seems pretty understandable, and it is kept very short. There will be a lot of other text surrounding it all, of course, but these key pieces seem to work, and to sum up the basics completely.

  :: Beyond The Basics ::

  The above only addresses the most basic of abilities, the ones I would usually call 'skills'. Talents are still left, and learning abilities are only described for their use. I need to decide how they function in terms of character creation, ability use and growth.

  One thing I want to determine right away is whether or not to make these abilities special in the way the dice mechanic handles them. GURPS, which is the prime place I've seen things like talents handled, prices them differently. The idea naturally is that by making them more expensive, players will not simply stock up on talents and ignore actual skills. Unless I find a compelling reason to, however, I don't want to use that approach. Whenever possible (and practical!), I want to use the same or highly similar mechanics as elsewhere. In short, I want talents and learning abilities to be very similar to skills. But that leaves a few questions to be answered.

  The first question is easy: How to have talents at similar rates as skills without the things overshadowing the skills. I'll just state that talents work by giving a bonus of 1/10 their level to the skills they work with. So if, say, Charisma (I still lack a list of talents. And of anything else, really!) can be used with a certain skill, add 1/10 of the character's Charisma to the ability before rolling the dice! Simple enough. And that lets the player buy talents at the same point rate as everything else, presumably(!) without unbalancing anything.

  To avoid the aforementioned unbalancing of the game by players bulking up on talents and learning abilities, I use the Nature versus Nurture approach. As a suggested standard, players should be given their Character Creation Points as 20% exclusively for talents and learning abilities, and the remaining 80% exclusively for skills (and the Specifics that follow along). I have no real explanation for the 20/80 divide, I just need something to work with. It is easy to adjust later.

  As a bonus observation, I can let the CCPs earned during the game be used for either skills or talents and learning abilities! That makes them a bit cooler, with even more freedom for the players to guide the fate of their characters. I hope.

  :: The Rest ::

  Since there are no outlines yet for very special abilities (magic, supertech, alien powers, etc.), I think I'll stick with what I have. The written segments will be a guide as I write the final first game draft, and the rest looks like it can be filled in with what I have. That only leaves a need for lists of abilities, and I think I'll draw heavily on existing games for that. After all, this is only a first draft, so it only needs to show that the things work.

  I'll get to writing the first draft, and even build a character from it. I will probably do this over a few days, so in the meantime, these entries will discuss future elements. Once I have the first draft and one or two created characters, I'll return to comment on problems and options that surface during that effort!

 


.::: Entry 6, 2009-10-20 :::.

  Complexity is building. And a couple of ideas still lingering in the back of my head threaten to add further complexity (I would really like Theory skills that symbolize the option of enhancing practical skills by reading about or experimenting with the subject). At some point, there will have to be a streamlining of the things I am inserting into the game, to avoid a clunky, unwieldly monster! But that is still to come, right now I can only worry in vain and that seems useless.

  On the upside, I did additional testing on the dice mechanic, in particular the time involved in large good/bad dice pool rolls. It seems more efficient and less stressful than originally thought; rolling 30+ dice and sorting them into good and bad for counting is surprisingly quick to do! That suggests that the basic idea of that method is solid. If Entry 7 becomes the one for merging all the current basics together in an early model core mechanic, this is all very promissing.

  But as mentioned in the last entry, this one is about character creation. I have looked over the character growth concepts in that post a few times since posting it, and a few things became clear to me:

  - I can't model character creation on the ideas for character growth without creating a monster of a process. Growth involves a lot of things that may or may not be smooth and delightfully detailed as the character grows from experience, but to emulate that whole process to create a complex character from scratch would take forever, and it would not be entertaining to anyone except mathematical hobbyist zealots.

  - I need to look long and hard at the way talents (which also substitute attributes, as previously mentioned) and learning abilities are acquired during character creation, or ambitious players will have a field day abusing them.

  - If I want something to add the rush of leveling and/or the individuality of class-unique abilities into what is most definitely going to be a point-buy system, I need to start thinking about the mechanics of it now. It need not be a complete solution, but I should start looking at options soon.

  :: Nature versus Nurture ::

  Most point-buy systems take an approach to the character that is very akin to building with LEGO: The character is a bunch of individual things that are put straight together. Whether a character acquired an ability early or later in life is not addressed.

  Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I am not sure. As a player, I definitely would not want to sit around deciding the age every skill was learned at. But the idea of something being an inborn trait, versus being something that could be learned later, offers some interesting possibilities. For one, it could be a help in solving the problem of overpowering characters through talents and learning abilities! But it would also be useful in game worlds that put stock in genetic heritage, or even other heritages like inherited wealth and status, or exotic things like a family or racial 'patron spirit' (or less benevolent spirits, even). Some game worlds may even have powerful items that are only available as birthrights, but that would need considering after items in general have been somewhat handled.

  One straight forward way to handle this concept of nature and nurture is to assign a different set of points to each. These would work like the 'Character Creation Points' (CCPs) of most other point-buy systems, in that the player spends them on acquiring abilities for the character. The difference is in what they can 'buy'; Nature Points buy inborn traits, while Nurture Points buy later training and education. This ensures that no player spends everything on abilities that symbolize powerful inborn abilities, or that an impatient player puts everything into immediate abilities and inadvertently creates a character that will grow at a pathetic rate compared to its companions. It also seems like a good piece in handling races and racial abilities!

  The Nature/Nurture Points are, of course, just terms pulled out of nothing. I know the nature/nurture debate from a lot of different sciences and social debates, so it became the first logical distinction to pull out. If need be, a finer grain is possible, distinguishing between Birth Points, Childhood Points, Youth Points, Adult Points (no, not dirty things), and even Senior Points if need be. Further distinction between Profession Points, Hobby Points, Social Points and so on are possible, too. What worries me is that, for all the glorious detail and storytelling potential, it easily becomes an accounting nightmare, and could easily restrict the player enough to squash good ideas. For the moment, Nature and Nurture Points are likely to be implemented, while the rest are just known to be available as needed.

  :: Life Stories ::

  My default game, GURPS, has a marvelous feature that gets far too little attention in my opnion. It is an advantage, meaning something the player can acquire for the character (usually during character creation, as opposed to from experience), that gives the character some form of edge over the rest. This particular advantage is called "Unusual Background", and it is a catch-all explanation for odd abilities a character might have, things that seem outside the scope of regular characters (but is still within the scope of the game world!). It could be highly exotic knowledge, very rare skills, equipment or connections not typically possible, and so on. A soldier would not have it, since soldiers are not that unusual. Even an expert ex-CIA (I know, no such thing) sniper is not unusual enough, since it is a profession and thus training that makes a lot of sense. Someone with experimental cybernetics in a modern-day campaign, however, would need the advantage! Explanations might be that the character is part of an experiment to fix accident victims or the like, and figured out how to do interesting modifications ("hey, there's room for a gun in this prosthetic arm! Maybe I can even attach a trigger mechanism...").

  What I hate about the advantage is the focus on the word 'Unusual', and less focus on 'Background'. The idea of acquiring a life story during character creation in much the same way as one would acquire the skills to operate a powerboat or read fluent Latin intrigues me. Of course, without significance for the character, a background might as well be written up just from player improv. And again, it should not be something that restricts the player, but rather a tool for deeper character development.

  If abilities are constructed in the familiarity-minded way discussed in Entry 3, there is already a built-in method of adding details to a character: Any ability acquired for the character is connected to details about how it was learned. For example, if the skill Machine Gunner is acquired, the player needs to pick an environment it was learned in. Picking Arctic indicates the character has been using a machine gun in arctic environments, which might be worthy of some character story writing.

