Wow I've had my head into designing the PWYW for Tiang Shang....

Had a nice big thread on RPG.Net discussing the game, put my head together with the design teams and we're working on a 2-year business plan, and we also re-named the project, finally settling on Tian Shang: All Above Heaven.

So David's contacting artists, we're putting together a financial plan, a release schedule, project goals, etc. etc.

It's been a lot of work!

I've been designing and writing for the intro adventure and the core system. There has been a lot of effort to keep the core mechanics as lean as possible and to explain them thoroughly. That means writing, re-writing, editing, testing, re-re-writing, re-editing, adding examples, and then I had to write a tutorial on top of that. Did I mention that the tutorial doubles as the first act of the intro adventure? Haha, my eyes are bleeding!!

It's hard work to write something for an audience like that. Ultimately the result will be clear, comprehensible rules with a solid jumping-on point for new players, so it's very worth it. But man, it is tedious.

So yesterday I took a break and wrote THIS Awesome shoot 'em up system I call SHMUP V.1. It's based on my childhood love of games like contra. It's got an isometric map, and it's all about run n' gun, baby. The rough draft is a bit. Well. Rough. But it's a full, playable game with two pages of rules!

If you want to give her a test, leave some feedback! I might make it into something yet!

Big Ramble about my involvement with the Legends of the Gods successor game

I was super excited for Legends of the Wulin. I remember that I had just discovered Weapons of the Gods and gotten my hands on a copy. I was still trying to grok the secret arts when I stumbled on some buzz about the new system.

There was Arik ten Broeke on youtube, talking about his masterful work on the game. His smooth and cultured tones laying out the shortcomings of the previous game, and some clever solutions to them.

Now I’ll waggle my cane a bit here about the landscape of wuxia gaming back then. The game that had hooked me on the medium was Exalted second edition, and I remember it as the 800-pound gorilla of kung fu action RPGs. It’s scale and scope were essentially unrivaled. Do it yourselfers could hack something with Fate, or use a super hero system, but there wasn’t much more. And of course, playing an all-monk party in D&D had about as much appeal then as it does now.

I grabbed the pre-release version as soon as it was available. I remember being bowled over by the size and depth of the game. It felt like I could hack this thing to do anything from DBZ to final fantasy (people with a lot more patience and skill than myself did!). I remember being almost obsessed with it. I thought about it all the time.

It was a long wait to get the physical book, but finally it arrived. I had sworn not to run it until I had a reference handy (my tablet, then as now, was not sufficient for GMing). With absolute relish, I got character sheets and ran.

It’s not uncommon for new games to be a little awkward, especially “fat games” with lots of rules and widgets. I chalked our first session up to new game syndrome and we ran the next. But it didn’t get better. Combats would drag out without results then end in a sudden fit. Consequences vaporized between battles. Non-combat world interaction was clumsy, with the dice offering several answers to binary question. The balance points were all interconnected in a dense, clunky weave and I often felt that I was ruling in the dark.

I tried again, In a successor campaign. Then again, in another. I tried handing it off to someone else to run and playing. Every time, it was the same. The game looked like a ballet and played like a brick. Eventually, EX3 got kickstarted and Legends drifted towards the back of my library.

But I didn’t forget it. Then, while wandering RPG.net (like you do) I saw a post by Wander Blade (David Ramirez) trying to get some fresh talent to do a rules-light rewrite of LotW. I leaped at the chance.

It was exciting to work with him and the team he’d assembled. We were driven and goals-focused in our design work. We drew on the accumulated knowledge and experiences of reviewers and fans of the game. We crunched numbers and assembled lists of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. We started structuring towards a solid first draft, and were poised to playtest.

And then Eos fell apart. I’ll not belabor what we all remember but it was such a distressing time for the team that we had somebody walk away (a big talent, I won’t name names but it broke my heart not to work with him anymore).

We were pretty directionless at that point. We had done so much work that it seemed a shame to let it all go to waste, but without Eos there wasn’t really anything to do with it all. But, as he infallibly does, our team lead David Ramirez had a plan.

David had been polishing his own setting for a few years. He suggested that we take the bulk of our work and adapt it to his setting to make an entirely new game.

