Deep thinking on T&T going on

After my last few posts, I started to wonder why things were like they were in the rules for T&T and initiated conversations with the creators of the game. There are some quite interesting stories and facts coming out in this conversations, but I'm going to let those run their course before posting. But, just so you know. More posts are coming on the topic.

Mix and match T&T rules - Rules for gear

Finally, after dissecting multiple editions of the game, I get so mix and match up the rules for the perfect experience. According to me. I would agree with critics who claim the game is taking too long with big dice pools, and I have my own issue with the lack of money sinks. I think these can successfully be handled, together.

Less dice - faster combats
For me, two things should be done to the game as written in the latest edition. My first suggestion would be to scale back the number for dice for all weapons. The older editions had smaller numbers and I see nothing to be gained by bigger numbers on both armour and weapons. One big benefit of this would be a game that runs faster. It's not hard to add at max 6 to 6 and so on, but every little step counts. Worth noting for those who like big pools of dice is a trick I learned Hero and D6 system players using, is to block the dice up in sums of ten, i.e. sort out those 5 + 5 and 6 + 4 matches and then you can quickly count those groups times 10. Supposedly it speed things up a bit. I'd just use less dice.

Ablative armour - money sink and more tactical combat
In my games I've found that after a short while, everyone have gotten the best armour they can buy. This is very similar to how D&D works in older editions. Check the price list in the B/X edition and you'll see what I mean. In D&D there's the possibility to save money to build that hold of yours at 9th level, but in T&T the only thing you have to pour money into is spells. The other option is to have a very developed system with an open market of magic items in general, but since that would make them feel less magical I don't like that option. 

The solution would be to go back to ablative armour. If you take a hit, the armour absorbs the damage and gets reduced at the same time. An interesting option would be to take a page from dT&T and allow a LK roll to see if the armour holds up. But, in line with my first point, I'd limit that to a special occasion. Allow a LK roll to see if the armour absorbs all damage a round, and then it's wasted. For good.


This relates somewhat to character abilities, like Warriors and armour. That's the topic for the next post...

Combat capabilities through T&T editions

The next part of my walk through of T&T editions will be a closer look at some miscellaneous rules that pertain to combat, and that might exacerbate or alleviate some of the issues you might have.

Having talked about the hardware, it's time to look at how the classes/types work in combat. In T&T you have those wielding swords, and those wielding magic. There is the middle ground, the rogue wizard, but I will leave it out of the discussion as there's nothing new for that type of character. But, it's worth noting how opposition works, because the monster have their own rules.

Warriors
Let's start with the Warriors. In the first two editions, the only thing a Warrior got was their adds from high stats. Then from the T&T Supplement and on to the latest edition, they get the ability to use their armour extra effectively. So, twice the value for absorbing hits. This kind of coincides with the first serious bump in dice for weapons. From the unofficial 6th unto the latest edition Warriors have also gotten a boost by adding extra damage. I think the +1/lvl kind of makes sense as the armour suddenly absorbs more from 5th ed on, but 1d extra damage per level as in 8th ed just sounds ill thought out. They mention in a side bar it was questioned in play testing. That should have told the game developers this was a bad idea.

Wizards
The magic wielding class have been very uniform through the editions. All first level spells have been available for all wizards, and apart from the 7th ed era where they needed to make a Saving Roll to cast, they have been able to lob spells freely, paying for then by WIZ or STR points. From 5th ed they have been upgraded combat wise with the ability to not only use 1d weapon, but 2d weapons. Then they also got the ability to use adds from high stats, which they were forbidden before. Interestingly, before that switch they had the benefit of being assigned hits last.

Monsters
How about the opposition then? Monsters can be stated out like characters, or they can use the more basic method of just having a Monster Rating. The basic idea is the MR gives the dice rolled, and the adds you add to that in combat. From 5th ed on you use the same amount of adds for each combat round, and before that the monsters used to loose steam as the fight progressed, loosing dice and adds. Interestingly enough, before 5th ed. the rules stated that monsters thrived in darkness and got double their rating in darkness! As sometimes is the case, the British edition adds in a line about rolling the dice off MR to generate the amount of hits a monster can take. Feels a bit odd if you already have the MR, right?