  The question becomes whether to treat a life story as purely a player creation (no points involved), an element of ability acquisition (it comes with abilities, like the arctic environment described), or make it a seperate entity all together (it is acquired independently of abilities). The first option is easy, since it means no rules. The second is somewhat intriguing, in that it makes any ability a solid part of some life experience. Learning to fire a gun is one thing, but learning to fire it in the police might have later consequences, not to mention it would give insight into the workings of the police and life as a cop. The third option is more free-wheeling, letting the player build the life story seperately and attach whatever significance to it he or she envisions.

  I am leaning towards the second option, with a careful eye on the third. After all, if players and/or GM prefer the first option, all they need to do is ignore the rules I make for any of the others.

  One reason I give this so much thought, aside from my taste for good character stories, is that many interesting characters need to go through something in order to get something. The 'journey of learning' is a favorite theme of mine, and if I can build a method for emulating it, I'll be very happy. An example could be a character having to travel far, under great threat, to find a legendary teacher. Or one who has been active in a certain group (police, military, politics, crime, etc.) long enough to be adopted into a brotherhood that has special knowledge. In essence, the 'Unusual Background' advantage, but with a full story behind it. This not only makes for even cooler characters, it also adds depth to a game world, promoting the idea that there are things that do not come easy, yet are worth striving for. It only requires a carefully considered system.

  :: Design Goals ::

  I like character creation. I also know that other players often like character creation. It's a chance to have a lot of control and a lot of choices at the same time, and you get to explore a bunch of possibilities. Not to mention you get to create a human (or other) being all by yourself!

  Because of this, I do not feel character creation should have to be fast. You can run through it quickly (or at least, the option should exist), but letting players pick around and invent their alter egos should be something worth their dedication. In other words, character creation should not have to be over quickly.

  Of course, it is the choices I want to take up the time, not the rules. When a choice is made, the rules should let it become character information without too much looking into books and such. Books should mainly contain new and interesting options. And of course, I do not want randomness to play too big a role, since that would be counter to player control and choices!

  The straight-up point-buy method seems like it could work. I will still consider a Nature/Nurture Point segregation, to avoid unbalanced character growth later.

  :: Post-Creation Creation ::

  One thing I have noticed that players like, and which I also sometimes enjoy, is to make choices like those in character creation after the character has been made. Point-buy systems usually have players spreading their earned XP around between adventures, picking abilities to improve, while class-level systems have developed complex growth systems with secondary classes, letting players pick between specialized versions of their class when they have reached a certain level, or even give a character multiple classes, combining benefits from several classes into one character.

  I described growth in Entry 5, but it was smooth and gradual. It happened automatically with use. That leaves very few options to include choices, and none that are really all that interesting. The question becomes what could be raised in between adventures, in the 'shopping pause'.

  Looking at the whole learning thing, the idea that additional points might be given to players in an XP fashion seems usable. These would probably be Nurture Points, so to speak, in that they cannot raise talent or learning abilities. On the other hand, if those abilities are balanced properly, it might not be a problem, and it would be a way to adjust for poor choices during character creation. Again, options, options, options. I need to decide, but luckily not right now (but in Entry 7, probably).

  The idea of 'adding a class' is more controversial to me. I do not want classes, but the thought that a player can earn enough XP (or whatever I end up calling it) to open up a new vista of choices lures me quite a bit. The thoughts I had in Entry 5 on new abilities included the idea of abilities that had one or more requirements, either in prep skills or in component skills. Odds are that I am too early in the design process to implement those thoughts, but they could easily be what is needed to simulate the thrill of opening up new possibilities: Finally being able to get or raise an ability that relies on prep/component abilities might just be roughly the same feeling!

  :: Conclusion ::

  Point-buy is chosen. I will do something in the Nurture versus Nature Points, but I think I need another name for it. Abilities are acquired at 1 level per 1 Whatever Point, but each level includes a level in each of a handful of specifying details, such as the terrain you learned to fight in or the model engines you learned to work with. Those specifics (a good game term for these things, maybe? 'Specifics'? Yeah, I kinda like it) are added to the ability as a bonus when the same situation is present during use; learned to shoot in the alleys? Well, if you end up in an alley shoot-out, you get your Alley Experience as a bonus!

  Growth is as described in Entry 5, complete with the learning abilities (the idea about Theory skills will have to wait, if it proves useful at all). Also, I will include the option of the GM handing a player an 'independent' point to raise an ability, as a reward for good play. I will include two minor differences from typical XP procedures, though: The point is to be awarded during play, after the worthy event happens, and it should be earmarked for something relating to the situation. Especially any Specifics on an ability should reflect the situation (if you did something neat in the frozen wastes up north, you don't get to have something with a jungle Specific, for example).

  Huh. Looks like I might be ready to produce the first draft for the core mechanics!

 


.::: Entry 5, 2009-10-19 :::.

  As hoped, the act of writing down my thoughts and progress on the game is helping tremendously! With this fifth post, I feel I am getting close to a central game mechanic. Perhaps I should consider using public thought documentation in other parts of my life...

  Anyway, the dice mechanic discussed a few entries back (I write on a small portable computer without access to my archive, so I do not have the exact entry) and the ability structure look good enough that I feel confident Entry 6 will be a summary and result in the actual core mechanics for characters in the game. One thing is missing before that, though, and it is the topic for this entry: Character creation and growth! Okay, so that's not one but two things. In my mind, they are closely related, but this remains to be examined.

  Now, the classic method of character growth is 'experience points'. A character goes through some things and gets these 'XP', and with them, new abilities can be acquired for the character. Point-buy systems usually let the player spend the XP directly on skills and other abilities (or on getting rid of disabilities), while class-level systems lean more towards a target number of XP that will grant a new level, full of character goodies, in one big swoop. Even class-level systems have begun offering smaller goodies for purchase with XP, but that is still a difficult marriage.

  I have already made it clear that I am in the point-buy camp. The whole level-up method of growth simply seems clunky and haphazard to me, prefering the smooth growth of pure point-buy. I do see levels as a cool feature in that each new level gives something to strive for, and I understand the rush that achieving a new level gives. I would like to somehow integrate that rush in my own XP equivalent, but I still want the smoothness of point-buy's gradual growth.

  The reason I am going straight for growth, by the way, and not looking first at character creation, is that I feel creation should reflect growth. The character is presumed to have become what he or she is by having a life, and thus growing into what the player creates. In the 'metagame' of GM and players sitting around a table playing, the character is a set of data put down on paper. But in the game, that is meant to portray an actual person who has had a life that is simply now becoming a part of the adventures to be played. I would like for character creation to reflect that, making it a kind of growth itself. I have no special plan on how to do that, and may scrap the idea entirely, but without some thought on growth, I cannot decide on that.

  :: Improving Abilities ::

  Coming from the point-buy mentality, I see abilities as grown from use. The traditional idea of handing each player some amount of XP after a game to spread on abilities is too artificial for me, at least without explaining it as having some deeper significance inside the reality of the game. As such, my first thought is to have some result measured with ability usage and let that raise the ability. For example, any time an ability succeeds by a certain margin, or even fails by it (we learn from our mistakes, they say...).

  One concern that has to be addressed is the rate of ability growth. If an ability grows equally fast no matter how great it is, abilities will soon grow into the heavens, continuing to skyrocket no matter what, as long as they are being used. If, on the other hand, growth slows down as abilities become greater, they will slowly level off, and as a result, characters will learn faster when they are rookies than when they are experts. There is no logic that can determine the proper way, it's a choice: Constant growth, or decreasing growth. Alternately, I could put a maximum level for the ability, but I dislike that idea. I could also go wild with an actually increasing growth, in which skilled characters learn even faster, but that would unbalance the game quickly, as the gap between highly skilled and poorly skilled would explode!

  One thing that I have long pondered is the existence of 'learning abilities'. I know from experience that people can learn at different rates, and that those rates are not bound by the level of skill they already have; skilled people sometimes learn quicker, sometimes slower. I have always wanted some clever game mechanic that integrates that into a game without unbalancing it, and without making it a mathematical nightmare.

