The Development of a Damage System

In a game about kung-fu, you’re sunk without a robust damage system for tracking wounds.

We again inherited the framework of a fantastic wound system from the precursor game. The Ripples system was an abstracted damage system that lumped all varieties of harm (even social and spiritual harm!) into an increasing pool of dice. When a deadly enough attack struck, these dice were rolled and the highest set was matched to make a Chi Condition.

These conditions were both narrative and mechanical in turns. A character was expected to adhere to the narrative applied to them by the wound (which could include anything! Broken arms, suicidal depression, overzealous adherence to duty… Anything!). When their actions or descriptions did not align with this narrative, they instead took a mechanical penalty to compensate.

The foundation of this system was brilliant. It balanced narrative reality with mechanical incentive. The only issue was one of implementation.

One of the issues we recognized added to the bloat of combats was that there was no terminus point to damage. A character could have a billion ripples as long as they weren’t rolled by a sufficiently powerful attack. But this was secondary to the issues that arose with the Chi Conditions.

As it ran at the table, conditions could pile on very quickly, but they only rarely had a tangible game effect. The amount of steps to placing them led to an excessive over-balancing, meaning fights could drag on with very little change for many rounds.

There were no clear guidelines describing what could be a narrative wound, which led to such bizarre scenarios as a foe having “only the palms of his hands” burned so that he could not use his sword without penalty. Let it not be said that my players cannot find a mechanical advantage even in the most narrative of rules.

Most unsatisfying to myself, was the contrast of a particular brilliant idea with its own antithesis. At the end of a combat, all accumulated ripples were rolled to place on lasting consequences from the battle.

I loved this rule. It meant that as wounds piled on, even though they had no immediate effect (avoiding the dreaded “death spiral” of most wound systems) they did increase the risk of lasting consequences.

The let-down came in the recovery rules. First, they had to get through the character’s full defense, being reduced in severity by the result! Second, Characters got to roll their full, unmodified die pool constantly to reduce and recover these conditions, so even in the case where such conditions were even applied they swiftly vanished.

We addressed these issues in turn:

It was first proposed to implement a balance that actually appeared in the Legends rules: a track of ripples that left a character vanquished when it was filled. This created a clean terminal point to conflict, and gave characters a sense of urgency as they took wounds.

We renamed the Chi Conditions “Imbalances”. The old term had too much baggage with the previous game’s “secret arts”.

We did retain the “damage as dice” framework. We added that as a character continued to take damage that the severity of the Imbalances they received would increase appropriately.

Finally, to add between-combat “teeth” to Imbalances, we made the natural healing very slow. We balanced this out with a faster and riskier option of healing others with what amounted to field medicine.

Imbalances have a rules framework that demands a dramatic payoff. It doesn’t really matter what form that payoff takes, but if they go out with a whimper rather than a bang, a player is left wondering why they bothered to record them on their sheet at all.

So my thinking was, whether dealing with the natural character arc that would heal the imbalance or sweating it out on an operating table, there needed to be tension and drama generated by the imbalance. In this way, rather than serving a pure “hamper the players” style utility purpose, imbalances drove gameplay into the desired shape.

Building on the legacy of Legends of the Wulin

Legends was a fantastic game. Our work originally was revamping and simplifying this system, rather than authoring a wholly original one.

It wasn’t perfect. Its most dangerous flaw, from a product standpoint, was how “heavy” it was during play. Even as veteran gamers, single turns in combat could take my group upwards of 20 minutes to play.

As well, there was a punishingly steep learning curve which served as a barrier to entry. And there were some elements (most notably for my table it was the Chi Conditions) which did not feel in play as they were described in the system, which created a feeling of dissatisfaction about the game.

During our initial redesign, we latched on to several of these points with a list of “trouble areas” marked for improvement. In that draft of the design, our goal was to cleave as close to the original material as possible. However, once we decided to generate a new system, we instead wanted to diverge more radically.

The list of trouble points ranged from the severe to the trivial, and so I won’t list them all here. Rather, I want to highlight some of the critical areas we decided to change, how we changed them, and why.

Rolling the dice

The Problem: This was swiftly identified as the biggest contributor to combat bloat. Rolling the dice was done for every stage of initiative, attack and defense for every character, with multiple decision points on each roll.

Our Solution: One roll. In Brahamanda!!! The dice are rolled at the start of every round, with every die rolled then becoming a “facing”. These facings are then used as a pool of resources for performing actions, including initiative.

The Wound system

The Problem: There was a threefold issue with the wound system in our estimation.

1.  Combats could drag on interminably, prolonged by the nebulous nature of wound assignment.

2.  The wound system would routinely result in a lot of rolling for little to no payoff.

3.  Chi Conditions (which tracked damage narratively) recovered easily and had little game impact, despite having a massive word count in the rules

     Our Solution: Our solution was likewise threefold.

1.  First, we added a simple health track to give combat a defined endpoint.

2.  Second, we re-designed the system for applying narrative “lasting” wounds (We use the term “Imbalance”) so that as more damage was applied, the likelihood of taking these more permanent wounds become higher.

3.  Finally, we designed an escalation mechanic into the health track that guaranteed deadlier Imbalances as more health was lost.

