The stamina die

I just read on intwischa.com a really neat idea bout how to model fatigue. This does sound familiar, but I'm putting it up here for personal reference if nothing else.

On there they suggested everyone roll a stamina die when doing something that might exert your character, in addition to the regular die roll. When you roll a 1, you step down one die size and take -1 to all physical actions. Naturally someone fairly weak would start with a lower die, maybe d4, while someone more buff would maybe start with a d8.

I like  the simplicity of it all. Maybe you could even tie it into encumbrance somehow.

The minutiae of gaming - training costs

In my latest post I talked about keeping track of the small stuff. Thinking on how I could have used taxes, fees and encumbrance made me remember my 3rd ed. D&D campaign.

That campaign was strongly influenced by the "Third editions rules, first edition feel" that was the motto of Necromancer Games. Some of that broke down when treasure entered the equation. I did use encumbrance rules and while they didn't stop any of my players, it at least slowed them down.

One oddity which was rampant when the campaign finally ended, was that gold no longer was worth it's weight in gold! Yeah, I know how absurd that sounds.

My players had realized that money was worthless unless you could use it to buy magic items, so unless it was gold in the thousands it was not worth picking up. You could probably make a case against selling and buying magic items from that, but I thought about something else in relation to my last blog post.

If encumbrance means so little when you have Handy Haversack and Bags of Holding, would exchange fees and taxes do much either? Basically, why bother?

To bring this together with my experiences of another game with checks and balances regarding money, I will relate this to my Megadungeon campaign in Tunnels & Trolls. In that campaign you didn't get xp for gold. That used to be in an older edition, but it was taken out due to the Monte Haul effect (so Ken St Andre told me). You did have to pay for magical training, though.

After having played a bit, there were not much incentive any longer to go adventuring in order to buy stuff. When you have the best armour there is, and the best weapon you can use you have to look further.This campaign did not break down due to two things. I was blessed with very good players who took upon themselves to create bigger and greater goals, like starting a tavern and a university. Almost like the old D&D rules for starting to build a stronghold. The second thing was that higher level spells still cost and arm and a leg to pay for training.

The lesson of this is that even if you don't use a rule like xp for gold, it's still a good idea to use training costs.

(edit: fixed a broken link)

Reading T&T 7.5 - Adventure Points p.29-30

Welcome back to T&T Friday! Today I'll talk mostly about Adventure Points, and also a bit about the small interspersed pieces of game mastering advice the author have sprinkled his text with.

Our read through today start at page 29. Here we finish up the character generation by mentioning some things apart from abilities and kin which would have to go unto the character sheet.

Adventure Points is the first. What is interesting with those, apart from how fun it is to see your character get better, is how they are presented here in which is really the player's part of the rules. Ken writes:

They are the most mysterious aspect of life on Trollworld -- it is as though the gods themselves were keeping track of the players' actions and scoring them, handing out rewards and occationally punishments for all actions undertaken during the course of one's adventures.

This is a very fun attitude, I think. There's no pretense here about any simulation of a secondary world. Adventure points are given by the gods, and they are an interesting mix up of the reality of the game and the reality of the players. A quote like this succinctly encapsulates the feel of the rules text.Note that it also gives you a hint of how to play the game! Just like the gods award their followers, sometimes giving and taking, you as a GM and player can anticipate the AP to come and go. Play loose and reward actions, good and bad. I like the implication here that your actions have consequences, in a lighthearted way. You play a game and try to score points. Simple enough.

Then there are mentions of Weapons, Armor, Languages, Magic and Equipment. All of this is self explanatory stuff, really. What is interesting, though, is that under Armor there is a hint of something from a former edition. Back in the days, armor was ablative. It meant that when you took damage the armor absorbed it for you, but got hurt in the process. While the idea of damaged armor is mentioned here in an off-hand remark, I think an opportunity is missed by not mentioning that armor effect as a boxed note, or something, for the GM to use an an interesting optional rule. I'm beginning to think that the game would have benefitted from a section for players and another for Game Masters. The fact that e.g. AP is explained and expanded upon on p.102 almost gives this impression, but in a more confused manner. I'd have liked to see it done more purposefully.

