Fallout
On Saturday we had the character creation and first session of Dave's new Fallout campaign. He opted to use Action Cards to run it, which I'm glad to see. That's our local homebrew rules I've been running for a number of years. Only recently have we had other people using it; Kenny with his excellent HALO adaptation and now Dave with Fallout. I'm not a big Fallout fan- I played some ways into the first PC game, but never followed up on the franchise after that. I know a lot of people love the most recent one and I suspect eventually I'll pick it up cheap to see if I can do it. I'm not an FPS player so I approach those kinds of games with a measure of hesitation.

I'm also not so big a fan of Post-Apocalypse gaming. I've played and read quite a bit of it in the day: old Gamma World, Aftermath, and Morrow Project for example. But it never grabbed me. That being said, boy I had an absolute blast at the game. Dave provided an excellent background and some of the other players' enthusiasm for the setting really sold it. I liked my character and everyone else's--and I'd had a hard time coming up with something I thought I'd like. But I'd been thinking about a character concept for a Pathfinder game that didn't happen and ran with that- a particular version of greediness as a flaw. As a GM Dave also pulled out a number of new tricks.

Character creation was simple; most of us are pretty familiar with how Action Cards works and Dave had done up some profession suggestions lists. We only had skills, qualities and a flaw to worry about (a total of ten item). We got a couple of raises from our background. Dave had also converted the Perks system from Fallout into a set of interesting abilities and we each began with one. He started us out in medias res, with all of us in an open topped vehicle heading to our “destination” when we suddenly see the white light and mushroom cloud of an explosion off in the distance. We're thrown by the blast wave. We come to in a hospital tent being treated by one of the Fallout factions. They question us which allows Dave to put together a quick GM manifest of our names, backgrounds, etc. We're then wheeled into a room where we're questioned about what happened-- which leads to a flashback several weeks earlier and the real start of the campaign. It was a great linking device and felt like a video game opening sequence. Another clever thing he did i the sequence was to keep us apart and not interacting in that intro-- that way if a PC does die, he can slot the replacement in without it seeming like a continuity violation. That keeps the danger high despite the “final scene” having been shown on screen.

Dave supplied a number of other mechanical modifications to the system which suited the game. He opted to go with dice based damage and hit points, which I think works for kind of crunchy, bloody game. Fallout has a thing called VATS which allowed for more specific shots-- he modeled that through the accumulation of VATS points which can be spent on attacks to make a called shot. At the end of the game Dave didn't hand out experience points. Instead, to simulate the kind of random nature of rewards in Fallout, he tossed out a set of hand-made reward cards on to the table. We were allowed to go through, pick one and keep it. As a group we had to negotiate and we can trade these off between sessions. It supplied an excellent, tangible reward and Dave put a lot of effort into putting these together.

I also have to mention the radio station. I've often heard guys who've played the game talk about how much they love the radio channel stuff in the game. Dave crafted a radio program ahead of time, with music and everything. He played the short and evocative piece on his phone-- a really nice touch. He used that interlude in the middle of the session to set up background, establish atmosphere, and point us to the key plot threads for the session. It was great. based on the response, he'll have to do one for each session now.

Combat Thinking
So I've been thinking about the different ways systems handle combat in terms of rolling. This is just a small mental exercise trying to figure out the options and their benefits. Here are the categories that I've come up with:

Success vs. Success: Attacker rolls under a skill number to determine success.
What the attacker needs to roll under for success is on the PC's sheet: a skill number in GURPS, a skill percentage in Call of Cthulhu. In this system, the defender usually gets to make a defense roll if they are aware of the attack. If they succeed, the attack misses. Variations on this system include types of defenses (dodge, parry, blocks) and critical results requiring critical responses. Usually defense skills in these systems are quite a bit lower than the attack skills, but that can vary. Whether the defense action of the defender eats up an action or opportunity varies.

Competitive Rolls: Attacker rolls and adds value, trying to hit a static target number.
This system has the die roll and total going upwards. If the attacker meets a minimum threshold of success, they hit. The defender then can roll to beat the attacker's total. If they do so, the attack misses. Variations may allow the defender to simply tie the attacker. The level of awareness and action required from the defender may vary. Unisystem uses this mechanic. Storyteller also does so, and there the defense action eat up a player's options.

Rolling vs. Target Number: Attacker rolls against a number established by the target.
It may be that the attacker has to roll above or below some “Defense Value” set by the defender. Generally this number is a passive factor of speed, armor and skill. Many classic systems use this, HERO System, d20, AD&D, True20, Rolemaster, Storytelling. Generally the defender does not have an active part in the attack resolution process. They may choose options which modify the value necessary to hit them (aborting to a dodge, increasing their parry, activating powers) and so on.

These would seem to be the basic forms of combat resolution. Of course there's a good deal of variation to that. For example, a variation of Competitive Rolls has the defender's roll not eliminating the attackers success, but perhaps reducing it. I believe the ORE system functions this way.

I'd also point to how time gets measured in combat. I can see three basic break downs.

Moment to Moment: Each action taken represents a discrete combat maneuver, a spell, a step-- measured tightly from second to second. GURPS, as an example, sees time in combat in this way. The new Scion and Exalted operate abstractly in this way.

Sequences: A turn is considered to be a bundle or set of time. An attack's considered not one particular strike but instead setting up, perhaps some feinting, getting into position, and a series of exchanges. I believe d20 can be seen this way since a turn is something like six seconds. Rolemaster explicitly handles time this way. Storyteller allows multiple actions in a round on a character's turn, so it does this.

Scenes: An interesting alternative is the way HeroQuest approaches the combat-- where it is a back and forth competition. There's little in the way of specific maneuvers or action choices. Instead the opponents are locked in a struggle, a combat, with one side working to gain an advantage over the other. When one side has accumulated enough advantage, they win. Time doesn't get measured except where other circumstances force it (like a ticking bomb rolling across the deck).

Hacks and Conversions
Working on a couple of things for the future. Eventually I want to reboot my Exalted Dragonblooded campaign, but with a different system. We'd been playing with first edition for a couple of years-- and while it functions, there's a lot of mess there. Second Edition Exalted didn't work for me either-- I ran Scion and got a taste of the combat wheel. It functioned decently OK at first and then felt more and more creaky as the campaign rolled on. I read recently about another GM using the exalted-lite demo system to play. I want something more like that- Exalted has a great deal of flavor and tremendous ideas, but I want an easier game.

I suspect we'll probably do a version of it using Action Cards. That's going to require some serious work to make the conversion however. The Charm system will have to be reduced and condensed-- focused on the essential aspects to make it easier. I think what I'm going to work on as a stepping stone to that will be an adaptation of Scion. It has something of the same epic feel, but with a small set of secondary mechanics. I have some ideas about how to convert the powers and also some structural changes I want to make to the cards themselves.

The other hack I'm thinking about revolves around HeroQuest. I like 95% of that system. Of the two stumbling blacks I have with that game, one's more easily dealt with than the other. I don't like expendable drama points also being experience points so that's easy to fix. However, the other problem lies in the resolution mechanic. HQ uses a d20 for everything. I don't like the smooth curve of that die-- it can really throw a session into wild fits. I'd like a smoother curve, or at least a mechanic which the players don't see as having that same problem. Now I don't want to knock the d20 generally, but the fewer rolls made in a game, the larger the randomness of the d20 appears. And HQ encourages a fairly light approach to rolling.

So in order to have HQ feel right to me (and some of the potential players) I need to remove or obscure that smooth curve. HQ operates by a success vs. success comparative system for any conflict. Players have a skill number from 1-20 (and higher, but let's leave that aside) and have to roll under that. Their opposition rolls as well). Results range from critical success (rolling a one), to standard success (making the roll), to standard failure (missing the roll), to critical failure (rolling a 20). The relative level of success is compared, with margins of success breaking ties. In a simple contest, that resolves things. In an extended contest, like combat, the players score point over the course of rounds until one side accumulates enough for victory.

The first option is to simply replace the 1d20 with 2d10. This creates a smoother curve, but the system remains pretty much the same. A critical success would be read as a 2 or 3; a critical failure as a 19 or 20. That changes the percent chance for either critical from 5% to 3% which is not that big a shift. There would have to be a couple of other modifications regarding the Masteries as well.

On the other hand, some of my players like dice pools. I could shift things in that direction. In such a system, abilities would be rated from 1-10 instead of 1-20. Each point in an ability grants the character a d10. If the player rolls a 10 on any die, they succeed. For comparative successes, the number of 10's would be contrasted. To handle the critical failure/success mechanic, players would have a key die in their pool, always the first one rolled. If the key die shows a 1 then the roll becomes a critical failure. If the key die shows a 10, then it becomes a critical success. I'm not entirely happy with that right now- it seems a little draconic, and puts critical success/failure at a 10% chance. I need to come up with a simple and easily read system which stays close to that 5% line.

Back to regular blogging tomorrow-- however I followed a link from Robin Laws' site to a really, really interesting session report here. I think that's a brilliant approach to building a one-shot game and really plays into the strengths of HeroQuest as I've seen them. In fact it is sort of stupidly brilliant in that "why didn't I think of it" way. I've been considering how to try out HQ2, and I think I will probably have to borrow that collaborative model.

