The odds & ends of roleplaying
My web hosting provider moved my files between backend servers (without warning me), which broke some custom things I had set up to run the Seven-Sided Die. Obviously it's back up now, but OpenID logins will be broken until I can fix what Dreamhost broke.
Update: The warning email went to an email address I forgot to check, so it's not all their fault. Also, OpenID logins should be working again. Let me know if anything isn't working right.
In preparation for a new sandbox campaign I've been pondering encumbrance systems. Encumbrance systems are usually more trouble than they're worth when you just want to get on with the plot or figure out whether you have a -1 or a -2 penalty in a fight. But, in a sandbox there is no overriding plot, and a player who has got their character into such a dicey situation that a 1 point difference matters will need to know which it is.
The trouble with encumbrance systems is that they all seem to involve too much bookkeeping. Even if your group is fine with totalling pounds carried at the beginning of an adventure, it becomes a real pain to manage just as the adventure goes into full swing. Once their characters have collected some coins, used up some oil flasks, lost their collapsible ladder, and decided to lug around that life-sized stone head that they found knocked off a statue six rooms back[1. True story.], most groups either quietly let encumbrance tracking drop or they start grumbling about having to count coins just to swing a sword.
These things really matter in a sandbox, though. How much stuff you choose to lug into the wilderness is just one of many meaningful decisions that can make or break an expedition, and sandbox games thrive on a good ecosystem of meaningful choices for the players to make. I don't want to ditch encumbrance entirely, but I also don't want the dead weight of a pile of finicky rules that make only a small (yet meaningful) difference after a lot of work.
As an alternative to counting pounds, I'm going to use this alternative system that reduces encumbrance calculations to a judgment call, a die roll, and a handful of special cases.
1. Players note their gear as usual. Players can expend a bit more effort and note how each piece of gear is carried (such as in the sack, belt pouch #2, hanging from their belt, etc). They don't have to, but it will give them a psychological advantage in the next step and is often just a good idea for exploration-focused games.
2. The GM looks over the character's load and tries to picture the character hauling all this stuff. Determine whether they're carrying a modest load (a reasonable amount of stuff to carry around), or a heavy load (a lot of stuff). There's no middle category, so err on whichever side is appropriate for the style of game you're running (and be up-front about what that is), or err on the side of modest if they have their gear well-organised. This step is all judgment call, so just go with your gut. Of course, if they're carrying a negligible load such as nothing but a walking stick, a pouch of acorns, and the clothes on their back, then you can just skip the whole thing and say they're totally unencumbered. (In that case: Done!)
(This is where the system interfaces with your game of choice, so I'll be a little vague. I'll use Savage Worlds and D&D as the example systems for what my vague terms mean to me, but if you're decently familiar with your system of choice you should have no trouble figuring out how to handle the roll.)
3. The GM has the player make a roll to test a skill or stat related to raw power.[3. I'm not using Constitution or Endurance–type stats here deliberately. This is about how much you can carry comfortably in general, not about how far or for how long. You can tack on exhaustion and fatigue for lengthy marches orthogonally to this system.] Make the roll routine or of modest difficulty for modest loads and hard or of high difficulty for heavy loads. Stats like Strength or Power are good choices; skills like Soldiering, Sherpa, or Lifting Heavy Stuff are good choices. Whatever it is, be consistent and true to your system. In Savage Worlds I'm going to use a straight Power test, and modest loads will have a Target Number of 4, while heavy loads will be at TN 6. If I were using a WotC variety of Dungeons & Dragons I would have players make a d20 roll, adding their Strength modifier, against a DC of 12 or 18.
4a. If they pass the test, their load is well-packed and they can manœuver under its weight just fine. They are unencumbered so long as their load remains reasonably unchanged. Picking up a fallen purse is fine. Throwing a sack of potatoes over their shoulder is a change in load.
4b. If they failed the test, use the margin of failure to set the encumbrance penalty. In Savage Worlds I would use the difference between the TN and what was actually rolled as a direct penalty to combat rolls and other activities that would be hindered by being encumbered, such as swimming or running away from a hungry [[spinosaurus]]. Because of the TNs I set, this gives a penalty of -1 to -3 for modest loads (and the -3 is really unlikely), and a penalty of -1 to -5 for heavy loads. Also because the rolls are against fixed TNs, characters with higher Power are unlikely to get (much) of a penalty even for heavy loads while weak characters are likely to get a penalty for anything but negligible loads. In D&D I would use the margin of failure in 5-point chunks: within 5 points the penalty would be -2, within 10 points the penalty would be -4, and failure by more than 10 points would be -6 or -8. In an descriptive system the character may gain a condition such as Encumbered or Heavily Encumbered that can be mechanically exploited as usual.