The Combat Resource system

The Problem: The system of Chi (which powered special attacks and defenses) in the original game had an issue between different types of Chi being significantly more powerful than others. This resulted in lopsided power levels in play and was never adequately amended because of its intrinsic place in the system.

Our Solution:  We decided at an early design stage to eschew the different “types” of resource (Which we dubbed Prana). It was simply easier both from a design and play standpoint to have a more unified resource system. This effectively sidestepped the original problem completely.

One of the biggest changes to our resource system is that it escalates during combats, in addition to between them (with the expenditure of experience points).

Actions are taken during combat that create new pools of Prana (These pools are called Chakras; activating one is called “opening a Chakra”).

This change has radically altered the nature of combat, making it increasingly grandiose and explosive as it continues.

Modifiers

The Problem: Dozens of unique modifiers for almost every important roll bogged down the action with tedious reference. The math, although simple, was a little awkward.

Our Solution: We simplified the system of modifiers down to its bedrock form. We removed the “categories” of modifiers, replacing it with a rule that only one modifier could apply to a particular action. We also removed the +5 flat modifiers and replaced them with a system that created particular facings. Finally, we linked all modifiers to techniques, eschewing static modifiers entirely.

These changes, in aggregate, allowed us to directly link a character’s mastery and power of their martial training to the rank of techniques they had mastered, and their mystical might (as represented through Prana). This more satisfactorily captured the themes and structure of the Wuxia genre, while streamlining and providing a balance framework for the system

The Origins of Brahamanda!!!

When we first formed a team, our project was different. We were originally all gathered together by the great David Ramirez to do a revamping of the Legends of the Wulin rules set. He envisioned a “rules light” version of the game that would help introduce new players.

Our project shaped up really nicely. We started by identifying points of the game where the complexity was a detriment rather than a boon, and worked on ironing those spots out with simpler alternatives.

We soon realized that merely doing a stripped-down version of the game to introduce it was going to result in problems. Players were going to run into the problems we were fixing when they “graduated” to the full game!

So our project burgeoned out of its original scope. We began to re-design Legends of the Wulin.
During this time, the infamous scandal that brought down Eos transpired. Legends was, at least in any official or commercial sense, done for.

David, dauntless, wanted to make sure that the work we had done wasn’t completely lost. He shared with us his idea for a new wuxia game; one set in a sci-fi universe based on a mix of Hindu and Chinese myths. It caught everyone’s imaginations and our work took on a new direction.

These were the origins of the project we’re currently bringing to life. It’s been dubbed “Brahamanda!!!”

I’m the head designer of the system. Most of my posts therefore are going to describe the mechanical side of the development. Make no mistake though, the setting is being co-written by David and it is fantastic, evocative and cool. Where I can I’ll dropping some info about that too.

Parliament of Crocodiles intro fiction

This is a good example of the kind of style and evocativeness I try to bring to the games I make. I've tried to keep this intro fiction short, punchy, and fun.

Intro Fiction

The humidity and heat of the city made it like a living animal in the night. The human filth pumping through the arteries of its streets were its blood and bile. She swam through its veins like a virus, scudding along the slick mirror of wet asphalt with confident strides. Her every nerve was raw and alert. Hunger verging on frenzy drove her. She craved crisp marrow-rich bones and hot, red globs of flesh.

She turned a corner into a garbage-choked alleyway. Her stalker didn’t know that she felt him following her. As he homed in on her his shadow swelled in the orange illumination of the last lonely streetlight. She heard the velvety click of his switchblade, felt his hot breath even at this distance.

“Scream and you die, Honey”

He was right behind her now, adrenaline making his pitiful mortal body tremble. She smiled to herself, her face split by the inhuman wideness of her maw. She turned on him. His face contorted into a mask of terror as he crumpled. He managed to churn out one terrified moan before it was choked out by the wet crunching of bone and flesh.

First post. I'm starting this blog to get word out about my game design company the Mushroom Press.  Currently all of the projects being worked on are tabletop role playing games. In no particular order, here are the games that are currently being designed:

Devil Hunter: a game of kung-fu heroes battling demons in ancient China

4-Color Heroes: a rules-flexible super heroes game with an emphasis on the dramatic themes of the super hero genre

Strangers in the Night: A diceless, non-violent game of spies and infiltration

Parliament of Crocodiles: A dark Id release game of monsters and conquest in a brooding modern setting

And with the Burning Scholars:

Brahamanda!!!: An Acid-Asian wuxia game set in the sci-fi genre

These are all in various stages of being designed.

Brahamanda!!! is actually being playtested currently!

Parliament has the core elements done, but the larger-scale resource and conquest mechanics have yet to be finalized.

Strangers is almost completely done, but needs to be put into an "audience-facing" format.

Devil Hunter is about halfway done; it is a huge ambitious project on the scale of Pathfinder/ Dungeons and Dragons (although with a unique system).

4-Color Heroes is still in an early design/ concept stage.

Each of these games has a unique system (distinct from all the others as well). They have various degrees of complexity and no one overarching design theory unifies them. I'm trying very hard to tailor systems to table-experience so that each game is uniquely satisfying.