Lore and Siddhi

Finally! I spent the last week working on this, getting it updated and flexed out. The big holdup was the large-scale resource system, which is still in the shop. Ultimately, it's a bit too big of a bite to take for the PWYW, so y'all are going to have to be patient on that one (It's looking like you'll see it realized in part 3, and then again in lone wolf fists when I get around to fleshing that out).

Without further ado:

Lores start out like your typical "splat"; they give you a broad-scale overview of the in-universe thing it represents (in this case the Varja Lotus, Tripitaka's brotherhood of "I can't believe they're not Buddhists!"). I also threw in a bit afterwards giving you some reasons why you'd include the lore in your game or as part of a character, because that saves you having to read the whole damn lore if the thesis doesn't grab you.

Lores are the key to advancing in this game: they're the training manuals, wizened masters and martial brotherhoods that offer training in the fighting arts. I wanted to make certain that the advancement mechanics were rooted in the in-genre conceits of Wuxia and Shonen; if you got stronger, its because you trained, and if you learned a new move, its because someone taught you.

If you want to purchase a new Siddhi, Gupt Kala, or Skill Mastery, you've got to get it from an organization you've entangled yourself with. There's another mechanic, not present on this sheet but in the works, which directly tracks how much favor you've curried with an organization, and this determines what they're willing to teach you (as a base; individual masters are almost always eccentric weirdos, but that's for you to roleplay, not the rules to dictate)

The Lotus offer three Masteries, I suspect most organizations will offer a similar amount. Spirit is the real keystone to the martial arts and shadow arts that they teach, so if you take this Lore it's what I'd recommend for your first choice. Spirit mastery also gives you +1 rank to open a Chakra, which is crazy powerful.

Finally, you get to see some of the Siddhis in their signature martial art style. I learned when writing them that their formatting follows the formatting of charms in Exalted very closely! It wasn't intentional, but if you're familiar with that game then you'll note the similarity right away. I guess those guys knew what they were doing.

The martial arts template I devised is separated into 4 tiers: Novice (beginning techniques taught to amateurs), Expert (More powerful techniques for your "established" kung-fu badasses), Master (Which is what your wizened masters use to whup your butt), and Ultimate, which is the cherry of the asskick cake.

(David specifically requested the giant-golden-hand-of-god attack; I made it an homage to kung-fu hustle because how could I resist?)

So let's talk about Siddhi

The Name is pretty self-explanatory. In a noteable divergence from Exalted, people in the Galaxy above Heaven actually use the crazy over-the-top names and recognize that they're using their magic to cast kung-fu spells.

The Rank is worthy of mention; it's the amount your base roll is increased in increments of ten. So like, if it's rank 1, that's +10. Rank 3 is +30. This helped to keep our math as single-digit as possible, which considering how much you have to track was a major boon.

Facings deserves some explanation as well. When you roll your Effort pool (a big ol' pile of d10s), the numbers you generate are the Facings of the dice. Siddhis only generate "dice" of certain facings; in the case of say, Maitreya's Palm, this is any Facing between 6-8.

What this means is that you can boost dice sets you've rolled in your Effort pool or stored in your Focus slots, but only if they have the right Facing.

On the other hand, you can just straight-up generate an action if you want. Using a Siddhi isn't any different, rules-wise, from just rolling a set, or constructing one from your Focus dice. So if you just want to burn through your magic go-go juice, you can shoot all the eyebeams you can afford. Speaking of which....

Cost is the amount of Prana it takes to use the Siddhi. Nothing much to explain there.

Power is the meat of the Siddhi. It describes the mechanical effect and restrictions of the technique. There are some keywords, because certain rules have juuuust enough text and appear in juuuuust enough techniques that keywords are a no-brainer option. Offensive can only be used to attack, Defensive only for defense, to give an example.

Arik suggested that, in addition to the more-or-less linear power scalar that more powerful Siddhi introduce, we focus on interesting "rider effects" that broaden the scope of what can be accomplished with magical punches. I loved the idea, so there's a ton of cool stuff that Siddhi do apart from just throw Hadokens back and forth.

Here's a peek into our take on the secret arts. Unlike Legends, the damage from such techniques isn't rolled into physical damage; they're kept separate by a mechanic called Aggravation. This lets you manipulate or create Imbalances without accidentally knocking your target unconscious.

(Actually wait, did it work like that? I've been eyeball-deep in designing this game for so long, I might be misremembering how LotW handled this)

I didn't dare try to recreate the genius which was the secret arts section of Legends of the Wulin; that part of the game is basically perfect, all I could do would be make a watered-down version. So I came at the shadow arts or Gupt Kala from a different angle, treating them more like martial arts styles instead of a set of general principles that practitioners mastered.

Treating them like this had the upswing that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel as far as learning new moves was concerned; go back to your master or seek out a new one and learn some new techniques, just the same as Siddhi.

Here's another feature of Lores (that was present in previous versions, just not as emphasized): the places, treasures and peoples of the organization.

Because LotW and WotG didn't concern themselves mechanically with locations (which Tian Shang does with battlefields, elements, the tactical infinity, and the effect chart) there wasn't much emphasis on detailing locations like strongholds or interesting features of the scenery.

