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Rituals Outside the Box and an Invitation

December 8, 2010 in Immortals' Wake, Playtesting, Rules, WR&M by Fitz | No comments

In my last post, I chatted about some of the difficulties I was having with Divine magic and how rituals fit into the mix.

Warrior, Rogue, & Mage has a few different parts to the magic system. You have Mana, which is the magical energy a caster can use to create a magical effect. You have a personal spellbook containing spells from the various Circles of magic. Each higher Circle basically provides a bit more gusto for your effects. Add to that the concept of Enhancements, which are basically Mana-fueled power-ups, and Rituals, which allows a single caster to cast higher level spells when in a group.

Pentagram with a circle around it
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Seems pretty reasonable doesn’t it?

However, as per usual, I seem to have painted myself into a box and created artificial boundaries. I was so happy that I found WR&M that I used it to build a new set of walls around myself. The rules are great, but I found myself wondering how to shoehorn a few things in.

Today I was reminded by Corvus that you have to take a risk sometimes – or as he put it – “No guts, no glory.” :)

As a result of this FACEPALM moment, it came about that perhaps these aren’t walls at all, but doors instead. And maybe it’s time for a little remodeling. The upshot is that for Divine spells of the priesthood I’ll end up with three or four Circles of spells and a 5th Circle of ritual-only spells that can’t be cast by a single caster. I won’t know for sure that’s going to be the final approach I’ll take for Divine magic, but it’s a start. And with a little playtesting, I ought to see any kinks that show up.

Once I get Divine and Superstitious spells fleshed out a bit, I’ll need to do some serious playtesting anyway.

So that brings me to the second part of this ramble. Would anyone be interested in a WR&M campaign online in an IRC chat one night a week? I’m thinking with one session for a couple of hours a week, we could explore the port town of Rivergate and see how the rules work in the setting.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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How to Extend Rituals in WR&M

December 6, 2010 in Immortals' Wake, Rules, Seeking Feedback, WR&M by Fitz | 1 comment

With a Divine spellcaster, the magical energy used to achieve an effect is channeled through the caster’s faith in a supernatural force. This force can be as straightforward as believing in a deity or more open-ended or philosophical such as the belief in a cosmic consciousness, the spirits of nature, or the ghosts of ancestors past. And though the end result of casting may be the same as a wizard, many Divine casters use personal rituals.

When we were working on Moebius Adventures we always loved the concepts behind ritual magic. These are the bigger spells that could only be done with larger amounts of casters, magical energy, components, or skill to gain bigger effects. For instance, a one-person Teleport spell could be transformed into a much larger Gateway to move additional people or equipment.

Rituals are broadly defined in WR&M as a way for participants to “pool their mana” to meet the DL requirements for higher circle spells that might be otherwise out of reach. Partcipants are still beholden to the mana cost for the spell and any spell enhancements, but the difficulty level is reduced by 1 if it’s done in the minimum time (1 minute for 1st circle, 5 minutes for 2nd circle, etc.).

Ultimately my question is this… Though this application of ritual magic is good – shouldn’t it be able to do more than that? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? Should it work more like there’s a 4th Circle spell – Mass Last Rites – with bigger bang that should only be performed by mighty powerful priests or a group of priests on the same mission?

For Divine magic, I’m thinking about rituals like:

  • Last Rites
  • Focus (Worry Beads, etc.)
  • Lay on Hands
  • Blessing
  • Inoculate (Cure Disease)
  • Detox (Cure Poison)
  • Protection
  • And so on

It gets more interesting when you look at how the effects are applied and how they stack if they’re done with friends.

For instance, let’s say a priest is delivering Last Rites to a dead or dying person. Perhaps this ritual helps their soul get to the afterlife. Perhaps it blocks them from rising as the walking dead. Perhaps it is nothing more than a way to make their family and friends left behind feel better.

If you take Last Rites into the wild where it’s simply a priest and the deceased, that’s one context. If you have a priest performing the ritual in a temple, church, or other holy place, that’s a different context that perhaps lends more weight or strength to the ritual. And if you add in more priests all performing the ritual at the same time, that’s yet a different context that lends additional strength to the ritual.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. What happens if Last Rites is a way to settle the restless dead – your textbook zombie? It may take a minute for a priest to do the ritual on a zombie – and it may require touching the zombie on the forehead with holy oil. Not necessarily a great position to be in obviously.

