Cathartic Play in Action: The Despair System

Yesterday, I was introduced to Shane, a game designer living nearby, who is working on a narrative (Forge style) role playing game that he calls The Despair System. As you would guess from the name, it's about putting your characters through Hell to see how long they can hold out against creeping doom and hopelessness. 

I don't want to give away too much about the system, as he's still play testing, and things are subject to change due to our feedback. But I do want to talk a bit about the experience. 

I addition to Shane and myself, Dustie and Scott who I have played with extensively online over the past few years, and Keith, who I met for the first time, were the other players. I only met Dustie face to face for the first time at Richard's last Call of Cthulhu game, and this was the first time for me to meet Scott face to face. It was still comfortable for me, since I have played with these two quite a bit, and Shane and Keith were both friendly and easy to get along with. 

For the game itself, it started off by making characters and getting some rules explained as we did that. One interesting bit is that Shane had told us to bring pens, not pencils. In this game, once something goes on your sheet, it might get crossed out, but it never changes. Things get added through play. 

The system is setting neutral, and I mentioned in my previous post that Shane had us vote on what sort of setting we wanted, and it was Vikings. We'd had time to consider what sort of character we wanted to play. I think I had given it the shallowest thought. Or maybe Scott. Dustie and Keith had much more detail in mind when we came to the character creation portion. 

My pre-planning, knowing only that it was "Vikings making one of the earliest voyages West" was that my character, Wehostan the Wanderer, had been to Gardariki (Russia) before with his uncles, and that his father was an iron miner (brothers, too) and didn't want his son heading out on expeditions, but mining was the last place Wehostan wanted to be. 

Shane gave us character sheets with six lines, each with a d6 die face, arranged from high to low, and told us the six attributes he was using for this game. The attributes might be different for other genres. In a previous play test with Scott, they had done a Wild West themed game, and the attributes were not the same. So you can customize it to fit the theme, genre, and mood. Players can arrange their six attributes as they like, putting one next to each die face. Each had a bonus of +2 (the six, four and two faces), +1 (the five and three faces), or 0 (the 1 face).

After that, each character got to select a pair of traits, one positive and one negative. My positive was Wanderlust, and my negative was Superstitious. These were each connected to one of the attributes, and if a roll on that attribute would be affected by it, it resulted in getting to reroll a die of your choice if positive, and the highest die if negative. 

The mechanics were a bit convoluted for this sort of story game. Not that any particular mechanic was difficult, but there are a lot of different types of checks (all checks are rolled with 4d6, and those +1 or +2 bonuses can be used to modify one single die that was rolled). The "game" part of this is basically bargaining your creeping Despair, which is signified by filling in pips on the die faces and the bonuses for attributes. The Referee is working to put the characters into situations where they are challenged, and have the potential to earn Despair points. The more Despair you earn, the easier it is to gain more Despair, so the game is basically build around the idea of the death spiral. Even if you succeed on a check, you might still earn points of Despair while doing so. There are a few ways to mitigate how much despair you earn, but no way to remove Despair once it's on your sheet. If a die face has all pips colored in (and the one face starts filled in), then any result of that number gives you a point of Despair. If you fail a roll, the difference in your highest number rolled and the target number is the amount of Despair you gain (in addition to any from "dead" dice). So the more Despair, the more dice will give you Despair.

The specific mechanics aren't so important to my analysis right now, though. What I found was that while the game itself is leveraging the various mechanics of your roll (or bargain to avoid a roll), the creeping death spiral of Despair is actually more effective than my recent experiences of Call of Cthulhu. Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun in our CoC game. And maybe Richard has been going easy on us. But we haven't had that much Sanity loss, and I don't think we've suffered a character death at all so far. The Despair System is designed to force Despair points on you, so that you can't escape falling victim to it if you play long enough. 

Narrative games like this aren't really my style of game, but as a one-off (or maybe two, Shane asked if we'd be interested in giving it another try), it was kind of fun. Because he was play testing, Shane skipped us through a lot of things. He would put us into certain situations, and not give us full freedom, but he did say that in a regular game there would be more player input and choice in the story, and more back and forth role play time. 

While it was a little off-putting at first to have him just dictating scenes and then making us roll (or test our abilities in other ways), after a few scenes I got used to it, and it actually made more sense. He needed us to test the mechanics, but also, the whole point of the game is to experience mounting despair in your character, as things that were easy to do at the beginning of the session get progressively harder and harder to accomplish, or at least harder to accomplish without adding more Despair points. We only made it half-way through the story line Shane had prepared, and none of us topped out our Despair, but I was pretty far gone, having lost the two, three, and four die faces, having taken on a second negative trait, and having crossed out two of my abilities (crossed out abilities could still have checks made, but at a penalty of removing the highest value die rolled on that check). Wehostan was not in good shape. 

It was an unusual experience, and I'd like to try this game again in a non-playtest mode before I make any final judgments on it, but it seems to me like Shane has put a lot of thought into how to make this game so that it provides the experience he would like for it to. Some more traditional, old school, or new school players may be put off by the game, but if you go into it knowing what it is, it can be a fun experience. And it was definitely more coherent in form and function than some other story games I've played in the past.

Escapist Play vs Cathartic Play in RPGs

On Sunday, I've been invited to take part in a play test session for a local guy (I've never met him before) who is working on his own game. Of course I said yes. 

He sent us a message a week or so ago with a few options for a setting for the play test. 

• American Western
• Late Middle Ages
• Modern Day
• Warhammer 40k
• Near-Future Sci-fi
• Viking Age

Viking Age ended up the winner, which is good. It was my #1 choice out of those (WH40K being bottom of the barrel for me).

