I recently decided to try a Diceless RPG. On acount of it being available for free I chose Active Exploits. And I've found it to be a lot of fun and really simple to play. the big advantage of no dice is that you can play it any time any where.
I strated a game with my son Saturday night, we made up aesetting using some random tables from Instant game. and started an adventure. I gave him the choice of using dice , in which case we would be playing Risus.
In a sligtly ironic twist he rolled a d10 to decide that no we would not be using dice.
His charcter is a pyrokinetic circus preformer. Who owes the Ringmaste a debt whic he I working off.
So we played until bed time. then on Sunday morning we resumed our game while walking to the shops, something that we could not have done if we where playing a normal dice based game. And it was still a fun game. Right now we are in the middle of a battle in which the circus that his character is part of is being attacked by frost goblins. He just defeated their snow golem but now one of the NPC's is about to be grabbed by two of the goblins.
Either he will have to go after her, or the ringmaster will discover that the stole all the circuse gold. Either one will lead him to follow the goblins to their lair.
Playing dicelss does present intereting GM challanges, in that I have to be careful with what obsticles I set and keep the consequnces of failure in mind. The game part of it comes in the form of resource management. Each character having pools of luck, discipline and expirence points to draw on. There is also the neat feature in the system that you only get a defence total if you say you are defending. Otherwise getting hit is almost certain. This serves to bring an element of uncertainty back in. A character who makes no attempt to defend can be taken downe even if their opponent is less skilled. You can try to do more then one thing in a single turn but doing so requires you to split your effort in some way.
The rules as given have a surprising amount of depth to them. Quite detailed rules on weapon damage type and armour type, and even rules on sanity for horror type games.
About the only thing I don't like are an optional rule called accented abilities. The notes say this is new in the 2nd edition and it feels tn me like a poorly conoeived patch that tries to solve a problem I havn't encountered as yet. At the moment this corner of the system feels broken to me so I'm ignoring it. I also have a few quibbles about the main book being a t6oo vuage in places, but this can be solved by looking throught the rules for soem of BiG's other games, quite a few of which seem to more or less the same game with different die mechanics. So you ahve genra Diversions which is a roll high 2d6 system, and Iron Gauntlets which uses a d10 dice pool . But all of them use the same terminology, and the same core abilities.
Other than that I'm really liking this system and I expect to playe more of it. Anytime anywhere. I just have to remember to bring water. I was quite parched after that walk.
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
I've Joined the Renaissance
Recently I've gotten into the Old School Renaissance RPG's, In particular Swords & Wizardry and Scarlet Heroes, I also managed to hope I managed to snag a copy of the D&D Premium reprint before Amazon stopped selling it. Though that particular bird is not in my hand just yet, though Amazon tells me it will be in early March.
One problem I perpetually have is that only one of my sons is interested in RPGs, the other finds them boring. Which has historically made getting much of a campaign going kind of difficult. This is where Scarlet Heroes come in, as its a set of rules that has been designed to allow old modules designed for 4 to 5 players work with a single hero. So far my older son is finding Old School Play with its focuse on exploration to be far more enjoyable that more modern my character has umpteen ways to hit things play, that seems to characterise newer games.
What we have ended up playing is at present a real Frankenstein's, or perhaps Zielinski's Monster of a system, which includes elements from the above two systems along with a home brewed roll under dice rolling mechanic. And it all started with the shear number of things that Swords and Wizardry defines as having an X in 6 chance of success, from opening doors, to searching and the thieves Hear sound ability.
I started trying to fit everything into a D6 system, and found this post about how to make the system scale. And then I had an Idea. What if we use dice size to represent difficulty. So 1d4 for trivial tasks, 1d8 for average, up to 1d12 for extreme difficulty and 1d20 representing the stress of combat. And yes using skills in combat will require a 1d20 roll, which I fee nicely reflects the fact that whatever it is your trying you only have 10 seconds to do it. The other change I made is to get rid of the arithmetic. So if you roll the highest number on the dice its generally a failure, unless your skill is at least that high. If it is then roll again using the next higher die type, and if you still fail then you really fail.
