For participation in the patronage project "Hall of the Mountain King" from Wolfgangs Baur Open Design, I recently joined Open Design. That it's recently is a shame, since the project is in its final phase and I basically missed all the fun. I just totally lost sight of the project due to other stuff.

Anyway, if you got an account on livejournal, you can also have a blog. After noting that livejournal has a rich text editor that allows me to copy & paste stat blocks and stuff from my notes in open office, I decided to start a blog there.
Archchancellors Thoughts

I am not sure what is to happen with this one. The neat thing with EN World is that it is closer to fellow gamers. But the presentation options aren't as great, and I think that reduces the blogs appeal - and it makes my "work" harder.

I suppose in the beginning I will use this blog to notify of updates in the livejournal, but that won't go forever.

So, head over for an Arch Chancellor Thoughts's Livejournal exclusive: A preview power of my new Warlock Pact, the Abyssal Pact!

Mustrum_Ridcully

Recently, I had an idea on how to combine several things I found as interesting to use in a game (as DM). There are a few thoughts lingering in my head that I am trying to make into a coherent game or campaign.


I have been working on concepts for a new "modern" campaign for quite some time now. Either as a successor to my D&D 4 campaign, as a off-and-on game, or maybe for my online group.

The original idea was running a d20 Modern campaign, and when I looked into d20 Dark*Matter, I found a lot of stuff I liked, though I wasn't "convinced" by the entire setting. I'd probably still do something homebrew. My idea was an "Aerth" (unfortunately a name already taken) - an alternate Earth, very similar to our own, but a few things that seem historic fact might be wrong.

Thanks to the many comments and recommendations on Mutants & Mastermind and a little thanks to movies like The Dark Knight or Watchmen, I finally decided to buy M&M 2, just to see what it was all about.
I wasn't sure what to do with it, though. Should I adopt my d20 Modern idea and add supers? A Heroes like campaign? Should I reuse Torgs Terra setting? Or how about something more far fatched - a future where mankind travels space, and there are a few superheroes from every planet and colony?
I didn't know exactly...

What I definitely think is that M&M 2 might be a good solution to an unfortunate problem my gaming group faces at the moment - some people have to work at the week-ends, and that is the only time we can meet to play at all, which leaves us struggling to have enough players for a decent D&D game. But a different game, with less focus on parties of PCs might work fine even with just one DM and two players.


That was the gaming side of things. But there's also a "story"/media side of my idea.

I am a great fan of Battlestar Galactica.

I decided to split this blog entry in two parts. It felt too long to read in one go. At least if I or "Short Attention Span Joe" was supposed to read it.

Mustrum_Ridcully

A recent thread on EN World asked "Is D&D 4 charmless". I don't know the real answer to that question (I think that's subjective). But it reminded me of something else and I answered (paraphrasing) "D&D 4 is shameless."

My reasoning behind this is based on my view that D&D 4 in a lot of ways is a design without compromises.

The goal of the D&D 4 design seems to focus on usability and play at the table, and the ability to facilitate a style of play where players face challenges in a fantasy world context, created using transparent mechanics and tools for helping the DM to gauge such challenges.

Other concerns are at best secondary, and there are no attempts to make compromises for other goals.
A common complaint is that certain rules are not designed for world building or for creating verisimilitude.
The rules regarding hit points and healing surges do little to explain what really "happens" in the game, but they are designed to support both long and short term resource management in the game (healing surge "triggers" per encounter and healing surges per day). Similar things can be said about the Encounter/Daily power rules or Action Points.
The DMG contains little information on how to build a "consistent" world (though as I pointed out, you can still use them for that purpose, but it is not what the DMG discusses much), it focuses on what kind of challenges are fair and appropriate for PCs.

Your AC and Reflex defense can be either based on Dex or Int. This gives Wizard a good AC and Reflex defense by default - but he doesn't get the previous edition staple "Mage Armor" to boost it further. One could still explain his half level and Int bonus to his defenses as a result of such spells, but the rules don't suggest anything like that. If it's something that typically applies all the time, it lessens playability if you have to keep book on something that can be taken for granted. The few occasions where it is not granted do not justify the book-keeping if you are focusing on utility and playability.

Skill Points have gone away. You are trained or your are not. The number of ranks in a skill do not matter at the table, only your final modifier. If it's not a concern at game time, simply it.
Certain skills don't even make an appearance - Craft, Perform, Profession are just gone. Very often, such skills are only character background, and they don't find much use during an adventure and the challenges you take. They are more for color then determining success and failure in crucial tasks, so off they go.