Perhaps if you and your priest friend both are doing the ritual, you can knock off the requirement to touch the body and affect a zombie at a distance. Add another priest and maybe you can affect a group of zombies. Add more priests and maybe you can affect a much larger group of zombies… Can you imagine a group of priests all performing a ritual while wandering through a town infested with zombies – and watching zombies fall around them like driftwood?

So maybe in the Last Rites example, there would be three spells – Last Rites (1st or 2nd circle), Last Rites in a Holy Place (2nd or 3rd circle), and Mass Last Rites (4th circle). And it would be up to the priest (or priests) to decide when to go it solo vs. with a group.

As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out how to best integrate some of these ideas with WR&M and am getting there slowly.

What do you think?

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Additions to WR&M for Immortals’ Wake

November 17, 2010 in Books, Immortals' Wake, Rules, WR&M by Fitz | 1 comment

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at extending the already cool system for Warrior, Rogue, and Mage for my new project. I’m trying to incorporate a few of the concepts we developed for Moebius Adventures as well as some new skills and talents.

For example, at character creation time in the base W,R,&M book, you get 3 skills and a talent. I’d like to tweak that slightly so that players pick skills based on different broad age groupings. So if I’m playing a young character, I should pick 2 skills with an eye towards childhood and 1 with an eye towards adulthood. Or if I’m playing an older character, perhaps only direct 1 skill to childhood and the other 2 to maturity.

I’m not quite sure yet how that will play out. I suspect that most players with such a small set of skills would focus on the usable skills for the character as opposed to how their childhood went. Perhaps this will be an optional rule players can use to help them define the life of their characters up to the present. I definitely don’t want it to get in the way of what players want – just to propose it as an option.

Beyond that, some of the new skills I’m considering adding include:

  • Animals (Mage): The ability to train and control animals. This would mostly be for domesticated animals, but could be expanded to wild animals as well.
  • Art (Mage): The ability to create a visual, auditory, or other sensory work to evoke an emotion in an audience.
  • Food (Mage): The ability to cook, prepare, and preserve food for consumption or storage.
  • Games (Rogue): The ability to play various games and apply strategy.
  • Performance (Rogue): The ability to perform (via acting, dance, or some other skill) in front of a crowd.
  • Wilderness (Warrior): The ability to hunt, track, trap, and live off the land in the wilderness to survive.

In addition, there are thirteen different wizardry skills ranging from Alchemy to the Supernatural, each with a particular spell book and magical philosophy. The first book will only cover a couple of these more closely tied to the sea – Supernatural Magic (similar to Voodoo) and Divine Magic (prayers to deities or forces of nature to help with a particular aim). I figure sailors (in fiction at least) have always been a superstitious lot and can use all the help they can get when rough seas come around.

Talent-wise, I’ve only really come up with one so far:

  • Healing: The ability to heal oneself or others using Mana.

I’ve thought about a few other possible talents that may come out of the old Random Fates list from the Moebius Adventures books, but haven’t defined them so far. These would be relatively minor talents such as the ability to see ghosts, knowing what direction they are pointing in regardless of position, and so on.

The existing skill lists in the base W,R,&M book are perfectly open-ended, so I don’t want to add too much clutter to it. My goal is to define these additional options for the rules and focus on the world of Immortals’ Wake. Each subsequent book will further define additional magic and talents as well as flesh out additional areas.

What do you think?

(By the way, if you’re looking for more details about WR&M – check out the website here at Stargazer Games.)

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Mana from Heaven (WR&M)

October 28, 2010 in Books, Rules, Seeking Feedback, World by Fitz | 5 comments

For a couple of years now I’ve been whining and moaning about how I’m not a system guy. I’m not. I’ve accepted that. My attempts at system often end up muddled messes that don’t scale well. And that has stymied me a bit as far as Moebius stuff goes.

Well, today I ran across a blog post today from John Payne over at Nevermet Press about Old School gaming. And he mentioned a game called Warrior, Rogue, and Mage that’s evidently been getting quite a bit of press since it’s debut a few months ago. Evidently I’m oblivious, but that’s nothing new. :)

Warrior, Rogue, and Mage (or WR&M) is a light rules system for fantasy roleplaying that’s been released under Creative Commons by Michael Wolf (Stargazer from Stargazer’s World and Stargazer Games). But beyond the free aspects, it is damn straightforward. And it embraces many of the ideas I was trying to implement in the revamped Moebius system. However, unlike my failed attempt at rules-light, WR&M provides a simple combat system that just… works!