  But let's start out with a very basic way a character might grow: Whenever an ability succeeds, that ability is raised by 1. This, of course, is highly impractical, since it will simply result in characters running around, using abilities willy-nilly to grow them. A standard character could, theoretically, pick fights all the time with defenseless old ladies and become a great fighter, because there is little chance of failing against such a foe. So let's alter the concept a little: Whenever an ability succeeds by a specific amount, it grows by 1. If the amount is small, growth is slow, and vice versa. In fact, the idea of learning from our mistakes can be used, too: If the use of an ability succeeds or fails by a certain amount, it grows by 1. The benefit of that certain amount is that higher skills means the character will need greater challenges to grow, because easy challenges will succeed by far too much to result in growth!

  I think I actually used something like this back in TAYDS, but I don't currently remember, nor do I feel like looking it up right now. The method seems usable, at least in its basic form.

  What becomes the inevitable question is "how much is the amount to succeed or fail by?". It could be set definitively by the GM, allowing a control over how fast or slowly characters grow (which makes adventure design a lot easier, I would think). But something tells me this number might be the way to put learning ability into the game, and into the characters! A character might have an actual learning ability, and the level of that ability could be the amount for any ability to succeed or fail by to cause growth. Since that reads like a lot of mathematical mumbo-jumbo, I'll phrase it as an example: If the character Lloyd has a learning ability of 14, a success or failure of 14 or less on, say, Chess, would raise Chess by 1. I like the theory, but I cannot shake the feeling that I am tempting fate with it. Inevitably, players will pump the learning abilities as high as possible, to ensure that their characters grow quickly. Complex restrictions will open the floodgates on math-gifted min-maxing players trying to calculate how to abuse the rules to create insane characters. Also, high enough learning abilities will cause every single use of a skill to result in growth, skyrocketing the skill!

  One quick way to influence, though not outright solve, this conundrum is to make the learning ability hard to achieve. If it is built on the same basis as other abilities (having the learning ability at 14 is no more unusual than having another ability, like Chess, at 14, for example), the rule might be that any roll on an ability that succeeds or fails by 1/10 of the learning ability, rounded down, results in growth. So a learning ability of 14 would mean any success or failure of 1 (1.4 rounded down) will raise Chess by 1. Much better.

  This might actually be a working model! To reduce overcharged learning abilities, different learning abilities should be needed for different things. Some people learn music quickly but never 'get' sports, and others are brilliant with languages. Some are geniuses across the board, but that just means the player has pumped a lot of resources into learning abilities, starting out with less in other abilities. This option severely risks skewing the rate of growth between characters in the same group, but I will have to patch that once I have better test data.

  But I skipped over the whole continuous growth versus declining growth a bit too quickly, I think. The above method does force the character to face greater and greater challenges in order to grow, but as long as such challenges can be found, it can just grow unchecked. I would like to see a decline, so that increased ability means slower growth. Not stopped, just slower. An added feature would thus be to encourage the player to focus more on learning abilities, since they are the one way to revitalize a declining growth (in plain English: With greater skill comes slower learning. So increasing learning skill becomes more important).

  We are, heavens forbid, moving into statistical math here. Since I don't want this to be any kind of math lecture, I feel a need to avoid anything complex. However, the more I look at it, the more it seems like the dice mechanism might actually solve the problem! Since I am leaning towards using the dice pool mechanics, greater skill would mean more dice rolled. Rolling a success or failure of no more than, say, 3 (remember, I'm still pulling numbers out of thin air here!) is harder when you're rolling 50 dice than when you roll 20. So in theory, and it is a very rough and untested theory, it should be harder to roll those close calls at higher skill levels. I can already see a lot of bellcurve graphs in my future to check the numbers, but I will stick to this observation for now. Unless some mathematical landmine is in there somewhere, greater skill diminishes learning (until learning ability is improved, that is), I just don't know by how much. And if I decide not to go with the dice pool mechanics, I guess I will just have to reevaluate the options for declining growth.

  :: New Abilities ::

  Along the road of adventure, players are likely to want their characters to pick up new abilities. Off-hand, I'd say that any situation that forces them to use a previously unused ability would be an opportunity for learning; if they roll the indicated 'learning success/failure', the character learns a little. Only in very easy challenges will they even stand that chance, but that mimics real life pretty nicely, in my opinion.

  What bothers me here is that some abilities should not be as easily accessible to learning as others. Sure, any kid might wave around a stick and get a very, very basic feeling of what it is to use a sword. But understanding complex technologies, not to mention magic, would take more than innocent play!

  One way I could see this work out is to simply assume that those 'hard-learned' abilities have very little use at low levels. Maybe any kid can learn to focus some magical power, but it's worth next to nothing because actual spells require so much more control over those powers! That is a pretty quick way out, but there is something very unsatisfying about it. Not only does it put a strange slant on skill challenges (doing seemingly complex things with one skill takes far more than doing seemingly complex things with another), it also seems to diminish the notion that there is even a reason for these skills to be harder to learn. And that goes against my intention of detail!

  This all makes me think about two other ways I can see this working. One is that learning a hard-learned ability is actually not hard, it simply requires other things to be learned first. Even learning how to create basic software is tough on most people who do not feel quite skilled at regular computer usage (if you can't check your email efficiently, odds are you can't create an email program at all). Futuristic technologies may require some basic concepts to be learned first, perhaps several, and magic could have entire disciplines leading up to the actual spells! What would be terribly, terribly important with this approach is to make those preparatory abilities worth something on their own. An ability cannot exist simply to be needed for learning another, it has to do something on its own. In the (overly generalized) computer example, learning to use a computer has a benefit on its own, even before it lets you create snazzy programs.

  Also, preparatory abilities (henceforth, 'prep skills') need to work in a specific way in the rules, or it becomes pure chaos. If it is simply a matter of "learn this skill before that skill", players will just throw a few scrappy points into the prep skill and be done with it, then focus on the more complex skill. That defeats the whole point of it, especially if the prep skill is meant to say something about the kind of character that learns it, or the life the character has lived to achieve the complex skill (I am getting visions of Tibetan monks and dedicated Shao Lin students here!). One option is to require the prep skill at a certain level to allow the complex skill to be learned, or that the complex skill can never be greater than the prep skill, or both! There are an abundance of options, but none of them are fitting perfectly yet...

  The other way I saw for complex skill learning to work is that the complex skill is not an ability as such, but many! Swinging a sword is about, well, swinging a sword, but understanding a fusion stardrive might well be the combination of several academic disciplines and some degree of practical training. But how would that play out in practice? It might simply be a matter of needing X different abilities, and only rolling the dice on the lowest one of them. Still, that pretty much defeats the idea of having something be an actual ability, putting in its stead a bunch of bits and pieces. Alternately, the actual complex skill might simply not be allowed to be bigger than the lowest of those 'component skills'. So to learn Repair Fusion Stardrive, the character needs, oh, say, Fusion Technology, Astrogation, Quantum Computers, and even the more hands-on Heavy Machinery. The complex skill, Repair Fusion Stardrive, is an ability all on its own, but it can never be known at a greater level than the lowest of the four others. And each of the four component skills of course have their own uses; even if they only have a few adventure uses on their own, they may be used to learn even other skills, such as Jumpgate Theory which requires Astrogation and Wormhole Physics!

  Both "complex skills require higher levels to produce useful results", "complex skills require prep skills" and "complex skills require component skills" offer playable options for simulating abilities that cannot be learned simply by watching someone and trying to do the same. They can even be combined; Quantum Computers require Computer Programming to learn (i.e. the component skill requires a prep skill), and even once Repair Fusion Drive is learned, it takes an impressive level to fix any serious damage! However, from just looking at it, I feel that either method, and especially all three combined, would leave a horrible mess. There is a simple elegance missing, something that makes it all very straight forward to use and at the same time makes it seem logical, perhaps even realistic. Something is still missing.

