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.

[FATE] Spirit of the World of Darkness - RPGnet Forums

[FATE] Spirit of the World of Darkness - RPGnet Forums: "I don't really have a purpose in making this post other than to say it just occurred to me how easy it would be to blend Fate and the World of Darkness system together.

* Add Aspects as per Fate. Aspects replace Virtue/Vice.
* Use the WoD skills, but treat them the eaxct same way you do skills in Fate.
* Replace the WoD health system with Fate's
* Replace Merits with Stunts
* Replace Morality with Fate's Composure track and Consequences
* Where it says you need to spend a Willpower point, you spend a Fate point.
* Replace the expendable stat (blood, essence, etc.) with a stress track and consequences.
* Replace the power stat (blood potency, Gnosis) with a special skill."

The above is a part of a forum-thread touching a subject I've been thinking about myself. I'll keep an eye on the thread and see if I can add something to it myself. My "starting point", so to speak, would be Starblazers, because I get the impression that it's slightly more generic than SotC. I am, however, looking forward to Dresden Files, whenever that one is released.

How I wrote 30 adventures in a couple of days.

Ok, I admit, the headline is a bit of an exaggeration. But it's cathy, right!

However, it's not that far of. But perhaps a better wording would be "how I wrote the outline for a 30-adventure campaign in a couple of days".

Anyway, I had an idea the other day, based on the Dawn of Defiance-campaign for Star Wars Saga, and also on the Scales of War-adventure-series for DnD 4th ed. The idea was to write a campaign that took you from lvl1 to lvl30 in DnD 4th. The pace would be 1 lvl/ adventure, so that would make 30 adventures. That felt a bit intimidating, but then I started to divide things up, and after a while I hade a rough outline for each module, stretching from the first one up to the very last one. Here is basically what I did. Hopefully it can serve as an inspiration to one or two of you out there.

I had some vague ideas that I wanted the characters to go from young, "just-graduated" heroes that could do some work for the local villages and towns, up to world-shakers. Thankfully, 4th ed provides some natural spans (level-wise) so that I basically had three parts of the campaign (Heroic, Paragon and Epic).

So, the first step was to write down the theme of each tier, what dangers there where, and to write down a line or two about the archvillain of each tier. For the first tier, it's on a fairly local scale, the villain is a local player etc. It has also the theme of "night", to keep with the Points of Light-setting. Basically, the villages are scattered, the wilderness is wild and everyone is threatened by the unknown. In the second tier, the PCs have some reputation, and all of a sudden they become involved in the politics of the area. At the same time, they have to face bigger dangers. The theme of the paragon-tier is dawn. Both the PC's and the evil around them is waking up, preparing for bigger things to come. The new archvillain is a bigger player (and a supernatural one, at that), who was the driving force behind the villain in the lower tier.
Finally, the last tier is Day, where the players are rulers of kingdoms, and now have to face opposing armies and epic enemies.

With the three tiers nailed, I made three empty lists, with 10 posts in each list. Then I brainstormed and tried to find a number of "one-sentence" plots/ scenes/ ideas. I wasn't satisfied until I had 10 ideas for each tier. Since I already had the basic framework and theme, it was fairly easy to find around 10 ideas for each. One aim I had was to vary myself, and also to use different settings and try to use as much of the rules as possible. For instance, I was keen to try out how 4th ed handles sea battles, so there is a module where the players have to stop a pirate invasion.

With the 3x10 ideas written down, I tried to sort them in some kind of order, so that they start out small for each tier, and then grow to something bigger, preparing for the next tier as the end of the tier approaches.

Finally, for each module-idea, I wrote down 3 additional points. This could be a bit of background, a twist, how it connects to the overall arch etc. The point of the points (no pun intended) was to give each idea a bit more depth and story. When I did this, I tried to look at the modules before and after the current module, to see if there was anything I could tie into it.

Not all ideas where smooth and easy to come up with 3 "sub-ideas" for, but after a little while I had 30 modules, with a coherent story, ideas, twists etc. While they still need to be fleshed out, doing so with the help of for instance the DnD-Insider tools (which I can recommend) will be a fairly quick and straighforward task. (And also, keeping it fairly loose will make it easier adapt it to what the players do and wish).

I'm so far quite satisfied with the results, and will do try this out on other games and settings as well.

So, to sum up: The secret is in

• Divide and conquer - Split the campaign into manageable parts. And then split them into smaller parts
• Use the rule of three - While a bit cliché and corny, in most cases you can always come up with three "sub-ideas" or lines for something. This process can be iterative, so if you want to detail it further, you can always add three points to each of your previous three points.