So I think that with a little massaging I can easily migrate the Immortals’ Wake and Age of Phaedrus fantasy settings to use Stargazer’s system. And Covert Directives, which is more of a near-future cyberpunk setting, might be able to take advantage of some of the work started a few months ago by Mark Meredith at Dice Monkey for Pointman, Hacker & Thief – a modern spy adaptation of WR&M.

That leaves me with a bit of a conundrum however regarding the Creative Commons (CC) license of WR&M. The main game guide is licensed under the Attribution (cc-by), Non-Commercial (cc-nc), and Share-Alike (cc-sa) conditions.

Though “cc-by” seems to allow me the freedom to create a commercial product based on WR&M, the “cc-nc” and “cc-sa” conditions would seem to override that and not allow me to create a commercial product. I’m good with CC’ing any system tweaks (i.e. a “Moebius”-themed set of races, skills, and talents), but would like to release products for a small fee on RPGNow.com or in other venues.

Can anybody clarify how that would work? I *love* the system and am happy to extend it and allow folks to use my extensions as long as they attribute the extensions to me and the base game back to Stargazer – but I don’t want to make my setting details completely free… Seems like a catch-22.

Anyway… Minor quibbles… Back to devouring WR&M to better understand the ins/outs of the system…

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Characters in the Abstract

September 29, 2010 in Design, Rules by Fitz | 2 comments

A few weeks ago I started contemplating the idea of having much more abstract rules for character creation. But what do I mean by abstract in this case? “Abstract” for me means having a player create a character less by filling out a character sheet, but more about writing out some description of the character and running with it.

Abstract Dice Image

Abstract Dice Image - from Clipart.com

When it comes right down to it, your typical party of PCs doesn’t really need much to describe it. Sure, most games use character sheets to note scores, skills, and stuff for each character as reminders of how to describe such things, but do we really need it?

What if we could simply take a character concept and describe a few basic things:

  1. How does your character appear to the others? (A brief paragraph that you can read or hand to a player to answer this essential question.)
  2. How does your character see him or herself? (Another brief paragraph that is more for the player than anyone else.)
  3. How does your character behave around other people? (What is the character’s personality like? Are there any behavioral triggers that produce an emotional response?)
  4. What is your character good at? (A list of the top 5 things the character does well.)
  5. What is your character bad at? (A list of the top 5 things the character does poorly.)
  6. What does your character own? (A list of the “stuff” your character has currently on his or her person.)

Now… Some may not like that this approach takes a lot of writing. I know many people who think writing is evil, difficult, and to be avoided at all costs. So it could probably be boiled down to a set of lists.

Some of these qualities would change over time, so you’d still need a character sheet to write things down on.

And the only thing missing is a way to resolve actions and/or damage in combat. If you boil #4 and #5 down to simple lists of common skills or actions (i.e. Swordsmanship, Acrobatics, Jumping, etc…) you could use a single die and modify it…

So let’s say you get, in your top 5 “good” actions – an Amazing, an Excellent, two Goods, and an OK. Your “Amazing” action would get you your base die + 4 dice. Your “Excellent” would get you your base + 3, etc. Or perhaps it’s just the base die + 4, 3, 2, 1… Though people like to roll lots of dice sometimes, so who knows…

Same on the other side… A “Horrible”, “Poor”, etc… Maybe we don’t really need this and just go with the base die for anything not explicitly called out in the “good” actions. Naked roll.

And it’s just roll vs. roll. Each character would have 5 “hits” before unconsciousness and a coup-de-grace hit after that kills them. Each time an action resolves not in favor of the PC, it counts against a “hit”. And they heal a “hit” per “day” in the game.

This is beginning to sound suspiciously like the old Vampire game with its dots. :)

Are there any games out there that already work this way? Or have you played with more abstract roleplaying concepts in the past? Let’s start a conversation! I’d be interested to see where things end up…

–Fitz

Blog Post: Combat… Damage and Critical Strikes… Help!?!

