Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 4

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

In part 3 of this series I worked through selecting a unified set of ability scores that I felt could be used in both of my visions for the skill system of my game.  What I forgot to think about, until the very end of that essay, was the scale and range of the ability scores.  That’s today’s topic.

In the first part of this series (Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 1) I briefly discussed the different ranges that the ability scores could take.  In part 2, before I worked out a unified set of ability scores, I discussed my thoughts and ideas on the values of the ability scores in the two different systems I was contemplating.  After part 3, I need to revisit this and see if I can come up with a unified solution.

Ability Scores Are Tied To The Mechanics

and especially to the skill system.  I’ve talked about this in the previous parts so I’m not going to rehash it in any great detail but just give a quick overview.

In what I’m now thinking of as my “basic” game, the ability scores are much more intimately tied to the skills than in the “advanced” game.  And since the skill list is going to be smaller and more general, there will be many more checks against the ability scores in that system.  As such, and since in both cases, I’m looking at a d100 percentile based system, it makes sense for the ability scores to be on a 1-100 scale directly.  Ability scores in a smaller (say 2-20) range would need to be multiplied by some factor in order to be on the necessary scale.

The other system, however, doesn’t have the tight coupling of ability scores to skills and the ability scores only affect the skills as small modifiers.  Thus in this case, we would prefer ability scores that are relatively small so that we can give +/- 1 skill modifiers based on the value of the ability scores above or below a certain threshold.  Ability scores in the 1-100 range would require division by something (probably 5) to give the desired skill modifiers.

Is The Math Really That Bad?

The real question is how cumbersome is doing that bit of math?  Personally, I don’t think twice about basic multiplication or division, but then again, I’m a Ph.D. astronomer who’s worked as a software developer for over a decade – math just comes naturally to me.

Let’s look at the four scenarios and see when we’d be doing the math.  From here on out we’ll call the Star Frontiers style skills XP Skills, and the RuneQuest style skills, NoXP Skills.  The ability scores on the 1-100 scale will be called d100 ability scores and the smaller range ones will be called 2d10 ability scores (even though I don’t know the exact range I’ll be using, if at all).

Case 1 – XP Skills, d100 Ability Scores

This is the “native” case for this system.  The skills are based on 1/2 the ability scores which run in the same percentile range as we want for the skills.  The only math involved here is the division by 2 and then addition of 10 times the skill level and other positive or negative modifiers when a skill is used.  But those modifiers will exist regardless so they really don’t count. And when you make ability score checks, which are more important in this system, you just roll d100 against your ability score.  So this option has effectively no math happening based on the coupling of the ability scores to the skills.

Plus with the ability scores on the larger scale, you can have finer variations between characters.  Is that really necessary or even noticeable? Probably not, but it is there.

Case 2 – XP Skills, 2d10 Ability Scores

In this case, the ability scores are not on the same scale as the skill rolls (Of course we could change the skill resolution mechanic off of a d100 system but that’s not really what is wanted).  So whenever you use a skill you’d have to be multiplying the relevant ability score by some factor (probably 2 or 3) to get it on the right scale.  Is that harder than diving by 2?  Probably not.  But it’s probably not any easier either.

Plus when making ability score checks, you’d either have to not use d100 (not desired) or multiply the ability score by some factor (in this case probably 4 or 5) to get it into the d100 scale.  This would have to be done more often since these ability checks are more common with this skill system.

So this one is slight more math intensive during play as you have a few more multiplications going on.

Case 3 – NoXP Skills, 2d10 Ability Scores

This is the “native” case for this skill system.  The ability scores don’t figure directly into the skills but only with modifiers based on the skill category and ability score’s value above or below a certain threshold.  In this case the modifiers are simple +/- 1 for each point the ability score is above or below the threshold.  However, those modifiers are static and so can be computed once when the character is generated and only have to ever be recomputed if an ability score changes.

This still has the problem that ability score checks have to be multiplied by a factor to make a d100 check against them.  But cases for this are much rarer in this system since many of the situations where these would be used are often covered by skills.

Case 4 – NoXP Skills, d100 Ability Scores

In this case, you don’t want the skill modifiers to be a simple +/-1 for points of ability scores above or below threshold as you would get some really large modifiers.  You have to make it +/-1 skill point modifier for every N ability score points (where N is probably 5).  This seems like a lot of work but remember, this only has to be done once at character creation and at the odd times a character increases one of his ability scores (how often that happens is debatable but in my experience not very common with this skill system).  Plus it’s easy to provide a quick look-up table to give the appropriate modifier based on the ability score so the math is reduced to simple addition and subtraction.

And in this system, the rare ability score checks can be made directly against the scores themselves with not multiplication needed.

Modifiers

One thing I didn’t mention above is modifiers on ability score checks.  In the the 2d10 ability score systems, difficulty modifiers can be applied simply by changing the score multiplier.  So an easy check might be rolling d100 against the ability score x5 or x6 while a more difficult check could be x3 or x4 and a really hard check could be x2 or even x1.  In the d100 ability score system, the difficulty modifiers will typically be subtracted from the ability score, i.e -0 to -10 for relatively easy checks, up to -50 to -60 for really tough ones.  So the math exists regardless, it just varies in flavor.

Balancing the Scales

In the above analysis, I’ve been blithely throwing around multiplying or dividing by 5 to convert between the 2d10 and d100 ability scores but is that really the right value?  Based on the maximum value it is, but what about based on the real ranges?

In the 2d10 system, your maximum value is 20 and it is possible for you to have a character starting out at that value.  In the d100 system, however, you can’t start at the maximum ability score of 100.  In fact, the best you can do is 75.  Of course the flip side is true as well.  The 2d10 system lets you have ability scores as low as 2 but the d100 system only lets you start as low as 30.

Converting the 2d10 system to d100 by multiplying by 5 means that on the 1-100 scale you can have ability scores in the range of 10-100 while the native d100 ability score range from 30-75.  Going the other way means that the native 2d10 ability scores range from 2-20 but the converted d100 scores only range from 6-15.  Both are basically centered on an average of 11 (in the 2d10 system) but the d100 ability scores come from a much narrower distribution.  You don’t have large heroic outliers in the d100 system.

And using different multipliers don’t really help unless you start introducing more complicated formulas.  Division by 4 instead of five takes the d100 ability scores down into the range of 8-19, now centered on 13.5 and skewed high.  One solution is to allow a larger range in the d100 ability scores either via the ability score creation table or simply going crazy with the dice and rolling the full 10d10 to generate your ability score.  That latter option would actually give you the same converted 2-20 range and basically the same distribution but that’s a lot of dice to roll (80d10 total), even if you do it only once at character creation.

So which is worse, having a wider range of ability scores that could potentially give you >90% success chances at things (that require an ability score check) even as a starting character, or having a narrower ability score range that provides less benefit to your skills and increased failure probabilities?

Reaching a Decision

So there are really two things to decide.  First, what’s the scale of the ability scores, 2d10 or d100, and second do we allow the full range or a limited sub-range for starting characters?

After working through the above discussion and the previous three blog posts, I think that I’m going to move forward developing a d100 ability score system with the narrower range that I laid out back in part 2.  It’s the “native” ability score system for the “basic” game skill system and I think that it really doesn’t have many negatives if applied to the other skill system.  The main downside is the more complicated calculations that are needed to determine the skill category modifiers in that system but that can really be overcome with a small table of values.

The smaller ability score range simply means smaller skill modifiers in the NoXP skill system.  However, these are small to begin with and this means you’d only be getting +0 to +7 bonus instead of +5 to +15 typically so you’re really only out about 5-8 percentage points on your skills.  It’s a noticeable but fairly small difference that I’m completely comfortable with.

So that’s where I’ll start.  We’ve finally reached the end of this set of posts and we’ll have to see how it goes.

As always, feel free to leave comments, suggestions, or questions below.

Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 3

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

I thought I was done with this set of ruminations with part 2 but after finishing that post I had a thought:  Would it be possible to combine the two different set of ability scores into something that I like that could work with both skill systems?

Why?  Well my reasoning was this.  I know in the end I want both games.  And I’d like them to be somewhat compatible with each other.  Thus if a character was created in one system it could be ported over to the other.  And that would be easier if the ability scores were the same.  Much like going from Basic D&D to Advanced D&D.  The ability scores were the same and the basic ideas were the same, just some of the details were different. (I don’t know if you could actually port characters between the systems but the foundations were the same.)  The Star Frontiers style version could be my “basic” game and the RuneQuest style could be the “advanced” form.

