Dungeon Gazette

I've been planning on game mastering a story in a certain science-fiction setting for quite some time. (I won't mention the name of the setting itself, because I don't like to litter my texts with (C), (R) and (TM) signs and also have no interest in having my snail-mail box filled with love letters from other company's lawyers. But for this and the following posts, the setting's name really does not matter.) I looked around for RPG books and rulesets for that particular universe, but found nothing that satisfied me. So I finally, after giving it much thought, decided to create my own set of rules. Blogging about its development gives me also a lot of reasons to discuss shortcomings or ideosyncrasies of other systems, as already did earlier. The first post in this series will present the first basic concepts I wish to incorporate.

Concept #1: The Dice

Ok, let's start with something really basic: No system without dices. :-) My own will use the D20, not for conservative or traditional reasons (although that would sound great), but because 20 sides, i.e. steps of 5% propability, is something that is fine-grained enough while humans still can grasp it. What difference does it make if one scores 53 or 57 on a D100? Normally, none. So people will mostly settle with intervals of 10%. I've never encountered a GM who thought of 63% as the margin for some check. However, only using D10 will leave the impression on most players that there are not enough possibilities, so the D20 is the natural choice.

C#2: Rolling High

Beating a check will always mean to roll a number higher than the margin. The reason for this is that it will keep the system playable even with characters that bring a buckett full of bonuses with them. With systems that need the players to score low to beat a check, the session will eventually run short on failures. Funny as it sounds, eventually there will be a situation where one cannot fail except for fumbling. DSA's bowmen often face this "problem": Their values being naturally high after some time, a normal dice roll is made against a margin somewhere above 20. So either nearly every shot hits, or people begin to stack modifier after modifier: "I'll quick-draw, shoot the head without spending extra time to aim and ... uh, add another +10 for additional damage." Sounds ridiculous to me. However, when rolling high, additional bonuses will at the end level out, so that even high-level characters will have to care for each roll.

C#3: Active and passive attributes

Attributes are the basics of every character. Many values derive from them. What attributes a system chooses is not a question of some divine logic, but merely what the creators deem appropriate. It is important that the logic created throughout the system stays stringent and coherent. As such, I'll introduce three "attribute categories" with two in each of them. Every category -- though I'll not explicitly use this term -- will have an active and a passive attribute. Active attributes are used whenever a player deliberately wants to do something, e.g. use his strength to shove open a blocked door. Passive attributes are not only used for saves, but for things that happen unwittingly; for example, noticing something. The three categories with their attributes are:

• Strength (active) and constitution (passive),
• dexterity and agility, and
• intelligence and wisdom.

C#4: An attribute is its own bonuses

Something I discussed with a friend already is another concept of my system. Each attribute's value constitutes its bonus at the same time. There will be no maths or conversion tables. Why should there be, to begin with? It is natural to assume that an attribute shall have an influence on saves or skills. To not map them directly has only one reason: One wants to avoid high numbers. Balancing is not an issue, since experience point costs as well as skill checks against an opponent can be tweaked by modifing the sheer numbers instead of introducing yet another level of abstraction. I don't care that I'll have to introduce poinsons with a strength of 65 to keep things balanced out. It's just a number, after all. As long as the system stays consistent, it does not matter.

C#5: Attributes are their own saves

The passive attributes constitute the saves, period. Modifications (i.e., extremely tough races) will have a starter bonus on the attribute. The reasoning for that goes along the lines of the previous concept.

C#6: Attribute advancement will be limited

I plan to limit the number of extra points one can gain through sheer XP in regards of advancing attributes. The reason behind that is pretty simple: Attributes form the basics of a character, i.e., what his body and mind are. Except when growing, there are limits on how strong or intelligent one can become. So there will be a limit of three points extra after the character creation.

C#7: How skills and attributes relate in regards of XP costs

There is a certain, obvious motivation to increase attribute values: It is a +1 for every skill that is connected to it, and as such, very much convenient. The motiviation to advance in manners of skills is not so obvious; mostly because it is less expensive and has no limits. However, skill and attribute values will probably differ strongly during the first few sessions. Attributes will start with a naturally higher number than any skill, and as such, players might be tempted to invest huge amounts of XP into their attributes first. I'd like to differentiate here using the XP costs: Buying a new attribute point will be extremely expensive, that is, their costs will rise on a exponential scale. Skills, in contrast, will of course become expensive the higher the values get, but on a more linare scale.

