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Sunday, August 21, 2016

Unfortunately, I am in the income bracket were an unexpected change can cause a lot of plans to fall apart.

Well, an unexpected change happened.

About an hour ago my car was stolen. The insurance is not going to pay for it and the police have added it to the gigantic roster of stolen cars from my city. I have little to no hope of recovery it or replacing it.

So I'm going to be on hiatus for awhile as I deal with this. I would ideally like this break to be no longer than about a months, but I have no idea if thats a realistic possibility.

Sorry for the bad news. Hiatus commencing.

UPDATE

The car was recovered! It's still inoperable due to the keys being missing, but otherwise she's fine!

This is great news. What I imagined would be a months-long hiatus is now only going to last a few weeks.

Special thanks to the good people of Springfield and our hard-working police force for the speedy recovery of the vehicle.

Friday, August 19, 2016

And now, the results of an impartial playtest of Saga of a Strange World. Presented to you in "copied from facebook" format (the most superior of all formats)

https://www.facebook.com/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gifJoel T. Clark
Hey Damien, tell me what you thought of my game next time you're on
I'm heading into re-writes right now, so some feedback would help to give it a direction
·  
Damien
Okay then.
Lemme get my notes real quick.

Joel T. Clark
Damien I could kiss you

Damien
Okay first off, here is what we ran, just so you can know what we did to shake it up.
Denizens of hell, hear rumors about a map that is able to shift along with the landscape of hell. The only actually accurate map in existence. So the group plans a sort of heist to go and take it.

Joel T. Clark
Holy shit, that is rad

Damien
The group consists of a magic user, demon blooded and damn proud of it. Racist as hell too. Then there's a snake oil salesman of sorts who, due to a series of strange events, had found his way into hell and now cannot leave. Then there was a strongman with a bone to pick against the guy who had the map. And finally a traveler from the underworld who was planning on offing themselves anyway, and decided it would be best to go out with a bang.

Joel T. Clark
So, that's fucking metal

Damien
Alright for the good parts of it first.
The game has a REALLY flexible setting. Character creation was a blast and we spent at least 2 hours just shooting concepts back and forth. I like what you did with the setting, and so did the players.

Joel T. Clark
Good to hear. Don't hold back with the bad though

Damien
Oh, I won't. I'm going good, bad, then weird.

Damien
Second good thing: Magic and Martial Prowess. The guys have really been into Dark Souls, where magic and martial ability are hand-in-hand, and we didn't see much restriction on having either. I had them do a roll off, to represent the difficulty of plying a secret from a mage, and then explain how they got it. The strongman took up on it, and had beaten a mage nearly to death for his secrets.

Joel T. Clark
Haha, that's cool

Damien
Now for the bad.

Damien
The Doom Chart. It's a cool idea, but it should really be listed as optional. This comes into play because the strongman, after an encounter with some brutalistic torture daemons, had to hop and fight one handed for much of the adventure. He said he'd rather have made a new character, but we wanted to stick to By The Book rules to see how they hold up.

Joel T. Clark
That is also cool. I think I might just make it easier to live with being an amputee. Maybe demon limbs....
Anway, go on

Damien
Next up for the bad is Morale. It's cool, but I think it should stand on it's own, rather than HP. Two of the encounters ended up fleeing outright, despite having higher number than the party.

Joel T. Clark
Yeah, I was wondering about that. My playtest had similar results. I think I might put in a modifier based on the leader's reputation or something

Damien
Yeah. That would be a good idea. Or maybe a more in-depth list on modifiers to morale in a given situation.
Now for the weird.

Joel T. Clark
Both good. I like the result of combatants running away without the need for anything too cumbersome. But its good to get this feedback early: an elegant fix could make it play niiice and smoooth
Yeah lay it on me!

Damien
Reputation was a strange thing to tinker with. i mean, story-wise I understand it's implications. You're a well-known and popular character. But it was strange that the characters convinced a bunch of menial Oil Harvesters to join them in gallant combat simply because they were very popular. At one point, it had turned into combat golf, with all these people clapping as they watched the heroes dropkick a group of guards.