5. The result holds until the situation changes. No re-rolls may be made before the party sets out. We've all had the experience of thinking we'll be fine carrying that load, until we get halfway to where we're going and our arms are falling off. The players may know the encumbrance penalty as soon as the roll is made, but there's nothing they can do about it, except to wait for a chance to repack their load (see below), or dramatically reduce their gear until they're in the next lower category (or completely unencumbered). The results remain even as rations are eaten and arrows are expended. Small, incremental reductions in weight won't make an appreciable difference until the character has a chance to stop and repack and take advantage of the space freed up by the used-up stuff.
On the flip side, they won't have to re-roll either. They can unload it and camp for the night and pack it back up without having to test again if conditions haven't changed. (If they have to repack in a hurry while under fire and in the dark, well, that's a change of conditions!) They can go for days on the same roll, so long as they don't add anything significant to their load (like a stone head).
6. A re-roll is made only when conditions change. Big changes will be obvious and will usually result in starting above from scratch, so I won't bother to cover that. (You may have noticed that the whole system runs on common sense.) There are three special cases for changing your load so that a player can or must make a re-roll.
Repacking the load. Players will want to get rid of those encumbrance penalties by re-rolling. They can only do this by repacking their load after carrying it for a while. "For a while" is left to the GM's discretion to define, but I'm thinking of things like a day's travel, or the experience of fighting, climbing, or balancing across a slippery, narrow stone bridge over a raging waterfall while under the load. (Essentially, either time sweating under the load or terrifying moments really feeling the danger of being encumbered.) If "a while" has passed such that the character (not the player) could reasonably be expected to know that their packing job is not working out for them and if they have a decent amount of time to fuss about with their gear (an hour or during camp—it shouldn't be a trivial amount of time), then they can re-roll their initial Strength test to get a new result. If the player likes, they can instead roll their Smarts (or equivalent, such as D&D's Intelligence) in order to come up with a clever fix for their packing problem. (The GM may want this clever fix described if it seems to matter.) Either way, the new result will give you a new encumbrance penalty, possibly zero. The better of the original and re-rolled encumbrance penalty becomes the new penalty.
Don't use repacking the load if the character is also adding non-trivial stuff to the load. In that case, start from the beginning.
Picking up stuff. Characters just love to pick up stuff and take it with them. Whether it's a huge sack of jewels or a the severed head of a magical stone statue, characters will often pick up large things that make the GM wonder if they should be able to carry that without penalty, but not so great that they've obviously got into kitchen-sink territory. When they do this they make an immediate re-roll as if they were repacking their load, but they may not use Smarts and must take the worse penalty of the new and original rolls. So, if the player rolls well there's no change, but if they roll poorly then the new item is the straw that broke the adventurer's back. However, unlike the original packing roll, once the player has seen the new penalty they may opt to "quit while ahead" and drop whatever it was that forced them to make a new roll. If they choose to leave without the huge sack of jewels because otherwise they'd get a -5 penalty on all rolls, that's a meaningful choice (and perhaps a wise one, given the dangers often near huge sacks of jewels) that the player can make.
Note that if the party sits down on the dead dragon's tail to carefully pack up its hoard, don't use the picking up stuff rule. This is for when they just grab something, stuff it somewhere, and keep going. If they're taking the time to pack up gear and loot fresh, start over by looking at what they're carrying and judging how heavy or modest the load looks. Don't forget to raise an eyebrow of skepticism if they're planning to haul twenty-thousand coins with only a single canvas sack between them! How and where they're packing things becomes much more important when there is a fantastic amount of treasure involved. Getting that kind of haul back is its own logistical challenge.
Dropping the load. Players might have the good sense to have their characters drop their packs before wading into combat. (Technically this doesn't involve a re-roll, but this special case doesn't fit anywhere else.) Only a modestly loaded character may do this, since a heavy load isn't going to be located in a single, easily-dropped pack. This immediately drops their encumbrance penalty to zero, but at the risk that some of their stuff, left unattended, may be messed with.