C#8: Experience values needed for advancement do not need to be looked up

I've already suggested that there will be a system behind XP costs as well. Basically, the current value of a skill or attribute will form the basic for the "cost calculation" for the next value. Complex as it sounds, the maths will be pretty simple. For example, a new attribute value's cost will be old², while for a skill, its as easy as old *2. I'm not sure on the numbers, yet.

Ok, this is the first set of concepts. Next posts will cover the skill system as well as combat. I hope you enjoyed the post; please leave comments telling me what you think of it.

Some time ago, I became incompatible with the real world. Some of my readers may nod here, while others now have a big question mark hovering above their heads. So, let me explain.

I'm game mastering a DSA story. Aventurien, the continent where DSA takes place, has developed a rich potpourri of cultures, traditions, people, monarchies and cities over the years, thanks to its creators. Over the course of the last months I've read a lot of source books to spice a story of my own creating. I often stumbled over a phenomenon that seems specific for the DSA world: An interweaving of rules, background information and official adventures. Most, if not all printed adventures taking place in Aventurien come from the same publisher that is also responsible for the rest. What comes out of it are not only hints given in the source or even rule books regarding a storyline persued in a set of adventures, but also frequent hints along the lines: "This NPC will be part of the next official campaign regarding this region," or: "This city will play a major role in the next official adventures. If you change its shape, you will become incompatible with the official world." It goes even as far as marking the mysteries of a certain region with an asterisk that means: This mystery is freely available for your next private story.

I guess I always misunderstood the reason for source books.

I have to admit that I rarely see a reason for buying an adventure. Sure there's maps, lots of nice stuff that adds flair to a well-designed story, but I always felt that this is something that I could do myself. Not the good layout and the nicely done prints, of course: But developing and designing a good story. Though crude, I always thought that actually buying a RPG story created by someone else meant declaring the defeat of my own fantasy. Well, I know that this isn't true, and I proudly use and reveal my sources of inspiration now. However, I have yet to buy my first adventure book, be it official of third-party.

Anyways, I have some expectations to a good source book. No, I don't mean nice graphics, maps, fantastic descriptions of people, traditions and places; that I take for granted. It's more meta what I want to get with such a book: Getting inspirations for my own stories, a stage where my carefully designed play can take place. Because regardeless of how well-done such a book is, it can and may never be more than a foundation.

With DSA, it's only partly true. Because -- although DSA's authors carefully avoid to write it -- there's a label on many paragraphs saying "you are disallowed to change this!" It perfectly makes sense to use the world you've created to write and sell your own official adventures that take place in it. It doesn't make sense to indirectly forbid people to change this world for their own creations. I can guess where this comes from: More than with any other system and world I know, DSA and Aventurien have a community of eagerly consuming players, who not only buy source books, but also the latest adventures. Certainly, following a greatly designed campaign and watching vallaineous plots unveil has a lot of appeal. But I'd never trade my own story-writer freedom with these experiences.

I like source books and rules not only nice, but also humble. That means they should instead have another label, saying: "This is how we currently see our world. Be free to change it!" It should not only allow, but encourage people to change the setting. I like epic adventures that change the shape of a world, and I am not content with exchaning the local Hetman of a small viking village. Sorry, dudes.

And that's why I became incompatible with the real world. And you know what? It feels great.

... no matter what you do to them, you'll never feel sorry.

It's true; undead are probably the only type of enemy that no player ever regrets slaying. A skeleton, mummy, even a lich, they're either totally devoid of any thought, or have been brought back by their very own scheming. The cases in which somebody's mind has been enslaved in a dead body are rare at best.

