Motley Is A Fool's Uniform

Thinking seriously (again) about doing an Old School campaign, albeit one that has been heavily modified. One of the things I'm thinking of doing is eliminating the Strength bonus to weapon damage. [pause for effect] Well, not really. What I'm thinking of doing is integrating the strength bonus in with the weapon choices available to characters.

Essentially, the damage that a character causes in combat is based primarily on their class. Fighters do d10 damage, clerics do d8 damage, thieves do d6 damage, and magic users do d4 damage. If they wield a weapon in two hands, then they get a damage boost of one step, so a normal fighter wielding a greatsword will do d12 damage and a normal magic user using a staff will do d6.

The damage bonus from strength is applied to this value. Thus a magic user with a +2 damage bonus wielding a 1H would do d8 damage, and a cleric with a -1 damage bonus would also do 1d6 with a 1H weapon.

So not much of a change from normal, really. However the difference is that this damage is actually what determines the weapons that the character can wield. Thus the aforementioned magic user would be able to wield a longsword (d8) in one hand. The cleric on the other hand would only be able to wield a club (d6) damage.

This is because strength allows you to wield larger and heavier weapons more easily. If the weapon does not suit your strength and reach, you will be very ineffective in wielding it. Conversely a weapon that is inadequate to your strength and reach means that you won't be able to gain the full effect from using it.

Does this mean that fighters with a high strength bonus wield supermassive two-handed weapons in one hand? Well no. It just means that the weapon they do wield can be used better. This system innately assumes that fighters wield the best weapons in the game. Thus the ultimate 1H weapon for a human-sized character is in fact the Bastard Sword (d10). Increasing the damage bonus simply means that the character can wield it more effectively when battering you into submission.

Classes will also gain damage bonuses as they increase in level. I'm unsure at the moment whether these should be applied in the same manner as the strength damage bonus (affecting the weapons that may be wielded), or act as a permanent bonus (so a dagger wielder with this kind of damage bonus does d6 because they know where to attack). What I may do is allow either approach, so a character can learn to wield a larger weapon or use a smaller weapon more effectively.

For reference the damage caused by swords are Greatswords (d12), Bastard Swords (d10), Longswords or Broadswords (d8), Shortswords or Smallswords (d6), Daggers (d4) and Knives (d2). Other weapons follow a similar scale, although they may lose a step for a special ability (frex a Spear, which would normally do d8 damage, actually does d6 damage but can attack at reach [and more importantly keep an opponent at reach]). Similarly creature size (and thus weapon size) will alter weapon damage accordingly, so a shortsword (d6) for a Fire Giant (+3 Size) would be a Greatsword (d12) for a normal human (albeit a clumsy one because the furniture would all be wrong - but capable of being adapted by a skilled weaponsmith).

Here's a little something that came to me recently. I don't know how much use it will be to anyone else, as it relies on stuff I haven't published concerning my home brew of Ironclaw for my Dragon Isles campaign. [A pseudo-Glorantha, since my original Runequest campaign started seriously diverging from the original back in 1978 (so much so at a Gloranthacon I had actually forgotten that iron was considered extremely valuable), and so I made the break official a few years back, especially in light with the increasing fanaticism of the Glorantha lists.] And given copyright and trademark problems with both will probably never get published.

Anyway here is The Way of Right Action. Something that probably would work for a race that would never get played (but the fact that there exists a mechanism to do so means that the game physics of the universe are functioning well).