I don't know much about the system yet (I was told "Bring 4d6 and a pen, not a pencil"), but from a few clues, and from a message he sent yesterday with some of his expectations for the game (not just vikings, but 8th Century horror set in Northern Europe at the dawn of the Viking Age), it was pretty obvious to me that he's working on a Forge style Story Game, rather than an old school or new school style Adventure Game. 

I'm not the biggest fan of the story games side of the hobby. I haven't had the best experience with them, because I find that either the mechanics support a GAME, in which case it takes a lot of force to make the right sort of story emerge, or else the mechanics support a STORY, in which case there's not really a lot of relevant game play to keep things interesting. 

I'll post my thoughts on the session, his game system, and everything next week, of course. For now, though, preparing for this game has got me thinking about that dichotomy. 

JB at BX Blackrazor has started calling his games Fantasy Adventure Games (FAGs... yeah, he knows) rather than RPGs. I think he may be on to something. Whether it's OD&D, Gamma World, 5E D&D, Traveller, any of the myriad of Palladium system games, various licensed property games like any edition of a Star Wars RPG, they all have one thing in common. They're primarily escapist. 

You get to create a character and go on adventures. Maybe you become a great hero or villain, maybe you get slain by a kobold or shot by the first stormtrooper to cross your path. It's exciting, it's fun, it's a way to get away from all the stress of your daily life. 

It's like going to see the latest MCU movie in the theater. A fun afternoon. Or it's supposed to be, anyway.

Sometimes, that silly popcorn movie of a game impacts you deeply in some way. And when it does, it makes us love the game all the more. But we're not expecting the game to change us in a deep way every session. It's part of the game, actually. Whether the session will be exciting or boring, pedestrian or deeply moving...that's all up to chance. It's unexpected. 

Story Games in the mold of The Forge, however, are typically designed to emulate fiction. They want that Three Act, or Five Act, structure that movies have. They also tend to try and explore some theme, linked to emotion and trying to get into the head of someone going through some shit. In that sense, they are a lot closer to the origins of Role Play as a psychotherapy. You're there to explore emotional impacts, traumas, and hard moral decisions in the game. And if the game is well designed, you'll also create an interesting narrative out of the experience. 

It's like going to see an art film at a film festival. It's cathartic. Or is supposed to be, anyway. 

Sometimes, though, that deeply moving, lovingly crafted art film is just a boring dud. You come away from it feeling like you just wasted a few hours of your life, because you couldn't connect to the characters, and the story was purposefully vague or anti-climactic to make some sort of statement. Maybe you kind of get what they were going for, but you still didn't really enjoy the experience. 

And I think for me, one of the reasons this always seems to happen to me when I play more narrative-focused Forge style games, is that I know how the sausage is made. I've studied creative writing and screenwriting. I've been a DM for 4 decades now. I've got insider knowledge on both ends. 

Being able to see how the game mechanics are supposed to craft a five act structure, or manipulate you into feeling just this sort of way about the events in the game...well, I see through it. 

It turns what should be an entertaining, if challenging, art film experience (or literary novel read, take your pick) and turns it into one of those poorly made films where you see every "twist" coming a mile away. Or at least it seems like that for me. 

Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what this guy has done. I may not be the target audience for his game, but that may make me more valuable to him as a play tester. And maybe, fingers crossed, this will change my experience of story games. I'll let y'all know soon.

Some Selective Play-Testing and Reflection

My new rules modifications for Classic D&D seem to be going well enough. Most players converted over to the new system, finding a way to more or less keep their PC the same (Don's still playing a dragonborn, a race which got axed, but did update his class from Fighter/Magic-User to Lark, and Jeff is still running the old Ranger class that gets Druid spells). Of the new Fighter (and Assassin/Paladin/Lark) combat options that have been tried out, both my younger son and Jeremy opted to go with Defense (+2 AC, +4 if attacker is giant sized) for their Fighter Combat Style (a 4th level ability), while my older son went with Cleave (like the 3E feat) and Don went with, I think, Iaijutsu (like a backstab: +4 to hit, x2 damage; but only on the first round of combat if you get initiative). 

Cleave and Iaijutsu haven't come up yet (pretty sure my son could have used Cleave last game, but we forgot about it). Defense is obviously overpowered. Not sure what I was thinking there. Obviously I was thinking of the Halfling bonus to AC vs large creatures, but +2 base was ridiculous. Even 5E's Defense ability for Fighters is only +1. I will change it. At 5th level, Jeremy's Fighter has AC 23 (I use ascending, obviously), and my younger son has AC 22 at 4th level. I'll be toning that one down a bit, and re-evaluating all of the Fighter Combat Options (a bonus ability at 4th level). 

Yesterday, Delta posted this discussion of the Fighter's ability to attack multiple low level enemies across editions.

It's interesting on its own, but since I've given my Fighter class the Sweep ability (from 2nd level) to make one attack per level vs 1HD or lower opponents in Classic (which if you haven't read Delta's thread, Frank Mentzer is commented as thinking is totally unnecessary in Classic D&D). But they also get an option to Cleave (drop an opponent to 0hp, gain a bonus attack on a nearby enemy) AND at higher levels gain multiple attacks against more powerful opponents with 1+1HD or more (2 attacks at 8th level, 3 attacks at 12th level, level cap 15th), I feel like I'm just handing out extra attacks like candy! 

Still, I've got to say the Sweep ability has been pretty useful in games so far, as it helps speed up fights with the weaklings. 

