The Toolbox - Roleplaying Game Hacks and Nifty Stuff

[SotC/Fate] Setting via character aspects...

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:46:47 GMT

System: Spirit of the Century / Fate v3 (http://www.evilhat.com/?spirit)
Hack Type: Setting Hack / Advice

I've been lucky enough to have the time recently to respond to a lot of SotC-related posts on the Yahoo group and on forums, and I've been sort of on this kick of bantering about cool tricks you can do with the system.

Here's one of them.

In most good fiction, you learn about the features of a setting because of the way in which one of the protagonists is connected to that feature - the whole backstory of Sauron and the Rings of Power is pretty much meaningless until Frodo has to go destroy one of them. That's why it doesn't show up in The Hobbit. In the Dresden Files novels, the White Council is mainly there to be a pain in Harry's ass.

You can use this to your advantage in Fate by allowing the characters' aspects to act as a fulcrum for establishing world details.

Let's look at a character from one of my earlier posts, the Princess Ilaria. She's a fantasy version of Zorro, basically a noble who goes out by night as a champion for the peasants, torn between responsibilities in both worlds. Her aspects are:

A Princess by Day
Cutter, Hero of the People
Duke Raster (her father)
Am I Fit to Rule?
A Fly on the Wall
Your Title Means Nothing to Me
Sheriff Bothun Knows My Secret

So, suppose the GM actually only came to character creation with very sketchy notes, and really knows nothing about the nation that Ilaria comes from. He looks at her aspects, and decides on the following:

* It's mainly a city-state with very small land holdings despite its wealth (probably from a good central position for trade among the different nations on the continent), making it plausible for Cutter to have a kingdom-wide reputation.

* The laws of the kingdom are probably rather draconian and written to heavily privilege the nobility. There is very little justice for the common man or woman. Protection from the city guard is minimal at best, and its ranks are mostly filled with badly trained dullards and thugs, such that Cutter's only barely considered a vigilante in any sense. The Royal Guard, however, is a huge contrast - fearsome and deadly to a man, existing primarily to protect the nobility and shield them from bad stuff.

* Because of this, there is an undercurrent of very deep dissatisfaction and anger among the peasantry, which could perhaps be turning into organized rebellion despite the general public's fear of the Royal Guard. If such a group forms one day, they may expect Cutter to lead them.

* By now, nobility is more a matter of money than heritage - the merchant class has come to dominate it, making a lot of meaningless, honorary titles that nevertheless cause their bearers to act with a great sense of entitlement. These people have turned the court into little more than organized debauchery, playing at politics only as a game. The hereditary nobles who are left generally despise them, and there is a heavy rivalry between them. Duke Raster, the current ruler, is a hereditary noble, but prefers to spend his energy on keeping the conflicting parties balanced than taking any proactive steps himself. No one knows if this is because of some agenda he has, or if he's simply paralyzed by the state of things.

* Things weren't always like this, and many remember a time when the kingdom was generally more fair and more noble. No one is precisely sure where it all started to go wrong, and this is something to explore during the campaign.

* Many members of the city and Royal guard units, caught between the peasants and the nobles much like the Princess is, are deeply conflicted about the state of things, but feel that doing their duty is the most important thing, and so they tend to grin and bear it. Sheriff Bothun is the personification of this, and it's the main reason why he hasn't turned the Princess in yet - he sees her as an opportunity to do some good without technically breaking any of his vows.

And there you have it - all of these details are things that come out of exploring the context behind all of Ilaria's aspects. I could easily have gone a bunch of different ways with it, like having the vigilante thing be a bigger deal, have the guard actively hunting for her all the time, and have Sheriff Bothun's motives be a big "but why?" in the face of that. But the point is, all this stuff I've made up is stuff I can use directly to interact with Ilaria, and so none of it is just color.

If you do this with all the PCs' aspects, you'll find yourself with a lot of setting detail, very suddenly - a huge playground of interconnected awesome for you and your group. Try it.

[SotC/Fate] Leading with aspects...

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 06:35:02 GMT

System: Spirit of the Century / Fate v3 (www.evilhat.com/?spirit)
Hack Type: Advice

So, almost four months ago, I promised Ben Robbins' (www.lamemage.com) gaming group from Seattle that I'd write about this topic somewhere. I'm just now getting around to it. Sorry about that, folks, if you're reading.

If you've ever played DC Heroes, you'll know that you can use Hero Points to boost your values and generally give you better rolls in a given round of conflict. What's interesting about it is that you actually do it before the roll, not afterward, and it's usually either done when a.) you know you're fighting someone that's normally out of your league or b.) when you want to hurry up and nail the conflict in one go or as few goes as possible.

