More freeform magic - Savage Worlds

Just as I wondered about alternative system for the freeform kind of magic of Mage, I suddenly find multiple alternatives! This is just as much a reminder and place holder for myself as it is a tips you you out there. Check out Clint Black's rules for improvised magic for Savage Worlds. They look quite usuable.

I guess Savage Worlds have a reputation for quite pulpy and cinematic action, but looking at how WoD games seems to be played I think it could fit. Personal horror or not, they can't get any less of that by Savaging them, in my opinion.

Freeform Mage system - in BRP?

As I'm presently stressed out, and slightly exasperated by the possibilities of getting a gaming group to schedule a session, I'm dreaming up new cool projects.

I used to think that the first edition of that wild and crazy game Mage had something. The setting was black and white to a fault, and the usual "class system" really created game groups where everyone was an oddball and nothing but metagaming would ever keep that group together.

But, the idea of magic as something as the whole basis of ontology and conscience was mindbogglingly cool. Suddenly everything was magic, and you could totally explore the modern world from that perspective. Except you were supposed to play conservative/reactionary people stuck in a superstitious world view. At least that was how it felt, when it painted the technomancers as the bad guys.

Now I picked up the big time about the Technocracy, and started to read it as if we would start playing those guys instead. I began to see interesting option. But, I was vary of the rules.

So, how about using BRP instead? You could just grab the standard Call of Cthulhu skill list and just add the spheres of magic, couldn't you? Imagine you have skill ratings in the spheres just like any other BRP skill. Then maybe you'll have another skill for actual spell casting and if you wanted to do something you'd allocate percentiles up until you reach your rating in that sphere, and if you want to do something more powerful you'll get Paradox. I have long been thinking it would be cool with a system where you would "bet" your chance of success against your character's limitations, and that would be an interesting way to make that happen.

I will probably never do anything with it, but suddenly I have some weird system hackery to occupy my mind with. Maybe I'll even feel tempted to toss some words into an search engine to find out if someone beat me to it. Maybe. It is more fun to just dream up systems, right?

Delving Deeper boxed set at last

Today I first held in my hand the boxed set of Delving Deeper boxed set. It took forever to arrive, and I will probably never buy anything from John Adams again. Still, I got a really warm and fuzzy feeling holding that box in my hands.

When I bought the White Box from Brave Halfling that box was joke. The bottom half was not even glued together, and the corners haphazardly closed up with tape.

This box on the other hand is gorgeous. The cover image is great and the box is sturdy. First impressions last, as they say. As I looked at the booklets, they also looked really nice and clean. No busy layout, no fancy stuff, just readable. Clerics gets no spell at first level, and there's a Thief class if you like that. Classic stuff.

While it looks like I have a hard time keeping a gaming group together, this is a game that just screams to be played. I long to try it out. That's a pretty good reaction for a new game, isn't it?

BRP did it first!

Being one of what China Miéville once called "the Chaosium kids", I always thought the way things were done in BRP was the way you did things. Today I learned that it was not until 6th ed. Hero system in 2011 that the defensive and offensive capabilities, OCV/DCV, were decoupled and you could become good as parrying regardless of your offensive ability. Maybe there was ways to tweak it, but in an interview I listened to with the line developer (Steve something?), it was presented that way. Back in 1979 when Runequest was released we Chaosium kids had separate attack and parry percentile ratings for our weapons.

God how I love how that simple rules set over and over again shows how everything you could imagine is in there!

BRP did it first.

Material components, taking a cue from Mage

I have more than once felt that the game Mage: The Ascension could be really cool, if I just figured out how. The rules are a bit too vague, and the setting cool but unfocused. Sadly, it felt later editions limited it to become the same kind of superhero games Vampire and Werewolf was.

Now I've started thinking about the really interesting bad guys in the setting, the Nephandi, I decided I needed to read the Guide to the Technocracy. That power group was presented as the main evil in the early editions, but I have picked up this book in order to find a more positive slant on them. There are multiple shades of bad in this setting, and I felt Nephandi would be more interesting as bad guys, and the technos as misguided good guys. It's after all a game about belief, and even the kind who seems abhorrent to you has to be investigated for what they are.

One thing this books talks about at length is the magic foci used to cast technological spells. The magic in Mage is very free form, and based upon some basic spheres of knowledge. You can pick whatever sphere you like and by manipulating that get magical effects of that kind. In GttT the "mages" use implements, like a calculator, mirrorshades, guns and other technological gadgets which both channels and "hides" the reality wracking effects. For example, in order to cast a spell of perception, you put on those shades and the spell take effect. The implements are not just like a magic wand you wave about, it's a thing that related to the magic action being taken. This made me think of material components.