This was a much bigger issue in WotG; the descriptions of places are airy and insubstantial, couched in flowering, poetic language that's just this side of worthless on a game table. Legends added some more meat to locations (I'm particularly fond of the Great Wall loresheet that let you make up interesting histories for different sections while you're fighting on them: classic!), but LotW was more concerned with the dramatic and thematic dimensions of locations, less with their actual terrain.

For Legends, this was because tactics were centered around narrative keywords, not environmental interaction mechanics. Its a perfectly viable approach; Fate uses this approach too.

But environmental interaction was a keystone of our design (the Effect chart is the central pillar of this design philosophy). The wonderful thing about the chart is that it allows us (and GMs) to create a description of an area (in the case of this Lore, the Vajra Lotus stronghold-temple) and then use the rules selectively as it is interacted with to create its tactical dimension. Just how sturdy are those gigantic walls? How much punishment can that crystal lotus take? GMs make the call on the fly, take a note, and add the tactical infinity to the area in an imminently gameable fashion. Sweet.

The actual game-effect of things like the cloning chambers and gene-therapy labs are clear and gameable, adding a new dimension to the game when they're introduced. Its my hope that, with the toolbox mechanics we've built into the system, inclusions of entries like this encourage GMs to add a gameable dimension to the things they introduce into their own games.

Finally, the leadership and membership of the organization is detailed. Because our character sheets only consist of a few dense elements, we don't have to waste a lot of word count on stat blocks (thank god). The degree of a character gives you the number of techniques they have, their action pool, focus, health, skill masteries... Nearly everything.

Also, our minion rules are a touch more robust and comprehensible than previous editions. I really want people to use minions, so they're balanced to present a challenge to "proper" characters. I was a little underwhelmed by the LotW minions (they were nearly a joke, going last and rolling so few dice, possessing a total lack of interaction with the kung-fu mechanics, etc.). These guys even get special moves (although they're just retreads of the "proper" versions of the earliest kung-fu moves. I like to think of them as the most fundamental forms that characters master on their way to achieving enlightenment)

Wrapping up, we've got the minor dharma and zui consequence list. These are a crack, so I'm going to dig into them a bit while I've got you here.

The XP-mechanism of this game is the Dharma mechanics. Characters get two varieties; greater Dharma, which is picked from a list of big-deal destinies at character creation, and minor Dharma, which are hitched up to Lores.

They both share mechanics. When you do (or choose not to do) something that resonates with your destiny, you get some XP (called Kharma). If you do something anathemic to your destiny, you still get Kharma, but get an equal amount of Zui, which is like bad kharma or a looming divine punishment.

There's a list of triggers to give players and GMs an idea of what the destiny is trying to get the character to do, but each xp-action is initiated, negotiated and agreed upon by player and GM on a case-by-case basis (guidelines for this conversation are helpfully included, of course)

Minor Dharma tie into an organization's goals; you directly link your conduct to their reputation and goals when they agree to train you (or serve as am embarrassment to them if you steal their secrets).
If you're upstanding and act to further their goals, you get Kharma. If you're a jackass and screw up their plans, you get some well-deserved Zui punishment (I like to think of it as "learning the hard way")

(There's a mechanic that needs a touch longer to cook, which relates your conduct to your standing in the organization, but you probably won't see it before the second part of the quickstart)

Zui sits on your character sheet as a resource for the GM to spend. They have a shopping list handily provided to them by your Lores that they can purchase from with Zui. It contains enemies, misfortune, annoyances, and other delightful disasters to rain on your character's head for taking the easy, sinful path.

(Also, GMs are not restricted to this list to introduce challenges into the game. This isn't Dungeon World; GMs can make a lot of this stuff happen as a result of play. But THIS lets them justify it as a pure manifestation of your earned bad luck)

Note that, they don't have to spend Zui earned from a given Lore on that Lore's Zui Consequence list; they can spend it on whatever Lores you've entangled yourself with. kharma pans out in all sorts of unexpected ways!

.....

Well that's our teaser! David's sent the text off to the editor, says it should be done about mid-next month. He and Victor Andrade, our graphic designer (and many-hat-wearing co-game designer and author) are looking at different layouts this month as well. So, happy holidays to all, and we'll see you next year, when we take the kung-fu RPG world by storm!

Editing=Hell

Christ; had to unify and edit act 1 today. And this is before sending it to the real editor. Good luck buddy; hopefully its comprehensible enough for you to do your job with some confidence.

I still need to update the Lores and Siddhis with the current nomenclature and design paradigm. But I think I might sleep first...

Linking the rules to the shared mindspace: The importance of the Effect Chart

Here's my gem, the Effect Chart:

You're going to notice a lot of similarity here to this old thing:

And indeed that's the origin of the Effect Chart. The design behind both is rooted in same goal; to allow the modeling of superheroic effort in a game that otherwise cleaves closely to reality.

