I’ve been thinking about DMing a lot and tabletop gaming in general and going back over what I said last week about the difference between railroading and roadmapping and running with the whole no pre-conceived plot Amber diceless thing. As such, this essay may be a bunch of random one-off thoughts.
In real life, you don’t know how many hit points you have, what your stats are, or what you rolled. Now, you have a good idea of more or less where you are in relationship to other folks and where you were this morning (“When I woke up this morning, I had full hit points. As I get up off of the floor, I know that I am under half”). Everybody I know has theorized about running a game where the players don’t know what their stats, hit points, or rolls are other than general descriptions (e.g., “you’re in great shape”, “you’ve got some scratches but nothing to write home about”, “you’ve had the living itshay kicked out of you”, “if you don’t find a healer in the next two minutes, you are going to pass out”). Despite regularly hearing from people that this is an intriguing idea, every time I have heard about a game being played thusly, it has always, always, always gone poorly.
The idea of the tabletop game as a multiplayer videogame without a console that you can play during a power outage is one that D&D runs with in their handful of ads I’ve seen in the videogaming magazines (“D&D invented God Mode” and so on). This seems to me to result in more and more and more railroaded storylines. The DM writes the game the way he’d write a videogame script. The players, being used to video games, play the game the way they’d play through a video game script. Even though most of the games that I have played have played out that way, it strikes me that, surely, there’s another way (or seven).
I’ve seen players make a ten-page character sheet (“no, you can’t see it”) and I’ve seen players say a variant of “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw” and a handful of the spots in-between. When players write a particular backstory for their characters, they’re pretty much making a request on the part of the DM. The case of the ten-page character sheet seems to communicate distrust on the part of the player toward the GM (I mean, what if all four of five people showed up to the game with a character like that? The game would be unplayable with everybody railroading the GM) but there seems that there must be a level at which this is a perfectly reasonable request on the part of the player… in the same way that a fighter might request a +2 sword or a thief request a wand of Magic Missile.
(A personal story from the game, if I may) one of the fun moments in the game happened following an encounter with Zorlac! The Evil Book Collector! where he told me that I could have the book if I found it, but the people in charge of defending the library collection against intruders would not be told this fact and would, indeed, kill me if they found me. When I encountered my first “Librarian”, I was asked “what are you doing here?” and my character calmly explained everything I said in the previous sentence. The DM said “I’m going to need you to roll something” and Maribou asked “Roll for what? Honesty?” and the DM said “Fine, I’ll roll sense motive”… and he rolled one of those Epic/Legendary successes we discussed last week.
The absolute best character creation system I’ve ever come across is warhammer’s. You start off with one job, then you move to another job, and then another (and maybe you keep going for a while), and then you become a level 1 whatever. You can begin as a rat catcher, then become a coin clipper, then become a fence, then become a level one thief (to use just one example). The idea that each character is a fully realized person with a backstory and everything was something that other systems left fallow. Warhammer was, I think, the first system that actually told people “this is important and you should spend time on it”.
I recently read an essay about the difference in gameplay between 2nd Edition between tweens and early teens and the hours spent getting the player equipment *JUST* right (how many days of iron rations? how many feet of rope? how many pairs of boots, high, hard?) and comparing that to the 4th Edition mentality (“I’ve got a sword and a… heck, another sword”) and wondering about the role of accounting when it comes to gaming. I think it has to do with what “being prepared for anything” meant then vs. what it means in games today. Being prepared for anything means “take it in stride” for modern Jaybird but early Jaybird had it mean “a ten-foot pole… to check for traps” (which, now that I think about it, there never were any… except when one forgot to check for them, of course).
Sorry about not having a coherent essay, I’ll blame it on gaming on Saturday making my thoughts on gaming an over-excited jumble and, of course, the wickedness that is Daylight Savings (HA!) Time.
Any random gaming thoughts going through your heads?
I had a six page character sheet (except when I played a spellcaster).