So what does this all mean?
I think we can see how the power of the classes have increased in lockstep with the die ratings for weapons and armor. There are some quirks on top of this, like the Wizards being last to take a hit, that I had either not noticed or just plain forgot. There was one quite interesting note in the editions before the 5th about monsters on deeper levels. I guess they game expanded out beyond the dungeon. But, that suggestion was to multiply the dice the monster rolled by the level to make it easier on the GM when rolling many dice. It seems like the rules writer and developer somehow changed their minds about big dice pools being a hassle.

It's not very far fetched to think that if you feel the present edition is cumbersome, just roll scale back all the numbers! In my next post I will consider that, and some other options.

A bucket full of dice - how the dice have changed in T&T through the ages

Like I wrote in my last post, it seems the biggest issue people are having with dT&T who have come to the game cold, are the dice pools. Since the basic combat mechanic is you roll all dice on one side of the conflict, add it up and subtract from the sum of the other side, you will roll a lot of dice. There ways to either roll fewer, or to sum them up, but I'm going to focus on the historical perspective.

So, was the game always like this? Let's take out the old books. I have in my possession the 1st ed reprint, the 2nd ed, the British 1st ed (1st ed with The T&T supplement included), 5th ed, 7th ed, the revised 7th ed and now dT&T.

Let's take a look at how some of the weapons have looked like through the ages.

Greatsword

1st	2nd	1st British	5th	7th	8th
3d+3	3d+3	3d+3	6	6	7

Bastard sword

1st	2nd	1st British	5th	7th	8th
3	3	3	5	5	5

Great axe

1st	2nd	1st British	5th	7th	8th
4d+3	4d+3	4d+3	5d+3	5d+3	7

Can you also see a trend here? I could take more examples, but I think the point I'm trying to make is clear. The game has become more unwieldy because of  dice inflation.

It kind of reminds me of how D&D grew out of proportions in 4th ed. where the hit points of both player characters and monsters were in the hundreds! The game wont feel more epic if all numbers are raised, it will only take longer to play. I think WotC proved that for all of us who played that edition of D&D. But, wait! Did T&T raise all numbers? Let's look at some armor.

Plate

1st	2nd	1st British	5th	7th	8th
10	10	10	14	18	16

Scale

1st	2nd	1st British	5th	7th	8th
4	4	4	8	8	10

Even though the Plate armor is not increasing all the way, we see the trend here as well. The fact is, the situation is more complex than it seems. In the earliest editions, armor was ablative! That 18 points of damage reduction you get in 7th ed is even better than the 10->18 step looks like!

So, the damage dealt have increased, and the damage absorbed by armor have increased. You could try to figure out the relation between those, but I will just state that in that increase you have also increased another thing. The time it takes to resolve a combat.

In my next post I will take a look at some other rules that have changed during the years, and in the final post I will serve up my take on how I would use the rules in my game.

DragonQuest Combat houserule

I got a comment on my last post, mentioning playing DragonQuest without a battle map. Personally I have nothing against miniatures with my rpg, unless it slows down play. If you count hexes or squares it will slow down play is my experience. Playing online I find it a bit fiddly. So, I always look if I can do without them.

Thinking a bit about DQ I realized that the big thing is if you are engaged or not, and if you can get engaged after doing a half move. With that in mind, and inspired by the classic Traveller rang band system for combat I present the following:

The dividing line down the middle is separating Team A from Team B, or Attackers from Defenders. Well, you get the idea.

All placed in the green fields are Engaged and play according to those rules for initiative and if you can Trip, Disarm and so on. If you are in the blue fields you are disengaged and far away. Here you can only do ranged attacks, and you need more than half of your TMR to engage. In the areas in between you only need to do a half move to be Engaged.

That sheet can be printed and laminated and you can write on it, or you can use actual pretty miniatures. But, you skip the analysis-paralysis of counting hexes.

I think this i how I would try to run DQ if I did run it online.

If you have any ideas or response, I'm all ears!