By contrast, in Spirit of the Century, you invoke aspects by default after the roll, usually to diminish the effect of a bad roll and add some spice into the narration before you describe the result. At GenCon, Ben and his group patiently explained to me that they tended to go ahead and declare before the roll, because they knew they wanted to invoke those aspects anyway and it was appropriate in the narrative to do so. I said, "Cool." I'm pretty much the epitome of the loose constructionist when it comes to game rules, so it strikes me that this approach is a fine one. It has an interesting impact on the play experience, too, which is what I'm writing about. I'm not really going to make a value judgment here, so much as provide some food for thought for your games.

1.) Perhaps obviously, this means you get the elaborate narration as part of the action description before the roll. "I dive behind the [Crates] and shoot a hail of bullets at them, not even blinking due to my [Nerves of Steel]. Here's my fate points." And then you make your roll at +4. In a way, it kind of resembles the feel of other systems where you'd explain how you're stacking situational modifiers up from the chart to your advantage: "I take a 5-foot step, and that puts me within my range increment, and I have Point Blank Shot, and 1/2 cover from my position behind these crates."

2.) Some people might find the dice rolling a greater source of tension that way, because you're paying in opportunity cost - you might have invoked three aspects, but you still could roll -4. Had you waited, you might have been able to reroll that -4 and gotten something better, and then spent the other two fate points on an even higher roll. Even if you technically allowed further invocations or tags after the roll as well, it's likely that you've already used all the ones that came immediately to mind, so it ends up making the die roll a more definitive influence on events. Interestingly enough, that also means that while your actions will sound more tactical in a fight when you narrate them, mechanically speaking, they wouldn't be as optimally effective. But I think some would be attracted to the visceral thrill anyway.

3.) Given the above, sudden crushing hits out of nowhere in a conflict become a much greater possibility, which some folks will think is cool and some folks won't. It wouldn't be uncommon to experience a 5+ shift hit even if you bought up your defense, because a bad roll could bottom you out and leave you with no recourse against it. If you're using any of the alternate rules to speed up conflicts (like the ones from the Evil Hat wiki), you may want to consider switching back to the slower default rules if you lead with aspects habitually.

4.) The flow of action in the combat round changes, because if you're front-loading invocations, you have to stop before every attack and defense roll to make sure no one wants to change their positioning before the roll. The impact of this is wholly dependent on personal taste - it may stagger things too much for some people, or be just right for some other people.

5.) It can potentially create a zero-sum game where you spend most of your fate points trying to remain equal to your opponent for as many rounds as possible, and leave you with a scene that'd have effectively been no different if you hadn't spent any points at all. In default SotC, that choice is less automatic because you get to see the results first and alter from there. If I beat you by 5 in default SotC and you invoke to reduce it to 3, I might be happy with that and not spend any points to resist you - but if you make that expenditure before the roll, I'm way more likely to spend the point to either keep things even or retain my advantage, because I don't know what's going to happen.

***

So that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Now, it's possible some of my worries about it might be smoothed out by allowing invocations before and after the roll, but I think that'd make the action really confusing, because you'd have a pause before and after the roll for position adjustment, and I can see some people's actions getting lost in that mix. I also see potential agenda clashes there, as some folks geek out to the cool narration and tense moments, and some folks walk all over those guys by gaming the system better. So I think it has to be one or the other, in your group, and you have to decide which.*

So really, what it all boils down to is how your group most comfortably parses out the action and flow in a scene. Leading with aspects puts all the narration stuff right up front, at the risk of letting you get hosed by the dice more often or not really getting a lot of bang for buck from your fate points. Sticking with the default is mechanically optimal and gives you the widest range of system choices, but ends up with the narration stuff getting used less often, or getting used in "aha, but..." statements more often than initiatory ones.

[ * : When I say "it has to be one or the other," understand that I'm talking about a general rule. This doesn't mean, if you're playing the default system, that you should flip out if someone wants to go ahead and spend the fate point up front once in a while. Sometimes it's appropriate. Likewise, if you agree to invoke up front, you shouldn't have a tizzy if someone asks to bring in a really appropriate aspect after the fact every once in a while. I only mean to say that in order to keep the action moving smoothly, you should agree to habitually do one or the other as the standard procedure.]

[SotC/Fate] A Different Take on Phases

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:44:57 GMT

System: Spirit of the Century / Fate 3.0 (www.evilhat.com/?spirit or www.faterpg.com)
Hack Type: Genre Mod / Alternate Mechanics

One of the things that comes up a lot on the Fate Yahoo group is how to handle the phases of Fate character creation differently than Spirit of the Century does, either because someone wants to use the system for a different genre and requires different baseline assumptions, or because they're not fond of lifepath-type constructs, or whatever. So I've had one method in my head for a while, mainly coming from jealousy at Primetime Adventures, in the way that you can go ground-up from concept to play in a single session, or sooner if you have the time.