I must say, I admire this "No Compromises" approach. But I see that it can also be very off-putting or outright appalling.

If you can craft weapons and armor, it's something your character can do. It should be found in his mechanical representation. And damn, sometimes you might actually want to make a check or make it a challenge. But the designers figured out that this doesn't happen often enough to warrant spending character resources!)

You want to know if your character has still arrows sticking out from him or if he is fine and dandy. Restoring Morale with some shouts might be all nice and dandy, but then distinguish between my morale hit points and my injury hit points! But no, the designers figured that this would add to many special cases and make balancing classes too difficult or outright impossible.

Orcus (Clark Peterson, Necromancer Gamers) was one of the first EN Worlders to talk a little about his PHB 4E, and I remember he mentioned one of these little "No Compromises":
The Dragonborn - a race that had never been a D&D core race before, a race that is not Tolkien fantasy, and a race an unfamiliar player might not identify himself with first - was the first race described in the book. No compromises to utility - Dr comes before Dw and certainly way before Hu in alphabetic order. And that's the order people will search for if they are looking for a specific race description at the table.

I think that also makes 4E shameless. It is not ashamed by the fact that it has new fantasy races. It is not ashamed that certain rules don't "make sense" if they just work and provide interesting challenges.
A little of this "shamelessness" might have always been inherent to D&D - yeah, Dungeons with tons of monsters might not make a lot of sense, but let's gloss over that for the fun of it.

And yes, I think that also makes it okay if some people find this unappealing, bad taste, and do not like the design. Sometimes you might except these compromises - there are conflicting goals and you actually want both, and the game used to make these compromises. 4E is not that game.

There are, of course, also dangers to the "No Compromises" approach. I think a particular danger can be in regards to settings - one of the design goals is to ensure that every supplement can be used with every setting - but there is a risk that you eliminate the entire point of the setting - providing a unique fantasy world.
One could make a point and say that this actually is no longer a "No Compromise" approach - one hand, you want everything to be used with every setting, but on the other hand you want actually different feeling settings. A real "No Compromise" approach would require to have only one setting or to have elements that are specific to one settings and make certain supplements useless (or at least less useful. A book detailing the Astral Sea is not applicable for a setting that doesn't have the Astral Sea.)

I suppose one of the things WotC might want to do is to reintroduce compromises, even if it dilutes the original design goals. It might be what they need to do to bring certain players back. But they have to be very careful - aside from finding the right compromises for "lost" players, they also risk losing those like me that admire the fact that there are no compromises. Maybe future DMGs or an Unearthed Arcana for 4E can do a lot here.

Mustrum_Ridcully

Not a long while ago I noticed that some had a problem with the DMG tables on skill DCs (see 4E DMG p.42). The DC link level and a suggested DC for Easy, Moderate and Hard checks on each.
This seemed to suggest to some that all skill DCs automatically increase by character level and thus they felt that the game world would feel inconsistent.

If moving about a sheet of ice is a DC 10 check at level 2, it shouldn't become a DC 20 check at level 20!

Maybe the crucial passage is
But I say that's not how you have to use it. You can go the slow way and ask yourself, on a scale of 1-30, what type of character would find this an easy (or moderate, or hard) challenge - but still one he could make?
Then set that as your DC.

Running over ice might always be a DC 20 check in your campaign. Because (using the old table, not the errata) you think that a level 5st level character should find running and charging over icy terrain easy.

You can also use the DC based on other aspects. The page 42 also discusses stunts - you could base the level of your challenge on the monsters level that is to be affected by the challenge (if any) or by the amount of damage the player wants to inflict. While swinging a chandelier doesn' get harder with PCs level or the Ogres level, it might get harder to charge him with the swing or the PC want to inflict more harm with your swing.

The beauty of this rules is that you can create an internally consistent gameworld and still figure out how hard a task is compared to your PC.

You can also apply this idea to skill challenges, and in a way you are always doing this - The DCs for skills only change every 3 levels. This can be helpful if you want to run skill challenge involving NPCs - especially if it's a challenge that bypasses a combat encounter. For example, if the PCs want to trick the troll guarding the bridge into believing they already paid their toll, you could use a short skill challenge with a level based on the trolls level and a complexity that would achieve similar XP value - meaning that your PCs get the same XP if they like to role play through the encounter or like to fight through the encounter, which is usually a good thing.