Converting L5R to HeroQuest 2e

So after having spent like five posts defining first systems in general and then HeroQuest in particular, we finally get to this.

So some thoughts about adapting over Legend of the Five Rings to HeroQuest 2e (finally...). Let's begin with the basics: all characteristics, skills, equipment, advantages and disadvantages can be handled by abilities. That's a pretty basic idea. One of the questions will be how do I want to present those-- should I create a list of example abilities? Doing so makes things easier, but also tends to limit what people go for-- usually drawing from those lists rather than going through the making up one's own process. Maybe-- it at least serves as a starting point.

As is my habit, I'll be using the term skill and ability here interchangeably. That's a mental block I haven't yet overcome. But I mean abilities as defined in HQ.

One of the things I need to prepare myself mentally for is the idea of defining the broadness and narrowness of skills-- i.e. how do I see them? Certainly some of that is going to come around in play-- if a PC ends up relying on one or two skills to the exclusion of all else, then by definition that skills a little too broad. However, that can also be a sign that the game's too focused on one aspect or another. Generally, I think you can at the start identify three levels of abilities: broad, medium and narrow. For example, Strong would be broad, Weight-Lifting would be medium and Arm-Pinning could be narrow. Or from a classic example, Perception would be broad, Spot Hidden Object would be medium, and Sense Ambush might be narrow...maybe.

So I suspect one of the first steps will be to go through the L5R skill lists and come up with a list of abilities drawn from the names and texts, with a range of scope. Laws' suggests focusing on the text of things when doing this-- what the ability looks like or covers rather than the hard mechanics.

Combat
One of the things that sticks out like a sore thumb, especially in the later L5R d20 material is the fall back to new and more complicated combat mechanics and abilities. Everything reflects yet another complication, modifier, or slight change to the combat situation. All of that has to wash out when handling this system. Combat abilities will have to be a mix of medium, with a few narrow to be used as augments for particular situations or to flavor what a character is doing. That's probably going to mean working out flavor combat abilities by families. I have to keep in mind that the characters will probably start with about twelve abilities, plus a keyword from a school (see below). Breaking things into too narrow a range also means reducing overall effectiveness. There should be enough diversity among these concepts to make each character feel unique, but also able to act in more than a niche situation. However, within their niche, they should be well set.

Clan Schools
Probably the most important distinction between characters lies in their choice of schools. In L5R there represent dojos or training paths which set a character's “class” more than anything. As PC advance, they gain new abilities within their schools. I will probably handle these as keywords, with several abiltiies group beneath them. One of the problems with these schools is that especially within the more focused samurai classes, most of the ability tend to be varying degrees of granular combat effects. Let me take two examples, drawn from the 2e rules:

Lion Bushi School
*Rank One: The Way of the Lion: May ignore an opponent's armor bonus or gain a raise for damage or a called shot.
*Rank Two: The Strength of Purity: May add honor rank to damage done.
*Rank Three: With the Strength of My Ancestors: May attack twice per round.
*Rank Four: The Hand of Destiny: Doesn't take penalties for called shots.
*Rank Five: May reroll failures, but reroll loses the benefits of any raises.

So as you can see we have a pretty mechanical thing. However, we may be able to salvage some things from that. There's an emphasis on precision, so any combat abilities will likely have that as a description. There's also the sense of overcoming failure, and the guidance of the ancestors, as well as purity of soul as a focus in combat. We want to have a couple of abilities which reflect combat, but others which reinforce the ideas of the school. The Loin stuff also reflects a focus on large-scale engagements, so that can be used.

Keyword: Lion Bushi School
*Precise Swordsmanship (the broad combat ability)
*Keeping the Righteous Heart (to represent the focus on honor)
*Knowing the Battlefield (a warfare ability)
*At Home in War (a combat ability for mass situations)
*Ancestral Guidance (knowledge of the ancestors, probably used as a reach or broad ability)

I've left out a few things, like archery or unarmed there, or a narrower battle tactics skill

For another example, consider the Mantis Bushi School, which only has four techniques listed (as a minor clan school). The Mantis are the only really strongly sea-faring clan.

*Rank One: Fight Without Steel: knowledge of peasant or improvised weapons.
*Rank Two: Voice of the Storm: allows character to all-out attack with less penalty
*Rank Three: Claws of the Mantis: Allows character to use two weapons
*Rank Four: Yoritomo's Rolling Wave: Increased defense due to ability to maintain balance on the rolling surfaces of boats and such.

Keyword: Mantis Bushi School
*Balanced Footwork (ability to avoid situations that might knock down)
*Master of the Seas (knowledge of sailing which comes from cultural background- fairly broad)
*Fight Without Steel (combat ability for use of peasant or improvised weapons)
*Ferocious Charge (a more brawl and extnded ability which might be used as an augment or for effect)
*Scaling the Masts (a nice athletics ability for climbing and scrambling)

For a less combat oriented example, consider the Yaskui Tradesmen School. This gets short shrift in the original books- with each rank of the school giving access to new goods the character can obtain relatively quickly. So we have to fall back to more thematic ideas

Keyword: Yasuki Tradesman School
*Honorable Commerce (a merchant ability, but also denoting that such trade is not against their code, so can be used as a resistance against those who might question their methods)
*Hasten Friends in Low Places (a contact skill for the lower reaches, with an emphasis on being able to get things done quickly)
*Useful Goods (In the sense of preparedness, being able to have at hand or find minor objects, a kind of wealth substitute ability)
*Gifts of Dubious Nature (both a bribery skill and also the ability to lay one's hands on forged or illegal things)
*Staying Out of Harms Way (a defensive combat skill)

The nice thing about keywords is that they do allow a thematic grouping, but players can also buy up a focus in a few abilities underneath a particular keyword.

Clans and Families
Clans and families obviously set a lot of things for the character. I suspect this will make up the other set of keywords available to the players. Each family will have a keyword set associated with it. Some of those will be the same across the families, but there will be a couple of distinctions between them. There will be at least one distinct “personality” skill in each set-- like Crab's knowledge of the Shadowlands, the Crane's artfulness, the Unicorn gift with riding, and so on. I'm also debating about something that reflects their outlook-- like “Crab Honor” which represents the particular flavor of what matters and doesn't matter to them.

Honor and Glory
Which does bring me to an interesting issue in the game. In L5R players have both Honor and Glory ratings. These can serve as bonuses for particular skills or measuring rank. They can go up or down depending on actions. In the past, I've mostly sidelined these functions, but here I think I can make them active abilities. Honor can be used to challenge someones honor or to defend against challenges to one's own, such as social attacks. It can also be used in contests against certain drives, such as personal flaws. In HQ damage can be done to Honor as an ability and I think that works here. I will probably have Honor be defined by the Clan flavor-- so there's a difference between Crab Honor, Scorpion Honor and Lion Honor. That can be represented by circumstantial bonuses.

Glory will also be its own ability, but not made distinct between the different clans. It can be used as an augment for social contests, or as a fall back skill used directly. It represents reputation and tales told. Strong actions can give temporary boosts, as failures can lead to damage to one's glory. I like that the mechanic there seems symmetrical with other abilities.

Dueling
I like the idea that a duel, either social or swordplay, can be an extended contest. This can make the specialist dueling schools (like the Crane and Dragon) quite good in their narrow roles, but second to more rounded fighters in general combat. An extended dueling contest would begin with an assessment of the opponent (dueling perception, assess adversary, gather rumors), then a focus contest (dueling focus, stare-down, garner support), then probably exclusively to a certain kind of duel-- the iaijutsu draw contest, and then the strike (iaijutsu strike, precise swordsmanship, discredit opponent). It also allows the classic samurai trope of one challenger being outclassed even before the blades have been drawn.

Magic
Some non-standard magical stuff can be handled easily- particularly that of the Monks and the Artisans. Dragon Monks have tattoos that grant them unusual powers and Monks likewise have kihos. Those will simply be handled as discrete abilities. For example, the Grasshopper Tattoo might be the ability Prodigious Leap. A kiho about resistance might be the ability Endure Hardship. The same thing with some of the small magics the Artisans have.

For the more classic magic of the shugenja I'll probably build a framework. Magical schools for the different families will have some abilities tuned to their particular style-- like the Kuni's work against the Shadowlands or the Yogo's skills with wardings. The Crane and the Unicorn both have spell users with a slightly different style, the making of material objects, but functionally that won't matter.

L5R breaks spells into the five elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Void. The last is less of a consideration as only one family, the Phoenix can take up spells of that element. I imagine that each element will be a kind of keyword, with abilities underneath it. The base effect within an elemental magic set will be to serve as a skill for auments and for communing with or summon small amounts of the element. Each element has some meta-concepts tied to it (Fire with Speed, Earth with Resistance, Air with Lore, Water with Purification) so on the fly augments should be easy. Then spells themselves will be listed under the elemental keyword. They'll be written fairly broadly, as I imagine players won't have that many spells, but will use them for various effects.

The game provides notes for the various schools having different elemental affinities, so for example the Asahina Shugenja school of the Crane has an affinity for Air and a Deficiency to Earth. I'll probably set the rule so that the element with an affinity must be at least three higher in rating than any other element, and the element with a deficiency must be at least three lower than any other element. I imagine I'll also put in some sample abilities for magical dueling.