Some extra rules for BRP - autofire and initiative

I've been very much in love with BRP lately. It's a game system I've played since I began this hobby, and it still feels like it can do anything. When Savage Worlds and FATE come and go as the "go to" systems for setting conversion, I always feel BRP could do it.

There are some oddities in the rules, though. Like almost every other rules set out there, it's more inspired by action movies than real life. I shall not try to bring up the dreaded "realism" argument, but sometimes you want to tone down the action hero aspects for a grittier game.

Autofire is one of those things I'd live to tweak. I've been thinking on this a while, and also been reading people's tweaks. This is my presents thoughts, archived. If you have any input I'm quite interested to hear it. I might still change things up a bit until I actually try these ideas out

Autofire

On of the oddities about autofire is that it's no harder to hit regardless how many bullets you put in the air. Recoil is abstracted out, and the amount of bullets that hit have no relation to your skill. I'd like to change that.

When you autofire, roll to hit as usual. But, do not add +5% per bullet! If you hit, take a note of your margin of success. A successful hit mean one bullet hit, and one more bullet per 5% of margin of success. But, regardless of success level, mark of all those bullets fired.

That will mean skill matters, and recoil is kind of factored in by removing the extra +5%. Optionally: subtract -5% per bullet fired if you really want to make recoil matter.

Another effect of autofire is to make people keep their heads down. To make that happen, I'm thinking of adopting a concept found in some games from GDW, namely Coolness Under Fire.

Coolness Under Fire

I'm not sure yet if this should be a derived ability, or a skill. The latter makes it easy to slot in among the other abilities. But, it's only partly something trained so I'm unsure if that makes sense, but also what to derive it from! Average POW and INT? Is low INT maybe a benefit? For now I'll treat it as a skill.

CuF is a skill, with a base chance of your POW. You can put skill points into it, just like any other skill. When you'd normally call for initiative rolls, instead roll CuF. For every 10% of your margin of success you get a +1 bonus to your DEX rank for initiative. Those who succeeded then act like usual in DEX order.

Those who fail their roll must take cover at once, and may not attack. Each round you make another roll to try to get to act.

Optional: For every bullet fired towards your area you take a -5% penalty to your CuF roll. That way autofire is very useful to lay down covering fire.

Final thoughs

The big problem with this will probably be for those players who fail their CuF, and get to sit there and do nothing. I guess that's why the rules are like they are in the book, but I have played enough conflict simulation games to appreciate the idea of having a field of combat a little less ordered and with a little less control.  I mean, RPGs are not like chess, right?

The other big thing is if CuF should be a skill at all. I'm still not sure about that, and change my mind every day. I'll put this out there as a working draft of my ideas. Hopefully I get to try them out when I've decided on something.

Delving Deeper - long/short weapons

As a companion to my post about weapon speed/reach. These are the arms listed in the Delving Deeper boxed set, with an entry for which weapons have reach.

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These rules are hereby designated as Open Game Content via the Open Game Licence.

Battle axe              short
Dagger                  short
Flail                   long
Hand axe                short
Lance                   long
Mace                    short
Morning star            short
Pole arm                long
Short sword             short
Spear                   long
Staff                   long/short
Sword                   short
Two-handed sword        long   
War hammer              short

---

You might disagree about some of those, but these are the ones I'd use. Even if they all only do 1d6 damage, this rule will add some tactical chrome to it game experience. Have fun with it!

Long weapons with reach for older editions

I just revisited my old favourite Stormbringer, and found that in that game there's a neat mechanic for how to handle reach and speed of longer weapons. As you probably already know, there are rules for weapon speed in AD&D, but they are fiddly. This is how I'd adopt the Stormbringer rules for D&D.

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These rules are hereby designated as Open Game Content via the Open Game Licence.

Long weapons and Reach

Weapons are rated as Long or Short. If you have a Long weapon, and are not Engaged, you will have the advantage and may attack once before any enemy with the same initiative count.

To Engage an enemy you roll 1d20 below your DEX, forfeiting an attack to do so. After that you will have Engaged your enemy, and that figure loose the advantage of having a Long weapon, and must Disengage to regain that advantage. Disengaging uses the same procedure.