Compare that to the rest of the typical adversaries a party normally faces: Goblins are poor, fearful contemporaries that attack you mostly because of either sheer stupidity or enormous need. Slay one of them and the rest flees, unless something went really wrong. Orcs, oh well, they make formidable enemies: Brutal and mostly stupid. Having an intelligent orc can be even frightening since this race employs rather ugly looks. But even they have a culture, there are wifes they return to, and they have children. Orcs might be driven by their constant urge to conquest, but some even attest them to have philosophers. Dwarves, elves, other humans? There are many reasons a member of this civilized group can try to kill the party. (I admit the attribute "civilized" might be misplaced when it comes to humans; but let's not debate this.) But in any case, when thinking of an elvish villain, it is easy to imagine a reason for their goal and eventually pity them. Hell, even a daemon, and be it a perversion of local time and space, is able to think, and therefore reason; and if they look cute enough, a female member of the party will, in the end, try to cuddle it. Oh, dear.

What they all have in common is the ability to think, something elaborate -- in contrast to an animation spell -- drives them. And that leads to the conclusion that one could understand the reason why they are against and not with the characters. They have a choice. An animated corpse doesn't.

That won't change the fact that most players won't regret having killed a NSC that fits the pattern of the adversary. I talked vaguely about "high-quality RPG" in my last post; it's time I begin to shape that topic by trying to answer the question: What does it take to create a worthy, vivid, plastic antagonist?

1. A story. People, even the Bad Guys, just don't pop out of nowhere. They have a life, there's a story behind them. They got born somewhere, they have or had parents, had a youth which perhaps had been taken from them: Something formed them. Having some bullet points about a NSC's life makes it easy to improvise, to (as a GM) predict his next move, to create an authentic behaviour.

2. A goal. Somebody isn't just evil because he's decided to be. Something motivates his actions, and in nearly all cases this has to do with the story of his life. The reason for the evil magican to create his doomsday device might just as well be sheer frustation and the greed for revenge. And in the end, the players might just pity him.

3. Values and principles. Nearly everybody will stop somewhere, even if it's ripping soft toys. It makes the very only guy without them really frightening, and it will cause the insane one to stick out pretty badly. "I don't care if you kill my mummy, I want to drink your blood, you smell so sweet!"

4. A stringent course of action. Most people never never fully realize this, but knowing the Status Quo and a somebody's character makes it easy to predict what she's going to do next. Of course, the problem is with (fully) knowing the character, at least as a player: The GM shouldn't face this problem. Every person in the story should follow her own logic, it makes her credible.

5. Quirks. What really makes our villain truely unique are the little quirks everybody shows without noticing it. Does he stroke or scratch is beard, massage his temples? How does he speak: Very elborately or rude, or even suffer a speak defect? Does she curse often?

It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Creating a true antagonist enriches any story. On the other hand, no story is filled with truely unique villains, there are also the little sidekick robbers and highwaymen that just happen to be there. Even so, they have a motivation for being just now the party's adversary, and be it because they want or need their money. Thinking it through takes only two minutes, but turns the two-dimensional guy along the way into a three-dimensional character and will also answer the question of "what will he do now?" a GM sometimes faces when the party decides to do something really original. That happens more frequently than one thinks, at least here.

You see, I came to like undead. Nobody's ever sorry for killing them, and they never cause the GM any headache.

Have you ever thought about how to start a story? Sure you have. But have you ever thought about how to start a quest, better yet, a sub- or even a side-quest?

Lately, I wondered how a game master would start a story if it weren't for the natural interest of his players. It is, quite naturally, the wish of any player to experience adventures, otherwise they probably wouldn't do RPG. (That this is not overall true I know; I'll post a rant about that later.) That particular interest causes them to merely ignore the beginning. Both players and the game master instinctively know that it is neither beginning nor the end that matters, but the journey, which is its own reward. Consequently, one keeps the introduction short: The evergreens of meeting in the tavern and having a more or less mysterious client accommodates that.

However, what were if the players didn't have that urge to go on with the story? I often face the problem when playing Vampire: The characters there loners, contact with another vampire, even if part of the same clan, can be problematic at best. The world of Vampire employs its very unique version of "Checks and Balances," where you better do not interfere with the matters of others lest they leave yourself at peace. The introduction of a Vampire chronicle, even a side-story, has to either wake the character's appetite or downright force them into action. Otherwise, a very unique part of playing a vampire is just lost.

Sometimes, players (and characters) have a very stark goal before their eyes. In some very intense situations people may decide to ignore the sidekicks, because they have better things to do. If that happens in one's story, the GM can very likely praise herself, because she made her story so compelling that her players ignore the very urge and instinct of every player: Curiosity. (Well, of course, that's not always true, but let's leave it at that.)