  :: A Quick Note on Character Creation ::

  The quick note is that I will have to bump it. Growth was not as simple as I had foreseen once I started questioning the traditional XP Reward system in favor of detail and smooth growth. I am not even sure that I have a complete handle on character growth yet, although the basic abilities (that is, whatever abilities do not count as complex skills) may have the needed system made for them now. The whole thing is rather ramshackle and held together with duct tape, but if the simple aspects fit together with dice mechanics and ability structure (I am not courageous enough to think about integrating the style issues discussed in the last entry!), there might be a bit of core mechanics in what I already have. Complex issues can hopefully build on that.

  What I do know is that character creation has not been addressed at all, and it needs to be! Entry 6 will not be the summary and assembly of existing bits I had hoped, but if I can spend that entry on the character creation topic with some useful results, there is hope that Entry 7 will leave me with a functional core of my game. And that is always something!

 


.::: Entry 4, 2009/10/18 :::.

  It seems some things are shaping up. There is a rough draft for a (presumed) speedy dice mechanism that balances high granularity with ease of use, and a base concept for how abilities work. This does not mean that these things are in any way done, but it does give a path to follow for now.

  As a result, my mind has slipped from game mechanics back to game philosophy, if one can speak about such a thing. The basic idea of the game has already been put forth: Universal through versatility, detailed and yet easy to learn. But that is a very general (one might even call it generic!) description, one that does nothing to set the game apart from most others out there. So what is it really I want with this game? What do I feel is missing, what do I want this game to do?

  There is one aspect of versatility that I have only barely touched upon yet, one that has been a great concern of mine in my many years with GURPS as my main tool and various other games as changes of pace: Style. Some would say that Vampire and its World of Darkness was the first modern game to put excessive focus on things like atmosphere, mood, and style. Later Hong Kong Theater games, Feng Shui as a glowing example, have pushed it further and farther, warping the game world reality to emulate movie style realities. I feel, however, that style has been quite alive before that, though with less attention drawn to it as a seperate discipline in game design. The old lady, Call of Cthulhu, is one of my favorite examples of a game promoting style as part of its design (as opposed to those that do it mainly through edgy art and florid prose. None mentioned, none forgotten). The notion of Sanity as a major influence on the game pulls the mind-numbing horror of the game world into a tangible piece of information for the player. I see WoD's Humanity and other such indicators as the children of that rule.

  Other game mechanics enforcing style also exist in old games, though they may be less elegant. I always regretted never getting deep into Paranoia, which had the blessedly mad idea of portraying the disrespect for life and safety in its Alpha Complex game world by the simple fact that everyone has six identical clones. If the player's character gets blown away or crushed by overzealous cleaning robots (no, I am serious, and it is hilarious!), the next identical clone will step in after a brief pause. One character sheet, six lives. If that does not promote disrespect for the wellbeing of characters, I do not know what does!

  What bothers me are two things about the whole RPG attitude on these style mechanics: Firstly, that a game has to be irrevocably built around the mechanic, forcing the overall setting and the style mechanic to stay together (try using Vampire or CoC rules for a lighthearted sci-fi game), and that it is one style mechanic per game, effectively summing up the rules aspects of the setting's style in that one rule.

  I want my game to be versatile in style as much as in genre. The ability and dice structure slowly coming together is applicable regardless of genre; skills in space can be simulated just as well as skills in ancient Rome. But how to make style mechanisms an integral part of it without locking it into one fixed style is another task.

  :: Style Galleries ::

  Style is, in my interpretation, a mixture of the general mood and feelings players are intended to develop while playing the game, and the kind of action mentality that they are encouraged to exhibit. Gun-crazy action gives players a feeling that bullets may fly at any moment, likely in insane numbers, and that they are not only excused for solving problems by laying down artillery-grade fire, but expected to do so. Silly styles should leave the players confident that they can do utterly insane things and get away with it, and probably that boring and sensible methods will not yield much. Players are rewarded for thinking along the lines of the style in question.

  Two measurements define a lot about style, and their combination is basis for most styles around: Cheerful versus gloomy, and calm versus blazing. On each slide, there is plenty of room for degrees, such as the slightly dark genre with snappy dialogue and brief action that is film noir. The four extremes are blazing gloom (splatterpunk or violent gothic fit the bill), calm gloom (like war drama or classic goth), blazing cheerful (usually cartoonish) and calm cheerful (like quippy, British humor, uncommon in RPGs but not impossible).

  Beyond that, style is typically specified by the value a game world, or simply the part that the characters see, puts on life, property, information, and various less defined concepts (honor, status, spirituality, forbidden knowledge and so on are known examples). Simply stating what a world values can flesh out the basic style, and things are very interchangable. The clone method mentioned above of giving characters essentially multiple 'lives' in a world, as used in Paranoia, could fit into a calm and gloomy style just as well (Paranoia is definitely blazing, on the side of suicidally cheerful), leading to horrible deaths without true release as lives are continued after, never knowing what killed the clone before you (the character does not know, even though the player might. Calm gloom tends towards drama and tormented roleplay). And anything inspired by saturday morning cartoons could be excused for having a Sanity score!

  Ironically, what often has the least impact on style is the actual contents of the game world. Most styles can be transplanted between genres with little trouble, as style tends to deal with ageless and fairly universal questions (is life worth protecting? Can I get away with insane actions? Should I trust people with important information?). Very specific game worlds may lean towards certain styles, but that would simply make another style an unusual take on them, not in the least bit impossible.

  What I am left with is two conclusions to continue building on: There is an abundance of styles, making it probably impossible to tune the game to each style individually, and I need not depend on the game world to deliver the style mechanisms, they function seperately from it.

  :: Actual Mechanics ::

  Sanity in CoC, Humanity and Paradox and other equivalents in WoD, even Cyberpsychosis in cyberpunk and to some extent the clone in Paranoia, they are all about loss and gain. In a sense, they mimic the idea of traditional hit points: You have an amount of something, and you can loose it slowly, and perhaps get some back somehow. Losing the whole thing tends to end badly, from death to horrible side-effects or unpredictable changes to your situation. But at the same time, each also gives you something to burn! You get the chance of sacrificing something in order to move beyond the norms. Sanity might be lost by learning forbidden knowledge, a clone might die to let you perform some suicidal stunt, and so on. Even hit points have a similar role, in that having a lot of hit points lets you take on big enemies and expect to survive! In short, the game mechanics related to style can be seen as resources to be wagered and weighed against great rewards. Even if those rewards are simply survival or a chance to show somebody who's boss.

  In a way, this puts most games into an interesting perspective. Hit points, used in nearly all major RPGs, are about taking damage. They are the high score counter that players use to determine how things are going. They are not typically the only counter, but they are prominent nonetheless. That essentially says about all those games that the style is martial combat. While not a great revelation (face it, we all know combat is an integral part of nearly any RPG's rules), the fact that it is essentially a style mechanic is an odd thought to me. Hit points are so common that they just seem like a necesity for any game not built entirely around some other interaction. Truly combat-oriented games should thus have a lot of things in them that are concerned with hitpoints. Which fits the idea of healing potions, health boosts, damage protection and so forth in many games.

  Again, this is not an epiphany. But it does give a lead on how to insert style mechanics into games, and how to open the game up to versatile style mechanic options. Essentially, a style mechanic begins its conceptual life as a measure of something that is lost and gained, and then a lot of ways to influence that loss and gain are designed. What they connect to in the game world becomes what the style centers around; if the most frequent loss of hit points is minor accidents, then the style becomes one of worrying about papercuts, broken glass and people with small, pointy objects. This could be a world without serious weapons, where enemies cut each other down slowly and 'monsters' are painful accidents waiting to happen. Some bizarre espionage ideas come to mind.