I've made attack rolls and saving throws work this way too. Incidentally when your target is to roll low, descending AC scores actually make a whole lot more sense.
It would be nice to get a hold of some d16 to even out the difficulty curve a little. Heck I'd be tempted to use 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 as my dice set, But finding odd sized dice in Australia is a little hard, and shipped in from the US or the UK ends up working out to more than $5 per dice. Edit. I've decided to run with it anyway, simulating the 16 and 24, with the odd / even trick that was used to get results of 11-20 on d20 rolls back in the day.
I also devanced the magic system, replacing one shot spell slots with a magic point pool that increases as magic users and Clerics go up in level. Now that My son has multi classed his thief into a magic-user/thief, we shall see how that one works out.
So things are looking up on the Role Playing front for the moment, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it.
One problem I perpetually have is that only one of my sons is interested in RPGs, the other finds them boring. Which has historically made getting much of a campaign going kind of difficult. This is where Scarlet Heroes come in, as its a set of rules that has been designed to allow old modules designed for 4 to 5 players work with a single hero. So far my older son is finding Old School Play with its focuse on exploration to be far more enjoyable that more modern my character has umpteen ways to hit things play, that seems to characterise newer games.
What we have ended up playing is at present a real Frankenstein's, or perhaps Zielinski's Monster of a system, which includes elements from the above two systems along with a home brewed roll under dice rolling mechanic. And it all started with the shear number of things that Swords and Wizardry defines as having an X in 6 chance of success, from opening doors, to searching and the thieves Hear sound ability.
I started trying to fit everything into a D6 system, and found this post about how to make the system scale. And then I had an Idea. What if we use dice size to represent difficulty. So 1d4 for trivial tasks, 1d8 for average, up to 1d12 for extreme difficulty and 1d20 representing the stress of combat. And yes using skills in combat will require a 1d20 roll, which I fee nicely reflects the fact that whatever it is your trying you only have 10 seconds to do it. The other change I made is to get rid of the arithmetic. So if you roll the highest number on the dice its generally a failure, unless your skill is at least that high. If it is then roll again using the next higher die type, and if you still fail then you really fail.
I've made attack rolls and saving throws work this way too. Incidentally when your target is to roll low, descending AC scores actually make a whole lot more sense.
It would be nice to get a hold of some d16 to even out the difficulty curve a little. Heck I'd be tempted to use 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 as my dice set, But finding odd sized dice in Australia is a little hard, and shipped in from the US or the UK ends up working out to more than $5 per dice. Edit. I've decided to run with it anyway, simulating the 16 and 24, with the odd / even trick that was used to get results of 11-20 on d20 rolls back in the day.
I also devanced the magic system, replacing one shot spell slots with a magic point pool that increases as magic users and Clerics go up in level. Now that My son has multi classed his thief into a magic-user/thief, we shall see how that one works out.
So things are looking up on the Role Playing front for the moment, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Mythic why it works and Why it dosn't
So I've worked out why I love Mythic as a game master emulator but am not so keen on it as a standalone RPG. And it all comes down to the Fate Chart. In both versions of the Mythic book there is a chapter of play advice. And of the items in that chapter says don't ask the fate chart too many questions. Go with one, or two at the most and then do whatever seems the most logical in context. This is great advise because using the fate chart is a bit of a mechanical process.
The problem with Mythic as an RPG is that it breaks this rule. To resolve one attack you need to ask the fate chart at least three and possibly four questions. And that can take a while.
Worst still how you look up the fate chart is much more complicated. When doing emulation you use the same column of the chart for the entire scene, and the only thing you need to do is estimate the probability. Better yet you do this by basically asking and answering the question in a very natural way.
In the attack version things are not that simple. Firstly both the row and column vary from roll to roll, with the Column representing the defenders most relevant attribute or ability. And even though both edges of the chart have textual labels, you have to do maths on them. So lets see I'm attacking and and I have a +1 shift for being so quick so that's a High, but I'm wounded for a -2 shift so that brings it back to average. VS your Exceptional ability, ow but your wounded as well so that's a -1 shift. OK so now I can roll. to see if I hit. Really if your going to make me do maths its better for my character to have a strength of 7 then a strength of "average".
