Item Classifications

For some time now RPGs include various classifications for items and then link them to certain mechanical benefits or detriments in the rules. For example, the GURPS system not only had types of weapons and damage but also Tech Levels, describing the point in history where the game was taking place and what sort of items could be found there. Obstinately, this was to keep laser guns out of the medieval fantasy, but in my experience, it served only to confuse the players and cause trouble. You can see where Tech Levels get silly quickly with the addition of half levels and the +/- which modifies the meaning of a given TL in an attempt to make it more customized.

Another good example can be found in D&D. Here you find weapons classified as either Exotic or Common, slashing/bashing/piercing, and by their damage die. In purpose, these are all present to give players a strategy to work by. Certain types of weapons do better or worse against certain types of foes. In practice, this causes parties to be concerned not with the story and its elements but often with the contents. How many times have you sat down to start a game session and are hit by a barrage of questions? “Are we going to be engaging undead?” “What sort?” “Skeletons or zombies?”

From such, or because of such classification, RPGs have rules which limit what characters can do based solely on them. Proficiencies, Skills, and Talents are layered with caveats giving players access to one or two of the categories but not all. But do these classifications do anything for the roleplaying experience? Do these rules enhance the drama and the player experience or end up restricting Players and their imaginations?

Here are two situations of high drama which Characters can find themselves in.

Situation 1: Your character has been kidnapped and put in a locked room. You’ve been able to escape your bonds. There’s nothing in the room but a chair, the rope the character was tied up with, and a table. Your character hears the kidnappers coming down the hallway talking about how the ransom hasn’t been paid and they’re going to murder them.

Situation 2: Your character is in the middle of a large battle, both sides have people dying all around you. Your weapon is broken and you’re suddenly faced with an opposing champion. Your only choice is to grab a spear-like instrument currently impaling a fallen comrade.

Both of these situations can apply to a whole party, not an individual. Both have the same problem when having rules reinforcing classification systems. Can the Character take up that spear or grab that chair and make good with their life? In both situations they should be able to because it makes sense dramatically. The system should be focusing on the drama of the situation and not the objects lying about the characters. These are not the plot macguffins you put in there. This is a Character in life and death. The drama of these situations does not lie in the materials but in how they are used.

When creating a system of classification for item you create a certain intent. If that intent is to limit or restrict then you have limited and restricted how your players imagine and react to the situations presented. Does that make for good roleplaying or not?

Tags: Classification, Design, Drama, Dungeons & Dragons, Games, GURPS, Items, Role-playing game, Roleplaying

I played a new game this past weekend. Witch Hunter, The Invisible World is a swashbuckling sort of RPG based on some real world history but with several twists. It is the late seventeenth century and you are part of world-wide network of Witch Hunters who track and eliminate those corrupted by The Adversary. Magic exists and you spend some of your effort working to keep it hidden.  America is still largely unexplored. The Dark Heart of Africa is as mysterious as it is dangerous. The Spanish find themselves at odds against a surprisingly strong foe in the Aztecs and Cortez has been killed.

One of the things which influenced my decision to give the system a try is that the publisher, Paradigm Concepts, supports it through a living campaign. In my opinion, a living campaign is one of the best signs that a company takes their published RPGs seriously in a good way. It shows that the company is trying to engage itself with their fans. It shows that the publisher wants to do more than just publish; it is actively supporting its products. And it gives potential customers a quick taste of the game world to help make up their minds.

Character creation is complicated process but ultimately fulfilling. The other players and I were able to take our concepts and see them as characters without much compromise. I played a Franciscan Monk whose main abilities are to know a lot and provide buffs, um, I mean blessings. Brother Leon is part of the Lightbringers, a group of witch hunters who intend to make the world better through science. The rest of the group was made up a mercenary, a professional solider, and a poet who happens to be handy with a sword.

The adventure, an early entry in the living campaign, took our characters to New London, Connecticut where a recent fire has destroyed a family. However, in our dreams it seems the fire disguised the abduction of the two children. Our task was to investigate the fire and to find out if the children had died along with their parents or if something more sinister has happened. It played out in standard fashion, rather predictable but that is not necessarily bad. In fact it was positively a boon as it gave us a chance to get a handle on mechanics while not overburdening us with the minutia of plot.