This past weekend, I ran my procedural dungeon crawl game with the boys. Their encounters skewed humanoid, so they made good use of Sweeps. First encounter with 16 bandits, and after negotiations failed, the bandits were wiped out quickly. Fire beetles and giant black widow spiders were spotted, but left alone. A group of warriors appeared, but were evaded. A Red Knight appeared (as a "special") and tried to arm wrestle the PCs (the boys' PCs legit won with good rolls)! Then they tricked a pair of white apes into opening a portcullis to allow access to a ruined castle. In the next room were (as determined by random roll) 40 orcs. They tricked the orcs and apes into fighting, leaving 29 orcs alive when the apes were finally defeated. Then they went to town, using Sweep, and the Sweep ability evened the odds, although both characters took some fairly heavy damage, even with my younger son's PC's amazing AC. In the end, all the orcs were cut down and the pair returned to town with the loot.

In my West Marches game that same evening, they finished off Quasqueton. Well, not completely finished, there were secret doors they missed, despite having a wand of secret door detection which helped. They didn't always think to use it, though. Most of the 1st level was already explored, and they had about half of the second level explored when the session started. So they put in the effort to finish it off. They encountered troglodytes (which proved to be the toughest fight of the evening!), a pair of ettins (spells rendered them ineffective), wraiths (only one level drain, Justin's PC - and just as he was about to reach the level cap for a half-elf Warlock, before the dragonborn blasted them and himself with a fireball), some ghouls, and gnolls. They avoided stirring up the bats in the giant cavern. And they finally found Zelligar's wand (Roghan's spear and armor had already been recovered). 

As for the character abilities under the new rule set, Nate has been searching for a way to make use of the Shaman (cleric subclass) ability to perform rituals, but they haven't really come up yet. The three rituals they can perform 1) allow detection of astral/ethereal creatures, 2) sanctify a small area for 24 hours, 3) allow up to four creatures suffering from poison, disease, etc. to make a new saving throw. 

The other area that's come to my attention through the game is the Paladin's Aura ability. Denis has been confused the past few sessions about it. The effects are fine, but the wording is poor. I need to rewrite the section to make it more clear.

Test Run

Played some Caverns  & Cowboys last night with the guys on Hangouts/Roll20. There were a few minor issues, but mostly Dean, Jeremy and Ken had a positive reaction to the game.

There was a little bit of confusion with the different ability scores from D&D standard. I've based the system on the Star Frontiers d% system, so the ability scores and their abbreviations can get confusing. For example, in SF there is an ability abbreviated INT but it stands for Intuition, not Intelligence. LOG (Logic) is closer to D&D Int. Also, PER is Personality, but they kept assuming it was Perception.

Char gen is fairly easy as far as ability scores and skill selection, but buying equipment was the thing that slowed it down. Dean missed having "ready pack" options like in 4E and 5E D&D, so I may come up with some suggestions for that. Jeremy just copy/pasted my sample character's gear then added a few things he wanted, so that was fairly fast for him. Ken is a bit of an Old West history buff, so he was pleased to see the wide selection of gear available.

Anyway, Dean's suggestion of some sample starting packs would be a good idea to help people get into the game faster. Also, Ken (who played a doctor) noticed that I forgot to put medical kits and laudanum and other period medicines on the list. To be added. I should make sure other skill sets that need tools/equipment have them available as well.

The big departure from Star Frontiers is the magic system I cobbled together. I did some research on period mystical/magical belief systems (Jeremy appreciated this level of setting detail) and came up with some appropriate magical traditions. Using the SF skill system of one skill with discrete subskills as a package, each magical tradition is a skill and each spell is a subskill. They improve in potency as you level up the magical skill. Dean took Mesmerism as one of his starting skills, and put it to good use with a seance to gather information and later hypnotism to pacify a villain. So far, it didn't seem broken. The other traditions, and magic skills at medium to high level play still need to be tested, though.

The combat system worked well (I knew from Star Frontiers that it should). Chances to hit for beginning characters are low and there are more negative modifiers to attacks than positives, so there was a lot of missing by both sides. Dean was a bit put off by this at first, but since Ken and Jeremy were commenting on how this was more like a real firefight, where lots of bullets do miss unless you're really close to your target, Dean got on board with it. I know from experience that once those combat skills get up to around 3 or 4, combat gets a lot easier.

The scenario I ran them through was a simple one. Sheriff Bart of the town of Justice asked them to go to the smaller town of Liberty nearby and run off some bandits who had taken over the town. After a bit of haggling over the reward, they set out and on the way were ambushed by blink coyotes (blink dogs from D&D of course). They had trouble hitting the blink dogs, and took a lot of small bites. Finally, they wounded enough of the blink coyotes that the creatures decided to find easier prey and vanished. The party decided to head back to town to hire some extra guns to take on the bandits.

In town, Dean's character Schmitt performed his seance to contact a victim of the bandits and get some intel. They each also hired a rifleman to accompany them. When they got to Liberty, there were four bandits guarding a bridge over a creek south of town. They spotted the bandits, the bandits spotted them. Both sides took cover, and one bandit ran into town to alert the others. The firefight was fairly long, as I mentioned above, lots of missed shots (mostly due to range and cover penalties to hit). After five or six rounds the bandit leader, an ogre, appeared and charged across the bridge to attack with its spiked club. They did a good amount of damage to the ogre, but it nearly killed one of their hired guns before Schmitt could hypnotize it to sleep. Then, Sam (the hired gun of Jeremy's character Hezekiah) managed to roll a 01 and 02 to hit, which are knock-out rolls in the system. So two of the three bandits went down the same round as the ogre boss. The final bandit surrendered, and the other bandits carousing in town fled to the wilderness when they got the news.