There are a few elements of this worth explaining in detail:

-The same mechanic for attacking and defending is used for all effort. This allows you to roll your action pool once, and have that roll express the sum total of a character's capabilities in that round. It also gives you tons more options per roll.

-Every character can perform every skill. The seven skills are Power (physical strength and leverage) Finesse (dexterity, agility, and speed) Endurance (toughness and stamina) Senses (environmental awareness and attention to detail) Intellect (skill, depth and speed of thought) Heart (charisma, social adaptability) and Spirit (psychic and spiritual awareness and control).

-The chart determines what effect a skill roll of a given rank can do. It gives both players and GMs a clear idea of the outcome of a (skill) action of (given rank). This works in two directions, both great:
1. Without needing to numericize their prep, a GM can make an on-the-spot call for the difficulty of an action "That boulder? About as heavy as a car, so that's Power Rank 4 to lift"
2. It benchmarks the effects of physical phenomena. "That boulder? About as heavy as a car, so that's a Rank 4 environmental crushing effect as it falls on you"

-Because the math behind the action pool exponentially favors multiple low-rank sets over higher ones, the path to climbing the effect chart is with roll modifiers. The system has two (broadly): Masteries, which give a flat, free +1 rank to actions of a particular skill, and Siddhis (your kung-fu techniques), which increase an action by a number of ranks for a cost in Prana. This means that higher-ranked actions (which have a bigger impact) rely indirectly on capability or magic.

-The chart is also capped from raw rolls; the highest a purely mortal roll can accomplish is Rank 6, which is about what I peg spiderman could do on a good day. Higher effects must be breached with more powerful techniques (Low-levels open rank 7, while the grand master techniques allow any result to be achieved), making the crazy DBZ-stuff an outgrowth of magic.

-It allows a GM to say "you can do what a person can reasonably do" as a shorthand for interaction with the tactical infinity, but it *also* allows them to say "You can do crazy DBZ stuff if you roll high enough", which puts pretty much any Shonen (Bleach, Naruto, DBZ...) on the table. It effectively allows this engine to work like the logic of Shonen, putting "normal person, but can become superhuman" fully on the table.

The chart does more than all of this, but these things are extremely important. I could probably run the game with just the action pool, health, focus, and this chart. But of course, what would magical space kung-fu be without the kung-fu? Next time I'll explain some of the development of Lores and the Siddhis that call them home.

Tripitaka, the Monkey King, and the Robots

Here are those character sheets I promised!

Tripitaka

There's that wonderful Grobelski piece, plus a little splash-intro to the character. I tried to keep in punchy, but to give a definite direction to a player picking this up for the first time.

Here you're seeing what a character sheet looks like on the table. It's meant to be functional; the empty circles are places that you literally place dice after you roll them, or save then in the focus slots. You're meant to write health in the health boxes. The pools of Prana are meant to have tokens placed in them (glass beads were used in the in-house playtesting). You're also getting a peek at the advancement system as well; again, those empty spaces are meant to be filled with tokens, dice, or writing at the player's preference.

Here's our current layout for the Siddhis and Gupt Kala sheet (your special kung-fu techniques). these are tied to advancement; as you learn newer, more powerful techniques, your overall power level increases, resulting in more action dice, focus slots, and accessible chakra. The empty areas under "power" are meant to contain either the rules text of the technique, or a brief summary and page number for ease of reference.

Sun Wukong

The Robot (Sentry)

The sentry here doesn't have a character sheet, but it's still laid out in such a way as to be functional if printed and placed on a table during a game. A big part of the strategy of this game relies on players being able to see what the bad guy's resources look like (this is often referred to as "system transparency"). What it's action pool has rolled, what it's saved in focus slots, how much Prana it has and will get in future rounds, and how much damage it's taken are all big and clear, so that players can gain familiarity with the strategic elements of gameplay from the quickstart.

Excerpt and art from Tian Shang

Hello everyone! Well it's finally happening: we're gearing up for the release of the Tian Shang quickstart. Since I've busted my keister on it (and since I'm impatiently waiting for everything to finalize) I wanted to share some early draft excerpts with y'all.

The Art

Let me start with the art. This is our chapter-header for act 1. For the quickstart, you're going to see this on the cover. What I love about RPG art, beyond it's "eyecatch" quality, is that it gives a GM the ability to point to something and say "That! You're fighting that"

What you're seeing expertly depicted (by the immeasurably talented Christof Grobelski) up there is the first fight scene with the two pregens Sun Wukong and Tripitaka. Yes, that sentry is your first opponent, and yes, you can smash it with Monkey's Ruyi Jingu Bang (the huge red club: it changes shape!) or adhere one of those holographic demon-sealing strips to it.

The Quickstart

We jump right into it! Bam, you're a clone! Bam, get the monkey king! Bam, scale that mountain! Bam, fight that robot! Wait I'm skipping ahead. You can also see one of the Arik Ten Broeke's suggested additions to the text here; that little callout box for gaming on the internet.
(For those not in the know, Arik was one of the brilliant designers of Legends of the Wulin)

The core mechanics of the game start getting introduced here. I'm particularly fond of the little d10 images I made up there; they're adorable.

