m20 Houserule set

[Desdichado]

I haven't really been a regular 'round here in quite some time, but since I've been poking around the last week or so, I thought I'd give a quick and dirty gaming update of what I've been up to.

I used to be known, by those few who paid attention to me at all, as a guy who was always looking to houserule d20 into a low magic, "fantasy Call of Cthulhu" type of paradigm, who wasn't very interested in things like system mastery or tactical combat. For a long time, I modified D&D (3.5) itself with third party and original houserules. Then I wandered into using d20 Modern + d20 Past. I flirted briefly with Pathfinder. I never even looked at 4e, much less played it. (take that, [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION]!)

Curiously, it was Pathfinder itself that brought an end to that era in my gaming career. Now, I still play d20 of various stripes with my gaming group. But I finally decided that I won't run it again, most likely. I liked many of the things Pathfinder did to update 3.5, but after a while, the sheer, ponderous tediousness of it all got me down. I probably could have endured 3.5 indefinately, but seeing it "turned up to 11" in terms of tediousness, is what finally convinced me that the many compromises I'd made with the system to cram them into something that my rather esoteric tastes would enjoy weren't what I was looking for after all.

I houseruled Old School Hack for a while, but it was too divergent really to ever become my "go-to" system, in spite of the many things I liked about it. But when I belatedly discovered m20, I decided that my Holy Grail search for the Promised System had come to an end. The system promised compatibility with d20, so that I could use, without too much fuss, all of the mountains of monster books and everything else that I had accumulated for that system. But, without all of that complexity. Without bogging things down with minutiae and more rules than I needed.

I still need more playtime to test the hypothesis that my m20 variant is sufficient to induce me to stop looking for systems for good, but early results are promising.

Anyway, I compiled all the m20 stuff that I wanted to use in my own game, which was a combination of some basic m20 stuff with some of the setting-specific details of m20 Cthulhu and a few other variants. After putting all this together, it occured to me that it wouldn't take much more work to make a completely stand-alone, full-fledged OGL compatible m20 game out of the document. So I did. The majority of the actual work was to type up my introduction to role-playing and roleplaying philosophy type stuff. Which I've helpfully posted here as a teaser. And then, the link to my document.

I guess I'm not really looking for feedback, because I'm pretty convinced that this is the system that best meets my needs, but... well, I dunno why I'm even putting this out there at all. In case anyone's curious, I guess, and because I'm a bit of a narcissist who likes me work to be out there, or something.

http://jdyal.webs.com/Mym20.pdf

Introduction m20 DARK•HERITAGE is a fully complete roleplaying game, ready for you (and a few of your friends or family members) to sit down and play, that is fully compatible with the DARK•HERITAGE fantasy setting, a development of yours truly.

Wait, what? You may ask. What does all that mean? First off, a roleplaying game is a game that is designed to allow you to assume the role of a fictional character, and then, along with an “ensemble cast” of some other characters, undertake adventures and other excitement under the direction of a director, or Game Master. The Game Master, like a director in a movie or play, is in charge of the entire production, and will provide both the environments in which you adventure, as well as many other supporting characters with whom you may interact. It’s his responsibility to make sure that there is, in fact, a game to play, and interesting things to do, and to make sure the game is fun and consistent. To do this, he will use the rules presented here and ensure that they are followed (more or less) correctly. He can, of course, modify them if he feels it is necessary to achieve the feel or result that he wants, but this should never be arbitrary, and you as a player probably shouldn’t ever by surprised by the fact that he’s done so. While I don’t favor necessarily a play style that is strict and by the book, I do favor consensus and understanding by everyone involved of what’s being done and why at a basic system level. Otherwise, the chance of the game being less than ideal for the players rises dramatically.

However, that’s not your responsibility unless you are the Game Master (GM) yourself. More likely, you are a player, and your responsibility is about your character, a so-called Player Character (PC). You determine what this PC does, and how he reacts to things that the GM presents you with, as well as what other PCs in your gaming group may do. It is also your responsibility to understand the rules sufficiently that you can play your PC without being told how to, ideally—although of course, any self-respecting GM and player group is more than happy to lend a newbie a hand while he figures the game out. This shouldn’t be difficult, as the rules for m20 DARK•HERITAGE are relatively brief and simple, by design.

So that’s what a roleplaying game is. A fusion of collaborative storytelling, impromptu “acting” via dialogue and in-character choices that you make in behalf of your PC, using a set of rules that use funny-shaped dice and a few other tools to generate a bit of randomness to inject the game with a bit of tension, since there’s always a chance that things you attempt to do will fail. Hopefully you recognize that bad things happening to your character are not equivalent to bad things happening to you personally and come to enjoy the often entertaining antics of PCs who fail dramatically and spectacularly from time to time, but who also achieve interesting and challenging goals. Roleplaying games are one of my favorite hobbies, and one on which I spend a fair bit of resources and intellectual capital.