If something untoward happens to the dropped portion of the load, the GM will have to decide exactly what gear is affected. If the player has noted what gear is stowed where this should be easy, but otherwise the GM can feel free to gleefully roll at random for the stuff in jeopardy, excepting things the character obviously wouldn't drop such as clothing and items used during combat. GMs should also keep in mind that when a character decides to pull out that stowed Wand of Firey Doom, apart from the time it takes to dig it out, it might also be in the dropped load if it hasn't been explicitly noted otherwise. Lots of other complications can be extrapolated from here, I'm sure. Don't be an evil GM, but don't make "I drop my pack" a meaningless choice, either.
(As a design note, dropping the load being limited to modest loads means that there is at least one good reason for very strong characters to not load themselves down like a pack mule.)
All that said, I haven't playtested this system. It looks good on paper, and there are a lot of nice synergies between the few moving parts that it has. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome, though keep in mind that the system's primary design goals are to be simple and fast to use, and to make encumbrance present meaningful choices and consequences that can be somewhat judged beforehand.
My intention is that players should be able to make meaningful choices about how much gear they want their characters to carry without having to slavishly tally every tenth of a pound carried. The system puts more emphasis on how and where something is carried than how many factions of a pound it weighs, which is an easier and more interesting thing for players to engage with, if they so choose.
The two (really three) major categories for encumbrance mean that a player can easily choose whether they will be dealing with the encumbrance system and how much it could potentially impact them. A player can have a restrained but decent load of gear and know what the worst penalty could be, as well as how likely they are to suffer such a penalty. The most significant dial in the system is in the players' hands. It does fall to the GM to judge exactly how a player have set that dial, but the coarse grain of the dial means that players should rarely have it set to a grey zone.
(For perspective, the average Power of d6 on a Savage Worlds character with a modest load means a 75% chance of no penalty, and only a 3% chance of the maximum -3 penalty. Not bad. However, with a heavy load it becomes a 69% chance of at least a -1 penalty, a 25% chance of at least a -3 penalty, and a 3% chance of the maximum -5 penalty. It should also be said that I didn't crunch any of these numbers until I needed them for this parenthetical aside. When I came up with my initial Target Numbers I only needed the basic system competency of knowing how to judge a Target Number.)
The system is fast. It may look like a lot of steps when it's broken down like this, but there's nothing to it really. The GM makes a judgment call, the player rolls a die, and you've got your encumbrance figured out just like that. The longest step is recording the initial pile of gear, which needs to be done anyway in the sort of game where you even care about encumbrance.
The system is also gives some pretty good results. Average characters with modest loads get modest penalties and with heavy loads get heavy penalties. Strong characters can more easily get away with carrying a lot of stuff without penalties, while weak ones almost certainly will suffer some penalties if they carry anything of significance. Note too that the penalties only apply to certain physical tasks, so an weakling apprentice mage might be carrying a heavy pack but they don't care since they're not about to swing a sword or go for a swim.
The system also makes encumbrance a significant consideration when choosing what to carry. Too much stuff and you might get away with it, but the risk of a penalty you'll be stuck with is enough to inspire caution. You only get one shot at the encumbrance roll, so you'd better be happy with what you've decided to pack. You have to commit to a certain set of gear and accept the encumbrance it comes with. No longer will the players be fudging a piton here or an iron ration there, because all the gear juggling is put on the characters' shoulders and abstracted away with a stat roll. The randomness of the penalty and the coarseness of the encumbrance categories means that there's very little gain in trying to game the system, which encourages the players to commit to their choice and move on.
The system also really likes bell curves. The repacking and picking up rules will tend to emphasise the position on the bell curve that the character's Strength occupies relative to the load they're carrying. A character carrying more than their fair share will not only be more likely to get a bad penalty initially, but when repacking they're unlikely to get a better penalty, and when picking stuff up they're likely to get a worse penalty. If you're on the other side of the curve you're likely to keep on truckin' without encumbrance penalty unless you get really ambitious.