Not because I had a ginormous backstory (although I usually had a pretty big backstory), but because I did things like lay out where each thing was in my pack. A GM once snorted and said, “You just did that so that you can argue about how easily you can dig something out,” and I said, “No, I did that so that when I tell you that the flask of oil is on the right hand side (straps facing you), arranged so that you can grab the neck with one hand while grabbing the rag that’s been looped through the lanyard in the other and inserting the rag into the flask in 3 seconds or less. Here, I’ll show you (grabbing my actual backpack off the back of the seat and miming the whole thing). He grabbed my character sheet and said, “Okay, smart guy, how many torches do you have?” “Three, one laced to the outside of the pack, on the left, and two bundled up in another rag, tied to the bottom rear of the pack, just above the bedroll.” “And where’s your whetsone?” “That’s a trick question, the whetstone is in the small belt pouch, the same one that has the steel. The whetstone is a small slab of flint and a small whetstone each glued to a wooden block in the middle – you made me pay 1 gp for that at the supply, remember?”
Hm, come to think of it, maybe this is why I always wound up GMing.
yeah. now if you’ve got a cranky gm, that’ll lead to breakage rolls, and “got it caught on something” rolls…
Or maybe that’s just me. I hike a lot, can you tell?
My random thought is that it’s challenging to find time to write a new chapter for my game and even more challenging to find a time to get everyone together for it.
Gaming + Grownups = Nightmare to Schedule
However:
Gaming + Grownups = Awesome Eats.
I like the way that Warhammer used ability scores for saves for various character actions. Players roll dice more, and the numbers are more meaningful when they have a direct application.
As I remember it, the characters in Warhammer were limited in some way. I think 5th or 7th level was as high as they went. Something odd like that.
Other than substantially increasing the number of saves, a real and lasting effect that Warhammer brought to my AD&D game was in combat. Warhammer had like five different armor classes for different parts of the body. AD&D had two: the body and the head. I felt that Warhammer’s hit location rules slowed the game down too much. I took to using the pummeling & overbearing tables in the appendix of the First Ed. DMG. Basically, every character (and monster) would have a base two pummeling attacks per weapon attack (except for ranged weapons).
Part of that too was watching “The Three Musketeers” movies, and seeing the way that combat was handled in the movie; from Gene Kelly’s somersaults, to the snatching of laundry from a clothesline in the Andrew York film. Pummeling makes combat more interesting, dice intensive, and lengthens a dramatic section of play.
If you want swashbuckling fun I highly recommend the Roll and Keep system of 7th Sea. For minions, you simply decide how many you want to take out and describe what you’re doing to do so. The GM mods your roll based on how theatrical (and believable) you want it to be and you roll. Minions drop after a single hit.
Henchmen take a bit more and usually have 3-4 hits before they’re down. Lieutenants and up take substantive work but make for longer more “traditional” fights.
Yeah, I had to modify the way that hp are used in the pummeling tables.
In the rules, the DM keeps a tally of temporary hp, and all damage from pummeling, grappling, and overbearing comes from this temporary figure. If it gets to 0, the character loses consciousness.
Didn’t really fit with what I had in mind.
I went with the temporary hp, accumulating as a percentile until one point damage had been incurred. Those were added from die rolls, either d6 or d10, for “Class One” or “Class Two” opponents. Those damage points then counted against the character’s current hp.
I’m not sure if it’s in the 1st Ed. DMG or the Unearthed Arcana, but there’s a rule for hp that states that half of damage is temporary. A character can regain half of hp lost in combat from short periods of rest, and not have to rest for days as when being restored to full hp.
Otherwise, the hp lost in pummeling will quickly bring a character to unconsciousness.
Too little sleep to think much about this or write something decent.
Warhammer Fantasy – You start as a window washer and feel powerful when the progession ends at “5th” level.
D&D 1-3.5 – You start as a class right after being a window washer and can become a god.
D&D 4 – You start at the level Warhammer Fanstasy ended at.
I think it more depend on the power scale player like play at as to which system suits them. And, of course, the general theme of the system. I normally like fantasy betetr than SciFi or modern RPGs. The one notible ecxeption was CthuhluTech.
