VectorSigma

I'm having a hard time paring down 3.5/OGL to get it to where I want it. Some things are hand-wave easy. Others...aren't.

For example, I'm trying to rework skills pretty much completely. I don't want a lot of mucking about with skill ranks, so we're leaning a little 4e here. Your class gives you certain skills in which you're "trained" and get a bonus. So far, so good, right?

Here's the issue. I'm looking at my simplified skill list, and all it does is exacerbate the fact that some stats are just "better" than others for general value.

Take a look at Intelligence. It would normally be my go-to stat for bonus languages, or extra 'pickup' skill points or whatever. There are a ton of d20 skills that work off of Intelligence. Compare with STR or CON, which both have more 'general' use (hit/damage, hit points/FORT), but aren't skill heavy. "But wait!" I hear you cry, "Strength gives you bonuses to Swim, Jump, Climb..." Yes, yes, I know. But I had intended to fold all of those into 'Athletics'.

So STR and CON look a little weak on the sheet. Hmm. I'm considering adding a 'Brawn' skill under STR that covers, quite simply, feats of strength - kicking in doors, lifting things, etc. Most characters wouldn't want or need to put extra points in such a thing, but some concepts might (Barbarian, any really brawny tank).

Oh, here's the other thing I realized...Saves are essentially Skills. Honestly. They progress much slower, but they work the same way, thanks to the unified d20 concept. So...why not make 'em Skills? Sort of skills. Kinda skills. Skills with a cap on how much you can drop in 'em or something. They sure do fit nice on the character sheet I sketched out, hanging out there with the skills next to each ability score (only with a square box instead of a circle to write the bonus in). *sigh*

I'm concerned that if I keep walking these roads in my mind, trying to simplify, I'll end up with the opposite.

At the moment, the character sheet looks decent (ie, "simple to the eye"). I've got the six ability scores (or the bonuses, rather) down the left-hand side. And then, next to each of them, four skills/saves that derive from them. (Except next to STR and CON, hence the visual problem). I know full well that some stats are more important than others in all versions of D&D. I wanted to downplay that somehow, but STR is what it is. Ditto CON.

Okay, so here are the stats and their four little buddies on the sheet:

STR
Athletics (skill) [Climb, Jump, et al]
Brawn (skill) [feats of STR]

CON
Fortitude (save)
Toughness (adds to hp/lvl)
Endurance? (skill)

DEX
Reflexes (save)
Acrobatics (skill) [Tumble, Balance]
Stealth (skill) [Hide, Move Silently]
Thievery (skill) [Open Lock, Pick Pocket, et al]

INT
Arcana (skill) [K:Arcana, Spellcraft]
Linguistics (skill) [Decipher Script, grants languages known]
History (skill) [History, Nobility, Heraldry]
Nature (skill)

WIS
Will (save)
Perception (skill) [Spot, Listen, Search]
Divinity (skill) [K:Religion, divine spellcraft]
Survival (skill) <-- looks weird here

CHA
Rapport (skill) [Sense Motive, Diplomacy]
Intimidate (skill) <-- not sure I even want this
Animal (skill) [Handle Animal, poss Ride??]
Perform (skill)

And I'm still missing the Craft/Profession spectrum.

But it sure does look pretty. Which, frankly, is what I want. Elegance of execution. I want the players to be able to look down at their sheet, and understand what they're looking at. Not messing with skill ranks every level. Not checking a skill against a stat. Just "I need a [whatever] check" and they look at it, and they roll it.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating this. Maybe I'm so accustomed to having skills that I think I _need_ them, when I don't. Should I just drop them completely and go old-school with ability checks? It's sorely tempting. The only real problem with doing that is that it raises a "thief abilities" issue.

Comments welcome. I'm banging my head against the wall here.

Years ago, I ran a D&D campaign at the start of which we all sat down and designed nations and smushed them together on a map. It helped get the players involved at the start, and worked pretty well (even though some of 'em were slack-asses as time went on). That was my first dip into collaborative worldbuilding, and it was probably fifteen years ago.