Many players approach the game with different goals, and different aspects of the game that they enjoy the most. While it’s primarily the GM’s responsibility to deliver a game that is fun for all players (which means he needs to pay attention to what’s working for whom and tailor the experience to fit the needs and expectations of his players) it is also incumbent on all of the players to enable a collaborative and fun experience for all. Don’t hog the spotlight, don’t insist things be done your way, help the GM out (he’s definitely got the most difficult job of the group) and work together. Note that this doesn’t mean that your PCs must always work together; sometimes conflict amongst the members of an ensemble cast makes for the most interesting episodes of a movie, TV show or novel, and the same can be true for your game. But be respectful and thoughtful of the other players, and be mature, and things will tend to go well for you and your game.

You may have heard of roleplaying games before. Most likely, if you’ve discovered this file, it’s because you already play them and are looking for a new alternative. If not, there’s a really famous fantasy roleplaying game that you’ve almost certainly heard of. Although I don’t believe it to be a violation of the fair use doctrine of trademark law to mention it by name, it’s traditional in the industry to side-step around it and avoid doing so, so I will do so as well. This game, and its rules, is heavily based on that famous game, the third (and “third and a half”) edition of which was released into the open source domain via the Open Game License (or OGL), included at the end of this document. This system is sometimes called d20 because of the importance of the twenty-sided dice in playing the game. This specific document, however, is more specifically based on a variant to d20 called m20, or Microlite20, which was specifically designed to work basically like d20, but significantly less complicated in scope. This lessened complexity enables the play style that I best enjoy; a bit fast and loose, and focused on more “authorial” concerns rather than focus on rules or tactics.

You are less likely to have heard of DARK•HERITAGE, a fantasy setting of my own devising, however. DARK•HERITAGE's Hollywood pitch goes something like this: "The Black Company and The Godfather meet spaghetti westerns and Pirates of the Caribbean." If the initial pitch sounds intriguing enough, and the Hollywood agent says, "let's do lunch and you can tell me more about this project," then I can start getting a bit more into the details.

DARK•HERITAGE is firmly rooted in the fantasy genre, and has some of the typical fantasy conventions you'd expect, especially if you're a fan of either old school Sword & Sorcery or this newer type of dark fantasy featuring criminals and anti-heroes as protagonists. But it also has a strong vibe of supernatural horror and Yog-Sothothery—magic exists, of course, but it's never a good thing, and kindly or wise wizards are replaced with terrifying and post-human (or human, but who aspire to transcend that state) sorcerers which are thankfully quite rare. Rather than save the world quests to stop the machinations of dark lords, or restore glorious kingdoms, DARK•HERITAGE is often about the skulduggery and intrigue of amoral movers and shakers--corrupt rulers, powerful sorcerers who pull the strings from behind the scenes, organized crime, and nihilistic cultists. Or, more accurately, it's about how Joe Blow fantasy characters (player characters) get caught up in that skulduggery and intrigue, and find their lives buffeted by forces beyond their control, and their attempts to take the reins and successfully navigate through them with their lives and sanity intact. Their motives are rarely altruistic or heroic and their personalities are often cynical, pragmatic or even world-weary. They're like noir characters who find themselves in a dark fantasy-horror hybrid setting.

The setting is fairly wild—part Arabian Nights, part Spanish Main, part Crown of Aragon, part Old West, part Lovecraft, part Clan of the Cave Bear. But most DARK•HERITAGE adventures will take place in one of three places: out in the wild, that's like Cowboys & Indians type settings except with much more dangerous wildlife all over the place, or the high seas, with Barbary and Spanish Main type pirates, or deep in Spanish or Italian style picaresque cities with thieves guilds, assassins, spies and cultists roaming the streets after dark.

The elements from the previously mentioned famous fantasy game are fairly muted; magic is more Lovecraftian in nature, characters don't become powerful, god-like superheroes, or adventure for experience and profit, and the palette of character options (especially races) is a more sword & sorcery like human and mostly human yet exotic "touched by dark magic of some kind or another" variants. There are no lordly elves, dour dwarves or cozy hobbits here. Villains are like more dangerous versions of the main characters—there are no conveniently cartoon-like always evil races; no orcs, goblins or whatever. No dark lords in the traditional sense.

The setting will not really be enumerated in this document. That said, this system will work well for any setting that features swashbuckling action sprinkled with supernatural in a fantasy setting. And the setting can be further explored in my blog and on my campaign wiki, links listed at the end of this document.

 

[Mistwell]

Downloaded. Looking forward to reading it.

You will be happy, I suspect, to hear I burned out on 4e a couple years ago, and now am in love with 5e.

