Category: Systems

gaming systems

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Unlucky 13

I generally like the idea of fumbles in games, being both true to life and literature, although they can be a problem if they’re too frequent or severe.  A fair number of published systems would have a tenth or more of an army incapacitating themselves over the course of a battle. Another thing that I think is a problem, albeit a minor one, is that most systems tie fumbles into failure, so it’s impossible to both succeed at a task but have something go awry.

Here’s the system I’m currently using in my D&D-esque game:  whenever rolling a d20, a roll of a 13 means something unlucky potentially happened.  Roll a Luck save (luck is a Stat in this system, but you could substitute some other sort of save).  Success means nothing happened, failure means something bad but relatively minor or recoverable (weapon twists in your grip and you can’t attack next turn, sun gets in your eyes, etc.).  A second roll of 13 means something quite unfortunate happened, such as dropping your weapon or falling down.  Roll again and keep rolling if 13 keeps coming up, making the result more severe the more 13’s you get.

Obviously you can adjust just how bad it is to taste; I feel that dropping a weapon one in 400 times is probably bad enough, but you might prefer that to be the result of failing the luck save, and have the roll of a second 13 be more spectacular, such as a broken weapon.  You could also make it more severe, so that e.g. a weapon breaks on a failed save after the initial 13, if you want things to be more chaotic; I lean against that, in part because in most RPGs that sort of thing can really make the PCs seem like klutzes.  During a campaign players tend to make many times more roles than any individual NPC they encounter, so a 1 in 20 or 1 in 40 shot may well turn up for each character at least once a night; if the failures are particularly memorable that can be a problem.  1 in 400 is more like once a session or less for some PC or NPC…enough to add flavor without being overwhelming.

I like this because it’s an easy mnemonic, which can be important for something relatively rare.  It’s a pain to have to, say, check each roll to see if it missed by more than X if it’s only going to really matter 1 in 400 times.  I also like it because it makes it possible to both succeed (if 13 was good enough) and still have something untoward happen, such as hitting a target but having your weapon stick.

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I Need A Miracle

I mentioned in my prior post that I had replaced the D&D Clerical spell lists and spells per day for the old-school D&D game I was running for the kids with a system that involved saving rolls to get miracles, and the Recursion King asked for a bit more detail, so here it is:

Basically, clerics get to pray for Boons, Blessings, Smiting and Miracles.  Boons are subtle aid to the Priest personally, Blessings are subtle aid to others, Smiting is subtle (and not-so-subtle) hindrance of enemies and Miracles are overt, even spectacular, interventions by the God.  Subtle effects are ones where the players can’t actually tell whether they worked or at least whether there was magic involved, so things like pluses to saving rolls, or a second wind (restoration of some stamina).  Overt effects are ones where there’s no doubt that it wasn’t just luck, something supernatural happened–so for instance, Cure Light Wounds would count as a miracle since the wound closes up and the character is restored to health.

The cleric announces what he’s praying for (“Grant me a boon, oh mighty one!”  or “I bless you in the name of my lord!”, etc.) and I secretly roll a saving roll.  Boons are the easiest, with other effects getting progressively harder to achieve, though since I still want low-level clerics to be able to heal even miracles aren’t that hard (I use 15, 16, 17, and 18 as the target numbers, with the roll getting bonuses for high Wisdom and for increasing level).  Clerics also have a secret stock of Faith, which starts each day equal to Wisdom.   If the saving roll is missed, then the effect still occurs, but Faith is reduced by enough to make up the difference; if there isn’t enough Faith remaining then the Prayer fails.  Every time the cleric makes the save without needing to draw on Faith, then the secret Faith score increases by 1, even if this would take it higher than the initial number.

This pretty much guarantees that the cleric will be able to do something each day, with higher level clerics being able to succeed more often.  It also makes it a bit wiser to not try for an outright miracle every time.  Because I don’t share the Faith score with them or tell them whether the Boons or Blessings had any effect (just figuring it into the subsequent rolls), they can’t calculate for sure what the odds are or even if they’ve definitely got some more divine help coming to them.