But back to the example. I've already rolled to establish that I get to go at all. And then to hit, lets assume I do. Now we do the same dance again, with a different set of abilities and modifiers to work out if I do damage. And possibly again for a fourth time to see if you succumb to you injuries. And the end result is that it all takes too long. The attempt at realism is just hard to implement with dice, paper and brain.
And if we where playing a supers game things could be even worse ad the full fate chart is open ended, while the the GME version is fixed.
Now I have a campaign running with my Son which is using Mythic and will probably continue to do so. But realistically I think its the one and only game I'll run using full mythic rules. And Even that's not a sure thing, If I can work out a nice way of making Pokemon Trainer into a Dungeon World Class.
But the Mythic Game Master Emulator is another question entirely. The GME is awesome, and a Really good fit for Dungeon World by the way. I'll say more about why I think these two rule sets work well together next time.
The problem with Mythic as an RPG is that it breaks this rule. To resolve one attack you need to ask the fate chart at least three and possibly four questions. And that can take a while.
Worst still how you look up the fate chart is much more complicated. When doing emulation you use the same column of the chart for the entire scene, and the only thing you need to do is estimate the probability. Better yet you do this by basically asking and answering the question in a very natural way.
- player:
- Has the the Don's Bodyguard got a gun?
- GM:
- Sure thing.
- Player:
- Is the Butler still carrying the murder weapon?
- GM:
- That's very unlikely.
In the attack version things are not that simple. Firstly both the row and column vary from roll to roll, with the Column representing the defenders most relevant attribute or ability. And even though both edges of the chart have textual labels, you have to do maths on them. So lets see I'm attacking and and I have a +1 shift for being so quick so that's a High, but I'm wounded for a -2 shift so that brings it back to average. VS your Exceptional ability, ow but your wounded as well so that's a -1 shift. OK so now I can roll. to see if I hit. Really if your going to make me do maths its better for my character to have a strength of 7 then a strength of "average".
But back to the example. I've already rolled to establish that I get to go at all. And then to hit, lets assume I do. Now we do the same dance again, with a different set of abilities and modifiers to work out if I do damage. And possibly again for a fourth time to see if you succumb to you injuries. And the end result is that it all takes too long. The attempt at realism is just hard to implement with dice, paper and brain.
And if we where playing a supers game things could be even worse ad the full fate chart is open ended, while the the GME version is fixed.
Now I have a campaign running with my Son which is using Mythic and will probably continue to do so. But realistically I think its the one and only game I'll run using full mythic rules. And Even that's not a sure thing, If I can work out a nice way of making Pokemon Trainer into a Dungeon World Class.
But the Mythic Game Master Emulator is another question entirely. The GME is awesome, and a Really good fit for Dungeon World by the way. I'll say more about why I think these two rule sets work well together next time.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Techniques of the Rules Author
I make sporadic attempts to write something good enough charge people money to read. So far these have not resulted in a published work, though they have made me a rather brutal literary critic at times. Over the course of these various attempts I've amassed a little writers bookshelf. Some of the books seemed good but I've never gone back to while others have become standbys that I refere back to and re read all the time. One of these standbys is Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain What has struck me is how much of this book I've seen in RPG rule sets recently. So much so that it seems to be the unsung hero of rules wrting, unlike Hero of a Thousand faces which gets mentioned all the time.
Two systems in particular stand out in this regard. Marvel Heroic Role playing1, which has an explicit structure of Scenes and Sequels, and even calls them this in the rules. And the various games derived from Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World and its derivatives, of which I'm most familiar with Dungeon World, have the interesting idea that the Dungeon Master does not roll dice, only the Players do. And based on the role they either fail, succeeded at a price or succeed outright. IF success is not outright the Dungeon Master gets to make a Move in response which may involve just dealing damage, or a host of other things. End result is that every dice roll matters to the story.