The system is a World of Darkness clone, but more restrictive. There are 9 main attributes and a slew of skills. The Attributes are scored between 1 and 5. Skills are checked in WoD fashion: Designated Attribute is added to skill level and that many dice are thrown. Successes happen on a 7 and greater while 10s re-rolled for additional successes. The restrictions come in two areas. First, this is a point build system. All Attributes start at 2 and points are used to increase them. 3s are 10 pts., 4s are 30 pts., and 5s are 60 pts. You get 100 points to spend and these points can only be used for buying Attributes.

Those used to starting with well-rounded characters are going to be frustrated with Witch Hunter. Starting skills are assigned by occupation and these are the only ones you get. It is designed around characters having one point in all of the starting skills except for a few, rare exceptions. For my monk I was able to allocate several points in language skills and a couple in his lore and philosophy skills but was only given one point to put into his combat and defenses. While this does fit with the character’s concept, it does restrict his role in the game to a few areas.

Not that it made much practical difference. The designers did their homework. Those areas that your character is good at have five or six dice to roll and most of the skill tests our characters went through needed only one success to pass. After the first couple of tests, we were very comfortable with the statistics and plunged into the task presented in the adventure.

Combat is different from the standard skill test. Weapons in this system have a complexity rating. This represents two things. First, the rating the number of dice removed from you pool when making an attack. If you had six dice to throw for the skill check, you could easily find yourself looking at having only 2 or 3, depending on what weapon you chose. That is easily overcome by selecting the appropriate talents at character creation or by having the weapon blessed before combat. Second, and this is the fun part, the complexity rating is the amount of automatic damage done by the weapon should you pierce the opponent’s defenses.

Defense is simpler. Armor gives a small amount of automatic damage soaking, but otherwise the character’s defense is based on a roll made at the beginning of each combat round. The number of successes rolled is the number of successes subtracted from your opponents attacking roll. However, this defense pool is reduced by all of your opponent’s attacks. If you find your character swarmed by a three or four of small baddies, as I did with my monk, there is a good chance that they’re going to be badly hurt since all of those opponents are taking away from the same defense pool. Once that is depleted then all your opponent needs is a single and if they’re wielding a weapon with a complexity of 4 then things become lethal quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. The setting has some nice twists in it making it more than a surrogated trip through history. For experienced players, the skills and combat should be quickly picked up but those less experienced are going to need some watching over.

Tags: Paradigm Concepts, Role-playing game, Roleplaying, Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, World of Darkness

To supply my Warhammer group with the materials needed to play the next version, over $150 is going to have to be spent. I have five people at minimum, but most of the time I have seven. According to FFG’s official reckoning I’m going to  need the core box set, the adventure’s set, and at least one extra set of dice. While they have said that you can play with as many people as you like with the core box set, this appears to be incredibly awkward to do, so I consider it necessary to get the expansion. This is a tremendous amount of money just to get basic functionality. Because of this, I have been thinking of the value of the new system when compared to the old and other RPGs.

First, the previous version of WFRP was $40 plus tax. It gave all of the careers, all of the races, a starting adventure to play through and a thin GM section. With it I could create everything needed for a campaign, no extras needed. All anyone coming to play need is some dice. This has been the traditional setup for RPGs and it delivers quite a bit of value for the money.

D&D 4th edition is the next natural choice to compare. The core set of books can run you as much as $105 + tax without any discounts. However, looking on Amazon, I can get each one for $23 for a total of about $70 before taxes. And I can check it out ahead of time by going to WotC’s website and getting a free pdf which introduces much of the core concepts and a free adventure to try it out with. In practical terms, a group of five to seven can easily play with just the initial outlay although an additional PHB may be needed. Overall, not bad bang for one’s buck if one is able to get the discounted versions online or even secondhand.

Pathfinder offers a nearly all-in-one tome for $50 that has everything but a monster manual. Much like WotC’s D&D not much more is needed to keep a group of players going after the initial purchase. Currently there’s no free taste but considering it’s built off of the freely available 3.5 SRD one doesn’t really need an official version to try out. Despite this, the amount of flavor put in there by Paizo makes the price well worth it.