If the cleric succeeds, then I roll for the impressiveness of the effect.  This is still a little hand-wavey at the moment, but what I do is roll a d6, with high being good.  The roll is open-ended, so every time I roll a 6, I add and reroll.  The final score divided by 3 is the approximate level of power of the effect, judged against the usual D&D spell list.  That is, 1-3 is roughly equivalent to a 1st level spell, 4-6 a second level, 7-9 a third level, etc.   I try not to just pick a spell directly, but pick an effect that I feel is about right for that level of power.  This isn’t modified in any way for the level of the Cleric; I figure that the god is more likely to listen to the prayers of the High Priest multiple times a day than a rank novice, thanks to the High Priest’s long record of service but that once the god has directed his attention to the matter it’s entirely up to the god’s inscrutable assessment of how much to intervene so that first level Cleric is just as likely to get a truly astonishing intervention as the High Priest.

It’s true that under this system 1/6 of the time any priest at all will get at least the equivalent of a 3rd level spell, and 1/36th of the time even more, but at low levels they’ll likely only get one or two prayers answered per day before they’re tapped out.  A high level priest isn’t guaranteed a high level result, but stands a much better chance just from more attempts.  It would be easy enough to adjust it by including a level bonus for the effect as well, if high level priests weren’t getting their fair share of truly impressive interventions, but I figure it’ll be a while before I need to worry about that.  It would also be easy to flesh out what happens in terms of the prayer’s effect according to some kind of table, or even just picking exactly from the cleric spell lists, but for now I’m really digging the aspect that when a Mage casts a spell they get what they want, but if a Cleric tries sometimes they just might find they get what they need.

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Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 vs 7.5

An overview of the changes that I’ve noticed between T&T v5.5 and v7.5  All the comparisons phrased in terms of what 5.5 has/lacks vs. 7.5, since I read 7.5 first and went over it extensively.  Also, some of the changes in 7.5 appeared in 5.5 in a couple-page appendix of Ken St. Andre’s house rules:

Chargen

  • No WIZ stat, spells are powered by STR.  Advantage: 7.5  STR to power spells isn’t a deal-breaker, but it makes the archetype of the frail old but nonetheless mighty wizard a problem.
  • SPD is an optional stat only used for movement rates, which are fairly complicated. It can’t be increased.  Advantage: 7.5  Even if you view Speed strictly in terms of how fast you can run, that’s certainly something you can improve with training, at least as much as you can improve your Intelligence or Charisma.
  • No Triples Add and Roll Over. Advantage: 7.5   Not a big deal, but it’s kind of cool. (This is one of the KsA houserules.)
  • Weight Possible and Weight Carried emphasized more in 5.5 including rules for how long you can carry how much.  Advantage: 7.5  I’m not enough of a Grognard to value the added bookkeeping.  It’s good to have a rule-of-thumb, but I don’t like tracking it.
  • No Specialists or Citizens.  Advantage: 7.5  Anything that increases the number of viable archetypes without unduly burdening the system with complexity is a win in my book
  • Warriors don’t get Level adds in Combat Adds. Advantage: 7.5  Something besides the armor bonus as a reward for leveling up is nice to have.
  • Warrior-Wizards instead of Paragons. Toss-up. It’s harder to be a Paragon (you need a triple somewhere in your roll-up, not just everything >=12), but the 7.5 advantages are better: they get to double their armor instead of add 1, they get to invent new spells once they reach 10th level, the Wizard’s Guild will sell them spells.  Both versions are rare enough that I doubt it matters which you use.
  • No Talents.  Advantage: 7.5. I like Talents…maybe the most out of any skill system I’ve seen published.

Saving Rolls

  • Saving Rolls have a minimum for success of 5, and are calculated as the SR – Luck = number to beat (instead of roll +Luck > SR?). Advantage: 7.5   The mechanical result is the same, but roll+add is easier for most people; whether it’s better to have 3 is an automatic failure or <=5 is a toss-up, but I’d personally give the edge to the players succeeding more often.

