Rock - Paper - Scissors! A method for War?

Nope, it's not about solving the wars of the world with a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (even though it would be nice if that was possible). Rather it's about me thinking more about what kind of conflict resolution system I want for my game War: The RPG (which I have written about in a couple of previous posts).

One trick that some games use is a variant of the old game Rock-Papers-Scissors. It has been used in roleplaying games before in one way or another (some Larps use it, and the game Dying Earth use a version of it). Now, in the original game, Rock always beats Scissors etc, but in an rpg one could for instance have different modifiers depending on the choices. Let's say you've got three types of attacks and three types of defences. If you are lucky and choose "Rock"-attack vs. "Scissors"-defence, you will get a bonus to your attack roll.

In addition to this you could plan your attacks (I think this is how they do it in Burning Wheels, and it's also how duels are played out in Castle Falkenstein), and for instance play out 3 (or something) cards at the same time, and then compare them step by step.

I think this would work well with a combat/ skirmish oriented roleplaying game for two reasons. First: It is quite common for a particular tactic to be more effeicient against some defences, while not as efficient against other.
Second: When the players have do several choices in advance, it simulates tactics and planning in a combat situation.

Dungeon Delves - the perfect format?

One of the problems often mentioned with RPG's in general is the time investment. First you have to spend one or several (often the latter) evenings, and on top of that, the GM have to prepare the adventures, something that shouldn't be taken for granted.

Dear Wizards have tried to solve that with what they call the Dungeon Delves. They are short adventures for DnD 4th of three encounters each, and each encounter is designed to take about an hour. There's also a book with a collection of Delves, meant to take you from lvl1 to lvl 30.

That means that if you have an hour to spare, you can play a short session. We are a couple of gamers that is trying this out on the lunch hour of the university we are all attending.

The impression so far is that it works. The modules are nice enough, and so far the encounters do stay within the time slot. So, what are our impressions so far?

• As said, the timing works quite nice. The GM has to setup the place a couple of minutes before, but other than that one encounter is roughly one hour (and sometimes less)
• The delves are VERY combat oriented. If you prefer other types of roleplaying, they may not be for you.
• The encounters are nicely balanced so that they provide a challenge, without being to lethal. You have to be careful with your resources (like Daily Powers) so that you have some oomph left for the final encounter. There are also guidelines for how to balance the encounters if you have to many or to few characters.
• The encounters use the environment quite nicely. For instance, in one of the encounters, some kobolds pushed over a large statue on one of the characters (who got stuck under it for 3 or 4 rounds).
  

Of course, while playing through the encounters, I've been toying with the idea of spreading the idea to other games and settings. Even to other types of encounters within DnD 4th, like an interesting skill challenge.

I think that "bite-sized" roleplaying has a place and is possible. Maybe we just have to think a little different and modulize our adventures a little more.

Plattforms for character generators

If you want to make a character generator for a game, there are a number of tools to use. Each of these have advantages and disadvantages, and I'll try to make a short summary here. I'll try to look at aspects like easy of use (as a developer), cross-plattform compability and what is required of the user.

Microsoft Excell

This is one of the major spreadsheet tools on the market. It's cell-like strukture and built in functions make self calculating character sheets easy to build. It's also fairly easy to deal with more advanced stuff (like turning a cell into a drop-down menu). However, after a while you run out of "out-of-the-box"-solutions, and that's when you have to come up with your own solutions. These can sometimes be both big and counterintuitive (time permitting, I'll see if I can write a post with some examples).

If you are into scripting, Excell so far has scripting possibilities (as long as you are using the Windows version. However, from what I've heard, that might change in the future).

Of course, for the user to use the Excell sheet, they need a copy of Excell. While MS Office is a rather widespread tool, it's not something to take for granted, and getting a copy isn't exactly sheep.

Google Spreadsheet

In it's suite Google Docs, Google also added a Spreadsheet tool, similar to Excell. Most of what I wrote above also applies to Google Spreadsheets. There are, however, some differences. The main one is of course that the latter is an online application. You can invite others to your application directly, and they can make a personal copy of the spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheet is also slightly smaller than Excell. While it still has a whole heap of tools and functions, it's not as powerful as Excell. Also, it of course requires internet connecion to use.

As a side comment: There's also other alternatives when it comes to spreadsheets, like Open Office (free, both win, osx and linux), Numbers (a nifty little spreadsheet tool for osx) and Star Office. These are all usable, and have similar pros and cons as what I've written above.

Flash/ Flex/ Air

These three are basically different implementations of the same core technology (to the extent that Flex Builder changed name to Flash Builder in the latest edition).

When we think about Flash, we mostly think about annoying banners and ads on webb pages. However, Flash is so much more than that, and if you are fairly profficient in Actionscript, you can build advanced applications in a fairly short time.

Flex and Air are technologies that build on the Flash framework, but while Flash in itself (the software, that is) is aimed at multimedia and presentations, Flex and Air are more focused on Application Development.