When the ogre woke up, they questioned him (with a bit more hypnosis to make him talkative) and found their lair was a cave outside town. After securing the ogre with chains in a root cellar, they set out and found the lair, getting just over $1000 in silver coins, a potion, and a magic wand. On Hezekiah's orders, Sam drank the potion (the order was drink, not sip! Jeremy had maybe a little too much whiskey as we played!) and so had clairvoyance for an hour with nothing to view. :D Back in town, the sheriff of Justice arrived with a Justice of the Peace and they gave the ogre his trial, found him guilty, and hung him by his neck until he was dead.

So the scenario I sorta whipped up out of next to nothing worked well, and since the players were into the idea of D&D with Western trappings, it seemed to work out well. I think this little game has some promise.

First Impression of the Black Hack system

Yes, I realize I'm VERY late to the party on this. Before G+ went tits-up, there were ravening hordes of gamers talking about The Black Hack and the myriad of derivative games based on it. And I pretty much ignored all of that. But this afternoon, Jeremy messaged me asking if I wanted to game tonight, and I said sure. Dean played too. So I finally got a chance to try it out.

Jeremy was running The Rad Hack, which is obviously for post-apoc/Gamma World type stuff. I rolled up Cybersys 842, a robot with a laser gun and satellite uplink to a supercomputer. Dean rolled up Pompeo, a psychic with empathy and life leech. Our mission was to recover stolen property for the warlord of our enclave, but when we found the target we schmoozed with her and ended up traveling across the territory of mutant cannibal freaks to her enclave instead. We're still undecided if we want to stay with her bunch or return to our own.

Anyway, the Black Hack system is pretty simple and easy to run. It's got the standard six ability scores and every sort of check you make is to roll under one of the six. Many abilities and bits of gear have a resource die that you roll. If you get a 1 or 2, it goes down a step. If it's d4 and drops, it's depleted until you rest/resupply. Simple and easy.

The places that take getting used to are the rules for Armor and for NPC/monster rolls. For armor, it works as extra hit points and damage reduction at the same time. Just starting out, we didn't have the money to buy armor (as a robot, I have built in armor of 2) so it was hard to see just how effectively it works, but the rules are fairly simple. Armor reduces damage up to its value. Once damage goes above its value, it's depleted until you can repair it. The wording in the rule book was a bit confusing, but in actual play it was alright.

The fact that the DM doesn't roll for very much is a bit annoying for me, though. I'm not the sort of gamer that thinks, "Man, I wish I was rolling the dice more often!" So maybe I'm not the target audience. But after over three decades of games where the GM rolls to hit and saves for the monsters, this seems a bit meh to me. I mean, it allows for your ability scores to replace a separate AC number, but why not just let the DM roll?

So I have a few areas of dissatisfaction, but in general, the game went smoothly, character creation was easy and straightforward, and leveling up at the end of the session was no problem either. I can see now why so many people like the system. Maybe I'll give it a go as DM sometime. Or even make my own variant...

Jokichi the Vagabond - Chanbara Character Profiles

I've been thinking of interesting ways to promote Chanbara besides just spamming everyone's G+/Facebook feeds with links to the game. No one wants that, and I don't like doing it. So, I'm going to post some of the characters that appeared in the play testing of the game over the next few weeks. Hopefully, seeing the interesting characters that people played in the games I ran will drum up some interest in the game.

First up is Jokichi the Vagabond. Jokichi was played by Justin, who ran the awesome Vaults of Ur campaign that I posted about many years ago (I played Thidrek the Sleestak). In my first round of playtests, Justin came up with a great character so I want to highlight him first.

Jokichi the Vagabond
Class: Bushi/Abarenbo level 1
Social Status: Eta
Allegiances: (undefined)*

Str 15 (+1)
Int 12 (+0)
Wis 11 (+0)
Dex 14 (+1)
Con 13 (+1)
Cha 9 (+0)

AC 14  HP 11
TD 14  BAB +2
PD 12  SP 22
Combat Dice: 4 (d6)
Encumbrance: 1.5/11
Speed: 120(40)

Saving Throws
Wood 12
Water 13
Metal 14
Fire 15
Earth 16

Background Skills: High Sport, Low Sport, Rural Craft, Crime

Special Abilities:
Show of Strength: Spend 1 combat die to increase Str score to 18 (+3) for 10 minutes

Gear:
Katana (hit +3, damage 2d4+1/1d10+1)
Partial Light Armor (AC +2)

As you can see, Jokichi was of Eta social status which Justin was happy to play up, and didn't get upset when NPCs treated him like garbage. Due to a lucky roll, though, the daimyo's niece was fond of him and there were hints of a "doomed romance" plot started that never got off the ground because Justin wasn't able to play the entire playtest campaign. Too bad, it seemed like it would have been a lot of fun.

Possibly because of the poor treatment he had at the hands of his employers, when the party went after a group of pirates, Jokichi tried to sign up. None of the players were sure if Justin was just doing it as a ruse or if he really intended for Jokichi to become a pirate. As GM, I was willing to let the campaign become one of nautical plunder if the players wanted to. In the end, though, the players managed to defeat the pirates (with Jokichi's eventual help), and continued on to serve their daimyo.

Since Justin couldn't continue playing, we decided that the authorities put the blame for the mission's blunders (they stopped the pirate leaders, but the ship and its cargo got away) on Jokichi's head, and he was confined to quarters. That way, if Justin had returned, we could roll out Jokichi again by saying he'd served his term of punishment.