In a way, this is a reverse engineering of what the 3E skill system did - DCs were usually fixed. But the fixed DC implied at which levels certain tasks become possible (when can parties hope to open Amazing locks? Of course when the Rogue's skill modifier is high enough to beat the DC with some d20 rolls.) or easy.

Of course, sometimes it would be nice to have some "fixed" DCs - a look into the PHB can help, there are a few of example DCs described in the skill selection.

It should be noted that it's suboptimal that the designers don't exactly come out to tell you that you can use the "stunt" table in this manner. I don't know whether this is because they thing it would be a rare case to work this way or it didn't occur to them. Also, the PHB example DCs seem inconsistent. As a defense it might be said that - since players don't set the DC - the players just need to see some "landmarks" what they might need. But still, a DM might want these information in the DMG, too.

Anyway, this clearly a thing that should be made more obvious. Maybe the DMG 2 will contain some hints and suggestions? Or has that ship sailed?

Mustrum_Ridcully

This is an unusual blog entry for me - it has little to do with gaming, and it is pretty personal - but I feel like I have to write it down somewhere, sometime.
----------------------------------

Everyone has role models in his life, persons or characters from which he learns stuff about how and who to be. Some of these are fictional, some of them are real-life persons - friends, relatives, teachers.

I think I have a variety of "fictional" role models... As a kid, my fictional role models seem all to come from Sci-Fi, or rather Star Trek where people like Spock (logic, not emotion), Data (logic, but appreciation for emotion and what makes us humans), Picard (emotion, logic, humanism).

My real life role model is my uncle and godfather. Godfathers in a Christian family are expected to teach Christian values to their until their confirmation/communion.

The "interpretation" of my uncle Jibbo was probably different from what the Church has in mind, but I very much appreciated it. One of the cool things he did for me was that he, while studying and later working in Oldenburg (the city I would later end up studying, to), would go the various flea markets and buy science fiction and fantasy books. For a cheap price, he got stacks and stacks of these books, reading them himself and then distribitung among the family - starting with my. I and my cousins probably owe a very high percentage of the books we read to Jibbo. It shaped each of us differently, I suppose, but Jibbos books were certain a common ground - and they probably helped me become the person I am today - interested not only in sci-fi and fantasy, but also their themes - science, the future of our life, philosophy, all the things you are confronted with when reading such books.

He did have other effects. He was one of the two members in our family who knew computers, and when I decided that I wanted to have one (after a computer graphics course in school), he helped my parents getting one, and in the coming years, he would offer advice and help. Without this influences, who knows whether I would have studied computer sciences and became a software developer?
He studied physical sciences, but still ended up with jobs in information technology (software developer, too).

He is also a avid player of games - not role-playing or table-top games, but he enjoyed card games, and he introduced a few in our family for great value. I still remember when we played the game Sechs nimmt, and he enthusiastically taunted my father with the words (paraphrasing) "Richard gets a stack, Richard gets a stack".
These years, he played a lot of "Sodoku" - and you can play this competitively - first to solve wins.
I am not the kind of guy to play competetiive games - maybe it's just because I lose to often - but the playfulness in that regard runs in the family, and he was a good model for this - always looking for the fun in the game experience.

A think that I would like to do similar to my uncle, is travelling a lot. He and his friends (and his girlfriend and now wife) would travel to different countries - typically for skiing, biking or wandering. He always found the time to travel, and I seem to never quite organize things in time. I hope to improve on that.

In person, he was gentle and full of humour. We couldn't meet too often, but they were always appreciated, since aside from the books and his special "bookmarks", he would also bring a lot of anecdotes, and just a cheerful attitude. (I think over the years, he moved from - often smart - jokes to telling anecdotes). Aside from Sci-Fi, he also liked stuff like "Wallace & Gromit" or "Shawn", and he introduced our family to both.

While the job of the Godfather theoretically "ends" when the child is confirmed, our relationship stayed this way. He kept giving me books (and the "bookmarks" I mentioned earlier - they certainly helped me to make my times as a student a little easier - and the last batch of them would effectively finance my first new set of furniture.) After I finished my studies with my diploma thesis, I recieved my last present, so to speak, and I returned the favor (well, without the bookmarks - that would be pointless).