So let’s see what we can do:

Similarities

This is the easy part.  Many of the ability scores are the same between the two sets, although they might have different names.

  • Strength – This is exactly the same in both sets
  • Constitution and Stamina – These are essentially the same characteristic with different names.  The names have slightly different connotations but mechanically they function the same in both systems as a basis for hit points, resistance to disease and poison, etc.
  • Dexterity – Again basically the same characteristic, although in the one system there is a separate score for gross motor skills and dexterity only applies to fine motor skills.
  • Appearance and Charisma – While charisma is slightly broader than appearance in its application, these two are essentially the same.
  • Intelligence – This is the same in both sets
  • Wisdom – This one exists in both sets but with slightly different application.  In the Star Frontiers style set, it rolls up both the Wisdom and Willpower characteristics of the RuneQuest set.  And it’s one that I added to the RuneQuest set over the RuneQuest model.

Differences

This is where the work is.  These characteristics don’t exist in one or the other set and I’ve got to figure out if they are needed or can be adjusted.

  • Stature – This one is from the RuneQuest set (called Size in RuneQuest) and describes the physical size of the character.  In that game system it has an impact on melee combat as the bigger you are the longer your reach and the earlier you hit in combat.  Plus it is averaged with your Constitution to determine your hit points.  It also has a negative impact on agility and stealth skills as the bigger you are the harder those skills become.  The only other place I remember it being used is as a limit on certain spells, i.e. larger Size required more magic to affect.
  • Willpower – This one is also from RuneQuest where it is just called Power.  In my Star Frontiers set it is subsumed into the Wisdom characteristic.  It forms the basis for magic/psi powers and has influences on a variety of skill categories (communication, magic, perception, and stealth), both positive and negative.
  • Quickness – This comes from the Star Frontiers set (called Reaction Speed in Star Frontiers) and is a measure of gross motor skills and how fast the character responds to sudden changes.  It’s fairly heavily used in that system for ability checks.  In RuneQuest it is basically combined into the Dexterity ability score or covered by skills
  • Leadership – Another ability score from the Star Frontiers set that has no analog at all in the RuneQuest system as everything that this ability score covers is handled by skills in that system.

Is Reconciliation Possible?

One of the great things about thinking out loud and writing things out to explain to others is that it really helps to clarify your thinking and organize your thoughts and ideas in ways that you would never do if you were just bouncing them around in your head.  After writing up the above comparisons of the similarities and differences, I believe the answer is yes.  It would be possible to come up with a single set of ability scores that could be used for both systems.  The question is how many do we end up with.  Let’s dive in and find out.

The Easy Ones

Two of the ability scores, Strength and Intelligence, don’t need any work as they are the same in both systems.

There are two more that are essentially the same but with different names.  First there is Constitution and Stamina.  I think I’d use Stamina as it has a slightly broader definition to me.  The second is Appearance and Charisma.  Again I think Charisma would be the better choice for its broader meaning.  I think these choices are better as they allow the ability score to have it’s full meaning in the Star Frontiers style game and then in the RuneQuest style system, where some of the impact of these ability scores are taken over by skills, they simply have a reduced meaning.  Going the other way is a little harder in my opinion.

That’s four down, moving on.

Dexterity and Quickness

So in once of the sets, this is all lumped under Dexterity while in the other set, they are split out.  Taking a quick survey of other games on my shelf behind me shows about an even split of the two methods.  Some do and some don’t split them apart.  Although the second ability score is usually called agility, which I like and will probably adopt if I use both.

So convention isn’t going to help here.  I like the idea of splitting them into separate ability scores as they really are different things.  I personally have fairly good dexterity but I’m not very agile.  And I see their benefit is the Star Frontiers styled skill system.  In the RuneQuest style skills, most of the actions that would be covered by an ability score check are handled by skills, the main purpose of this ability score would be to affect the skill modifiers in that system.  Which is okay.

I think in this case, I want them separate and so would keep both of them, calling them Dexterity and Agility.

Stature

Other than adding flavor to the system, I don’t know that his one really has any impact in the Star Frontiers style skill system game.  Unless I model the combat mechanic of the game after the RuneQuest style mechanic, something I’m very inclined to do.  Otherwise, it would only affect things like the size of armor you needed and whether or not you’d fit in that escape pod or other such things.

The reverse question is could you live without it in the RuneQuest style skill system?  It’s only a negative skill modifier unless you’re really small so for most characters, removing it would improve their skills, a positive from the player’s perspective.  The implications on spell casting could be ignored or based on a rolled height/weight that is not an ability score.  And the melee modifier isn’t really needed either, it just adds a bit more differentiation in the combat system.

Mostly I see this one, while highly realistic, being more for adding flavor to the system than fundamental to it’s operation.  I can’t see any of the Star Frontiers style skills being based on this ability score.  For now I think we leave it out.  I can always add it back in later if I change my mind.

Leadership

This one I think is unique, at least in my experience, to Star Frontiers.  In RuneQuest, the events covered by this characteristic are handled by various skills.  The only other system I know of that had something similar were the chutzpah and moxie scores in Paranoia.  Although Powers & Perils had Eloquence which was used in combination with other ability scores to compute probabilities for things a Leadership ability score would be used for.

While it’s definitely possible for someone to be very charismatic but completely incapable as a leader, or vice versa, I think this one could be dropped and the areas covered by this ability score lumped in under the Charisma score.  We’ll leave this one off as well.

Willpower and Wisdom

This one is probably the hardest for me to come to a decision on.  Willpower is derived from RuneQuest’s  Power ability score and Wisdom is derived from Star Frontiers Intuition ability score.  Neither one has an analog in the other system although I added Wisdom to my RuneQuest style set and included the nature of Willpower into Wisdom in the Star Frontiers style set.  So I’ve obviously considered them both as a combined ability score and as unique entities.

The real question is which do I prefer and how would they apply in game.  As a general rule I like more detail over less and think that they should be separate for maximum realism.  I can definitely think of people/characters where one would be high and the other low as well as ones where they run together.  Having them separate provides more potential variations.  But how do they apply in-game.

The first to consider is Willpower in the Star Frontiers style skill system.  If separate from Wisdom, it would form the basis for any psi power I included, just like it would in the RuneQuest style system.  Also, since I’ve decided to drop Leadership, some of the checks that might normally fall to that ability score would probably fall to this one instead.  At least anything related to the force of character instead of their charm and likability (which would go to Charisma).  It would also possibly be the go to ability score for things like morale.  So this has a valid use in the Star Frontiers style skill system.

The second is Wisdom in the RuneQuest style system.  I added this one originally simply because I liked having it distinct from Willpower and felt it should be in there, not because I had a strongly perceived need for it.  Although once added, I had it sprinkled throughout the skill system being a positive modifier to a greater or lesser degree for Communication, Knowledge, Perception, and Stealth related skills.  I think it also would be good to have as an ability check as a defense against skills like Bargain, Charm, Fast Talk and the like when someone is trying to pull one over on a character (whether they be a PC or NPC).  However, you could also consider using countering skill rolls and have the Wisdom ability score only play a part via its skill modifier.  So I guess I see it as useful, although to a smaller extent in this system.

Since both characteristics have a use in the system they weren’t originally designed for, I think they are both worth keeping.

Conclusions

If you’ve been keeping track, of the ten original unique ability scores, eight made the cut and were deemed useful in both systems and the other two were maybes whose utility could be subsumed into one of the original eight and so were dropped with the caveat that we might call them back up later on.  This gives us as our final ability score list:

  • Strength – Raw physical power
  • Stamina – Vigor and vitality – will be used for hit points as well as endurance and resistance to disease and poisons
  • Dexterity – Fine motor skills and hand-to-eye coordination
  • Agility – Gross motor skills and ability to react to sudden changes and events
  • Intelligence – Brain power, ability to reason and to learn
  • Wisdom – Intuition, street smarts, and perceptiveness of surroundings
  • Charisma – Appearance and personality/likability
  • Willpower – Force of character and presence.  Will also be the basis for psionic power if included.

It wasn’t intentional but a happy coincidence of this is that there are four physical characteristics and four mental characteristics, giving us a nice even balance.  Plus the two extras are one of each so if they get added back in it will still be balanced.