He was a trouble maker of the first order, and the early playtest games were really lively because of the chaos Jokichi brought to the staid lives of the more honorable characters.


*Since I was trying to playtest the exploration, combat, and magic rules in the live game, I didn't worry about allegiances. In my play-by-post game, I did, and I'll provide some of those characters and their allegiances in future posts.

Chanbara Play Test Art!

Last night was another (in my opinion, at least) successful Chanbara play test session. The big bad boss fight at the end went MUCH faster than I thought it would, and more decisively in the players' favor, but they did do a few things "right" and had a few tactics that I didn't anticipate that went well for them (which is not a complaint at all, I'm not in love with my NPCS, and I'm happy to see the players defeat them when they can).

Anyway, just before the session, Jeff submitted this graphic novel-ish recap of the previous session a couple weeks ago, and I thought I'd share them (with his permission).

another f'n cool session

Last night, the stars were apparently right. Not only did my family schedule work out to allow me to run another session of Chanbara, but Dean, Alexei, Jeff and Jeremy all showed up to play. We haven't had four players since the first session.

We spent a bit of time at the beginning leveling everyone up to 6th, and making sure everyone had the correct version of the rules. I'd also updated a few small things due to feedback from Stefan and his group, so the Bushi characters (Alexei's samurai Ringo, Dean's sohei Monban, and Jeremy's kensei Kuro) all now have a size-up opponent ability, which was helpful for them.

I'd started them off with the prophecy they'd been seeking, and gave them a few clues about things they could do in it, plus had the daimyo ask them to track down a stolen katana (which was in the prophetic dream). I had two paths planned out for them, figuring they'd either do one or the other. They of course did a third. So I had to improvise a bit.

But the session started off with some fun RP, the improv led to a very short combat (morale check in round 1 ended it in the party's favor), then some interesting decisions on the part of the players about how to move forward. They made a choice (one of the things I'd planned for), and that led them to another choice (the other thing I planned, and one which is something I'd run 20 years ago with my Evansville group). It looks like the players are interesting in following up choice #2, so I'll have to update it from AD&D OA to Chanbara, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Many attempts were made to charm these lovely sisters.

After the session, everyone said they had a great time. The title of this post is a quote from Jeff. And Dean gave me a bit of praise that I wasn't expecting. Compared to many other games he's played set in unfamiliar settings, he thinks I've done a great job with my rules of a) not overloading it with new terminology, and b) making the new terminology that is in the game very easy to grasp.

That was actually something I was concerned about. Speaking Japanese fairly well, I knew I had the potential to go overboard with using the language. So that comment from Dean makes me feel like I'm on the right path with the tone of the rules. And the fact that everything is running smoothly makes me feel like I should get the game edited and then into layout. I think it's about ready to go!

Fingers crossed, I'll be defending my dissertation in November. If that goes well, I'll get the manuscript into shape, get a decent cover and back, figure out what sorts of print options would be best, and publish over the winter break.

The jorogumo must die!

Another successful Chanbara playtest!

Last time, Dean and Jeff's characters died at the hands of a jorogumo (demonic spider-woman). This time, Alexei's Samurai and Dean's new Sohei used some clever tricks to defeat the monster easily, mostly avoided a few traps, and rescued a trapped kirin. In the process, they gained some treasure (finally) and also a few magic weapons.

There were some magic weapons in the very first adventure that they could have acquired, but they missed out on them. Now, five sessions (or is it six?) later, they've finally managed to get their hands on some.

We played this session at 5th level, but since only two players could come, I'm going to stay at 5th for our next session, which will hopefully be sometime next month, sooner rather than later. I'm also doing some edits on the rules draft, based on these play test games, but nothing major needs to be changed. It's mainly just fixing a few discrepancies, clarifications of effects or abilities, etc. The game holds up through the first half of the level spread. Hopefully the higher level adventures play similarly well.

Playtest Doldrums and some Light at the End of the Tunnel

My RPOL play by post play-test game has pretty much floundered. There are three active players, and by active I mean they maybe post once a week at best. My schedule is chaotic, and I keep having to cancel, delay or postpone the live, G+ Hangouts games (session this Saturday, fingers crossed it happens!).

It makes me wonder if play testing was such a great idea after all. I didn't really play test Flying Swordsmen. I did some masturbatory number crunching/die rolling on a few things, but mostly since I was cloning Dragon Fist I figured the mechanics were pretty sound. With Chanbara, I'm designing a lot myself, so I wanted to play test it. And so far, it's done well for what I want it to do. I was hoping to get to play through all 10 levels with the G+ group. And maybe we will before I get this thing ready for release.

So while I was a bit down on the whole slog of play testing a game I barely have time to play, I got an email a few months back from a guy who'd read about Chanbara and found the players' playtest document I'd put on the web for the RPOL group. And he ran a session with his group of players.

He gave me some very useful feedback on the game, and since they found some things problematic that my groups haven't, but also found some things unproblematic that one or the other of my groups have, I think it may be less of problems with the rules themselves than in player preference.

The areas of concern from Stefan's group that match with things my groups have mentioned are areas I should address. Other things that have seemed like a problem for only one of the three groups may be the sort of thing DMs should address for their table's preference, not necessarily flaws with the game.

That's got me excited to give Chanbara one final revision, have some outside editing done, and then move on to formatting it! I'm working on my dissertation this summer, trying to get a first draft written, so that comes first, but when taking breaks from it, I'll likely be putting the finishing touches on Chanbara.

No promises of a release date, but this will be released in both PDF and print sometime this year or (more realistically) next.