We it took me about sic entries to finally get to this and put down some of my starting ideas about L5R conversion down on the blog. Seems like a lot of front work for not all that much payoff. However it will help if and when I sit down to do the full write up. There are a couple of other settings I'd like to think about for conversion, but I'll stop talking about that for a while.

For Friday, I'm hoping to talk about some of the new ideas for doing my next major revision to the Action Cards system-- version 3.0. I keep tuning that and there are a few things from HQ I want to think about for a very indirect application to the game. I might also talk about a character exploration exercise that Sherri and Sharon have been working through and one can get on the same page as a player about their character.

Here's an interesting short article about games, reflecting what I've been saying about L5R and what happened to it.

Contests in HQ Continued-- Last Day
I mentioned the simple group contests in my last post about HeroQuest and I want to say something important about those before I talk about Extended Contests. Combat's obviously one of the crucial kinds of scene in most rpgs. Now mind you I've moved away from combats every session or even every other session for most of my games-- but they form core scenes for some kinds of games (for example superhero and dungeon crawl games rely on them). HQ suggests that most conflicts will be resolved through simple group contests-- with the extended contests as serious set piece sections for a game. That's interesting in that it puts a good deal of narrative burden on the GMs and players. By that I mean, a quick combat resolution in that system will involve the group making a roll apiece, with the GM narrating the results. That's a fairly low-granularity system, relying on the GM to make the scene feel invested and engaging.

Now that's not a bad thing-- and it does bring up a couple of questions. Again, what's the point of a combat? It should be a chance to bring in risk, to defeat an obstacle in a physical manner, and to get the group to utilize or show off certain skills. Narratively, there's no difference between combat as an obstacle and any other kind. Mechanically, there's often great difference-- with large sections of the rules now in play for those kinds of contests. HQ treats things from the narrative perspective on all obstacles which shapes the mechanics. Combat's just another kind of challenge.

But importantly, even in these little challenges, like group simple combats-- take for example the group moving through a group of mook guard or driving off a raiding party-- there's risk. Failure can mean penalties applied to the players. Even if they win, some players may suffer consequences- not necessarily to physical abilities, but to the shaking of confidence or the like. But the important thing here is that if you're going to go to resolution, you open up the possibility of consequence. If something's going to be a cakewalk, then you don't go to formal tested resolution, you stick with the negotiated system.

One of the points to be made here and worth thinking about is this-- once you reduce significantly the amount of time a combat takes up-- you get a move in two different directions. On the one hand, you free up space for other forms of conflict and possibly for an emphasis on storytelling and narrative interactions. On the other hand, if you reduce the space a combat fills, you also increase the number of combats you can have in a session. There's a truism in games with lengthy combat systems (say a full party on an equal number of opponents fight) that you don't start after a certain hour of the session. For example, you'd better get to a fight in Champions with at least half the session remaining or you're going to run late.

OK, let me move on here.

Extended Contests
mechanically, an extended contest follows the same basic system as a simple contest, but the contest requires several rolls, with each side building up points towards their victory. The winner in any round scores points, with the first side to gain five points winning the contest. Probably the most common example we're going to see of an extended contest will be a set-piece fight or a duel. The rules suggest only using extended contests for pivotal scenes where the consequences can have significant effects on the long-term story. Interestingly, the system has a distinction between two kinds of results: rising action and climax. I like this-- in rising action contests, the players may suffer consequences, but they generally reduce the party's abiltiies rather than eliminating them. However at the climax, the stakes become higher, with larger and more severe results being possible.

There are a number of additional mechanics supplementing this basic system. Winner of extended contests may make a risky attempt to inflict a parting shot on their opponents to increase the consequences, but there's a chance the contest could end up reversing back on them. The mechanics of the system allow players to switch through abilities, sometimes taking an action to boost themselves or to deal with secondary circumstances in the combat. One interesting feature of the system is that consequences and penalties don't resolve and apply until a contest is over. That's a classic cinematic/dramatic device, with a character not being actually winded or noticing their wounds until they have a moment to catch their breath.

Assuming a player is free of an opponent in an extended contest, they can attempt to aid another player. This is done as a risky test, with escalating difficulty, attempting to reduce the score against the player they're helping. The escalating difficulty is both a balancing and dramatic device. Fighting multiple opponents gives a player a -3 cumulative penalty versus each opponent after the first. Each exchange still has its own resolution and score however. An interesting mechanic used for followers could also be applied to handling groups and mooks. A follower can act as a full combatant with his own contest rolls, but get knocked out when 3 points are scored against them. Optionally they can serve as a kind of wingman, reducing the multiple opponent penalty or as a resolution point soak for themselves. Finally the follower may be used to perform assist tests or unrelated actions. Finally, in extended contests, players can also go for risky gambits to close a fight early or take a more defensive stance to keep from being knocked out.

Augments and Important Notes About Abilities
I think one of the most interesting factors in the resolution of contests in the HQ system it that when two opponents face off, if one has a more specific skill they're applying to the situation they gain a bonus. The example given in the rules suggests a contest between someone with the Strong ability and another with Arm-Wrestling-- we have a case of the broadest possible versus the highly specific to the situation. There the latter would gain a +6 bonus to their test. I suspect most conflicts like this will be narrower, granting the more specific a +3 instead. One implication for this system is that GM's do have to have some things sketched out a little-- at least moreso than I do at times-- in order to play fair with these determinations.

Another interesting idea is that players also set the benchmark of specificity in a group. If someone else has a more specific and applicable ability, even if they're not in the scene, the character takes a penalty. The point of these rules seems twofold-- to encourage players to take some specific skills and also to encourage players not to step on one another's shticks. I think that's something worthwhile to strive for, but I can also see some players bristling at this, especially those focus on autonomy over group work. The broad potential nature of these abilities also means that sometimes players will try to use one where it doesn't really fit. This is considered a stretch and nets a -6 penalty.

*****
Sidebar: A later edit, after Sherri and I talked about a couple of points, specifically about the possible penalty for broad/narrow within the group. First, I think Laws actually frames it badly in the mechanics. Given that a person with a narrower skill has a bonus in a one-on-one contest, then if Player A is using a broad skill in a contest against something or someone, and Player B has a narrower and more applicable skill, then it shouldn't be done as a penalty to Player A, but rather as a bonus to their opposition. Penalties suck and you can keep the same balance without the potential reaction by applying the bonus elsewhere.

Second, we have to look at what that rule is trying to accomplish. On the one hand it is about making sure that players who have invested in a particular area don't have other players who've bought broadly stealing the spotlight or constantly showing them up in what they're supposed to be good at. I think that's an admirable goal for a game. On the other hand, it is also about keeping players from buying and relying on one or two broad skills as swiss-army knives to solve any situation. Again I think that's an admirable goal.

In the case of both of these admirable goals, I think the rules are written to give the GM an option they can enforce if they find either of these situations going on. In play, these kinds of things only ought to come up if a player is turf-stomping (and the player who is being stomped on doesn't like it) or continually falling back to X or Y ability (again I keep saying skill when I mean ability). I can't imagine in play consistently checking those things...only when I see a nail sticking up should I have to get the hammer out.

*****

The game includes the concept of augments which are lingering bonuses a player gains to future ability uses. For example, success on a previous contest (as mentioned earlier) may result in an augment bonus which will affect that ability or a related one in a future contest. Other players can also try to provide an augment for a player before they go into a contest-- otherwise it is more of an assist action. To provide an augment, the player must describe how they're helping and it must be entertaining and/or novel. Repeated uses of the same kind augment don't work over time or suffer an increasing resistance- for dramatic effect. Augments resolve through a simple contest-- and notably active augments are limited to one attempt. If the augment takes, then that's what the player gets-- if it fails, no other augment attempts can be made. Again, not necessarily realistic, but definitely appropriate to a dramatic narrative. The rules also have notes on conducting plots to gain augments and for handling them without rolls.

Interestingly since equipment functions as a ability, i.e. Something you use to solve problems, it doesn't provide an augment unless you can find a description in which it will help you in a particular circumstance. So, having a Kakita Blade in L5R would be an ability which could be used in combat. But you could also figure out a story or reason why it might give you an augment for a particular contest. The assumption in the game is that items cancel one another out-- armor and weapons-- except for the ratings of the abilities associated with them. Patrons, contacts and sidekicks can all function likewise- as an abstract ability used to overcome an obstacle.

One of the few places in the system where we get some parallel or alternate mechanics comes in the form of the Community rules. I have wonder if this system hadn't originated out of Glorantha if we'd have the same thing. Communities can simply act as abilities or they can form the core of a series. In that case they have resources which can be drawn on, with some risk. A communities resources can grow over time and players can increase or decrease those resources and injure or improve their relations with the community. I can see how some of those structures might be used for a samurai building game, with the players managing a fief-- or for a magistrate game, revolving around the characters relation to the community they oversee.

Magic, Everything Else and Last Bits
OK, I'm almost done running through the parts and pieces of this system. Just a few more details to get out there-- mostly so I have in mind the options and tools for crafting a conversion of the system over to another setting. The last couple of chapters of the book focus on this-- first how to build “genre packs” and then providing a detailed example for the Glorantha setting.