In some editions of D&D, you have to have a spell component to cast some spells. If the component is verbal it is easy to just say your character chants or shouts or whatever. That pesky bat guano or black pearl is more complicated. How often do you need to stock up? How do you track usage? Is that really fun? And so on...

Maybe you could use implements like in Mage instead? It would take magic back to how it worked in the Blackmoor campaign. Dave Arneson had a very tangible kind of magic in his campaign, that much can be gleamed from what he have said, and written in the FFC. It can't get any more old school than that, eh?

I would think it would have to be components of a lasting nature. One problem with the material components rules as they are in e.g. AD&D is that it's unclear how to manage the logistics. If you instead always have your item around, it solves that problem. I do like the idea of being able to improvise and take whatever item that suits the effect you are trying to achieve. Since there are no dice rolls involved in classic D&D spell casting, you could say spells cast without implements take one additional time increment to cast, a segement, round or whatever.

I'll file away this idea for the future. Right now it looks like I'll have few possibilities to actually test it, but if you do feel free to post your experiences!

When do you need a game system to support your play?

A short while ago I read a forum post where someone claimed the game 3:16 did not work for them. I played it a few times and thought it worked fine. I searched out an episode of the Walking Eye podcast to compare, since they often have interesting things to say about games they've played.

Interestingly enough, on the podcast there was a player who did not feel the game "clicked" for them. The question came up whether the theme of the game was satire, and if it was reinforced by the system of the game. Considering you don't count hits in that game, but kills, I think it's pretty obvious. But, there are some subtle things in there I felt like talking more about in this space.

In the game you have a flashback mechanic. Using that you can take narrative control, and define the psychology of your trooper. This is where the game enters the "hippie game" territory. But, here's the interesting part. Using the flashback you can fail and succeed on your terms, but it does not force you to adhere to the theme. In fact, it's only the last flashback that's mandated, as Hatred for Home. Basically, there is an endgame and there is a setup. The latter picture mindless carnage and the former suggests moral doubt and satire after turning military glory into genocide. What is interesting is that up until that point, you can play it however you like. There's nothing forcing you down the path of satire. Sure, there is that end, but it's fairly open to interpretation and you get to choose the seriousness of it.

Some people like to point out that even though D&D basically only has rules for combat, it's not really about combat. I'm not going to get involved in that discussion, but I want to compare that situation to 3:16. In that game you have a setup which is all about killing. Your game system only involves itself with killing, and that which some consider its core, the flashback system, does not force the issue of the theme. Just like in the case of D&D, it's more about System than system. System with a capital S is the sum of what happens around the table, not just the rules in the book. I think 3:16 is a very subtle design, in that it rather tries to give you a playground and let's you discover its social mechanics than putting it into text.

Killing bugs and going into genocidal frenzy is something that can affect you, not only your character. This is something which I've also found happens in Dogs in the Vineyard. At least for me it does. When I first played it, I started thinking about how I felt about the events my character encountered. If you let that inform your character's actions is of course up to your individual play style, but I found it both challenging and refreshing. 3:16 is a game that works the same way.

If you don't feel a bit repulsed by your trooper's mindless killing you I don't say you are playing it wrong, but if you do get that effect it sure is a memorable one!

Scenes and nuggets - the DGP way

Anyone remember the DGP "nuggets" system? It was back when GDW had handed over most of the development of their Traveller game to Joe Fugate and crew of DGP. They had been thinking on adventure design a bit. The result was that they designed adventures in the format of "nuggest", which were self contained scenes. I wrote about them once before in relation to campaign play of Battletech. Now I'm thinking of them again, for organizing your scenario in a more general sense.

Each nugget had some thing that would happen, some NPC you could talk to and a place to visit. The new thing was that DGP had sorted these in order, and told you which nugget had to go after the other. It was kind of like the solos, where you had forks in the road where you had to choose were to take the plot. I always thought these nuggets were a sweet idea, but I also never felt they worked as promised.

In Trail of Cthulhu the authors write about how to structure your adventure along a "spine" and then have branches off that tree. Core clues, those that are crucial for the mystery, are forming the spine of the adventure. I have not yet played much ToC, so I have no  solid opinion on how well that works. It doesn't read like it would work that well, but maybe it just puts into words what we have been doing all along. The thing is, this is what the nuggets DGP used reminds me of. I guess nobody is surprised that this idea was old.


Now I feel like pulling out some of those old Traveller books and taking a look at them with ToC in the back of my mind. For those who are interested in adventure design, it might be something worth studying. Identifying where you have choke points is very crucial if you want to make sure you don't limit your players, and maybe structuring your scenario in nuggets like that is a good way to find out the logical structure of your design? If you do that, you can then design where to break up the rails, and where to leave them in. I for one am going to take a look at those old nuggets again.