Early D&D was designed to be a stingy resource-management game. You wer suposed to worry about torches, food, encumbrance, spells, hit points, all of which were fairly precious and not to be squandered. 4e still has this to a small degree with the encounter and daily powers, but there it feels like you are managing hand grenades and tactical nukes instead of food and light.
“Prepared for anything” reminded me of the recent “war vs. sport” analogy in this much-discussed post on RPG.net (forgive me if I have already linked it here): http://bit.ly/Apbt2S The major premise is that combat in early D&D was, especially at low levels, unbalanced, unpredictable, and best approached as “war” where the PCs would try to gain an asymmetric overwhelming advantage using dirty tricks and creative strategies. Today, in the age of “balance,” it’s more possible to approach D&D combat as a “sport” where the sides are usually evenly matched and the PCs can concentrate on the best tactics using the detailed combat rules. There’s less need to be “prepared for anything”–didn’t we discover that the 4e hardbacks had no provision for holy water?
Those encumbrance tables are important, or else you would have all these characters walking around with 17,000 gp each.
I understand what you’re saying.
I just felt a need to stand up for the tables.
I’ve always like the White Wolf character set up as a good balancing of background and relevance as you build your character. One concern I’ve had, of course, is when a player shows up and says “here’s my sheet” and it’s all filled out. I really find a great deal of value in going through the backgrounds and saying “okay… 5 finances.. what are they? Hmm… 1 mentor… who do you think that is? Do you want them powerful and infrequent or frequent and relatively minor? How do you think that will work into this campaign story?”
I tend to see the combat as a sport with the Players at an advantage, and the storytelling and RPing as a shared exchange. I create the world, they give me people worth talking about in that world. I give them interesting NPC’s and they react to those NPC’s to make the story.
As to the DND editions…. I like them all for what they are. I’m finding that I am very drawn to 4th edition because it simplifies for me what has always been the hardest part: A fairly balanced combat encounter. If my players have to retreat it’s because a) They rolled for crap, b) they used crappy tactics or c) they overreached and engaged someone too strong too early. In earlier editions “DM built a bad encounter” was as likely a culprit as the previous cuases…
White Wolf strikes me as completely different. You’re going into the game as a completely realized character who, theoretically, will be interacting with other fully realized characters and you’ll all be exploring the dynamics between yourselves socially.
It seems to me that the social dynamic s of D&D are significantly different… and so going to the DM with a Druid/Mage with an Epic-level staff that you don’t know the password for but hope to find it from the man who killed your parents and alienated you from your twin brother who may or may not have the password who happens to be a Fighter/Barbarian who is two levels higher than you who would make one heck of a henchman, just saying, and… suddenly… the DM’s idea of the necromancer in the barrow becomes secondary to this damn staff/brother/murder storyline.
No, see… that’s someone being pushy. And you deal with it the way you deal with the combat-mook. With a big, loud, “that’s not happening, we’re playing together.”
I love good backgrounds. Ten pages is a trifle long… but might work out if you’re playing someone who’s been busy. (average 16 year old hasn’t, just saying. but a 50 year old?)
I like Rolemaster’s backgrounds. They encourage people to Think about what’s going on. Also, races and stuff play into your background and your skills. “Take a craft. You Did something for fun.” (includes drowsing)
Before I began futzing with Linux Mint, I had a private wiki on a different partition. Since the old OS was getting creaky and constantly gave me concerns about privacy I had to redo everything which meant backing up the wiki in a xml dump.
First I didn’t know that I had so much information about my space campaign. Second I looked at it and thought “This is awful, it needs to be fixed” followed by “If only I could find that little black spiral notebook with my original notes. It’d be awesome then.”
Most important thing is to write a story, reread it some time later then edit or rewrite it. If you do that too much then you’re a member of the Knights of Saint Onan and accomplishing nothing. Always best to have one or two rewrites then decide if it’s good enough or trash it all and salvage the really good bits.
Players are going to mess everything up. They aren’t going to play the way you want them to play. On the bright side as a GM you have an Ass of Many Things from which you will pull things to maintain a balance of power at the dinner table.
The Ass of Many Things!