The rules again come back to the idea of keywords I mentioned before-- groups of related abilities underneath one simple idea, usually a class, background or culture. Since costs for raising keyword groups are affected by the number of elements beneath them, there's a balance there. They can serve as a useful starting point for characters.

The discussion of magic mostly focuses on building the narrative and logical framework for how magic operates. Otherwise, magic generally just functions as an ability. The key point here would be how narrowly those abilities are bought-- at the level of individual spell, of general powers or something even larger. There's a few ideas about how to handle other powers as well-- for example the difference between ordinary Strength as an ability and Super-Strength lies in the narrative limits, but the GM may also want to impose caps on some ordinary abilities while allowing extraordinary ones to keep increasing. That's an interesting approach and I'd be curious to see how that would actually play out over time. Most everything else high-tech equipment, psychic powers, species traits and so on follow the same basic system. Interestingly, the Gloranthan system of magic provided has more detail-- including some things which happen as certain level limits, notes on how and when magical augments can be used and so on. But I'll come back to that later.

OK. I think I'm done with my overview. Wednesday I'll come back to talk about some ideas of how this might apply to an L5R game.

The Tools of HeroQuest 2e

HeroQuest presents itself as a toolkit for storytelling games. I think that's more accurate here than most other games that make that claim. The mechanics are pretty consistent, but the rules also present a number of options about how to make changes. Strikingly, those changes don't feel like a rejiggering of the game. They feel like another path the rules developer could have gone in and kept the same pattern. I want to lay out the basics of HQ as I understand them, trying to see what tools I have available to me (while staying close to the system) in porting over Legend of the Five Rings.

Characters in HeroQuest have three mechanical parts, plus the player's own self-definition of the character. Those are Abilities, Flaws and Hero Points.

Abilities are, to paraphrase the rules, anything you use to solve a problem. I'm going to come back that, but abilities form 90+% of your character. Flaws are essentially inverted abilities, they follow the same pattern and can serve as a force of resistance in a contest or the GM may handle them as a penalty assessed to particular actions. Hero Points serve two functions- they are drama points which can be spent in play for a bump up in results and they are always your experience points. Notably, they're really the only system in the game that has a different mechanic.

I want to focus in on the idea of Abilities as they're going to be the bread and butter of the game.

Abilities
Abilities cover just about everything that I talked about earlier as mechanical aspects of a game: characteristics, skills, advantages, powers, and even equipment. All of them are handled the same way.

Each ability has a rating. Rolling that number or below on a d20 is a success. Rolling a 1 is a critical success. Rolling above the ability's rating is a failure; rolling a 20 is a critical failure. If two things are contesting and get the same level of victory, then the person with the lower roll has the edge. There are a couple of notable consequences to this-- we have a smooth curve of probability distribution, rather than a bell curve. That means each point of an ability increases the chance of success by the same amount. It also means a roll-under approach, with some odd effects. The rules suggest that one could have the higher number rolled as having a success in a tied contest. While that does give some greater leeway to higher skills, it also requires reversing one's mental calculation about what's a good result. Fading Suns used that and I recall the players and myself not liking the break it caused.

There are a couple of complications to this question of ability ratings. If a rating hits 21, it converts over to a 1 with a mastery, which I'll use the @ sign to represent throughout. A mastery allows a player to bump his results up by one level, so a failure can be moved to a success or a success can be moved to a critical success. Masteries cancel each other out-- so two people with abilities at 5@ and 10@ will be rolling at 5 and 10 respectively, without any bumps. This means that the abilities have important break points at 21, 41, 61 and so on. As well, the experience system allows players to bring up abilities which have straggled when they raise a skill to a mastery-- this means there can be some point calculation and efficiency there- another break point.

Character Creation
Abilities are generally discrete units, but there's an option for something called 'keywords'. A keyword represents a group of related abilities joined under a common element. So, for example, Warrior Mage (like a class) would have several abilities under it. The rating of the keyword is used for all of them and players can also specialize in some of the things under a keyword. So, if a character has the cultural background keyword, Aoniaen at 15, they might have Identify Magic +1, Spooky Lore +2, and Magocratic Etiquette at +0. The game suggests that you can work with abilities exclusively, keywords exclusively or easily mix the two. Keyword buy ups have a slightly different cost in Hero Points to raise. I'll want to keep that in mind when we hit L5R.

HQ presents three versions of character creation. You can write out a descriptive story about your character and then mark elements in the description which will serve as abilities. For example if you say that your character “...handles his fast car like a race driver,” you could take “Fast Car” or “Race Driver” as abilities. You can also go the route of just putting together a list of abilities, with a main ability plus ten others. The other option is to pick abilities as you go along. In any case, you get a main ability at a high number, a set of abilities at an equal lower number, plus some HeroPoints to spend to raise those abilities. Depending on the game, you may also get some cultural or background keywords or the like.

Contests
The system presents three (and a half) kinds of contests or methods of resolution. The first is automatic success-- where the character winds by virtue of the situation or their skills. I'm going to liken this to the negotiated resolution I talked about before. The rules do make explicit that some times people like to roll or have a chance to show off their skills, even in circumstances where the GM knows that failure's not a dramatically appropriate result. The game suggests fake rolling a contest in those cases-- which is a refreshing admission.

Framing and Scale
I need to make a point here in terms of framing the contests, both simple and extended. There are no scales in this game. No rules for distance, for movement, for time, for any of the classic units that typically mechanize the situation. Instead, a contest represents an abstract measure of the time necessary for the story. How far away is something-- either your right there or you'll have to take an action to get there- again driven by the narrative.

Simple Contests
A simple contest involves the player(s) rolling a die against the GM rolling a die. For example, a mountainside might be considered to have “Hard to Climb 10”. Again the book suggests these resistances should be dramatically appropriate-- not that you have to calculate the resistance of everything in the world in a solid way. The players have to frame their contest-- naming what they want to have happen and how they're going about doing that. (So not too far off from a matrix argument).

There are couple of notes about resolution that have to be kept in mind as well. If you're going to use a Hero Point to bump a result up, you need to describe how you're taxing yourself, finding a new path or pushing your strengths. Also, the game specifies no repeat attempts. A contest is about your putting all of your effort into overcoming something- if you want to try again, you need to use another ability or find some kind of special circumstance which might permit it.

In a contest between two rolls, you end up with five degrees of success. A tie means no change or else that both sides suffer or gain from the consequences. Marginal Success, the victor gets what they want but the loser doesn't suffer effects beyond the loss. Minor success, a clear victory and the loser suffers some short-term penalties. Major success, the victor gains benefits beyond the contest and the loser suffers penalties beyond the contest of longer duration. Complete success, which grants big bonuses and big penalties to the winner and loser respectively.

Modifiers
I should say a word about modifiers here as well. Generally the GM can assign modifiers to a player's skill to represent circumstances or they can simply up the resistance. The latter's a better approach as it doesn't obviously penalize the player. A player can also can modifiers from various sources-- augments, assists and so on which I'll talk about later. They can also add description (ala stunting) or describe a connection to something else to try to gain a modifier. Most of these are either a +3 or +6 to the player's effective ability. If a modifier pushes a player's ability up over twenty, then they gain the appropriate mastery. The same thing happens in the other direction.

One of the most common sources of modifiers, often lingering ones comes from winning or losing contests. These are states of adversity and can hit on literal or metaphorical areas. Obviously in combat, loss may mean injury. But in a social contest, it may mean loss of reputation or friends. Contests between nations may damage resources or economies. There are various levels to this-- applying a penalty until time or effort has been expended to repair the state-- duration and degree dependent on the level of loss. Worse states may require the player to test to see if they can even use an ability or even act. Of course, characters can also be dying from their injuries-- again both literal and metaphorical. Destruction of one's social reputation may require the person to retreat off into the woods, never to be seen again. Or in something like L5R, may require seppuku to rid themselves of that shame.

On the reverse side, winning a contest may providing lingering benefits in the form of bonuses to the appropriate ability. The player may also make an argument for the bonus to apply to a different ability or circumstance. Benefits last until a contest is lost on the ability or the story moves forward significantly.

Multiple Contestants
I should also note that simple contests can be resolved in group form, with each player rolling against a separate roll by the GM. Each side tracks points from the margins of victory. It may be that the members are participating against one another or trying together to accomplish some task.

I'm about 1700 words in and I haven't gotten to Extended Contests, the heart of the game in some ways. I'm going to stop here and continue on with Sunday's post. Obviously tomorrow is Halloween, so I'll be skipping posting for that most wonderful day of the year.

Off-Topic Idea
So I just had an idea that I want to get down on the page before I forget. A good number of Euro Games (Puerto Rico, Caylus, Power Grid, and so on) are about building things up-- creating an engine that generates resources, creates opportunities, and acquiring victory points. I'm wondering about the possibility of a game which goes the other direction. That is, you begin with a bunch of resources and engines but as the game progresses, those get slowly stripped away from you. Your goal is to keep your structure more intact than your opponents at the end of the game.

