Posts Tagged ‘Role Playing Game’

In The Danger of Difficulty Despair – With Graphs I talked about the risk of a game suffering from boring encounters if the difficulty progression was always identical.  I showed, with the aid of graphs, how linear encounter difficulty combined with character improvement at the end of each adventure could create a universe which sees the player characters improve but never lets them experience the improvement.  I’ll come back to that problem in a future post.  First I’m going to suggest a few alternative difficulty variations that can be used for adventures.

To quickly recap the linear difficulty encounter adventure is an adventure where a series of encounters occur starting with an easy one and building up to a harder one.  The difficulty of each encounter is roughly similar.

Capability and Linear Difficulty (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

A common variation on this is the Swooping difficulty adventure where the difficulty starts out at a level, drops down and then rises for the climax.  My notes included a mention of the “extreme” swoops favoured by one of the DMs we played with who used a lot of very easy encounters and then towards the end things got really tough.

Swooping Difficulty (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

Extreme Swooping Difficulty (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

Another type of progression happens in dungeons built of areas (which may be levels) where several encounters of similar difficulty are grouped together followed by an area with harder difficulty and so on till the final, climactic encounter.

Stepped Dungeon Style Difficulty (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

Last time I said I’d talk about one of the worst games I ever played in.  I’d played in games run by the DM responsible before and he was usually pretty good.  Then came his experimental phase.  First a game where he let two of us generate nominally evil (really just not good) characters and then decided he wanted only the cleanest of clean characters.

Then came what I think can be best described as his attempt at a game combining psychedelic elements from 60s TV shows, American film musicals and Dungeons and Dragons.  He topped that strange combination off with difficulty so varied that I think it can be best described by this graph…

If you've read this far already you shouldn't need any explanation for this graph

It was just as frustrating for the players as the linear progression of difficulty.  Here the frustration came from the feeling that the world didn’t make sense.  It might be “realistic” but it lacked drama.  Players never knew when to heal and when to use their limited use abilities until it was too late.  We suspected there was a lot of dice fudging by the Dungeon Master going on so we didn’t get wiped out.  We stuck with the game for about five sessions and then, to our relief, it came to an (unsatisfying) end.

I was going through some very old gaming files from when I was at college and came across some notes on designing the difficulty of encounters in a tabletop role playing game. A few weeks ago I questioned if Role Playing Games Need XP and the notes reminded me that in a game with experience the characters can effectively not develop. That sounds like a contradiction but it can happen and it can be a problem. It happens when the difficulty faced by characters increases at the same rate as the characters improve and this can be frustrating for players.

In most table top RPGs experience, and character development happens between adventures characters’ capability develop something like this:

Character Capability against time (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

A game with linear encounter difficulty is one where as the characters abilities increase so does the difficulty of the encounters they face. The characters may gain some advantage; they may hit their enemies harder or more often and may have more hit points. Unfortunately their opponents also now hit harder, more often and have more hit points. In its purest form every encounter has the same chance of their succeeding, as the last for characters. In fact, apart from a little colour in their encounters, they might as well have not improved at all and their opponents could have remained at the same power too.

Linear Difficulty over time (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

So difficulty and capability always keep step with each other…

Capability and Linear Difficulty (blue vertical lines represent the end of adventures)

Some games virtually encourage this style of adventure design by including charts or advice to allow referees to work out the ideal encounter for a group of X players of level Y to face. Charts and tables like that serve a useful purpose in helping new referees and those unfamiliar with a game to find their feet when designing encounters. The risk of building an encounter that will obliterate a group or underwhelm them is significantly reduced without having to resort to dice fudging or deus ex machina. There is a real risk of boredom if this type of difficulty progression is slavishly applied.

Others virtually rule out easy adversaries – I read one rulebook recently (forgive me I can’t remember which one) that said all “easy” encounters where the characters were guaranteed success should be role played rather than roll played. While I agree with that generally (although I hate the phrase roll play and its derivatives) doing this all the time means the players can never feel how powerful they are in a crunchy way.

I’m going to leave this here for now but I’ll be back soon with some other kinds of difficulty progression and some thoughts on one of the worst game I ever played in.

Update: Part 2 is now available Variations on the Difficulty Theme.