Optional: If you fail your roll to Engage/Disengage, the opposing figure get one free attack at your figure. 

Group initiative

Roll initiative as usual and use the rules as written, except that before the first action are taken by the side winning, all figures equipped with a Long weapon get one strike each. These attacks are resolved in DEX order, and then the initiative proceeds as usual. No figure may attack more than once per turn in this way, unless explicitly allowed by other rules for multiple attacks.

Individual initiative

Roll initiative as usual. When resolving actions, first make one pass through the count down for all figures equipped with a Long weapon. Each may may one attack, in DEX order. Then go through the count of actions once more for those who have yet not taken an action. No figure may attack more than once per turn in this way, unless explicitly allowed by other rules for multiple attacks.

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Long time readers of this blog might remember that I wrote about this rule once before. That rule used the initiative roll in stead of a DEX check. It would be fun to try both out and see how they feel in comparison.

Getting hurt in different games

Since I recently played a game of FATE, I have been searching out other experiences of playing FATE, including listening to podcasts. At the same time, I have been re-reading Dragonquest, which a game quite different from FATE. Today I realized you could consider them side by side, based upon what happens when your character gets hurt in those two games.

In FATE you basically only have two hitpoints. You have two stress boxes for physical hurt, and two for mental hurt. Nothing happens when you tick them. Then you have consequences, which are things that last. I guess that's clear from the name, right? But, what I found intriguing is how those consequences are used.

Since they are Aspects, just like so much else in FATE, they can be invoked. That means they will affect the story and the narrative, and they wont just be points of damage. Now, how does damage works in Dragonquest? Well, you have your points of Fatigue, and you have your Points of Endurance. Depending on how severely you get hit, you dock some points off those. But, here's the thing. If you get hit real bad, you take a Grievous Injury. The interesting thing about them is that they are lasting consequences.

See? How about this. Grievous injury are stuff that will stay with you, and a smart opponent will invoke for effect, eh. I mean, utilize to their advantage.

If you were afraid of New School, don't be. It's all known stuff, eh?

BRP did it first!

Being one of what China Miéville once called "the Chaosium kids", I always thought the way things were done in BRP was the way you did things. Today I learned that it was not until 6th ed. Hero system in 2011 that the defensive and offensive capabilities, OCV/DCV, were decoupled and you could become good as parrying regardless of your offensive ability. Maybe there was ways to tweak it, but in an interview I listened to with the line developer (Steve something?), it was presented that way. Back in 1979 when Runequest was released we Chaosium kids had separate attack and parry percentile ratings for our weapons.

God how I love how that simple rules set over and over again shows how everything you could imagine is in there!

BRP did it first.

Narrative criticals

First off, let me just say I like criticals. The thrill of seeing the dice indicating that something wonderful/awful is going to happen is like no other. The drawback of course is to have to find those critical tables, rolling another die and all that which slow down the game. Maybe there is another way?

This fine post is one solution, where the damage is rolled off one small table and the game effects are narrated. Well, if you don't like those newfangled big words, made up on the spot.

Let's take that one step further in the player empower direction. If you do sand boxing, player initiative rules, right?

Let's assume you roll d20 to attack, and that low is good. Then, on a roll of 1, turn to the player that just rolled a critical success and ask them. "You just did something awesome. Let's hear what it was?" Likewise, when someone rolls a 20, ask them. "Now you have messed up. Let's hear how it went wrong." Players agency, right? As experience have shown that nobody is as brutal when describing a fumble as someone who inflict it on themselves.

A Rolemaster combat variant

Way back in the days, Rolemaster was one of those big systems used in fantasy campaigns all over the place. Then the company who published it, I.C.E. suffered some setbacks and eventually folded. Through all this a few new iterations of the game saw the light of day, and being an old fan of the system, having started my GM career with MERP, I own more than a few of these books.

Now the company is back again, and it's time for consolidation and a new edition of the rules. Will it be viable in today's marketplace? I have my doubts, but for old times sake I took a peek at the play test documents.