I’m quite happy with the way this turned out and so I think I’ll use this list going forward.  It’s almost identical to the original Star Frontiers style set but with Quickness renamed agility and Willpower substituted for Leadership and a few of the definitions shifted around.

But Wait, There’s More!

And it looks like there is going to be a part 4 to this series.  As I was writing this I realized that one other thing had to be determined and that is the range for the ability scores, do we go something in the 2-20, 3-30, or 1-100 range?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?  However, this article is long enough already so we’ll save that discussion for part 4.  Stay tuned.

Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 2

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

In my last article, I mused a bit about the different ability score options and thoughts that have been floating around in my head.  In part two I’m going to discuss my ideas for the two different sets of ability scores and talk a bit about each one.  Maybe by the end of this I’ll have come to a decision.

What Have I Done?

So I have done a little bit of design on characteristics based on both of the two different skill systems that I’m considering.  These were done at completely separate times with out comparing one to the other.  Here’s what I have so far and my thoughts on them.

BRP/RuneQuest Style

The ability scores from RuneQuest 3rd edition

I jotted down the notes for this one at my twins’ Boy Scout summer camp this year.  I was up for a couple of days teaching the Astronomy merit badge and was working on gaming stuff during the day while they were off doing activities.

For this system I settled on eight ability scores, one more than RuneQuest uses:

  • Strength – physical power
  • Constitution – health and vigor
  • Stature – physical size (equivalent to RuneQuest’s Size ability score)
  • Dexterity – fine and gross motor skill
  • Appearance – physical attractiveness
  • Intelligence – brain power
  • Willpower – strength and force of character (equivalent to RuneQuest Power)
  • Wisdom – intuition, street smarts, awareness of surroundings (this is the extra ability score)

My original thoughts were to base these on 3d10 for the ability scores with 16-17 as median and a range from 3-30.  And then use scores above and below 15 to modify skills.  Why?  At some level it was completely arbitrary but based on a few considerations:

  • I’m considering basing the system completely off d10s like Star Frontiers.  So it had to be a multiple of d10′s
  • To couple with the skill system, the ability scores need to be relatively low so that there isn’t a lot of math involved in computing the skill modifiers.  i.e. I wanted simple +/- 1 instead of something like +/- 1 for every 5 points.
  • 3d10 gives a slightly more bell curvy shape than 2d10 which is just a pyramid.  So 3d10 will cluster toward the middle values of 16-17 more than 2d10 will cluster toward 11.
  • 2d10 gives a 2-20 range similar to RuneQuest’s 3-18 range and I wanted to be a little different.  This one is a pretty lame reason.

The more I’ve thought about this, I think that despite 2d10 be less bell curvy, a range up to 20 is really the way to go as it makes other mechanics that use the ability scores directly a little better (i.e. ability score x5 gives you something on the d100 scale).  Although an alternate, if I don’t want to limit to d10s, is to use 3d8 and get ranges from 3-24 and then ability scores x4 puts you on a percentile scale.  Something to consider.

Star Frontiers Style

Ability Scores from Star Frontiers

The notes for this one are contained in a preliminary player’s book I started working up just a month or so before I started this series of blog posts.  In this case I basically used the exact same scores but I renamed a couple of them and I also decoupled their creation so that instead of being generated in pairs, they are each rolled individually.  The ability scores I ended up with are:

  • Strength – raw physical power
  • Stamina – endurance and constitution – this is the basis for the characters hit points
  • Dexterity – fine motor skills (shooting, manipulating objects, etc)
  • Quickness – gross motor skills (responding to sudden events i.e. while driving/flying, dodging blows, etc.)
  • Intelligence – brain power and ability to learn
  • Wisdom – awareness of surroundings, insight into interactions, etc.  It would also form the basis for power in psi abilities if I include them. (This is Star Frontiers Intuition ability score renamed.)
  • Charisma – appearance and likableness. (Star Frontiers’ Personality characteristic renamed.)
  • Leadership – bravado, moxie, chutzpah, and command presence all rolled into one.  This is how well you inspire others to do your will and follow your instructions.

Like in Star Frontiers you would generate the value for these ability scores by rolling d100 and consulting a table to determine the exact starting value.  Since a d100 gives an equal chance of any score, and we want things grouped a little more toward the median, just making the roll the score doesn’t work.  Instead, I generated a probability curve using the awesome Any Dice website that allows you to generate distributions for any combination of dice and modifiers.

I based the distribution off of 10d10-5 (so that the average was 50 and we got a nice bell curve).  I then looked at the probability ranges and generated a table that gives realistic probabilities of generating the range of ability scores I was interested in (namely 30 to 75).  I actually had to stretch out the tails just a little to make the table simpler but the distribution is close.  Here is what it looks like:

Die Roll1-56-1011-2021-4041-6061-8081-9091-9596-99100
Ability Score30354045505560657075

Of course with the resultant values being in 5 point increments, one might ask why I don’t just divide by 5 and go back to a 20 point scale since they are mathematically equivalent?  And who knows, I might.  But with the ability scores on the same range as a d100 it makes ability checks simpler:  just roll against the ability score and you’re done, no math.

Do we have a decision yet?

Not quite.  I’m still exploring ideas.  But I think I’m starting to lean more in one direction than the other.  And the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced that the choice for ability scores is very much coupled with the skill and experience system.  These form the core mechanics of the game and have to be developed in tandem.

As time goes on, I’m starting to feel more like I want to try my hand at the simpler Star Frontiers style skill system and therefore related ability scores.  Maybe that’s just because I’m lazy.  I know that system will be simpler, both to create from a game design stand point as well as simpler for character creation.  Or maybe it’s because I want something compatible with all the Star Frontiers stuff I’ve done over the past 30 years.

On the other hand, I love the crunch of RuneQuest’s skill system and the infinite variations its vocations can give to characters. But I’m a astronomer and computer programmer by training and experience.  I like numbers and math is a no-brainer for me so I don’t see the extra complexity as a negative.

So in the end I’ll probably create both systems.  The real question is which one first?

Thoughts, comments, or suggestions?  Leave a note in the comment section below.

Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 1

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

As I’ve been thinking about this, I wonder if character ability scores are something that should come early in the design process or something that should come later.  I also realized that this is one of those topics that are at least loosely coupled with the choice of skill system, which I discussed in my previous post.

Musings

At some level the choice of ability scores is closely tied to the mechanics of the game system.  One set of mechanics would lean toward one set of ability scores while a different mechanic may lean toward a different set.  And that is both in their mix and their value range.

For example, a system like RuneQuest or Basic Role-Playing (BRP) has mostly physical characteristics (strength, appearance, constitution, etc) and most of what I call the “touchy-feely” bits are handled by skills.  Star Frontiers on the other hand has ability scores like Personality, Leadership, and Intuition as those types of actions are not really covered by skills but rather you use raw ability scores to determine your success.  Thus to some level the ability scores you need are determined by the game mechanics.

Likewise the range of ability scores is influenced by the mechanics as well.  In RuneQuest ability scores are based on 3d6 and lie in the 3-21 range typically.  Plus there are skill category modifiers which are based on your ability scores that can increase or decrease your skills depending on whether the relevant ability score is higher or lower than 10.  While you could do something similar with ability scores that range up to 100, you’d have to impose additional math on your players to keep the modifiers reasonable (effectively giving bonuses for every 5 points above/below 50 instead of simple +/- 1).  Similarly, since Star Frontiers is a percentile based system and uses the ability scores for success checks or as basis for skills, you want the ability scores to potentially range up to 100.  You could do this do this with ability scores in the range of 3-21 but you’d have to multiply by 5 (or roll a d20 instead of d100).

That also brings up the discussion of whether you need the full 1 to 100 range or if 1 to 20 is good enough.  Does the extra gradation on the d100 really mean much? Or is rolling a d20 good enough?  I think in the end, you have to pick something that works best with the rest of your mechanics.

Which brings us back to the original question: Ability scores or mechanics first?  As I’ve been writing this I think that I’ve come to the conclusion, unsurprisingly, that its a little of both and possibly cyclic.  I think you have to start with your skill/experience system.  Once you have that you can chose the ability scores that best compliment that system, but not necessarily their scale.  Then you go off and build the rest of the system and come back an look at your ability scores to determine the scale, range, and distribution that makes the most sense with the other mechanics you’ve written.  Of course you’ll probably make an assumption about the scale as you start but you may find that you are having to make lots of exceptions or are adding in extra steps in the mechanics to accommodate that initial assumption.  That’s a pretty good sign you got it wrong and will guide your choice of the correct values.