The core mechanics, as you'll note, have a lot in common with Legends in terms of how you roll and score dice. You roll your action pool's dice (in this case 4d10) and match them into sets of same-numbered dice. The more same-facing dice in a set, the more powerful the action.

Just like Legends, rolling more than one set allows you to take more than one action in a turn. I greatly admired this rule; it had the dual advantage of empowering players with strategic choice and empowering their characters with lightning-fast flurries of action.

A recurring theme of my work in the mechanics has been just polishing already-genius things like this and making them just a squinch more defined.

You're also seeing a taste of the Effect chart from later in the book. This thing was the core of my new contribution to the system, and I'm just aching to talk about it, but I'm going to shut up until you can see the whole thing (dammit).

Yeah baby, time for some carnage! 

One of the things I wanted to do here was demonstrate to GMs how to frame success and failure in terms of an ongoing game. In a less linear module, I would have allowed a failure state ("You don't manage to climb the rocks, and must find a new way up...") but here I'm happy to take the advice of Vincent Baker and Luke Crane and just "fail them forward". It's important to have plenty of techniques in your bag of GM tricks.

Another important thing kept from Legends is the "Chi Imbalance" mechanics (here simply Imbalances). Again, the framework of the mechanic is identical: you have an injury, and choose between manifesting it with a mechanical penalty or with a limitation on your character's described actions.

Where I polished this is small, but important. First, you "lock in" either of the ways of dealing with it at the start of each of your turns. This allows you flexibility over a battle, but forces you to commit to only one approach in a given turn (this set predictability makes strategy easier for both you and your foes, greatly speeding up play).

Second, the descriptive dimension is given a thorough treatment on the next few pages under "Reaching into the Tactical Infinity". This gives GMs and players a framework for using their descriptions to interact with the game world in a non-mechanical way, that doesn't intrude on or devalue the mechanics. Rather, it frames the narration as an equal partner to the mechanics. The Effect Chart helps this as well, but all in due time my pretties.

A few new mechanics are introduced here; the health track and initiative bidding.

I went back to the well of Weapons of the Gods and used their health track. This was in response to complaints that in LotW that you didn't really seem to "damage" your foe, just add an ever-increasing amount of "ripples" (dice that could generate chi imbalances). I fused both mechanics, since I liked elements of both, and created a health track that causes Imbalances as you become more wounded. This created multiple paths to defeat, which added an interesting dimension to combat strategy.

The initiative bid is a predecessor to the initiative roll of LotW. Rather than a single round of bidding, I wanted characters to have to strategize their turn from their initial roll (you only roll once per turn in this system) so I allowed them to continue upping the initiative bid as high as they want with multiple rounds of bidding. It sounds time-consuming, but it typically resolves in just a handful of seconds.

It's drawn some criticism, but I like the bid. Going before an opponent has the effect of changing their dice from offensive vectors to defensive ones, giving you greater control over the rhythm of the battle. Its a sizeable advantage, but balances nicely with saving your dice to have a greater, if slower, impact in the round.

There's that callout box. I've been a firm believer in the shared mindspace and tactical infinity since I became aware of their existence. There's another dimension to RPGs which isn't discussed here, the conversational dimension, which is wonderfully expanded on by Jenna Moran in her games, most notably in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine. Its a bit effervescent, but I haven't read a game closer to the bleeding edge of modern game design.

The river returns here as Focus Slots. The principle is the same; you store dice from this round to use in later rounds. There's also a clarification of how many dice it requires to act in a round (you can do a single action with a single-die set, and you can perform "bonus actions" with sets of 2 or more).

You also get to dip your toes into Chakra, Prana, etc. this round. This is our resource system; chakras give you prana, you spend prana to do magic stuff.

Some really cool stuff here. There's a demonstration of using a Focus slot to "hold" an action between rounds (like holding your breath, lifting heavy stuff, or grapples), which is an innovation I'm really proud of. We also introduce the Gupt Kala ("Shadow Arts") which are our answer to the Secret Arts from the previous games. 

Our combat pacing mechanic gets introduced here too. You can open up more of your chakra during a fight, but it takes a set. This allows players to invest in future rounds at a cost to current ones. It also incentivizes them to open as many as they can, since Siddhis (your kung-fu techniques) "cheat" the rolling curve by allowing sets to increase over what's likely to be rolled.

This is the wrap-up of our introduction. Since I didn't want to assume the outcome of the battle, there's a sidebar in there for if the player loses. An important lesson from this introductory fight is that losing doesn't have to mean dying; there's a mechanic in the full rules for introducing death into a scene; its very explicit and transparent. This is my take on a similar rule, the "death box", from Tenra Bansho Zero.

We also introduce the second playable pregen, Sun Wukong, affectionately called Monkey by the design team.

Taking a page from my college texts, I re-introduce and examine concepts here that have been previously introduced, allowing the player and GM to become familiar with them through repetition.

That's all for now folks! Next time, I'll let you take a gander at the bad guy and the pregens, as well as the much-anticipated Effect Chart. Stay tuned!