GURPS has a two book set, Characters & Campaigns, comprising its core system. Both are listed at Amazon for a total of about $50 before taxes. Together the two have a page count of nearly 600 pages of yummy RPG goodness. Designed for the DIY crowd, the Campaign book goes to great lengths to help the GM get going. Players with a lot of imagination (and more than a little time on their hands) have a dizzying array of options to go with. There is absolutely nothing more needed to play. This is another system that offers a free pdf to give a taste before buying.

In looking at how much is packed into these two books, it is hard not to say that GURPS may represent the most bang for one’s buck. The only drawback is the the amount of time needed for world-building.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. The HERO 6th edition core set is $70 if both books are purchased together. Rifts is currently going for $30. This doesn’t even touch free systems such as FUDGE or FATE. Nor does it address the hundreds of small/independent RPGs, many of which are $30 or less.

So I am skeptical, very skeptical, that the next version of WFRP is going to have a comparable value for my money.

Tags: Bang for buck, Games, GURPS, Is it worth it?, Role-playing game, WFRP

The amount of money being spent on various forms of entertainment these days is growing, but for some reason, the RPG market remains in its limited scope. Why is this?  Considering that one of the biggest trends in entertainment has been the so-called interactive experience, I find it surprising that RPGs haven’t been touted loudly. The core of RPGs is interaction and the sharing of fun with other people.  However, I realize that these games have had a controversial existence marked with swathes of provocative misinformation and purposeful misunderstandings hounding those who play them.

Perceptions of what these games are and those who play them are the biggest culprit. Not long ago, some umbrage with the images and themes used in the biggest of games, Dungeons and Dragons. Grabbing the headlines, blame for all sorts of horrid and completely imaginary events was unjustly laid at the feet of a mere game. If you look in the right places you can still find this going on today. One of the saddest of these demonetizations came from Jack Chick and his ignorant pamphlets. In it, he unsubtly proclaims that playing D&D leads directly to devil worship, and does so in the most serious of terms. If it wasn’t so sad, all of this would be hilarious. However, since many took them seriously much damage was done to the reputation of RPGs.

To counter these perceptions we must be proactive in advocacy. And to do that we must be honest with ourselves about what we are doing.

Role Playing Games are make believe. Dressed up with esoteric rules and polyhedral dice, we project ourselves into worlds of fantastic designs, supernatural powers, and heroic paragons. But at the very core of this experience is a game of make believe. Couched in these terms RPGs don’t seem very dangerous. Practically childish, in fact.  This is a good thing. It takes a sprained mind to twist such a simple idea. However, there is someone else to consider in terming it this way. Us. It will probably take some time for gamers to become comfortable with these terms, nonetheless, this must happen before progress can be made.

Once the idea of “make believe” has been accepted by everyone, we can build on it to show that it’s not a childish escape. There is intellectual, cultural, and artistic merit to the things we do.  In taking on these alternative personas, we get a chance to experience life from a different perspective. Questions of a philosophical nature are given life in new and exciting ways not easily experienced in everyday life. This acceptance even gives us a chance to explain the iconography in proper context, finally pushing our hobby out of the metaphorical dungeon it has been languishing in.

There is a second perception which needs to be addressed. The perception of ourselves.

I have been to GenCon twice now and have to say that I could not have met and had fun with nicer people. Strangers and friends alike, everyone found themselves enjoying the fun. Everything else was ignored as unimportant. Gender, identity, ethnicity, and the lines which generally divide humanity were all tossed away. It’s hard to explain to those who have never experienced anything like it, but for all too briefly the only important matter was laughter and fun.

So why do we accept the picture of a basement dwelling, misogynistic, agoraphobe drenched in sour smelling stains of sweat as the public face for this particular facet of our lives? Why do gamers, RPG players in particular, allow this stereotype to continue unchallenged?

The vast majority of us aren’t represented by this view. For some unknown reason, we tolerate it, and it keeps people away. I’m beginning to think that deep inside we are all elitist assholes. That we don’t want other people to play if it’s not someone already approved. I hope this isn’t the case because it couldn’t be further from how I feel. I like including more people, new people, in my sessions. I like new faces because it means we get new views on the story. There will always be a few outliers that do live in their parent’s basement, eschewing greater social contact for the insulating glow of 20 watt bulbs and the screen of their computers, but that does not mean we accept it as the face the rest of the world judges us by. It by no means is me, my wife, or my friends.