The startup is a bit tougher in these tools, since you have to learn at least a little Actionscripting before you start. But if you master that, I'd say that Flash (etc) is a fairly good way to go, because you can develop applications for it rather quickly, it's compatibale with both Windows and osX, and as long as the user has Flash Player installed (most have, and it's free) anyone can use it.

Java and/or C#

If you have some programming experience, it might be worth looking into a more full fledged programming language like Java or C#. The advantage here is that many programming languages have pre-made functions and classes for dealing with lists and collections, something that is very usable when you are creating characters. Both Java and C# (and others) have graphical tools for laying out the GUI, which saves you a whole lot of typing (if you are not like me, and like writing the code for the GUI as well... ).

With Java, you can distribute your application to anyone with the Java Runtime Environment installed (which is fairly common), and it's cross-plattform compatible. Other languages, for instance C# is limited to one OS (Windows, in the case of C#).

Other scripting languages

There are a number of powerful scripting languages like Python or Ruby, and these can be downloaded free. However, they still require some programming knowledge (unless, of course, you are ready to learn a little coding). On the other hand, they are often very poweful, and you can achieve quite a lot with just a few lines of code. Unfortunately they are hard to make completely stand alone, and often the end user has to download the language package as well to run it. They also can be lacking in the GUI-area slightly.

Databases

One way to make a character build is to use a database enging like MS-Sql, MySql or Oracle. Some of these tools are free to download and use (Ms-SQL Express, various MySql tools) and there are a number of nifty little features and advantages you get from using a database.

However, relational database design can be quite tricky if you are not used to it, and a complex thing as a character generator can easy turn into 50-100 different tables to keep track of everything (speaking from experience. I once did a database-based character builder for Mutants and Masterminds).

Also, there is no easy way to distribute "just" a database, but instead you have to build a front end using something like Java, a scripting language or Flash.

Web-based

Using a database as above, and combine it with a scripting language like php is also a way to go. This, as well as the other tools, does require some knowledge of the following areas:

HTML+CSS
Database Design/ SQL
php (or similar)

However, as long as you got somewhere to put it (that is, a web-server), you can find all the tools for free, and distributing is easy (it's a webpage).

Summary

Creating a character generator does require some hard work (of course a bit depending on what game system you are using) and I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that as a starting project if they have no experience in a given tool. However, as long as you got the initial parts understood, a chargen is a great (if hard) way to increase your skill.

One of the main areas to look at in any given environment is how it deals with lists, because character generation is a whole lot about building lists by picking items from other lists.

Excel tip #2 - Drop down menus

Making a drop-down-menu in Excel is fairly easy (and with drop-down-menu I mean in this case a cell with a number of preset options that you can choose from).

Let's say you hae a game with 10 classes you can choose from. Create a new sheet (I usually create separate sheets for look-up-tables etc). Enter the names of the classes in a column, one class/ cell. Then select the cells and give them a name (as described in the previous tip).

Then go back to the first sheet and select the cell where you want the drop-down menu to be, and then go to Data - Data Verification. Choose "List" from the combo-box, and then enter the name you gave your list in the previous step. Finish with clicking OK.

If all went well, you should now be able to click on the cell and then get a nice drop-down-menu with all the classes.

Excel tips #1

As said before, Excel is a good tool for building character generators. In this little series, I'll try to provide some tips and hints that'll help you build your own chargen in Excel (or other spreadsheet tools). These will be varying in length and complexity.

Tip #1 Use Names for cells and areas

To make things easier for you, take the extra time to give names to your cells. It's quick, and makes your life easier when it comes to building your spreadsheet. Whenever you select a cell or an area, you can see what you have selected in a small field at the upper left of your screen (image from osx version of Excel 2008, but it's similar in Win-versions as well).

Now, with the cell or area selected, you can type in another name for that cell or area. For instance, if you have four attributes, Muscle, Brains, Cool and Speed, you can name the cells with the values Muscle, Brains, Cool and Ego as well.

You can then use that in later formulas. To continue the example above, let's say that there is a health attribute that is the sum of Muscle and Speed. Normally, you would have typed =SUM(B2;C2) or something like that to add that together. But, since we have named our cells, we can instead type =SUM(Strength, Speed) (or =Strength+Speed)

While it may not seem to make a big difference in a small example like this, when the spreadsheet grows bigger, it will make life a lot simpler. This is especially true when you start to deal with areas instead of single cells.

Excel and Spreadsheets for RPGs

A spreadsheet is a tool that basically is a large grid of cells. Each cell can contain a number, a text-string or a formula. It originated within the business world as a way to build budgets, keep track of transactions and economics etc.

However, the structure of the spreadsheet also makes it a fairly good tool to use in RPG's. Especially for creating characters and other rule-bound artefacts.

To give you an example, a few years ago, I tried to challenge myself with building a spreadsheet to handle the vehicle creatoin rules in Gurps Vehicles. While the result was clumsy and not particulary elegant, it still helped me build a whole heap of nice vehicles (including a tank with a crew of 30).