Intro text to Lone wolf Fists

Forgot to share this last night. It's the intro text for Lone Wolf Fist, my post-apocalyptic take on Tian Shang

"The world died in a thousand atomic fireballs

Pockets of humanity cling to life in the ashes of the world

Wandering heroes wield mystic fighting arts against the many perils that threaten humankind

They are the Lone Wolf fists

Welcome to the atomic aftermath of a fantastic world, hero. A world where the gods taught humanity the secrets of Dharma and Chakra. A world that pushed the fabric of reality until it tore. A world peopled with heroes whose might could pull down the moon or crack the planet to its core.

Such marvels and terrors it had in delicate, harmonious balance. And then came the fire, and the terrible noise of ten billion lives blown out like candles. Then finally, silence. The ceaseless, unbroken silence of a dead world.

Those few who huddled in vaults and bunkers and the secret, sheltered places outlived their world. When the hot, yellow clouds blew out and the shrieking winds went silent and still, then they emerged.

They found their world strange and silent and toxic but not entirely empty. Gods and demons and creatures from before history were awoken and driven mad or changed by the nuclear winds into terrible and powerful predators.

Food and water became more precious than diamonds, and when tribe found tribe, the thirsty soil was quenched with blood.

The savage remnants of humanity gathered beneath the banners of seven mighty clans who wielded the lost martial powers of the time before the fire.

In the dust and wind between the tribes, lone heroes wander the wastes, pursuing ancient destinies of heroism and strength.

With this book, you and your friends get to play some of these heroes and pursue their destinies in the smoldering grave of the world."

Not too much to report today. Got back to finalizing Tian Shang after a hiatus; there are a few issues that cropped up in playtesting and design that sorely needed to get addressed.

I've also been watching one of our star playtesters Mikel on his channel Confessions of an Improv GM. That's been really informative; I feel like in a lot of ways Mikel puts into words the zeitgeist that surrounded LotW, and that's an important thing to capture in the new rules.

Also, We're getting the finals back from Christof for the art. Check out this badass Tripitaka he drew up for us:

Scope those flyin' prayer strips. Hell yes.

In addition to Tian Shang, work continues on Parliament of Crocodiles. Taking a page from Justin Alexander's playbook, I've been reviewing the games Processes in order to ensure that GMs have a system that they can use to answer the question of "what do we do now?"

It's a beast of a system, but the final game should be amazing (tootin' my own horn, here)

Finally, I've been bitten by a creative bug and I've started pecking away at a riff on the Tian Shang system for a post-apocalyptic kung-fu thing a la Fist of the North Star. I put up a post on the ol' RPG.net to see if I'm the only one who would actually play a game like that. If I get some bites, I might actually lump for some art and publish it. We'll see!

War combat in fifth edition

Another thing I got up to a few weeks ago was having a go at getting some paid writing work. It was my first attempt, and I ultimately did get rejected, but I had fun writing my pitch and it did get me to finally write a treatment of war combat for fifth edition. I got permission to retain use of the rules, and the publisher said that they would like to see them further developed. I might get back to them later; step one is sharing them with everybody.

I based my take on the winning entry of the thought eater contest; the basic design principle was "D&D already has combat". I wanted to make war rules which a GM could run alongside any other combat, with as little additional bookkeeping as possible. Additionally, I wanted to make them an outgrowth of pre-existing rules (in this case, the group combat rules in the DMG). Finally, I wanted players to be able to both intuitively understand the rules without additional reading requirements, and still be able to make strategic decisions.

War combat

Some battles pit heroes against hordes of enemies; dozens, even hundreds at once! To keep a handle on the scale of these enormous conflicts, we introduce some rules abstractions that make running such epic battles no more difficult than a standard combat.

In these rules, a collective mass of troops is referred to as an army. Armies function similarly to characters, but have some new rules.

Shared Defense and Health

The members of an army share a unified health track, lumping their collective HP into a huge communal pool.

This abstraction allows the GM to easily track the overall fighting strength of the army without the need to track individual HP totals within the throng.

It is a mixed blessing for players. Martial characters now leverage the full damage of every strike (indeed, GMs should encourage meaty descriptions of broadswords cleaving multiple foes at a swing!). However, an army attacks at full strength until vanquished, so players cannot rely on victory by attrition.

When players wish to attack an army, they make their attacks against the shared AC of the foe. If they hit, they do damage to the communal health pool.

Should the player’s attack the army with an effect requiring a saving throw, the statistics of an average member of the army is used to make the save.

Army attacks

When battling an army, players enter a world of strategic abstraction, where clever positioning and armor matter more than a foe’s relative skill

To simulate the hectic, opportunistic nature of war, heroes are dealt damage based on two factors; their armor class, and their overall exposure to attacks.

Fronts and Armor categories

While operating within the abstraction of mass combat, characters have three broad vectors which can be attacked by the foe: Left front flank, right front flank, and the rear.

·       Without utilizing cover or strategic positioning, a character exposes all three fronts to attack.

·       Fighting back-to-back with an ally, behind ½ cover, or with their back to a wall protects one front, closing it off from attack.