Some nice play test results

Last night, we play tested Chanbara again, this time with the group up to level 3. Dean, Michael and Alexei were running Kozuzume (Shukyo Shinobi/Taijutsuka), Oman Won Shinobi (Kuge Shinobi/Kagemusha) and Ringo Matsuoka (Buke Bushi/Samurai), respectively.

The parentheticals are the social class [Kuge - Nobility; Buke - Warrior Aristocracy; Shukyo - Religious; Noumin - Peasant; Chonin - Townsfolk (Artisan/Merchant); Eta - Untouchable], followed by character class [Bushi - Fighter; Mahotsukai - Magic-User; Shinobi - Spy] and Profile or specialization for each class. Taijutsuka are martial artists, Kagemusha are mystical ninja, and Samurai are samurai, obviously.

Anyway, since I'm doing accelerated advancement for this group (with normal play in a play-by-post game with other players), they leveled up to 3 for this session. And at level three, each profile gives the first choice of special abilities for each profile.

Thankfully, at least for the three profiles on hand, there wasn't an obviously superior choice. All three players considered both options as useful, then chose the one they felt best fit their character's personality/style.

Other than that, Michael suggested that the Kagemusha's spell choices, if they take the spell-casting special ability (he did) should be limited to spells thematically appropriate to a ninja rather than open to all Yamabushi spells. He purposefully limited himself that way, and at the end of the session it proved to be problematic (they had a problem a spell he had decided he wouldn't use would help solve) but he stuck to his decision and they will look for other means to that end.

I'd hoped for a bit of combat this session, but events worked out differently. I did manage to throw some good non-combat challenges their way, and the 2d6 background skill system I'm using continues to work well, as does the 2dX based Ninpo special Shinobi skill system. I'll probably run one more session at level 3 to get a bit of combat in (there was only one hit roll made the whole session, and that was to lob a persimmon at a monkey to get it to eat the fruit and drop a pouch of poison it had stolen). Hopefully in a few weeks.

In other news, my academic paper is finally ready for submission, but now it's time to start working up my study for my dissertation. So I expect posting to be slow for the mean time. I'll post when I can. Oh, and my super secret project RPG supplement text is nearly complete. Once it's done, I'll do a quick and dirty layout and start hyping it up.

Second Play Test Session of Chanbara

 Last Saturday night, I ran a somewhat short session of Chanbara for Michael, Dean and Alexei. I don't want to get into the details of play exactly (thinking of publishing this series of adventures in the future, so more on the actual adventure then). So I'll mostly be posting here about the system and how it fared during the game.

First of all, we spent most of the session RPing the aftermath of the previous session, and coming up with a plan to proceed. They set out and for the most part, again it was all RP. So like the first session, the rules were more invisible for most of the night. Then what I thought would be a short encounter on the way to their destination turned into a fairly major and involved melee.

The good thing is I got to try out my "tactical attacks" mechanic, and especially the grab/pin rules. And wouldn't you know it, they're clunky and not really satisfying. They're better (IMO) than 3E/d20 or 1E AD&D's grappling rules in that they are much simpler. The problem is, there's no way as stated for the grapple to end. There's no inescapable pin. So that needs to be changed.

One of the monsters they encountered was a rokurokubi, which because it's a monster, it has a special "grab" attack. The accompanying bakemono do not, so they had to settle for regular tactical attacks to grab and then pin the PCs. And the PCs' rolls were good enough for the most part to keep breaking the grabs or pins, but then the monsters, who outnumbered the PCs, would do it again. So it took a while.

Part of me is thinking, "Well, isn't that sort of like actual scrappy fight wrestling?" Another part of me is thinking, "Well, that wasn't as fun as it could have been for me or for the players." And that second voice is the one I know I need to listen to.

So, I need to rethink the Tactical Attacks rules a bit, and especially the wrestling rules.

I took a hint from Pathfinder for this. In PF, if you're not aware of the system, they have a special attack bonus and defense score for special maneuvers like trips, disarms, grapples, bull rushes, and the like. In Chanbara, I have a special defense score, Tactical Defense (TD), but the attack roll is just a normal attack like any other.

Usually, a tactical attack that hits works automatically. No saving throw, no nothing. So if someone tries to disarm you, and their normal attack roll is higher than your TD, you're disarmed.

In the case of the Grab, if a character is grabbed, they can make their own tactical attack to escape (their action for the round). If a character has been grabbed and the opponent succeeds on a second tactical attack, the character is pinned. But again, a tactical attack at a -4 penalty can allow them to break out of the pin. And they can keep retrying every round.

Either I need to put a cap on the number of retries, allow a third successful tactical attack to result in an "iron pin" that can't be escaped from, or have a pinned PC make a saving throw (Metal or Water would likely be appropriate). If they fail the save, they are in an iron pin and can't escape. If they succeed, they can make tactical attacks each round at the penalty to try to escape.

Alexei also mentioned something important in our end of session comments. A grabbed/pinned PC should automatically lose initiative. In that way, their attempt to break the hold is always at the end of the round. And if they break the hold and gain initiative the next round (rolling group initiative every round), they then have a chance to act - flee, strike with a weapon or spell, grab the grabber instead, etc. That's easy to implement.

I hope to run the next session in 3 weeks or so, and we'll hopefully (if they keep on doing what they're doing, and things go more or less according to my plans) finally get to do a bit of dungeon delving and see how things work in a dungeon scenario.

Oh, and one more thing worth noting - Alexei's rolls weren't nearly as good as last session, so his combat dice didn't seem overpowered at all. I'll still be evaluating them, though, especially if we get to the dungeon next time.