When making rules for a role playing game there is the ongoing balancing act between narrative and simulation.  Both of which ultimately need to create fun.  At one extreme you’ve a game like Over the Edge with very lightweight rule system and at the other end you’ve got rules heavy, simulation game like Rolemaster.  Both have their place and both have advantages and disadvantages.  A rules light game can be as hard to run (harder in some ways for a novice) than a rules heavy game.

When I wrote Under Stairs Over Stairs I deliberately decided that character development should be based on a character’s age not on how many fights they had been in.  However over the years some of the feedback I’ve had suggests some players would prefer an experience system.  They’re just more comfortable with games that keep the elements most games have like Statistics, Skills, Combat Rules, Experience Rules and buying equipment with cash.  The further a game moves from the comfort zone the less they like the sound of it.

Simulating an episodic TV shows before the story arc era of shows like Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer presents an interesting dilemma.  In that era, where episodic and serial TV shows were clearly separate, characters didn’t develop much from one episode to the other.  There were good reasons for this: channels could show the episodes in any order and repeat them in any order without having to worry about it.  Writers didn’t need coordinating so the story line maintained continuity.  Crucially it was felt the audience could miss an episode and then start watching again.

So in the game I’m running I’ve been talking to the players about how we can simulate this narrative style in-game since the setting is style after episodic TV shows.  Traditional experience systems see XP awarded and characters improving from adventure to adventure.  The game has that kind of system at the moment.  Episodic TV didn’t see characters changing and growing.  They usually began as fully formed heroes, at least once the pilot episode set them up, and then carried on in the same way for the rest of their dramatic lives.

I’ve been considering a few different approaches to take to this.  The first is simply to not bother with XP.  The second is to not bother with XP but to allow players to reshape their characters a little between episodes by moving skills or stats round till they are happy with the balance.    A slight variation on these possibilities is to give the players more points when creating their character’s so they start out better.  Many games are designed with the idea that the characters will become more powerful and thus deal with bigger challenges as time goes on so this would balance that out.

Another thought is to use XP but instead use it to buy prominence in an episode’s story or to buy central casting in the next episode.  I’ve seen this in a few games – role buying in Hong Kong Action Theatre springs immediately to mind.  I’m wondering if a system that allows the players to buy into the story could work. A little XP would net them a part in the adventure’s B plot.  A bit more would buy them a connection with a character in the story or being in the right (or wrong) place at the right time.  A really big spend in advance of the adventure would let them buy a pivotal position in the next adventure.

So would throwing out XP or using it in a different way make you less likely to be interested in a game?  How would you feel about buying a bigger role for your character in a game?

I’ve been writting the next adventure for the role playing game I’m occassionally running today.  As well as the traditional overhead map of one of the key locations I’m considering using elevations of the streets to help players visualise their surroundings.  The small sample above is a section from a trial elevation I sketched tonight.

I can’t remember ever seeing elevations used in any roleplaying game.  So I thought I’d throw the example out there to see what any gamers reading this thought.

I’m wondering if I should add textures to some of the surfaces or leave it as line art.  If I leave it as line are I’m thinking I’ll use different pen styles / weights to enhance the look.  I’m also wondering if I should include people and cars on the drawing.  Do you think I should add in postboxes, lamp posts, pedestrian crossings and other street furniture.  One detail that’s missing from the example: I’ll be including labels on the final elevations.  Is there anything else you’d suggest?

In the dim and distant past (well circa 1996), when I had my first web site on mudhole, I had some pages about SLA Industries a British, dystopian, science fiction, table top role-playing game.  Last night I revived some of those pages from back-ups.  So for the first time in quite awhile (well probably 8 or 9 years) some of my completely unofficial, fan material is back.  More to follow later.

The rebuilding and post launch work on impworks is now pretty much done which means I can get back to other projects.  tonight I’ve taken an editing chainsaw to a 120 page text which is the core design for a game and so far I’ve cut it to 60 pages.  Now I’m at the hard part: cutting stuff I want to keep, stuff that took hard thinking or hard research.  I’ve a simple incentive.  I know that if I get this right and this text ends up in print then there is a chance I can see the cut material in print as supplements.

So tomorrow its away with the chainsaw and out with the pruning knife.

How players’ characters approach a simple doors in a setting says a lot about a role playing game. A cautious door approach can indicate a game with high character mortality or it may simply, as in the case of D&D and its many subsequent editions, reveal that every door opened is likely to result in a new encounter. At the opposite extreme in high action low lethality games doors may be simply kicked down, blown up or smashed through.