Combat

  • Monster dice as well as adds get reduced as Monster Rating goes down during combat; this produces a much sharper death-spiral effect.  Advantage: 7.5  I don’t really see any advantage to having nearly every combat the PCs win end with several anti-climactic rounds that are rolled (if at all) just to see how fast they can finish.
  • 5.5 Makes it clear that armor doesn’t subtract from hits for magic (though a magic amulet might).  Advantage: 5.5
  • Missile fire isn’t added into the side’s Total Hits, but some magic is–at least up until the point when it would double-count hits.  Advantage: 7.5  This rule actually puzzles me in 5.5.  If you’re worried about double-counting damage, why does magic get to (semi) double-count and not missiles?  There’s a sort of explanation that Take That You Fiend! jars or shocks nearby foes and makes them less effective, reducing their attack up until it makes them lose the round but never delivering more hits than the magic’s damage, but Freeze Please and Blasting Power are spread out, while other spells don’t, and…It’s far simpler to my mind to just add everything up, and that lets your rear-rank guys like archers and wizards actually figure into whether you win or lose the round.  The whole “the monster can lose the combat because of magic adds, but not take extra damage” calculation makes my eyes water.
  • Damage is divided evenly between all the losing side, except that if it doesn’t come out evenly the Wizard (if any) can take the smaller parcel.  Advantage: 7.5   Dividing the damage up is one of the few tactical decisions that the party gets to make during a turn, and I like the idea that the fighters can choose to bear the brunt of it and protect the weaker party members.  I can see play-by-post going with even splits to reduce the back-and-forth, but flavor-wise I think 7.5 is much more interesting.
  • Missile weapon fire requires multiplying a distance factor by a size factor to get the SR level, but archers get twice the DEX adds when firing a bow. Advantage: 7.5
  • Dodging is handled by an SR against Luck if the players agree that monsters get the same SR. Advantage: 7.5.  There are several points in 5.5 where the rule to be used is negotiated with the players, which I kind of like, but the 7.5 version of just doubling the SR level if the target is dodging or moving erratically is easier and quicker.
  • No spite damage.  Advantage: 7.5  Even a stronger party bears some risk of injury in combat, and combats tend to get resolved faster because spite damage bypasses armor.
  • Rules for too-heavy weapons.  Advantage: 7.5  While it’s nice that 5.5 has an answer to what happens if you try to wield a weapon too big for you, the answer being that you knock yourself out in short order (your STR is damaged by the difference each round, with it increasing each round as your new STR is even less) is probably worse than just saying you can’t use it effectively.
  • Rules for Movement.  Advantage: 7.5  The 5.5 rules are simultaneously complex, with varying formulas based on encumbrance and type of activity (looking carefully, normal dungeon speed, sprinting) and fatigue rules based on CON and abstract, yielding nothing more than a rating of feet/minute traveled.

Monsters

  • No special abilities for monsters. Advantage: 7.5  The whole spite-damage activates special monster abilities like stoning gaze or fiery breath makes them a lot less bland, IMO.
  • Wandering monsters.  Advantage: 5.5  5.5’s rules are vague, but at least it has some.
  • Monster reaction chart.  Advantage: 5.5  Another inexplicable hole in 7.5 is no discussion at all of anything monsters might do except attack and fight to the death.

Magic

  • No Kremm resistance.  Toss-up.  I don’t really know whether the whole kremm resistance thing is worthwhile, and I suspect I won’t until I’ve played a bunch.

There’s more, including stuff on learning languages, berserk fighting, a really elaborate set of optional marksmanship rules, hirelings and slaves, some nice discussion of designing a dungeon, and so forth, but that’s the gist of it.  There’s also a fairly substantial (and controversial) change in how experience is allotted, going from advancement in level granting you the right to improve one attribute by an attribute-specific formula (e.g. +your new level to your STR, but only 1/2 your level rounded down if added to your DEX) to a uniform spend your current attribute x 10 xp to raise it by one, with level back-figured from changes to one of your class’ primary attributes, but I haven’t yet bothered to figure out what that would mean for a typical character at various levels.  I suspect 5.5 would tend to preserve initial differences in stats more, since you can only pick one stat to advance per level, and levels take more and more XP to achieve as you advance.

As you can tell, by and large I think V7.5 is an improvement in most ways.  I think 5.5 is a better introduction to RPGs…I’m not sure somebody new to RPGs could really understand what to do with 7.5, and certain things are either cryptic or accidentally ommitted in 7.5 (such as what the 2nd figure for DEX under DEX required for knives meant), but most of the individual rules changes in 7.5 are in the direction of making things simpler and more uniform, and where they add complication (Talents, Specialists) they get a lot of bang for the buck.  Still, I’m very pleased to have both sets of rules now, and I like T&T even more for having read where it is coming from.

update: Commenter G’Noll points out that I was confusing the requirements for Paragon with the other Specialists; Paragons in 7.5 have the same basic requirements as in 5.5: 12+ in every attribute before Kindred modifiers are applied, though that’s much harder to do with an extra two attributes.

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4e For Grognards?