Finally, the RPOL.net game is about to get up and running. The character creation phase is just about complete, and I've got plenty of good hooks I can use to get them up and exploring Ghost Castle Hasegawa!

Chanbara Play Test Report #1

Last Saturday, I ran a session of the (new and improved!) Chanbara 2015 draft rules.

To make a long story short, the rules for the most part stayed out of the way during play. I only had to reference my rules three or four times during the four hours or so we played (mostly to double check which saving throw to roll for certain effects).

The session was a rip-roaring chaotic one, and pretty fun. Dean (taijutsuka shinobi, formerly a sohei) and Justin (abarenbo bushi, formerly a ronin) had updated characters they'd used in the previous play test. Alexei (samurai bushi) and Michael (kagemusha shinobi) had new characters. They were sent on a mission, nearly turned it on its head, and somehow managed to come out on top in the end.

As I said, the rules seemed to play smoothly, at least for now. One potential problem they noticed is that the Bonus Combat Dice that Bushi (Warrior) characters get is really powerful. While Justin liked the power boost, and Alexei didn't complain about all the high hit rolls and damage rolls he was getting, I'll be watching closely in the coming games to see if I need to lower the die type (currently d6 for most characters, but a d8 for samurai), reduce the starting number (three plus or minus the prime requisite score of the PC), or both.

Since we mainly had just one big set-piece battle, both of the bushi used a lot of dice in a short span, making quick work of their enemies. In a more dungeon-crawl type situation, they may be more sparing with them.

The two shinobi characters played by Dean and Michael didn't use their Bonus Skill Dice very much. So we'll have to wait and see how they work out.

Another issue is that there weren't any spell casters. Michael is playing a kagemusha shinobi, so at level 3 he'll have the option to get some spell casting. But for now, the party is spell-less (as were the enemies they faced in this first session...although that will change soon).

So, no problems. One or two things to look out for in future games. Things are looking up for publishing the game this year.

Oh, and the play-by-post game is coming along. There are seven players, and so far two have rolled up spell casters and one or two more players are considering it. So while PbP is slow, at least there should be ample chances to see how spell casting works out, and gauge the appropriateness of the spells.

Playtest Commencing

Tomorrow night, I'm gonna run the updated, revamped and hopefully simpler version of Chanbara that I worked on (sporadically) all last year. The Busan Gamers are up for the challenge...I think. I've asked them all to make characters before the game, but I've only gotten a few cryptic comments/questions so far. Fingers crossed it's not just a char-gen session.

In addition, I've now got five willing players in my RPOL.net play-by-post play test game. While it'll be slower, it will give me a chance to test out more stuff.

Among the Busan Gamers, Dean wants to update his character Little Sparrow, originally a Sohei. The new Bushi/Sohei didn't seem right to him, so I suggested he consider a Shinobi/Taijutsuka (martial artist) with a religious background for his armorless, staff-wielding monk. Michael is planning to run a Shinobi of some sort, but I'm not sure which. I sent Justin an update of his Ronin character, as a Bushi/Abarenbo (rough, tough, rowdy warrior), but no response from him yet on that. And no word at all from Alexei or Jeremy.

In the online game, Jeff (a friend of friends) is playing a Shinobi/Kagemusha (magical ninja). The other players responded to an RPOL players wanted post, so they're strangers to me. One has rolled up a Shinobi/Uragata (disguise-master ninja), another has a Bushi/Kensei, and another has said he's going to make a Mahotsukai/Onmyoji (Taoist exorcist). The final player is torn between a Bushi/Samurai archer (or gunner?) and a Mahotsukai/Soryo (Shinto priestess).

So it looks like I'll get a good spread of classes to see how they all work in play, at least at low levels.

I've got my Ghost Castle Hasegawa adventure updated to the new rules (and with digital designed maps instead of the original hand drawn ones) for the RPOL game at least to start. For the G+ game, I've got the first adventure of my old 1E/2E OA Evansville game expanded and ready to go.

Recycling

The new round of Chanbara play testing draws nearer! And I'm revising and expanding on the old adventures I ran with my Evansville Group years ago. Back in 2013, the play test didn't last long, and we never got to these adventures. So I'm dusting them off to use them again.

I've completed converting all the information from the original adventure from AD&D to Chanbara stats (wasn't hard) and doing a bit of revision in the notes. Now, I'm adding some extra contingency plans for things that could happen if the players take the adventure in an unexpected path (or fail at something). The hooks may make this seem like a simple "fetch quest" but of course it's not going to be that simple! And when things get complicated, things are less likely to go according to plan.

When I ran this back in the late 90's in Evansville, the party failed the "fetch quest" which then inspired them to try and rectify the situation and led them on to greater threats and to uncovering the enemies' plots (well, some of them... we stopped playing before they had even figured out who was behind all of this). It was possible then, and it's possible now that at the end of the adventure, the PCs will have the object of the quest, so I need to plan on both contingencies.

So, expansion and preparation for contingencies is the plan. It's also helping me flesh out some NPC faction motivations a bit more. Or maybe I had the motivations figured out 20 years ago, and have just forgotten them in the intervening years.

The up-side of this over-prepping and revamping is that I should be able to publish the module; possibly as a super-module with the whole darned campaign if the play test goes well and I can keep up the pace while working on my dissertation. Possibly as a series of linked modules. This series, along with the standalone Ghost Castle Hasegawa (which I'm planning to play test again via PbP if anyone's interested) will give Chanbara a nice little bit of support when released that Flying Swordsmen never got.

Last Day of the Year

Yes, the obligatory year in review post! Luckily, it's going to be short. There's not a lot to review.