A few years back Wil Wheaton gave the keynote at PAX. In it, he goes through why he continues his gaming and why he exposed his kids to it. In the end he give some sage advice to those who want to spread the word. Don’t be a dick. I cannot think of a singular, simpler way to express what must be done to get more people to join in the fun.

Play. Have fun. Include strangers. And don’t be a dick.

Tags: Dice, Don't be a dick, Dungeons & Dragons, Games, Role-playing game, Roleplaying, Roleplaying in Society, RPG, Wil Wheaton

They can’t away your books. Really, they can’t.

Games change. New companies buy licenses, old companies get new developers, different ideas are bandied about to see what sticks. The point is nothing remains the same forever. Not even your favorite RPG system. In the last couple of years the RPG world has been inundated by change. WotC announced and brought to market D&D 4th edition. Paizo responded by having one of the most open, transparent, and popular beta testings of a new system, their D&D 3.5 based system, Pathfinder. And at GenCon this year both Fantasy Flight Games and AEG announced that two popular systems, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Legend of the Five Rings, respectively, are going to see new versions published in the next six months.

Yet all of this change is not completely welcomed. There is something in the makeup of many gamers that does not welcome these changes; something in how habits are formed. Wherein, playing at the same time each week, at the same house, with the same system and same GM, over and over again, an inertia is created that is not easily overcome. So much so that it is usually not nearly enough when one person in that group may want to try something different, it is the whole group which must embrace something new in order for it to happen.

However, it is shortsighted to say that this is only in the hands of players. The companies which produce and publish these games also bear some culpability. They also get trapped in inertia, but of a different nature. These are habits of risk avoidance and profit seeking. It is expensive to bring major change to an established series; development and testing is rarely free and advertisement is pricey. Faced with these costs is it no wonder that new versions can take decades to reach a release. There is also the matter of previous advertisement that the publishers must deal with. You don’t have to look very hard to find where these were declared “The Best Evar!” and “Will Never Be Replaced!”. All of which has no small contribution to the risks that fans often reject changes outright.

I, too get caught up in these feelings and am tempted to go down the path of least resistance. Perhaps a smarter idea would be to admit that games change to fit the times. Popular roleplaying systems today may not be popular next year. We need to admit that there is no such thing as “The Best Evar!” and that a fanatical adherence to any particular system is a disservice to our experiences and time spent with friends. We must also respect differences in opinion; admitting not everyone enjoys or feels the same way is as important to remember as is having fun.

Most importantly, we need to remind ourselves that they can never take away our books. Just because a new version comes out, our books do not stop working. The words are still there and can still be used to create whatever world you see fit. Nothing is stopping your keyboard from writing new adventures and playing them. Just because a new version comes out, does not mean our previous experiences are magically invalidated. Your memories of fun and excitement do not disappear into a void, they are as much yours to keep as are the books. And finally, just because a new version comes out it does not mean that you have to embrace it. If the old is what you like, then by all means stick to it. There is nothing in this world compelling you to buy everything new. That sort of blind loyalty is as destructive as blindly rejecting the new.

In return for this reasonable reaction to the new, publishers need to respond with like. Make available unfettered electronic copies of previous versions so that books may be replaced as they age and wear out. If you have done your jobs correctly, then it should be cheap, simple, and profitable to do so. I also ask that publishers stop with the advertisements that push ideas of exclusivity and fanaticism of your systems. Trouble only follows when your fans become fanatics. You cannot predict when they will turn on you. Open up your development process to be seen and stop keeping every little thing a secret. Remember that communication no longer takes the form of monthly magazines. If you want us to embrace change, then let us witness it as it occurs. We have a world which communicates in seconds what used to take days or weeks. Allow us the chance to see the justification for change.

Tags: Can't take away our books, Embrace Change, Role-playing game, Roleplaying, RPG

Part I: Past Models and Principals

Games and game design are expressive and creative activities which should be placed alongside film, literature, and painting as artistic endeavors. Few people recognize them as such. One thing which seems to keeps games and gaming from being generally accepted as art is that it lacks a critical theory or language. This is not to say that there have not been attempts to do so. This is a brief look at one.