So when one has carefully designed some quest along the way, perhaps one that matters pretty much for the big picture, but the players ignore it just because the GM bet on his player's curiosity, it's sobering. It reminds us pretty much that high-quality RPG needs high-quality introduction, too.

I once started the story for one of my players, her character being a Gangrel from Vampire: The Masquerade with her finding herself trapped in a death-end alley with an armed and angry mob trying to lynch her.

Another player woke up in the pathology on one of those cold stainless steel examination tables.

Having a third character wake up on a shabby motel room with a dead body beside him in the bed, a painfully throbbing head and no particular memories about the day before and especially the night was something I really liked.

And about those tavern starts: Having the players caught up badly in a tavern brawl, that was fun.

And sometimes it's "you're out, wandering around, exploring the world," and yes, adventures do just happen.

How did you start your past stories? Was there some introduction you really liked? And how do you perceive the oh so carefully designed introductions our GM presents you?

Let me know in the comments, please.

We happen to play a lot of DSA lately since I'm leading a campaign in Aventurien, DSA's world. For those who don't know the abbreviation, DSA stands for "Das Schwarze Auge" (en. "The Black Eye"); it's a german RPG. It is fun, and Aventurien is a wonderful world. However, the system has a consistency problem. It's not the layout, which is fine, or the art and drawings, which are mostly black and white but nevertheless nice, and it isn't that a core rule book says this and another contradicts it. No, DSA has a problem with what I'd like to call Implicit Consistency.

Implicit Consistency happens to be when one can reason some part of the rules from the rest by taking an educated guess.

Take, for an example, penalties applied to actions. In DSA, a fighter can aquire several feats. One among them is the power attack. With it, the player can voluntary take a penalty to his liking on the next attack, and if he succeeds, this penalty will be applied to the damage caused by his weapon. The DSA-style power attack has a mandatory penalty of +4 which isn't added to the final damage. (With DSA, the lower the numbers, the better, so a penalty gets added to the final dice result.) For example, if you want to cause 5 additional points damage, you have to take a penalty of 9 = 5+4.

Other feats work in the same way; you take a +4 penalty and gain something extra for it. They are, basically, special maneuvers you can exercise during combat. For some of them advanced version exist; the power attack is followed by the hammer blow, beeing a more deadly variant where the final damage is tripled. The player can, as with the power attack, take a voluntary penalty, and also the hammer blow features a base penalty. Here, it is +8.

Judging from the feats one gets the following idea: Many special maneuvers come with a +4 penalty, more advanced action even with +8.

However, looking at the distance classes, this assumption isn't true any more. DSA employs distance classes to make weapons of different length useful. Somebody carrying a pike is able to deliver a possibly deadly blow earlier than the attacker that merely has a knife, but if the knife-bearer is finally able to underrun the pike's length, the defender will be in dire troubles. A battle always starts in the outermost distance class possible. In our example, the pikeman is the one to fight in the ideal distance class. The fighter with the knife has to make an attack to get nearer. The knife-bearer's player has to take a penalty, of course, since it's a special maneuver. One would think that getting into the next nearest distance class is an attack +4. But it isn't; instead, the attacker takes a +6 penalty. He who guesses is wrong.

Different scene: Skill checks. Of course, DSA features advices on how a game master could apply penalties to actions that are harder to accomplish than normal. The penalty table goes like this: 0/+3/+7/+12/+18/+25, so the penalties become worse by 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 points. That will be hard to guess if the game master doesn't know it from memory!

Why is it important? Simple answer: Because one doesn't want to spend minutes over minutes studying one of the several core rule books searching for whatever penalty applies right now during the session. While playing, the whole group usually has better things to do than consulting the rules, like fighting. It destroys the precious atmosphere.

"Why then," I hear you ask, "doesn't the GM just apply the penalty he deems appropriate?" It's a true question, and I'd normally do it that way. The problem is with the beginnings: Newbies do not yet have the sense for the particular system's finer mechanics. How does a newbie know whether +4 is apropriate? It could be too much, thus ruining it all, or it could be too little, thereby making things to easy, and again spoiling the fun. We've all started as newbies ─ we all depended on those pieces of information like "how much penalty should I apply to this action that isn't hard, but not common?" And, besides that, for other things, this isn't possible: The hammer blow will always come with +8.