So this year, I started the year off by getting back to work on Chanbara with a new revision mostly from the ground up. I'm now happy with that revision (a few things need tweaking, and I'm still undecided on how much setting info to include, and whether to revise the adventure/campaign advice chapter). I'm going to start play-testing it both on G+ with the guys, and on RPOL. Anyone interested in joining? So far, one guy, a friend of friends from two other RPOL games, has agreed to play. If you want to try it out, here's the link:

http://rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=65385&date=1449791951

Other than that, there's not much gaming related to say. I tried to get a GamMarvel World (Gamma World in the Marvel Comics Universe) game going, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to get my Mentzer Cover to Cover series going again, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to game as often as possible, but usually got sidetracked by real life.

Well, them's the breaks when you're trying to adjust to a new job (teaching at a university instead of a kindergarten), work on a PhD dissertation (more to come in 2016!), and raise two boys (one seven, the other one-and-a-half).

Happy New Year to all of my readers, and I hope you all have great gaming experiences in 2016!

Getting stuff done despite having no time

As usual, academics are taking up a lot of my attention, and what little is left has been mostly devoted to my family, so not much activity on the blog. I haven't been looking over Mentzer's DM book lately, but I'm not planning to abandon that line of posts. People seem to like it. It may stretch out a while, though, and I may give up my plans to continue through the Mentzer Expert, Companion and Master sets. That will depend on how the dissertation goes. [I'm getting my main experiment prepared, and doing a lot of background reading for that. Once I get that sorted out and I commence the experiment, I may have more time for blogging for a while, until it's time to write up everything, at least.]

On the plus side, I managed to squeeze in an impromptu game session last Saturday. I continued running Dean and Jeremy through an old dungeon I'd made for a 3E game and converted to Labyrinth Lord stats. They haven't completed it, but they found the puzzles and challenges to be good but not too difficult, and the combats so far have been hectic but not unwinnable (in the first session over a month ago, Dean and my older boy played through and came close to a TPK but avoided any loss of life, this time Dean and Jeremy each lost one of their two characters). They both feel like this is something I could publish. So I'll try to get one more session in to let them finish the dungeon, then try to find some time to write up some introductory material, rumors, additional information that could be researched, etc. Oh, and a few pre-generated PCs. And some art, maybe, but I'm not that great and I'm on a budget. Then I'll be ready to try selling it through my DrivethruRPG storefront.

Also on the plus side, I've been plugging away at my latest Chanbara draft (#4), and it's almost done. I just need to flesh out a starting area, and add a few things in the appendices. Then I'll be ready to have this thing play tested. Again, I might not have time to play test it myself due to the dissertation, but I'll try and see if anyone else can do it for me and give me some feedback.

So, if I can make good use of my very limited free time over the next month or so, I might get both of those projects completed. And if not by next month, then at least by the end of the year.

Two sohei walk into a haunted castle...

Last night we ran another play test of Chanbara.  Things are going well.  Dean and Alexei were the only two players available, and they are both playing sohei.  It made for an interesting experience, and helped us to find some fuzzy areas in the rules that need to be ironed out.

Little Sparrow the Sohei by Dean Flemming

Basically, I was going for OD&D levels of sparseness of spell and ability descriptions.  And we found out why the descriptions of such things have gotten longer and more legalistic over the decades first hand.  Now, I don't need to go to Pathfinder lengths to describe every little detail and proscribe every possible abusive case.  That last part is something individual GMs should be able to handle.  But I do need to be concise yet specific in the use of certain abilities.

I also need to think of some sort of caster limit.  Chainmail roll to cast mechanics are working well as a means of working spells in play, but while in a wargame there's a limit to the amount wizards will be casting determined by the length of the "battle," there's no such limit in RPG campaign play.

Some sort of limit needs to be in place.  Now to figure out what.  I don't want Vancian spells per day by level, nor a spell point system.  But possibly a hard limit on spells per day regardless of level?  Or fatigue such as the Stars Without Number system strain mechanic?  Something else?

One proto-idea floating around in my head would be a system of diminishing returns for casting the same spell more than once.  So a caster would be able to cast each spell they know once per day at no penalty, but each additional casting of each spell would be at a penalty, have a cost, or cause some sort of hindrance.  Having to track it for every spell, especially at high levels, would get tedious, I think.

At the moment, I'm leaning toward a modified SWN system strain mechanic.

Oh, and the two sohei, both designed for hunting undead, did really well in the castle versus skeletons and jikininki, but had a hard time in a random encounter against a group of kama-itachi (flying sickle weasels).  Probably as it should be.

Chanbara Playtest 1

The first session of Chanbara went well.  Not perfectly - the magic system needs revision, and we found a few bugs here and there.  But mostly, it went smoothly.  A samurai and two sohei investigated a haunted castle, locating clues to the haunting that may help them end the curse.

Thanks Jeremy, Dean and Alexei!

I'll write more later, as it's 1am.  Time for bed.

The Playtest Begins

I'm gonna give my draft rules of Chanbara a spin this coming Saturday, using an adventure in a haunted samurai castle, "Ghost Castle Hasegawa."  (If I can find the map, it's MIA at the moment.)

Michael and Dean have made characters, but need to update them to a last minute rule change (unless they can convince me to keep the old version, which they actually liked).  Justin has a concept, but hasn't gotten further than just rolling it up as if it were a Labyrinth Lord character.  Not sure if anyone else will play.

Anyway, we'll have a Kitsune Onmyoji, Human Sohei and Human Ronin versus whatever I can throw at them.  :D