Coupled Ability Scores

On a completely orthogonal axis, there is the issue of coupled skills.  In Star Frontiers, skills came in pairs, i.e. Strength and Stamina, Intuition and Logic.  When creating your character, you roll once to determine the value of both ability scores in the pair.  You could shift up to ten points from one to the other but they were tied together to the same baseline.  As I’ve thought about it over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really like this.  There is no reason you couldn’t have a really strong character (high strength) that was sickly or easily hurt (low Stamina which is your character’s hit points).  Or one that is really smart (high Logic) but clueless about the world around him (low Intuition).  I don’t think that the maximum 20 point difference does enough justice.  So if I go that route with the skill system, I won’t be coupling the skills together, you’ll roll separately for each of them.

Coming Next Time

I had originally planned on a longer article but I’m also trying to post at least once a week and the last bit isn’t ready.  As I was writing up the descriptions, I realized there was some more analysis I wanted to include and that simply isn’t going to happen in time for this post.  So next time I’ll talk about what I’ve done in both of the two ability score systems so far.

Designing Out Loud – Choosing a Skill System

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

I mentioned in my introduction article that I had the idea for two games bouncing around in my head.  In truth they are mostly the same.  Almost all the mechanics would be the same in both systems with one or two possible exceptions.  The main difference is the choice of a skill and experience system.  (The other is probably combat).  I’m torn between two different models that I love.  Both have pros and cons.  In this entry I’ll be exploring those two systems.

This is an important choice as it can have repercussions throughout the game.  At the very least in the way other mechanics are described and in some possible cases the very way they work.  It has fundamental impact on character generation and how characters advance and improve.  If this aspect of the game was modular, I’d write up one as the basic system and have the other as an optional system.  I still might do that but I don’t think it will be possible.  It definitely isn’t possible to switch between the two.  Once you’ve started down one path it’s not really possible to switch to the other without completely revamping the character.

The one thing that is the same about the two systems is that they are both percentile based.  You have a change to succeed with each skill and you roll a d100 to see if you make it.  Beyond that, however, they are quite different.  So let’s dive in and start exploring.

Skills and Experience Points

This first system is inspired by the skill system in Star Frontiers.  In this system each character has a primary skill area (PSA).  Skills that fall in this area cost less, and therefore advance faster, while skills outside this area cost more and it much harder for a character to become proficient in them.  Each beginning level character starts with two skills, one from their PSA and one from any skill area (a second from their PSA or one from any other skill area).

The skills themselves are quite broad: Computers, Medical, Demolitions, etc. and each skill has a number of sub-skills: Operate Computers, Repair Robots, Diagnose Disease, Set Charges, etc.  This sub-skills will either have a based percentage chance or the base percentage will be based off the character’s ability scores.  Skills can be increased up to some maximum level (6 in Star Frontiers) and each level give you a 10% bonus to accomplish the skill.

A variation on this is to eliminate the sub-skills and just give a base percentage based on the character’s ability scores with the bonus for the skill level.  And the ability score used could depend on the task.  i.e. diagnosing a disease may depend on you intelligence while performing minor surgery may depend on your dexterity but both would use the medical skill.

Skill improvement comes by expending experience points (XP) gained through play.  With each level costing more than the one before (i.e. 4 for level 1, 8 more for level 2, 12 more for level 3, etc).  Players will typically earn 3-9 XP per session of play so early levels can be gained fairly quickly but the higher levels will take some time to acquire.

Pros

One of the biggest advantages of this system is that it is fast, both for character generation and during play.  On the character generation side, you can roll up a in just a few minutes.  In Star Frontiers, character generation takes exactly 5 die rolls, 4 for character abilities and on for starting money.  Other than that you choose a race and gender, pick your PSA and a pair of skills, and buy a bit of equipment with your meager starting fund and you’re off on adventure.  While I think my system will have a little more to it than that, the same principle applies.  You can pick your skills quite easily and be on your way.

During play it’s also quick to use the skill system.  Select the sub-skill you want to apply, find the base chance and add 10% per skill level, and add (or subtract) any modifiers given by the GM.  Then roll to see if you succeeded.

Cons

The existence of the sub-skill might also be considered by some to be a con as you have to remember what the sub-skills are and their base percentage chances.  The use of ability scores as the base chance and elimination of the sub-skills removes that issue but adds in the need for the player or GM to make a call on what ability score applies in a given situation.

Another less desirable aspect of this system is lack of differentiation.  One aspect of this is differentiation between different characters.  The skills are very broad.  Any character that has a computer skill can do all the same things that any other character with that skill can do.  The other aspect is lack of differentiation within the skill itself.  Is repairing a computer really the same skill as programming one or simply being able to operate one?  There is a bit of blandness in this skill system that just lumps it all together.

A third con, at least in some extent as I see it, is that there is no coupling between the experience gained and the skills that are improved.  Your character may spend an adventure hacking the computer systems of the rival gang and stealing all their secrets and then spend the experience gained from that session on his laser gun skill.  There is nothing to tie the XP to the skills used.  Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it works fine.  Plus if the GM wants they can place limits on what the characters can an can’t spend XP on but the system really allows it to go anywhere.  It’s a little unrealistic, you typically only get better at things you put effort into or use a lot and I like to see realism reflected in the game mechanics when I can.  So while I wrote the most words on this negative aspect, it may be the least important one.

Skills, Vocations, and Check Boxes

The second option I’m considering  is based on the skills in the Basic Role-playing System or, as I was introduced to it, in RuneQuest.  In this system you have lots of little skills: dodge, fast talk, charm, drive: ground, drive: air, first aid, repair computers, program robot, etc.  Each skill has a base chance that everyone has (maybe dependent on race) and then increases based on the character’s background and experience.  There are also modifiers based on your character’s ability scores that can increase or decrease your skills in broad categories (agility, communication, knowledge, etc.).

This system doesn’t have the concept of experience points or levels baked into it.  Rather each skill is just a percentage chance of success and when you successfully use a skill in a “critical” or meaningful way where failure has consequences, for most skills you get a “check”.  Then at some suitable down time during the adventure, you have a chance to increase your checked skills at which point all “checks” are removed and you can accumulate more.

Like in the other system, earning the higher skill percentages is harder than the lower ones.  In this case, to improve your skill you have to fail a skill roll, which, as you get better, is harder and harder to do.  This system also doesn’t have the concept of a PSA where skills in that area advance faster, every skill uses the same mechanics for improvement.

Additionally, this system carries with it the idea of prior vocations, what your character did in the years before they became adventurers.  Each year of vocation provides skill points (or possibly a skill list and number of points to use) to build up your character’s starting experience.  Thus if you were a machinist, you’d get one set of skills.  If you were a doctor, you’d get different ones.

Pros

No experience points!  This is a personal bias of mine but I really like the idea of no experience points.  I’ve never liked having to give them out or receive them based on some arbitrary judgment of the GM.  This is also a place where the realism can shine through a bit in that you can only improve the skills you use.  If you never once pulled your blaster during an adventure, there is no reason your character should get better at it just from surviving.  The system still allows you to increase unused skills via research or training but experience from adventuring only accrues in the skills you use.

Another area where this system shines is in character customization.  You want to be good hacking computers but not know a thing about building them?  No problem.  You want your doctor to specialize in disease and poisons but not really know about surgery?  Can do.  The more detailed skill lists allow you to customize the details of your character so that even if you are technician with a medical skill, the details will be different from someone else that chose the same idea instead of being generically the same.

This system also plays fast.  Your chance to succeed with any skill is just a percentage written on your character sheet.  Pick a skill to apply roll d100 and see if you succeeded.

Cons

This system would suffer from slower character generation.   With the larger list of skills, more thought would have to go into how to allocate your skill points when making a character.  Plus the vocations that define your background take some thought to pick, especially if there end up being a lot of them.  You’re not going to whip one of these characters out in 10 minutes.

Some would consider the large skill list a con as well.  It definitely means a large portion of the character sheet will be devoted to the skill list so that they are all represented.  Having to decide which of the skills apply to any given situation (or possibly more than one) can sometimes be a hassle or at least an irritation compared to just have a “computer” skill that covers anything related to computers.