Lastly before the big section on Talents, we have a short but interesting section on encumbrance and how it affects the life on Trollworld. The idea of tracking weight is "for the purists in the audience", and I must confess I ditched that rule myself in my campaign. What is interesting here is first that Ken mention the old Weight Units (1/10 of a pound) which have been in the game for many editions, but we get no real reason not to just use kilos or pounds. Secondly, we have a paragraph about how this affects people in Trollworld:

the delvers of Trollworld have developed wonderful packs for stowing stuff, and their clothing is full of all sorts of pockets, pouches, belts with hooks, and so forth. It's funny to visualize, but the heavily laden dungeon delver probably looks more like a boy scout leader buried under packs and gear than he does a medieval warrior.

I can't emphasize enough how that picture evokes the wonder of delving for me! No "dungeon punk" attitude with spikes and impossible poses. For a game that is so unashamedly a game, with its wacky logic, this for me gives a stamp of "realism" to it. Don't sweat the details, but imagine how fun this looks, eh? I like that.


Next up: Talents!

A few good links

Game Design Have you wondered why some game seem to be so dull, and them sometimes just light up and be awesome? This post might give some hints. Maybe the game lacks a "cruise control"? Like I wrote in the comments, I think T&T is the gold standard here. It is so easy to play as just a game where you collect AP, gold and roll dice. It's also a game with a slick generic resolution mechanic which can fade into the background and let you do story gaming and acting out without encumbered by needless crunch.

Rules expansion Have you been running a game, just like me ignoring encumbrance because there was no way or the painful way? This might be the way to do it. Common sense and a set penalty. I'm stealing that for my next game!

The weight of encumberance

One thing that used to bug the hell out of me was the fact that D&D used to measure how much you could carry in coins. Not only that, the equipment list didn't even list things in kilos, only coins! I thought it was unrealistic and focused the game only on grabbing money, which I thought was a baser form of enticement for adventuring. Pretentiousness in its base form, really.

Now I've realized that this is a design feature. The fact that you get experience for gold, actually emphasize the fact that you're better of fooling monsters out of their treasure than slaughtering them.

In the Swedish RPG Drakar & Demoner [Dragons & Demons, original, eh?] which I grew up playing, the curious invention of Encumbrance points saw the light of day. They were supposed to include not only the weight, but also the volume of things. Naturally, some of these numbers felt seriously wonky.

So, when I started my present campaign I decided to toss all kinds of encumbrance. In T&T there are something called weight units which one tenth of a pound. Why on earth invent a new unit if it's just a bunch of kilos/pounds with a new name?

What kind of campaign will benefit from encumbrance rules? I've been thinking about that a bit, and realized that the only kind of game that I intuitively feel would benefit from it is a post-apocalyptic one. In such a game where resources are scarce and where barter for high tech might be reasons for adventuring, I can fully see the need for a system that keeps track of stuff. Traditionally games about plunder, i.e. classic dungeon crawls, seem to be candidates for that, but now I'm not so sure.

In my last 3rd edition campaign (which I'll probably write more about at a later date) I once put in a pile of loot, with the idea that encumbrance would stop them from hauling it all home. Since there was a table in the DMG that told me what amount of treasure a party of a specific level "should have", the game suddenly ground to a halt when one of my players was inventive enough to figure out a way to haul it all home! Now what I do? Let them have it, or curb the invention? The mother of this dilemma of course the idea that I did the stupid thing of showing them all the stuff they couldn't have, and teasing them. That is not only cruel, it's bad manners and bad game mastering. Let's just silently sidestep the crazy idea that there are a level of treasure a PC "should have", and focus on good game mastering.

Good game mastering is about facilitating fun, and letting the players do what they want to test their wits and stretch the resources of their virtual personas. Counting on rules for encumbrance to limit the players is just laziness. Give the players meaningful challenges and they will surprise you with their inventiveness. It will be fun! In my game now, we all ignore weight and how much the characters can haul about. Will it break the design feature that it was intended to support? No, I don't think so. I have begun to like the idea of giving experience for gold, but since I'm not using that rule I think the best thing you can do about those "weight" entries in the equipment lists is to toss them out. If someone finds a dragon hoard and defeats a dragon, then they probably deserve to bring it back to town. No matter how unrealistic it is.