How to write adventures - stringing scenes together

I've posted before on my thoughts about scenes as the currency of gaming. This post is about how to use them to best effect. I'm not claiming to tell how it is, this are my thought right now, and will probably change.

Having scenes thought out, I think it's quite tempting to decide from the start which of your darlings you want to use, and what's going to happen. Especially the latter is tempting. If you "figure out" that they players will do B after doing A, you can be pretty sure that they will want to do C instead and will violently protest about that B you dangle in front of them. Don't do that. I at way to got at doing just that. So, how do you do?

I've tested out a few ways myself, and read about what others have done. I think that there are a few way to do scene based design without laying down the tracks. I think the best way is to have one opening scene, one scene with some kind of conclusion to the main conflict and in between you have the other scenes. If you introduce a threat in scene one, and put in some things that leads up to the conclusion or what brings the conflict to a head you can kind of have your cake, and eat it too. Say you have a bad guy planning to do a bad thing at a specific place at a specific time. Then it's fairly obvious which the concluding scene will be, and if the first scene is designed to involve the players you probably have your adventure right there. You could probably run that after just thinking about the supporting cast and some key locations, and after putting some stats to that you could improvise the rest.

My latest game, which we cancelled due to scheduling problems, was supposed to be some attempt in this vein. I had a starting scene introducing the action, and when a key event happened a NPC would show up, kill another NPC and then I'd let the law descend and see which way the player character jumped based on whom they had befriended before the murder. That way I hoped to tell a story, while giving the players the ability to steer most of the action. Key for me here would be that even if the players did nothing, I could make sure something happened, and if they did take the plot and run with it, I could just throw in that smoking gun and go along with the ride.

Wish me luck herding the cats back together and we might see if it worked!

Emergent Story - in multiple ways

I was listening to an episode of the The Walking Eye podcast recently. It sometimes has moments of pure brilliance, and I was hoping to catch some of those. Someone mentioned some "Forgespeak", which made me want to write this post. I've tried three times to make this to the point and less rambling. God knows if I succeeded!

Have you heard the phrases Story Before/Story Now/Story After? That was the "Forgespeak" which I triggered on. Basically, those words are all about how and when the "story" appear in the game. Naturally there are strong opinions attached to all those positions. I will just pontificate on the idea of story and when it happens, kind of with those positions as a starting point. We are talking rpg theory here, so nobody just blogs. We pontificate.

It's interesting how "story" became such a loaded term. Personally I blame the metaplot heavy days when White Wolfe reigned. Others were also quite into it, but it seems like the WoD gamers adapted it fully. The Story Before concept relates to that, with the GM showing up with a story in her head before even the game starts. I have actually played in a few con games like that, and they were not all bad. But, more often than not, I don't enjoy that.

But, the other cases of emerging story is more interesting. I'm not entirely sure why the Story After case are considered a sign of "dysfunctional play", but I'll roll with it and consider some cases of emerging stories.

I like to play games where actions of the players affect the world, and small pebbles tossed in the pond by the GM creates big ripples, just because one player or so decides to surf the waves created. That is one quite fun type of emergent story. On the other hand, being thrust into a situation where you have knobs to twiddle and dials to turn is also fun. It seems like some people only likes stories to emerge when they step outside the game system. Others seem to think real story only emerges when the knobs of the game mechanics drives that action. I'm kind of amazed that those two positions are sometimes defended so strongly against each other, when they in my mind is quite similar.

Famously, some people have claimed that the fact that D&D have most detailed rules for combat does not mean the game is about combat, quite the contrary! In that case, story emerges when the rules are not involved.

Other games have rules for social combat, or some kind of game currency you can use in interpersonal interactions, or maybe a set up where the setting and the roles of the characters are creating conflicts to be resolved by the players. I'm actually not sure why especially this latter kind of game so often are scorned by people interested in gaming they "old ways". Sometimes I think it's just a case of narrow vision, thinking D&D is the end all, be all of gaming. At other times it might be that stubborn resistance against "having anyone tell me what my character likes or not". While I can understand the idea of that argument, most people I've encountered arguing like that have also been close minded individuals who came across as jerks in general. Maybe that have coloured my opinion of that argument.

How about this situation? Your character is fighting lizardmen, and overwhelmed decides that as the last man standing, discretion is the better part of valour. From now on that player might decides to always have his character scowl and mutter when lizardmen show up as antagonists. Maybe the character even develops a slight phobia of lizards. That is all emergent story for that character, totally without being based on any rules forcing that to happen.

Compare that to some hippie game where the dungeon crawl is about the mental degeneration of those who crawl underground. Maybe in that game you have a psychological profile, and as you fail some game checks and the numbers decrease, your character get afflicted by some predetermined effect. This is also emergent story for that character. But, in this case it's mandated by the rules.