·       Fighting in a triangle formation with two allies, behind 3/4ths cover, in a regimented squadron, or from a corner protects two of a character’s fronts from exposure, closing them both off as vectors form attack.

Characters behind the battle line or full cover are Unengaged, and may neither attack or be attacked by an army.

A similar abstraction determines the protection offered by a character’s armor.

·       Characters with AC 15 or less are considered Lightly armored.

·       Characters with AC 16-18 or less are considered Moderately armored.

·       Characters with AC 19+ or less are considered Heavily armored.

Armies deal damage (or make attacks) against all characters battling them. Such characters take injury based on their overall exposure and armor according to the army’s threat Chart.

Example: Horde of Berserkers Threat Chart

Deadliest threat	12 automatic damage
	8 damage
	4 damage
	Attack roll with advantage; +3 (4 damage)
Minimum threat	Attack roll; +3 (4 damage)

The Horde strikes lightly armored, fully exposed characters with 12 automatic damage every round.

For every Front a character closes off from attack, reduce the Horde’s threat level by 1 step.

Example: A character fighting with their back against a wall would close off the rearward Front, reducing their automatic damage by one step to 8 every round.

For every category of armor a character wears above lightly armored, reduce the army’s damage by an additional step.

Example: a character with AC 16 reduces the Horde’s damage by one step, to 8. A heavily armored knight with AC 20 reduces their threat by two steps, taking only 4 damage every round.

These abstractions encourage players to maneuver and make use of terrain, as well as armor themselves as heavily as possible when marching to war!

Morale

Armies live and die by their morale. Panic spreads like wildfire through an undisciplined force, resulting in routes. Well-drilled soldiers stand resolute through the searing flames of war.

Whenever an army takes enough damage a portion of its membership may quite the field in retreat.

An army’s Breaking Point is the threshold of damage it can take before requiring a Morale Test. This threshold is broken every time its stated damage is received, meaning that a single, powerful attack can cause multiple Morale Tests!

A Morale test is similar to a Wisdom saving throw, and generally it is taken the exact same way. Armies whose troops are weak-willed, undisciplined or otherwise demoralized take this save at Disadvantage, while inspired, well-disciplined or bravely led troops take it with Advantage.

If the save is failed, a squadron within the army breaks and flees. This is abstracted by damage to the army’s shared HP total (as they no longer contribute their health, having retreated!). The amount of damage taken is listed under the army’s Break Damage entry.

Areas of Effect

Some attacks, like cauldrons of boiling oil, catapult grapeshot and explosive spells, deal damage to every target within their area of effect. Against armies, such effects do their full damage multiplied by the density of troops in the area they target.

·       Loosely spaced: X2

·       Closely spaced: X5

·       Tightly packed or regimented: X10

Undisciplined hordes tend to be loosely spaced. Cavalry tend to favor closely spaced formations. Troops in shoulder-to-shoulder shield wall formations, or massed around a critical point are tightly packed.

Ultimately the GM’s description decides the density of the targeted area.

Ranged Warfare

Armies equiped with ranged weaponry may elect to fire a withering hail of arrows.

Armies track ammunition in whole-army increments. For example, armies with 20 ammunition listed are considered to have the majority of their membership equipped with full quivers of arrows.

When an army elects to use their ranged weaponry en masse, they collectively expend 1 ammunition and force foes to take cover or suffer damage as described below.

Ranged Warfare and Fronts

Player characters facing a ranged attack from an army replace Fronts with cover.

·       Uncovered characters are considered to have 3 exposed Fronts.

·       Those behind ½ cover have two exposed.

·       Those behind 3/4s cover have one.

·       Characters behind full cover are considered Unengaged.

Experience and War

The entry for an army lists the experience point award for vanquishing the entire force. Additionally, there is an Interval Reward which is earned each time the Interval Damage is dealt. This represents damage dealt sufficient to vanquish a single member of the army.

Oddball interactions

Some effects interact strangely when they encounter the abstractions of these rules. In oddball situations, GMs are encouraged to rule with an eye towards preserving the in-game reality of an army representing hordes of individuals, rather than “one big monster”.

Battles between armies

Direct conflicts between two opposing armies operate under a distinct, parallel set of abstractions. Such grandiose spectacles of war exist both as a clash of militaries and an epic backdrop to the individual heroics of characters.

The Clash of Armies

Armies act in minute-long rounds.

Engaged armies deal automatic damage to one another based on their War Damage Chart. This damage represented ten rounds of bloodshed and carnage between dozens or hundreds as the tide of battle ebbs and flows. Damage begins at the highest stage, but is reduced by poor performance or a foe’s defensive positioning as described below.

Example: Horde of Berserkers War Damage Chart

Maximum bloodshed	400 damage
	300 damage
	200 damage
	100 damage
Rebuffed offensive	No damage

Every minute, each army makes a standard attack against each other. This uses the Mass Attack statistics and is against the rival army’s AC. If this attack misses, reduce damage dealt by one step.

The foe’s strategic positioning further reduces incoming damage.