Damien
Sorta like Fable, really.

Joel T. Clark
Huh. That is pretty weird. could you unpack "combat golf" a little? That sounds like a scene worth examining

Damien
Okay, picture this. We have a group of adventurers that have convinced a group of 12+ folks to follow them. You have a crowd now observing your acts. But because you are strong enough to handle things for the time being, the adventurers keep the crowd as backup. So while the action is going on, you have spectators, much like at a large golf game, who just watch and clap while the adventuers do their stuff.. Their morale isn't being damaged, the adventurers are being aggressive enough to keep aggro off of them, so the people are just watching for sport. I eventually added some flavor of them calling out point values for certain heroic actions and cheering.

Joel T. Clark
Well... I will grant that is weird, although kudos to your players for some seriously strategic thinking. It gives it a bit of a "gladiatorial arena" vibe but... You know? I'm not unsatisfied with it

Damien
Yeah. It wasn't bad or good, it was just strange.
I will say this much though, if you could factor in something of that nature, like a "crowd pleaser" system to quickly boost reputation or morale, that would be neat.
Basically think like a brave knight having a cheering entourage.

Joel T. Clark
Well, there are the bards. Although I think I might write in some gladiatorial stuff for hell now.

Damien
All in all, it was a pleasant experience. Although we all by and large agreed that you need to put in some examples.

Joel T. Clark
Haha, very well. Damien thank you so much for this! I can't ever properly express my gratitude

Damien
No problem man. I hope to see some interesting changes and improvements. Also, just as a personal thing, if you add somewhere in hell's lore that they do gladitorial combat to settle some instances of arguments or whatever, i would be 100% down with it.

Joel T. Clark
Well, the mortal plane recognizes hell's aristocracy because of the suggestion of my wife. So why not have hell do some ceremonial gladiatorial melee?

Damien
That would be superb.
It could also give an easy adventuring hook or character starter, for those that wish to begin as a denizen of hell.

Joel T. Clark
Hell yeah (to coin a phrase).It doesn't seem like there were any big balance issues or anything outside of the Doom chart?

Damien
Not really. We looked at the Prowess system and related it to the PP system from pokemon, in a way.

Joel T. Clark
Huh. I guess it is a little like that.
I mean, I'm too metal for Pokemon.
:Metal Face:

Damien

SO METAL

Saturday, August 13, 2016

To give you guys a little insight into the creative process, I herein present a playtest I recently ran with my friend and my lovely wife. there are some design notes to the team at the end as well.

The Playtest
As I suspected, characters were compact enough to fit on note cards. So everybody got a note card with the following stats:
Action Pool 3
Focus 1
Chakra: Recovery 1/ Pool 10
Health Levels: 3
Then they got to pick an entire style from the current style and technique list.
My friend Ryan decided to do a “Vash-esque” character like on Trigun. He took Bullet Kata.
My lovely wife combined Vegeta with the post apocolyptia to make Vegatahawk, the Saiyan Biker. She opted for the Sand Demon techniques.
I set the thing in a post-apocalyptic wasteland halfway between the Road Warrior and Fist of the North Star.

The first combat was with Monev the Gail, who here was a little bit Kaneda and a little bit Vulcan Raven. Here’s his stats and the stats of his followers:
Monev
AP 3
Foc: 1
Chakra: R1/P10
Hlth: 3
Techniques: Focused fire (8) 2 Die facing 6-8, Spread fire (8) Roll 2 dice, generating 2 Facings
Goons 1-4
AP: 1
Hlth: 3
Him and his 4-man biker gang rolled up to the heroes in a canyon filled with ancient, derelict buildings. He posed dramatically and demanded they pay the toll: IN BLOOD. Vegetahawk mocked him and then Initiative got rolled.