Since then we've had over three rules drafts and countless very enlightening playtests. After over a year of independent design, we’re almost ready to showcase our game.

I’m currently polishing up the design documents and making an audience-facing draft. It’s a big job, but immensely satisfying.

Since we're at a nice, elastic point in the writing right now, I'm posting this up to see what suggestions the community has for a successor game. Once we absorb the feedback, it'll be time for the penultimate revision, then the BIG playtest. After that, its all production until the PDF gets released.

It's a good time to be a fan of Wuxia!

Behold the latest art commission! I really like this one; it was the test run for our new artist on Brahamanda!!!: Jessica Cox!

She's been doing amazing stuff for awhile and you should totally check out her awesome art.

We've got her beavering away on the cover for a first test-run release of the system. It's going under the working title "Journey to the Western Galaxy". Its an acid-Asian retelling of the monkey king legend.

We're hoping to keep our costs low enough to make it a "pay-what you want" so that everybody who's interested can take a peek at what we've been up to!

So, the future's looking bright for all you wuxia fans out there!

Well, that's a wrap for Random ACKS of Violence. We're going back to non-recorded sessions. I haven't decided what to shift the videos to yet. Reviews and playtests maybe...?

Our penultimate session:

And our farewell session:

The free dungeon from the Patreon has now been thoroughly plundered. I'm going to focus on tightening up the PDF and getting it ready for art, etc. In the meantime, the Castle of Count Z is dominating my design. I want to have it done in the next few days, but that's dependent on a few factors (including school, which I'm unfortunately behind on).

If I get it done I'll post it up. Let's hope for a Halloween release!

I got a Red and Pleasant Land and Vornheim: the complete city kit yesterday. I'm going to be busy for awhile...

Meanwhile, I'm way behind on posting these:

I'm actually 2 behind. The guy playing Hank informed me that this was his farewell session, which is too bad. I humbly dedicate the episode to Hank the Cleric in his honor

Dig that turtleneck huh? I'm trying really hard to be this guy professionally. I'll let you be the judge.

The Dwarf Slayer

For those of you unfamiliar with the Warhammer fantasy Dwarven slayer, check ‘em out! 

I always add these guys (and the Dwarven book of grudges) to every game I run. For my BECMI / ACKS game, here are their rules: 

-Any dwarf vaultguard who becomes tremendously shamed, or who accrues debt beyond their ability to repay, may join the slayers to redeem themselves through glorious death.

-They foreswear the use of armor (they are trying to die, after all)

-They spike their hair with hog fat, getting rad orange/red mohawks

-They receive grudge tattoos from a craftpriest. These magic markings help them to survive until they can find a glorious death. Mechanically, if they lose their last HP to an attack from a creature with less HD than their level, they save VS death. If they succeed, they immediately gain 1D4 HP and continue fighting!

-They take the Slayer’s Oath, a mystical Dwarven oathspell which protects their hearts and minds from harm. If they should fail a save which mystically enslaves or beguiles their mind, they may give themselves over to rage and enter a berserk fury for 2D4 turns, ignoring any urgings save their desire to destroy to revenge their shame.

-A slayer always gives away all of the gold they earn or any share of the treasure they would keep, save for a pittance for food and meagre supplies. This “wasted” gold is banked towards the (inevitable) replacement character that will step into the slayer’s shoes when they find their glorious death.

Also, time for some more random ACKS of violence!

So, after a few test runs, I have created the first draft of the free sample dungeon for the Patreon.

Some notes:

1. It is missing the rumors chart and adventure hooks in this draft. That is because I stayed up all night finishing the key and I am tired. They will be added to complete its utility.

2. It is OSR/BECMI compatible, but has not been upgraded to be fully compatible with 5th edition D&D yet. This will also be done, given time.

3. This dungeon is meant as an introductory adventure. It adopts the OSR mindset of level-neutrality in that, aside from a general power curve around 5 HD, there is no thought given to encounters being "level appropriate". Daring this dungeon should be done with caution, every time, by everyone.

4. I have a copy of deities and demigods, which when filtered through the strange genius on exhibit in this article, spawned this dungeon. I hope you like Celtic Deities.