The standard rules in Dungeon World is present the situation, the looming threat and ask "what do you do?" The player then responds and probably rolls their dice. In Dwight Swain's terminology the chunk of converstation between the Dungeon Master and Player is a Motivation Reaction Unit. Indeed go to any example of play in the Dungeon World manual and you will see a seqnece of prefect MRU's strung together into a scene. And that accounts for everything the game calls a basic move.
Then we have special moves, which could just as well have been called sequal moves. They are things like making camp or making an entire perilous journey through the wilderness, and other such bridging details that go to make a smooth narrative wihout getting bogged down.
I've also being playing Mythic RPG both in whole (Pokemon inspired game with my sons) and the Game Master emulator subsystem (solo play dungeon world on the train). What has struck me in the last day as missing from Mythic is any mechanic for dealing with sequels. The system as it stands works very well for scenes but I can't seem to get it to frame sequels at all. At the table with my sons we just narrate them, while in my solo play they are quit conspicuously missing, mostly because I'm not motivated enough to type them in on my tablet. That said The Mythic GME is a great product, and has worked very well for me both at the table and solo. Mythic as a generic system not so much though, but thats a post for another day.
Two systems in particular stand out in this regard. Marvel Heroic Role playing1, which has an explicit structure of Scenes and Sequels, and even calls them this in the rules. And the various games derived from Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World and its derivatives, of which I'm most familiar with Dungeon World, have the interesting idea that the Dungeon Master does not roll dice, only the Players do. And based on the role they either fail, succeeded at a price or succeed outright. IF success is not outright the Dungeon Master gets to make a Move in response which may involve just dealing damage, or a host of other things. End result is that every dice roll matters to the story.
The standard rules in Dungeon World is present the situation, the looming threat and ask "what do you do?" The player then responds and probably rolls their dice. In Dwight Swain's terminology the chunk of converstation between the Dungeon Master and Player is a Motivation Reaction Unit. Indeed go to any example of play in the Dungeon World manual and you will see a seqnece of prefect MRU's strung together into a scene. And that accounts for everything the game calls a basic move.
Then we have special moves, which could just as well have been called sequal moves. They are things like making camp or making an entire perilous journey through the wilderness, and other such bridging details that go to make a smooth narrative wihout getting bogged down.
I've also being playing Mythic RPG both in whole (Pokemon inspired game with my sons) and the Game Master emulator subsystem (solo play dungeon world on the train). What has struck me in the last day as missing from Mythic is any mechanic for dealing with sequels. The system as it stands works very well for scenes but I can't seem to get it to frame sequels at all. At the table with my sons we just narrate them, while in my solo play they are quit conspicuously missing, mostly because I'm not motivated enough to type them in on my tablet. That said The Mythic GME is a great product, and has worked very well for me both at the table and solo. Mythic as a generic system not so much though, but thats a post for another day.
- What? Marvel Heroic Roleplaying has been pulled. I went looking for the link only to find that the entire product line is gone from the Margret Weiss Website. I'm assuming their relationship with Marvel soured for some reason, but man I didn't see that coming,
Monday, May 27, 2013
The Lost Region
I've started a new Table top RPG campaign with my Boys (aged 8 & 10). As I predicted before we started the story involves kids who go around forcing cute little monsters to fight each other. What we have always gotten stuck on is me actually creating adventures to run. So this time we are doing something a little bit different. In that we are using the Mythic System and its Game Master Emulator.
I'm also getting the boys, well mostly the older one, who is more into Role Playing, to keep a Campaign Journal. For which we are using one of these hard bound note books. I remember buying these books for one purpose or another all the time when I was a Kid. There is just something fun about having such a serious looking book to write in. So far we Have Bio pages on the Characters, there Nemesis (played by Me) and the start of some maps of the Town of Tworocks and surrounding regions (currently a single dot on a blank page).