On another level doors can also let us know quite a lot about a game system. Does a door have statistics for how strong it is, how much armour it has or how easy it is to pick the lock. Do doors have a price tag? This usually means that characters can get rich enough to comission buildings or that the game designer who made the equipment lists is either a quantity surveyor or needs medical help. Finally how many dice rolls will a party make to get through a door?

Here are a few (humerous) illustrations, if I’ve missed your favorite game feel free to e-mail me your suggestions. A version of this list first appeared in Valkyrie but over the years a few more games and settings have been added. The odd game which isn’t an RPG has crept in too (it’s my list so neh if you don’t like that!)

D&D (Original 1st Edition)

Thief uses hear noise to listen at door, finds traps, removes trap from door, open lock and walks through the door.

Call of Cthulu

Open the door, see greater being lose 1d100 San.

Tunnels and Trolls

I roll my bucket of dice the door rolls its bucket of dice.

Munchkin

Open the treasure, kill the door, steal the monster.

AD&D

Thief uses hear noise to listen at door. Barbarian (Unearthed Arcana) smashes door down in frustration

Role Master

Check breaking down doors critical table.

Shadow Run

Street Samurai blow the door away with a GPMG. Decker walks up and politely asks the door to open.
Racoon Shaman walks up to door and asks spirit to open the door. Troll ignores door as inconsequential to its worldview and carries on through it.

Vampire

Agonise over the door. Explore the political, sensual and aesthetic properties of the door.

Champions/Hero

How many points is the door built with?

Munchkin Fu

Open the treasure, kill the door, steal the monster.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Unicorn Games)

If the door doesn’t open with a “woosh-woosh” call the Tellarite Engineer by striking your nipple and talking to the air. When they arrive they will open it using an Engineering Systems (Intellect) Environmental Systems test.

OG The Role Playing Game of Prehistoric Free-Style Role Playing Game System

“You Me Small Rock Bang Tree Thing”.

Traveller

Short lived character blown out of airlock door during character generation shock.

Legend of the Five Rings

Challenge the door to an Ijitsu duel. Raise. Raise. Raise. Pass. Then kill it with a single well-placed blow.

Kobolds Ate My Baby

Kobold hits door with other kobold until door (or kobold) breaks.

Spycraft

Defeat undefeatable biometric lock with false finger prints lifted from evil corporate executives/renegade CIA/terrorists stupidly expensive bottle of imported, designer, micro-brewery beer stolen by a beautiful, double agent working undercover for the CIA/FBI/DEA/MI5/DSS within the organisation of the evil corporate executives/renegade CIA/terrorists who has a cover job at a bank and a couple of friends who havn’t a clue.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Kick the door down with gritty British style.

Star Trek

If the door doesn’t open with a “woosh-woosh” either apply a judicious use of a Scottish accent or break out the phaser rifles and blow it away.

AD&D 2^nd Edition

Thief (Treasure Seeker Kit) uses hear noise to listen at door. Half Ogre (Book of Humanoids) Fighter (Hairy Barbarian Kit – Fighters Handbook) smashes door down with Axe +5 door smasher while wearing girdle of Storm Giant Strength.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Curse Cardassian’s persuade a Ferengi to get the parts in return for trade right in another quadrant. When they don’t deliver on time because of an incident involving a shape shifter and a plasma conduit get the Klingon to force it open.

Twilight 2000

Not much of an issue because 1) there has been a nuclear war 2) all the doors have all been used to make shelters following the instructions in Protect and Survive.

Two-Fisted Tales

Kick door down, draw pistols, roll through both guns blazing, stand up, get knocked unconious by bad guy hiding behind the door.

D&D 3rd Edition

Thief uses only a d20 to open the door not needing any of those other dice that earlier editions were made so complicated by.

OG The Role Playing Game of Prehistoric Free-Style Role Playing Game System

“You Me Small Rock Bang Tree Thing”.

Elite

Begin your new life as Commander Jameson stocks up on Food and Minerals at Lave. Jump to a nearby system. Fight a Krait rendered lovingly in innovative vector graphics. Locate the Coriolis station and approach it. Fly near to the station towards the planet (monitoring altitude carefully). About face so your ship is orientated towards the entrance. Approach at DEAD SLOW SPEED (original manual’s emphasis not mine). Manually control the Cobra’s roll to match the rotation of the Coriolis station. The entry port must be as nearly horizontal as possible. Scrape the sides of the aperture. Lose defensive shields and cargo. Suffer a horrible death as your body is exposed to space. Work har to raise the credits to buy an automatic docking computer so you never have to manually dock again.