5. Wow I am really tired.

6. I have never done anything in publisher before. I kind of hate it. I had to resort to drawing the map in bloody ms paint. If anybody has any helpful pointers for better mapping or how to wrangle publisher to not be a jackass, I would very much appreciate it.

7. As a GM, I am a bit of a Monty Haul. There is a lot of treasure in this thing. Most of it is balanced by a horrible drawback, but your characters stand to gain a lot by risking this dungeon. You've been warned.

THE NEXT DAY

Okay, so I've slept now. Time to unpack:

Some of the thought and effort that went into this dungeon

1. The Jaquays technique (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon)

This series of articles inspired the nonlinear layout of the dungeon.

There are multiple entrances to every level, allowing players to explore the dungeon in a unique way each time they encounter it.

Also, as you guys can see here (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaD16z1FQGeKmdCyqxdjvdu7h7pJTnSXE) (if you’ve got a few hours) the dungeon plays different depending on how it is approached. This is one of the coolest things offered by the Jaquays technique.

Removing the linearity of the dungeon means that there is no set “encounter path”: the story and history of the dungeon is learned holistically as it is explored. Each room and level reveals a little more.

The dungeon reveals itself through play( http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-i-want-to-hear-about-your-setting.html ). When you crawl through this ancient, monster-infested church, the nature of it sinks into your bones.

You don’t just encounter an ogre: you encounter a Fomor. Rather than attacking, he engages you with an impossibly cultured voice, constructing a case for his loathing of the gods.

You don’t just find a magic item: You find a Tathlum, made from the head of an ancient bloodline’s kin.

You don’t just see a painting of Arawn, the god of death: the skeletons in this room see it to, and they’re spellbound.

2. Get some mileage out of the Deities and Demigods (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/10/deities-and-demigods-is-totally-book.html)

That blog post really inspired me to take another look at Deities & Demigods. Thumbing through it, I realized just how gameable its contents were.

The unique features in rooms, most of the items, enemies, wolves, waterfalls, statues with hideous faces: all of it comes from the Celtic God’s section of that book.

Like, did you know what a tathlum is? Because I didn’t. But now I’m glad I do!

3. Something cool in every room

No article link for this one, because I can’t find the quote that inspired it (drat)

But the basic idea is this: if a room is in this dungeon there has to be something cool in it.

Just to throw out a single example: there is a stone pair of hands that crushes anything placed between them to powder. There is another room where 3K GP’s worth of gold is sitting on the floor but oops: it’s cursed, and turns into flesh-eating scarabs every night.

My players took the cursed gold and crushed it with the giant hands: bam, 3K’s worth of gold dust. Brilliant

And I didn’t design that. I would never have thought of it. Players are rewarded for being imaginative and combining the unique features of the dungeon in unexpected ways.

4. More than one thing going on (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/03/zaks-ez-adventure-making-chart_30.html )

The core of this dungeon looked a little like this when I started:

Chaos sorcerer/Cursed sword/ Troll/ Magic healing fountain/ Ghost

Then I used the technique outlined in the linked article to define all of these element’s relationship to each other. For example:

Chaos sorcerer: Covets the cursed sword, controls the troll by bribing it with the water from the magic healing fountain, which he manipulates. Fears the ghost, which guards the sword (like a ringwraith, because those are the best ghosts)

The Fomor came in at a later design stage, when I was trying to give the dungeon rival factions. But he fits really well (Like, it makes sense that he can’t overcome the sorcerer’s troll despite his fire attack, because it’s not possible for it to do enough damage to slay the troll. But his power is enough that the sorcerer wouldn’t just attack him outright)

That final level with the wraith is creepy as hell too. It’s the deepest layer, and it’s cramped, and you’re alone. And all of the entries to the hero’s tomb are ominous (and if you’re smart, you’ll realize that they’re keeping the wraith trapped in his grave!)

This kind of churning factions/rivalry angle is pretty forgiving on players, because they can stack factions against each other and loot the place in the chaos.

5. Everything seems hostile

Nearly every single room has a feature (or an environment) which could house a trap. Or be cursed. Or have consequences if it’s screwed with.