April 8, 2010 in Design, Playtesting, Rules, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 14 comments

Duel of Volker the minstrel and Ilsan the monk...
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Ok, so with the help of Chuck and Mike, I feel a bit better about a few things. But when I was trying to write up a concise summary of the combat rules last night, I ran into a few snags.

Like was documented in Starting Over… and Starting Over… Further tweaks, the basic mechanic for the MARPG revolves around these points for skill, characteristic, and combat resolution checks…

The idea is to roll on 2d10 and get a number below the designated target, which is always the characteristic or derived characteristic value involved, added to any ranks in an applicable skill, and modified by environmental or opposition effects. Sounds tough, but it boils down to:

[Characteristic or Derived Characteristic value] + [Ranks from applicable Skill] +/- [Modifiers]

For example, if we have our Tracker with a Mind characteristic of 5 and a Tracking skill at 3 ranks, by default any “tracking” he tries to do will have a target number of 8. If the rain washes away the tracks, the GM may make things more difficult (-2). Or if there’s a layer of snow that the quarry has walked through, the GM may make things easier (+2). And if the quarry is smart enough to try and cover her own tracks, she can roll against her own Tracking skill to do so. Success on her part would make things more difficult for the Tracker, and failure would make things easier.

If the character has no applicable skill, the target is based solely on the characteristic value and any modifiers from the GM or any opposition.

Success or failure is determined by comparing the die roll (2d10) to the target number. Roll the target number or less and you succeed. Roll above and you fail. The Quality of Success or Failure (QoS or QoF) can then be used, as in the quarry’s case, to make an opponent’s task easier or more difficult.

Great, so that handles the skill or characteristic action resolution. Not too tough. Pretty consistent even.

Now we apply it to combat.

As its bare essentials, combat boils down to one opponent trying to do damage to another. The damage may be direct, as with a sword in his hand, or indirect, as in a trap laid for a pursuer.

So let’s say our Tracker has caught his quarry, a female thief who took something from his employer. She is wearing leather armor and carrying a short sword. The Tracker is wearing chain mail and carrying a longsword. (Let’s forget for a moment that most trackers would probably wear less noisy armor while stalking prey.)

Each character has Hit Points (HP) like in most other systems. In MARPG, HP is equal to the character’s Body characteristic value times 4. So since each of our characters has a Body of 5, each has 20 HP.

Let’s talk about armor and weapons for a moment.

  • Armor has two main values (beyond weight). First is the number of Armor Points (AP) it has, This is equivalent to the number of HP a character has. Second is the Absorption Rate (AR), which notes how much damage the armor can take to itself in a single blow before the strike cuts through the armor to the character’s HP. For instance, a suit of Chain mail has an AR of 6 and an AP of 48. Soft leather armor has an AR of 3 and an AP of 24.
  • Weapons also two main values beyond weight. First is the Strength (Body) needed to wield the weapon. Second is the Damage Potential (DP) of the weapon. For example, a long sword has a Strength to Wield (StW) of 6 and a DP of 8. A knife only has a StW of 1 and a DP of 6. A short sword has a StW of 3 and a DP of 7. (Values for StW and DP may change.) A character with a lower Body score than needed to wield a particular weapon will drop the DP of the weapon an equal amount.

With these ideas, let’s look at our Tracker and his Quarry. Both have a Body characteristic of 5. The Tracker is wielding a long sword (StW 6) so the DP in his hands will go down by 1 for the weapon and be 7. On the flip side, if the woman he’s tracking (Body 5) is wielding a short sword (StW 3) and has no issues getting the max damage for the weapon.

Now let’s talk about how armor affects each character.

  • Each character has a “passive defense” (PD) as a derived characteristic value equal to the total of their Body + the AR of any armor they’re wearing divided by 2. So the formula is (Body + Armor’s AR)/2. If the character isn’t wearing armor, their PD is equal to half their Body characteristic value (rounded up). PD is similar to the concept of an Armor Class (AC) in other systems.

So with that in mind, our Tracker has a PD of (Body 5 + Chain AR 6) / 2 = 5.5. We’ll round it up to 6. His Quarry has a PD of (Body 5 + Leather AR 3) / 2 = 4. The Tracker’s armor will obviously absorb a bit more damage than our thief.

Really we’ve only added a few new ideas to the basics we discussed earlier in the post.