My Older son also designed a whole Slew of Pokemon based on the Cumberland Games Pokethulhu rule set. I've build a few more that He doesn't know about yet. I was planning on using the Pokethulhu rules alongside the Game Master Emulator but several things got in the way. Firstly after some negotiation with the party pretty well all of the Thulhu aspects got removed in favor of canonical Pokemon types and behaviors. Secondly the Party expected to have evolutions and legendary Pokemon, just like in the cartoons. Sadly a Xd12 roll sort of under system just does not scale particularly well when you have a range of powers from mouse to deity. So What I did was take the Pokethulhu attributes and translate them into the Mythic system, at least approximately. This also completed the de Thulhufication as we changed sanity to bravery while we where at it.
After the first play session I can report that they translation has worked quite well. And after some early hiccups we got an impromptu game going. Mostly due to me realising that I want yet another book from my bookshelf, and us not being able to find my main dice box (its still missing, but fortunately I have a backup). What happened was:
It is the first day of the summer holidays and the a batch of Eager young trainers are at the Tworocks Pokemon center for their first training bouts. While Hans Granite, the Tworocks Gym leader, is explaining the rules, our heroes see their Nemesis sneaking into a staff only area. They follow with the obvious consequence of a Pokemon battle. Which our nmemesis won in classic cartoon style.
This would be the point where in the cartoon Ash would go and lick his wounds and start training Pistachio for a rematch. Instead what did my Son do? He had his character punch his opponent. She wasn't hurt but played it up, getting the attention of the Gym leader and forces our "heroes" to flee to avoid being caught. They did however find out that Sabrina Silver is searching for a Sapphire Pokeball.
This leaves the story our story with three thread open:
I'm also getting the boys, well mostly the older one, who is more into Role Playing, to keep a Campaign Journal. For which we are using one of these hard bound note books. I remember buying these books for one purpose or another all the time when I was a Kid. There is just something fun about having such a serious looking book to write in. So far we Have Bio pages on the Characters, there Nemesis (played by Me) and the start of some maps of the Town of Tworocks and surrounding regions (currently a single dot on a blank page).
My Older son also designed a whole Slew of Pokemon based on the Cumberland Games Pokethulhu rule set. I've build a few more that He doesn't know about yet. I was planning on using the Pokethulhu rules alongside the Game Master Emulator but several things got in the way. Firstly after some negotiation with the party pretty well all of the Thulhu aspects got removed in favor of canonical Pokemon types and behaviors. Secondly the Party expected to have evolutions and legendary Pokemon, just like in the cartoons. Sadly a Xd12 roll sort of under system just does not scale particularly well when you have a range of powers from mouse to deity. So What I did was take the Pokethulhu attributes and translate them into the Mythic system, at least approximately. This also completed the de Thulhufication as we changed sanity to bravery while we where at it.
After the first play session I can report that they translation has worked quite well. And after some early hiccups we got an impromptu game going. Mostly due to me realising that I want yet another book from my bookshelf, and us not being able to find my main dice box (its still missing, but fortunately I have a backup). What happened was:
It is the first day of the summer holidays and the a batch of Eager young trainers are at the Tworocks Pokemon center for their first training bouts. While Hans Granite, the Tworocks Gym leader, is explaining the rules, our heroes see their Nemesis sneaking into a staff only area. They follow with the obvious consequence of a Pokemon battle. Which our nmemesis won in classic cartoon style.
This would be the point where in the cartoon Ash would go and lick his wounds and start training Pistachio for a rematch. Instead what did my Son do? He had his character punch his opponent. She wasn't hurt but played it up, getting the attention of the Gym leader and forces our "heroes" to flee to avoid being caught. They did however find out that Sabrina Silver is searching for a Sapphire Pokeball.
This leaves the story our story with three thread open:
- My Younger son's character wants to travel back to Nova City, where he used to live, but is afraid of wild Pokemon who live around Tworock.
- Both characters want to Find out more about the Sapphire Pokeball and foil Sabrina's plans. Out of world the players know that she is trying to get into the evil Team Quake.
- My older son's character wants to journey to the mountains to capture a particular Ice type Pokemon. He just decided that towards the end of the play session.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Roleplaying Games we may never see.