The last long-term roleplaying campaign I ran was not D&D. It was a BESMd20 game, although that's neither here nor there. The campaign was called 'Low Disguises', and it was set in modern America.

The gist of the campaign goes like this: seven regular people get caught up in a weird government conspiracy, and along the way, get injected with crazy nano-retroviruses that reprogram their DNA and essentially give them superpowers. The viruses were designed based on the DNA of captured supernaturals, and each one was different (we find out later there's a certain amount of soul-snatching involved), so each PC morphed into a version of a different mythical creature (pixie, troll, ghoul, etc).

As the campaign continued, what began as a weird low-supers conspiracy game morphed into a more high-fantasy superhuman game, as the heroes took on the powers that be (both mortal and immortal), gathered armies, did all kinds of crazy stuff, and became 'baby' gods themselves. At the end of the campaign (three years later), the apocalypse has occurred and we leave our heroes as the new chief gods and goddesses of Earth, struggling to keep peace amongst the survivors (human and otherwise) and build a new civilization out of the old.

All well and good. Sometime right after the apotheosis of the PCs, we bandied about the idea of "how cool would it be to essentially push the timeline forward a bunch and run a D&D-style game in this world, where our old PCs - or interpretations thereof - would actually be the pantheon" etc. Everyone agreed it sounded awesome, and I agreed to eventually do it once we'd taken a break, played some other stuff, and enough time had passed to make everything feel fresh and wonderful again.

That time is almost here - it's just over the horizon. Our group played some one-shots, a couple of mini-campaigns, and we're getting ready to do a medium to long run of a Star Wars game. Once that's over, it's back to the world of 'Low Disguises' - five thousand years later.

That's a pretty long introduction to get to the meaty part...but the point is that, while we're doing Star Wars, we're going to do sort of a PBeM thing in the background. I want to let the players - as their old PCs-turned-gods - actually take the actions to shape this new world, a step at a time. Fifty centuries will pass in the interim, but we'll start at the beginning, when reality is pliable, and work our way to the end, as whole races are born, nations rise and fall, and the gods of the pantheon influence how magic-rich and/or technological the world will be. Naturally, the PC deities will sometimes be at cross purposes; and other lesser deities may challenge them as well, as time goes on.

I want this to be an opportunity for the whole group to take part in the worldbuilding aspect of our next D&D game, but do it in a way that feels organic. They can sponsor civilizations, create new species (which may end up being PC races when we do the D&D thing), shape the religion, rework the continents, all of that. A turn at a time.

I'm thinking the initial few turns will be closer together (in 'game-time'), a century or less apart. This will be the period in which they can do some serious mojo potentially, carving up continents and such. But, conversely, they're still inexperienced gods. They may find that by the time they know _how_ to do certain things, the world isn't as pliable as they'd thought. Later turns will be "further apart" as the gods grow more distant from the mortal minutiae, and they will have to act less directly.

Once we get rolling on this, and as things progress, I'll blog about it occasionally, and we'll see how things are going.

(NB: we did have a rule, by consensus, that when we get to the D&D portion of this, you're not allowed to play a cleric of yourself. Actually, several of them are pretty charged about character concepts that involve being a paladin of one of the other players' deities, etc)

-----
TODAY'S QUESTION:
Any experience with collaborative worldbuilding above and beyond the usual?

I've been posting so far on the groundwork I'm doing for an upcoming three-player game. On top of that, it's looking like at some point (6-12 months from now?) I'll be running a separate D&D game for my current (larger) group.

Is this a problem? Heck, no. It's an opportunity, and on several levels.

Opportunity the First: The aforementioned larger group will be amenable to me running the game as a strongly-flavored, rule-tweaked 3.5, just as I intend to do with the smaller group. That means less work for me overall, and no need for the brain to shift gears dramatically in terms of ruleset.

Opportunity the Second: I'll use the same game-world. The exploits and additions of each group will help in building the world both for myself and for the other group. Plus, every ounce of thought or time I put into the setting gets double-payoff. And this leads into...