Our Tracker now looks like this:

Tracker

  • Characteristics: Body (5), Mind (5), Soul (6) (we’ll talk about these in another post)
  • Derived Characteristics: HP (20), PD (6)
  • Skills: Swords (Body) (4 ranks) (default target 9), Tracking (Mind) (3 ranks) (default target 8 )
  • Items: Chain Mail (AR 6, AP 48), Long Sword (DP 7)

And our Quarry (thief) looks like this:

Thief

  • Characteristics: Body (5), Mind (6), Soul (5) (we’ll talk about these in another post)
  • Derived Characteristics: HP (20), PD (4)
  • Skills: Swords (Body) (6 ranks) (default target 11), Tracking (Mind) (2 ranks) (default target 7)
  • Items: Leather Armor (AR 3, AP 24), Short Sword (DP 7)

(Acronym reminder: HP = Hit Points, PD = Passive Defense, AR = Absorption Rate, DP = Damage Potential)

Now let’s walk through a bit of combat. The Thief heard the Tracker coming, and is not surprised. She has her sword out and is ready to defend herself.

Let’s ignore initiative here and just say that the Tracker goes first. He’s going to attack the Thief with his long sword. The Tracker’s player rolls a 5 on 2d10. The Tracker’s Quality of Success (QoS) is Target 9 – Roll 4 = 5. Great. It’s a hit!

The Thief can choose to actively defend with her short sword (i.e. parry the blow), dodge, or take the hit and strike the Tracker. She chooses the last option. The GM rolls a 7. The Thief’s QoS is Target 11 – Roll 7 = 4. It’s another hit, but the Tracker tagged her as well.

Though the thief didn’t defend herself, she has her PD on her side, which is 4. And she has her Leather Armor on, which has an AR of 6.

Here’s where my questions come in… Should the Thief’s armor absorb all 6 points of damage, doing 6 points to its AP of 24? Should her PD kick in, absorbing 4 points (to where exactly?) and letting 2 points get through to her HP?

In the next round, the Tracker chooses to attack again with his long sword. He rolls a 8, which means a QoS of 1. Not a great hit, but a hit nonetheless.

The Thief decides not to let him just smack her again, so she parries with her short sword. She rolls a 3, which means a QoS of 8.

Her parry beats his attack and she manages to avoid any damage.

Moving to the third round, the Tracker attacks again. He rolls a 10, which means a QoF of 1. He missed.

Not waiting to see if he was going to miss, the Thief dodges, which is a Body characteristic check. She rolls a 6, which gives her a QoF of 1. It’s ok though, his attack missed anyway. And on the other side of the Dodge, she attacks with her short sword. She rolls a 2 (natural 1 and 1 on 2d10) for a critical success. Critical success means she gets all 11 points of her target number. Her short sword has a DP of 7 however, so she can only do 7 points of damage maximum.

Again, my question is… how does damage get computed? The Tracker has a PD 6 and an AR 7 for his chain armor. Should the armor absorb all 7 points of damage? Or should it take 6 and have 1 get through to HP?

On the flip side of this, it doesn’t seem fair that a Critical Success in this case would only allow the thief to do her maximum. Should she perhaps do the same amount of damage as her target number, which would be 11? This would be tantamount to finding the chink in his armor and exploiting it.

So what do you think?

–Fitz

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Starting Over… Further tweaks

April 5, 2010 in Design, Rules, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 2 comments

Hi all…

{{en|}}
Image via Wikipedia

Chuck and Mike have thrown a few good comments my way that I’ve been pondering a bit since my last Starting Over… article, so I thought I’d address them before moving on…

A couple of things came to light, including:

  • The need for a more static or passive defense number instead of an always active defense.
  • Damage and how armor affects it needs some work

Fair enough on both parts. Since we’re going for light, quick, and playable, we want something straightforward to use and evidently the whole Quality of Success vs. Quality of Failure argument doesn’t hold much water (or holds water, but seems to be full of holes like a sieve)…

So to answer both questions a bit, it comes down to something like the old Armor Class idea for D&D. Not only does the armor have a certain value, but the PC‘s ability to move and dodge out of the way comes into play as well.

Chuck, you mentioned a static defense of something like (Attribute + Skill)/2.