Atriums and Ardvarks
Baths and Bandicoots
Corridors and Crocodiles
Dugouts and Dingos (Adventures in the Australian Outback)
Escelators and Elephants
Foyers and Fauns
Gorges and Gargoyles
Houses and Humans (of this one is called the Sims)
Iglus and Iguanas
Jails and Jaguars
Kitchens and Krackens
Locations and Lurkers (the most generic system ever)
Moseliums and Mummies
Nests and Narwals
Opisthodomos and Octopuses
Palaces and Pelsiasours
Quaries and Quails
Roofs and Roosters
Saunas and Salamanders
Turrets and Turtles
Universities and Unicorns
Vestipules and Vipers
Warrens and Wearwolves
Xystums and Xenomorphs
Yachts and Yetties
Zoos and Zebras (I guess this woudl be sim Zoo)
And we have an entire alphabet though really Opisthodomos and Xystums are a bit of a strech.
Baths and Bandicoots
Corridors and Crocodiles
Dugouts and Dingos (Adventures in the Australian Outback)
Escelators and Elephants
Foyers and Fauns
Gorges and Gargoyles
Houses and Humans (of this one is called the Sims)
Iglus and Iguanas
Jails and Jaguars
Kitchens and Krackens
Locations and Lurkers (the most generic system ever)
Moseliums and Mummies
Nests and Narwals
Opisthodomos and Octopuses
Palaces and Pelsiasours
Quaries and Quails
Roofs and Roosters
Saunas and Salamanders
Turrets and Turtles
Universities and Unicorns
Vestipules and Vipers
Warrens and Wearwolves
Xystums and Xenomorphs
Yachts and Yetties
Zoos and Zebras (I guess this woudl be sim Zoo)
And we have an entire alphabet though really Opisthodomos and Xystums are a bit of a strech.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Dice Rolling Mechanic
One thing I don't really like in Dice rolling is the potential open ended roll, such as the Exploding dice used in Mini Six. So I've developed my own alternative. Rather then rolling an unknown number of extra times, why not just count sixes and assume that on a succesfull roll, more sixs means a higher degree of sucess.
To stop things getting out of hand I'm placing a limit of 6 dice on my players. If anyone has more than that additional dice get converted to +3s. Futher 5 sixes and six sixes are so rare that I'm not bothering with them. Which leaves me with four possible degrees of success. Here's how it works in an attack roll (I'm using static defences by the way):
Note that this scheme places natural limits on this in terms of unskilled characters, if you don't have 4 dice to roll, then your character has no chance of getting a Critical hit. While at the top of your game (rolling 6 dice) you will manage this slightly less then 1% of the time.
On the other side of the coin if all your dice are 1's then you have botched. And any time you only roll 1 dice that will happen 16% of the time. So make sure to spread your skill points around a little.
As futher encouragement to use skills I'm toying with the idea of setting seperate dice pool limits on attributes and skills, inorder to counter the Mary Sue effect of the unskilled but high attribute character who is good at everything. It all depands how cinamatic you want your compain. For gritty realism, and lots of fumbles you could rule that unskilled attempts only get 1d, though I think 2d (and a fumble rate of 2.7%) might make for a less frustrating play expirence.
To stop things getting out of hand I'm placing a limit of 6 dice on my players. If anyone has more than that additional dice get converted to +3s. Futher 5 sixes and six sixes are so rare that I'm not bothering with them. Which leaves me with four possible degrees of success. Here's how it works in an attack roll (I'm using static defences by the way):
- 0 or 1 six
- A normal succesfull attack
- 2 sixes
- If the target is using a sheild its ignored for purposes of soak
- 3 sixes
- The hit was really lucky, and armour is ignored entierly.
- 4 sixes
- A Critical hit, Target is treated as having a Soak total of 0.
Note that this scheme places natural limits on this in terms of unskilled characters, if you don't have 4 dice to roll, then your character has no chance of getting a Critical hit. While at the top of your game (rolling 6 dice) you will manage this slightly less then 1% of the time.