Round 1
Immediately we realized that pools of 3 dice were not going to work well with initiative bids. You take a significant chunk of your resources to bid when all you have are 3 dice.
Vash got a set and a high roll, which coupled with his style to give him an absurd boost to both initiative and the set. He wound up going first by a margin of like twenty and generated a 48 result with his attack. Yikes!
Monev had a set too, but he had to use it to soften that man stopper so he wound up on the ground with two wound levels down and a rank-2 Imbalance from his lungs filling up with blood.
Vegetahawk went next, but she rolled like garbage. After bidding for initiative, she couldn’t do much more than put a die into her Focus and use her 1 to steal Monev’s bike. In her defense, she stole it though.
Monev did manage to scrape together a set by emptying his Prana into Focused Fire. He winged the helpless Vash for two HL’s, giving him an injured shoulder Imbalance.
The thugs went last. Since they only had AP1 each, they could either bid for initiative, attack, or defend. They chose attacks. All of them curb-stomped Vegatahawk for stealing the bike and piled up two HL’s of damage! She got an Imbalance causing her to rant incoherently or suffer -2 AP. There was a lot of ranting as a result of this Imbalance.



Round 2
Everybody was pretty fucked up this round. Nobody bid on initiative because things had gotten real ugly real fast. So it was a three-way die-off to determine who got initiative. Weirdly, we got exactly the same initiative roster as last time. Freaky.
Trembling from trauma and blood loss, Vash tried a weird tactic for generating results. He took a technique that gave him 2 dice of different facings and added them together. I ruled that this was a nebulous enough point that he could do so. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough: Monev was able to muster enough defense to survive his attack, although it did drain his Action die reserves.
Vegetahawk was done with this shit and ran Monev over with his own bike. Harsh.
The thugs spilt 50/50 and did some minor damage to the party. We staggered into the next round.



Round 3
Man things were grim at this point. Vash and Vegetahawk managed between the both of them to take out 1 thug and injure another. As an added bonus, the thugs could only muster enough offense for 1 attack, which was thwarted easily.
As a point in the design, additive offense VS single-set defense almost guarantees that you can’t hurt the defender without a significant advantage. So that’s noteworthy.



Final Round
This round got nuts. Increasingly desperate and with a newly refreshed pool of Prana, Vash went all out with a technique that granted him multiple attacks. He played it like he was going berserk and blasted his guns until he was dry-firing them. He managed to take out the remaining goons, but he also injured Vegetahawk and blasted most of the bikes to smithereens.



I ruled that the Imbalances had healed up after they spent the night in the ruins of the ancient buildings. So the next morning they were all patched up. Then, a freak appeared!
I wanted to use Legado (since we were doing a kind-of Trigun thing) so I made this jerk:

Legado
AP: 5
Foc: 2
Chakra: R2/P10
Chakra: R2/P10
Hlth: 5
Soul-Chilling Strike- Generates a single offensive die of facings 4-8. 3 Chi.
Shadow Waltz- Roll a die, generating a facing. Counts as both a defensive technique and a roll to establish stealth. 3 Chi.

He was a real motherfucker, because I wanted to see what a “standard” character looked like compared to these “rookie” characters.
He showed up with the sunrise to his back. The characters woke up and of course started making fun of him (I described him as having one dialated eye. They mocked him for putting his contacts in wrong).
He muttered a disturbing non-sequitur into their minds with telepathy and the party decided to take the better part of valor and get the hell out of there.



Round 1
Because of his superior die pool, Legado won initiative. He used his psychic powers to throw one of the working bikes into a building, which exploded. He also grabbed Vash by the throat with a pretty punshing set and choked a health level out of him.
Vegathawk made a great comeback by punching him into the next zone with her knockback attack. I thought that was pretty awesome, but we don’t currently have any rules for moving between zones, so…. I just ad-lib ruled that it took him a total of 10+ to move between zones with a quick dash. It ate his die pool, but he had rolled a 9 and a 1 so he caught up to them pretty quickly.
Vash just added to his Focus pool after softening the blow from the chokehold.
With the current rules, if you declare that you are fleeing, you escape and end the scene. Since I wanted to make sure there was a sense of continuity, I bent the rules a little and allowed the next round to play out as the same scene. However, I did rule that Legado was trailing way behind, flying with his powers, and that they had a big lead on their getaway across the desert.



