RMU Update: No Maneuver Chart Required!

Perhaps the most common criticism of Rolemaster over the years is that it is ‘Chartmaster’: overly reliant on charts for basic actions. I think everyone should rejoice to hear that RMu has now dispensed with the need for a chart to handle basic movement.

JDale just noted that the default method for movement in RMu is now what I call the ‘pay AP to move’ method (if you have a more succinct name for that by the way, please let me know!). Characters simply pay action points for movement, just as they would pay for any other action. You get to move up to your BMR for each point spent. Want to move 1x your BMR? Pay 1 point. 4x? Pay 4 points. There is a minor wrinkle in that to get to 5x (the maximum pace normally allowed), you have to spend your instantaneous action for the turn. But otherwise, the system is very simple. (In fact, it is similar to the system in Pathfinder2, though we started doing this in RMu first, before we’d even heard of Pathfinder2).

RMu does have an optional method if you want to try to combine movement with other actions. You can move at up to a run (x3 BMR) and combine your movement with another action, but those actions suffer the pace penalty (-25 x pace) if you moved during any phase while performing them. If you don’t like the complexity this adds, you can just not choose to use this optional rule.

You can read JDale’s description of how this works on the ICE forums, here: http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=19163.20

All of this makes for a much easier system that allows RMu players to dispense with the maneuver/pace chart altogether.

And there was much rejoicing!

Action Economies: Pathfinder 2 vs. RMu

Pathfinder 2 launched at Gen Con this weekend and I was lucky enough to play it there firsthand. The thing I liked the most about it was the action economy, which I think gives Rolemaster players (especially RMu players) a lot of food for thought. In fact, I think PF2 shows us the way towards a better solution for RMu’s ‘Walk and Chew Gum Problem’ than adding a Footwork skill. But more about that in a later post. Today, I just want to explain for you how the PF2 action economy works, because it is not only significantly different from DnD 5e and even from 3.5, but I think it is superior insofar as it is simultaneously easier to understand and richer in player choice and tactical depth.

First let me note that PF2 has so far gotten some mixed reviews overall. It seems to me that players who really liked the way DnD 5e pushed Theater of the Mind combat and went back to basics and simplicity tend not to like what PF2 is doing, while those who prefer greater depth in character customization and tactical choices are more sympathetic. One element of PF2 that has received near universal acclaim, however, is the action economy. Even negative reviews are praising the 3-action-and-a-reaction system of PF2 for being easy to pick up and fun to play.

Basically, the PF2 action economy works this way: each turn, your character gets 3 actions and a reaction, to spend in whatever order he, she, or it sees fit. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s not that different from RMu, in which characters get four action points and an instantaneous action each turn.

Nevertheless, there are some significant differences between RMu and PF2 beyond the fact that PF2 characters get 3 actions (and a reaction) while RMu characters get four action points (and an instantaneous action).

For one, PF2’s reaction is different than RMu’s instantaneous action. The PF2 reaction is a true reaction, i.e. one that you can use on another character’s turn rather than your own, whereas the RMu instantaneous action is more like what DnD 4e called a ‘minor action’, which is a quick action to be used on your own turn.

Another difference is that attacks in PF2 cost only one action. What?!?!?! Does that mean a PF2 fighter can attack three times in one turn? Yes, it does. But this is balanced by the fact that each action beyond the first suffers a cumulative -5 penalty. So if you had a +9 to hit bonus, your first attack would be at +9, second at +4, and third at -1.

Another big difference is that PF2 treats movement not like some different kind of action with its own rules, but rather just like any other action. This means that you don’t need different rules for movement; it is just a regular action. (Word, brother! Testify!) Each point you spend on movement allows you to move up to your movement rate, and you can use each of your three actions for either movement or attacks however you see fit. This is of course exactly what RMu does: give you action points that you can spend in any order on whatever you like. Unlike in earlier editions of Rolemaster, you don’t have to wait for the spell phase to cast a spell, the missile phase to fire a missile, the movement phase to move and the melee phase to melee. In PF2 terms, this means you could do a first attack at +9, a second at +4, and then move for your third action. Or instead you could move first, then do your first attack at +9, and second at +4. Or you could move twice, then finish with one attack at +9. You can even move three times if you like.