It also (in theory) nicely handles incremental changes in encumbrance: if you have a -1 penalty already and you're in the middle of the bell curve or on the favourable side, picking up more stuff is likely to either make your encumbrance no worse, or to only increase it slightly to -2 (all Savage Worlds numbers, here). That still leaves you room to pick up some more stuff and maybe get a -3, at least until you start getting into the grey zone and the GM wonders whether you should really be testing for a heavy load. This possibly needs tweaking to prevent a "portable hole" effect where you can just keep picking up huge sacks of jewels without having your encumbrance penalty increase, perhaps by increasing the TN by one for each prior time that you invoked the picking up rule. but I won't know if this situation will come up often enough to bother until the system has seen a good amount of playtesting.
The encumbrance system I've brewed up was inspired by a number of systems. The Riddle of Steel introduced me to a revolutionary encumbrance system. Here's what I remember of it[2. My memory of the Riddle of Steel encumbrance system may be inaccurate. What I remember, and hence how it inspired my system, is really what matters.]: look at the gear carried and picture someone loaded up with all that. Compare it to a couple of pictures in the book ("moderately encumbered" has a guy with a moderate amount of stuff, well-packed and stowed; "heavily encumbered" is the stereotypical image of an over-loaded adventurer carrying everything but the kitchen sink and borne down by a bulging set of packs and bags), and then assign the character either the none, moderate, or heavy encumbrance penalty. From that I took the idea that you can just eyeball a character's gear and move on.
From the Burning Wheel I took the idea at the core of the Let It Ride mechanic, which forbids re-rolling a test until conditions have substantially changed. The essence is that you roll once to find out the results of the effort, and that result sticks so long as the character is trying to accomplish the same thing. The purpose of Let It Ride is first to keep the game moving, and second to keep the system fair—neither GM nor player can call for a re-rolls to try to get the failure or success that they want.
And finally, Savage Worlds inspired me in the first place to abstract encumbrance away with a single roll. The seed of the idea was planted when I re-read my post on Bookkeeping-free provisions and torches in AD&D, which was in turn inspired by a Rambling Bumblers post of Joshua's entitled Savage Bookkeeping. Doing bookkeeping in the spirit of Savage Worlds means getting the end result—a penalty or whatnot—without tediously counting arrows, torches, or pounds. Once you accept that you don't need to track everything to get the same effect, it becomes much simpler to make encumbrance matter without boring the players.
To recap, the Lightweight Generic Encumbrance System is:
Let me know what you think, what you would change, and especially what you think if you use this system yourself. Happy hauling!
Inkwell Ideas is running a survey of roleplaying blog readers. The aim is to get some idea of what frequent readers of roleplaying blogs like and dislike about the blogs they read. There are questions about content as well as the way the site is set up. I contributed a few questions that I'm curious about, especially ones about what features of blogs people like. There are so many ways to set up a blog that there's no standard, and I find that as a reader I've come to prefer sites that offer me certain features that make participating or following the blog easier. I would be foolish to assume that what I like as a reader is universal, so I'm particularly curious about that part of the survey.
If you're interested in helping the roleplaying bloggerwebs improve a bit (or just like clicking ticky boxes), head over to the roleplaying blog reader survey. It's short—about 25 multiple-choice questions—and the results will be released to everyone in a couple of weeks at Inkwell Ideas. There are already some early results posted for the curious and impatient.
Apparently Wizards of the Coast has finally released something that they're calling a fan site policy. There seems to be a bunch of kerfuffle among the bloggertubes about this event. There also seems to be a lot of confusion about what this means.
My other hobby for the past 10 years has been informing myself about copyright, trade mark, and other so-called "intellectual property" laws. I'm not a lawyer, but some of the things that people find confusing about this fan site kit are pretty clear to me.
Here's the most important one, and I'm going to put it in obnoxious formatting to make it really hard to miss:
This thing that WotC is calling a fan site policy is a license, not a policy.
The distinction is so stark that I'm frankly surprised that Wizards has done something so boneheaded. A fan site policy is a document that serves as a statement of company policy: what the company avows to do and not do in relation to fan sites. It is merely a communication of intent, a statement of policy. (Funny that.) A fan site policy is not a legal document, but rather is a means of communicating with the fan community in order to clear up fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what fans can and can't do while they're busy fanning about on the Internet. Such a policy draws some clear lines between what a company will magnanimously allow fans to do beyond the scope of fair use, and what the company will not tolerate and will reserve the right to challenge or issue take-down notices over.