 

[Desdichado]

Heh. Actually, if you like (or don't, either one) 4e, I don't particularly care. I've moved out of D&D specifically, to a great degree, and suspect that that's more or less a permanent development. I do recall your prediction, which became somewhat infamous briefly, that everyone would, at some point, at least play 4e.

For the record, I never have! I did browse a handful of the books at the public library, but I was mostly looking at the flavor changes; I really have no idea whatsoever how to actually play the game.

EDIT: I also freely admit that my tastes are fairly esoteric, and that a lot of the things that a lot of gamers like best about D&D are things that I have little to no interest in and vice versa. I don't expect my ruleset to appeal to a broad range of tastes, necessarily. But for my tastes, it's fantastic.

 

[GMMichael]

m20 is Microlite20? I could be looking at an old version, but did you make any changes to:

- The ratio of 4 skills to 3 abilities? Which effectively means that skill points don't amount to much more than ability bonuses?

or

- magic spells causing HP damage . . . to an archetype that is classically low on HP?

 

[Desdichado]

m20 is Microlite20? I could be looking at an old version, but did you make any changes to:

- The ratio of 4 skills to 3 abilities? Which effectively means that skill points don't amount to much more than ability bonuses?

or

- magic spells causing HP damage . . . to an archetype that is classically low on HP?

Five skills. But that was changed by a number of other variants before I got my hands on it. And you say that like it wasn't a specific design goal of the system, or something!

Magic spells cause HP damage still (and sanity damage, in my system.) Your last phrase there doesn't make any sense, though, since all classes in m20 have the same hit dice (d6.)

Also, the game is customized to my setting, which eschews a number of D&D elements, including the specific rendering of D&D archetypes. My sorcerer archetype is not the same as the D&D "magic-user" archetype anyway.

 

[GMMichael]

Five skills. But that was changed by a number of other variants before I got my hands on it. And you say that like it wasn't a specific design goal of the system, or something!

Magic spells cause HP damage still (and sanity damage, in my system.) Your last phrase there doesn't make any sense, though, since all classes in m20 have the same hit dice (d6.)

Also, the game is customized to my setting, which eschews a number of D&D elements, including the specific rendering of D&D archetypes. My sorcerer archetype is not the same as the D&D "magic-user" archetype anyway.

Simplicity as a design goal is great. But here's the thing: if your abilities drive (via modifiers) exactly 1 or 2 skills, then why have skills in the first place? You can add bonuses to abilities and get the same results. The reason (to have 5 skills) is that abilities affect some features other than skills. But that's not an excuse, it's just a complication in a game that's supposed to be simple.

Attempt at being helpful: if you're going to use m20, add skills until you have at least 6 (two per ability), so that there's a reason to have skills. Otherwise, just make everything an ability check.

The m20 rules I read said that HP are equal to...strength plus hit dice? I assume that casters will have the lowest strength, making them also the lowest in hit points. I...could be wrong.

 

[Desdichado]

Simplicity as a design goal is great. But here's the thing: if your abilities drive (via modifiers) exactly 1 or 2 skills, then why have skills in the first place? You can add bonuses to abilities and get the same results. The reason (to have 5 skills) is that abilities affect some features other than skills. But that's not an excuse, it's just a complication in a game that's supposed to be simple.

No, it's not really a complication. Or at least, certainly it's not an onerous one, if so. There's no absolute zero of simplicity that is the goal. It adds just enough texture to be interesting without being a needless complication. Flavor is also a goal, after all, not just simplicity.

In any case, if that's a complication, good heavens, what other game is less complicated than this? And what method of assigning these bonuses, that are textured and tailored to give flavor to class and race, and which scale with level, do you propose that's less complicated?

Attempt at being helpful: if you're going to use m20, add skills until you have at least 6 (two per ability), so that there's a reason to have skills. Otherwise, just make everything an ability check.

No, I like five. And yes, skills are modifiers that scale with level to ability checks. Again; you keep refering to that as if it were a problem. Not to put words into the mouths of the original designers of Microlite, but I rather believe that that was the whole point. Ergo...

The m20 rules I read said that HP are equal to...strength plus hit dice? I assume that casters will have the lowest strength, making them also the lowest in hit points. I...could be wrong.

Yes, you could be. That's a choice that the player has to make; how to assign ability scores. As always, there will be trade-offs.

In any case, the difference is going to be very slight, except at first level. But for those of us who have read over games like Sword & WIzardry, or who remember playing early editions of D&D, this isn't exactly unprecedented.

But mostly, like I said, you're assuming D&D archetypes. Sorcerers in my setting are not like D&D magic-users. They're an entirely different animal. And the nature of magic is nothing like it is in D&D either. In fact, I toyed with changing the nature of magic even more to match the flavor, but ultimately decided that playing a sorcerer was already as complicated as I was willing to allow the system to be.

