Friday’s Random Thoughts
I wish Bards were more like the musician assassins in Kung Fu Hustle. If you fix that in 4e Wizards then I’ll happily throw more money at you as I pre-order the new edition.
John is starting a new Darwin’s World campaign for us, and I love that new campaign smell. The smell of freshly printed character sheets, nely rolled stats, and the fear that the game will end abruptly due to impregnation by giant invisible spiders.
Edit: The above has happened more than once, and taught me that either random encounter tables are evil, or game masters should not watch Alien immediately prior to running a game.
I’m halfway through Feist’s Magician: Master book, and I love it. I’m both surprised and delighted by the amount of fluff in the book which closely mirrors background lore in my campaign world, Orroth.
Yax has once again proved his brilliance by ranking me as the twenty-second best RPG site on the net.
Evaluating Your Game: Part Three
This is part three in an ongoing series, designed to help you evaluate and improve your game from the ground up. Previously, I discussed Genre, Setting, and Scope, followed by an analysis of Character Generation Methods. Today, I’m going to explore the role that randomness plays in your game.
When I talk about randomness, I mean meaningful randomness which affects the outcome of events purely through game mechanics. Rolling a die for an attack roll is a good example, where deciding what clothes a random bar patron is wearing is not.
First, what does the randomness represent in your game? Is it luck? Favor of the gods? An independent range of outcomes? A range to succeed or fail, determined by skill? While many people may be tempted to assume it is the last one, keep in mind that in many games, the range of randomness is never affected by skill, simply what is acceptable in that range to succeed. Be sure to consider this in all aspects of the game, skill use, combat, and character creation. For instance, why are hit points random?
Once you’ve determined what role randomness plays in your game, determine how big of a role it can play in the course of a game. You may be surprised.
For instance, in the d20 system you may assume that someone has a Base Attack Bonus of +10. In addition to this, their stat modifier gives them a +4 bonus to their attack roll. Further, they have managed through use of superior equipment, positioning, and tactics to acquire an additional +6 bonus to their attack roll, giving them a total of +20 to their attack. This means that thorough skill and preparation which borders on or exceeds the “realistic” human limit plays an equal role to pure, random chance.
Once you have figured out the role that chance plays, determine if it is the correct role. Does it play too big a part? Too small? Does it scale the way you want it to? (If scaling luck is of importance to you, I recommend looking into systems with dice pools.) If the answer to all these questions is no, then you need to ask yourself if your players will be happy with the role chance plays - if it plays too big a part, players may feel that chance simply dwarfs their character.
If you are investigating new systems, one thing to look at is how they present the odds of chance. Simply on a practical level, percentile is the easiest to work with, as people usually think in percentages when they think in terms of chance - it’s simply more natural than increments of 1/20th or 1/6th.
The final consideration with chance and randomness is how much you will do during play to minimize or alter it. If you are going to allow re-rolls in many instances due to clever thinking, or it simply being appropriate in the situation, this will slowly control the role that chance plays.
Best Game Resources
Some games and books are ideally suited to providing inspiration and ideas for games, even if the game to be played is of an entirely different genre. Here are some of my favorites:
Dark Matter. The Dark Matter campaign is ideally suited towards conspiracy and paranormal games, and provides a lot of space geared towards describing organizations in enough detail to provide a slew of hooks and plot ideas. Each organization is fairly universal and may be exported or converted to other settings with little in the way of problems.
Complete Mafia for d20. The historical information available in this book provides a good history of how criminal organizations work in the real world, and the detailed descriptions of criminal organizations and roles of members will give you a great start on detailing the criminal aspect of any world or setting in your own game.
Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition. Theoretically, any edition of the game will work, but I have far more experience with this version. Anytime a truly “alien” entity or effect is needed, a flip through this book will provide either a great example or great inspiration. The d20 version may provide more direct compatibility with other d20 games.
Rifts, Heroes, GURPs, or any other “universal” point-buy system. While these games aren’t always as universal as we might like, there’s a lot of diversity in those systems, and the books are written to encourage the building of anything - both through mechanics and stirring up ideas.
Planescape. In my mind, Planescape is the most complete Dungeons and Dragons setting in existence. Anytime something in the game happens that involves any plane other than the Prime Material, I consult with Planescape for ideas, rules, and inspiration.
TSR Wizard’s/Priest’s Spell Compendium. Four volumes each, these compilations take spells and descriptions from almost every TSR game, setting, adventure and magazine release for several decades. The spells are updated for balance and use, and provide the widest variety of spells and abilities I’ve seen in any set of DnD products. Alternatively, you can get the wizard or priest spell cards, which contain identical information.
Darwin’s World. Darwin’s World combines elements from numerous genres, providing ample information and inspiration for post-apoc games, mutant games, or high tech games. The affiliates and organizations in the game also provide great templates and can easily be exported to other games or genres. (I still would love to play an X-Men game with Darwin’s organizations.)
What resources do you go to when you need some inspiration?
Resuming a Campaign
A long time member of my gaming group is set to return from AIT in the middle of the month, allowing us to continue a campaign that after nearly three years, approaches its conclusion. While this is very exciting, it can also be daunting, as it has been several months since any of us has played that game, that world, or even that system.
In honor of this upcoming event, here are some tips for resuming a campaign that has been on hiatus.
Group Memory Jog. Get as many members of the group together sometime before the game, and simply discuss the game. Good topics that will help jog the memory include character biographies, stories over how items came to be with the party, and goals that characters had. All of this will help get rid of some of the cobwebs and get peoples’ mind going about the game.
Role-play Before the Game. Set up a basic premise which will cause the players to role-play their characters, both with each other and a small cast of NPCs. This can either be part of the game or a separate exercise to help people get started. This gives people an additional chance to get used to their characters skin.
Hang-out Without Gaming. If the group has been apart for long in addition to the game being on hold, not only does everyone has a lot of catching up to do, but they may need some time to get reacquainted and used to each other again. Make sure everyone is comfortable around everyone else again before you try resuming the game.
Pre-pare a “Best of…” By preparing a best of list for each of the characters, you’re reminding everyone not only of the things that made the characters great and their greatest accomplishments, but also of what the characters were like and what had been important to the storyline and the game. Make sure to prepare a good selection which both demonstrates the past experience of the game, and prepares everyone for the experience ahead.
Field Questions. Before the game starts, open up the floor to questions for everyone. These questions can go in any direction - player to player, player to narrator or narrator to player. These last minute clarifications can prove invaluable.
Start Off Slow. No matter how much preparation you put into it, things are likely going to start off a little slow. If this is the case, you simply need to allow for some time for the game to once again pick up momentum. Sometimes this can take one or two sessions, but usually by the middle of the first session the game seems to be in full swing again.
What do you do to resume a game that’s been on hold?
Open Call for Interviews and Guest Articles
I have decided to introduce a new set of features to the website, and allow for interviews and guest articles. I am doing this in the hopes that it will let me bring my readers both a wider range of content, opinions, and ideas, but also let me help give a voice to people who might not have any outlet other than forums, which may not always be appropriate.
While the guest articles are primarily intended to help give an outlet to people without one of their own, I am open to guest articles written by anyone.
If you have any interest, drop me a line at Daniel (at) Aleph Gaming (dot) com.