A license is a legal document. It exists to be agreed to in order to exchange rights between two parties. It has terms of acceptance, termination clauses, and explicit descriptions of the rights that the licensee will been granted by the licensor. You are bound by a license only by formally agreeing to it by taking certain actions, such as signing a document or using a particular service. The existence of a license has no meaning or influence over people who do not agree to it, and it does not change what people can legally do already without the license.
If you read the text of the Fan Site Kit, it is a license. Critically, it does not clarify what Wizards will and won't sue over which is the sole reason for having a fan site policy. What it does do is offer you some rights (the use of the copyrighted material in the kit) in exchange for being bound by the terms of the license (not writing about or doing things they forbid, which are otherwise legal).
The so-called Fan Site Kit Policy is a contract, and it bones anyone who agrees to it. Even worse, by calling it a "policy", Wizards is contributing to the confusion about fans' legal rights by making it seem like fans need to agree to this license to operate a fan site. I won't cast aspersions upon the designers and managers at Wizards of the Coast, but their legal department are a bunch of tools who know exactly what kind of deceptive shenanigans they are trying to pull with this so-called "policy".
There are some other confusions around the "policy" that aren't such a big deal as that huge one above.
Berin Kinsman notes that it requires agreeing to the Wizards.com Term of Use, and wonders if it could be interpreted as signing over all copyright and trademark of your own site to Wizards of the Coast. This is from a reading of Section 1 (User Content), which in part reads:
By posting or submitting any text, images, designs, video, sound, code, data, lists, or other materials or information (such User-submitted content, collectively, "User Content") to or through a Site, including without limitation on any User profile page, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards, its affiliates and sublicensees, a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sub-licensable license, to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
Yeah, that's pretty alarming to see attached to the terms of using Wizards' fan site kit on your own site, at first glance. However, earlier in the Terms of Use the word "Site" is specifically defined as "this website", which can only mean Wizards.com. Agreeing to the Fan Site Kit "Policy" requires agreeing to the Wizards.com Terms of Use... but I'm not sure to what end.
There's nothing in the Terms of Use that remotely applies to anything done elsewhere than Wizards.com. The only conceivable purpose to tie together the Fan Site Kit "Policy" and the Wizards.com Terms of Use is that anyone who can be construed as violating the Terms of Use while using Wizards.com (such as in the forums) could have the Fan Kit license for their own site revoked. However, they already include in the Kit "Policy" the words:
Also, we reserve the right to revoke this limited use license at any time, for any reason, and at the sole discretion of Wizards.
So they don't need any such excuse to revoke the license. Incidentally, this is the one place where they slip up and use the correct term "license" instead of the misleading and inaccurate term "policy".
In a word, No. There is nothing in the Fan Site Kit "Policy" that is legally enforceable (or even legally meaningful) to anyone who does not agree to the license. But wait, what if you do want to agree to the license? Well, here's what that gets you:
No, seriously. That's all. The only reason to agree to and be bound by the Fan Site Kit "Policy" is if you want to use (as my wife put it) "their stupid banner" on your site. In fact, that's the only way to agree to the policy: by using their Fan Site Kit. If you don't use their Fan Site Kit, you can completely ignore the "policy".
What does Wizards ask in return for the incredible boon of using their graphics?
So, that's the sum of it.
You agree to not do some obviously bad things, and also agree to bend over backwards to say that WotC products are the bee's knees and that nothing else can be (legally) compared to them, to religiously avoid mixing your business with your fan activities, and to vow to never be a potty mouth while sprinkling fair dust (by which I mean ® and ™) liberally over your writing.
In exchange, you get to use their stupid banner.
So… What does all this amount to? Well, Wizards of the Coast is still operating without a clarifying document of their intentions toward the fan community's activities online. They've got this… thing… that doesn't clarify what fans can expect to do without getting sued or having a copyright takedown sent to their ISP or web host.
Fans are still left in the dark as to whether their sites are OK as far as WotC is concerned, or whether the hammer is about to fall on them (and their wallets). The chilling effect of operating without a clear statement about fan sites is still going to give people pause and cause many to self-censor for fear that the wrath of Wizards may descend on them and destroy their little corner of the community in a digital apocalypse. People are still left guessing, and since eliminating that is the entire purpose of a fan site policy, that makes this move a huge fail for Wizards.