GURPS: Doors

Steve Jackson Games could never get that desperate. Could they?

Dark Conspiracy

Drive through the sprawl to the demonground in ’50s cool, retro styled car. Strut from car to door in an outfit straight out of a Meat Loaf / Bonnie Tyler video accessorised with pistol, assault rifle, grappling hook and flash light. Argue with GM when you claim your character has Darkling Empathy. Persuade him you do. Sense nothing on other side of the door. Kick down the door. Find a massive swarm of Michael Jackson style zombies waiting to eat your brains. Make note on the character sheet of the now dead character to back down if the GM catches you cheating with your next character.

Deadlands

Shoot the lock with a six-shooter then swagger in.

Toon

Remove one extra large ACE rubber hammer from pocket and apply to door until it falls down.

Cyberpunk

The fixer obtains a really hot deck, the netrunner takes three hours of play to do the run to get past all the black IC and unlock the door. The cybered up solo fights their way to the door and opens it. The Corporate walks cautiously out of their private rest room and pays everyone.

Trail of Cthulhu

Open door. Wonder why you ever played that other Cthulhu game. See greater being. Lose Mind.

Pantheon

And on the thirtieth day Buzz Saw the god of carpentry and other handicraft invented the door thus putting an end to the reign of terror brought upon the mortals by the goddess of drafts Swanway. Challenge!

Feng Shui

Character use all their chi in a devastating Storm of the Tiger bare handed strike and watch the door disintegrate into splinters.

James Bond 007 RPG

Pick lock. Draw Walther PPK. Open Door. Trip over white cat coming the other way through the door. Get captured by Evil Genius’ henchmen set on world domination. Get taken to Evil Geniu’s secret base. Face certain, slow death in Evil Genius’ secret agent (slow) killing device. Escape when Evil Geniu’s back is turned. Stop Evil Geniu’s not so genius evil plan. Escape from soon to be destroyed base. Get the girl/boy.

Lost Souls

Walk through the door without opening it but only three times a day.

Dr Who

What else is a sonic screw driver for?

Millennium’s End

Set the shaped charge plastic explosive strip round the door. Retire to a safe distance. Detonate it and watch it fall quietly inwards.

Extreme Vengeance

Set Plastic Explosive charges on the door. Retire a short distance. Set off the charges then stride into the room like a manly man.

Hong Kong Action Theatre

Set Plastic Explosive charge on the door. Retire a short run up away. Run at the door, set off the charges and ride the blast wave into the room full of mooks as a grade A stunt.

Sengoku

Kneel before the door and wait patiently for someone to ask you in.

Conspiracy X

Opening the door was the easy part. Covering up what you find on the other side will take all your guile, skill, ingenuity and just a few resource points of used up gear.

The Babylon Project

This joke awaiting approval by JMS.

d20 Modern

Agonise over best door opening method between magic, psionics, lock picking, a lump of C4 or good old brute force. Then do it just the same as in regular d20.

Star Wars

Use the Force. If that fails use a Thermal Detonator.

Babylon 5

Ko’Dath demonstrates airlock accidents are not just a problem for Traveller characters.  The only real question is did G’Kar give her a little push?

7^th Sea

Doors are for the boring. Use a crossbow to fire a grapple to the roof and swing in through the stain glass window. Gain one Drama Dice.

Bushido

Kneel before door and commit seppuku embarrassing the door into opening.

SLA Industries

The Wraith Sniper covers the door from 1000m while the Ebon uses Sense to feel what is on the other side of the door. The media package Brain Waster films the Frother (aka Barbarian in a skirt on drugs) charge in hyped up on UV and Kick Start who tears into it with a flick scythe. The finance package human tries to balance the profit from the film footage with the charge for the damage to the door including bullet tax and form fees.

Wraith

What’s my character’s motivation to bother with the door?

Paranoia

What colour is the door handle?

Mage

Entropy mage twiddles a stick near a door. The door unlocks itself and swings open.

Stargate SG 1

Combat engineer complains at not being allowed to open door with explosives on a sneaky, sneaky mission. Takes door off hinges using powered screw driver instead.