Another con for this one is that it is a lot more work for me to set up.  Of course I like world building so it’s not like it will be drudgery but there will be a lot more effort expended.  Once done, it’s fairly easy to use, however, so that effort for the most part isn’t passed on to the players.

Last Thoughts

There really isn’t much more to say.  I like both systems.  One is definitely simpler and more abstract than the other but both are appealing in their own way.  The final decision will come later but feel free to chime in with questions, comments, or suggestions.

Designing Out Loud – Introduction

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

As if I don’t have enough on my plate right now (new job, back in grad school, running two fan magazines and several websites), I think it’s time I sat down and fleshed out my own RPG game system.  Heaven knows we don’t need yet another system out there but I’ve always wanted to try to build one and I’ve got these ideas bursting out of my head.  In fact, I’ve got ideas for two different systems.

So I’m starting up this new thread on the the blog entitled “Designing Out Loud”.  In the posts in this thread I’ll be discussing topics and details of the various aspects of the gaming system as I work through them.  Sometimes I’ll just be posting notes and ideas, literally talking out loud to organize my thoughts.  Other times I’ll be posting polished mechanics.  I don’t know exactly how this will go but I look forward to seeing your comments.

So what kind of game?  It’s going to be a science fiction game since that’s where my passion lies.  Now I love Star Frontiers.  I’ve played it since I was a kid.  I run two fan magazines for the game, the Frontier Explorer and the Star Frontiersman.  But I’ll be the first to admit that some of the rules are a bit wonky.  In fact some make my physics, math, and astronomy brain practically explode with their incomprehensibleness.  As time has gone on, I’ve realized more and more that it’s not the game mechanics that I love but the setting and feel of the game.  I like the way it plays but the details can get under my skin.

On the other hand, I think that mechanics-wise, the all time favorite system that I’ve played or read (and I’ll admit I’m not as well read or played as most) was a game based on RuneQuest 3rd Edition that I played in the late 80s to early 90s when I was in high school and college.  This was a fantasy game.  The mechanics were basically RuneQuest but with an additional magic system and a greatly expanded skill list (250+ skills instead of the standard 40 or so). I’m sure that a large part of the reason I loved this game so much was our GM.  I mean you can be doing too bad when your GM has an Origins Best Role-playing Supplement of the Year award.  The world was very richly developed and by the time we were playing he had been running games in this setting for over 20 years (it might have been over 30, to this day I still don’t know his exact age, I just know when he started playing. Yes, I know that late 80′s minus 20+ years puts you in the 60′s. He started role playing with his friends in high school before D&D was even invented using a 3 page rule set that he developed.  And you might recognize the names of his friends that he introduced to this type of gaming if I mentioned them.)  He still runs this game every Saturday at his home.  I loved the detail, realism, and crunch of that game.

So I’m torn between writing a game that is simple and fast to play like Star Frontiers, and one that has more detail and crunch like RuneQuest.  In the end, I’ll probably find myself somewhere in the middle but for now, I’m going to lean more toward the lighter, simpler system.  I can always add the crunch later.  So come along as I work on this system and let’s see what we can turn up.

Comments

neoproxy – November 15, 2014 at 8:28 pm

Nice, I think at some point a lot of gamers come to this point. I’ve had several ideas and tried testing some them out with varying success. I look forward to see what you have.

Variation on a trap

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

I was playing Star Frontiers with my kids last night and they dreamed up a trap far worse than what was actually there.  They are in the last section of the SF-1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery module (PDF).

Warning: spoilers for the adventure.  If you’re a player in this module stop reading now!

Trap corridors from the module

In this part of the module, the characters have to assault a Sathar artifact.  The module is designed such that the characters can easily find a false entrance that opens up into a small closed set of interconnected tunnels that were circular in cross section (see area labeled 4 in the image at right).  The trap here being that once the characters pass a certain distance in either direction (the dashed lines in the image to the right) the entire tunnel complex flips 180 degrees tossing them about for some damage.  That’s all this area does, continuously.  There is absolutely nothing else here, just empty halls that flip over every time you cross one of those lines.

My kids were smart and were looking for traps but the technician looking barely made his skill roll, so I declared that he saw something at the positions of the dashed lines that looked like a triggering mechanism but didn’t know what it was.  He carefully moved over and made another skill roll to try to figure it out, again barely making it.  He was informed that it seemed that the tunnel system could pivot around a central axis but couldn’t figure out anything else.

At this point they all began speculating wildly about what could happen.  Not being able to see the entire structure (it was dark, they only had flashlights, and couldn’t see around the corners), they came to the conclusion that the corridors were balanced and that if they went too far in any one direction, it would tip over, dropping them to the bottom.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were also convinced that there were large 2 meter balls in the hidden portions of the tunnels that would roll down and squish them.

They immediately started looking at the weights of the different races (2 Dralasites, a Yazirian, a Vrusk, and 2 combat robots) and trying to send equally weighted characters in opposite directions.  This obviously didn’t work and they got flipped over and there were (luckily) no balls to go rolling through the halls.  After a couple of flips they decided this wasn’t working and found the correct (secret) entrance.

I’ll have to admit though, that the trap they dreamed up was much more interesting (and deadly) than the actual one.  I may just have to use it in a future adventure.

Comments

neoproxy – July 8, 2014 at 12:22 pm

Nice, that is ingenious on their part and far more believable (IMO). Their trap required no actual power source as the character’s own weight powers the trap. Their logic to counter that trap is admirable. I like it better as the current trap is doesn’t appear to have a way for them to overcome the trap other than just leaving.

Game Review – Arkham Horror, Fantasy Flight Games edition

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

(Warning, this is a little long.  TL;DR version – Great game go play it, even if you’re a fan of the first edition as I am.)

Okay, so I’m a couple years behind the curve on this one but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve actually owned the game for a couple of years; my wife got it for me for Christmas in 2011. But until Christmas Eve 2013, it was still in it’s original shrink wrap. You see, the very existence of this game represents a bit of a personal disappointment/frustration in my life (If you want that story, it’s at the end of this post). Plus, I’m a big fan of the original Arkham Horror game Chaosium published decades ago.  I’ve been playing it with my kids for years. So the new game didn’t hold a lot of draw for me. This review will definitely be tempered by my decades of playing the original game.

Physical Components

Let me start by saying that the physical components of the game are absolutely wonderful. The pieces are thick and sturdy and the artwork is beautiful. I was a little put off at first at the sheer number of components but once we started playing it wasn’t bad at all.

As I was punching out the components, I thought it odd that there were little chits for the money instead of paper money but in the end, I think this was a good idea as well and they worked well.

Compared to the old game, this one is much larger physically. Everything is bigger. The player cards are larger, the monster markers are bigger, the board is much larger. In a pinch you could play the old game on a folding card table if you only had 4 players. I’m not sure the game components of this game would even fit on a table that small. This one took about three quarters of our large 8 person kitchen table to play with the four of us playing.

The components were well designed and worked well with the game. My only real complaint was the sheer number and variety. It takes a bit of work to get everything sorted to get the game started.

Rules and Game Play

One of the things we loved about the original game was that it was a collaborative game with the players trying to defeat the game and not each other. I was glad to see that this hadn’t changed in the new version.

The basic premise of the game hasn’t really changed. You still move around Arkham, fighting monsters, closing gates, and having encounters in the various city locations. The details of all those things, however, are completely different. In fact, there really aren’t many mechanics that are the same. The game has received a complete overhaul. I’m not going to go into all of them, just the ones that stood out in our initial game.

Movement

The two maps, to scale

This was very different from the original game. In the old game, there was one big map that the locations were set off of and the monsters would wander around the streets, moving on every turn. In the new version, the monsters are still on the streets but there are only 7 street squares instead of about 6 dozen. So while the board is physically larger, it is logically smaller, the largest distance between any two points being only about 7-8 spaces. Of course you don’t move 2d6 spaces a turn anymore but rather a relatively low “fixed” (see Character Skills below) number of spaces each turn.

Plus the mechanic for moving the monsters has changed and not every monster moves on every turn. This proved to be a frustration for us in our game as several monsters just sat still for several turns blocking the road before we were able to gear up enough to go kill them. It took a little getting used to as we were used to having monsters move on after every round. In the old game, they might be blocking you now but wait a turn and your path will probably clear up. That’s not the case any more.