( The Way of Right Action — The Dragonewt Cult of the Dragon Isles )

Dinosaurs ... in Spaaace! is now publicaly available as a PDF. [I would have grabbed a physical copy from the Kickstarter but I'm cutting down on the physical RPGs I'm getting which I will never play. Especially since freight tends to double the price.] This is the expansion/update/commercial version of Greg Stolze's in Spaaace! free (will one-time ransom) RPG with a cover featuring the obligatory T-Rex being blown out of an airlock, and a classic 1950's Space Patrol background (including their taking an oath to never intentionally destroy the universe.*. Uses the same Token effect system were players (and GM) wager tokens for how likely they want a situation to occur. One token can indicate "after I insult her she throws her drink at me," whilst five can mean that "One in a bazillion - 'It turns out the general is my long-lost mother's alternate universe opposite-sex duplicate, come to rescue me because she never recovered from the death of my alternate universe same-sex duplicate.'!" Haven't had time yet to see if they still include the Fraternal Order of Evil Space Lawyers and Georgle (the AI search engine that is really embarrassingly good at finding niche pornography) in addition to the added Dinosaurs, Laika the Super Dog, Grays, and other detrious that's been added to make it a much more serious game. I shall probably have to cut it to bits with bris to stop the insane layering of the PDF that makes each page turn so irritatingly slow.

Hocus Pocus is a free Fiasco play set for the Dresdenverse. As such it's for portraying characters with powerful ambitions and poor impulse control ... which could never ever be any player in a normal DFRPG game ... or so Fred thinks. I now have a surprisingly useful DFRPG scenario generator. Well, maybe not.

Airship Pirates or to use the full title, Abney Park's Airship Pirates is the RPG of the post-apocalyptic time-travelling Steampunk universe of Abney Park's songs, featuring the crew of the HMS Ophelia. Which is interesting since I was actually listening to Escape The Clouds whilst perusing this 300 page tome and it fitted quite well. Although I was amused that characters can have Autograph Hunter (a fan that shows up at inopportune moments) as a complication. Probably needs a deeper in depth review to do it justice.

Also picked up Ben Lehman's Clover on a pay what you want (I paid double because it's one of Ben's games), and the basic set of Dungeon World (a fantasy Apocalypse World hack). And people wonder why my RPG collection is as large as it is (over 10,000 items in the database so far).

And Google+ discussion has given me some ideas for a possible Smallville hack that might do what I want. Still undecided whether I want The Crater to be realistic (BRP variant) or traditional (D&D variant). Although I am tempted to want to do a superhero again. Hmmm. Isn't City of Heroes Freemium now?

* In a pure coincidence this is almost exactly the same wording as my radiation licence. If you substitute "irradiate humans" for "destroy the universe." The inclusion of the word "intentionally" has always amused me, especially since "accidentally" irradiating people results in reams and reams of paperwork, even if the exposure was not actually measurable (such as someone entering a restricted area where there was no exposed radiation sources but there could have been). Somehow I doubt that "accidentally" setting off that neutron bomb wouldn't allow me to use my officially issued licence to escape the consequences....

In many skill-based systems you get collections of skills that perform the same basic function, but in different ways. For example, many skill-based games have different skills for Bribery, Negotiation, Leadership, Gossip, Fast Talk et al, when what most of these skills is trying to do is the same thing - influence another person. So why not have a single Influence skill with a preferred mode.

Now, in the current incarnation of Glorantha, everyone has a single elemental rune which represents their affinity to the five elements (Fire, Darkness, Earth, Air, Water). So why not extend this to skills, so each skill is associated with a different elemental rune. So Influence (Air) is Oratory, whilst Influence (Fire) is Command, Influence (Water) is Negotiate, Influence (Earth) is Bargain, and Influence (Darkness) is either Gossip or Fast Talk.

The nice advantage of this is that you can extend the qualities of the element to the skill. And since each element trumps the element that follows it in the list (so Fire defeats Darkness, Darkness defeats Earth, Earth defeats Air, Air defeats Water, and Water defeats Fire), using a certain mode of Influence will be more of less effective according to the audience. So for example, using Influence (Air) [Oratory] would be relatively ineffective against someone with an Earth orientation, whereas Influence (Earth) [Bargain] would be advantageous. I already do this for overt Rune magic. For example the damaging effect of most Air magic tends to be lightning, which, as you can imagine, is quite effective when used against things immersed in a pool of water.