The Core Mechanics offers up 10 House Rules to Make Grognards Like 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, most of the house rules are of the Racing Stripes on a Yugo variety. (Or, if you’re a 4e fan, putting Fuzzy Dice and lowrider hydraulics on a Formula 1.)  Except for Rule 7 (Don’t scale the Campaign Setting), they change the surface details like number of classes or races without getting at the essence of the play style.  For instance, Rule 4: Limit Races to 3.  White Box D&D from 1974 had the rule

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.

So it’s not the Dragonborn that are keeping the Grognards away, ok?  (Btw, just for comparison, that single rule is the same amount of space as devoted to Halflings, and only about a sentence or two shorter than the rules for Elves or Dwarves.)

So what would you really have to do to make 4e Grognard-friendly, assuming you wanted to?  There are really three major things, and they’re comparatively simple, but profound.

First, you have to reverse the direction of causality in the system: cause and effect have to flow from the game-world to the rules, not from the rules to the game-world as it currently stands.  What does that really mean for 4e?  It means that you have to visualize what’s really going on in the world, and reason out the consequences from there.  What 4e calls “the flavor text” is the power.  You can’t just invoke “Tide of Iron” and move the mini, it actually has to make game-world sense that the character be able to push the opponent in that direction given everything you know about the combatants such as their relative mass, whether one of them is made of some substance that makes pushing/being pushed wierd or would have some other consequence–think about using your shield to shove a Gelatinous Cube around and you’ll see what I mean. And if the effect is not supposed to be magical, if you can’t explain how it would actually happen (frankly, most of the pull and slide powers) then you can’t do it.  If the flavor text of the power causes small flames, that’s different from a power that creates icicles, even if the rules are otherwise identical.  And just because two powers have rules that interact (the whole “exception-based design”) means nothing if it’s not clear how the interaction would play out/make any sense in the game-world.  I expect that a lot of 4e players would balk at this, despite it being the same as Mike Mearls’ advice on running 4e without minis, but do you want to game with Grognards or don’t you?

The second thing you have to do is eliminate any vestiges of any rule or mechanic that can’t be understood in game world terms, and talked about in-character.  That doesn’t mean that the characters have to use the exact same terms, but they have to be able to think about the concept.  A Fighting Man might not actually say “Saving Throw”, but he could fully understand and discuss with the other characters that he’s much better at dodging a death ray or beam from a magic wand than he is at resisting a spell.  He can talk about how hard it is to hurt or kill something, even if he doesn’t literally say AC or HP, and how experienced he is even if he doesn’t divide it into points of XP.  For 4e that means dropping Skill Challenges.  Sorry, but there’s no in-game way I can conceive of to explain the spooky action at a distance implied by the accumulating successes and failures (particularly the failures).  You’re just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, by reasoning about the logical consequences of each individual failure and success and whether there’s any causal reason one would influence the next.  You also have to eliminate Action Points, possibly Healing Surges, and probably a raft of other things (“minions” for instance–a creature of the same type as another you’re fighting that can only take 1/100th or less damage can really put a dent in the old verisimilitude).  You could try to “reify” them…make them actual things that the game-world inhabitants really do understand  and talk about (perhaps with magical or divine explanations), but you risk turning your game into The Order of the Stick.

The final thing that you have to do, and this is really the culmination of the other two, is that you have to stop looking at the character sheet and the rulebooks to tell you whether you’re permitted to do something.  If the player can describe the action in such a way that it makes a lick of sense in the game-world, the character can attempt it.  The GM can assign a probability to whether it works (even if it’s so low as to be in effect impossible), or just rule directly, but everybody can attempt anything they can imagine unless it’s specifically called out as forbidden to their class (e.g. fighters learning spells, magic users wearing armor).  Skills, feats, powers…they mean you’ve got a better shot, but the lack of one should never be cause for the GM to say no.

And that’s it. You don’t have to strip out the laughable names “Moon Prism Power Divine Strike!™”  “Bloody-Riptooth All Cool And Spiky Badass MoFo Crocodile™.”   You don’t have to put save-or-die effects in, enforce completely random chargen, have level-draining undead, or make magic Vancian.   All of those things were indeed common enough back in the day…but they weren’t the essence of game-play; plenty of undeniably old-school games didn’t have those features….even if they were using a system that did (3d6 in order was one of the first things that many groups discarded; by the time of Basic D&D there were official, if optional, rules for discarding characters with no score above 9, or swapping attributes).  You could add one or more of those, but the plain truth is that the Grognards who would insist on them aren’t likely to touch even a revamped 4e with the proverbial 10′ pole, and those are the things that 4e players are most likely to strongly object to.  On the other side, I think that many of the things that are show-stoppers for the Grognards literally fall beneath the 4e fans’ notice….in prior conversations trying to explain the differences I get the distinct impression that they don’t even realize (and some don’t believe) that these actually are differences between the way the editions work, or they discuss them solely in terms of design goals (this is faster, everything you need to know is written on this card) without even considering whether it has implications for how you think about the world.