·       If the foe is positioned defensively in soft, natural terrain (trees, shrubs, etc.), reduce damage by one step

·       If the foe is positioned defensively in hard, natural terrain (stone mounds, cave systems, etc.) or soft, constructed terrain (houses, huts, etc.), instead reduce by two steps

·       If the foe has taken a fortified position (within castle ramparts, stone walls with murder-holes, etc.) reduce damage by 3 total steps.

Note that it is possible that one side takes no damage under some circumstances.

At the end of every attack, the army which dealt more damage is the winning side, and the one that received the most is the losing side.

Morale in War

The losing side makes a single Morale roll as normal. However, on a failure, they double the damage they received from the opposing army as a mass retreat takes place.

Military Objectives

The winning side gets to advance their military objectives by one step. The specific goals and steps vary by battle, but examples include breaching a sieged wall, pushing the foe into less favorable terrain, and capturing a strategically important hill.

Because of the tactical infinity of the game’s world, it is impossible to make exhaustive guidelines for determining military objectives. GMs are encouraged to use the above examples as a guide to allow mass battles to proceed in dramatically powerful stages.

Epic Backdrop

Because they operate on a faster timescale, the swirling chaos of war acts as the milieu in which heroes experience a mass conflict.

Characters can charge into the fray using the above rules, dealing and risking damage to an opposing army. Additionally, they can perform any actions which operate below the fidelity of the army conflict abstraction; they can and should heal injured comrades, join regimented troops, climb besieged castle ramparts, set fire to enemy structures, and hurl bolts of arcane power into the rank of the enemy.

The GM simply records the damage done and dealt by armies, and metes out damage according to armor and risk as above. They roll every ten rounds to see how the tide of war is turning. They make morale checks when heroes scythe down enough of the foe.

With the above rules, you can easily and satisfactorily add the explosive thrill of warfare-scale conflict to your games. Enjoy, but remember; victory favors the bold!

Horde of Berserkers

...

Finally, I have copious design notes so you guys can peer into the mad machinations of my mind:

Mass Combat

Concept 1: Mob rules

When battling mobs of adversaries, the DMG allows them to be abstracted into auto-hits based on their relative ability to hit a target’s AC. It’s a very reductive calculation: to-hit, minus a character’s AC, results in a number necessary to roll to hit. This number is compared to a chart to determine the minimum number of enemies that must attack to generate an automatic hit.

Concept 2: Getting surrounded

On a hex grid, as opposed to a square grid, there are a maximum of 6 foes which could be considered adjacent to a given character. This places a clean, highly divisible (6, 3, 2) limit on the number of adversaries which could reasonably surround a target,

When you combine a dash of concept 1 with a sprig of concept 2, what emerges is a system which allows groups of 2 to approach a character from 3 angles on an open field. This results in three scenarios:

1. A character is surrounded on three sides by six adversaries

2. A character closes off a front, potentially by an act as simple as fighting with their back to a wall

3. A character closes off two fronts, by something like backing into a corner

Because we have an abstraction which demands a certain number of adversaries attack a given AC to produce an auto-hit, we can forgo the chart (since we know the numbers of adversaries which could attack) and practice some conservation of rules using the following method:

1. Determine the to-hit of the mob (for my purposes, I’m using the tribal warrior stats form the back of the MM, so this is +3)

2. Consult the chart in the DMG, recreated here for convenience:

D20 roll needed/attacking creatures needed to hit

·       1-5: 1

·       6-12: 2

·       13-14: 3

·       15-16: 4

·       17-18: 5

·       19: 10

·       20: 20

Because of the banded nature of AC, we can predict that it won’t rise significantly above 20 except in the most extraordinary circumstances, and will nearly never drop below 10. Because of this, we can abbreviate the chart thusly:

·       7-12: 2

·       13-14: 3

·       15-16: 4

·       17-18: 5

·       19+: no auto-hits possible (only 6 can surround)

To make it fit more cleanly into our paradigm, we can wiggle the numbers to make all results divisible by groups of 2, 3, and 6:

·       7-12 (Against AC 10-15): 2

·       13-15 (against AC 16-18): 3

·       16+ (against AC 19+): 6

Now, when we consider our new chart in the context of our three frontages, we enter scenarios in which a well-armored PC can close off their frontages through simple strategic positioning. To continue with our conservation of rolling, we can add a new rule, expanding the scope of mobs by digging a bit deeper into our chosen template’s special rule allowing them to get advantage if they outnumber the foe.

This gives us a cross-chart, with (number of fronts) on one axis and (ac of target) on another:

	3 Open Fronts	2 Open Fronts	1 Open Front
AC 10-15	12 damage	8 damage	4 damage
AC 16-18	8 damage	4 damage	+3 atk w/ advantage (4 dmg)
AC 19+	4 damage	+3 atk w/ advantage (4 dmg)	+3 atk (4 dmg)

Now, for each PC fighting, the GM never has to roll more than a single d20. Players are incentivized to position themselves strategically with clever use of the described terrain (and more on that in a moment), and the rules are minimal, organic, and ultimately a satisfying abstraction.