One of the most interesting jobs Jibbo had - but also probably the most stressful - was a job at a corporation that developed the display controls and the computer system behind it for airports, and he worked quite some time "on location" - like Dubai. I envoy him a little for his experiences there, even though the corporation had some flaws.
So, if you ever visit Dubai, you might see some of his work.

Last year, my uncle went to the hospital. I don't even know exactly what was the cause, but eventually, the disagnosed cancer – far progressed, and if he hadn't gone there sooner, he might have died.
So, he went into therapy, or therapies. We were all surprised, shocked and worried. The family enacted a “plan” - conciously or unconciously – so that some of us would visit him from time to time. In this time, his condition did improve and worsen again. He became weaker, he didn't eat as much, and became thinner. But he kept his gentle nature, his humour, his playfulness. Just before the diagnosis, he had changed to a different job, at the university in Frankfurt. He was still in the probation period, but despite the fact that he couldn't work due to his illness, the university decided to end the probation period and kept him in their staff. Even with the short time he was there, he managed to win over his co-workers and boss.
He did not give up. Each day, despite feeling weak, probably in pain he would make at least one, but more typically two long walks – and not at a slow pace, either.

This year, we had our great family party, also celebrating his 50th birthday. As a special guest, his old friends from his time in Oldenburg were also there. It was a very nice experience, getting to know them. They were the kind of people I would hang around with, too – except 20 years further in experience and their life. That was the last time I saw him in person.

A few weeks ago, I was at my parents home – the only one at the time, and suddenly their Skype “ringed” (I didn't even notice it was online!). It was Jibbo, trying to explain a friend of him how Skype worked. Unfortunately, my parents didn't have a web-cam, but I could see him – his smiling face, his dark, curled hair. We talked a short time, exchanging what was going on at the time.

That was the last time I talked to him. He died yesterday afternoon in the hospital. He wasn't alone – his girlfriend, one of his sisters and her husband with them.

Yesterday, I also learned that he and his girlfriend married sometime last month – more or less spontaneously (they just wanted to inform themselves about it, but they were offered to be married then). He also – just like me – had left the church a few days ago. I will never know if I am right, but I believe it was not a reaction of spite, but a reaction honesty. This might be the only point where I was a little faster then I was – leaving the Church has a small monetary benefit (no longer having to pay church tax), but it was a point for me to say: “No, I don't believe. I am an atheist”.
Leaving the Church might be problematic for some members in my family. But he and his girlfriend finally marrying just feels so right. It might have some practical reasons (they share a condo, and without this, the heritage thing might get unneccesarily complicated), but it just feels right to have a formal sign that she is a part of our family.

I have the feeling that Jibbo lived a good life. A life not unlike I would want to live it. The bad part is – he would have continued living a good life. He would have had many good years if it wasn't for the cancer. But at least I feel that he didn't die regretting to have missed something he always wanted to do but never got around doing because he wanted to deal with “more pressing manners”. His travels, his relationship with the family and his friends, they tell me he had nothing to regret. He didn't waste the time he was given. It is a weak comfort, but still some, and I hope that I can follow his role model.

Thank you, Jibbo, thank you for all that you had to offer. Thank you.

Mustrum_Ridcully

These are some thougts that occured to me after some internet discusions on levelling and tiers and my various approaches to skill challenges.

LEVEL and ITERATIVE ATTACKS
3E and 4E basically mean that you get some more options as you level, but one of the major stuff levels do to you is making every number bigger. And this also primarily means you fight tougher foes - but you rarely fight more. Most monsters are around your level, and there is little point fighting low level monsters once you got enough hit points, BAB and Defenses.
I mused a little about tiers and how they could be used to change the feel of the game, and I thought about 3E concept of iterative attacks.

An idea I had that instead of increasing BAB beyond +5, just grant the extra attacks. A 10th level fighter could have two attacks at +5 per round. And if he reaches level 11, he has an attack routine of +5/+5/+1. Monsters at level 11 had mostly the same AC then monsters of level 5, but they have twice its hit points meaning that it needs twice as many succesful attacks to fight the PC.
The interesting thing now is that you can still use Level 5 monsters against a level 10 fighter, or a level 20 fighter, or a level 30 fighter, because the "math" still works - you just need more of them to achieve the same challenge.

Using the combat challenge system, you could use the multiple attacks per round to accrue sucesses faster and possibly pull of an encounter power every other round.