In this method, as opposed to centering the phases around events in your character's life, you center them around the different "categories" of aspects that are in the Spirit of the Century rulebook. To briefly summarize, they are:

* Phrase - Delineates something significant or unique about the character, be it a personality trait, inherent trait, belief or conviction, behavior, social/professional status, whatever. In this post, I'm going to rename that category description, because that's what those aspects primarily do. ("Strong as an Ox", "Follows the Pirate's Code", "Wealthy Beyond Avarice")

* Person/Prop - Delineates an important connection of the character, be it to another NPC, another PC, an organization or cause, a special or sentimental piece of equipment... some entity outside of the character, in the game's setting. I'm going to condense these also, and call them connection aspects, because that's what they do. ("My Sick Mother", "Excalibur", "The King's Ear")

* Story - Suggests a source for stories involving that character, and usually are synonymous with connections, but not always. These are the primary tools the GM uses for coming up with scenario material. Can be very similar to Issues from Primetime Adventures. ("Hunted by the Mob", "My Lost Sister", "Fated to Confront Ultimate Evil")

* Situation - Suggests a source for scenes involving that character, and are usually synonymous with descriptions, but not always. You can look at the difference between story and situation aspects as the difference between "why" and "what" in terms of your adventure - situation is what's happening, story is why it's happening. ("Nick of Time", "Brunt of a Joke", "Unlucky in Love")

Keep in mind that these aren't hard and fast categories, and it is very likely that you'll get overlap. "Top FBI Agent" is both a description and a connection, and immediately suggests situation as well. The main reason the categories exist is to break mental blocks and ensure a variety of useful stuff for player and GM on each character.

So, with those in mind, the actual method is pretty simple - each phase involves answering a question about the character, and those answers translate to aspects. So, once you have a strong concept idea in mind, you go over one of the following questions:

* What is the most important stuff we need to know about this character? (Description)
* What connections does the character have - who and what is important to them? (Connection)
* What is the most significant stuff the character is dealing with right now? (Story - remember I said similar to PTA's Issues? There it is.)
* What kind of stuff do you see happening to this character most often? (Situation)

You can do this like in SotC, where each question is a phase and you go round-robin and get input from each player, or you can lay out the four questions in a sort of open forum, letting the players tackle each in whatever order helps inspire ideas the best. As always, much discussion between players and GM is encouraged. Also, in terms of total number of aspects, I'd refrain from assigning a set number you need to come up with per question, and instead just pick a total number you need and mandate that you need at least one for each question. So if you want to do a six aspect game, four are used to answer the four questions, and the last two can put more detail on any one or two questions you want. I'd also refrain from forcing people to have the total number of aspects set before play starts - it's way better to leave a few spaces blank than to have aspects that don't grab you immediately.

For connecting to other PCs, like in SotC's "guest star" phases, you can do it in one of two ways: have a custom fifth question, something like, "How do you know X?" or, just encourage cross-linking when you're answering some of the other questions.

So, let's run through an example of how this might be done. Suppose we're in a Fate game that is a fantasy romp, about a group of co-conspirators who are ferretting out secret corruption in their home nation. The GM decides that 7 aspects is a good number. Tammy thinks of a character, a princess named Ilaria who hates the royal life and often slums it in the disguise of a Robin Hood type named Cutter. Basically, Zorro with a fantasy twist. So, Tammy goes about answering the questions, and comes up with the following:

Description - She goes with "A Princess by Day" as a description aspect, as well as "Cutter, Hero of the People". These aspects provide a lot of compel potential as her dual identities pull her in different directions.

Connection - She decides her most important connection is her father, whom she worries is part of the corruption plaguing the nation. Taking a suggestion from another player, she makes this character "Duke Raster", who is also on the character sheet of Grog, a big dumb mercenary being played by someone else. That also connects them through mutual association.

Story - Tammy decides that one of the biggest problems facing her character is that she's unsure whether or not she's really fit for her life as the princess, and has a hard time grappling with conflicting obligations there. She decides that she needs "Am I Fit to Rule?" as an aspect - she tends to be less arrogant and more open-minded than other nobles, but she also suffers from indecision at critical moments.