If we consider the case of ranged attack, we can use a similar abstraction regarding cover in place of Fronts: No cover is equivalent to 3 exposed Fronts, half-cover is equal to 2, and 3/4ths cover is equal to 1.

Damaging the Mob

Attacking the mob is basically identical to attacking any single foe in it; in other words, the AC (which is 12 from our template, but I would strongly consider reducing to 11 or even 10 for naked barbarians) is exactly the same from their template.

HP is another matter, and one in which another abstraction is called for. Multiplying the HP of a single character by the number of the army yields one large HP track, which represents the whole force. Following our example, the HP of a 100-man mob would be 1000 (in this case I am reducing their HP from 2d8+2 to 2d8+1)

Sounds nuts, right? Hear me out; armies are only rarely vanquished through murdering every last member. Typically, they take enough casualties to force a retreat. So, we dip our toes into the morale rules.

Morale

The DMG poses morale as a pass/fail will save, and gives some circumstances under which such rolls can trigger. For the purposes of our system, we break the entire mob into chunks of 10-member groups and use one of the criteria to create the following simplified moral structure:

For every 5 members of the mob slain (here abstracted as 50 dmg dealt), a morale roll (will save) is made. Failing this roll results in 10 members fleeing the field (here abstracted as 100 damage to the group)

Inspired troops make this roll with advantage, while demoralized ones make it with disadvantage.

*Why 10?*

You don’t want to use half of the entire group’s membership; for one, that number is huge. For two its constantly changing. Nuts to that, abstracting it into “chunks” of 10 lets you gauge the deadliness of an attack by the number of moral rolls it generates, which is a solid abstraction that lets morale play the part it was born for.

*Are we counting bodies?*

Nope. 10 damage is equivalent to one dead foe, doesn’t matter if you’re technically killing this guy with wasted damage, or technically reducing that guy to 1 hp: the result is abstracted for sanity’s sake. The GM can simply divide the damage dealt by (a single foe’s HP, in this case 10) after the battle to determine casualties. Actually:

XP rewards

Take the total damage dealt (which, as with every combat in D&D, is recorded through the battle by subtracting from the foe’s starting HP). Divide the result by 10, discard any remainders. That number is multiplied by the XP of a single member of the mob (25 for our purposes) and the result is the XP reward (and number of casualties)

((Yes, I’m assuming cowards are executed or otherwise don’t rejoin the army. Who needs that headache?))

More stuff

Areas of Effect

When a spell or cauldron of boiling oil or whatever hits a mob, it’s going to fry more than one dude. To simulate this, I again crunched some pretty thankless numbers and created an abstraction which I think will make everybody happy

Rather than trying to figure out who would be hit by an AOE, it’s damage is rolled than multiplied based on the density of troops it impacts, abstracted into three categories:

·       Loose: x2

·       Close: x5

·       Packed: x10

This way it fries a reasonable number of foes (in HP)

Mob V.S. big monster combat

Big monsters cover more area than a single person; they therefor have more fronts which can be exposed to attack.

·       A large sized creature has 9 surrounding hexes, translating to 4 fronts (rounding down to make this safer)

·       A huge sized creature has 12 surrounding hexes, translating to 6 fronts

·       A Gargantuan sized creature has 15 surrounding hexes, translating to 8 fronts (rounding up to make it more dangerous)

Mob on Mob action

So what happens when two mobs go at it? Here I favor forgoing the round-to-round damage in favor of a different system, which adds context to the round-to-round heroics experienced by the characters without adding tons of bookkeeping.

I abstract the conflicts of the mobs into ten-round (1 minute) long battle rounds. This allows the GM to roll every 10 round of hero combat, which greatly reduces their bookkeeping, but will allow them to inform the players how the battle is unfolding around them.

The amount of damage dealt is the standard damage multiplied by the number present in the mob (for my army of barbarians, this is 4 damage multiplied by 200, for a total of 800 damage against a rival army)

This base damage I “chunked” into quarters (I’ll go into the why in a second). This makes 4 separate 200-damage chunks.

·       Every battle round, both sides roll a single attack against one another. They use the standard to-hit and AC of a typical member. If they miss this attack, they reduce their base damage by 1 chunk.

·       They additionally reduce their damage by 1 chunk per level of defensive positioning and favorable terrain the opposing army employs. This is an abstraction that considers terrain as a key strategic element of war.

Terrain occupied by foe (use only highest)

·       Open field- no reduction

·       Soft, natural cover (trees, shrubs, tall grass, etc.)- 1 chunk

·       Hard, natural cover (Stones, clay mounds, etc.) OR soft, constructed cover (houses, huts, etc.)- 2 chunks

·       Hard, constructed cover (castles, walls with murder holes, etc.)- 3 chunks

After both armies roll and apply damage, the army which deals more damage is considered the victor, and the other the loser. The loser must make a single morale roll, doubling their losses on a failure.

Achieving military goals

The winning side gets to push around the losing side, dig in, or otherwise accomplish a military goal.

I’m leaving the full realization of this rule abstract; for the purposes of these rules, military goals are things like storming the ramparts, breaking through the gatehouse, advancing to the courtyard, pushing the invaders off the walls, etc.