There are some good examples of fan site policies out there that we can compare this non-policy-actually-a-license thing to. Geek Related already did a good job of comparing this Thing That Should Not Be to actual, real, honest-to-goodness fansite policies, so I'm not going to duplicate that work. It's already far too late and this Public Service Announcement is already way too long, and I really should have been long since curled up in bed with my wife and my new copy of HackMaster Basic instead of trying to help to keep people informed about their rights online in the face of WotC misinformation. (Seriously, Wizards, fire your legal team. They are your albatross.[1. However, if they're actually Hasbro's legal team… I'm so, so sorry. Sucks to be you.])
Finally, don't take my word for any of this. I'm not a lawyer, right, just some guy who claims to have spent 10 years reading things on the webbernets about copyright and related stuff. Take the claims I make here and go find out about these things for yourself. I've given you a starting point, and maybe introduced some legal concepts and distinctions you weren't familiar with already, so you've got some terms you can start googling.
(Aside to trolls: There's some troll food in the beer fridge, and some nice gift bags in the foyer you can grab on the way out. That's all you're going to get though, so you can save yourself the trouble of posting. Thank you, and have a nice day.)
UPDATE: For comparison, here's how TSR's fan site policy failed back in the day. I forgot to link this yesterday.
A lot of post-Forge games use descriptive attributes of some kind to define characters.
These are more-or-less freeform terms that describe the character and have mechanical effects in situations to which they are relevant. A system that relies on descriptive attributes exclusively won't have a fixed set of stats. Instead, characters are "average unless otherwise stated": a PC could be given the attribute Really Strong to indicate that they're stronger than average, or you could get more evocative and give a PC the attribute Built Like A Brick House.
The key to descriptive attributes is that when and how they have an impact on the mechanics depends on what the phrase means to the group, and how the player justifies applying it to a task. The two PCs above[1. Assuming they're male, since given the gendered difference in meaning in the saying "built like a brick house", it might mean something very different that has nothing to do with strength .] who are Really Strong and Built Like A Brick House would both easily get a mechanical boost in trying to lift a fallen tree off a comrade, but the player whose PC is Built Like A Brick House would much more easily make the case that their "strength" attribute is also useful during an intimidation attempt.
Descriptive attributes are nothing new. Whether a system calls them Traits, Aspects, Qualities, or something else, descriptive attributes are a core of many roleplaying games these days. Spirit of the Century, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, and the PDQ system (which literally means Prose Descriptive Qualities) that powers Questers of the Middle Realms and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies—all of these have descriptive attributes at their system's core. The commonality of descriptive attributes among successful games speaks to the robustness and usefulness of the concept.
With that in mind, consider this excerpt from Off the Grid: Using your powers in roleplaying situations from At Will:
Split the Tree
This power does absolutely nothing for you outside of a fight, right? It doesn’t have to be that way.
First, you have to buy into a different way of thinking about powers.
Powers as Personality
[L]ooking deeper into the powers you picked gives you insight to who your character is. Many people disconnect ability and personality, mechanics and story. There is no disconnect between these and in fact they often converge—if you let them.
[…]
- Make your players explain how the power fits. Sometimes just the name of the power alone will fit the situation, but allow your players flexibility. As long as they explain how that power represents the character’s approach and mindset, everything is going well.
- Give them a bonus. Don’t give anything for at-wills, or your ranger is going to constantly be “twin-striking” in conversation. An encounter is worth +2 to a skill check, and a Daily is worth +6. Why so much? Because the PC is going to expend that power, and if they are expending a daily power to accomplish something, they should stand a good chance of success.
That sure sounds like Powers are being treated as descriptive attributes, doesn't it? Although I do have to wonder a bit at this kind of reinventing the wheel to patch a system that supposedly[1. Not every 4e fan feels that 4e is "perfect" for roleplaying just how it is, but with all the shouting it's sometimes hard to remember that.] doesn't need any patching to support roleplaying, I would love to hear of more groups playing 4e this way.[1. That's the trouble, isn't it though? Different groups are going to like or hate this house rule, so even if you think 4e "should" be played this way you can't join any old group and expect the GM to let you use Powers that way.] Not only would it make for more interesting 4e play "off the grid", but more people playing this way can only lead to more people discovering games where "there is no disconnect between [ability and personality, mechanics and story] and in fact they often converge".
If you're a 4e GM or even just a player, go read the whole post and consider whether using Powers as descriptive attributes could add something positive to your game.