Character Skills

Skill groups in the new game

The original game gave each character 4 skills that were relatively fixed (in both versions you can get skill cards that increase these). The new game removes the Fast Talk skill, makes movement a skill and adds in Luck and Will. These skills are grouped into three pairs and you are allowed to shift them somewhat at the beginning of each turn. Changing them allows you to sacrifice ability in one area to get a gain in another. For example, Speed and Sneak are paired up. You have the choice of moving quickly but not being able to sneak past monsters or dangers that appear or increasing your ability to move unseen but not being able to move very quickly. I found that I really liked this new twist on the skills and being able to adapt your abilities based on the situation definitely came in handy at times.

Encounter Resolution

The original game had the “Arkham Gazette”, a 4 page booklet of tables that you would roll on to determine what would happen. In the new game, the various locations are divided into neighborhoods and there is a small 7 card deck for each neighborhood, each card having a unique event for each location in the neighborhood. I’ll admit this was a refreshing variation. We used to play the old game so much that we knew about half of the encounters without even consulting the “Gazette” just based on the die roll (e.g. a 6 is always a Gate and Monster in locations that can have gates :-) ) The random shuffling of the mini deck always make for an unknown encounter.

I also liked the expanded deck of cards for the Other World location encounters. This deck of 49 cards had events for one or more of the 8 Other World locations plus and generic “Other” category to use if the specific world you were in wasn’t listed. This greatly expanded the possibilities and variety of encounters you can have over the single d6 table in the original game.

Gate Appearance Location and Monster Surges

Again, in the new game, this is determined by a drawn card instead of a dice roll. Since there are 67 such cards, the statistical probability of the various locations is bound to be different than in the original game that relied on a 2d6 roll and table to pick the location.

In the old game, you knew exactly where to put your 4 possible elder signs. You put them on the 4 gate locations that were in the middle of the table and had the highest probability of being rolled (Founder’s Rock, the Graveyard, the Silver Twilight Lodge, and either the Woods or Devil’s Beach). In the new game, where you can have more than just the elder signs from the item cards, you put them wherever you can.

In the original game, you only got a monster surge (one new monster on every open gate) if you rolled a 7 for the gate location (Founder’s Rock). Statistically, this happened about 1 in every 6 rolls. In the new game, you get a monster surge whenever you pull that a gate should open in a location you already have an open gate. Plus in the new game, you get more monsters, one for every player or one for every open gate, whichever is higher. This was a problem for us in our first game as we kept pulling the same gate location very often (although this was probably due to poor shuffling on my part of the card deck :-) ).

Skill Resolution System

This aspect of the new game was completely different and took a little getting used to the first few rounds (and we definitely made several mistakes until we got the hang of it). In the old version of the game, you rolled d6, possibly adding your skill and any bonus for items and compared it to a target number. If you exceeded the target you succeeded. If not you failed. In the new game, your skills and item bonuses determine the number of d6 you roll with each 5 or 6 rolled being a “success”. Each challenge had a number of “successes” (typically 1 or 2) that you needed to roll to complete the task. The jury’s still out on whether I like the new system better but it is interesting and definitely different.

Other Thoughts

I like the variety of “enemies” that you get to fight in the new game in the form of the various “Ancient Ones” that you have to fight. It provides some variety to the game play (each one has different special rules). I also liked the larger number of potential characters you could play (24 instead of 8) that come with the new game. Again, adding variety to the game experience.

Overall, there wasn’t anything that stood out as a strong negative to the game. There was lots of new things that we’re still getting used to but there were a lot of things I liked about the new game. A lot of those having to do with adding greater variety to the game play. Overall, I’d recommend this game to anyone. We’ll still play the old version occasionally, but I think the new Arkham Horror will become the go to game when we need some Lovecraft gaming (unless of course we’re playing Munchkin Cthulhu).

Game Report

Now that I’ve talked about my impressions of the game, how did our first game go? Well, let’s just say that the monsters didn’t have a chance. Although there were some points where we were a little worried, and I personally had a dismal game (I didn’t kill a single monster or close a single gate :-( and kept going insane!). Of course it didn’t hurt us any that we were an experienced group of monster hunters that have been playing the old game for over 20 years in my case and as long as they’ve been able to read in the case of my kids. The strategies that work in the old version still work in the new one, just some of the tactics have changed a little. The players were myself, my 17 year old daughter and my two 14 year old twin sons.

This was our first game so we make a few mistakes (usually in the monster’s favor) the first few rounds but quickly sorted out those issues. All started well. I had a retainer and headed to the Curiosity Shoppe to start collecting magical items for the team while the others set about exploring Arkham. One of my boys pick up a second gun quickly and jumped right into the first gate.

The one worry we had was that we kept pulling the same gate locations over and over (probably due to poor shuffling of the deck) and were constantly getting monster surges. So the doom level wasn’t going up but the monster count was. We weren’t killing any monsters to start off so this kept pushing up the terror level (a new mechanic I didn’t talk about above) and actually closed off the general store early in the game and the Curiosity Shoppe somewhat later. And then of course, just as we started to get the monster situation under control, we started pulling new gate locations and the doom level started to rise.

My daughter had a rough time. She started out with no weapons and couldn’t for the life of her get one anywhere. She did manage to amass quite the army, however. By the end of the game she had 6 allies that boosted her skills all over the place. She finally managed to team up with one of her brothers for a round and he gave her some of his extra weapons and then she was off to the races closing gates. Her brother that gave her the weapons managed to close one more than she did but he had a big head start.

My other son had a decent game as well. He had a run of bad luck on one of his gates, however. He got a good encounter in the other world that sent him back early so he got out quickly, but then couldn’t for the life of him close the gate on the other side. It took him 4 or 5 round to finally close it.

My game on the other hand was terrible. I started well with my retainer and starting monies allowing me to purchase several magical weapons at the Curiosity Shoppe. It all went downhill from there, however. When I left the Curiosity Shoppe to try to deliver some of the items to the other players, I ran afoul of a nasty group of monsters going insane (and losing half of my items in the process). Then we made a rules mistake and allowed two Hounds of Tindelos to enter the Arkham Asylum (monsters aren’t allowed to go there or to the hospital) while I was still there and I went insane again losing more items, leaving me only with an Elder Sign. One of my boys went insane at the same time and so I passed the Elder Sign off to him while we were in the asylum together. Later tried going through a gate and ended up getting lost in the gate and randomly coming back to Arkham and not being able to close it. I was pretty useless.

Overall, we did quite well, the doom track only ever got as high as 7 and was only on 6 when we won the game. Part of this was due I’m sure to poor shuffling on my part of the game cards as we got a lot of repeat gate locations and managed to get 3 Elder Sign items early in the game. However, a good part of it, I believe, was due to the fact that we were experienced players. By mid-game we had reached our stride and were closing gates as fast as they were appearing. I think better shuffling would have resulted in a higher doom track value but I don’t think we would have reached the 12 necessary to summon Hastur, the King in Yellow, our opponent for the game.

As is typically the case, the last round was spent waiting for one of the boys to come of the last open gate (my daughter had closed the other open gate the round previous) and close it while desperately hoping that the next gate opening location was either where the last gate was or where one of our 4 elder signs were located. Luckily we pulled a location with an elder sign and the universe was saved. Fun was had all around and we’ll definitely be playing again.

The Tragic Backstory

If you’ve been wondering why the existence of this version of the game is a bit of a disappointment or frustration to me and why it took two years to actually open and play the game, read on. Otherwise, you can stop here. Also, I’ll be dropping names that may or may not mean anything to you depending on your connections to early gaming history.

Original Arkham Horror game box

Dial the clock back to the late 80′s, early 90′s. I was in high school and played in a gaming group GM’d by John Scott Clegg, who went by Scott and is about 20 years older than me. Scott grew up and went to high school with Tracy Hickman (yes, that Tracy Hickman of Dragonlance fame) and Sandy Peterson (yes, the Sandy Peterson that wrote the original Call of Cthulhu RPG). In fact, Scott is the one that introduced Sandy and Tracy to role-playing in the first place, even before D&D came out. We played a heavily customized version of RuneQuest set in a world Scott had been developing since they were in junior high. Occasionally, if we didn’t have enough players, we’d play Arkham Horror (the original version of course) instead of RuneQuest.