All of this makes for a very interesting action economy, because it often requires you to make some tough tactical decisions. Do you want to use your last action of the turn to move into a better position and thus set up a flank attack on the dragon for next round? Or do you feel lucky enough that you’ll connect with a last attack despite the big -10 penalty? Will you try to finish off that dragon and be the one to save your dying party member, or do you leave him to fend for yourself as you set up a your coup de grace? In practice, making these choices was a lot of fun, and added greatly to the drama at the table. I overheard two fighter-loving players saying they really liked the way this gave them more to do than just ‘one move, one attack; one move, one attack’ ad nauseam (which is essentially what 5e does to Fighters, especially at low level).

Everyone I played with at Gen Con picked up this new action economy very easily. Three of the guys I played with had no prior PF experience at all, and by the end of the session it was second nature. I will also note that no one complained that there was no pace chart to consult 🙂

This then is what Pathfinder 2 does, and by most accounts, it is great. It is an innovation that makes the game easier to play while also presenting players with interesting tactical options. The fact that RMu already has a similar economy bodes well I think for RMu, and I think has some lessons for us RMu players too. But I’ll save them for a (near) future post.

Spell Law Deconstruction: Charm and Charm-like magic.

The Charm Spell. One of the four foundational spells that are required in fantasy RPG’s. (Sleep, Fireball, and Fly being the other 3). Rolemaster Spell Law includes several type of “Charm” magics, but they don’t feel well thought out in requirements, applications or effects. Charm types spells should not only be differentiated by their Realm assignment, but should also have specific mechanics: mechanics that might break the standard SCR/RR counter play.

Charm type spells can have a potent impact on gameplay: they can create an ally, remove an adversary from the “table” or bypass normal gameplay by using an NPC’s actions to further player goals. Charm spells can have a variety of effects: control, persuasion, influence or distraction. One well cast Charm spell can upend the course of an encounter or combat quickly. Basically it’s a force multiplier: take a combat of 4 on 4 and one successful Charm spell can tip it to a 5 on 3. That’s a winning advantage; especially in a combat system like Rolemaster.

For purposes of this blog and my recent work on BASiL (a complete rewrite!) I see “Charm” spells as covering a spectrum of effects and mechanics:

Charm. I see “Charm” as spells that act as a magical friendship. This may limit what the caster can ask the target to do and excessive requests may break the magical bond.

Enslavement. These type of “control” spells are most often used for controlling Demons, Elementals and other entities, but could also be used in Evil spell lists to enslave a subject. While this might be considered evil, it’s also very potent and conceivably allows a caster to have the target do most anything.

Master. I would classify these types of spells as sitting between Charm and Enslavement. The caster can ask the target to put themselves in harms way–even against their friends, but not unduly put themselves in danger for no reason.

Enthrall. This is more akin to Charm, but the target has an unnatural attraction or focus on the caster. These types of spells are like “Bewitching”, “Love”, or “Seduction”.

Mesmerize. A broad range of spells that subsumes the targets senses. Similar to hypnotism, but could be simple spells like “distraction” or “blind spot” or “tunnel vision” or more potent spells that act like a combination of Charm and Enthrall.

Certainly, my classifications might seem like a distinction without a difference, but they can also be used to differentiate these types of spells among the various Realms. Since I try to incorporate different functionality into the standard RM Realms, I would argue that these spells might also work differently even adopting standard RM (and not BASiL). What might these differentiations be? Here are a few ideas in no particular order of relevance:

  1. Most Charm type spells of any sort should be Mentalism or Channeling. Essence could have control spells for Demons and elementals, but the fundamental basis of charm spells is the subsumption of will or spirit. This is distinctly in the Realms of will, spirit and soul.
  2. Charm spells should have a range of efficacy. Charm, Enthrall and Mesmerizing should require the caster to be in intimate or interactive range (and a supportive environment) to cast. You can’t just mesmerize a target hundreds of feet away in a crowded combat can you?
  3. Some of the spells may require the constant presence of the caster to maintain the duration?
  4. Failure could mean that the target is aware that they were being magically influenced?
  5. Are there any other inputs that could cancel the spell’s influence or require a check of some sort?
  6. Do “third parties” (even the other PC’s) impact the influence of these spells or is it meta gaming?
  7. Should any Channeling based “Charm” spells incorporate the moral implications of the spell and the host Diety?