On the other side of the coin if all your dice are 1's then you have botched. And any time you only roll 1 dice that will happen 16% of the time. So make sure to spread your skill points around a little.
As futher encouragement to use skills I'm toying with the idea of setting seperate dice pool limits on attributes and skills, inorder to counter the Mary Sue effect of the unskilled but high attribute character who is good at everything. It all depands how cinamatic you want your compain. For gritty realism, and lots of fumbles you could rule that unskilled attempts only get 1d, though I think 2d (and a fumble rate of 2.7%) might make for a less frustrating play expirence.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
And one of the Campers was eaten by a Bear!
Actually a lot of them where and that was with two handed swords to boot. The campers not the bear. What I actually did is simulate the combat mechanic from the Mini Six ruleset. The combat setup takes a fairly standard starting character (Might 3D Weapon Skill +2D) and pitts them against the Bear as stated in the rule book.
On average the Bear (who hit first) would make a tasty meal of our camper 71% of the time within 5 combat rounds. And most of the remainders 27% ending with both of our combatants unconcious. Our camper escaped only 2% of the time.
Granted it is a pure slugfest that I'm simulating here, with no attempts to escape or do anthing other than hit the opponent. And Really the average of 5 rounds should give the player plenty of time to do something inteligent.
Giving our camper some armour helped a lot. Giving them an average of 29 rrounds to try an escape and an 18% chance of winning outright. The Bears odds of getting lunch also dropped to 56%.
With evently matched oponents there is a significant first strike advantage. The fighter who starts winning 46% of the time. The Second striker wins 24% of the time and there is a draw the remaing 30% of the time. Combat howerver takes a more respectable 7 rounds on average. Adding Armour seems to even this off and add a couple of rounds to the combat.
And finally Our fully equiped hero against a lowly guard with lower quality equpment, he will manage to win out 71% of the time, and only stands a 1% chance of actually looseing. Which is as it should be.
So all in all I'm happy with the calibration of the system. Though I find the high freqnecy of mutual unconciousness a little suprising.
On average the Bear (who hit first) would make a tasty meal of our camper 71% of the time within 5 combat rounds. And most of the remainders 27% ending with both of our combatants unconcious. Our camper escaped only 2% of the time.
Granted it is a pure slugfest that I'm simulating here, with no attempts to escape or do anthing other than hit the opponent. And Really the average of 5 rounds should give the player plenty of time to do something inteligent.
Giving our camper some armour helped a lot. Giving them an average of 29 rrounds to try an escape and an 18% chance of winning outright. The Bears odds of getting lunch also dropped to 56%.
With evently matched oponents there is a significant first strike advantage. The fighter who starts winning 46% of the time. The Second striker wins 24% of the time and there is a draw the remaing 30% of the time. Combat howerver takes a more respectable 7 rounds on average. Adding Armour seems to even this off and add a couple of rounds to the combat.
And finally Our fully equiped hero against a lowly guard with lower quality equpment, he will manage to win out 71% of the time, and only stands a 1% chance of actually looseing. Which is as it should be.
So all in all I'm happy with the calibration of the system. Though I find the high freqnecy of mutual unconciousness a little suprising.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
D&D Essentials In review
So I've read through both Players Books and the Dungeon Masters book. On the whole I like how 4th Edition (and Essentials in particular) works and how it plays. I've run several encounters with my Boys and a friend of theirs (aged 6 - 8) and they all enjoyed it immensely. Heck in the last game they actually started working together instead of just attacking things at random, and my 6 year old actually had his Cleric character use healing word on his brother's character without being prompted to do so. Up next is another encounter and then a Skill Challenge, which should be interesting.
That said I have a few comments on the book themselves. First up, obvious cut and paste jobs are not what I expect in a book I pay money for. The Dungeon Masters book has at least one of these where it refers to the monster section later in this book. This is obviously pasted from one of the Fast Play Rules books (which indeed had a monster section), while the Dungeon Masters book does not.