One of the first and arguably the best known is the famous GNS. GNS stands for Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist. These are labels used to identify the major divisions of game design under this theory. According to Wikipedia, the theory was first named in 1997 and is based upon the “Threefold Model” that arose from discussions in the rec.games.frp.advocacy newsgroup. It was further developed by Ron Moore and others on his Indie Games development site, The Forge.

Ron, realizing some of the flaws in the GNS system eventually moved on and formed a new design theory he called “The Big Model”. It is largely concerned with modeling game design in a hierarchical structure and attempts to unify many of the disparate elements which go into the experience of playing an RPG, focusing attention on those parts the designer most desires to bring to the fore.

Both of these theories have their flaws and a number of detractors.

The GNS framework of game design types provides some categorical structure but its usefulness is undermined in that many popular systems are split across its categories. For instance, D&D has a large Simulationist component aside the obvious Gamist portion. Legend of the Five Rings can be classified as somewhere between Gamist and Narritivist because of its heavy reliance on players’ description of actions. About the only pure games according to the GNS method are Simulationist types such as GURPS. This raises questions of its usefulness. Since GNS does not provide a clear classification of gaming systems then analysis can become muddled and confused. Not a desirable artifact when attempting to create a systemic method of analysis.

GNS also lacks a critical language. While Ron Edwards and others have developed and published a sort of glossary it is not restricted to GNS and includes a wide range of lexicon created in the quest for better RPG design.

The Big Model, since it was built on GNS, shares many of these same flaws and is criticized in other ways. Most of the valid criticism is centered on the big assumption of the model. Which is, everyone participating has the same ideas and desires as to the outcome of the story being played through. A demonstrably large flaw considering the prevalence of players known as “griefers” and “munchkins”, both of whom seem to have more fun as individuals and often at the expense of the groups’ experience.

Game design, especially for RPGs, is not an easy task. The designer is asked to examine many different aspects of human interaction and come up with a system that allows everyone taking part a chance at having fun. Analysis of those ephemeral parts which go into the experience and fun is even harder. It should be of no surprise that the first major theories of RPG design have serious flaws.  But, and this is the important part, these represent the first steps towards that much needed critical theory. It started the conversation, one that in future entries I will continue.

Tags: Big Model, Game, Game design, GNS, Role-playing game, Roleplaying

I am not sure whether it is my getting older or if it is my understanding of the world getting more mature or some combination of both. Of late I have found myself getting tired of seeing my favorite games being mismanaged. I have seen some of the best computer games I ever played get half-ass sequel treatments and then watched as the whole franchise goes down in flames. I have watched the launch of a new iteration of a classic RPG fail to revitalize the aging line while simultaneously the controlling company alienate half of the people and all of the companies who supported it not less than a year ago.

So in attempt to try and correct these mistakes and keep others from happening I propose the following. We gamers of all stripes, need to own part of the companies who make these games. We would form a group, a union of sorts, and pool our monetary resources to start buying the stock of these companies.

In looking back at the last thirty years, very little has been accomplished politically or economically when people protest something or boycott a product. Companies simply rename themselves or find a new brand to use the old product under. Mismanagement is forgiven because it is effectively forgotten. New customers are made because they don’t realize it is the same thing under a different name.

The way I see it, the only way to get their attention, to get them to stop screwing up gaming is to get into us into boardroom.

This will not be an easy thing to accomplish. Most of us gamers really only want to have fun. Running corporations is not fun. Getting involved with a group whose only purpose is to do just that? Probably not very high on any Gamer’s to-do list.

Assuming that this proposed group even gets the money to buy enough shares, there is going to be a fight to exert that influence. Those who are already involved are not going to give up their positions easily, if at all. Communicating to Gamers about these political subtleties will be an investment in a new language. I’m not sure how many FPS or RPG metaphors can be used to describe the politicizing that goes around in such places.

And that is just for the publicly held companies. Those who are in private hands create a different set of complications. It is usually considered to be an aggressive act to buy the banknotes of a company without their permission. It is considered to be less than sporting to buy privately issued shares from former employees to gain a stake. There are a multitude of reason why people keep companies private. Not having to deal with outside influences is one of them.

Why should Gamers own the companies that produce their games?