Round 2
Vash won initiative this time and unfurled his fivefold tactical mastery technique. It gave him a lot of boosts: he actually managed to snap off a shot that went through Legado’s damaged health level and one more, so he got to declare two rank-1 Imbalances, injuring his arm and side. He could have lumped for a rank-2 Imbalance, but I think he had a plan?
Legado had to roll 3 sets of 20+ to catch up within 3 rolls because of their lead. He had a set of three 3’s, but he couldn’t further upgrade it, and he couldn’t attack because he was trailing so far. So, I used it as a set of 23 and floated the remaining 3 into his Focus. He was able to use shadow waltz to hide in the dust cloud. As a design note, I think if I had it to do over again I would say a set of 30+ would count as two of the three needed sets.
Vegatahawk added together all of her dice and coupled it with the activation of a technique (again, the point was nebulous as to whether this was possible, but I had already let Vash do something similar so I let it slide). In total she got around a 32, which I ruled widened her lead.
In addition, her technique allowed the roll to be counted as an action to change the scenery. She decided to bury Legado in a huge sandstorm to ensure their getaway.
Between his wounds, the cover and their lead, I ruled that they had escaped from his clutches and they rode off into the sunset.



Conclusions
The core purpose of this test was to determine if low-die pools became more playable with the die adding in addition to sets. I can say pretty conclusively that they do not.
In nearly every case that wasn’t me flagrantly bending the rules, we would have been better served simply allowing a single-die set to be used as the character’s action, once per turn.
Die adding has to many grey, nebulous and confusing areas. We should excise it and replace it with the above-suggested rule.
In addition, this playtest gave us some evidence of the following:
We’re on the right track with the new wound system. It was clean and easy and fun.
Expanding the low-AP levels of playability is more a question of cheap techniques or other things that elevate single dice into actions.
There was a VAST power gap between Legado and the PCs. It was a very gameable gap, as you guys saw. This is good news! It means we can have “boss” characters!
Initiative might need a more robust secondary system for resolution in the absence of bids. I propose that characters have a “standing #” between 0-9 that is their unbid initiative, and that would reduce die-offs between those who do not bid.
Zones need rules for moving between them. We might want to consider thinking about movement and speed rules. No suggestions yet.
Imbalances work great! My wife suggested that we look into dividing all of the rules into “dramatic” and “mechanical”, and I think she might be on to something. I’m percolating an idea which I’ll send in a future email.
Finally, I think the bedrock character would work fine with a 2-die Action Pool.



Wednesday, August 10, 2016

From the ground up
When I started tinkering with Legends of the Wulin the base character had a 7-die pool. You roll the pool, you get sets of matching dice, and you get an action per set.
Seven struck me as a lot of dice. Now that I’m working on a similar system, I realize the number must have come about after a lot of playtesting.
My own flailing attempts into the math behind the set-matching have proven… Beyond my mathematical understanding. 
But I have noted some undeniable trends:
-Sets are increasingly likely with higher die pools (duh)
-It is way more likely to get multiple sets of two than a single set of three or higher
-The likelihood of getting larger sets is really small, even with a big die pool (assuming 10 is the max)
So it makes sense to start with a big die pool like that. It puts a 3-die set on the table as a viable option. It makes rolling a set of 2, or even a couple of sets of 2 pretty good.
Even the NPCs never have less than a pool of 5. Probably for the same reason.

Coring down deeper produces weird results. What happens if you only have one die? How about two?
Clearly you can’t get sets from a single die. You also only get the “best” result of 10 one in ten times.
So, when you get two, your odds of getting a set of two are also 1/10. Twice your chances of rolling a natural 20 on a 2-sided die.
Three dice is where it starts to get complicated, and you start to see the real weirdness of the math. You go from 10 possible results (1-10 on a D10) to 100 results (100 unique combinations of 1-10 evolved from 2D10) to 1000 (You get the idea).
The strange thing though is that sets of two dice have this kind of lopsided lurch that doesn’t match with the pool of possible results as cleanly. If you spread out the 1000 results in front of you and count all the times that sets of 2 come up, then you get around 270 results (excluding the triple sets, which have ten).
So you go from 1/10 to about 1/3 (it’s a little less).
My ability to math out the results disintegrates above that. I’m not savvy enough with figures to set it up like a formula, so I have to write out the results in excel or by hand and just look at them.
But those results bear out in play. Eff it that’s trend enough.