How about if I counter the argument and say that it’s (Body + Armor’s Absorption Rate)/2. For example, a Chain suit has an AR of 6, vs. Leather armor has an AR of 3. Armor in the MARPG system is broken into a couple of broad categories – how much damage can it absorb from a single blow before you go through to hit points (HP) and how many total points of damage the armor can take before it’s useless.

If a character with a Body of 8 is wearing Chain, it would deflect (8 + 6) / 2 = 7 points of damage by default. If the same character is wearing Leather, it would deflect (8 + 3) / 2 = 5.5 = 6 (always round up) points of damage.

That doesn’t seem right, does it?

Though a character with less Body would get hurt more quickly, even in Chain. Let’s take a character with a Body of 4. In Chain, he’d deflect (4 + 6) / 2 = 5 points and in Leather he’d deflect (4 + 3) / 2 = 3.5 = 4 points. Obviously the wimpier character would die more quickly.

The question then becomes a matter of where does the damage go… If the armor, say Chain, can absorb 48 points of damage 6 points at a time, an opponent swinging a mean axe doing 10 points a swing will do 6 points to armor each hit and 4 points to Hit Points. Ouch. It gets worse for the poor slob in Leather (absorption rate of 3) with the lower Body score. It would be 3 points going to armor and the remaining 7 going to HP. He wouldn’t be long for this world.

Should combat be this vicious? I tend to think yes. It makes characters think twice about getting into combat without preparation and backup.

And characters can also actively parry with a weapon or shield to avoid damage all together. For example, if our buff Chain-mail wearing character has a long sword and a shield, he can attack with the long sword and parry with the shield doing an opposed roll.

Ok, this is starting to sound better. Active vs. Passive Defense. Coolio.

Thoughts? Ideas?

–Fitz

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Starting Over…

March 17, 2010 in Design, Playtesting, Rules, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 6 comments

Just like the rest of life, sometimes it’s time for a do-over. Thus begins a new chapter in the life of Moebius Adventures (MARPG) games.

Dice for various games, especially for rolepla...
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Here’s the scoop. We have a streamlined system. It needs to be tested seriously. So who better to take a look at some of the mechanics than… you! That’s right, it’s time YOU got into the act here.

First, I want to welcome you (back) into the fold. The next series of articles will focus on some core mechanics, character creation, and then how to apply those bits to various genres. After all, MARPG is a cross-genre, universal roleplaying game. Tough to tell that when all we’ve seen so far are examples for fantasy settings.

I WANT your feedback. If you think this sucks and is too difficult, let me know. I’m looking for frank opinions with suggestions on how to make things better. The goal here is to create a solid base mechanic for a variety of settings so gaming groups can pick up the system and play just as easily in a cyberpunk setting as they can in a low-magic fantasy setting. Or if they want to do epic space battles such as in Star Wars or Star Trek or make more intimate “cowboys in space” games like with Firefly, it moves quickly with them.

Like in all roleplaying games, your MARPG character is a set of properties – characteristic values (Mind, Body, Soul), derived characteristic values (Hit Points, Luck Points, Reality Check, and so on), and skills with ranks. All these values do is provide a framework for behaviors, abilities, and experience. They’re just numbers on a page. It’s up to the player and GM to bring the player (PC) and non-player characters (NPCs) represented by those numbers to life.

As a player or GM, in addition to a PC or NPC, you’ll need two d10s. We’re not talking huge sets of dice here.

The basic mechanic is the same for all skill checks, characteristic checks, and combat rolls. You have a target number you have to roll below with 2d10 and modifiers.

The target number comes from the character himself for most actions, with modifiers from the GM for things like weather, fatigue, item quality, etc. In the case of opposed actions, it becomes a battle between the quality of success or failure between opponents.

Bird tracks on a frozen lake
Image by Paul Williams (Iron Ammonite) via Flickr

For example, if a tracker is looking for animal signs and tracks in the woods, it’s a simple skill check. The GM may make the attempt more difficult or easier based on conditions such as how recent the tracks were made, if there was fresh snow, if snow or leaves covered the tracks, and so on.

Let’s say the Tracker has a Tracking skill of 3 ranks. Tracking relies on knowing what to look for and how perceptive the character is, so it’s a Mind-based skill. Let’s say the Tracker has a Mind of 7. By default, without any modifiers from the GM, the target number is 10.

To determine success or failure, you roll 2d10, add modifiers, and compare the total to the target.