What I’m trying to get to here is a system–a protocol for most every spell that maintains the logical coherence, game balance and uniqueness of player ability. Yes, it’s magic so by it’s nature it doesn’t require logic. Right?

Anyway, appreciate any thoughts. As I’m finishing up BASiL: Mentalism these issues have become pre-eminent.

Gen Con Initial Impressions

I’m here at Gen Con in Indianapolis, and hope write several blogs about my experiences. I’ll talk about what I’ve learned about mechanics — action economies, playstyles, and my personal favorite, shield usage — in later blogs, but since this is my first time here, I thought I’d just post general impressions first.

First thing that struck me was how large it was. It took us over an hour to get our badges (they wouldn’t send them to us by mail because we are in Canada), but the system was actually quite efficient; it just took long because there are tens of thousands of people here (I read something like 60,000, but can’t confirm whether that is accurate or not). One of my friends who is with me is a bit weirded out by crowds, so he is struggling a little, and going to take a break tonight.

I, however, am energized. I can’t help but remember that famous dialogue from Clerks, where Dante tells Randall, ‘You love crowds’, and he responds, ‘Yes, but I hate people.’

It is both unexpected and wonderful to be sitting in line at Starbucks, and instead of overhearing conversations about shoes or horrible bosses, you stumble upon people arguing about initiative order or debating whether they should make their Rogue ranged or melee. These are my people.

The vibe is happy and positive, and all the people we’ve played with so far have been really nice. The show floor is huge and I’m about to head out to the Pointy Hat Games booth to check out the Rolemaster stuff. I am GMing my Rolemaster session tomorrow, so I’ll have lots more to say later in the week. And I’ve learned a lot, mechanics-wise, that is going to shape my houserules for Rolemaster. So far, this is everything I hoped it would be, and I’m really glad my wife let me come 🙂

Shadow World Mechanics: Essaence and the Moons.

The Kulthea and the Moons.

I’ve blogged quite a bit about game setting driving rule mechanics over the years, and one of the fundamental issues of Shadow World is how “magic” works in a world that exists in our own reality and universe. I expanded on our own views of Essence three years ago on this BLOG POST, but wanted to dive a little deeper now that I’m working on a few related projects for SW.

Ostensibly, the Essaence permeates Kulthea through a tear in our universe into another; the same universe from which the Orhanians originated. This is all well and good, but is really not much more than a hand wave that does little to ground the mechanics of magic in Shadow World. Plus, it raises an important question: where is the “source point’ of this tear? In my mind it needs to be on either Kulthea, one of the moons or on some artifact or techno-artifact somewhere in the system. Let’s examine the pros and cons of several of these options:

  1. On Orhan. This probably makes the most sense. The Gods live on this moon and being the choke point of this power helps explain their ability to channel to their followers on Kulthea–they basically control the well-head. We can than extrapolate that this fifth energy follows gravitational waves and therefore encompasses Kuthea’s magnetosphere as well.
  2. On Kulthea. Does it make sense to have the source of Essaence on Kulthea? The Pillar of the Gods would be the most likely location–it is a physical manifestation of the arrival of Essaence on Kulthea (via a wormhole/blackhole/etc) and would explain the power fluctuations around the region.
  3. Techno-artifact. I originally had the source of Essaence encased in some object (it was a mcguffin and I never identified it) at the Lagrange point of Kulthea/Orhan. This split the power between the planet and moon and allowed for a ebb and flow of power I use in my campaign.

However, I’ve been re-thinking my “Lagrange Point” solution and now am leaning towards #1. This still allows me to play with varying Essaence levels and solidifies the basis for the Orhanian’s “god-like” powers.