So on the one hand, I do actually think a 4e for Grognards is possible…in some sense even easy: just ignore a bunch of these rules, and interpret these ones in a different light.  On the other, I’m not entirely sure whether the result would be still be 4e.

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Multi-Classing

The Valley of the Blue Snails, a really interesting blog mostly about an unusual setting that Canecorpus has created, has a post about Multi-Classing in his D&D setting:

Valley of Blue Snails: Multi-Classes Revisited

I will be changing a few of the multi-class titles though I’m a bit mixed on what direction to take it. The titles are similar to normal class titles (Veteran, Cutpurse, Wizard, etc) in that they are mostly for fluff with perhaps a minor ability to adhere the two classes better. I’m deciding on wither to make it very setting specific or use more intuitive titles.

Example, a Fighter-Cleric would be a Paladin. Pretty intuitive. Setting specific would be something like a Dwarven Fighter-Cleric would be a Whitebeard. Not so intuitive but perhaps a better choice since this sort of multi-class fluff is well outside of the realm of B/X anyhow. The main problem is the setting specifics titles would indeed be rather specific, slanting towards race with specific classes.

I did something similar for a (for now abandoned) retro game I was working on, which I might as well share in case somebody finds it interesting:

Primary/Secondary Fighter Mage Priest Thief Actor Ranger
Fighter Warrior Magic Knight Paladin Brigand Swashbuckler Barbarian
Mage Wizard Mage Seer Warlock Witch Hermit
Priest Monk Thaumaturge Priest Charlatan Oracle Druid
Thief Rogue Mountebank Fraud Thief Spy Outlaw
Actor Bard Conjurer Idol Jester Actor Minstrel
Ranger Scout Shaman Pilgrim Vagabond Emissary Ranger

Basically, there are six primary classes (one for each of the six standard stats) and they combine into 36 different classes, with differing emphasis depending on whether a particular class is primary or secondary.  Somebody who’s primarily a Thief but uses magic to steal and con is a Mountebank, while somebody who is primarily a Mage, but uses stealth and deception to accomplish his ends and impress people with his power is a Charlatan, etc.  You mostly got the armor restrictions of your primary class, and the weapon restrictions of your secondary class, with most other abilities splitting the difference.  Spell user progressed as in their primary as if they were one level lower, and their secondary two levels lower.  And so forth.

I actually think it’s pretty workable, but it’s not something my main face-to-face play group would be interested in, and I have too much on my plate right now to pursue it further.  If I start a play-by-forum or play-by-post campaign, I’ll probably use Tunnels & Trolls instead of trying to sell people on and play-test some wacky homebrew.

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Tunnels & Trolls: Magic

Magic in Tunnels & Trolls is a fairly standard (though innovative back in ’76) system of individual spells that cost spell-points to cast.  In earlier editions, your spell-points were your STR, now they’re your WIZ, which seems to me widen the range of possible character types quite a bit.  The names of the spells are whimsical, like “Take That You Fiend!” (the basic magic blast spell),  “Dis-Spell”, “Oh, Go Away!”, which some people find a bit off-putting, but the spell effects are generally straightforward: do damage, turn invisible, heal wounds, and so forth.  Not always: “Troll God’s Blessing” causes a big club to appear over the head of the target and bash it, but if that kind of thing is a problem for your players you can easily substitute more “serious” flavor text.  Spells range in level from 1 to 13 (or more, I suppose, but that’s as far as the books go). Wizards begin with all the standard 1st level spells, and learn new spells from the Wizard’s Guild, by paying 1000 GP per level of spell.  Spells can only be taught by direct instruction (presumably by casting the first level Teacher spell until the Wizard succeeds at the SR to impress it in his mind).  Casting a spell requires a Saving Roll against the level of the spell, which should mostly be a “gimme” except for very low level casters or when trying to cast a spell at a higher level than you’ve reached.