The theme of the game could be corporate downsizing. You'd begin with resources of personnel, finances, and some other things-- probably represented by cubes of some kind. You'd have a set of projects or departments to start the game with in your display. Each turn you'd be forced to allocate personnel and resources in an attempt to protect, maintain and even possibly grow things. Then, at the end of each turn there'd be a cutting-- where each person has to lose some things, cut a department, eliminate people, and so on. What is lost at the end of the round would be random, but from a closed set of options, so you'd know what the general pool of cuts are, but not when they'd actually happen. The side game to the thing would be to also create value in certain project areas-- through your actions. At the end of the game points would be based on intact structures and also how well your department matches the new direction for the company (determined by measuring where value has been built). So your choices on any turn have to be balanced between preservation of your resources and shaping the company vision.

Adapting L5R: Another Path

Back to what I was talking about before.

A while after I finished running Legend of the Five Rings with Rolemaster, I decided I (sort of) wanted to run another samurai campaign. However I wasn't sure about whether or not I could sustain such a campaign-- I didn't have any really great ideas rolling around in my head for it. So decided to handle it as the start of an HCI style campaign. In retrospect, though I really enjoyed the whole campaign, I could have easily run the game solely with the samurai setting. We had what I've come to call the Shining Path (from Rob's game) syndrome-- where you have a campaign set up with multiple options and directions, but the players focus on one to the exclusion of others.

I opted to go with the Storyteller system for this new version. I had the advantage of already having some of the structures (lists of advantages, the schools) in text form. A number of additional supplements had also come out since then, including rules for Monks, so I would have to go through that material as well. Once again I bit off a little more than I could chew-- deciding to write up adaptation for everything rather than focusing on what players wanted and just writing up those systems. I had an idea that I needed to maintain consistency and also have all the options out and written up for the players. I think that ended up being false-- players made their choices thematically, rather than by comparing the mechanics of the classes. Consistency wouldn't have been a big issue, and later mechanics might have benefited from having seen how their earlier things functioned in play. And, of course, Sherri warned me that I was probably taking on too much at once.

Storyteller's an odd system to convert to, especially since both game sources I was working from the original L5R roll and keep system and the Rolemaster percentile and add skill, functioned completely differently. Both are open, roll up systems, but both have different scales and systems for resolving those things. Storyteller has you adding dice for a dice pool, but how exactly do bonus dice translate to the bonus dice in L5R or the +X% modifiers in Rolemaster. I really had to wing it pretty hard. Storyteller has a good deal of combat crunch and detail, but not nearly as much as something like d20-- so unfortunately some abilities seemed repetitive: how many extra dice for something can you get? In the other system those modifiers/bonuses would have been split among several systems.

That aside, I again had to consider the four areas: Classes & Schools, Advantages, and Magic. Since this would be a point based system, I didn't have to worry as much about restrictive class structures. Players could choose the skills they wished to buy and then choose training schools with bonus abilities which matched their character. Again the question arose about when a person could actually gain another rank in their school. I'd pegged that to levels in the RM version, but I decided to keep that question open and at a certain point allow players to advance. I wrote up just about every school and also had to come up with stuff for the different shugenja as the material for that ended up being lacking. We only ended up with a single spell-caster so the details for the shugenja of a number of clans got dropped to the side- one of the few places I really cut corners. Advantages (and Flaws) required a lot of rewriting. I went through and cut some and added others from other Storyteller materials (like Exalted). I tried to use that as a model and assigned guesstimate point costs-- which ended up mostly close to their value, but not entirely.

Probably the hardest time I had with magic. I kind of wrote up rough guidelines for how magic would operate. Casting a spell would require a number of success equal to half its rank and then additional effects could be applied to extra successes. I copied out the various spells from the sourcebooks and wrote up a couple of pages of quick guidelines. However I never really defined that well-- is a casting roll an attack roll? How is that defended against? Does using extra successes to raise an effect then leave fewer successes over such that the spell can be blocked more easily? How do you determine extra damage. Shari was a pretty good sport about running with it, and I tried to give her some flexibility as we went along.

I did have another magic system to work out as well-- the kiho magic for Monks. That system, as presented in the original rules is actually pretty complicated. It has five kinds of kihos with different durations, stacking limits, rules on activation and a host of other details. I ended up porting that structure over pretty straight. That was unfortunate-- I should have reduced the complexity of that when I had the chance. It resulted in a lot of look ups during the play of the game. I also added martial arts forms and weapons styles, the beginning of my more flexible approach to martial arts in the wushu system. However, while the styles did add flavor and ended up as a nice element for the couple of tournaments we had, they also-- again-- added an unnecessary level of complexity.

Storyteller handled some of the social elements better than Rolemaster, but they still ended up relegated to second chair. Some schools had social abilities, but often they were simply abilities which a courtier could use in combat. The focus of the game and the mechanics still rested firmly on fighting, damage and conflict. I had systems for honor and reputation in the game, but I never deployed them adequately. The problem came that no one really likes to have their character punished for action choices in a way which seems to impinge on the actual player. That's a problematic situation.

OK, tomorrow-- with all of that in mind, laying out the basic premises of HeroQuest 2e-- figuring out the toolbox I have to work with there.

Mechanics and Mental Weight
In part I'm batting around in different directions on these posts with the idea that I'll go back later and tighten them up into a single article. Again, my main goal is to prepare some thinking about converting one or more existing game systems/settings over to the new HeroQuest 2e. That game has major differences from most other rpgs, requiring some real consideration of what's going on at the table.

A few things that came up/occurred to me after yesterday's post. Gene mentioned the idea of break points rather than just choices. I think that fits better because choices or even resolutions suggest an active mechanic, which happens quite a bit. But as I suggested yesterday, sometimes those shifts and breaks come about more passively-- either as a factor of the character's nature (this player has handsome, so this NPC is more likely to approach them) or as a result of past behavior (these people are going to avoid the party because of the negative reputation they've built up over time). There's no roll and the players don't see the events playing out at the table, just the results.

But I think more importantly is for the GM to consider what constitutes an actual break when player's have active involvement. If the situation is going to go one direction, regardless of the PC's actions, then that isn't a break. A good GM has to be prepared to show a shift in things. If the player's asked to roll, test or contest then the resolution should be undetermined before hand. Now the player may not always get the result they desire, but when a player takes an action and succeeds, they should see some change in the narrative-- for good or ill. Bouncing off of things is among the most frustrating things for the player. Even in the player doesn't “win”, they should see some kind of result. There's a classic trope that the player makes an action and it just bounces off to demonstrate the invulnerability of the opponent. Even in that case something should be stressed about the change in the situation: information gleaned, gaining attention of the bad guy, perhaps a sense of weakness on the player's part. Just saying it bounces off is usually the weaker way to play that out.

One can't forget that rolling dice (or pulling cards) is actually fun as well. One of the dangers of a narrative heavy game, or one which resolves most things through negotiation is that players get fewer opportunities to roll. The fewer the number of rolls made in a game, the greater the investment and emotional weight placed on them. That's actually one of the drawbacks to the Action Cards system-- players can see pretty visibly how many rolls they've made. They don't track in parallel how many breaks they've managed or controlled through negotiated resolution, so there's a different weight there. I'd also say that fewer rolls means that certain skills become more obviously useful-- at least they become the ones which seem to have more rolled tests against them. Again I think players don't consider in that the utility of skills(or abilities or whatnot) used in negotiated resolutions—often there's no obvious [yes/no] result from those resolutions so some players categorize them differently, which I think is a mistake.

There's another interesting sidebar about abilities that came up in conversation with Sherri last night. Different systems put different weight on it, but in most game systems, combat usually has a higher level of detail than anything else. Combat also often operates under another set of mechanical systems, with factors like initiative, damage, armor, etc. Even the segmentation of time and events within a combat scene works differently. Combat options, because of their level of crunch and detail, are often the easiest to expand as a game system wears on with more and more supplements. Legend of the Five Rings, for example, explodes into combat detail in the second edition as a substitute for anything substantive-- which is a point I'll come back to later when I'm talking about converting that in particular. Another usual difference is that the idea of critical success usually apply to combat more than any other part of the rules. Even if a game has the idea of a critical success for non-combat actions, there's usually not the detail or added mechanics to resolve it beyond saying- you did well. There are a couple of rare exceptions. Rolemaster Standard System for all of its craziness, did have tables for different non-combat skill classes and individualized results for exceptional success in those.

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Sidebar to that sidebar-- one of the things that Storyteller does well is perceived success. By that I mean, where you roll and count up successes, you know when you've really done well. With other open roll systems, sometimes a;ll but the highest rolls feel the same and the GM can narrate them the same way. I've been trying in ST to make sure to reward a large number of successes, to show how absurdly high they are. And pretty quickly they can be crazy high. Storyteller defines a single success as basic, but things like three successes as being extraordinary (except in combat where these things are opposed). So five successes ought to be legendary-- which in a lot of the systems (especially Exalted) is quite easily doable. But the point here is that you have an immediate gratification to rolling a bunch of successes in ST that you don't necessarily get in other one-die open systems unless you roll a critical.
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The point I want to make here is that combat usually exists as a separate system, not in complete parallel with the rest of an rpg. Again, this is another place where HeroQuest diverges-- all contested systems use the same form of resolution, even down to how time and such get applied (liberally, as it happens).