However people would be more likely to respond to a mode that is similar to their preferred elemental mode. So perhaps some sort of distribution similar to the Ka distribution in Nephilim might be appropriate. So a player gets their full ability against someone with a similar elemental affinity, and reduced ability in the other modes. They still only have the one skill, it's just it's application changes.

Now the interesting thing is that you can also associate skills such as Influence with the various Condition Runes as well as the Elemental Runes. For example, you might have different modes of the Movement Rune, so Move (Darkness) is Sneak, Move (Air) is Athletics (or Jump or even Fly), Move (Water) is Swimming, and so on. Similarly the Death Rune presents us with Melee (Fire) is Spear, Melee (Air) is Sword, Melee (Earth) is Axe and so on, as well as Missile (Fire) being Bow, Missile (Air) being Javelin (or Sling), and so on. So it might be possible to reduce the entire skill set for Runequest (or in my case Runeclaw) to the Condition Runes, as modified by the Elemental Runes.

Although I think I do like the separate skills, and perhaps the cost of learning a skill would be affected by it's elemental affinity. The bonus from the Cult Trait, Rune Magic, and general Cult Magic is always directed to the appropriate skill, so Orlanthi magic only augments Oratory (usually as "Boast").

And of course, there are the exceptions that make the rules. For example we have odd runes like the Moon Rune, so Influence (Moon) might be Beguile, Movement (Moon) might be Balance (or Dance), and Melee (Moon) is the Scimitar. Whilst some consider it to be an elemental rune (and it often acts as such), it is outside the cycle of elements, so it won't get the advantages and disadvantages that the other elemental runes get. Instead it will be tied to the cyclical nature of the Red Moon.

Some interesting thoughts here to explore. Are spears more effective than clubs? Are axes more effective than swords? And what about those deities (such as Orlanth), who stole the secrets of the other elemental deities for their followers.

( Alternate Dice Rolling in Basic Role-Playing )

More years ago than I care to remember I wrote an AD&D module for a tournament. It was a fairly standard conceit, in that it opened with the Bad Guys™ raiding the palace of a city and kidnapping the princess from her tower. The players, being the first responders on the scene, arrive on the tail end of this event, just in time to witness the bad guys make their getaway. After dealing with the rearguard, they have the option to pursue immediately themselves (something the gamemaster should encourage), or organise a proper rescue party. [If they did the later they'd automatically "lose" the tournament btw, as they could never catch up to the kidnappers, but they could still have fun as the module bifurcated heavily at that point. (They were warned).]

The fun bit was the freedom of choice offered to the players, because we allowed them to build their own characters (using the rules we provided) and take whatever equipment they wanted. Often the players got to run the same characters in two completely different dungeons (I'm not sure if this was the case with this one as I wasn't present at the Con where it ran). This could end up with, say, a party deciding that 4 druids (plus 2 other classes) was the way to go and ending up in a situation where most of the druids special abilities don't really come into play.

What I also enjoyed about this module is that it was set on the dying Mars (and where, in pulp SF conceit, Earth is inhabited by Stone Age primitives and Venus by dinosaurs). Fighters and thieves could translate almost untouched. The spellcasters used the remnants of the lost technology to duplicate the powers of spells. Magic users became "Scientists" who had a rote understanding of how such arcane devices worked and could create their own if they found the right parts. Clerics became the "Engineers" who through their devotions and under the command of their God(s) ran the cities aging support infrastructure (there were many cities which had been abandoned because the gods had withdrawn their favour), and could commune with the City God (or gods) in their Temples. And because you can get away with a lot more in a tournament than you can in a campaign, spells were single-use devices. So instead of having memorized the spells, it represented the devices that the spell-casting character was carrying at the time of the raid (and whose secret of operation was jealously guarded secrets). It lead to the interesting idea that players could regain unused "spells" from the body of their spell-casting opponents (after they had disarmed the requisite booby-traps that were a standard amongst Scientists who jealously protected their secrets). And yes, spellbooks were coded design schematics for devices. It also explained why the cleric with the party was most probably from the Order of Medik from within the city cult/temple.