Situation - Tammy says she sees Ilaria doing a lot of sneaky espionage-type stuff both in investigating stuff at court and as Cutter when doing scoundrel stuff. She also thinks that Ilaria would find herself in a lot of comedic "fish out of water" moments in formal court ceremonies like galas and whatnot. She goes with, "Your Title Means Nothing to Me" and "A Fly on the Wall" as her two aspects - basically, she can be confident and sneaky, but sometimes she's a little *too* boorish or *too* curious for her own good.

So, now she has six aspects, and needs to fill in one more. She's already got a lot of story potential coming out the gate, though - setting up conflicts of interest between her royal and popular obligations, having her father do controversial stuff, forcing intense responsibility into her hands, having her need to slog through keeping up appearances in pursuit of a goal, etc. She decides she needs another connection, and says that she's in a tentative alliance with Raster's head sheriff, because he discovered her secret identity. She names him Bothun, and calls the aspect, "Sheriff Bothun Knows My Secret". The GM giggles and adds a note to puzzle out the Sheriff's motives along with her other stuff.

The cool part about this approach is that it focuses on providing stuff you can use in play immediately - the GM will definitely get a whole campaign out of all the story aspects that come up, at the very least. Taken as part of a ground-up approach, where you get together and brainstorm what the campaign's going to be about, make the characters, and then the GM starts cooking stuff up with the story/situation aspects, it allows you some of that awesome PTA-style magic, and adapts to nearly any genre or game setup.

[PTA] Yet another PTA resolution hack...

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:34:41 GMT

System: Primetime Adventures (www.dog-eared-designs.com)
Hack Type: Alternate Mechanics

Posted to an rpg.net thread about a minimally impacting way of making conflicts seem a little more proactive and ability-oriented in Primetime Adventures, stealing mojo from Cold City and Sorcerer. http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=7723881&postcount=10 is the link - if I get generally positive feedback about it, I'll probably expand it and put a cleaner version of it with play examples here.

[Fate/PDQ] Because it had to happen sometime...

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:39:21 GMT

System: Fate/Spirit of the Century (www.faterpg.com) and Prose Descriptive Qualities (www.atomicsockmonkey.com)
Hack Type: Alternate Mechanics

So, here's a link to a post I made on rpg.net about a variant on Fate that takes some cues from Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=7417164&postcount=32

And here's a link to a Word document of the same hack: http://darkwood.wikidot.com/local--files/game-tools-and-hacks/PDQ%20Fate%20Merger.doc

That is all.

[PTA/PDQ] Primetime Descriptive Qualities

Fri, 18 May 2007 19:58:25 GMT

System: Primetime Adventures (www.dog-eared-designs.com) and Prose Descriptive Qualities (www.atomicsockmonkey.com)
Hack Type: Blasphemous

This hack is called PTDQ, Primetime Descriptive Qualities. It is a not-in-a-gay-sense love letter to Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue.

Assume everything about PTA and PDQ as written, except for the following:

Issues and Screen Presence -- Screen Presence translates to a number of points, like PDQ's Hero Points, that you get in a particular episode to help you resolve conflicts. Pick an Issue and chart out the season out as usual - minor episodes give you 1 HP, supporting episodes give you 3 HP, and your spotlight episode gets you 5 HP.

Traits -- You have 8 MOD points and one Weakness to distribute between traits, creating and rating Edges and Connections exactly like you would create Qualities in PDQ. You have to have at least one Edge and one Connection, and you can put your weakness in either category. If your Weakness is a Connection, that person is probably your nemesis, according to PTA rules.

Depending on how many different types of action your show regularly features, you may want to adjust the starting MOD to 10, or cut it back down to 6. Also, if your Weakness is an "Edge", picking something that ties directly into your Issue is doubly cool, and gets you props from me.

Fan Mail Economy and Budget -- At the beginning of each episode, the Producer gets Budget equal to double the sum of each character's screen presence. Budget is used to create opposition for the Protagonists to face in conflicts; each point of Budget either assigns the opposition a permanent Upshift from Average for the purposes of rolling dice or additional Failure/Damage Ranks (free default is 1) that the opposition can ignore. Unlike normal PDQ, Failure/Damage Ranks never take away from the opposition's score - they're removed more like hit points.

So, for example, at the beginning of an episode, the Producer has 18 Budget. In the first scene, one of the Protagonists gets into a conflict, and the Producer spends 3 Budget - one to put the opposition at Good [+2], and two more to allow it to ignore 3 Damage or Failure; the fourth would spell defeat. The Budget is reduced to 15, and 3 points go into the Audience Pool.

The rest of the economy works essentially as in PTA. Fan Mail translates to additional Screen Presence in the hands of the players. You may need to adjust the Budget formula if the Protagonists start with 10 or more MOD for Traits.