Conversions
I've converted a number of existing game systems and settings to other ones over the years. Some of that's been fairly straight line and some has been pretty catch as catch can. Usually with things like setting and sourcebook material I handle it pretty loosely. For example, I adapted a good deal of Warhammer Fantasy rpg material for my old GURPS game. I never worried about the mechanics there, just the basic ideas. The same thing when I borrowed Rolemaster or MERP modules for ideas. When I ran Rolemaster on the Third Continent, I used a great deal of Runequest/Glorantha there, but again only for plots and general capabilities. I never worked out any kind of formal conversion. I've thematically borrowed Mage: the Ascension for Champions, Unknown Armies for Action Cards, and Amber for GURPS.

But I have done some heavy-duty full conversions as well. For example, my Action Cards version of Changeling: the Lost is pretty direct. Mind you, Action cards is pretty loose but I can usually look at the various abilities and mechanics and come up with how those will function in AC. I've dropped a few systems, but kept some of the crucial interlaced parts. Players can look through the original source material and probably see how the mechanics of the various contracts, tokens and other abilities would fit into the current game.

But I've also converted Legend of the Five Rings twice into other system, both with a high level of detail. My first attempt was a conversion over to RMSS. Rolemaster had the advantage of having a lot of existing parts and scattershot mechanics, so I could pick and choose the elements which would best simulate the Rokugan setting. I had four main tasks to accomplish. First, converting the classes over to RM classes. Since L5R really only had a few (Samurai, Monk, Scout, Shugenja, Courtier) that was reasonably easy. Each class was defined by the costs it had for the many and various skills. Second was to convert the advantages and disadvantages into background options and picks. Some of the bonuses ended up being harder than others to figure, but most went straight over, but it did take some work to consolidate those from various sources and bring them together. The third part ended up being the most subjective. L5R has “schools” with five ranks of abilities and the idea that players gain those abilities through advancement, with the last rank really being the apex of skills. Many of them were purely combat oriented and therefore easy to convert, but others had more complex affects. For example, the Suzume Clan ability to avoid danger or the Yasuki Tradesmen's contacts. Things like the Tattooed Monk's powers I also had to figure out-- define each of the possible choices and figure out when such a character could buy more of them-- a level limit? Free? Purchased with development points. In the end I pegged ranks in Schools to character levels, with PCs gaining their new abilities at certain levels. The final part was figuring out how to handle magic-- I really didn't even try to simulate the original L5R's restrictions (such as scroll use) but instead simply chose out various spell lists that seemed to reflect Rokugani magic. We ended up with one and a half mages, so that didn't prove to be a problem.

How successful was it? I think it worked pretty well for what it was-- a more conventional fantasy game with a samurai backdrop. Rolemaster focuses on combat and the campaign reflected that. Most social interactions tended to be handled through Negotiated resolution. The magic felt powerful, but perhaps not exactly of the original setting. I left out some important mechanics because I couldn't see exactly how to handle them: Honor and Glory. I put a good deal of work into the conversion-- I wrote up pretty much everything so that any choice could be simulated. That's always a hard call when you're doing something like this-- do you do everything up front or do you just work on what the players have chosen? Despite that effort I pretty much decided against using Rolemaster again.

Shorter post today-- still pressing on, tomorrow about the Storyteller conversion of L5R and talking about the system premises of HeroQuest 2e and how they change up a good deal of what I've been talking about.

Continuing on from what I started to talk about in yesterday's post. I mentioned about the different parts which make up a character (stats, skills, powers and equipment). Before I get to talking about HeroQuest and game conversion (which honestly is the whole point of this thing). I still want to look at some of the other ways we can break down how a system functions.

So I think it is worth thinking about where the rubber meets the road in terms of mechanics and games. I'd say things break down into three groups: modifiers, inherent and restricted things. Those are hugely imprecise and vague terms, but that's what I'm going to run with now. Inherent represent those things skills and stats which all players have. Generally in a game with characteristics all players have the same set (though it would be amusing to see one where they didn't). They also have some skills or things they can do out of the gate without training- like running. GURPS, of course, has a complex and formal set of these things where an untrained person can try to perform a skill, but at a default or reduced number if they don't actually have any training in it. D20 likewise has skills that you can't make a roll on unless you have a rank representing training, but everything else you can use your stat bonus as a base to make an attempt. HERO System has Everyman skills.

On the other hand, restricted things represent everything that you have no default in. You gain these through leveling up, through expending points, or at initial character creation. This can be as simple as I can pilot and airplane, to I can cast firebolts. Most of what defines a character as a character comes from this stuff. Usually it is heavily tied to the chrome of the system. And often there are structures in place that highly regulate what kinds of restricted items you can have for your character: class paths, limits on points, favored abilities, etc. Modifiers, OOH, just affect the other two things. They don't provide anything new-- like a sword, which has damage specs and other factors, but is simply an improvement on punching someone. A number of GURPS advantages serve the same purpose-- for example, "Voice" just gives a bonus to other skills.

Anyway, I think that's a way of looking at the mechanics aspects for a low-granularity viewpoint. You probably break those out, much, much more fully. But how do those things come into play. Generally they affect break points, where the situation could go one way or the other. And I think there are several different kinds of break points in a game which represent how the decision to go one way or the other happens. Some breaks are subtle, while some are more obvious shifts in the course of the game and narrative.

* Choice through Evaluation (GM)
* Choice through Negotiation (Player to GM)
* Choice through Test (Player & GM)

By choice through evaluation, I mean cases where the GM has to make a decision about what's happening on the fly. Most of the time that will be driven by story and meta-concerns. For example, where a particular character is at that moment, what kinds of stories or incidents players like, whether or not a particular player has gotten enough table time, what kind of mood people seem to be in. But sometimes it will be driven by character sheet information. For example, a character with Dangerous Beauty is more likely to get certain kinds of approaches. A character armed to the teeth might get unwanted attention. Or a character with a high level of inherent power might be passively traced. I can't recall exactly the game right now, but one system I read had “Bad Stuff” for characters in it-- essentially if a character wanted to buy something beyond their normal costs, they could take the difference as bad stuff. Then if something awful had to happen to the party, it would land on them by default. In any case, these kinds of breaks- where the story shifts in one direction or another are internal to the GM and can be modified by what a character has bought for their player. They're probably not worrying about too much as they really represent the backroom decisions on the GM's part.

But let's consider where the player and the GM start to interact. But first I have to say something about a real shift in the way games have been written in the last twenty years. At least for the way we play, game design has finally started to catch up to what we've been doing for a long time. Just about every game system now suggests that players shouldn't have to make an active roll on something unless it is important-- that those moments should stand out. If the action is commonplace or easy for them based on their skill or even not important to the plot, rollings usually not necessary (with exceptions). That's a far cry from early games like Rolemaster which had rolls for everything and encourages constant roll, roll, roll until you die. Even more mechanics heavy games like d20 and its horrible, awful, unending spawn of versions, usually has that advice and/or has a mechanic for players to pass by certain things (like the Take '10' rule).

But what often happens at the game table these days is Negotiation, or mechanics-free resolution. I spoke some months back about the idea of the Matrix arguments and how they could be used as a tool for resolving longer or more involved actions outside of the game table. Essentially, that works by stating: I want to do X, I want to do it by method Y, and I have these three Z things in my favor to support me in trying that. But we get those kinds of arguments and statements at the table all of the time now. The easiest things is something like “I want to Climb this wall, which should be easy because my Climb skill is 20.” But it can be more complicated, “I want to see who everyone seems to be talking to in the room, I've got the talent Party Savant, a skill in Human Perception, and I know most of the guests already.” Here the player presents supporting statements about what they're doing beyond the basic skill they'd usually be called on to test. A GM, given that supporting evidence can move to the end result, accepting that the argument has been proven: that the PC can find the person everyone is talking to.

But it can be more literal-- any conversation between a PC and an NPC at the table is a kind of negotiation. This goes back to my point about dealing with NPCs-- in any piece of dialogue, both parties should want something. What that is may not be necessarily understood by the other person (or may be misunderstood). The most basic level may be simply trying to get to know the person or building up the relationship. But often it is about getting information or soliciting aid. We have certain mechanical supplements to those moments as well. Someone might state a piece of dialogue and then mention “...and I have Cute as an advantage.” out of character. That's an argument for what they've said being taken a certain way. Or for another example, Will's character in the Changeling game has an ability which grants him a bump to social interactions of a certain kind. He can mention that effect before engaging in conversation, making an argument that the NPCs reaction should lean more positively. Dialogue can more back and forth between negotiated and tested, for example if a player hits a stopping point they can request a roll on something like Diplomacy or Human Perception for example to buy a clue. Or as a GM, I might also ask for a roll in order to see if I ought to supply additional OOC info to help them out.

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Sidebar: Some of the way in which we handle situations in our games currently is a form of negotiation on a meta-level. I describe the scene and the elements in it, but I don't flesh everything out. Players know now that they have some leeway to describe things. That used to be in the form of “Is there a chandelier I can swing across the room from?”-- now they say “There's a chandelier and I'm going to swing across the room from it.” That simple change dramatically changes the way the players look at the scene, and I rarely have to say “Yes, but...” or even “No...” to those things since most players understand the limits of the genre.