  But to truly test this basic idea of how to make a style bleed into the rules, sample styles should be designed using it. And the stranger, the better, since nothing tests a theory better than going at it from an odd angle!

  First test: Blazing and slightly gloomy, based in technology. A world in which technology is powerful, but something has made the fuel horribly scarce. The mood to be conveyed is that the characters have incredible power, but it runs out with every use, until the lights go dark (figuratively speaking. Or maybe literally...). The theme is the sacrifice, losing a bit of greatness every time they apply it, and the battle to 'fuel up' and stay powerful. The logical game mechanism is that which the sacrifice is about: Power, be it electrical, fusion cells, super-gas, or anything else. The characters have technological superpowers, but using them drains their power, which requires a lot of work and luck to replenish. If they go dark, they are powerless. Perhaps they even die outright, because they are robots or heavily cyborged, or because technology keeps them alive. The blazing action comes from what they can do. The gloom comes from always knowing that they are burning themselves out doing it. For added worries, different power sources may fuel different things! Yes, finding certain stored chemicals keeps life-support running, but it won't fuel the exosuit lasers...

  Second test: A bit more weirdness is needed for a thorough test. Calm and cheerful has some lack of immediate examples, so let's go there. And the theme is the value of information. The game world... Let's have characters be conspirators and manipulators, puppetmasters having fun pulling strings and conning the rich and powerful! But the more they do it, the more they risk exposure. So let's call the main style mechanic Secrecy, and have them looking paranoid over their shoulders every time they up the stakes. Every time they manipulate someone, and especially when they manipulate someone new, an amount of Secrecy is lost, decided at random but guided by how risky their victim is to manipulate. They can work hard to regain Secrecy, solving problems in true conspiratorial fashion, plugging leaks and seeding disinformation. But if Secrecy drops significantly, police shows up to ask questions, shady people get nosy about their operations, and old enemies may pop up for an unpleasant reunion. If Secrecy runs out, everybody knows, and you are hunted! So loss of Secrecy does not actually kill anyone, but the game changes in challenges. Secrecy concerns loom over them at every turn, and yet the lure of more puppets tempts them...

  It's not perfect, and a mechanism alone will not fulfill a style, but it's a step in the right direction, or so it seems.

  :: Game Application ::

  There is doubtlessly a reason why most games with a style mechanism rarely have more than one, or two that are closely related. The reason I can easily see is that the style is so integrated with the game world; if you have mechanisms surrounding the deeds of vampires, it's because you have a vampire game. So if game world and style mechanism are so connected, how can a versatile game contain style rules?

  From my immediate perspective, it's a matter of what is implemented. In a game that does not have any real focus on combat, fighting skills and weaponry are quickly glanced over. A gunfight will be a few quick rolls to hit someone, if even that. If combat is not of interest, any combat related rules will be cut away in favor of game progression. A lack of drama surrounding anything combat will also signal non-importance to players, (hopefully) letting them understand that combat is not important, or even useful.

  This, however, is not about how rules are, but how they are used. No combat, then no use of combat rules. The same should be possible for style: If there is no focus on fear in the game, then any style rules for fear can be ignored.

  By that logic, a versatile game can have rules for governing style, but like combat rules, the GM and players pick only those worth using, discarding the rest.

  Of course, that means it is a futile task to create unique style mechisms for every style and theme, because any game will use only one or two, and there are just too many possibilities out there, most of which I probably cannot even think of. The only logical choice is to create a generalized style mechanism or two, and have full instructions for how it adapts to need. That way, when someone wants a new and clever style, he or she can simply say "it's about X, so we put X into this style mechanism".

  For the moment, I stick with the basic idea behind style mechanisms I know. Like Sanity or Humanity, the mechanism has a set of points, based on some inherent ability in the character or a flat number. Like hit points, some things will drain the points, some will replenish them, all depending on what the style is meant to symbolize. I call them Style Points, a generic term for the mechanism that can become any style desired.

  Come to think of it, there is a variation in Style Points worth adding as a second choice of mechanism. Though very similar, the difference is that they start out at nothing, but points can be earned in the course of the game. Like traditional character points or experience points, they can then be changed for something when there are enough. Or they can be burned off during the game to do something more or less extraordinary. I call them Award Points. They are a style mechanism because they can enforce the style, being awarded when players have their characters do something that is truly in the spirit of the game, whatever that might be.

  :: Multi-Styles ::

  While all games I know that use style mechanisms consider them universal in that game, this need not be the case if the game has versatile style mechanisms. A character group consisting of a psychopath, a paranoid, and a gun-toting lunatic might have different style mechanisms to support each variation of character: The psychopath has something like Humanity to keep him from killing people, the paranoid has something like Sanity to keep him from running away screaming, and the gun-toting lunatic has extra lives as in the Paranoia game. Every game has its specialists, all the way back to the old warrior/wizard/rogue/bard classes of D&D's early ages. Now, style simply enforces the differences in character! Assuming all players understand the different style mechanisms, they can enjoy the struggles and tribulations of their very different characters without being governed by others than their own; the player with the psychopath character can feel for the eroding mind of the paranoid and worry when the gun-toting lunatic is going all-out crazy and risking yet another life lost!

  There are concerns about mixing styles, of course, since there are gains from adhering to a style mechanism that might seem unfair to others. This is a game balance issue, and a complex one at that. It is too complex to handle right now, but I will keep it in mind until later, when style mechanisms become more defined.



.::: Entry 3, 2009/10/17 :::.

  Well, yesterday's rant left me a great deal to think about, and the thinking has yet to stop. The fact that I will largely stay clear of the dice issue in this entry is a force of will thing. I need to go beyond that issue, or I will be stuck on it forever.

One note, by the way. Currently, the entries are coming day by day, but I am fairly convinced that I cannot keep that going indefinitely. In fact, I feel a hint of carpal tunnel just thinking about a daily write, I have no idea how professional bloggers keep this up! That does not mean that I am not thinking about the work, just that my hands and my time need to be applied elsewhere now and then. Thoughts thought will follow quickly, whatever the case!

  Today, my issue will be on abilities. More to the point, the overall structure I'd like to see abilities assume. The goal of extensive detail plays in here, heavily, but is balanced brutally against the whole ease-of-play concern. The best way I can see this happening is by having a stable learning curve, making early characters fairly manageable, but letting growth increase not just the character awesomeness (for lack of a better word), but also complexity. So players can start out with simple characters, and then go on to define more depth later on if they wish. Of course, this is an option and not the law; if players feel comfortable creating complex characters, they should not be prevented from doing so by the rules. The GM can put restrictions on them, but the rules need to allow for both simple and complex characters, equally.

  I am really not making this easy on myself, I guess!

  But this lofty overall goal has to take a backseat for now. There are definitions and closer goals that need taking care of before I can adjust the entire structure to my vision.

  :: Anatomy of Abilities ::

Firstly, this all has to do with abilities, not disabilities. I hope to have some similarity, especially in the dice mechanism, but my initial assumption is that any character will have a lot more complexity and variety put into abilities than disabilities. Both may be of equal interest, but abilities tend to be more carefully calculated, with disabilities being more for flavor (assuming I can limit the opportunities for min-maxing!).

  In a modern RPG, abilities cannot be tossed in willy-nilly. Even though systems tend to seperate combat abilities for special attention, the trend is leaning towards categorizing abilities in a way that seems logical when compared to the real world. Thus, if two aspects of the matter are to be treated differently, they damn well better have real-world differences to justify it! That makes the act of explaining what aspects of reality one wants to emulate rather important.