Scott actually helped Sandy write the original version of the Call of Cthulhu RPG (his name appeared in the credits at least up through the 4th edition, the last one I saw) and wrote freelance for Chaosium creating adventures for CoC. He also wrote, with his wife, the Earth Dreamlands supplement that won the Origins Best Role-playing Supplement of the Year award in 1985. So he had some background with the game industry and Chaosium’s Cthulhu games specifically.  According to Scott, the scene on the original game cover (above) is a depiction of a scene from one of the RPG sessions that Sandy ran.  In the session, the mythos monsters destroyed an entire wing of the hospital trying to kill Scott’s character (in the blue coat in the foreground).  He managed to escape with the other character who was visiting him in the hospital at the time.

In the late 80′s we decided that we’d take a stab at writing a sequel to Arkham Horror. Scott knew that Chaosium had intended to do expansions for Arkham Horror but had never gotten to it and figured that if we could present them with a ready made game, they might snatch it up. So we set to work. The game was called Chaos in Kingsport. It had a new map, new locations, new encounters, a new monster mix, and some slight rule variations that made it a bit more difficult than the original Arkham Horror. It was designed to be played stand alone or in conjunction with the original game and had rules for allowing the characters to travel between the two cities.

Once all the design was done, we built a prototype and sent it off to Chaosium for review. We had the beginnings of two more expansion games plus expansion packs for each of the four games in the works (we actually finished the expansion packs for Arkham Horror and Chaos in Kingsport). We figured if they liked this one, we could do quite a bit more to expand their line. Then after we sent off the game, the bombshell it. Chaoium pulled Arkham Horror and declared it ‘Out of Print’. At the same time Dragon Magazine ran a very positive review of the game that ended with this gem: “The game is now out of print. So if you can find a copy, buy it. Period.”

Needless to say this didn’t bode well for our endeavor. Although we had a little hope that if they had some viable supplements, Chaosium might bring the game back. In the meantime we took the advice of the Dragon Magazine article and paid a visit to our local game shop (which I’m glad to say is still in business 25 years later and has grown from 1 to 3 locations). Scott talked with the owner/manager and told him to get as many copies of Arkham Horror as he could and we’d buy them. He managed to get three copies and that’s how I got mine, probably one of the last ones sold at MSRP.

Well, in the end we got our prototype back with a rejection letter. With Arkham Horror out of print, they weren’t interested. They had loved the game, however, and played it to death. The pieces were in shambles, the map had mug stains all over it (why they had been putting mugs on the map, I’m not sure) and the review they sent back was glowing. Our timing had just been bad. If this had happened today, we probably could have gotten permission to do a Kickstarter and produced the game ourselves but at the time, we had no money (that was one of the reasons we did the game in the first place) and no real way to raise any (except for Scott, most of us were still in high school).

In the end, we consoled ourselves with producing a copy of the game and the two expansion packs for each of us. I think my copy is number 14 of 20, I’d have to go find the map and pull it out to be sure. Had things been different, I may have broken into the field of game design much sooner in my life and been doing it at least semi-professionally for years now. So that’s why it took two years for me to even open the game. I’ve always had a soft spot for the original game and didn’t really want to see what had replaced it.

Wrap-up – June RPG Blog Carnival – Favorite NPCs

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

I’m a bit late getting to this wrap-up article as I’ve been busy getting Issue 5 of the Frontier Explorer magazine ready to go.  It should be out next week.  But enough of that, back to the issue at hand.

This month’s Blog Carnival topic was favorite NPC’s whether you encountered them as a player or played them as a game master.  We had a dozen entries, including mine from the original post plus my final one that I forgot to link to in the comments.  Here are the links to all the submissions:

There were many reasons why the NPC’s listed were favorites.  However, the two main reasons that stood out seemed to be comic relief and player consternation, whether the NPCs were ones the writers interacted with as players or ran as GMs.  The NPC’s that stood out seemed to either inject humor into the campaign or cause an endless stream of problems for the characters.  Or both.

So read over the various NPCs and get all the details.  Maybe it will provide you with ideas for NPCs of your own in games you are running or may run in the future.  And be sure to check out the July RPG Blog Carnival  on Summer Gaming over at the Dice Monkey Blog.

Favorite NPCs: The Aide

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

Now that my co-bloggers here at Arcane Game Lore have chimed in as well, I figured I’d better put up my entry for the month’s RPG Blog Carnival and post one of my all time favorite NPCs.  I had intended to do this post a week or so ago near the middle of the month but life got a little crazy and I kept putting it off.  This is a bit of a long post.  I like to tell stories and it’s these stories that make my NPC memorable for the role the NPC played in them.

As I’ve thought about the topic and considered NPC’s from games I’ve played in and ones I’ve run, there is one particular NPC that always comes to mind.  I had considered an NPC from some Star Frontiers games I’ve run, but since that was really one of my old player characters turned NPC, I didn’t feel that really qualified in the spirit of the blog carnival topic I proposed.  And so my entry comes from the same world (and I believe the same campaign, it was 20+ years ago after all) as the highwayman I presented in the Blog Carnival announcement post.

The Military Aide

This NPC was my character’s aide de camp. She was the niece of Dalin Dafka, the Minster of Defense, who assigned her as my aide.  I’m sure Dafka’s rationale was that it was partly subtle harassment of my character (he was a “friendly antagonist” to our party after all) and partly a way to spy on our group.  You see this young lady was over-eager, over-zealous, and always did the “right” thing (in her eyes) and followed the rules and reminded you of what they were all the time.

As with the Highwayman, I have no recollection of this NPC’s name.  I have my old character sheet and looking over it I have all kinds of bits of trivia noted in the margin but the name of my aide doesn’t seem to be there.  The only name that I can find written down that I don’t recognize is Asimath.  That could be her name but I don’t think so, it doesn’t sound right.  And so I’ll just refer to her as we did in the game, as my aide.

You might be wondering why the Minster of Defense would be assigning my character an aide.  It’s a long story but the short version was that by this point in the campaign our group were adventuring as the Queen’s Guards.  One of the girls in the group had managed to get her character married to the young king, as his second wife.  She didn’t give up adventuring and so the rest of us all became, eventually, part of the royal guards.  My character was one of the main holdouts (being lesser nobility from a distant, rival country) until he was given the choice between joining the Queen’s Guards or a heavy crossbow bolt through the back of the head. :-)   It was shortly after I finally “joined up” that I was assigned my aide.

My aide’s personality was such that she tended to rub her commanders the wrong way and drive them batty.  I know she did so to me a number of times.  It probably also didn’t help that her uncle was the Minister of Defense.  Digging a little into her back story we learned that she had bounced around from assignment to assignment, in each case with the officer she was assigned to requesting her transfer because they couldn’t stand her.  And she was a little obnoxious.  At least at first.

You see, I did something that none of her other commanders had done.  I was nice to her.  I’m sure that the other officers she had been assigned to looked at her connection to the Minister of Defense and saw her as a spy and there to evaluate them.  So they saw her as somewhat of a threat and treated her as such.  I knew she was a spy for her uncle, not necessary under orders, but just as a matter of course in reports she would file.  But unlike the other officers in the military, I couldn’t care less what her uncle thought.  So I didn’t see her as a threat and didn’t treat her as one.  I saw her more as a resource to help the group out and provide information.  I didn’t go out of my way to be nice to her.  I just simply treated her decently as befitting her position.  But that was apparently considerably better than any previous treatment she had had.  And because of that, she became intensely loyal to my character.

So why was this NPC so memorable.  It was because of some of the completely crazy things that happened as she went about in her “doing the right thing” mindset.  Two stories:

Near-complete Destruction of a Neighboring Country’s Air Force

Okay, so it wasn’t the country’s entire air force but it was the main force in the western region of the country.  In this campaign/setting there existed “flyers”.  These were magically enhanced boats that could float up to tens of meters above the ground.  They were primarily used as floating archery/artillery platforms in support of ground troops and for reconnaissance. Flyers were typically crewed by women as they tended to be smaller and lighter and it took more magic to sustain flight with heavier loads.

Flyers  came in a variety of sizes from little 2-man (or more accurately 2-woman)  scouting ships to the more typical 20- to 50- man sizes and there were even a few 100-man versions.  They sported arbalests or ballista in the prow and stern and also along the sides in the larger models and then the sides of the ships consisted of wicker breastworks with arrow slits to provide protection to the archers as they fired on troops below.