For various reasons I've been thinking of doing my very own, personal reboot of the Forgotten Realms. If you're not a fan of the Realms this might be a boring post. Or it might not be—the chief attraction of the Realms for me is the wealth of detail that even just a glimpse can suggest, so for all I know you might find the tidbits below fascinating.
There won't be any Savage Worlds mechanics in here either, so if that piqued your interest I'm sorry to disappoint.[1. For now. I'll probably have something crunchy and Savage Worlds–ish to talk about in a later post.]
Many a seer had visions as the Time of Troubles approached. The visions of one Mirador of Arabel predicted an age of strife ushered in by the ascension of a petty thief to godhood by deceit and murder. Gods fell as if stalks of wheat before the scythe of this new Lord of Murder, until the fabric of the world could take no more and Abeir-Toril as we know it was forever changed in a great magical cataclysm. It is well then that, as I have discovered in my research, this petty thief Cyric was sat upon and crushed to death by a frost giant during an attempted burglary of its clanhome.
— Artoros the Inquisitive
I've never liked Cyric. My introduction to the Forgotten Realms was through the AD&D 2nd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (the "gold box"), so Cyric was a fixture, but to make heads or tails of him and his divine soap opera required reading some TSR novels in which I frankly had not a shred of interest. Also, he's a bastard, and not the good kind of magnificent bastard that you just love to hate. No, I've never liked Cyric.
I'm doing some leisurely planning for the next campaign I want to run, which will be a sandbox focused on the ruins of Myth Drannor using Savage Worlds (with some of the fantasy bits from Shaintar) as the system. I've been trying to settle on a year in which to start the campaign[2. I'm considering either when Myth Drannor's ruins were "opened" to intruders (The Year of the Worm, 1356 DR), or the default "present day" of the gold box (The Year of the Banner, 1368 DR) since that would require less alteration of my 2nd edition material.], and reading events in the roll of years on the Forgotten Realms Wiki brought me inevitably to the original controversial cataclysm that was written just to update the Realms to a new edition of (A)D&D: the Time of Troubles.
The arbitrariness of the changes made during the Time of Troubles never sat well with me, but I didn't have a familiarity with the old edition of the setting (the "grey box") to have a concrete objection. Reading over the events, though, I realised some of what I didn't like were the events that involved Cyric becoming a god and his effects on the pantheons. I just didn't like anything to do with him.
At that moment four things clicked in my head: the Time of Troubles was the fictional excuse for the changes in magic from one system (1e) to another (2e); I was going to be using a different magic system; I didn't like Cyric; and the vague memory of an article on Gnome Stew about using the system-changeover cataclysm of the 4e Realms as an opportunity to rewrite the setting to better suit your tastes:
I recommend that DMs running 4E games take a crack at revising their Realms before the official update, which presumably will advance the timeline and explain the evolution from 3E to 4E magic systems, is published in August.
Why? Here’s a chance to put your own stamp on this storied world.
That advice applies as much to the official update from 1e to 2e as from 3e to 4e. Since I was already going back in time (and busy hating on Cyric), I realised that rewriting the gold box Realms from the Time of Troubles as a Savage Worlds version of the Realms, with my own pet changes as a bonus, would be awesome. The Godswar explained the changes in the Weave to accommodate 2nd edition changes in the magic system, but that was nothing compared to the changes in magic that I will be introducing with Savage Worlds–style magic. I was just going to handwave it and mumble something about the magic in AD&D books never working according to the AD&D rules anyway, but having the Time of Troubles introduce SW-style magic within the fiction instead puts a warm glow in my GM heart.
And, I get to kick Cyric out of my version of the Realms.
With Cyric dead before the events of the Time of Troubles, I can change a number of obvious and not-so-obvious details of the crisis. Cyric's actions led directly to the deaths of Bhaal and Leira and to the ascension of Kelemvor. That gives me a lot to play with already, and if I consider that removing Cyric's influence on events might have many chaotic implications, I could really bring back any dead god who took my fancy.
The other nice thing about this opportunity to re-imagine the Realms and reshuffle the pantheons is to consider how the gods would fit into a world without explicit alignments. Savage Worlds doesn't use anything remotely like alignment, so I don't think I'm going to tag any of the gods with that kind of descriptor in the background material I prep for my players. I like gods that are a little more morally ambiguous than most D&D gods, and having the elbow room to give a follower of an "evil" god some human motivations for their heinous acts is particularly refreshing.