Similarly the basis of the various demi-human races changed (they were all engineered off-shoots of the

Anyway, I wrote the module on this basis, beginning with a skimmer chase across the desert in pursuit of the kidnappers, with encounters along the way, and a final confrontation with the kidnappers. [Or if they waited and formed a proper posse, they got to have fun stomping around the desert with troops, lots of spell support, and eventually realise that the kidnappers had made their getaway. Fortunately everybody apparently took the rather pointed hints that they should immediately grab the remaining raider's skimmer (after having killed the rearguard), and pursue. But I don't like forcing people, so I gave them the choice.]

But I wrote a lot more background than was really needed for a tournament module. Especially one built on the pun that "magic" swords and armour were manufactured from various grades of a material called plas (plas wun, plas doo, plas ree, plas orr, plas phi), and the idea that anyone could use a standard magic wand (a pistol) or a magic staff (a rifle) [although there was always a risk with such valuable relics that something might go wrong, and recharging or fixing one was a dedicated job for a Scientist, often needing resources that were zealously guarded by the temples (Scientists had inherited the blame for the world dying and were generally looked on in suspicion by most, especially the Engineers)]. Because I found the word quite attractive as somewhere to adventure. There is always something intriguing about breakfasting in the ruins.

It's surprising how many people take an unreasoning dislike to roleplaying in a science fantasy D&D game (in general, I was never told if people freaked in the tournament, and the feedback I did get was that people thought it was fun). But it's a fairly standard trope from the very beginning of the hobby. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign featured more than it's share of ancient technological artefacts (such as The Blue Rider's impressive strength-enhancing magical armour and flaming sword), and even Empire of the Petal Throne's Tekumel was originally a struggling colony that had been cut off by some cosmic catastrophe from it's space-faring roots. Not to mention it was also a standard trope of the fantasy of the time. [Many people credit Tolkein as being the inspiration for D&D, but whilst it had a profound impact on the wargames that D&D grew out of, I always found that D&D owed a lot to the pulp fiction of the time as well.]

Why do I mention this. Well I've come to the decision that I'm not going to reboot my old D&D campaign, because it's tied too closely to the players who created it, and most of them are no longer around. So that leaves me looking for alternatives. I do like the idea of The Crater, which is the source of all magic in the world as a traditional megadungeon, but since that was envisaged to rely heavily on the third dimension (pathways clinging precariously to the sides of the crater with minidungeons and even entire towns carved into the sides of the crater). And good 3D design is something that the tabletop doesn't really do well, and probably best done with miniatures, especially with floors mounted on polystyrene blocks for height. And I don't really do miniatures. And there is an intentional separation from the wider world in play there, since the "Empire" is struggling to maintain control of the outpost there, especially in light of the hostility of the surrounding nomad tribes who believe The Crater is taboo and keep raiding the supply caravans (and any magic prospectors that they can find). And yes, it is more than reminiscent of Pavis (Runequest/Glorantha) for the set-up; that's because Pavis is such a brilliant adventuring idea. And I'm thinking I want something with a bit more campaign interplay in the style of my old campaign.

And I've just been reading the excellent dungeon module Anomalous Subsurface Environment by Patrick Wetmore which makes me want to revisit a similar theme. The Orbital Gods are such an excellent idea, and they remind me of the City Gods of the Martian tournament. And City States are so much easier to do in D&D.

The main problem is that, whilst my trick for dealing with spells worked well for a tournament module (since there was no effective difference between a mage memorizing a spell that disappears on use and a one-use magical device that must be activated, the application of such a distinction in a campaign is less clear, and may result in a fundamental change in the nature of the game. If it becomes a simple game of searching the ruins of the past for Lost Tech then it simply becomes another Gamma World, which is what I don't want.

Although truth to tell, probably nothing will come of this either, besides copious notes, but then, it's a good thing I do like constructing worlds. The interplay of the necessary systems required to get the world to live on it's own has always fascinated me.