Our group had a 50-man flyer to transport the 20 or so characters in the group (we had a lot of gear and the PCs were physically larger than the average flyer crewwoman so we needed a bigger boat).  We had found the flyer in an old abandoned ruin that we had been exploring and were bringing it back to our home base.  Unfortunately, we had to cross a neighboring (friendly) country on the way home.

A storm came up and, since these boats are fairly fragile and don’t handle well in high winds (think about sitting in a hot air balloon in a major windstorm), we had to set down.  Being we were in a friendly country, we put in at the main town just twenty miles east of the border into our home country to wait out the storm.  Unfortunately, our flyer stirred up some interest and inspection by the town’s military wizards (all part of a routine inspection of course ;-) ) showed that this flyer had some magical enhancements that made it more efficient.  And so they wanted to impound it for further study.

We weren’t having any of that, and so made our plans to escape and make a run for it.  We only had to cover 20 miles and had plenty of magic points to fuel the ship and figured we could make it.  There might be a bit of fighting at first but, with the magic we had to spare and the wizards with fire spells we had as part of the crew, we figured we could pull away and get clear.  We also had the foresight to call ahead home via communication spell and let them know we were coming and so the eastern flyer forces of our home country would be waiting for us by the border (This was one of the few times it was to our advantage to be the Queen’s Guards).

During all our preparations to make good our escape, my aide vanished.  I had no clue where she went.  I was going to give her an assignment and was informed by the GM that she was gone.  There was nothing I could do but we weren’t going to wait for her.  We were just boarding our flyer in the predawn darkness, having knocked the guards out with sleep spells, when she showed back up.  She was a little disheveled (unusual for her) and a little out of breath.  We didn’t have time to question her as we were getting underway.

As we lifted off and started out of town, the alarm went up and we all braced for the pursuit that we knew was coming.  However, after a few minutes, no flyers had risen to pursue.  A little puzzled, those of us watching behind the ship noticed a reddish-orange glow on the horizon in the direction of the city.  It was neither the right color nor direction to be the early light from the sunrise.  One of the PC’s wondered out loud what the light could be when my aide answered.

“There was a fire back in the town,” she said.  Of course that got everyone’s attention.  So I asked her, “What sort of fire?” To which she responded, with a completely straight face, “Apparently someone accidentally spilled lamp oil all over the flyers at the fortress.  And then while trying to clean it up, they accidentally dropped a lamp and it all caught on fire.”

We all just stared at her for a moment and then the players all burst into laughter.  Needless to say we made it back home without any further incident.

My Elevation to Crown Prince

This one caught me completely off guard  when it happened and came completely out of the blue.  Some time after the incident with the flyers, we had traveled down to a city in the western wildernesses of the country my character was originally from in an attempt to rescue the crown princess (Jennifer) of an ally country.  She had been kidnapped and was supposed to be handed off from the kidnappers to those who had wanted the kidnapping at the slave market in that city.  And of course along the way, one of the girls in our group managed to get her character kidnapped by slavers and so we had to rescue her as well.

We failed to rescue Princess Jennifer at the slave market, although we weren’t too concerned about it as the person who “bought” her was someone we recognized as a very wealthy, very eccentric man from her home country that was completely loyal to the crown.  So in effect she was rescued, just not by us.  Also there to try to rescue her, traveling “incognito”, was her fiance, the crown prince from a neighboring country, and that county’s royal wizard.  Later that night, the prince, not knowing who the man was that had “bought” Jennifer, rescued her from his clutches and the pair, along with the royal wizard, escaped into the nearby jungle.  We eventually had to rescue the three of them from jungle but that’s another story.

In the process of trying to get our captured PC back, we were out-bid in the market and failed to get her as well.  She was actually sold just before the princess.  The problem was that the market was cash only and we didn’t have enough ready cash.  We had other valuables (in the form of two dozen 20 carat rubies) but they weren’t accepted as payment at the auction.  After the auction was over, we approached man who had purchased our PC and tried to buy her from him but he wouldn’t sell.

This is where my aide started to step in and take matters into her own hands.  About this time, as we were considering our next move to try to rescue the missing PC,  there was a ruckus in the hotel raised by the disappearance of Princess Jennifer and her “rescue” by the prince.  We went to investigate, not knowing at the time that it was the prince that had stolen her (we had recognized him at the market).  Once a little investigating had discovered the identity of the “thieves”, we were once again satisfied with the safety of the princess and returned to our rooms.

Upon our return, we found our missing PC and my aide waiting for us.  Apparently, she had used the diversion caused by the uproar to liberate our missing party member.  Of course since I had just been taking to him, when her “owner” discovered she was missing, our rooms were the first place he came looking for her.  There was no denying that we had her and after some persuasion and haggling, he agreed to accept compensation for the price he payed for her and then some in the form of a dozen of the rubies, and let us keep the character.  He only agreed, however, on the condition that we also take the other slave he had purchased since he didn’t want to have to deal with the added expenses of transport for just a single slave and had already made a profit on the trip from us.

We agreed, figuring we could at least free this other young girl as well.  We had seen her at the slave auction as she was a few lots ahead of our PC in the sale.  She was interesting in that she had waist-length silver hair but we had no idea who she was.  I think I had even bid on her in keeping up my disguise as a slave trader while waiting for our PC and the princess to show up.

After concluding our business with him, the man had the girl sent up to my rooms.  When she arrived, she seemed completely terrified.  She seemed to be about 18 or 19 years old and we couldn’t get her to say anything.  I tried everything, using all my character’s charm and communication skills to try to get her to open up, reassuring her that we weren’t going to hurt her and just wanted to help her get home to her family, wherever they might be.  Nothing seemed to work.  Finally my aide suggested that I let her talk to the young woman, “girl to girl” for a few minutes and that maybe she could get some information out of her.  I was  a little reluctant to let my aide take the lead knowing her past performance but nothing else was working so I finally gave in.

I should have known better.  A few minutes later my aid came out and said that Temera would talk to me.  A bit surprised I went back in to see an even greater look of terror on the young girl’s face than had been there before.  It turns out that my aide had decided to play the bad cop to my good cop to try to get the girl to talk.  I don’t know what she said, but apparently it worked since she learned the girl’s name and Temera had asked for me to come back.  But she wouldn’t talk while my aide was still in the room.  So I sent my aide out and tried once again to talk to the young woman.

However, she still wouldn’t talk at first and finally asked me to take my sword out and lay it on the ground between us.  Thinking this was  a little weird, but willing to humor her in the attempt to get her to open up and tell us where she was from so we could take her home, I did as she requested.  She then proceeded to preform some sort of ritual involving the sword.

It didn’t have anything to do with magic (I was a wizard and could tell.  And yes, in this setting wizards could carry and use swords) but I had no clue what it was (none of my lore skills helped).  It ended with her kneeling on her side of the sword, kissing the blade, standing, and stepping across the sword on the ground.  She then turned, picked up the sword and presented it back to me.  As I took the sword from her hands, she simply said, “Now we are wed.”

Alarm bells started going off everywhere in my head.  All I said was “What?!?”.  All I knew was that the GM was going to make my character’s life miserable.  It wasn’t that my character was now married.  It was more that he was married again.  You see, my character was already married.   My character’s (now) first wife was also a wizard and was trained as a flyer pilot and had been the one operating the flyer in the earlier adventure.  And it wasn’t that polygamy was illegal.  In fact, it was kind of expected for the upper social classes of which he was a member.  It was just that the first marriage was voluntary and this was completely out of the blue.  Plus I played my character’s first wife as a PC and this one I knew would be a pure NPC.

It all worked out in the end, however.  We learned that Temera was also a princess.  So we did rescue the princess, just not the one we had originally intended.  In fact, it turned out that she was the crown princess of the largest human kingdom on the planet.  And that ritual?  It was an official marriage ceremony from her country and completely valid.  So I was now the crown prince.  Needless to say our lives got quite interesting after that.  All thanks to my aide who had decided that the “best thing to do” was play bad cop to my good cop to try to get the girl to talk.

Final Thoughts

So my aide is probably my favorite NPC of all time.  She provided us with comic relief at times, she helped get us out of trouble, and she provided a way for the GM to introduce new plots and hooks into the game (usually by getting us into more trouble than she got us out of).  It’s a credit to my old GM that I still remember her after all these years.  He played her so well that we still loved her even with all the trouble she caused.