Conflict Procedure -- Determine involvement and stakes, just like in PTA. Figure out what trait is going to be used in the conflict, and roll off with the Producer. Whoever wins inflicts Damage/Failure equal to the margin of success on the loser. If the loser is a Protagonist, the ranks are taken from Traits.

Narrate what happened according to your preferences, but the winner of the round has final say. If neither the opposition nor the protagonists have zeroed out, run another round until all but one person has or has given up. That person wins the stakes, and also final say over how the conflict turns out.

Protagonists regain 1d6 Damage or Failure ranks after a conflict. Unlike normal PDQ, there is no distinction between momentary or continuing danger. You can get another 1d6 back by framing a scene in your personal set. All Damage and Failure heals between episodes.

Using Screen Presence and Fan Mail -- You can spend a point of Screen Presence or Fan Mail to get an Upshift in a conflict roll and/or ignore a rank of Damage or Failure. There is no limit to the amount of points you can spend on a single roll.

Regaining Screen Presence -- You can regain Screen Presence in a number of ways. Any time your Weakness comes into play, you get a point back. Any time your Issue forces you to do something stupid or risky, you get a point back. Any time the Producer has to hose you to set up a scene or conflict, you get a point back.

***

There are a lot of different ways you can hack this to be even more like standard PDQ or PTA - I consider this to be "right in the middle" along that continuum. Enjoy.

[DitV] Powers and Spells

Thu, 03 May 2007 01:33:47 GMT

System: Dogs in the Vineyard (http://www.lumpley.com/games/dogs.html)
Hack Type: Additional Mechanics / Genre Hack (fantasy, supers, supernatural)

Vincent Baker posted some off-the-cuff magic rules to the Forge, in response to someone asking about using the system for a fantasy game. You can check those out here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=23654.msg232590#msg232590

I was pretty much floored by this post - the possibilities there burn my mind. So much so, in fact, that I'm writing this post to refine and expand on what he's done, by way of adoring thanks.

***

Hacking the Dog - Magic and Powers

Some settings may want to include supernatural powers for use by the PCs, whether they're modern occultists, spandex-wearing costumed avengers, eldritch wizards, Jedi Knights, or whatever.

The simplest way to handle powers is to just record them as Traits - if they are assumed to be fairly commonplace (meaning both the PCs and their opposition), and the effects are general, there's no reason why they won't work as "fire magic 2d6" and "debilitating touch 1d8" and so on. You'd just incorporate them into narration with raises and sees like normal, and voila. You might spend a little more time than normal negotiating what effects can and can't be used in what situations, but overall, this method takes the least amount of work. If you don't want to take up room on your Traits list, the GM can add Powers as a separate category of stuff to the game's Backgrounds, and give that its own pool of dice to assign at character creation.

A slightly less simple approach, and one to use if there's an unequal distribution of powers either among the PCs or their opposition, is to mandate that extranormal Traits are "complicated", adding an additional +1d4 to their value the same way that guns do in standard Dogs. Using your powers pretty much means that you're taking at least one blow before conflict ends, and hence will lead to fallout and potentially troublesome outcomes more often. This provides a cool side effect that doesn't necessarily change the flow of conflicts much.

If, for some reason, your setting includes a universal set of powers that are available to all people, or just a few people (like if the PCs are all members of a single priesthood or magical tradition), you might want to consider adapting the rules for using ceremony from DitV - assign a die value to each power, that can be used in a raise or see, and the fallout it will inflict if the opponent takes the blow. Again, if the powers are meant to create complicated outcomes, you might give all of them +d4 in addition to their normal value.

So far, all the solutions above are for incorporating powers in such a way that they don't make a major impact on the default process of play, more color than substance - you're not going to see much of a change in conflict strategy, but you'll see a major difference in how actions in a conflict are narrated.

Suppose, however, that you do want that impact. In that case, you need to take what's above, and crank it up to 11.

Great Power, Great Responsibility

In this powers variant, every unusual ability that the PC has gets two ratings, which can be stated as either dice or straight-up numbers: bonus and cost. The bonus is what you get when you use the power in a raise or see. The cost is what you take in fallout when you use the power in a raise or see. That's right - you volunteer to take fallout every time you use the power. Why on earth would you want to do that? A few reasons:

1.) You can add the bonus on top of a normal raise, which means you can now raise with more than two dice. This allows you to throw forward some potentially monstrous hits.

2.) You can add the bonus on top of a normal see without having it count as taking the blow. This allows you to potentially escape a hit for a greatly reduced fallout.

3.) Associating powers with fallout ensures that their use has heavy thematic impact in play, and gives you a means to experience those effects without necessarily needing to escalate conflicts.