That kind of system really brings out the best of Wuxia combat. Lots of actions, flurries of activity, etc.
So the paradigm is that it gives you
1) No answer (no sets)
2) One answer (one set)
3) Multiple answers (more than one set)
Which produces weird results when you ask it a binary question.
“Can I climb this wall?”
“How much can I lift?”
And stuff like that. It tells you inconsistent things from roll to roll. And what are you supposed to do with two answers? Take the higher set? What did the other set mean then?

"Can I climb this wall?"

-Not this time
-Yeah, with probably a 20-something result
-You can climb it, and you can do something else if you want

"How much can I lift?"
-Nothing this time
-About 20-something’s result worth, and rarely a little more
-You lift about 20-something’s result’s worth and do something else equally well at the same time

See its weird. People ask binary questions of an RPG system. Giving them answers like the above is awkward. This system does not do that well.

My proposed solution has been to allow people to just add the damn dice together. That way, more dice = higher result on average, with a little wiggle for the outliers. Way more consistent.
So there’s a dual resolution system. Adding the dice together (which in my estimation is the more intuitive) and sets (which are better, but less intuitive).

The dual resolution has the upswing in that it works with really low die pools. If you’re rolling one die, but 1-9 are on the difficulty scale, then you get an answer as to what you can do.
Adding the second die gives you more reliability, and it makes sets possible. So you’re significantly better than those 1-die chumps.
3 dice starts to really take advantage of all the options in the combat system. They have enough dice to attack and defend reliably.
You could conceivably start characters at low die pools like these and play them. Which opens up 6/10ths of the die pools that weren’t available in the older design.

I think that having the complication of a dual resolution is worth those results.

Monday, August 8, 2016

David and Goliath
I was working on Parliament on my last sleepless night (the only time I get the best stuff out from myself for Parliament). I have come to the realization that downtime is a necessary part of the growth into the higher echelons of power. So, I was trying to solve the problem of voluntary downtime in a competitive game.

The idea I had been bandying around was that, players could get GM actions (like increasing challenges or activating Retribution mechanics) while in downtime against active players. The action economy would be consistent, so as more players entered downtime there would be more “GM actions” and less active players to target. Not a terrible rule, needs development but it could work.

The issue actually comes in after that mechanic transpires. Because it can force the “trailing” player(s) into downtime at a sub-optimal time, it can create a substantial power gap. Which, while a desirable outcome, leaves the trailing player at a disadvantage that they need to rectify before they’re steamrolled.

So now my challenge is: How to create a set of “David VS Goliath” mechanics, where a weaker foe can overcome a stronger one.

There are a few important points to consider, and I’m surely missing some:

1. More power is granted from smart play and taking risks. It is a reward. If the rules over-balance in favor of weaker players, it becomes foolish to pursue power because it is actually a disadvantage. It then mutates into a punishment for power: not a desirable outcome.

2. Rewarding one player is indistinguishable from punishing every other player in a zero-sum game.

3. Setting the terms of engagement is the strategy used to win a game. There are valid arguments for either stronger or weaker to set these terms (power VS flexibility), but granting it to either is the pivot-point of balance.

4. The stronger player has a safety net for failure, so that they can afford to lose. The weaker player does not. Their failures and successes are matters of life and death.
5. Players will get frustrated if being weaker is impossible to recover from. The David VS Goliath mechanics are a necessary part of design.

6. It should be possible to, through clever play, go from a weaker position to a stronger one.

And all of these points can’t get in each other’s way. If I over-emphasize point 6, I endanger point 1, etc. Thankfully, they don’t all have such a contrary relationship. There is a fair synergy to them.