APPLICATION to SKILLS
This also reminds me a little of the Torg variant of skill challenges, dramatic skill encounters. In there, each round you must make a check, but you can make more then one, but each check gains a cumulative penalty. There is a limitation created by the initiative system - each initiative card tells you which "steps" of the challenge you can perform (you must always make A,B,C,D,E(?), and if the DM draws a initiatice card with the "wrong" steps, you might no be able to progress that round - and of course, a setback card will bring you back to step A.)

The problem of the system is that it causes a disconnect if you apply this rule only for one subsystem - combat - and not for all, but is a bit strange to have skills stop advancement.
The simplest approach is to fully apply the system, but instead of doing "more" things, you gain rerolls with the lower bonus.

So, you could have a skill like Stealth +5/+2. Whenever you roll a Stealth check, you roll once with +5 and once with +2, and the higher result is used to see if anyone notices you.

TIERS and d20 MODERN 4E
This interestingly ties somewhat in with some of my thoughts on a 4E variant of d20 Modern. I thought about how to use tiers and what names tiers could have, and somehow "heroic" and "superheroic" as unique tiers made sense to me. But do superheros automatically need higher bonuses to attacks or skills? Is Spiderman so much better than, say a Jack Bauer or James Bond? (Or are these superheroes? Nerd Question: Can Jason Bourne beat up Batman?)

So, using this approach, characters of the superheroic tier would simply gain one extra roll, and the bonus on that roll improves with levels, just as with the heroic tier. In this model though, the "primary" roll might not have a different bonus then the second one, so an inexperienced superhero has the same to-hit as an inexperienced hero, but he still gets two tries. This of course is still different from the aforementioned system, and it assumes that no character can ever "leave" his tier. In a way, superhero characters become "Elites" PCs...

Mustrum_Ridcully

A thing I sometimes find odd about my role-playing game experiences is the fact that I am mostly playing fantasy-related games (especially D&D). But outside of RPGs, I am mostly interested in science fiction stories, and the only fantasy series I am really interested in is Discworld. [sblock]I read countless of Startrek and Starwars novels, and many other sci-fi stories that my uncle used to buy on flea markets and give out to his nephews and nieces. Similar things are true for series - I never watched Xena or Hercules, but I am a fan of most sci-fi series, including exotic/old ones like Space Patrol Orion.

I can't really point my fingers on why I am rarely playing Sci-Fi games, as there seem to be several contributing factors.

What is the equivalent to D&D in Science Fiction? Or is there just none?
D&D seems to steal everything it can from folklore, mythology and fantasy stories, adding some of its own ingredients and twisting many elements to create a unique blend of fantasy, that for some reason appeals to a lot of gamers. I don't know if that's its strength, or if it are purely the "network externalities" of always being able to find D&D gamers if you want to play.
But I never encountered a Sci-Fi equivalent. I know that Traveller is a classic Sci-Fi game, but the T20 Traveller variant I tried didn't satisfy my inner gamist, and I can't really see this improving with any of the other variants.

Maybe it is so hard to create a good sci-fi games because science fiction can come in many forms - some hard sci-fi with minimal made-up science, some more fantasy aka Star Wars, and some soft sci-fi that might explores the effects of technology on a society (some Star Trek), but creates a lot of made-up science (full of techno-babble).

I'd like a setting that tried to keep its meta-game stuff close to "speculative hard sci-fi" (bubble-shaped force shields around starships and noise in vacuum out, interesting non-humanoid life-forms in). I don't want to be limited to Earth, Mars and maybe a wormhole. The space should be big and explorable, and I want the PCs to be part of the exploration part. If there are psionics, I want a scientific approach to how it works.

But in the game system, I think I prefer a more ... "gamist" system. Combat should be similar valid as an option as in D&D, though I would also like strong non-combat/violence options available that are equally fun then combat.

I'd like to have options for conduction trade, exploration and combat (both space and ground). I want to see reasons for why a diverse set of aliens might work together in a small team (party), and use such parties tp stop mad scientists and avert dictators plans for war.

So, any suggestions on a game system that can provide this to me?


I originally wanted to post this blog together with my ideas on using 4E for space combat rules, but as I started the above I figured it would be nicer to split the blog post into two parts, one me rambling about sci-fi games and one on rule snippets.

Oh, and there is a certain irony in it that I say "Force Shields Out" on my dream for a perfect sci-fi game and then proceed to present rules for shields.

Mustrum_Ridcully