Opportunity the Third: Serious crossover potential. I've always wanted to do this - no doubt some of you have tried it - but I'd love to have the storylines from the two campaigns intertwine and lead up to a blowout crossover adventure where everyone from both groups shows up, teams up, and brings on the awesome. How cool would that be? Difficult to pull off, maybe. But the potential payoff is outstanding.

The campaign that will start first (the smaller one) will likely be playing far less often than the later-starting campaign; which might (with massaging) put everyone at around the same level come crossover time (this is a good thing).

My intent had always been to set the small campaign in the same game world as the one I would eventually run for the big group, but it didn't occur to me (who knows why) that I might end up doing both at the same time. But this could generate a lot of kickass. What if, even pre-teamup, the two groups are in communication with one another, and could send messages, hints, and plot hooks back and forth? That might be fun. The weaponsmith from group A could use downtime to forge a sword (or whatever) for the paladin of group B. Heck, we could even go cliche-classic and make a PC from each group into siblings or something.

One tidbit that's terribly interesting to me is that the game-world I'm working on is based on the last campaign I ran for the larger group; wait, that didn't explain it at all. This will require a separate post, no doubt.

Curses, I'm going to have to start categorizing blog entries now. *sigh*

------
TODAY'S QUESTION:

Have you ever run multiple campaigns simultaneously for different player-groups, which intertwined or interacted? How deep did it go? And did it work?

The dunewalker is intended to be a hybrid class that really exemplifies the Babylonian/Arabian/desert setting of the campaign. He's 70% Ranger, 30% Barbarian, and 10% Fremen. Yes, that's 110%, because he's a hard worker.

I know I want him to have d8s rather than d12s. Let's take a look at the special class features of our donating classes, and which ones should have a place in the first ten levels of dunewalker.

BARBARIAN

First things first - rage is right out. Doesn't fit the concept. The whole berserker thing just screams "Norse" to me (or at least "Conan") and that's not what I want. Dropping rage from the build also saves some headaches.

Illiteracy. Dropped. Even outside the cosmopolitan areas of the setting, the religion pushes literacy. Everyone can read and write their native tongue.

Fast Movement. Absolutely kept, and it needs to be early in the progression.

Uncanny Dodge and Trap-Sense. Maybe. Trap-sense is a little "thiefy" for me.

Damage Reduction. It's intended as an outgrowth of rage - so no go on the DR. Doesn't make sense, either.

Indomitable Will. I actually kind of like this one, but normally it's for 14th level Barbarians, and we're only worried about the first ten levels right now. Maybe we can dial it down and give it earlier in the progression - with all the mirages and genies and stuff, resistance to enchantment makes some sense for this guy.

RANGER

Favored enemy. Aside from tracking, perhaps the most rangery of ranger powers. I'd like to keep this, but maybe loosen it a little.

Tracking. No-brainer - tracking stays. Ditto Swift Tracking later on.

Wild Empathy. Well, it's certainly rangery.

Endurance. Well, it's a feat in the first place.

Combat style. The two combat styles, as presented, still make sense. Twin scimitars? Booya! Turbaned dunewalkers plunking away with bows feels right, too. (see, I told you it'd end up 70% ranger)

Animal Companion. Sort of fits, maybe make it optional? A tradeoff for something else?

Woodland Stride. This would fit if it were desert-tweaked...I need to dig Sandstorm out, I know there's an equivalent in there.

Evasion. At ninth level in the standard progression, this makes some sense.

Ranger spells. Right out! This is not an inherently magical class. If you want your desert spells, take some cleric levels.

WHAT ELSE IS NEEDED?

We may need to leave room for some more desert-focused stuff (if there even IS room left).

Should I be doing something with totems here? I always liked the totem-barbarian stuff in PH2. Hmm.

(don't mind me...thinking aloud)

In an effort to simultaneously simplify the rules (tailoring them to the audience) and tweak their flavor (tailoring them to the campaign), I'm taking a hard look at the 3.x classes.

At a bare minimum, we need four: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage (Wizard).