The Action Cards system is entirely built around this kind of negotiation. Players have cards with abstract results-- Crawling from the Wreckage (where the action happens but something, literal or metaphorical, breaks), Deadlock (where nothing moves forward or changes), and their various unique cards. They have room to negotiate what happens in those cases. I really like that system-- except for one thing. Players sometimes have a hard time when I step in to put in my own GM negotiation on those effects. I try to give them time, but if I've got something in mind and they've paused, I do move the scene forward to my liking. Sometimes, where something really strong has popped up for me, I'll jump in right away. I try not to do that too often as a GM, but it happens. Some players are flexible about that, but I have to be careful as other players dislike it. I can see their reaction to the perceived loss of autonomy. My argument would be that those moments are the trade off for the general freedom the characters have in nearly all other situations.
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Test resolutions involve the GM or the player stating an action and then having the player and possibly the GM roll to see if that action succeeds or fails- possibly determining a degree of success or failure from the roll. I think it is important to consider the difference between a test and a contest. A test is simply to see if you can do something, like a roll in GURPS to see if you manage to play your flute. A contest is a roll against something else (see different words, with “con” the prefix meaning against or something like that...). The contest may be against another rolled opponent or can simply be against a difficulty. Of course here for rolls I'm talking about any kind of randomized system (dice, cards, or whatnot). But generally we consider difficulty levels as simple contests, rather than lumping them in with opposed ones, which usually involve an active force. The resolution system shapes this-- a roll under system (like Hero, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS) has you rolling under whatever you've got written on your sheet. Now that can be modified by circumstances such that even rolling under what's written on your sheet can fail. However the real secret is that in the heat of the game, the last thing the GM wants to do is tell you that you've rolled under what's on your sheet, but you've still actually failed. That's why a roll up system (Unisystem, Cyberpunk, d20, Storyteller), where you roll and try to get a higher total systems, usually has more failures. That's purely an anecdotal observation, but I bet that GM's have an easier time stating a high difficulty required than asking players to take a penalty to their roll. It is all about stealing power from the players-- purely a narrative construct.

Contests may be simple things-- like did I manage to knock my enemy down or did I win initiative. They can be more complicated. An extended contest usually refers to one which takes several rolls to complete. But a contest may be more complicated-- a fight is usually a big, complicated and compound contest-- with trolls on a variety of skills and systems and all kinds of mechanics coming into play before final resolution. Even a simple attack will often have an attacker roll and defender roll-- with various factors impacting that, and then you move to damage resolution, criticals, resolving effects, all of which may have their own test or contest. So, lots of different ways to see those actions...


Hit my 2K limit- Tomorrow, continuing to talk about Test resolutions, converting games, L5R and HeroQuest 2e.

I encourage gamers/goobers to go and check out rpggeek aka Geekdo.com as they've really come a long way in the last couple of months. There's a lot of stuff there and the ability to search through by various things-- families, genres, systems, mechanics, etc. As more people rate their collections and review things it will become even more useful.

Starting Thoughts on Something I'm Going to Talk About Tomorrow

For mechanical aspects, it seems like most systems use some kind of combination of the following items: Characteristics or stats- usually representing inherent general ability in an aspect (this can be as broad as L5R's use of the elements for several different things; the classic ST, DX, INT; or really narrow sets like Manual Dexterity). Some may be figured from other stats. Skills- which generally represent training or knowledge of how to do something. Some may be “everyman” in that they represent inherent or instinctual ability. Skill lists may be less (Melee) or more (Fencing Saber Parry) granular. They can be a close list or an open creation exercise, and some skills may have specializations or the like. Equipment- the stuff you have and what you can do with it. Some equipment's independent of your character and some requires spending some kind or points or picks on them. Powers- things you can do. They're not necessarily a function of training, but can be. These include feats, magic, advantages, merits, charms, superpowers, and so on. Probably the biggest catch-all area-- usually defined as anything that isn't something else.

Different games will have different combinations of these things-- often equipments more an afterthought or an in-play item. Lighter games often throw away Characteristics in favor of skills. But usually you have, I'd say at least two of these different classes of things defining one's character. And usually they have a different mechanical basis or system. For example, in d20 your characteristics have a number and that number determines a bonus. That bonus then applies to other areas, notably skills. Skills have a number, but it is a straight value to which the bonus from the associated characters is added. Feats, then operate by a completely different but connected logic. The same thing with equipment there. GURPS, at core, has the same thing going on-- with feats being replaced by advantages. Some have closer systems-- such as Storyteller, but the applications and costs differ still between the two sides of skills and characteristics, and then the powers stuff builds atop that. Even something like Mouse Guard with its simple and stripped down system has a number of different mechanics, with not all of them acting in the same way.

On the other hand, in HeroQuest 2e, we really only have one thing: Abilities. You're entirely defined by your abilities, they cover everything listed above: characteristics, skills, equipment, and powers.

And they're all equivalent.

I'm going to talk about this in detail tomorrow and my thoughts on converting a couple of different games to this system. Right now my brain just hurts.

RPG Items I Like: HeroQuest, Second Edition

Caveat
I should get a number of biases and experiences out of the way before this review. I've been a fan of Glorantha for years and I bought the earlier versions of this game: both as Hero Wars (1st edition) and HeroQuest (1st Edition). I'm knowledgeable about Glorantha and competent with rpgs, but I found both versions impenetrable and off-putting. Every time I read them I came away with a different sense of how the game worked. Weirdly my interpretation of some of those concepts would end up subconsciously reworked into our house homebrew system (Action Cards). But as a game itself I didn't like the earlier versions. And I say that as a self-confessed Robin Laws fanboy and a person who enjoys reading novel game mechanics and narrative approaches. Those experiences colored my thinking going into reading this.

I have to note two other things: first, this is a reading review. I think I'm a good judge of games and how they'll play at the table (notwithstanding my experience with The Dying Earth rpg). My plan is to write this review based on the reading and then try to get a group together for at least a one-shot. I'll report back after that. I think seeing if my reactions stay the same should be a useful exercise. I should also note that Issaries offered pdf copies of the game to reviewers. So this review is based on a copy given free of charge from them.

Basics
HeroQuest 2e is a generic engine for running narrative-centered games, primarily written by Robin Laws. You ought to know going in that HQ2 structures itself in nearly all senses around the way stories are presented. It builds from literary forms and conceits. Laws makes a forthright case for considering the needs of the story as shaping the rules and the play. That can be a turn-off for some players, a point he addresses in the GM section-

The narrative style gets a bad rap among some players, who assume that it means an overbearing Narrator will impose on them a pre-determined story, the outcome of which their characters are powerless to alter. These assumptions usually spring from their past bad experiences with uncollaborative Narrators. Address these expectations by allowing the player’s choices to lead your narrative. You might start the game with at least one possible interesting storyline in mind, but should always be willing to abandon it if the players seize the reins and take it in an unexpected direction. Your goal is to move the story toward any thrilling outcome, not a particular endpoint you’ve already envisioned.

For only a 130 pages, the book packs in a lot of ideas, material and more importantly tools for building the kind of campaign you want. The introduction begins by setting up the core idea that HQ2 will be starting from: in dealing with challenges and conflicts, the difficulty depends on the story. Or as Laws states it for the GM- "Pick a resistance, then justify it." He compares standard games to calculate the difficulty of an action you analyze the physical factors, determine range, figure wind speed, and come to a target number (or whatever works in the system). I quote here again because I think it really sets out the logic of the game:

In HeroQuest, you start not with the physical details, but with the proposed action’s position in the storyline. You consider a range of narrative factors, from how entertaining it would be for him to succeed, how much failure would slow the pacing of the current sequence, and how long it has been since Joey last scored a thrilling victory. If, after this, you need further reference points, you draw inspiration more from martial arts movies than the physics of real-life jumps from bridges onto moving hovercrafts. Having decided how difficult the task ought to be dramatically, you then supply the physical details as color, to justify your choice and lend it verisimilitude- the illusion of authenticity that makes us accept fictional incidents as credible on their own terms. If you want Joey to have a high chance of success, you describe the distance between bridge and vehicle as impressive (so it feels exciting if he makes it) but not insurmountable (so it seems believable if he makes it.)

What Laws does here, as he's done elsewhere is make explicit some of the things which GMs often already do, but usually hide. I've seen some criticism of another Laws' design in Gumshoe to the effect it fixes a problem that GMs have already been fixing on the fly. I think the difference here is that laws' openly acknowledges those factors and those things we often hide from our players. He brings them out into the open and builds them into the system.

Character Creation
Players can easily create characters, with the rules providing several different approaches to it. Any character is defined by the abilities he possesses-- there are no stats or other factors (like wounds or willpower). Abilities can be anything-- and options are provided for the GM to set them more or less loosely. For example some might want players to be able to invest and build up sub-abilities, called keywords here. There's no universal ability list, just examples. Some abilities may function as flaws if they drive your character to make bad choices.

Depending on what the GM wants the player might write out a block of text describing their character. The GM and player can then choose and mark abilities from that description (like Sensitive Soul, Throngs of Fans, Piercing Gaze, or Plucky Assistant). Alternately, the player may make a list up of abilities or even come up with abilities as on the fly. In any case the player then assigns ratings to these abilities and the process is done. Later sections of the rules do provide and extend these ideas beyond these basics-- giving example cultural keywords, discussion of how items are handled as abilities, magic and other powers and so on. The books splits the difference well here-- as your reading you don't feel like there's a chunk missing from the discussion. The implication is that all of those systems will be parallel to those the book sets up first. And honestly with that logic in place you have a fairly strong sense of how those mechanics will work.