In the case of the Tracker, let’s say he rolls a 13. He failed the attempt, so he’s unable to find his quarry.

Roll two 1′s and you have a critical success. Roll two 10′s and you have a critical failure. Compare the total to the target number to determine the Quality of Success (QoS) or Failure (QoF). If your total was above or below the target, your QoS (if below) or QoF (if above) is the difference between the target and the total. If your total is equal to the target, the GM can decide whether the act was directly opposed and it was a draw or if the act was unopposed and it was a success.

QoS = Target Number – Total Die Roll
QoF = Total Die Roll – Target Number

For the Tracker, his QoF was 3. He missed the target by 3 (Total Die Roll 12 – Target Number 10 = QoF 3).

Let’s say he rolled a 3 on 2d10. That would mean he succeeded in finding tracks. In that case, his QoS was 7. He made it by 7 (Target Number 10 – Total Die Roll 3 = QoS 7).

Now let’s say the Tracker is looking for someone deliberately trying to obscure signs of their passing. The Tracker’s opponent uses her Tracking skill at rank 4 and her Mind characteristic value of 5 for an unmodified Target Number of 9. The GM rolls 2d10 and gets a 5, for a QoS of 4. This makes the Tracker’s job harder.

The Tracker’s unmodified Target Number is 10. But since it’s opposed, the QoS becomes a modifier on the skill check making it more difficult. Now the Tracker’s Target Number is 6 (Target Number 10 – opponent QoS = 6). The Tracker would have to make a great roll to get a six or less.

* on the left: German Reitschwert, circa 1530,...
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Let’s add another wrinkle. The Tracker finds the woman he’s been searching for in the woods and a battle begins. Each opponent has a sword and some ranks in the Swordsmanship skill.

The Tracker surprised his quarry and gets to attack first. His quarry can only Parry with her sword or Dodge to get out of the way. The Tracker’s Swords is at 4 ranks and his Body is a 5, for an unmodified Target of 9. His quarry has Swords at 6 ranks and a Body of 5 for an unmodified Target of 11. Both opponents roll 2d10.

The Tracker rolls a 5, for a QoS of 4 (Target Number 9 – Total Die Roll 5 = QoS 4). His quarry has a -4 modifier to her Target to make it a 7. The GM rolls a 9 for a QoF of 2 and the woman takes 2 points of damage…

This pattern of comparing QoS and QoF is repeated throughout the system now for skill checks, characteristic checks, and combat. One mechanic simplifies the rules greatly, while still providing the flexibility and uniqueness of character strengths and weaknesses to appear in sometimes unexpected ways.

In the next article, we’ll talk about character creation and the flexibility available for quickly creating PCs and NPCs for any campaign.

What do you think? Leave me comments here on the blog entry or send me e-mail directly at fitz (at) moebiusadventures (dot) com. I’m looking for negative and positive feedback here – so let ‘er rip!

–Fitz

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Religion in Fantasy Worlds

December 13, 2009 in Design, GMing, Inspiration, Resources, Rules, World by Fitz | 8 comments

This post was inspired by a post at the KORE rpg blog about the topic. And it got me thinking, which is sometimes not a good thing…

monk_bwReligion is definitely one of those hot buttons in the real world, like sex, money, politics, and many other hot buttons. As soon as you breach the subject however, some people want to either convert you or condemn you – and neither option really appeals to me.

I’m an atheistic-leaning agnostic… or an agnostic-leaning atheist. Just depends on the day. From my point of view, religion is a good thing for a lot of people, so I don’t make a fuss about it. If you want to talk to me about religion, that’s fine – but I don’t like being preached to. Just a personal thing. The door-to-door folks concerned with saving my soul should just move along. (I’m nice about it, but don’t want to waste their time or mine.)

What’s funny is that it’s also not one of the things I typically think about in my roleplaying. I’m more likely to play a cleric or priest as an NPC than a PC, which goes along with my leaning towards creating worlds with conflict these days.

My Immortals’ Wake setting has a church – the Church of the Mother – that has been twisted in the last thousand years to preach a message of no tolerance. History in the real world shows that many faiths have had issues with tolerating views other than their own. And I wanted to bring that aspect into my setting.

And, as with all things, there are those people within the Church who are more liberal in their views of brotherhood than others. A militant arm has sworn to destroy a group of so-called “demons” simply because they are an affront to what they believe. Other groups within the Church are more tolerant of the “demons” and even helps them from time to time.