Now a Word about the Rules Compendium. I have seen a lot of good reviews about this book, but I really can't echo them. Having just bought the rest of the essentials line I now have 90% of what is in this book, and really I'm not going to pay again just to get a page each on Mounted Combat, Aquatic Combat and Disease.
Now that we have some extra space in the Hero books add the following:
Assuming you get both books this would end up with a subset that has 2 builds for each role. Each character now has a choice of three paragon paths (one based on race and two on class power source) And 4 epic destines. And with skill based utility powers has a range of options to choose from.
House Rule
As somewhat of an old school player the idea of magic items that have no mystery about them rubbed me the wrong way. So my house rule here is that Arcane checks are required to work this out. The DC being based on the Items level. Say Easy to work out that it is definitely enchanted, Moderate to work out the basic bonus penalty. And Hard to work out each additional power the item has.
The biggest advantage of this is that it allows me to bring back the idea of cursed items. Which is really part of the fun, even if it just requires an application of a remove curse ritual now and then.
That said I have a few comments on the book themselves. First up, obvious cut and paste jobs are not what I expect in a book I pay money for. The Dungeon Masters book has at least one of these where it refers to the monster section later in this book. This is obviously pasted from one of the Fast Play Rules books (which indeed had a monster section), while the Dungeon Masters book does not.
Now a Word about the Rules Compendium. I have seen a lot of good reviews about this book, but I really can't echo them. Having just bought the rest of the essentials line I now have 90% of what is in this book, and really I'm not going to pay again just to get a page each on Mounted Combat, Aquatic Combat and Disease.
What I would have like to change about Essentials
- Dump the Slayer build to make room for other stuff.
- Dump the Scout build, to make room for other stuff.
Now that we have some extra space in the Hero books add the following:
- Add a Paragon path to each race.
- Make the class paragon paths work based on Power Source. so that Fighter and Rouge can pick each others (and you end up with a slayer paragon path). Ditto for Cleric and Paladin, Wizard and Warlock, Ranger and Druid.
- Put in Skill based utility powers
- Each book should have 2 rather then one Epic Destines, one geared to Lawful Good and the other towards Unaligned characters.
- if we still have room left add some more feats.
Assuming you get both books this would end up with a subset that has 2 builds for each role. Each character now has a choice of three paragon paths (one based on race and two on class power source) And 4 epic destines. And with skill based utility powers has a range of options to choose from.
House Rule
As somewhat of an old school player the idea of magic items that have no mystery about them rubbed me the wrong way. So my house rule here is that Arcane checks are required to work this out. The DC being based on the Items level. Say Easy to work out that it is definitely enchanted, Moderate to work out the basic bonus penalty. And Hard to work out each additional power the item has.
The biggest advantage of this is that it allows me to bring back the idea of cursed items. Which is really part of the fun, even if it just requires an application of a remove curse ritual now and then.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Dungeons & Dragons
Well, it looks like Wizards of the Coast have lost me as much of a customer, just as they where about to win me back.
Its depressing really. As a casual gamer I embraced what they released for casual gamers. The hard core faction poo pooed the idea to the point that it won't be continued. I'm disappointed by this, but I guess if I'm in the minority then so be it. I;'m sure with a bit of online digging I can invent the bits that are missing, such as the Autumn and Winter varients for Essentials Druids.
- I like the Essentials book format. Which now appears to be canned for all future releases. so that's an end to that then. The digest size is lighter, and frankly more convent.
- I like the idea of downloading 1 or 2 PDFs per month for the articles. but that is finished now. So I'll probably get a D&D Insider membership long enough to get what already exists and then forget about it.
- I might get future Monster's vault products, providing they come with tokens. But I would hope that they come with digest sized soft cover books.
Its depressing really. As a casual gamer I embraced what they released for casual gamers. The hard core faction poo pooed the idea to the point that it won't be continued. I'm disappointed by this, but I guess if I'm in the minority then so be it. I;'m sure with a bit of online digging I can invent the bits that are missing, such as the Autumn and Winter varients for Essentials Druids.
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