One thing I never liked was how every weapon in the system had its own attack table. If for nothing but logistical reasons, it was unwieldy. But, it also made no sense. While the difference between getting hit by a small piece of sharpened metal and a bigger one might might be significant, the steps in between were just way too fine grained. It was often lauded as realistic, but in reality that was a simulationist dream. But, in MERP and in RMFRP they did something else.

In those variants of the rules (I consider them all to be kind of the same, even HARP), you had groups of weapons, like one handed edged weapons. It was easier to handle, and kept a level of verisimilitude. Today, considering the effects of what this about to model, I came upon an idea of how to present this even more concisely.

The individual hit points matter little in RM. What kills you is the critical hits, which are divided into levels of severity. So, I thought why not boil it down to those crits? Since a critical shows up in the upper level on the hit charts, you can see how big a percentage of the hits are of a specific level. Those percentages could be rolled in tandem with the attack roll, skipping the roll on the hit table. If you beat your opponents roll, add the overlap to the crit roll and see what level of crit you inflicted. It will make a bunch of simplifications to the RM system, but keeps some of the flavour. The obvious thing missing is of course the difference against different kinds of armour. Maybe I can shoe horn that back in somehow as well, given some time.

I wont be able to do a proper play test, since I'm lacking a group to test with. But, I felt like throwing it out there for anyone who happen to see it, and for my own archival purposes. Enjoy.

How to make combat interesting - two suggestions

Go read Zak's great post on the subject from a short while back, and check out Dan Bayn's series on actio scenes on big purple.

Why don't I remember all that cool shit when behind the screen?

Horses and knights in plate mail, in real life!

This last weekend there was a cultural festival in these parts. All kinds of films, literature and ethic food and dance all over downtown. When darkness fell, fires lit up and you could watch a show with real horses and knights clad in armour thundering forth. Guess where I was standing?

It was quite amazing to see a 600 kg horse come galloping down a field of gravel, the ground thundering and loudspeakers playing Ramstein. The fact that the horse had a lad or lass on its back wearing plate armour and swinging a sword or lance didn't make it less impressive! With people breathing fire for the audience and the jousting knights sometimes having swords lit with flame it was quite a show!

Now, imagine that beast and warrior coming charging against you with intent on your life.

I would run.

I'm suddenly feeling that having a PC make a morale check to stand his ground when facing a dangerous monster makes a lot of sense.

Rules found by re-reading

As some of you know, Initiative is something many D&D refs have house rules for. Ordering the chaos of real life combat, or just the monomanical urge to add structure to all facets of life is something that all kinds of roleplaying games are pretty wont to do. Today I found some new little nugget of Initiative related rule.

Since I have not had a regular game for a while, the inspirations for posts on the blog have shrunk, and the posting frequency almost crawled to a stop. But, hope lives eternal and I have started to re-read the Call of Cthulhu rulesbook in the hopes of starting a CoC game.

Today I read the skills chapter. Usually lists of skills and their use is something I find as yawn inducing as spell descriptions. I prefer lists of skills and spell just to be the names, and those to be descriptive enough. But, I had promised myself to give the rule book a full read through so I kept slogging at it. So, now I found a nugget I had missed before!

When you are in a fight, you can either attack, dodge or parry. The latter you can do once a combat turn, dodging you can do more than once. Since Parry is a bit special, you actually have to declare in the beginning of the round that you will parry, and which antagonist you expect an attack from! Should that NPC not attack, you have "wasted" your round.

Interesting.

I wonder how well that would work transplanted to another game, or for that matter, how well would it work in CoC? I have played with BRP derived games for many years, but never have I encountered Parry like that.

Interesting.

Weapons length and reach in combat

When posting a comment on the A Paladin in Citadel blog about the value of weapon length modifiers I realized it had turned into a post of its own. I have posted on this topic before, but it's worth revisiting. Here we go.

Those rules, adding a sense of simulation to the play, are probably jettisoned because they make combats longer.

While it might be heresy, I might suggest that those who prefer tactical crunch should take a closer look at D&D 4th ed. The teamwork and tactical play needed for efficient combat is a big part of that game. Even with the fiddly bits of 1st ed., it never was a very tactically detailed game.

