Instant swashbuckling, with fast pacing and a fun game

I have been requested to run a game of 7th Sea. This caused me to take down one of those games I have on my shelf which had not seen any action, and make a concentrated effort to make it shine. This brings back the question, before mentioned on this blog, of pacing a game. A game like 7th Sea is very much a game about pacing.

Swashbuckling means you have to keep the pace brisk, and the mood has to be one of adventure and daring. My friends have started to make characters, and while we have decided to start the game at sea, we will probably try to swing from at least one chandelier, and at least have one chase involving horse dawn carriages. My image of how swashbuckling works, is to have iconic settings and iconic dramatic situations presented in swift succession to get that feeling we all look for in such a game.

Now, anyone can line up a few villains, a few chases and a fencing scene or two. Making it sing and dance demands a rhythm, a beat, to keep everyone dancing the same dance.

Swashbuckling is, I claim, not a genre, but a way to approach your game. I suggest the following.

• Chases - there must be quick transitions between scenes. If you don't just gloss over a bit of travel, it should be a chase.
• Witty banter - whatever you do, you have to whip out witty one liners. The problem hwre of course is that not all of us are that quick thinking. 7th Sea have something called The Repartee system, usable for tauting and intimidating people while you cross swords. I like that game system support for such a thing.
• Swinging, sliding and jumping - I designed a S&W swashbuckler class in an earlier post, and tried to get this in there. I think swinging from chandeliers is the thing for swashbuckling. Oddly, most gamesystem give you penalties when doing something at the same time as swinging a sword. To make this kind of action happen you should give bonuses for every action you take while fighting! The only game I know of that does it is Wushu. 7th Sea uses something called Drama Dice, which you can use to increase the chance of success. A good idea, but maybe having to roll at all is a bad idea?

My idea is that if you manage to get that in your game, the pace of "brisk succession" I mentioned above might come naturally. If nothing happens for a while, I'll just have someone enter with a loaded gun (hey, in the 17th century you can have guns!) and then add the three points above. Instant "swashbuckliness". Should work, eh?

Reading T&T 7.5 - Saving Rolls p.99-126

So, now we have come to that mechanic which makes us T&T fans rave so much about the game. Usually I don't talk that directly about rules here. I think you should buy the rules to find out. Today I think I will, though.

What's the fuss all about then? Nothing much, but it has implications. Starting the section on Saving Rolls, we read that sometimes only luck can save a delver. That's when you roll a SR. Rolling a SR is done with two dice, and then you add a relevant stat, like LK och STR. If you meet a target number, depending on difficulty, you succeed. Easy ones, level 1, is TN 20 and then it increase by five per level.

Nothing special, eh? Well. One nice feature is that when you roll doubles, you add and roll again! I love exploding dice, and ever since I encountered it in MERP during the 1980-ies I have loved that mechanic. The feeling when you really need to succeed and you get those two 5 staring back at you, roll again and get two 4 and roll again and get more, is priceless! That's why I couldn't play diceless. Random chance is just to much fun.

Now imagine doing this for anything, at any time, to resolve any crazy idea you get. Why would you? Because of AP.

Just after the section on Saving Rolls, with two very good examples of different SRs, we start to read on Adventure Points. These are used to raise your stats, and you gain them from, among other activities, rolling SRs. Note, you get it for rolling, not for suceeding! There's no reason not to try to do something cool, because you will get a reward in the form of AP, just for trying. This is a game where being active counts. The rules in this section is very well written with many examples sprinkled throughout, this is also true for the section on Adventure Points.

I remember when I first heard of Feng Shui, by Robin Laws. Chinese action movies are something I enjoy a lot, and that game seemed very fun. But, when I read it I didn't feel the love like I expected. I didn't feel the game mechanic inspired me to do over the top action stunts. Removing obstacles is one thing, but providing wires for the wire-fu and bullets for my gun was something else. Then I encountered Wushu - the ancient art of action role-playing. This was a game that gave me what I wanted! For every weird stunt you try, the easier it is to succeed. That, is a stroke of design genius. That is how I feel about the interplay of Saving Rolls and Adventure Points.

Adventure points you can get for slaying monsters, outwitting them, casting spells and any thing the GM feel is worth rewarding. How they are used, and how fast a progression the game will have is discussed in the rules, and more than one way presented for quicker and slower games. In my games my played by the book, and I let my players raise their stats as soon as they could. In the middle of a fight someone would take a look at their stats, ask for a SR and I would gladly allow it and then see them raise the stat and continue the fight. Entertainment was guaranteed when they scrambled for that SR and a few more points.

I will close with one thing our game designer feel is worthy of Adventure Points is Daring. Daring is described as the difficulty and danger of the tunnels and encounters for a session. Exposing your character to danger is worthy of reward if you survive. Think about this quote: "A general guideline is to reward 100 AP for each level of dungeon or difficulty that is overcome".