That brings up an unusual feature of T&T magic. While spells have a minimum DEX and INT to cast, they aren’t restricted by the level of the caster.  A 1st level Wizard can attempt to cast a higher level spell, it just requires a harder Saving Roll and higher stat minimums.  A 1st level spell requires 10 INT and DEX, a 2nd level 12, all the way up to 100 for a 13th level spell. Many spells can also be cast at higher level than their minimum in order to ramp up their effects, e.g. Take That You Fiend! costs 6 WIZ and does damage equal to the caster’s INT at 1st level.  If a Wizard with INT 15 casts it as a 2nd level spell, it costs 12 WIZ but does 30 points of damage, as a 3rd level spell it costs 18 WIZ but does 60 points of damage, etc.  Whether a spell can be “Powered Up” and the effects of doing so vary depending on the spell.

Spell costs can be reduced in a variety of ways.  If you’re higher level than the spell you’re casting you get a discount, with a bigger discount the higher level you are compared to the spell level, though there’s a minimum cost of 1.  You also get a discount for using a “focus” such as a wand or ring.  In fact, the primary purpose of wands and staves in T&T is as spell foci rather than bearers of independent spell effects.  Specialist Wizards get to cast all the spells in their specialty at half cost, but can’t cast spells outside their specialty at all. WIZ recovers fairly quickly, 1 point per ten minutes of non-strenuous activity (no combat or running, but you don’t need a lie-down), but high-level spell can still take hours to recover from casting since they can cost 30, 40, 50, even 200 points to cast (for the 13th level “Born Again” spell).

An even more unusual feature, and one that’s apparently new and somewhat controversial, is that spells cannot be directly cast on any target with a current WIZ higher than the caster’s.  That means that not only are Wizards unable to affect more powerful wizards (at least until their targets have expended enough WIZ to make them weaker), but Wizards may find themselves unable to bespell Warriors and monsters if they have built up their WIZ.  Monsters typically have WIZ equal to 1/10 of their monster rating, so a dragon with MR 500 has quite a substantial barrier against direct-effect spells.  Wizards who attempt to cast against a target with higher WIZ get a “bad feeling” that lets them stop before they actually waste any of their own WIZ.

I’m not entirely sure what I think of this.  On the one hand, I certainly see roleplaying possibilities, particularly since spells that indirectly affect the target (e.g. its clothes, or by affecting the ground under it, or drop something on it) are possible regardless of differences in WIZ.  It also gives magic a very otherworldly feel, not at all equivalent to simply having a laser pistol or even crossbow.  On the other hand, since WIZ amounts vary round by round in combat based on the spells the magic users are casting, it might become something of a pain to track, and even if it didn’t you could potentially lose a lot of actions to “bad feelings” when your estimates of the current WIZ of your opponent miss the mark.  On the third hand, it adds another tactical dimension when unleashing a huge spell at the beginning of combat can render you vulnerable to lesser magicians for the rest of the combat, and I’m in favor of increasing the number of tactical decisions, at least in moderation.  As with other things T&T, I really have to see how it plays out in practice.

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A Personality Mechanic

Here’s an orphaned Personality Mechanic that I developed for Elves & Espers, before we started using Savage Worlds. It was a pure descriptive mechanics, intended to give the player some ideas for a personality for the character, but having no mechanical affect during play.

Drive: Roll 1d10 to determine your strongest drive:

    1. Sex
    2. Money
    3. Fame
    4. Power
    5. Religion
    6. Knowledge
    7. Thrills
    8. Comfort
    9. Love
    10. Food

    Note that the way you choose to live your life may be in opposition to that drive–it is just what tempts you, not necessarily what you do.

    Aversion. Roll 1d10 on the Aversion chart to see what drive you are averse or indifferent to. If it’s the same as the positive drive, you can choose to either regard yourself as neutral in that regard, or as powerfully conflicted.

      1. Commitment
      2. Work
      3. Attention (you’re shy)
      4. Responsibility
      5. Rules
      6. New Ideas
      7. Danger
      8. Boredom
      9. Rejection
      10. Being Unattractive
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      Return to the Stinking Sludge

      Session Summary for 3/8/09, Elves & Espers

      The Party for this session consisted of Idariel 7, Twonkey, Josepi, Bon Go, and Traumiel. It has presumably been some short time (less than an hour) since the last session, and some of the party members have wandered in and out on errands of their own. The early part of the session was spent bringing Bongo and Traumiel’s players up to speed. As the result of a particularly clever Knowledge (Arcana) roll, the party now suspected that the mysterious Figure in Red from the previous session fit the description of a Super-Model, a race of technologically and magically enhanced creatures, gorgeous in appearance, near-perfect in every way, and endowed with what can only be considered “superpowers.” No one else could have held up the zombie mammoth by main strength, or moved quickly enough to be unseen while causing a sonic boom. The Super-Models had evidently taken over the city some decades back, ruled it with an iron (but immaculately manicured) fist for about a year and a half, and then abruptly vanished without trace, after which the current Lords of Infrastructure took power.