When you're naming powers, consider the desired flavor of your campaign - you can make them as general as "super-strength +d8 bonus, +d6 fallout" or as specific as individual spells with set effects, like "Bahamut's Wrath - a fiery dragon's head appears and chomps my enemy - +5 bonus, +3 fallout".

When you're rating power bonuses, you can pretty much go directly with effectiveness or mastery = die size - the 'complicating' effect of a d4 in your normal dice pool doesn't happen with powers, because they add for free. This is pretty simple stuff, more power = more dice.

When you're rating power fallout, it's more like potential danger = die size - d4 powers only have a risk of lasting consequences if you use them often, d6 powers risk injury, d8 powers risk near-mortal injury, and d10 powers could kill you outright, making them options of extreme last resort.

You're going to want to fine-tune this for genre, too... so if you're doing a four-color supers game, most powers will probably only be d4 or d6 fallout regardless of their bonus, and if you're doing gritty fantasy, being a novice at magic might mean that all your spells are d8 and d10 fallout, making the choice to use any magic a powerful and demanding one.

This method can, of course, be combined with an altered ceremony list - a perfect fit for the moves list from a sword school in a chanbarra game, for instance, complete with the last ditch d10/d10 suicide secret move. (Yes, I just finished watching Samurai Champloo.)

Vincent's post, linked at the top of the page, has a couple of examples of use. I'll provide you one more:

Spider-Man has the power Enhanced Physique, +d6 to physical raises and sees, +d4 fallout. He also has a Relationship with Mary Jane at 2d6. During play, Mary Jane is accosted by thugs and he saves her, using the power twice to enhance his raises during the conflict. Spidey's player rolls 6 for fallout on 2d4, indicating a temporary effect. As they play out the scene, it's clear that MJ's developing a very intense crush on Spider-Man which could be troublesome - so, Spidey's player changes the die size of their relationship for the next conflict, down to 2d4.

Later, when the Green Goblin captures MJ in an attempt to lure Spider-Man out, Spidey's stuck using those 2d4 in his pool, meaning he's probably going to be taking some blows from the Goblin if he wants to get her back.

Vincent? Thank you so, so much for this.

[SotC] A Closer Look at Weapons

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:31:34 GMT

System: Spirit of the Century (www.evilhat.com/?spirit)
Hack Type: Genre (gritty), Revised Mechanics

So, some folks like a greater disparity between weapons and tools in a conflict other than a taggable aspect. I say okay, and make this:

***

More Detailed Weapons for SotC

Much of the benefit you get from weapons in a conflict is situational - you're in the right position, you're using the weapon in ideal circumstances, etc. Some of it is also inherent to the weapon - you have a .45 ACP, I have a .22, etc. The ideal is to be able to deal flexibly with both.

Hence, in this system, weapons are given a rating from 1-X (where X is probably 6 or so at most) that represents a maximum threshold for how useful they can be in a combat situation. This rating should be taken to represent the best possible circumstances in which to use the weapon on top of its raw power. When you use the weapon in combat, you roll an additional number of Fudge dice equal to its rating on top of your normal 4dF roll, and take the best four dice as your result.

So, suppose your broadsword is rated at 3. In ideal circumstances, you'd roll 7dF and take the best four. This means you're more likely to have results in the +2 to +4 end than someone rolling just the default.

What if the circumstances aren't ideal, and what does that mean? Then you'd simply remove bonus dice or eliminate their use altogether, depending. And it means whatever you think it means, because a.) this is Fate and hence supports fiddly interpretation room on some level and b.) no two people have the same concept of the effectiveness of weapons in a fight.

So, you might say that if you're in an enclosed space, you only get 1 bonus die from your broadsword because those things usually need something like four feet of clearance on all sides to use properly. Or you might say that knives don't get their bonus dice unless you're close enough to grapple. Or whatever. GM has the final say, or whatever your group does to resolve such matters. Armor would either remove bonus dice or add their bonus dice to a defense roll, depending on which you think is easier to manage.

And that's it. Everything else works the same. Here's why I think this approach is cool:

* You get the benefit of both dramatic and concrete bonuses - a battleaxe might get up to 4 dice, whereas a dagger might never get more than 2 even in ideal circumstances, representing the sheer mass of the battleaxe. But you can also have fun with situational or dramatic bonuses to your heart's content.

* Big weapons in ideal circumstances means lots of dice hitting the table, and yet because you're taking the best 4 dice, it does not require evil maths any greater than the system already calls for. So you get the tactile fun without the hassle.