Marvel Universe

Check you have enough counters to open the door while feeling remarkably reasured that this is a newer, better, different type of game from those other roleplaying games. It says so in the book. Which explains why it vanished when it wasn’t a big hit.

Changeling

Wander up to door. Smile sweetly. Walk through.

Lord of the Rings

Oh Please we are just so much a better class of fantasy RPG than to lower ourselves to that kind of door opening scene. I mean we might win an Oscar* and we are consistently voted the greatest book ever. Oh alright then – the Fellowship find a blank bit of cliff by a nasty looking pool. Big G waves his hand and a secret door and some secret elf-letters are revealed but it remains closed. Everyone wonders what “speak, friend and enter” means. Big G doesn’t know. Everyone gets dismayed. Wolves howl in the distance. A couple of pages and some howling wolves later Big G solves it. The door opens. Happy now?

Werewolf

Kick the vampires out of the way, walk through the wraiths, treat the changeling with pure disdain snarl at the mage until they get the message break down the door.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten

Whats the point? We know there will be zombies on the other side!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Agonise over teenage troubles and the pressure of responsibility then open the door and kick
some demonic vampire backside while looking cool and without breaking a nail.

World of Warcraft

Millions of paying players, a lock picking skill and an engineering profession but only twenty doors in the whole universe. We’re finding it hard to work out what they are.

* We went on to win 11 of them (more than Star Wars got) not that we were counting.

A free table top role playing game (RPG) of Edwardian life that fits onto just two sides of paper.

Under Stairs Over Stairs (914k PDF)

At Home with the Gordons

A supplement for Under Stairs Over Stairs describing the architecture and
folk of a grand house on the outskirts of London.

At Home with the Gordons (54k PDF)

Here are the Valkyrie magazine articles and reviews I’ve written. I’ve not included any game statistic in the articles or articles that were specific to particular games at the moment. I’ll add these later once I’ve checked the copyright position of the companies concerned if allowed.

7th Sea Feature Review

A review of AEG’s swashbuckling adventure game which appeared in Valkyrie issue 18. While I’ve written a few reviews for Valkyrie and for Ragnarok this one is special because it got my foot in the door at Valkyrie when the reviewer who was supposed to be writing it pulled out with only a few days to go before the issue was due to go to press.

A & B Services

A short character piece featuring two unusual assassins.  From Valkyrie issue 19.

A & B Services (13k PDF)

Comeonthenifyathinkyerardenough!

A new fighting school for Feng Shui.  My tongue was planted firmly in my cheek when I wrote this.  From Valkyrie issue 19.

When a Door Isn’t Just a Door

A retrospective look at the door in role playing games.  This article from Valkyrie issue 20 was possibly the hardest work of any of the articles I wrote for Valkyrie.  After a half dozen or so drafts it just wasn’t working so it was pretty much written again from scratch.  It was worth the hard work in the end when coming back from GenCon UK a group down the carriage were laughing their heads off sharing the jokes.

Where Drachen Dare

This scenario for 7th Sea appeared in Valkyrie issue 21 written before I knew that AEG were planning the Freiburg Box set.

Sky Scouts

A generic, forteana, UFO conspiracy organisation from issue 23.

You’re Only Supposed to Blow the Bloody Doors Off!!!

Heist themed gaming advice from “The League of Gentlemen” to “Resevoir Dogs”  that appeared in issue 25.

The Way of the Chocolate Ninja

A kung fu setting inspired by 70s chocolate adverts and Jackie Chan films. From Valkyrie issue 26.

The Way of the Chocolate Ninja (39k PDF)

At Home with the Gordons

The people and architecture of a grand Edwardian home. From Valkyrie 27.

See the Games section

Characters on the Couch

A practical Jungian approach to role playing game characters which appeared in Valkyrie 28.

This section includes a selection of my games and gaming related stuff. Some of my articles for gaming magazines can be found in the Words section pages for Ragnarok and Valkyries.

Under Stairs Over Stairs

A role playing game of Edwardian Life that fits onto just two sides of paper.

Cardboard Buildings

A small collection of do it yourself buildings for gamers.

Posters for Miniatures

A selection authentic period posters scaled to fit on to sheets of adhesive mini address labels. These can be applied to 25mm to 28mm gaming scenery to add a bit of a personal touch and break up the uniformity of a set of otherwise identical scenery.