Now, that being said, there are some ways to incorporate tactical details while making the game decently swift. One good way to add some depth and planning to the combat phases is to have different phases in combat. Ranged combat and magic have their own phases, and I'd suggest they go before melee.

When it comes to weapon length, I think Elric!/Stormbringer can add a simple way to handle that. This is how it works. If you have your weapons categorized as "long" or "short", the longer ones will have reach to hit before the short ones do. Simple enough.

When attacking, in whatever order you choose, let "long" weapons go first. If you use DEX order or side initiative, follow that but let long weapons trumph that order.

For fighters with "short" weapons, they will have to make a dodge of some kind to get within the reach of the "long" weapon. Otherwise they can not attack. The same thing then apply when the opponent have dodged within your reach. Wielding a "long" weapon you then need to make a disengaging dodge in order to use your weapon again.

While it reduces the reach to a binary situation, it have the benefit of being very simple, but still managing to create a lot more tactical depth to the choice of weapons. Should your game system of choice, D&D say, not have a dodge skill, use the initiative! Dice off or use DEX or whatever method you normally use. A great idea from Tomas Arfert's Saga RPG.

Hopefully that gave some food for thought.

Rethinking the spear trap

Inspired by the table (I rolled a 5) I suddenly realized that on way to make the old chestnut, the spear trap, interesting would be to have a room with a spear trap, sprung. The wall of the room opposite from where the characters enter you have a door. This door is rigged with some kind of alarm. When the alarm goes off, the snake people in a room close by arrive to the party.

Now, imagine a fight in a room with spears sticking out of walls, floor and/or ceiling. Let's also suppose that the opponents are more than one, quick and dextrous. They can probably dodge these spears quite easily, or maybe slither around them. Maybe they even trip and push the player characters towards the sharp spikes.

That would be a far more interesting use of the old spear trap, and a way to make a bunch of weaker monsters more fun to fight.

How about that?

An addition to the wiki - shields

I guess most of you have heard of the wiki by now? It's a very handy collection of some of the best contributions in the blogging community of handy and cool stuff for your game.

Following the very useful table Zak posted the other day, I rolled a '2' and updated the wiki with something cool.

I think of the most of the really cool things out there have been put up there, but since I feel it's bad form to post a link to my own blog I did dig out something else which I think was missing, namely the genre fitting post by Trollsmyth called Shilds shall be splintered. Enjoy!

So, why did I pick that? I did it because it is such a small tweak that gives a minimal additional power to that 1d6 Hits level 1 character, which is one thing many gamers have a problem with. Also, it happens to feel very much like a proper sword and sorcery thing to have in your game, without going all wire fu and gonzo just to up the ante and action level of the game. Just like intended it additionally shift the focus to the shield as a useful and important tool for the warrior, and not just a forgettable nudge to your AC.

Why aren't there any good rules for martial arts??

Since I'm a practitioner myself, and since I have been on a kung-fu movie spree of late, I've started to wonder why there are no rules for fluid, quick and colourful martial arts action?

The rules there are, in different rules sets, are are either too involved to feel at all like Brave Archer by Chang Cheh (like GURPS) or just to damn flavourless (like Rolemaster or unarmed combat in AD&D (the horror!)).

Are there any good wushu rules out there that is fun and quick, and wont bore me to tears or lull my non martial arts friends to sleep?

I'm thinking of dice, cards or something else unorthodox to base it off. Damned if I know what to make of it! I've even tried myself even if that was just a toss off first draft.

[DragonQuest] Shields will be splitered!

I found this reading DragonQuest yesterday:

[18.3] Grievous Injury may result if the successful Strike Check is 5% or less of the Modified Strike Chance. 
...
A figure who suffers a Grievous Injury while wearing armor has the Protection Rating of that suit of armor reduced by 2 until repaired. Optionally, a figure who is also carrying a shield can choose to have the shield cloven and spare his armor. A cloven shield is useless.

Shields will be splintered, eh? I really like the idea with ablative armor, like in older T&T editions. Try that one out with D&D and let me know how that works! Should drain some money from those rich coffers.