I’m pretty weak on orbital mechanics, but I understand that Orhan is on a ecliptic orbit and Charon is on a polar orbit. In my campaign this allows for a variance in Essaence (channeling) powers for followers of Orhan and the Dark Gods of Charon. Therefore:

  1. The Dark Gods are outcasts from Orhan. They were banished to Charon because it acts as a prison and limits their access to the Essaence.
  2. Charon only has normal access to the Essaence when it crosses the ecliptic–otherwise it has limited access to the Essaence elsewhere in it’s orbit. Thus the weakened nature of the Charon Gods and their powers on Kulthea. Channelers of the Dark God don’t have full access to their powers about 1/2 of the day.
  3. When Charon fully eclipses Orhan, then it is both ascendant with full access to the Essaence and it also disrupts Orhans connection to Kulthea. This is the “Night of the Third Moon”. Channelers of Orhan lose access to some of their powers. This makes the Night of particular relevance to Channelers all over Kulthea.

There are probably a few flaws in my approach, and while I don’t get the orbital timings exact during my game play it does add another strategic and narrative element to my SW campaign. It also creates a “moon magic” mechanic that meshes in with current RM spell law without the specific lists found in the RM Companion. It also adds another unique setting driven mechanic to shadow World.

Anybody else do anything like this?

Cities of Hârn

We have an English saying, which is in the same sort of vein as Murphy’s Law ( Anything that can go wrong will go wrong ) and Finagle’s Law ( hope for the best, expect the worst ). This one is to describe something as ‘just like busses, you wait for hours for one and then three come along at once.’

I know I have already posted today but I just got an email about the Hârn kickstarter and it fired two thoughts.

The first was that plenty of people seemed to like Hârn as a rolemaster setting. The whole thing being d100 based made adopting material fairly easy and the harsh realities of Hârn fits well with those that like their Rolemaster gritty and dangerous.

The second was the way that people, even to this day still reuse the Pete Fenlon maps and floor plans from the old MERP books as they have never found anything better.

Keep those floor plans in mind when you see some of the images below.

So I had an email from James Eisbert at Columbia Games, the publisher of Hârn promoting their kickstarter, Cities of Hârn.

You can check it out yourself here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/columbiagames/cities-of-harn?ref=ekv5oe

But it is this sequence of images that got me…

If we look at that last panel in detail you can see how they have atomised every possible common form of door, ladder, stairs and surfaces. That is going make setting difficulty mods pretty easy.

I also liked the whole zooming in from city to building to interior scope.

If you world need maps and cities then I think one could do a lot worse. If you buy in at the $1 level you get the first PDF immediately which I think is fair. For a dollar you get to see what you would be buying into.

It looks good value to me.

A Plague On You!

I know I could do all the research myself but I thought this would be a fun post and something people could get creative with.

Here is the idea. Evil Villain (called Evie from now on) has a plan. She wants to infect rats with a horrible plague and then use the rats to infect the people and get the people to infect each other. This will bring the kingdom to its knees without Evie ever being in danger.

The biggest problem Evie can see is priest curing the sick so she has to be able to target clerics first. Get rid of the sources of magical healing and the plague becomes much scarier.

Evie is prepared to invest in her grand scheme so can research new spells, lets give her 2 years (104 weeks) to complete any spell research.

What profession would have the spells needed? What is the lowest level that Evie could be to pull this off? Is a ritual to cast the 50th level Plague on a rat and then 9th level Animal Mastery to get that rat to just nibble on hundreds of other captured rats ( you could pay peasants a tin per rat to bring you live rats so that would not be a barrier). This would give you an army of plague carriers. Further castings of Animal Mastery could be used to target clerics.

Any thoughts?

I wrote the top half last night and was then thinking about Evie and had a second idea below.

Playing wound with 50th level rituals is fairly dangerous but there is another way and this is far more horrific.

Evie buys a few hundred live rats for a bronze piece. She kills one and then on the fresh corpse she creates and controls a type 1 undead. Not a zombie or a skeleton, no, she goes for a Lesser Ghoul. This bit is a bit rules fuzzy, Ghouls are not standard created undead but a bit of narrative dark rituals and maybe trading with shady dealers in necromantic antiquities and Evie could get hold of a part of a ghoul that could be regenerated into a ghoul.

With her captive ghoul she infects the captured rats with Ghoul Rot and Bubonic plague (See Creatures & Treasures or Creatures & Monsters and even Creature Law).

This is a much easier way of getting plague infected rats.

Control Undead will work on ghouls just as effectively as created undead so we are only looking at 2nd level for Control Undead I.

If the dealer in necromantic antiquities only had greater ghoul parts available then they are Type II so a 6th level Control spell is needed.