  TAYDS, for those who have looked into the tome, already depicts several of my notions about ability structure. I would like to distinguish between skills (the ability to handle a certain act, topic or tool), talents (broader and often innate abilities, applicable to a coherent mass of connected skills, and nearly impossible to train directly), and familiarity (handling a very special act or trick, or a unique brand or version of a tool, a narrow specialization of a skill). But with time, other concepts have attracted my attention, and the notion of a 'skill' as a clearly defined unit has become rather bland to me. In real life, anything we do is a mix of many factors in our training, experience, natural proficiencies, and a lot of other factors. We draw on things in unexpected ways, even if we can afterwards describe what helped us succeed (or made us fail!). Not all of this is relevant, but I feel that RPGs are ignoring a lot of interesting topics for the sake of quick simplicity.

  Ideally, I would like to see any 'skill' as the product of several character traits interacting. Pushing a car to its limits would entail a knowledge of the mechanics of the car, of physics, of the way the car is controlled, of driving conditions, and so on, combined with physical reaction time, overview of surroundings, sheer nerves, and a bunch of other things. Someone knowing how an engine reacts to stress would be able to push it farther, but someone with the nerve and reflexes might make more impressive maneuvers. The simple act of driving a car haphazardly through city streets would be a depiction of how the character is as a person and a driver. Of course, that level of detail would hardly be practical in a gaming environment that depends on players and GM handling the numbers!

  Another aspect of abilities is habit. Familiarity has been brushed upon, the factor that makes one model car a different experience than another, or makes a swordfight against one creed of enemy easier than against another. The character knows that car or enemy in specific detail, quite possibly more than any other car or creed. But it goes deeper than that, and my opinion is that a character should show that. Different circumstances for driving, different maneuvers, different people in the car, etc., can all be important to a driver. Being used to driving irresponsibly on your own makes passengers a problem, while a habit of relying on someone else to keep an overview of the street can make solitary racing difficult. As for the fight, soldiers used to fighting in units act very differently from lone warriors, and fighting in a swamp is nothing like fighting in an open square. Add to that the whole issue of what tools, primary or for support, the character is used to using, and things get complicated.

  I personally like this complication, at least in theory. It makes situations unique, and it makes characters unique. Two swordmasters can both be trained to perfection, yet have very different habits of fighting, and function differently under various circumstances. But I am encumbered by the need for a system of abilities that will be easy to use and quick to resolve. The differences, in other words, need to be quickly apparent.

  To construct an early model of ability structure, I will need one or more sample actions to act as concept tests. To ensure a broad understanding of what I need to deal with, I pick the mentioned swordfighting, electronic lockpicking, and local geography (as in, knowing how to get around an area quickly).

  :: Dissection ::

  First order of business is to define what is being done with each ability. Swordfighting means using a sword to deal damage and, possibly, avoid taking damage. Electronic lockpicking means turning off lock mechanisms and alarms. Local geography is a bit more vague, but pondering it brings me to the conclusion that it is about knowing where a place is in relation to another, and how to get from that A to that B. Now for picking them apart: What affects each of those deeds?

  A swordwielder first. What defines his skill? Well, a basic capacity for swinging the weapon around at a target, for one! That is, to my understanding, the essence of a weapon skill in most games: The wielder is trained in efficient ways to get the blade into the opponent. But other things can affect that ability: The fit of the sword, the strength, agility and precision of the wielding hand (which might not be the same as for the body!), stable footing in the given environment, overview and focus on the surroundings, understanding of the opponent, weather conditions and visibility, the temper and similar mental state of the wielder. Though I had intended to continue, the list of influences on that single skill seems endless. I'll skip to the next for a look, then see if it sheds new light on swordfighting, as well.

  Electronic lockpicking is about knowing the gear used and the lock picked; make, models, brand, condition, any typical modifications or tricks of the trade. It is also a matter of concentration, agile fingers, good eyes, and overview of a bunch of little indicators in the electronics. Conditions around the character might play in, but they are not an essential part of the deed unless the character is actually being pushed, trembling, sweating or the like. Of course, typical working conditions do build on that, such as what temperatures the character is used to working in (ever note the focus on air-condition in many non-chemical labs?).

  Local geography is a bit different. It's not really an action as much as an understanding. It could be seen as raw map memorization, but that seems, to me, to diminish the ability to the point of insult. Remembering a map is one thing, but getting through, say, a crowded city is as much about knowing shortcuts and routinely blocked passages. Getting from A to B might be easy on the map, but the obvious route is always in a traffic jam, or bad neighborhood, or just plain impractical. What you are willing to deal with influences your options a lot. And method of movment, such as by foot, car, bike, jetpack or teleportation, plays a big factor! Even more, perhaps, does the question of what you want to do, from just get away from someone or through a city block quick, or find a particular shop.

Looking at even those brief dissections of the skills, a few things jump out at me. Working conditions seem universally important, from the weather and terrain of a fight to the crowding of a city. Adapting to specific tools also seems important, mainly in the two first but also in case local geography involves an actual map, GPS or the like. And mood or mental state seems pretty important for keeping a clear head! In other words, there is a lot of meat on the bones of even a few abilities! And I haven't even included the deeper details on the tools themselves yet!

  :: Player Choice ::

  I am a fan of point-buy systems. That is, I like players to create characters by putting together abilities and the like from scratch, rather than using classes and levels. I never understood why having fought a lot of monsters made you a better thief, or why it had to be a hassle to play a merchant just because no game supplement had thought to make a class for it. It probably goes back to granularity. I want wide selections and player control, not an identity quick-pick.

  But having players pick every little aspect of a skill just to be able to, say, swing a sword around seems like overkill. I can't expect the average player to make the above dissection of every skill he or she wants in a character! Encouraging specification by offering various familiarities (a specific type of sword, a special group of people in a city, etc.) has been my default method until now, but I am beginning to feel that it does not exactly frame the skill as a whole, it simply gives a discount on narrow abilities. And the talents have run the other way, being more costly 'über-skills'; cost ten times as much, added to a whole range of skills. In essence, talents have been an encouragement to build characters with broader abilities, again by supplying a 'discount' (20+ skills boosted for the price of 10). My thoughts of late, having tested and explored ideas on simple point-buy discounts as a basis for character variation, have drifted towards making abilities more integral to the actual background of a character. A player does not simply buy a familiarity with a certain environment to use a skill in (swordfighting in the forest, for example), it is a part of the character's background that determines it. And in a nice loop, that brings me back to the idea of skills being uniquely assembled, rather than just an arbitrary name on a list.

  A possible solution that has come to me while actually writing is to have the uniqueness of an ability be part of the character creation, and inserting familiarities and the like there and then. If a character learned swordfighting with his or her father in the woods, it seems logical that the woods become part of the skill. A way to take the pressure of point economics off the player's hand could be to simply state that the defined environment comes along automatically. So if you spent (and I am grabbing numbers from thin air here) 20 points on Swordfight that you learned in the woods, you get 20 points of Woodland Experience (or whatever name fits) for free. When you happen to be using your skills under the familiar circumstances (swordfighting in the woods), you get whatever bonus those free 20 points will buy you. And since any similar skill has similar environmental bonuses (axe-fighting learned in the cold snow will have that bonus, for example), there is not a lot of room for abuse. True, a player might take other abilities that boost the free Woodland Experience, but that seems fitting to me: If your character learned both swordfighting, axefighting and archery in the forest, he's going to be hell on wheels with any such skill in the woods! Of course, he'll likely be at a disadvantage anywhere else, compared to whoever trained in a variation of environments.

  And just to address a question immediately: Yes, a character can train 20 points worth of swordfighting in the woods, then add 10 points worth of training in an arena or on the beach or the like. The Swordfight skill goes up, but the environmental experience gets spread across different training grounds. And if a game world or carefully constructed character puts together certain places or trainers that match up certain experiences, it becomes a cool background story. "You fight like a madman with that stubbed Milian sword in the grainfield, my friend. Did you train under Master Haran of Kolchen City?" How to fit the talents into this is still less clear, but the same or a similar method seems theoretically possible...