One of my current projects is to build a character generator for the World of Darkness/ Storyteller-system by White Wolf. Due to copyright-infringement etc I can't publish it. I can, however, give you some hints and tips on how to build your own spreadsheet for use with roleplaying games.

While the core application will be Excell, I'll try to keep it as generic as possible (no scripts, for instance), so that you can do some migrating to Google Spreadsheet, Numbers or Open Office.

Advance over a field

One common occurance in wars is trying to advance over a field under enemy fire. To simulate this, the following rules are used:

A field has two values: How difficult it is to pass, and how dangerous it is (enemy fire, mines etc).

Each turn, you roll 1D10 - danger. The resulting number is how far you advance along the field. If you get a negative result, that results in you getting hit.

When you have advanced along the field a number of steps equal the difficulty value, you have reached your destination, and the next scene starts.

The difficulty value is both a value of how hard it is to cross the field and how difficult it is to traverse.

Damage in War: the RPG

When a character is hit and wounded within the game, several things can happen. Not only does a hit do bodily harm, it also affects morale/ willpower, the equipmant and the cooperation within the group.

Some of these aspects, I will deal with in a later post. In this post, I will mention a little about how to deal with bodily harm.

There are different intensities of weapons, and different levels of protection from armour.

If you are hit by a weapon that with a rank equal to your armor, you are wounded. One more wound or higher will kill you.
If you are hit by a weapon that with 1 rank lower than your armour, you are lightly wounded. This will stun you or slow you down a little, but will not stop you. Unless it's in the same round or the round after that you can take an infinite number of light wounds. Each wound adds to the time you are stunned. However, if you take more than Body number of light wounds while you are stunned due to light wounds, you become wounded.
If you are hit by a weapon with 1 rank higher, you are severly, mortally wounded. This means bodily trauma, mental trauma and technological breakdown (things will stop working for you). One more hit will kill you. Same goes if you are not treated within body number of rounds

Lower damage than that, nothing happens. Higher damage kills you instantly.

A quick discovery about google wave

When I first heard about google Wave, I suspected that one of the first plugins to pop up would be a die-roller.

So, yesterday I finally got my invite to Google Wave, and lo-and-behold, when I look at the short list over plugins I find a bot (script) that can do simple die-rolling. You basically type xdy (x = number of dice, y = type of dice), and the bot gives you the roll.

Told you so! ;-)

Group combat

In most RPG's combat is treated as a number of individuals fighting another bunch of individuals. At times, there are things like aiding each other, but that's about it.

However, in War: The RPG, the aim is to simulate that the group is a group that has trained as a unit for a while. Even though it's not always explicit, when two group members are firing at a target, they are doing it in a way to maximise their fire. Also, they will always protect each other in small ways, give signs, shout out to each other giving each other clues to what's happening etc.

In order to simulate this, in each combat, there is a stat called Group Strength. In the beginning of the combat, it's at it maximum and will give bonuses to all the participants of that group. As combat goes on, due to fatigue, damages and stress, that value will go down, and after a while it'll be so low that it's actually a negative modifier to the members of that group, since they are loosing their ability to fight as a unit.

Also, whenever a single individual is hit, it can choose to take all damage on himself, keeping the Group strength intact, or choose to move some of it onto the Group strength. In other words, he can either take one for the group, or choose to live and be stronger by himself, but at the expence of the group strength.

Character traits in War: The RPG

Today, I'll post my first draft of what characters will look like. Since this is supposed to be a rules-light game, I have decided to make the attributes few, and also include more abstract things into them.

So, a character has the following traits

Body - The characters physical strength, speed and stamina
Mental - A collective term for the characters morale, mental strength etc.
Equipment - Since this is a sci-fi game one can assume that the characters have loads of equipment on them. Instead of listing everything they've got, the game abstracts it into a specific value. Whenever someone want's to try to do something (Scan the area, call for reinforcements etc), roll a test against the Equipment value.

Each character also has a role and specialities that gives them either bonuses or specific typ of actions. For instance, one character can be a healer, or a Heavy Weapons specialist etc.

More posts will follow...

RPG-Design, a case study

To put it short: I'm trying to design a roleplaying game of my own. Turns out, it's fairly tricky (no big surprise there).

It started ... or rather, was triggered by when talking to a gaming friend that also had some ideas for a game. We talked a little about it, and while there was some cross-polination, in the end, our ideas diverged a little to much, so I decided to take my ideas as a core and build a game from that.

These core ideas are

• It's a violent game, about wars and warfare
• Combat is lethal
• It's a simple, semi-narrative game
• The game should capture the feel of intense battles.
• The game should have a very low prep-time.
  

When it comes to other games, it's related to games like 3:16, Wilderness of mirrors.

So far, I've only got a couple of loose rule-ideas, but I'll publish them here as time goes by. If you read it, and have some thoughts, please let me know.