Players' ability ratings have a number, with a 17 being assigned to your defining ability, and 13 to everything else. You then get a pool of points to raise those values. When an ability hits 21, it shifts and the character gains a mastery. So a character with an effective 23 notes that as 3@ (where @ marks the mastery). With a 33, it would be noted as 3@2- showing two masteries.

Resolving Contests
In play characters roll a d20 against their abilities when presented with a challenge. The book stress that challenges should be reserved for dramatically important moments. In a simple challenge, the players roll and compare to the ability's value. The character's value may be modified by circumstance but those are loosely defined as either a -3 or -6 penalty. Those modification can wipe out masteries if the number drops below the threshold. If they roll their ability or below, they have a success; if they roll a 1 they have a critical success. If they roll above that number they have a failure; if they roll a 20 they have a critical failure. The GM rolls simultaneously with the player for the opposition's resistance.

Now here's where masteries and the side mechanic of Hero Points come into play. If one side has more masteries in the relevant ability than the other, they may bump up their result by one level (i.e. failure to success, success to critical success). You may also spend a hero point to bump up your results after the dice have been rolled. If a character already has a critical result, and extra masteries left over they can also bump down the opponent's result.

The GM compares the results and determines the level of victory for one side or the other (tie, marginal, minor, major, or complete) and narrates the results based on this. For a simple contest, the character simply does one round of exchanges. For more complicated actions, the GM uses an extended contest, with several exchanges and the build up of advantage to one side versus the other. This can be for a debate, a chase sequence, a military raid, or probably most commonly a combat. Two important things come out of this system- first, the players obligation to frame the goal of their contest at the start of it. The question in the drama comes from what the player wants to accomplish by the scene. The other thing is that all conflicts, of all kinds, are functionally equivalent.

This is important in that you can be "killed" or effectively removed from action on any of these fields of conflict. In a simple contest, the loser fails and also suffers a penalty to their relevant ability. Those consequences can be even more severe in an extended contest. If the contest was an economic one, the loser may expend resources or have their control shaken, for an artistic contest the loser may end up debilitated by a shattered confidence, for social contests the injuries may take the form of shame, humiliation, or even loss of community. As an interesting dramatic choice, there's no damage effects in the midst of contests, instead results are tallied and applied at the end of resolution.

Elaborating Mechanics
Most of the rules spends time elaborating these simple mechanics-- exploring the various permutations (like group simple contests, options for representing support abstractly, parting shots, disengaging). Most of these arise logically from the rules and nothing feels out of place. I like several of the mechanics presented here. For example, with a prose-based ability system, some characters will obviously end up defining their abilities broadly. That's well and good for general use, but when they come into contact with other abilities, the more broadly define one suffers a penalty. The first example given compares someone with a Strong ability versus Bar-Room Brawler ability in an arm-wrestling contest. The former suffers a -6 to their ability. But interestingly the penalty applies to the character with the broad skill definition if another player in the group has a narrower and more appropriate ability. For example the Strong character goes to arm-wrestle someone with an equally broad ability. But also in the party is another player with the Professional Arm Wrestler ability who is or isn't at the same scene. The Strong character suffers the penalty to their skill. The goal here, as with some other systems in the rules is to keep players from stealing other's thunder through the use of overly broad abilities and encourage players to develop some niche areas.

The rules stress a practicality about running games. For example, something every GM has probably used- the idea of Mock Contests- where the GM knows the results will be in the players favor but wants to give them the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. The character development system includes a mechanic to allow players to catch up skills they've let fall to the side over play. The average difficulty of challenges rises over time as the players gain experience. Results and consequences apply differently if you're in the rising action of the story or at the climax. These all represent tools in the GM's toybox, but they're rarely stated or built into the mechanics of the system explicitly. They're tricks a rules-centered person might object to in another game system, but here that kind of player knows ahead of time that might happen and is permitted by the rules.

Ideas and Presentation
The section on devoted to "gamemastering" takes up twenty pages of the rules. Laws' lays out solid and approachable advice in the context of the system. He presents nice discussion of story structures and how consequences and failures can work into the overall arc of the game. For gamemasters familiar with the concepts, it feels confirmatory and clear. For gamemasters less familiar, I think it will be an eye-opening experience- presented in a friendly way.

I never really felt confused reading these rules, a problem I had with earlier versions. The layout's excellent and the illustrations pretty well done. Every time I thought "Gee...I'd like to see an example of that..." the book presented one. The system is pretty different from most games out their but as a whole it remains accessible.

That being said, the book did lose me a little in a couple of place. Some references to other sections aren't as clear as they might be. For example, the idea of community support is mentioned without reference well before the idea is actually discussed. Other things like the sidebar on Extended Contests and Healing Resistances seem placed oddly away from their relevant sections. Then there are a few small places where the writing lost me, for example:

You may improve any ability by 1 point per session, at a cost of 1 hero point. To raise an ability by 2 points at once costs 3 times the cost of raising it by 1 point. 3 points at once costs 6 times as much. To raise it by 4 points at once, which is the maximum per session increase, costs 10 times what it would to raise it by 1.

Um, does that mean it costs 3 points to raise an ability by 2, or 6 points? I'm not sure where stating the special number wouldn't have been easier.

I hesitate to mention these things as they are few and far between. Laws presents the vast majority of the material in a lucid and cogent way. I think that's vital for a core set of rules, especially one which works with a different approach from other games.

Ideas for Community Games
One of my favorite section of the rules covers the idea of players being part of a community. In such a campaign, the community acts as a resource and a backdrop. Players want it to survive and thrive. Challenges to the community have to be met over the course of the game. Various abstract stats are defined for it either by the gamemaster or the player group defining the history. In play, the PCs can try call on support from the community to aid them. However the cost comes in temporarily reducing the community's ability, perhaps significantly if the supported conflict fails. Failure can also reduce the player's ability to interact within the community, as they lose face, gain distrust or earn a bad reputation. Success can mean the growth of the community's abilities and resources over time.

I like mechanism and the structure presented. It is simple, but well defined. It also scales well, both for size and the time intervals of the campaign. I like "building" games so this has a high appeal to me. I can imagine it working at the small scale for something like a Covenant for Ars Magica or at a larger, even national, scale for something like the old TSR Birthright setting. Some years ago Steve Jackson produced GURPS Alpha Centauri which had some great material, but seemed to stay in too narrow a range. I could easily imagine a multi-generational game being done with HeroQuest. I'd also say, for want of an even more obscure reference, that the ambitious intent of something like Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth could be met with this game system.

What About Glorantha?
The book ends with a sixteen page guide to applying the new HeroQuest to Glorantha. It is pretty basic, while at the same time does cover all the bases you'd expect. I suspect by this point those people who want a Glorantha game already have one and this isn't going to sell that setting. If you are a Glorantha player you'll probably find this book a smoother set of core rules, but you won't find any world specific material you don't already have. Having read the earlier versions, both as Hero Wars (1st edition) and HeroQuest (1st Edition), I much prefer this presentation. I hope we support for this line...not a rehash of the Orlanthi Barbarians but more on the Malkioni and the Lunars (Glorantha fanboy mode off).

Summary
Overall I'm really pleased and excited by these rules-- that's refreshing. I too often find myself going "umm...yeah...I don't think so..." when I read new game systems, especially ones with radically new mechanics (for example Don't Rest Your Head). I never got that sense with HeroQuest 2e-- instead I wanted to and really hope to be able to try this out with my group and get their reaction. As I said at the beginning, once I've done that I'll try to report back on the results.

Portability
I think there's two directions to consider this in. First, can mechanisms or ideas here be brought over into other games. I could see borrowing several of these ideas for other, more narrative games. The general ideas on structuring of stories, the mechanisms for handling a community-based game, and the means of creating differences between narrow and broad skill definitions. I especially like how conflict is presented with equivalence-- that loss in realms other than the purely physical can remove opponents- having suffered extreme losses to reputation, resources or other factors, they're forced to withdraw. If you're generally looking for ideas on how to run, this book can be useful.

The other direction is how adaptable would an existing setting be to the mechanisms here. I'm pretty used to adapting published settings I like over to other game systems. Originally I ran Glorantha using Rolemaster and my Changeling: The Lost campaign uses a completely homebrew system. One potential challenge here comes from dealing with the chrome of the previous setting. At first I thought that would be difficult, but the more I think about it, the easier that becomes.

As a concrete example, I love the Legend of the Five Rings setting, but I've never cared for the system (any of the editions or the d20 version). When I ran it I first tried using Rolemaster Fantasy and then did another complete reconversion using Storyteller. There's lots of nice detail and bits in the game I like: kihos, the various clan schools, and the advantages and disadvantages. At first I thought that would be hard to replicate. With more consideration I think it would be pretty easy. Schools could be replicated through the keywords in the genre packs. A duel could be handled with an extended contest in a satisfying way, with the build up to the final stroke. Social influences have an equal footing with combat prowess, perhaps finally bringing courtier characters into parity. The idea of a community basis would ideally tie into the Rokugani sense of clan, family and daimyo fealty. You could use HeroQuest to do a number of things like that easily-- I can think of a number of games where I like the setting but not the game system (Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade and The Black Company for example). I think that I might try converting L5R as an exercise in the future.