Evie could then control a single rat ghoul and send it into a church with the intention of ‘touching’ as many people as possible. No attack is actually necessary just their touch. The disease attack is not very high so not everyone is going to become a ghoul (30% chance on a fail) or get the plague or gangrene. Ideally Evie will get into the church during a service when there would be several clerics present and then send her rat running around and try and infect as many clergy and lay clergy as possible before having the rat running over the feet of the congregation.

Statistically about 1 in 5 normal people who are touched by the rat will become infected by Ghoul Rot and 2 in 5 will get gangrene or the plague.

This is a repeatable exercise if crowds gather to beseech the clerics to treat the plague victims that is a place to release a controlled rat ghoul.

The plague is contagious as is Ghoul Rot. In three or four days you have epidemic levels of undead infestation and disease.

Could the available clerics, that would need to have the Repulsions list, deal with the exponential growth in undead? That is on top of the growing tides of plague victims and those suffering from gangrene.

At this point I am thinking of the impact of releasing one controlled ghoul rat at a time to target the clerics in a community. Imagine if that evening Evie released a hundred plague and ghoul rot infected rats into the dock district or a towns warehouse district. You average barn contains hundreds of rats that will soon be infected or become carriers.

In a city a hundred rats into a sewer system could spread Ghoul Rot and plague right across the city in three days.

The speed and scale of Evie’s plan is limited only by power points. If she is around second level then although she can cast the control spell she only gets two or three castings a day barring any spell adder or multiplier. In RMSS the power point count is much higher and she could attack multiple temples and churches in a single day.

In RMu she could concentrate on multiple rats meaning she could achieve more in a shorter time. If she picked her moment to coniside with a major public religious festival she could get much greater access to high ranking clerics.

The chance of infecting a high level cleric is slim but there is always the chance of one or some failing their resistance rolls. If you picked a day towards the end of the festivities any visiting clerics could be infected and then take the infection away with them as they disperse but before the nature of the disease is obvious. That would make it harder to find and cure the possibly infected clerics quickly and make sure you got all of them.

Whilst the plan is not foolproof it is easily repeatable and if Evie has Control Undead, Repulsions and Cure Disease she is pretty much proof against her plans turning against her.

This is my take on how Evie could bring a kingdom to its knees and it looks like 6th level would be more than adequate to have the lists, spells and power points to carry it off.

Any better ideas?

Rear and Flank Bonuses: An Experiment

I just had a strange idea. I was thinking of the normal Rolemaster positional bonuses (+15 for a flank attack, +35 for rear), and what they represent. It seemed to me that characters got these bonuses because targets would find it more difficult to parry, dodge, and block attacks from these awkward directions, due to the fact that it is harder to see them coming and to turn to parry, block, or dodge. But what about a target such as a giant amoeba, that does not have eyes and does not parry, block, or dodge? Why should the amoeba’s attackers get positional bonuses against it?

The other thing that got me thinking of positional bonuses is DnD 5e’s system of positional bonuses — or lack thereof. (My group plays DnD about half the time and about Rolemaster half the time, so I am always comparing the two systems.) The 5e player handbook, which contains the core combat rules, uses no positional bonuses at all — not even flanking. That is of course terrible. However, the Dungeon Master’s Guide lays out optional rules for flanking and facing. Flanking provides advantage (i.e. you get to roll 2 d20s for your attack and take the higher one), which is neat, but can become a bit overpowering; and the downside is that to gain flanking, you have to be on the exact opposite end of the target square/hex from an ally who is also attacking your target. This leads to odd combats that devolve into the famous ‘conga line of death’, a long line of combatants, alternating ally – enemy – ally – enemy, as everyone tries to get the flank bonus by aligning exactly on the opposite edge of an enemy. That isn’t really very realistic and kind of makes a mockery of formations.

The 5e DMG also offers optional rules for facing: attacks through the rear arc benefit from advantage and the target does not get a shield bonus. The shield bonus only applies to attacks through the front and shield side arcs. This is better, and also contains the stipulation that some creatures, such as ‘an amorphous ochre jelly’, do not have rear arcs, as well as more detailed rules for playing on both a square and a hex grid. The downside of the 5e DMG facing rules, however, is that 5e does not have sufficiently developed rules for ‘sticky’ combat: characters only get attacks of opportunity when opponents leave their zones of control too hastily, not just when they move through them too hastily. This means that in 5e, you can circle strafe to an enemy’s rear and attack with advantage all in the same turn with virtually no penalty. Oops — this is the reason why turn-based systems need some ‘stickiness’ to their combat, so that characters have a reasonable chance to react to the actions of their enemies.