  :: Note on Attributes ::

  Anyone reading this might have noticed a distinct lack of talk about 'attributes', one of the archtypical elements of RPGs. For those who do not know what I mean, think Strength, Intelligence, and other such basic things on a character sheet. Most games have 3-7 of them, and they are typically the first things to get filled in. Simply put, a lot of games encourage players to determine how strong a character is before going on with weapon skills.

  I'm not a fan of attributes. Let me explain why.

  Over the years, the point of attributes has been eroded heavily. The original D&D put a lot of weight on them, making them more or less the basis of a character; you decided what kind of character you had by setting the attributes. Skills and such were simpler back then, meant mainly to set classes apart, giving warriors combat skills and rogues thief skills, etc. As time has moved on, skills have become more important and more varied. Attributes no longer represent as much as skills do. And with skill variations, attributes fit less well to their skills, too. The latest incarnation of GURPS (that is, the fourth edition of the game) caught my eye in that it has Talents (no, I actually did not copy the term from them, just coincidence) that apply bonuses to sets of skills (seriously, not copied, just coincidence, I swear!). The same game has attributes that do roughly the same. So in a sense, an attribute in GURPS has become a variant Talent. Feats and such in D&D look like they are heading in the same direction.

But attributes still remain, and in my mind, they obstruct more detailed perceptions of a character. When everything mental is built around the idea of Intelligence as a measure of brain power, how do you create a character that is dull-witted but well-read, or vice versa? It's the old case of high Agility making you both a skilled archer, clockmaker and ballet dancer at the same time. While it is not as insane as some claim (agile people do often have funny skill combinations in my experience), it takes away the option of expanding a lot of details. Attributes hover above everything as the one thing that cannot easily be altered to enhance the game, and patchwork rules to circumvent it are found in most games. I say just do away with these high and mighty lords of abilities and make them talents, then tear them apart and see what makes them tick. I'll be doing that in the near future for this game.



.::: Entry 2, 2009/10/16 :::.

  A lot of my time has lately been spent pondering the core dice method(s) of the game. Well, that and a name, but the name seems less essential at the moment (TAYDS is being scrapped, for several unimportant reasons). Note that not using dice in the game would feel horribly wrong to me. Dice are a part of the fun, and it would take a very interesting substitute method to get me away form dice.

The way dice are used will have a serious effect on the game, for several reasons. Deciding on dice system is a lot of mathematical nitpicking, so be warned: What follows is not for the faint of heart!

  One reason is the already mentioned ease-of-use or 'playability' of the game. While most dice systems can be learned, the way dice are rolled makes a big impact on the actual pace of the game. Basically, math takes time. For some more than others, of course, but even simple adding or subtracting can become a time drain when it has to be done multiple times in a row. It is not uncommon for combat or other such engagements to suffer from this in existing games; roll, math, roll, math, more math, roll, math, etc. The original premise, similar to that used in TAYDS, was a 3d6 roll (three six-sided dice) that needed to be below a target number (skill level). This, in turn, was inherited from my experiences with GURPS.

  The problem with this method is that detailed use of dice will inevitably involve amount of success and failure. With a 3d6 under-roll, as in GURPS and TAYDS, the roll would need to be subtracted from the skill level. As stated, this is easy, but doing it a lot becomes cumbersome. Using an over-roll against Difficulty (you roll, add the result to skill level, and check against a 'Difficulty' number determined by the GM) involves an extra step of including the Difficulty!

  Of course, what plagues me most is my growing affinity for dice pools. The idea of letting skill level indicate the number of regular, six-sided dice (d6) that are rolled and added up would result in a lot of low-level math, adding up all those dice.

One method that has come to my attention, partly as a result of some Vampire: The Masquerade gaming (yes, old WoD, not new) is the idea of individual target numbers. V:tM uses Difficulty per die, such as 3 dice having to roll 7 or better. That easily becomes time-consuming if used with larger dice pools, and it muddles the task of the GM in setting Difficulties (should a roll be hard by requiring a higher number to be rolled, or by requiring more dice to roll it?). By simply setting half the die maximum as a fixed Difficulty, that can be handled; for a six-sided die, 4 or more is good, 3 or less is bad. The only variant becomes the number of dice needing a good roll, and the higher skill level / more dice, the greater the chance of getting enough good rolls. Math is reduced to spotting good rolls and counting how many, which is very visual, removing the need for constant small-scale math (adding/subtracting). It seems perfect. Of course, there is...

  ::Granularity::

  The concept of granularity or 'graininess' has become very interesting to me over the years. Explained quickly, 'coarse-grained' or 'chunky' games deal with very low numbers for things and thus not much room for difference; it's hard to have a lot of differently skilled people when a skill level can only be from 1 to 5. 'Fine-grained' games offer more variation, like having skills range in level from 1 to 100. Things can be tuned more finely, for more variation. Granularity also plays a role in the range of skills and other (dis)abilities, such as chunky games having only one or two abilities covering a wide field of actions ('Body' and 'Mind' only, for example, with Body covering anything from punching someone to tapdancing), while fine-grained games would define a whole range of abilities, allowing more detailed and precise characters and the like.

  I am heavily in favor of fine-grained.

  While that will show in thoughts on skills and other (dis)abilities, at this point, the dice are the issue. And that issue more or less blows up the idea of dice pools, since fine granularity would require a lot of dice to be rolled. Essentially, I would love to have skill levels and the like rated on a scale from 1-1000, with exceptional abilities going above 1000. The granularity would allow for spectacular effects! But with dice pools, it would be insane, while with over- or under-roll, it would require even bigger math calculations. Five three-digit subtractions in a row every ten minutes of game would slow down most people!

  Options for solving this seem theoretically many. Dice methods can be endlessly modified and manipulated. But I am back at that distressing challenge: Choice. One concept that has been digging in my brain is to use a very high level of granularity and 'layering' it. A skill level of, say, 835 might seem insane, but in general, does anything beyond the first digit (8) matter? If two players are trying to roll the highest, one with a skill level of 835 and one with 712, would the effects of the first digit outshine the rest?

  Let's try. If we stick with the good roll, bad roll dice pool mechanic, that would make it a roll of 8 versus 7 dice. Let's say the player with 7 dice rolls 5 good and 2 bad, and the player with 8 dice rolls 4 good and 4 bad. This suggests that the 712 player won. But could the other digits make a difference? Since the second digit is one tenth the value of the first (in 835, '8' represents hundreds, while '3' represents tens, for example), it seems logical that it would take ten good dice for the second digit to equal one good die on the first. And ten dice would make the second digit 10, which is impossible; 10 tens simply make 1 hundred! And it would seem logical that if one player has 127 in skill level and another has 51, it simply pits 12 dice against 5.

  Of course, this still leaves the problem of measuring amount of success/failure. A roll such as this will not automatically show how much a roll was succeeded or failed by, but the method of counting good and bad dice does seem quite quick and easy. And at least it shows there might be a viable option of uniting high granularity with dice pools. The final choices are still to be made.

  :: Multiple Dice Systems ::

  There is hardly a single rules system out there that uses only one method of rolling dice for everything. Even if all abilities are rolled for in the same way (which is not the case in many systems!), things like weapons damage and other non-ability rolls are often rolled slightly different. In the effort to make the game as easy to use as possible, I favor keeping all ability rolls, and probably also any rolls involved in disabilities, within the same method.

  This puts my worry on granularity yet again. Even though I know I am getting ahead of myself, I cannot help but think if there are actions that will be unwieldy to resolve under something like the dice system(s) depicted above. Or rather, if there are actions that are impractical to use the same method on. Since many systems are capable of keeping all their skills and the like under the same dice mechanic, though, I will try to put the thought off until it forces me to consider it, if ever. It looks unlikely that the same mechanic can handle all non-ability related rolls, though, such as weapons damage. That bridge must be crossed when I get to it, i.e. when I start handling things like weapons and combat. My only real worry is that whatever I decide to use for damage counting (hit points or the like) might not fit in the same granularity range as abilities, but I cannot make predictions about that at this point.