I quite enjoyed the first two of the Twenty Palace Novels by Harry Connolly, being Child of Fire and Game of Cages. The second novel was particularly well done, a lot cleaner, filled with a bit more background, and definitely confirming some of my thoughts about the main protagonist from the first book.

The main premise of these books is that a variety of extremely alien creatures live in the Empty Spaces between dimensions and can be summoned into our world by those knowing the appropriate spells. Now these Predators love being summoned into our world, but hate being bound. The Twenty Palaces Society is an organisation of sorcerors dedicated to wiping out these Predators and the sorcerors that summon them into the world. The main protagonist is an ex-con, who accidentally discovered the existence of these creatures and was recruited as a Wooden Man by one of the Twenty Palace sorcerors.

From a gaming viewpoint there is a rich milieu available to exploit. The obvious comparison is with Call of Cthulhu and The Laundry, which is good because BRP seems tailor made for a campaign of this universe. Magic spells are generally created by drawing a magical sigil, which is an excrutiatingly painful process for the caster. I'd suggest using a POW vs Potency test (similar to the French edition Nephilim) to create the spell. One use spells are usually inscribed on ribbons and the like. More permanent spells may be drawn on more suitable objects or even etched into the design of an artefact, or tattooed onto a recipient. Which is important, since some of the protective tattoos only protect the hit location they are applied to, which invokes the Runequest hit location tables, both for their designed purpose, but also as a guide to the number and location of tatoos that can be put on a character. Also the powers of sorcerors is very similar to the overpowered augmentation capable with the original Avalon Hill Runequest sorcery spells.

An interesting addenda to this is that there are only three different spellbooks. The most powerful sorcerors learned from the original, whilst the copies that have been made have lesser potencies. So you have a Progenitor (or possibly even original Vampire) generational bias to the powers of the sorcerors.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the upcoming Circle of Enemies.

The problem with collecting interesting role-playing games is that there are some that you really really want to play, but you know in your heart of hearts that there is no one else within a thousand kilometers or so that owns the game, let alone is willing to run it for you. [Save vs Despair or +1D2 Despair]

The source of the problem in this case is Abandon All Hope, a game set on a massive (ala Escape From New York) computer controlled (ala Paranoia) prison (ala The Shawshank Redemption) vessel (ala Leviathan) on the way to deliver convicts (ala Fortress 2) to found a new colony (ala Pandorum), that has accidentally fallen into a rift between the universes into one inhabited by demons (ala Event Horizon), which are attracted to the rich bounty of potential convict happy meals inside the ship (ala Alien and Alien 3). So you get to combine your standard horror and prison movie themes in one setting [including the possibility of those types of horror prison movies (ala Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS and Werewolf in a Women's Prison) if you so desire]. Plus some SF tropes, and your typical FPS game (ala Doom, Quake, System Shock, Half-Life, and Portal*) as well, of course.

I really want to play a dissident nuclear weapons engineer who was sentenced to transportation because his knowledge was considered dangerous (and immoral) to the New World Order. [Although the game does seem to be lacking "fissionable (1)" components in the scrounging table, so I suppose I'd better limit my abilities to be really good at jury-rigging (can we give up and simply call it McGyvering from now on) stuff.]

[* Mainly due to the presence of the happy fun Warden computer (ala Paranoia) that isn't at all reacting to the massive damage the ship has taken, the prisoners being outside their cells, and all those demons/aliens running around the ship. But whose to say anyway that the entry into the rift was an accident. Perhaps this is an experiment by the New Order, investigating the rift by using disposable people, with the computer monitoring the results (and planning to send a message buoy back). That would certainly account for taking all the expense for shipping the convicts off into space, rather than just using a bullet and a backhoe...]

Airship Pirates looks quite interesting. For those who don't know it's the postapocalyptic steampunk RPG based on Abney Park's songs (and band backstory). It's being done by Cakebread & Walton (the writers of Clockwork & Chivalry) and is using the Heresy Engine of Victoriana (2nd Edition). Presumably it will be released by Cubicle 7.