Ranger and Barbarian are going to get smushed together into the Dunewalker, an all-around desert guy who's 70% ranger and 30% barbarian. (More on him in a later post, of course). No inherent spells for the dunewalker, although they could multiclass a few levels of cleric to easily get the same feel. Now, I could certainly leave this guy out completely, if I wanted to go super bare-bones. But it's themey, and the two donating classes have their own special abilities which aren't replicated elsewhere.

Speaking of replicated elsewhere, what's a paladin? A fighter/cleric, or a cleric with certain feat and thematic choices. So that's that - no separate paladin necessary. Plus, this eliminates that pesky lingering alignment issue.

Bards, as written, don't go well with the setting. I'm leaving them out completely for now.

Same is true for Monks, I'm afraid. Plus...that class has some issues as written.

Sorcerors? I've always had a bit of a problem with 'em. I like my magicians old-school, I suppose, and that flavor suits the setting better. No sorcerors, either. (see, that was easy...)

Druids? These might be better reworked into either a) a beast-talking shapeshifter, b) an elemental spellcaster, or c) a leafshaping plant guy. As they stand, they're a bit of all three, and that's the problem I have with them. I think I can safely set druids aside for now...remember, I'm plotting a campaign for only three players.

And with only three players, what we're probably going to be looking at is a fighter-type, a rogue-type, and a caster. This isn't guaranteed, but it's a likely spread. If the players decide they want a fighter, a cleric, and a dunewalker, that's okay, too - the adventures will be tailored to them. Two clerics and a mage? Sure, why not. We might see some multiclassing along the way (I'm allowing multiclassing freely for this game), I don't expect to see it the first couple of levels.

Spreading all those thoughts out in front of us, we're looking at five classes. That's all. And isn't that enough for three players? I think so.

Now, looking at those five, there are some across-the-board tweaks that will have to apply. The first is the simplified skill system, and adjustments for that. Secondly, the cleric domain system needs work. I want the clerics in this setting to be different from each other, but I don't want the cleric player to have to keep separate track of domain spells, regular spells, and what have you. I'm thinking I'll prep a list of 'universal' spells, and then some lists of 'domain' spells - which will have a lot in common with the 2e 'spheres' system. Every cleric (PC or NPC) will have access to the universal spells, plus those of probably three spheres. This will keep them limited, but still different from one another. I'm all about handing the players what they need to play - and if that means I spend a little time compiling a "spells you can cast" document, so be it - I'm okay with that. I'd rather spend the time now than waste it later as a player desperately flips through several books looking for 'just the right spell'. Plus, if we end up with two cleric-casters at some point, I can easily mandate that their spheres not overlap, which will keep them differentiated.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with the mage end of magic as far as 'schools' or 'elements' or 'astrology' or whatever. I know one thing: item creation feats are gone, gone, gone. I'm the DM - I can ad-hoc decide what the mage can and can't craft, and how long it takes him, and what weird ingredients he'll need (I smell a plot hook there). Just like we did back in the day. And, again, with only three players, we're looking at one, one and a half arcane casters max.

Mages, will, of course, still get the ability to scribe scrolls at first level - I'll just have to keep it reasonable as we go. Specialist wizards have gone the way of the dodo...if the player of the mage wants to 'specialize', then we'll do it via feat selection, roleplay, and questing for unusual spells.

Mages will also have the option at first level of either having a familiar, or having a staff (or other focus item) that can serve as an 'item familiar' and grow in power as they increase level.

Other than the skill system and the above-mentioned stuff, these four classes basically look like their PH/SRD equivalent. The rules & setting handout will have the first ten levels of each of these classes (plus the dunewalker and possible druid-substitution, when complete) printed in 'em, so the players have everything at hand when creating their characters, levelling up, or thinking about multiclassing.

I know that between reworked rules and all the setting fluff, it seems like a lot of stuff to be handing to the players, perhaps. But this isn't supplemental - it replaces their (nonexistent) Player's Handbook. Call me old-school, but I'm the DM - I'm the only one who needs the full byzantine rules at hand. They just need the basics and their sheets, period. No clutter!