To fix DnD 5e’s rules, I’ve brought back 4e’s rule about moving through an enemy’s zone of control: moving through or out of an enemy’s zone of control now provokes opportunity attacks if the movement is hasty (i.e. not using the ‘withdraw’, ‘disengage’ or ‘5-foot-step’ action). This houserule change largely solves the strafing issue. I can now use 5e’s facing rules without getting too annoyed.

But making this change also got me thinking of an innovation to eliminate the ‘conga line of death’ and make formations matter more again: instead of giving advantage in the case of two combatants being on exactly different sides of their opponents, I would only give them a +2 flanking bonus. Similarly, attacks from the flanks (back left and back right on a square grid) would only get a +2 flanking bonus. To get advantage (i.e. the right to roll 2 d20s and take the higher one), you would have to attack through the rear arc only, because advantage can be a huge bonus.

Then I went a bit farther, and thought, instead of flanking bonuses, why not just say that targets don’t get the benefit of any Dexterity bonus against attacks through the flank? Because really, the flanking bonus is meant to represent the fact that it is harder to dodge/block/parry an attack that you can’t really see coming very well. So wouldn’t it be easier just to eliminate the set ‘flank bonus’ altogether, and instead just say that targets don’t get a Dex bonus vs. flank attacks?

Thinking of how I would fix DnD 5e’s positional rules in this way also led me to think about an experiment in applying a similar rule to Rolemaster. What about instead of set bonuses (+15 for flank, +20 for rear) for positional modifiers, we tailored the bonus to the situation and the abilities of the combatants in a more realistic way? What if we said this:

–A Flank attack is an attack made through the left flank or right flank hex. Because such attacks are harder to see and therefore defend against, the target cannot benefit from any shield bonus, and receives only half his quickness and/or parry bonuses.

–A rear attack is an attack made through the rear hex. Because such attacks are especially hard to see and defend against, the target cannot benefit from any shield, quickness, or parry bonuses.

Rather than giving creatures set bonuses, then, we would instead be limiting their defenses in a more realistic way. There would no longer be any abstract ‘flank’ or ‘rear’ bonus that worked the same for every creature and combination of battlefield conditions; rather, flank and rear attacks would be deadlier against combatants that rely on seeing attacks coming and actively defending against them, and less deadly on creatures that don’t defend or even see at all. Amoebas, Gelatinous Cubes, and amorphous ochre jellies everywhere would rejoice (though we’d never hear them, since they don’t have mouths). And we will no longer have any conga lines of death!

Has anyone ever tried anything like this?

Emotional Beats

Emotional beats are a game feature that designers try to identify and maximise. I will try to explain what they are and then why they are important to Rolemaster.

Every roleplaying game I know goes through the following process.

  1. The GM sets to a challenge
  2. The players plan their reaction
  3. Dice get rolled
  4. GM describes the result

So that cycle could be a combat round as easily as a negotiation or hanging off a place balcony as the mortar crumbles under your grip.

The player is focused on the challenge as the GM describes it. Then focuses on their character and the options they character has. They make their rolls, while trying to get as many bonuses as they can and then they wait for the result.

The emotional beats start with anticipation as the challenge is described, then a level of anxiety is common if the right skill isn’t known or the character is forced into combat when they are weak. When it comes to the roll we have heightened anticipation while they await the result and then a sense of elation upon success, the resolution stage.

What professional game designers do is minimise the time delay between the dice roll and the completion of the resolution step. The reason is that the longer that time delay is the less the feeling of elation and importantly elation releases dopamine into the players blood. A game with a snappy skill/conflict resolution system is quite literally more addictive to play than a slower game.

Games with hit point attrition can still have fast emotional beats or rhythm. With each successive combat round the odds are changing and the risk to the character increasing which heightens anticipation and when victory is achieved the sense of elation is greater and that leaders to a bigger dopamine hit.