The big rocks blocking the doors on level 1? If you move those, then the goblins raiding from the northern mountains will have two ways to harass the troll. The rock by the stairway is discouraging the Fomor from continuing his war with the Chaos sorcerer.

This dungeon is silly with ancient, blood-streaked statues. Adventurers have to balance their curiosity (or good intentions) against the very plausible possibility that interacting with these statues can call down the wrath of the gods (Don’t mess with those stone pillars of Dunatis, you could cause a landslide!)

Again, speaking from experience (and you can watch this on our playthrough) this makes the dungeon a place that players tend to crawl inch by inch, which gives it a great table presence.

6. More stuff

But frankly that’s enough bragging for now. Trust me in that a lot of thought and careful construction went into giving this thing a reason to be at your table!


EDIT: This dungeon is no longer on the patreon (that's been re-purposed for Lone Wolf fists). However, if you still want to check out the dungeon, here's a link to it!

Random ACKS of violence

So, we're now putting up our play sessions on the olde youtube:

Go and waste three hours of your life!

Generally we'll run whatever the hell game is currently tickling my fantasy (ACKS right now, this is a love that will not soon die) but also this is where you're going to see us do our playtests of the games designed by the Mushroom Press.

You're soon going to see us playtest our latest draft of Brahamanda!!! and then Parliament of Crocodiles. Stay tuned, true believers!

Goblins as nasty maggot monsters

Inspired by the dilemma of this thread (and also by this rant by the spoony one) I have opted to provide a workable and disgusting solution.

(Also, I always hated that goblins had like, two clearly distinct species which were carbon-copies of each other ((I dare you to give me a concrete difference between and goblin and hobgoblin)). So I took a swing at that one too.)

The life cycle and habitat of goblins

Goblins settlements never occupy the lowest level of their environment, and with good reason: that is where both their filth and their children inhabit.

The liquid and solid refuse of a goblin infestation filters down to caverns and tunnels below them, forming a sort of sewer. When goblins breed, the females (who are indistinguishable from the males, as they are not mammals) will journey to this labyrinth to lay their eggs.

Goblin eggs are soft and slimy and laid in massive clutches, similar to frog eggs. Goblin “children” more closely resemble a hideous cross between a tadpole and a gulper eel.

When goblin larva sprout limbs and venture out of their filthy spawning catacombs they are swiftly caught by the Spawn Wardens. These are goblin adults that are equal part slaver, trainer and drill sergeant. They train the spawnlings like dogs, teach them to fight and recruit them into their home clan for the glory of their leaders.

Goblins who survive their harsh early years as cannon fodder grow stouter and more cunning, becoming what humans call hobgoblins.



Those that live and succeed beyond this eventually grow to massive size, what men call bugbears.



The goblin king (whomever that may be) is generally the eldest goblin, swollen to tremendous size from a lifetime of wickedness and excess.

Why I like this

I like it because it makes you not feel bad about killing goblin babies or women. It makes women just the same as men (nasty, evil monsters) so its fine to slay them. It makes babies into gross vermin, far removed from doe-eyed, redeemable goblin babies.

It also makes the question of nature vs nurture academic. Goblin society harnesses the life cycle of their species into an engine creating endless cannon fodder, where the strong naturally rise to the top of the command hierarchy. Separating a goblin spawnling form this cycle would be very similar to taking a wolf from its pack. You wouldn’t redeem it: you would stunt it, warp it into a thing useful for humans. I do like that it opens up “domesticated goblin” as a thing, sort of like a powerless Darby.

Maybe if the players are really torn on killing “young” goblins they can just sell them to a goblin domesticator, with methods of training them that are only dubiously ethical.

I like that goblins get bigger and nastier and rarer as they age. That fits in with the CR paradigm really well and explains why goblins get along so well with bugbears and hobgoblins and the like. It also explains why their leaders are always big gross blobs.

I like the relationship wrinkle it puts in to goblin wolf riders. They have more of a lamprey/shark thing going on now.

I like that this makes goblin cities a sort of organic outgrowth of goblin nature. It makes a species like this make sense while giving them numbers to explain their ubiquity.

So there you go. A way to make both goblins and maggots worse. Enjoy!

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.

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)

Joel 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

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.

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.