      Idariel came to the conclusion that finding the Super-Model might somehow lead to the return of her investigator’s license, and she was determined to track down the figure. After the parade ended, the party trooped down to the street to examine the site of the amazing rescue. Unfortunately, investigation of the area proved fruitless; there was no way to track a figure who seemed to have vanished completely. Many bystanders had seen the event, but they had all been deafened and knocked down by the sonic boom, and were unable to provide any leads as to where the figure might have gone. The party decided to change tack and question the G-Nome family. Fortunately, some of the bystanders recognized the girl as the younger daughter of the Gruff family, so the party had somewhere to start. Visiting a G-Nome family isn’t easy, as they all live in the Web. Fortunately, getting G-Nomes to come to you is easier–you simply hire them. Idariel and Josepi made their way to the nearest G-Nome booth, where they were able to request a contract with the Gruff family. Almost immediately, a teenage boy G-Nome by the name of Bob Gruff appeared, offering to take a message. Idariel asked him about the incident, but as he had been busy working, and not attending the parade, he hadn’t heard about it yet. He agreed to carry a message to his mother Phoebe, however…for a fee, of course. Josepi grudgingly paid up, and Bob zoomed off into the Web. Not long thereafter, Phoebe showed up. After expressing their concern, and hoping her daughter was all right (she was), Idariel asked if Phoebe knew anything about the red-cloaked figure. She didn’t.

      The party batted around several more ideas and quizzed the GM about Super-Models for a while, but eventually gave up the search as a dead-end. At a loss for anything better to do, Josepi and Traumiel suggested that perhaps earning some money was an acceptable alternative, so they decamped back to Barbis Boltbiter’s establishment to ask for another contract.

      Barbis wasn’t in the best of moods when the party arrived — he had been expecting them right back after the parade, and had been wondering where they’d been the past few hours. Setting that aside, though, he informed the party that he’d been negotiating with Lord Shadrach, owner of the Sludge Works, over the rights to the Thaumivorous Ghost Moths. Lord Shadrach had agreed to pay the party a generous percentage of all proceeds arising from use of the Moths (of which Barbis took a cut as well). The party was naturally surprised that things had worked out well for them, through no action of their own…until Barbis mentioned the catch.

      It seemed that Lord Shadrach needed a job done. Carvin Spiker, who the party had met previously, manager of the Sludge Works, and therefore employee of Shadrach, had been murdered, his office burned with him in it, and Shadrach wanted the party to investigate. (The GM explained that the police wouldn’t get involved unless they were paid to do so, and that the Lords generally handled crimes on their own properties.) Barbis made clear that the deal about the Moths was contingent on the party taking care of this, so of course they agreed immediately.

      The party retraced the steps of their previous expedition, and made their way down to Poisonville. Josepi suffered from the same allergic reaction to the fumes that he had before, this time joined by nature-boy Traumiel. Eventually, the group made its way to Carvin’s office, and found it quite thoroughly torched. Carvin’s corpse sat unmoved, but deeply roasted, behind his desk. Figuring he should put his medical skills to some use, Traumiel examined the body, not entirely certain what more he could learn. He was able to definitively determine that the body was Carvin, that Carvin was quite dead…and that he’d been killed with a garrote before he had been burned. While Traumiel was playing medical examiner, the others searched the office, and noticed that Carvin’s papers had been carefully spread around before they were burned, so that nothing readable would survive. The fireproof safe had also been carefully opened and the contents burned. The party made knowing “Hmmm” noises at each other–clearly, they were dealing with professionals here. But why garrote Carvin before burning the office? Bon Go also noted a spot of flooring that appeared different…she recalled that there had been a locked drawer in that spot before, but it was gone now. Twonkey volunteered that Carvin had never let anyone see what was in that drawer before, and had locked it hastily the one time that Twonkey came into the office while it was open. Idariel attempted to Detect Arcana on the room, and was able to determine that the firebugs, whoever they were, had left behind a spell designed to mask any clues from prospective forensic investigators…and that the spell was working quite well. Idariel had been fortunate to detect it at all.