What I’m thinking of is allowing point 3 (the setting of terms) to balance point 4 (the safety net). If I make challenging the stronger player a bigger risk for the weaker and grant them higher rewards for success, I don’t take enough away in loss from the stronger player to invalidate their position, but I give enough to the weaker to eventually catch up.

Of course that’s going to need some more specificity and development, but you know, it’s not a bad starting point…

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Saga nears completion. I can tell, because when I read the rules they are both delightful and informative. I find myself doing editing passes to add a rule or clarify something, then discovering the changes I was about to make in the text. This is a good sign.

Here is the current, not-entirely finished text. Take and enjoy! Any criticism or comments are eagerly welcomed.

One thing that isn't super clear in the text that might come up: The Hexes are about the same size as the tiles for Settlers of Catan. I.e., they're HUGE. They were designed that way to allow the use of minis and to keep a tight focus in combat.



Monday, August 1, 2016

Hexes…. Again.
At this point Saga of a Strange World is on its fifth version. I remind you, this is the game I am selling for free. I really thought that I would be able to squirt this thing out in a couple of weeks. I truly did.

So I’m going to use the two-month blunder of its design as a chance to pontificate on the necessity of playtesting.

Every single Thursday (and this really should become a podcast) I run a playtest of my latest system for whichever game I’m designing. My long-suffering friends dutifully learn a new system, or a revised version of that same system, and attempt to roleplay through the mire of half-formed rules.

These playtests have been enlightening and agonizing. In addition to the much-needed ego puncture, they invariably reveal the flaws, critical and small, that exist within a body of rules.

Case in point. After the initial two weeks of design, I had enough done in Saga to give it to one of my play testers to run. I got to be a player. He ran us through a two-session scenario purely of his own devising, informed only by the rules and whatever mad rantings I puked out to him as he frantically read the test rules.

His story and characters were awesome. My system was not. It predicted a weird, unintuitive word were people were born wizards or hedge-wizards and could never get any better through study or practice (I hadn’t intended that). It made a world were, although you were guaranteed to win any given fight, you better choose the biggest bad guy or you would be a bleeding stump by the time his 
three buddies fought you in succession.

It made a game where you succeeded before you rolled, but you were always a loser in the end. It sucked hard.

So I went back to first principles. I redesigned the entire combat system, adding a hex-based movement grid and pass/fail rolls. I made a robust reputation system, revised and expanded the magic rules, created an “emergent” in-game economy (one that shows up in play, rather than one dictated by the rules) etc., etc.

I did a ton of work. And since it was pretty skeletal by the time it got revamped, I ran the next test session.

I won’t call it a disaster. It flew, but awkwardly. Like a chicken that dreamt of being a condor.
The combat system was a zero-sum game, like Risk. However, that format is very, very carefully balanced in Risk. Not so here. Combats swung back and forth ad nauseam. The emergent trade economy of Settlers of Catan is also, as it turns out, very carefully balanced. Mine quickly become a confused mess.

And magic… It had dominated the first tests, quickly becoming a player and GM favorite. Determined to keep it dangerous, I over-balanced it into oblivion. Nobody was casting spells anymore, either because of the risk or because of the obscene amount of complexity making it incomprehensible.

So I went back to the drawing board… Again. I redesigned the movement system to be more risk-like, with organic looking “areas” replacing the hexes. I re-redesigned the combat system so it had a “diminishing returns” to reduce the swing. I pulled out 9/10ths of the casting rules and disentangled them from the resource mechanics, opting for a risk-management system. I clarified and studied the bronze-age economy (for which there is an impressive body of research).

Finally, the last (as in “most previous” not “final”) playtest. I ran again, this time echoing the previous two-session outing. It went over well! The combat was deadly and tactical. The magic was dangerous and strong. The reputation system dovetailed nicely with the natural roleplaying. The resource system created fun, in-character bartering and dealing. It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!!!

So only minor problems arose from this test. Ranged combat was too strong. Magic needed more 
reliability to balance its risks. And my beloved “areas” didn’t have a place anymore. Their tactical need vanished once I allowed more than one character to strike from an area.


So I've had to replace every instance of “area” with “hex” in the text. Again. C’est la vie.