How do you handle that? If the delvers go down to level 3, do you give them 300 as they set foot on level 2? Going down a chute and at once going up again using an elevator from level 9, is that worth 900? You get no strict advice from the rules. I found this to be a very charming and very old school so I rewarded 100 times the deepest level visited and encountered something, when my players was back in town alive. Combine this with the stable rule, and there are interesting strategic options of resource management available to the game.

Next week it's time for Magic

Fight on! How to make combat interesting

I've read more than once about Tunnels & Trolls that people think it's a neat game, but that they get tired of rolling buckets of dice and that the abstract combat system don't work well for them. I'm a bit surprised that the dice pool system is much of a problem, considering how popular that kind of game mechanic is, and also how easy it is to manage by some shortcuts. Today, though, I'm going to talk about the combat system, and how you can get it to sing. Note: these ideas work for any game system! If I get a bit rambling, bear with me and see if I might have some cools ideas in here after all.

In his very enjoyable book Play Dirty, author John Wick writes about a lot of cool things to use at the gaming table. Naturally, he also writes about combat. Some of the tricks he writes about, I'll show you here as well and talk about other stuff in the same vein. When I attended the Ad Astra convention in Toronto earlier this year I listened to a panel about how to write combat scenes. When reading Play Dirty I was reminded of that, since in that book John wrote the same thing those panelists said. First off, a real fight is quick. Real quick. I remember making fun of AD&D when I was younger, because the game turn was so ridiculously long but you only got one attack in! In T&T a combat turn by the book is two minutes. Obviously these games are not good aproximations of real combat. They don't need to be, but if you really want to end a combat quick, here's how to do it.

So, if all those game turns is just waiting for a killing blow, and all the circling and shuffling about is just wearing each other down, then let's go for the kill. So, let's feint and kick him in the groin or poke him in the eyes. Then, when he is down, kick him until he wont get up.

Feint – SR on DEX or LK. Why not take the average? Level? Well, I use the level of the dungeon as a general metric, but otherwise use his level, or MR/10 if no level is applicable. You're playing D&D? Roll as many d6 as the difference in level between you, add then and try to get under your DEX.

Groin kick – SR on LK or STR or maybe the average. You don't need to give him 2d6 Spite damage, just say he's out of the fight. In D&D you can call for an attack against a tougher AC and call it a day.

Poking eyes – Make a SR on SPD to see if your opponent manage to deflect your attack. You are going to do something in the middle of his field of vision, so it won't be easy. Say, level based on MR/10 with a bonus of +2? Maybe base it on his SPD/10 if he has one.

One thing to notice here is of course that T&T have a very cool mechanic, the Saving Roll, which can be used for anything. This is important so I'll say it again, it can be used for anything. I wonder if people who claim T&T combat is abstract and unengaging have understood that they can do anything. It's in the rules, pal! Let's get back to John Wick and Play Dirty again.

John notes one thing I find really spot on. He writes “Never let your players say, 'I roll to hit'. You know what they're doing, you want to know how they are doing it.” That's not only amusing, but also very true. Nobody will roll to miss, so why bother “rolling to hit”? So, following John, a DM should ask “where”, “how” and “when”. Good players will catch on, since you'll be giving them a bonus for each of those three. Imagine the three maneuvers mentioned above, but with a hefty bonus because the player said he was crouching down as if hit, kick out just as that other NPC/PC character shoved the target off balance (hey, if it's a minute or two it will happen all the time as people scuffle around). Beautyful and grim. Also, quite fun. All this about bonuses makes me want to bring up Wushu. In that game there are no penalties, only bonuses. I have read many games that talk about cool maneuvers, but they all have penalties. Not so in Wushu. The more cool stuff you say to try, the easier it is to succeed. Now, I fully understand that not everyone wants their fantasy games to be like an over the top wuxia movie, but take a long hard look at the idea that you award stunts if you really want to spice up combat in your game. Penalties are telling the player "don't even try it, boy".

Now, you might not want to go that far, but there are still a few tricks left. One interesting suggestion from the panel at Ad Astra, was that since the fight will be very much waiting and then a few short blows before it's over, you have to make it interesting in some other way. The method that stuck in my brain was the idea that you can always describe the event from the viewpoint of another character. Since you only have one character as a player in a RPG, you'll have to make do with that. Try to describe you're next maneuver in combat by mentioning how you get caught up in the successful attack by the player before you in the initiative (or something like that). That player gets to shine once more and will hopefully reward you with some inspired narrative next turn where your character is in the spotlight. Make combat fun together. Having fun together is why we play roleplaying games, right? I would even suggest that if you treat them nice, you could probably borrow a creature from the Game Master if you promise to return them in decent shape. Go wild.

I'm not always very good at following my own advice in this post, but I'm trying and will see if I can't manage to collect some real life drama from my game table some time. Oh, and buy John's book!

Fight on!