      Giving up on the office, Josepi decided to canvass the neighborhood. He’d noticed a diner nearby that was not only a greasy spoon, but also a greasy knife and fork, and probably a greasy soup ladle and whatever that fork is with the three tines that no one can remember what it’s for. He introduced himself to the owner, M3j (a Droll…a cross between a dwarf and a troll, 4 feet tall and 7 feet wide -jm), and asked if anyone had seen any strange air-cars in the area. M3l was only interested in talking to paying customers, of course, so Josepi and Bon Go each bought a cup of coffee, which turned out to be surprisingly excellent. M3l still wasn’t terribly forthcoming, so Twonkey, an acquaintance of M3l, spilled the beans that Carvin had been murdered.

      Meanwhile, Traumiel wasn’t about to go anywhere near a place that ostensibly served food in Poisonville, so he stayed behind. He reasoned that if the arsonists had blocked spells and technology, they might have failed to account for purely physical methods of investigation. With nothing to go on except for memories of cop shows from his youth, he cast around outside the office, and was lucky enough to locate the scorch-marks left by a landing air-car on the street just outside the office. He decided to wait until Josepi came back to see what he made of it.

      Back at M3l’s, the cook was visibly upset about Carvin’s murder. After all, Carvin did considerable coffee-and-danish business with the diner. After recovering his composure, M3l opened up a bit more. He hadn’t known Carvin particularly well (people in Poisonville don’t ask too many personal questions), but it was obvious that Carvin had a little something going on the side beyond running the Sludge Works. He was known to flash some cash around, and was frequently seen with some “honeys” on his arms. Given Carvin’s rather expansive physique, it seemed likely these companions were paid. M3L recalled that they’d probably come from the Pussycat Club, and gave Josepi directions as to where to find that establishment. With a couple of new leads and a probably course of action, the players decided to call it a night.

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      Get Awesome!

      Awesome! The Storytelling Game is now available as a PDF or Open Office file.  There’s also character sheets.

      Download it and give it a whirl!

      Mucho thanks to Mike DeSanto, who took the original blog post and turned it into a nifty brochure.  Truly Awesome indeed!

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      Tunnels & Trolls: Monsters

      Here’s a stat-block for a monster from Tunnels & Trolls:

      Basilisk MR 78

      Here’s the same monster, with the initial Combat Adds prefigured:

      Basilisk MR 78  Adds 8d6+39

      Here’s a Basilisk with special damage:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa

      4/Medusa means that any turn when it rolls four 6’s in its damage it also uses its gaze to turn someone to stone (as if it had cast the 9th level spell Medusa, though costing no WIZ to invoke).  As far as I can tell, there’s no save…the only thing protecting adventurers from the gaze is the monster needs to roll well in order to use it.

      And with some more special abilities:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons

      Partially Statted:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons
      INT 27  WIZ 19

      Fully Statted:

      Gidorah the Basilisk

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons
      STR 18  DEX 32 CON 78  SPD 14  LK 20 INT 27  WIZ 30 CHR 14

      I think you get the picture.  Monsters can be described in a single number, or be as elaborate as a player character (not that PCs are all that elaborate), or anything in between as is convenient for the GM and suitable for the adventure.

      Run of the mill monsters generally have only one attribute: Monster Rating.   From their Monster Rating you derive their CON (HP) (same as MR), their Combat Adds (MR/10 d6 + MR/2), and their WIZ (MR/10 round up).  As they take damage, their MR drops as do the pluses they get to their Attack, though not the dice rolled.  Unlike adventurers, that means that monsters do have a “death-spiral”–the more you damage them, the weaker their attack becomes.

      They can also have additional special abilities to spice things up, like armor, spells, gaze weapons, and so forth. Armor is usually constant, but other special abilities generally trigger when a certain amount of spite has been generated (e.g. the basilisk being able to use its petrifying gaze whenever it rolled 4 or more 6’s on its 8d6 attack).

      T&T has a simple rule of thumb for balancing combats… a fair fight is one where the monsters have about the same number of dice of damage as the adventurers.  That might be one monster, or ten.

      T&T gets another A from me for the way it handles monsters.  Who needs to “shemp” when you can describe a monster in as little as a single number, or give it a bunch of special abilities, name and personality in one or two lines of text?  For that matter, who needs rules for ganging up, swarms, or over-bearing when a hundred MR 10 goblins are mechanically almost as dangerous as an MR 1000 Titan?