I personally think the latter way has one advantage. When those knobs and dials are in place, things will happen. If I have to hope for some lucky combination of situation, character and place it will be harder for me as a player to make that happen. It's basically a tool to make it likelier to happen. I think that sometimes the Story Now people have taken that position to be better, since you have tools. I know for a fact that even if I buy a really fancy hammer and saw, I still wont turn into a great carpenter. On the other hand, I still like to have great tools around. Tools I don't have can't help, or hinder. I think that is why I like those games which include more than basic combat, and leaves the rest to the group.

That being said, one thing I really don't get is why so many hippie game designers think that emotional relationships are the only good source of conflict and drama? Do we have to turn all our games into sappy soaps in order to have engaging games? I don't think so. It makes me think of a game I was once in, where we played in a setting developed by our GM. He is a great world builder so just the glimpses we had gotten of the bigger world made me want to go out and explore all that! Imagine my despair when it turned out that we had all been grounded in the village, banned from leaving and exploring the woods and wilds around. This was supposed to be a social game, using the rules for the Buffy RPG. Buffy happens to be a TV series I despise as a sappy soap. Maybe I came to the game from a wrong angle, but it sure didn't work for me.

What I wanted to say with that paragraph was just that the environment can be just a rich source of emerging story as people can. Sometimes I think the dungeon dwellers and the hippie gamers both wants emergent story, but forgets that point, in different ways. Both exploration of time and space as well as interpersonal relationships can create story. Having tools for that in the game system makes for great games when you uses them to hot rod one killer story, or for shiny gears that can lie dormant but admired as decoration as you blaze through the emergent story on wheels you just imagined into being all by yourself without tools.

Yeah, there you have me, creating some group hug of a messy metaphor. Whatever. Here, take a cloth and wipe of some of that grease and oil and go out and game. However.

How to write adventures - I keep talking about scene based design

I'm continuing my thinking on adventure design, and have now come to how I've planned out my Savage Worlds scenarios. Since I've heard so much about how great this game is for cons, I designed scenarios from that. I've listened to how people often use a scene based design to fit in the time constraints, and that fit me perfectly.

So, I wanted to do something with a lot of feel of the X-files. Since I started from that, it was very natural for me to think of a scene that introduce the mystery and then play the intro and then introduce the characters. Since I was not writing a TV-show, I did think up the first part, but we started play when the players entered the plot.

The first scene would utilize the outcome of the background scene as its "bang". So I imagined a miner in this small community being attacked by his whole kennel of dogs, and how his fiance would see it and panic. That was what had just happened. Then I planned on putting the PCs in that small mining town, fill it with NPCs and build scenes from character interaction and some"plot based" scenes that would exhibit more of the strangeness that was the basis for the hounds attacking the miner.

The main plot was that the miners had dug deep into the Appalachians in West Virginia, and uncovered Cthonians. They reacted by psionic mind controls and called in their minions. I planned to have some weird things happening, like the MIB show up and discourage the PCs from snooping, and finally have the fiance disappear only to call someones phone and lure them out into the wilds at night. I had decided that after fooling around like that, I would end it with a scene where the PCs found them somehow confronting "aliens" in a strong light and finally finding themselves with redacted memories in their car out on the highway.

So, how did it go, and how did I used the scene based design?

Well, I started with the players taking control. They came to the town, and started talking to people. I decided to take a cue from Vincent Baker's advice in Dogs in the Vineyard, and started to give away as much as possible from all the NPCs. Vincent is wise, for without that they would have stumbled!

Talking to the NPCs, the characters were set in a location, some people were there and that was often the extent of my scene framing. I did not include any "bangs" or any destabilizing events into those interpersonal interactions.

In between those I dropped some small bombs in the shape of scenes with not only location and people, but also destabilizing events. It turned out that those scenes which all had things happening they had to react to did work really well. I totally failed to make one of them a chase scene with the Savage Worlds chase rules, but that was only me at odds with that rules set, and I've posted about that in other posts.

Worth noting here is that I did not introduce any shakeups in the "interview" scenes we had. Maybe I should have, because I sometimes felt that all those individuals with cool stories to tell had to walk up to the player characters more often than being sought out. It might be something that is dependent on how proactive your players are, but I did take that with me to my next attempt. It was my greatest lesson from this kind of adventure design.

Then there was that about how to string scenes together. In this scenario, which I called "Deep Calls to Deep", the players had the choice of going where they wanted and talking to whomever they choose. That kind of made it very natural for me to toss in my bombs after they had learned stuff which would make the next thing happening feel more cool. It made for a fairly natural flow, I would think.

All in all I think it went well, and as far as I understood from the after game chat I had nailed the X-Files feel. Nobody ever got any hint it was a Cthulhuoid menace.

But, what could I make different, and better, the next time? I will talk a bit about stringing scenes together next time.