This problem arises in many ways, not only with penalties to dice rolls. Whenever it comes to numbers, neither game masters nor players usually want to cram tables just to make the game play fluent. Taking an "educated guess" should be the appropriate solution to all those problems ─ and players and game masters alike should usually be right with their guess.

Now what's the solution? Introduce "difficulty classes" that come with a static penalty. Something is ordinary: +/- 0. Everything else means a stacking +4 penalty. Difficult: +4. Hard: +4+4 = +8. Even harder: +4+4+4, +4+4+4+4, and so on. I guess you get the idea.

Of course, this is very specific to checks and penalties. Generally spoken, if you, dear reader, were about to create a RPG rules system, you would make sure you have a pool of decent numbers. Whenever you brood over a rule and catch yourself out on thinking of a number: Stop it. Concepts must be simple. Some few but basic meta-concepts must exist that span all rules. Having common numbers is one of them.

While I often unconciously wondered about those things, I haven't concretely thought about them until one of my fellow RPG mates, Sven, brought it up during a session of DSA. Thanks, Sven.

And one final word: Aventurien is great. Don't think I cannot stand DSA just because it is the leading example for this entry. :-)

Many role playing systems make the mistake to include a skill or attribute called "knowledge," or similar. This is just plain wrong: Knowledge is an abstract concept. Knowing something means knowing a distinct, particular thing. Which means: You don't just know, but know something. The value a character has in its "knowledge" skill tries to describe that. But it completely fails at that since it's too abstract.

Let me precise this with an example. Suppose some guy named Jern, thief by "profession" has a value of 80 in knowledge. Fine. Now what does that mean? The question obviously answered is "how much does he know," but that doesn't help: During the game, the question obviously asked is: "What does he know?" and more precisely: "Does he know XYZ?" Ok, so there's an ancient artifact with hieroglyphs all over it, and Jern wants to find out what it is. He get's to roll a knowledge skill check, makes it, and finds out that this artifact will cloak him for an hour. Good for him! Some hours later, Jern has just broken into a library, looking for valuable books to steal. He gets to roll a -- you guess it -- knowledge check, which he not-so surprisingly pulls off. That rare book describing a forgotten, powerful teleport spell from that famous magician over there in the shelf is his now, thanks to his high ranks of knowledge!

Quite obvious is that the "knowledge" skill completely fails at what was its sole intention: Figuring out what a character knows, and figuring out whether he has a clue what's going on in a particular situation or not. Because it's abstract, but has a concrete value.

Enough of the ranting, I think it's clear what I am trying to express. More interesting is how to overcome the problem. First of all: Make that "knowledge" thing something concrete. If you don't want to change your character sheets, assume that "knowledge" is actually knowledge about a character's main field of interest. If it's a wizzard, it's knowledge about magic. If it's a warrior, it's knowledge about battle tactics, weapons and fighting skills. That makes a warrior a good member in a CSI team, by the way. In any case, whatever a character could know but isn't covered by her profession or interests means rolling a check against a penalty. The less it has to do with her profession, the higher the penalty gets. General knowledge works the same way, but the penalty is a fixed value.

However, that also means that there's more trouble ahead. Sleek as it sounds, consider this: Suppose you decided to apply a -20 penalty to all checks for general knowledge. Also consider Grungh, an orcish warrior with a knowledge of 20. Poor Grungh seems to know nothing except wielding his weapon. Which is probably wrong, too, since everybody has some general knowledge. Grungh, too, will know about the deities of his folks, something absolutely not connected with his warrior profession. This will lead the game master to make an exception of his rule and allow Grungh's player to roll dices without the -20 penalty sometime later in the game when it comes to that strange weather phenomenon. But any rule that needs exceptions isn't well thought of.

I, personally, like the idea of having a "general knowledge" skill and some more, specialized knowledge skills for the character's professions. For each and every character, unless monstrously tuned, this will result in about two to four skills. They don't necessarily need to get enhanced separately, but can be interconnected in some way, since they are interdependent. Let's say three points more in any knowledge skill raises all other by one. Of course, that's only a proposition.

Please tell me how you would handle this in a comment.

Oh, and by the way: Welcome to our new blog. :-)