  :: And Fun :.

  The reason I worry so much about a seemingly casual part of the game such as throwing dice and adding or subtracting largely simple numbers is fun. The dilemma of RPG math is, to me, that people want to juggle numbers, but too much repetitive math, simple or not, becomes tedious. Tedious means less fun, as always, and I want every angle of game enjoyment covered.

  Of course, that brings up a counter-argument to some of the things I have stated above (yes, I write pretty much while I think here): Variation versus simplicity! I have not hidden the fact that I am envisioning the basic dice mechanics of the game as one rule, or at most a few, that will apply to as much of the game as possible. Having eight different rules for rolling for abilities is in my opnion insane, and bogs down the game. Even worse, it's ugly to read, clunky to handle ("what kind of ability this time? What kind of roll??"), and takes up unnecessary explanation space in the rules. If nothing else, explaining why throwing a spear and riding a bike needs completely different rules requires some logical explaining these days, RPGs aiming for logical rules more and more.

  Making dice rolls fun and exciting will rely a lot on the abilities themselves, but I feel I need a good starting point. Since the system is to be versatile, I need it even more, or a creative game world will suddenly need its very own, unique rules to even function.

  I need something quick and easy.

  I need something that can be universal, but still allows for variation.

  I would love something with high granularity and dice pools.

  :: A Note on Testing ::

  The previous incarnations of this game have used fairly simple dice mechanisms, most notably a 3d6 under-roll (as in GURPS) or a d20 over-roll (similar to D&D/D20). I have no wide-ranging test data with dice pools except for what I have observed in other games. The testing for this entry has been me, a bunch of dice, and theoretical situations. Some more complicated simulations are strictly written math, to theoretically check the effects of extreme rolls or skill levels. This, of course, is far from enough to get a clear verdict on any dice mechanic. I will stick with this method until abilities are better defined, though, simply because the dice mechanic and the structure of abilities have to mesh, and testing one thoroughly without the other seems like flood-testing a boat in a bathtub.

  In all, the close tie between what I want the dice mechanism to achieve and how I want abilities to function means I will be shifting back and forth between the two in the future, drawing them closer to one another until they fit just as I want them to. So expect far more dice talk in coming entries!



.:::Entry 1, 2009/10/15:::.

  With a website template selected and installed, I guess it's time to open up to everyone and start providing some insights into what this all is. First, however, let me say that the website is still 'filling out', and there are multiple dead/unapplied links in here still. It grows with use. But I digress...

  I am making an RPG.

  Nothing new in that, almost any dedicated gamer has done or tried to do so. I have been working a long time on mine, and even written a full book on it, originally published as TAYDS (you are free to download the PDF or buy a POD print in the left menu). TAYDS tragically ended up being more a philosophical work on my experiences with and studies of RPGs, mostly from the GameMaster's perspective. That was a few years ago, now I feel it is time to start turning it all into an actual game. First, though, a bit about myself. It should go a long way to explain some of the odd choices I will no doubt make. After that, I will describe my thoughts about the project itself, and why I have chosen to do it in the very public way I have.

  I was born in 1976, in Denmark, and got into RPGs at the age of 12 via the "Swords and Sorcery" book series. I had read/played them for a long time before that, but at that time, they published (in Denmark) a book called "Make your own adventures" ("Lav dine egne eventyr"). It was and remains the simplest RPG I have ever enjoyed. I got hooked. I have since enjoyed a line of other games, the one making the greatest mark being GURPS. But more about that later.

  It seems worth also adding that I am autistic. Not in a paralyzing way, but in a way that does affect my thinking a lot. I have what is known as Asperger Syndrome, making me fully functional but mentally... unusual. Basically, "Rainman Light". Most people do not notice it until getting into complicated discussions with me, but it influences me heavily. Especially, I have an obsession with detail and am a perfectionist around things I care about. This will become abundantly apparent as this project progresses.

  ::The Project::

  I have been assembling this game over the last ten to fifteen years, restructuring and rewriting it again and again to make it fit a specific vision. Having spent the last few years using the material I wrote into TAYDS, I believe I am closing in on my objective. I have fine-tuned my objectives into what will be the basis for my continued work, and I will address each of these directly in the time to come:

Firstly, the game will be versatile. By that, I mainly mean that it is a multi-genre system that can be configured by the GM for many worlds, and for many kinds of games and styles of play. I have a central setting (Alice 2.0, more about that at a later time), one that actually needs that versatility. If anyone wishes to use the game for other settings, it must support that idea. As stated, I have spent a lot of time with GURPS, and this is basically the same multi-genre idea it has (and to my knowledge, the same as in FUDGE, Savage Worlds, D20 and a line of others).

  Second, and far more counter to current trends, it will be detailed. Current games gloss over the minute aspects of fictional experiences that many actually enjoy, in favor of swift and simple rules. This is no doubt my Asperger talking, but I want a game that not only makes a magical fireball, a psionic blast and a laser rifle to feel different, but one in which the caliber of a handgun is more than a difference in damage and recoil, in which a dank, old spaceship feels that way in comparison to a sleek new one, and so on. In most games today, a single stat like Agility (or Dexterity, or similar name) raises both the talents of a ballet dancer, a clocksmith, and a gunman. The lack of depth and uniqueness makes characters and worlds feel bland to me, and I want my games to drip with immersive detail, not just in the verbal descriptions but in everything that goes on. This, of course, needs balancing against smoothness, to avoid a game that is crushed beneath strange math and tables of skills. Which brings me to...

  Third, ease of use. A game is about the choices you make, not about a long host of things you have to memorize. Or at least it should be. This does not mean simplicity, it simply means that knowing what to do comes easy when handling rules, and the actual deed is swift and never an interference in the game. Time should be spent deciding or figuring out what to do in an adventure, or choosing how your character grows before and after. It shoul dnot be spent looking up obscure rules. A tall order, I know. But there are so many extraordinarily good games out there, so making my own needs lofty goals to justify the effort needed.

  ::This Website::

  As stated, I have written a lot in the course of this project. Much of it is encumbered by my constant perfectionism, never being satisfied with a certain way of handling a rule or method. But of late, I have noticed that a lot of it seems related to focus. I simply have too many ideas, too many options, and keep trading one for another until I finally rewrite everything and start the process over. Writing things gives me focus on what I am writing, so instead of just knowing every in and out of the rules I work with, my most recent revelation, and perhaps the biggest in a long while, is to write down the process. With a journal, so to speak, of all that I do and consider, I can backtrack my chains of thought and understand what I am doing, and not just what I am producing.

  Of course, I also open myself up to criticism, which is a painful thing for anyone working on a labor of love. I have no illusion that people will follow me by the hordes, of course. I am not Ashton Kutcher, nor do I aspire to be. I do welcome comments and criticism, though, and will do my best to make the project easy to comment on. As of yet, the website has no comment function, but RPG.net will soon have a thread for it, and I will do my best to enhance the options if needed. So if you feel a venue of commentary is missing... comment on it on RPG.net! I will insert a link to the commentary thread in the top bar ASAP.

And along the way, there will be a stern eye on structure, allowing people to get into the project easily to comment. Good structure is, after all, an essential part of writing good material, so why not start here! I intend to, when the project seems ready, publish by way of POD, both in a commented and uncommented version. The commented version of the game will contain a lot of material from this site, and more, to describe the ideas and processes behind the game it contains, while the uncommented will simply contain the game. If that makes no sense now, don't worry, I will get back to it when the project gets that far along.
 
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