* It accomplishes the goal of making the person with the best comparative weapon or circumstance win fights faster, and retains concrete effectiveness in the realm of firearms, because the bonus dice for your gun would not apply to your Athletics roll for defense. So it preserves a certain "guns are damn dangerous" component of more gritty genres.

* Using bonus dice instead of a numerical bonus circumvents some granularity issues with the Fudge/Fate ladder, while still providing a clear advantage.

* It doesn't require screwing with the default stress w/ consequences layout to achieve any of the abovementioned results.

***

If you want an example set, let's say brass knuckles and saps are rated 1, knives and small clubs at 2, most one-handed melee weapons at 3, polearms and two-handers at 4. For guns, let's say really small calibers (.22, .25 ACP) are a 1, small pistol calibers (.38, 9mm) are at 2, large pistol calibers (.45 ACP, .357) are a 3, and shot-shell is a 4. If you want, you can say that being fired from an SMG gives you +1 and a rifle gives you +2, so that MP-5 might be rated at 3 and that .30-30 Winchester might be rated at 5.

Obviously, this can also translate to stuff other than weapons, to provide a mechanic for handling the benefits of gear in other conflicts. You'll have to decide locally how to handle choosing between this mechanic and temporary aspects, but at least you're not lacking in options.

[True20] Damage and Fatigue Redux

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:36:32 GMT

System: True20 (www.true20.com)
Hack Type: Revised Mechanics

So, good on True20 for not using hit points. Bad on True20 for clouding up their damage system with more criss-crossed "if, then" condition-oriented statements than I care to keep track of in the course of a tense action scene, and allowing for combats where people can totally get owned without even getting to act just because they roll bad a few times in a row. Instead, I propose this alternate approach, stealing a little from Mutants and Masterminds and my brain on over-the-counter cold meds:

***

When you fail a damage save, compare your results to this chart, noting whether the attack is lethal or non-lethal:

Damage Save Failed By:
1-5      = 1 Hit
6-10    = 2 Hits
11-15 = 3 Hits + Staggered (non-lethal) or Disabled (lethal)
16+     = Unconscious (non-lethal) or Dying (lethal)

A Hit: -1 on all future damage saves. That's it; no other rolls are affected.

Staggered/Disabled: You are severely shaken, losing all dodge and parry bonuses to defense as well as taking a further -2 penalty. Until the condition is healed, you can only take a single standard or move action in any round. If you push yourself and do both, you immediately worsen to Unconscious or Dying. This replaces the definition of these conditions in the standard rules.

Unconscious/Dying: As per standard True20 rules.

Cumulative Results: All Hits that you receive in combat stack, so if you get a Hit in one round and two more in the next round, you'll be at -3 to your damage save for the following round. Condition effects do not stack from multiple hits; you can only receive any condition one time from any source. So if you fail your save by 11 two times in a row, you'll have 6 Hits and be Staggered or Disabled.

Recovery: Non-lethal Hits fade at the rate of one per minute, and lethal Hits fade at a rate of one per hour. The Cure power instantly removes all Hits. Other conditions recover as per the normal rules, and require a recovery check, which the Cure power can also provide.

Adepts and Fatigue: Whenever you fail a fatigue save, compare the results to the above chart and apply Hits/conditions as per the above. Unlike damage, these Hits are applied both as a penalty to power checks *and* to future fatigue saves, as you wear down your inner spiritual strength; they do not, however, stack with Hits from damage saves. Also, Hits/conditions from fatigue are always non-lethal, and recover appropriately.

***

Groups looking for more heroic results can nix the penalty to the power check and just have the adept's Hits affect fatigue saves. Consequently, groups looking to be real bastards to their magic users can say that Hits from fatigue also stack for damage saves. This is appropriate in some genres, but I went more with the idea of fatigue from casting representing an inner "soul-weariness" type of thing. Fatigue effects not related to magic would just go down as non-lethal damage, in my game.

And that's all. I choose you, TheraFlu. Peace out.

[SotC] Psychology of Violence

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 19:25:51 GMT

System: Spirit of the Century / Fate v3 (www.evilhat.com/?spirit)
Hack Type: Genre (modern, noir)

So, I've been thinking about running some gritty, noir-ish investigative stuff using Fate, and I swear it has nothing to do with inspiration from The Dresden Files (about to move onto TV, yay), Robin Laws' new Esoterrorists game, or the upcoming Trail of Cthulhu by Kenneth Hite. Nothing at all. I swear. Really.

Part of what I need to help the transition into a modern setting is to systemically convey that modern folks aren't psychologically built to handle lethal violence as a common occurrence of daily life. Even people who are trained for such things, like soldiers and cops, often require both casual and professional support to cope with even one violent incident, let alone several. People report all kinds of weird stuff happening in real-life gun battles, like lapses in memory, altered perception of the flow of time, slight hallucinations, loss of motor skill and muscle control, and so on as adrenaline wreaks havoc on the nervous system.