However, priests in my games tend to be focused on the personal aspects of the mortal condition – helping the sick and poor, aiding those seeking sanctuary, providing spiritual guidance, and so on – not just the traditional D&D cleric point of view as far as mobile MASH and holy smash unit. As mentioned, there are militants in the Church of the Mother who certainly focus on what they think of as fighting the good fight. But most priests would rather tend to their flocks than fight I think.

As such, my priest NPCs tend to be more philosophers and scholars than weapon-wielding crusaders of faith. They’re more likely to talk you to death than beat you with a blessed club. These folks are also just as likely to be warped by greed or lust as any other mortal, so they may not be the paragons of virtue they’re made out to be. They’re simply men and women doing a job they believe in (or want you to believe in).

This is not to say that they don’t apply their healing abilities to those who need them. Nor do they stray away from praying regularly to the focus of their devotion. And miracles do happen. But these are mortal representatives of their faith who only rarely become vessels to the divine power of their gods.

When you bring in the whole wizard vs. cleric debate and wonder whether a priest might directly oppose a wizard and try to have them lynched. Many priests would decry that wizardry is evil and therefore should be destroyed. But many others would state that if their divine hosts could work miracles through the faithful, why would they allow magicians of other types not to exist? What’s to say that the wizard isn’t working divine miracles of his or her own and simply doesn’t appreciate the divine side of the equation?

A priest whose power base is threatened might turn his flock against a rival wizard, but that would erode his power base. The wizard would most likely fall to greater numbers eventually, but how many members of the priest’s flock would die first? Wouldn’t that give them pause?

So there is definitely room for religion in my games. I’ve only had one player ever convincingly play a priest in a campaign I ran. But I’m always hoping for another!

How do you use religion in your fantasy games? Is it a force to be reckoned with?

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Need Feedback – Where do we go from here?

November 22, 2009 in Design, News, Rules, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | 1 comment

Sorry I’ve been a bit lacking in the posts arena lately. I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about how to move forward.

Question MarksWith the great, constructive feedback from the October 2009 playtest session of the Moebius Adventures system, it became painfully clear it was time to rethink things. Each player at that session had constructive criticisms of various aspects of the rules, from character generation and presentation to skill resolution and combat. Though we had a good time despite the rules, I was left wondering about the future of the game.

Moebius Adventures was born in the mid-1990s when a friend (Sean Bindel) and I took a hard look at the games we’d been playing.

Like many gamers, we’d played with a number of systems in college and before. We had a great time with a campaign set based loosely on the Temple of Elemental Evil from TSR, but we used the Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game as our system. Add in some serious time playing the d6 Star Wars RPG, Call of Cthulhu, Mechwarrior, and even a little Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, and that about summed it up. And after college, we were playing in a Vampire: The Masquerade game and decided we wanted to get back to the fantasy roots we both started with.

The Moebius Adventures system started out as an exercise in discovering what qualities we wanted to see in a RPG rules system. We modeled it a bit after the Palladium FRPG (1st edition) and Dungeons & Dragons and set to work adding our own spin. The result was first published in 1997 and then in revised form in 2007. And it was the edition from 2007 that we playtested in October of this year.

Though painful, I would say it was incredibly valuable to have seen the game through fresh eyes with this recent playtest session. Almost immediately after, I started working on a slimmed down set of rules that would provide (1) quick character creation, (2) quicker skill and combat resolution, and (3) enough freedom to do all that I was looking at for a cross-genre universal system.

I believe I’ve met that goal and hope to do some playtesting in the next few months as I get more details written up and considered.

My problem now is deciding what to do about this predicament. I have a ton of ideas for free-form magic, super-hero abilities, as well as ways to integrate technology for modern and futuristic settings. And I have three entire settings from which to pull potential setting or adventure products from. But without a simple, consistent, and open system to use, I’m at a bit of an impasse. In my mind, I can’t create system-less modules or settings without having some way of modeling a consistent way to describe NPCs, monsters, items, and so on.

Am I simply over-thinking this? Obviously there are many companies and writers coming up with great RPG materials and I’m not the only one who’s run into this.

Can anyone point out some companies that are doing this already and how they’ve overcome this hurdle (that’s most likely entirely in my head)? Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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