 

[GMMichael]

But mostly, like I said, you're assuming D&D archetypes. Sorcerers in my setting are not like D&D magic-users. They're an entirely different animal. And the nature of magic is nothing like it is in D&D either. In fact, I toyed with changing the nature of magic even more to match the flavor, but ultimately decided that playing a sorcerer was already as complicated as I was willing to allow the system to be.

And...I'm hooked. Tell me about your casters. There is definitely a way to run magic differently than in D&D. Although I have to say, 3.5's Tome of Magic was an awesome book.

My magic system deals damage to casters too, but it goes to the metaphysical ability, which would be "mind" in m20. And these points get healed by the hour. The other major mechanic in spellcasting is that a certain number of actions in a specific time (1 round) are required to cast a spell. So if you don't have the inherent talents (ability scores) available, you can't cast higher level spells.

But that's it for the mechanics. Casters can do whatever they want after that. They can call their magic "psionics" or "bard music," they can say that they prepare spells after resting, or use mana points, pull power from the Weave, whatever roleplaying-wise, as long as they follow the mechanic above.

 

[Desdichado]

Heh. Well, it may not be what you're interested in. My goal was, really, to have spellcasting be more like how it's done in Call of Cthulhu. I consider my fantasy setting to be a dark fantasy setting that's as much horror as it is swashbuckling fantasy, so the goal was that becoming a sorcerer was never something done lightly, and never something done without cost.

Also, I thought that the Microlite sorcerers I saw looked like they had almost everything that every other class had (other than a few points in bonuses to some skills and to attacks) and in return, they got to cast a bunch of devastating spells. If anything Microlite sorcerers (again, depending on which variation you were using) had a lot more going for them than most other classes. This might have especially been true of the Microlite74 variation, which I used as my "baseline" to modify from. But the primary consideration was to change the flavor first and foremost.

But a secondary consideration was that I wanted to do it without having to reinvent the wheel, or deviate too much from a system that I thought was already fairly easy. Those goals were, to a certain extent, in direct contradiction. But I ended up being satisfied (if not 100% thrilled) with how it turned out--it's not the most simple thing in the world, but it's simple enough, and I think fairly evocative.

First off, for reasons completely unrelated to magic per se I had already added Sanity in (from a Microlite Cthulhu variant; I kitbashed that particular element in.) So, I jiggered a bit with the hit points cost (it's a bit lower than in Microlite default, IIRC) but also added a risk of Sanity damage when casting a spell. Taking a page from older editions of Warhammer 40,000, with a real flub on that "saving throw" you can even have 1d4 Hounds of Tindalos show up with a spectacularly badly saved spell-casting attempt.

I also changed the spell list somewhat, and renamed every single spell to some Lovecraftian counterpart.

I only have up to 5th level spells (because I only assume up to 10th level play--I'm not interested personally in playing higher level than that, and since the document was really for my own play of my own setting, I figured why not specifically exclude those higher levels?) but I also added a simple little subsystem where any character can cast any spell--including a few higher than 5th level--as a ritual/incantation. Of course sorcerers are likely to be a bit better at this than other classes, but in theory, anyone can do it. You can also have a proxy or patsy (or sacrifice, if you prefer) take that damage (or at least a portion of it), and you can cast rituals as partnership with more than one caster, spreading the risk around (although whoops! The draft online doesn't include those details; that's in my draft here at home! [EDIT: OK, I've re-uploaded the file, complete with this change.] I need to finalize and upload that.) None of these are really appropriate for combat spells, needless to say, since the timing to cast them is a bit long.

 

[Desdichado]

As an aside, I also created an m20 variant for Star Wars. There were two existing Star Wars variants out there, but neither one of them were quite right; there were a few issues that were better in one version, and other issues that were better in the other version, and a (rather smallish) list of issues that weren't really quite right (or ever completed) in either. So my version is kind of a fusion of the two, with a few additions/changes of my own which were largely based on trying to make the rules fit a little bit better with the source material without being more complicated or fiddly.

I also added a few minor setting details, since my (putative; I haven't actually run this one yet) Star Wars game is kind of an anti-Old Republic: instead of thousands of years before the movies, it takes place about a thousand years after the movies, and late enough after even the Legacy comic series, that I can freely ignore any EU that I want and not have to worry about the tears of setting junkies (not really an issue with my group anyway, but I wanted to accomodate all types here.)

Anyway, between the two of them, those are my two personal forays into m20. Both are a bit esoteric and specific to me rather than expected to have wide appeal, but there you have it.

http://starwarsm20.wikispaces.com/

I should probably start a separate thread for that one...