I'm not really sure why it's a prevailing trend in role-playing games to overlook just how seriously fucked up it is to point a gun at a man and pull the trigger. I could guess, but as stated in my introduction, I'm not here to editorialize. Suffice it to say, I'm interested in something a little different, and so I propose something like the following:

***

In this system, any kind of violent conflict carries a chance of inflicting permanent mental damage to the participants. Groups can adjust this dial as specifically as they want - for some people, it won't be plausible to apply this system for fistfights or any other type of combat that more often results in subdual than permanent injury or death. By default, though, I'll say it applies to all forms of violence, because I'm lazy and that makes it easier on me.

Like any other damage in SotC/Fate, this damage is expressed as stress and consequences.

Whenever you're in a violent conflict and you inflict Health stress on an opponent, you take Composure stress in return. The amount of mental stress you take is equal to the stress you inflict on the target, minus your Resolve score. So, if your Resolve is Good (+3), and you hit your opponent for 5 stress, you take a 2-stress hit on your Composure track.

If your opponent takes a consequence as a result of the attack, add +2 to the stress you take. So, if the example above had resulted in a consequence for the defender, you would take a 4-stress hit on your Composure track.

Your mental stress is adjudicated as normal, and can bleed up into consequences, which should represent the psychological damage caused by engaging in the fight. Note that this means you can concede and be taken out in a conflict purely from your own actions, simply losing the will to fight or just being so shocked that you freeze up and can't continue. It also means that you'll be less able to participate in other social/mental conflicts if you walk away with consequences, as your damaged psyche leaves you less able to deal with further mental pressures.

And that's it. The "nicer" variant of this has you rolling Resolve as a defense against a mental "attack" that you take whenever you inflict a consequence on someone - treat minor ones as Fair (+2), moderate ones as Great (+4), severe ones as Fantastic (+6). I'd recommend letting the mental stress hang around for a few scenes if you're going to do that, to give the chance for the stress to pile up in multiple fights.

Why I thought this up on Christmas Eve, I'll never know.

The Toolbox - Intro

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 22:19:00 GMT

So I've finally figured out what to do with a LiveJournal. I really don't like writing about myself extensively, and I really don't like pontificating on topics where my authority (and nearly everyone else's) is dubious, especially given that I generally suck at communicating with people on the Internet.

I do, however, like to hack print RPG systems and tweak them. Lots. I think about it every day. So, that's what I'm going to put here. You can expect:

* Minor rules tweaks for several different RPGs. They basically would represent that 5-10% additional drift that a rules set might require to better match your local preferences when you play. I say "your" because I often do system hacks that I wouldn't even use, and will probably put them here in the hopes that they might match someone's preferences.

* Genre mixes of established systems. As long as I don't think it'd interfere with the system's agenda support, I'll sometimes recast a system in a different genre.

* General tools that you can use regardless of what game you're playing. This one's kind of tricky, because not all those tools are going to be good with all games. I definitely don't believe in one game or one set of techniques that "rules them all", and I don't believe there's a magic formula to good play. So, there's a healthy dose of general discretion required and expected here.

* Links to other places that have tools I like on them.

What you shouldn't expect:

* Protracted discussion. This space is primarily for me to brain dump. I'm not really interested in discussing or revising the content too much once I post it, because a lot of it is half-baked stuff anyway. I'm fine with people adding comments to suggest their own refinements or additional ideas, and for them to discuss amongst themselves, but I don't intend to participate extensively in that. The time I spend here, I want to spend adding new material.

* Heavy, ground-up redesigns of a given game. As a big 'System Does Matter' proponent, I'm quick to point people to different systems when they exhibit preferences far outside the range of what I think a given system provides. When someone complains about the strict adherence to equipment and gear recording in D&D, I don't make up an abstract equipment mechanic - I point them to PiG's Iron Gauntlets instead. I stand behind the idea that it really is worth learning a whole new system in those cases. Like I said, this is for the last 5-10% you might need to drift a system to get it perfectly in line with your local situation - it's not for giving Spirit of the Century the detail and minutiae of Pulp Hero, and it's not for making a World of Darkness game into Sorcerer, and it's not for making Primetime Adventures into Now Playing.

* Outreach. If you don't know anything about pen-and-paper roleplaying games, you're not going to find introductory material here.

* Regular updates. I do this when I have time. I don't have a lot of time, most of the time. That's all.

So, I hope that whoever reads this journal gets something cool for their game out of it.

Bye.