So we can make sure that all of us continue to look forward to great gaming content. Personally, I am tired of being on the sidelines. I am tired of being looked at as a pocketbook with legs waiting to be exploited. Voting with my dollars is no longer enough with so many others acting like battered spouses or addicts by continually going back to those who cause these problems in the first place.

Look at one of the big dust-ups of 2009, Hasbro pulling all pdf versions of their past and present D&D games without any announcement until it happened. I wonder if it could have been avoided. If there had been anyone in their boardroom saying “This is a bad idea”. Maybe it wouldn’t had happened or had happened with clear warnings going out giving people weeks or months instead of 24 hours to get one last copy of the books they’ve paid for. While there were plenty of howls for the heads who made this asinine decision, it was all hot air and nerd-rage. No one who purchased these materials had any legal recourse.

Hasbro is not the only one to have missteps this year. Activision last week announced that LAN play isn’t going to be included in Starcraft II. Instead they have decided that all multiplayer games are going to go through their portal, Battle.Net. A piece of software that is well known for instability and abounding with cheaters and greifers of all types. Many have wondered, myself included, how well their servers will hold up when the game releases. Or how well the competitive leagues will take to it after the first time the global servers are hit with a DOS attack in the middle of a tournament.

Would a gamer have made a difference if they had a seat at the big table in either of these cases? I don’t know. I like to think that it would.

Tags: Gamers Playing United, Games, Multiplayer video game, Role-playing game, Video game

There are a lot of things to do but I wanted to start the site off with a bit of homebrew gaming content.

The beer will be coming along later.

To begin this site I want to talk about a campaign. Not just any campaign. No, this is the ground work I am trying to lay for a living campaign. A Warhammer Fantasy living campaign.

For a few years now one of the groups my wife and I play in has been doing the Heroes of Rokugan living campaign. I have to admit that it has been a great way for those who own the system to get people invovled and keep up to date with their books and sundry. It has also been a good way to get involved with a comunity of players that has been one of the most fun and unbelievably mature comunities of games I have ever found.

So I was inspired to do the same for one of the systems I love most. Warhammer Fantasy.

Not unsurprisingly, I was unable to find one already in existance. This being doubly true as not too long ago, Games Workshop decided to shut down the publisher and yank the license from the current holder. Fantasy Flight games soon ended up with it, and while they seem to be doing a bit better of a job in keeping WFRP and its brother system, Dark Heresy, going I couldn’t find the sort of grass-roots active comunity that HoR has. I found that a vast majority of the sites are dedicated to the minis wargame than the actual RPG.

The first module I have written up takes place a few years before the events of The Storm of Chaos, the event which kicked off the 2005 relaunch of the rpg. It takes place during a fair being held in Altdorf, capital of the Empire. It has several events that the players can take part in. There is an eating contest, a drinking contest, tests of archery and gladiatorial pit fights. There is also a taste of chaos cults and how the empire deals with such threats. It does a lot to set the tone of the setting as well as leave open a number of avenues to take stories from.

I got to run it this past Sunday for a few people. After the initial hiccup of needing to create some more characters, we got started. And it was fun. I like the system as it gives me, as a GM, the tools necesary to allow the players shape the story of their characters. For instace, in the pit fighting, I got the chance to give the lone character a bit of a boost from the crowd since one of my other players was able to get the crowd to cheer along for them. There were several other instances of this thoughout our session and yesterday I wrote up some notes so I can go back in and make  changes to the module. Eventually, I hope to be able to release it and start up such a thing. This means having a few more modules to go along with it, but that is hudle to jump soon enough.

I did want to make one more note about living campaigns and supporting them.

Find one that has some quickstart rules. GURPS probably has one of the best sets of quickstart rules out there. D&D recently released their own for Fourth. Oddly enough, they put it out their as a pdf but I guess this would be something they want you to download. HoR also has one as well as several premade characters to start out with if you don’t have the core book. Warhammer sadly does not which left me the option of having to create one. At a very concise 2 pages, I had to rely upon the core book getting passed around to copy out all of the career information. Fantasy Flight Games recently put out a Career Compendium for WFRP but no quickstart rules. Which is really too bad as this would help those of us who like the system a bit of an easier time evangelicising it.

Tags: Living Campaign, Rokugan, Role-playing game, Roleplaying, Warhammer Fantasy