Looking at Rolemaster through the lens of emotional beats you can easily see how and why the ability to one hit a foe makes you feel so good. You instantly know if you have made a great attack roll and the likelihood that you have an E critical. You then roll 66 and you just know that it is curtains for the bad guy. What the GM eventually tells you is just a cherry on top, you already know the beastie or villain is dead meat. Instant resolution. instant elation and instant dopamine.

As a game designer there is a danger of ‘getting high off your own supply’ (I think that is a hip hip lyric from NWA but don’t quote me on that). You see a potential problem in the rules (anticipation), create a special rules to fix the rules and test it (moments of anxiety) and it works (elation and reward). The problem is that the temptation is to create endless rules and complications; as the simple act of adding them to the game makes the designer feel good.

One of the reasons the damage calculations from the size rules were unpopular, looking at it from an emotional rhythms point of view, is that it puts a delay into the resolution stage. Worst still it happens before the real resolution, the critical, can be calculated and resolved. If you are fighting something and size rules are reducing your attack size this is even worse as it is the wrong sort of anticipation. Positive anticipation is waiting to see if you have succeeded. Negative anticipation is expectation that things are getting worse. Having your E critical turned into a C is not something to look forward to.

In another part of the RMu rules we have spell casting going from 2 rounds prep to zero rounds of prep. This is great. Although there is technically less anticipation time the player still gets to cycle through what spell to cast, the spell casting roll and waiting to see if their spell worked and the effect it had. Without the prep delay the emotion rhythm is much faster.

Looking at skills, if RMu piles too many penalties on to the characters it is in danger of breaking the emotional cycle. By that I mean if failure is more common that successes then the anticipation is negative and the elation is diminished if it came from pure chance rather than your skillful play and choices.

I think the character creation time is another point at which the reward, getting to play, is too far from the start of the challenge. This is also an area where the playtesters and fans are quite vocal.

Game design by fans, for fans is not always a good idea if they lack the actual skills to pull off a great design.

Micro Settings

I saw a discussion on the Tenkar’s Tavern* discord server today. One participant pitched a suggestion for a game setting to get feedback from the community. I will call him the Pitcher as it is nicer than participant. The Pitcher was actually looking to do an entire world building job. I had already read a initial draft of the first book and that ran to 86 pages without any game stats, maps, NPCs or art.

The general reaction of the active people was that they thought it would be fun to play for four or five sessions.

I was quite surprised at that at first and it got me to thinking about what makes a setting have longevity?

I suspect that deep down we all want to win. Role playing games are not supposed to be about winning. They are open ended stories that could play out forever. In reality they don’t. After the third time you saved the world it is time to hang up your shield and enjoy your rewards. You have faced impossible odds and won.

The pitch I heard today was such a bleak world that winning would have no purpose. It may have been a case of there is no point in trying to win in a world full of so much suffering and little comfort.

I skimmed the list of most recently released games and eight out of ten were dark, grim and very negatively portrayed worlds. Skipping back a ten years and the games were much more upbeat and about exploring rich worlds and looking for adventure.

Even my own RMu adventure path is about a conflict between two evils, not between good and evil.

I wonder if this is a case of follow my leader. I could imagine one publisher thinking that they could make their game stand out by going all dark and moody. Other publishers see the sudden success of the trend setter and next thing is that we have a fashion or a movement for bleak game settings. Will these games have longevity?

Game of Thrones was bleak and miserable but that has now gone. I am guessing that everyone who wants a bleak and miserable game setting already has one. So how big is the market for more of the same?

More interestingly, I don’t think the setting writers and world builders are going to fall back to high adventure heroics. They have done that and would want something new.

Pugmire, Ironclaw and Ponyfinder all seem to have zeroed in on a particular niche, of animal heroes. In Pugmire you play talking dogs, Ironclaw you can be different woodland creatures and in Ponyfinder you play horses.

Although I read and enjoyed the Martin the warrior and Redwall Abbey books I don’t want to roleplay them.

I think in the fantasy genre people still want elves, dwarves and the rest of the Tolkien races along with vampires and dragons.

The question is how will the world builders pitch that so it is neither high adventure or bleak and pointless?

*An OSR centric discord server.