With Kelemvor never ascending and Myrkul killed in battle with Midnight, I think I'll have Jergal resume the role of God of the Dead. He's creepy and dusty, but I admire his devotion as a librarian. I love the thought of the PCs meeting a lich devoted to Jergal who really just wants to sit around and wait until they and everyone else dies so that he can record their passing properly.
I suspect that Leira was killed off mostly because she was the patron god of a class—illusionists—which was remove from 2e. I've always liked the idea of a god of mystery and deception, so I'll reinstate her as-is.
Bane is a fun evil god, but leaving him dead gives a nice power vacuum and also lets me play with the idea of Banites keeping the faith and seeking to resurrect their Lord. That undercurrent was one of the more interesting ones in the gold box, though I never did care for Iyachtu Xvim. He'd be a convenient place to stick the unclaimed portfolios of Bane, though, so maybe the stripling god will be interesting without the opposition of Cyric. That would also mean that, though Jergal will be a bit more prominent, with no gains in portfolios the God of the Dead will be much less powerful than any other incarnation in the past or in alternate futures.
Bhaal, the Lord of Murder, is great. I'm happy to just have him back as a nasty motivation for assassins and brutal thugs. Unfortunately, that means the area around Boarskyr Bridge isn't very interesting anymore—since Bhaal's blood wouldn't have spilt there—unless I come up with some non-fatal reason to have him badly wounded there. However, that's a small price to pay for having a religion terrorising all of Faêrun with weekly ritual murders.
Waukeen disappearing during the Time of Troubles was her own damned fault, so it would be a bit of a stretch to bring her back with an argument about chaos theory and Cyric's absence. On the other hand, since Liira kept Waukeen's worshippers happy and her temples open so that nobody was sure what was going on, I don't think it actually matters whether Waukeen goes missing or was never gone. The gold box leaves the truth of the matter as a secret up to the GM, so I think I'll roll with that and say... maybe.
So that leaves just Bane, Myrkul, Moander, and Mystra among the major gods who died during my version of the Time of Troubles. I get to keep some favourites in Leira, Bhaal, and Jergal, and completely change the dynamic around the portfolios of tyranny, strife, and fear during the following years. Mystra's death and subsequent reincarnation as Midnight (who then changed her name to Mystra, just to make things confusing) will be my in-fiction explanation for why magic has changed so very drastically to fit the Savage Worlds model.
And, I get to see Cyric dead under the buttocks of a frost giant. Perfect!
How would you do things differently if you were to reshape the Realms?
There are a tonne—a metric megatonne, actually—of roleplayers on the Internet who have never picked up dice, who have never heard of E. Gary Gygax, and who wouldn't recognise what we call "roleplaying" as having any relation to what they do.
Trollsmyth recently wrote about the Harry Potter generation, who have never done any of those because they skipped right by traditional roleplaying and re-invented the wheel on LiveJournal, forums, and in chatrooms.
There is a huge number of kids out there reading, writing, and yes, even roleplaying right now. A sizeable groundswell of interest in fantastical fiction and play that crosses gender lines has risen up in the Harry Potter generation, the likes of which have probably never been seen before.
But you'll notice I mention nothing about games. Regular readers know what I'm talking about: fanfic and free-form roleplay. It's easy to laugh and dismiss this sort of thing (just as RPGs were laughed at and dismissed in my youth, when they weren't being blamed for suicide and devil worship), but here are a bunch of kids so desperate for roleplay that they have built websites and software and communities to facilitate their play. They've done it all on their own.
To be accurate it's not just Harry Potter roleplayers, of course. There are as many online roleplaying subcultures as there are fandoms. In fact, that's why there is little to no connection between "our" roleplaying culture and "their" roleplaying culture: being a natural outgrowth of the connective power of the Internet and the rise of vocal fandoms, fandom roleplaying is a creature without a trace of OD&D's genetic legacy.
But that's all background. My thought is that a lot of these roleplayers are good, and what's more a lot might really enjoy the sort of roleplaying that "we" play. I don't think that there's anything wrong with roleplay that has no connection to traditional pen-and-paper roleplaying or that there's some mythical "real" roleplaying that they're missing out on, but I do think that offering people more options is a great idea.
So why hasn't there been more outreach to this generation of roleplayers growing up under our collective noses? No—the better question is, what's stopping us?
At Places to Go, People to Be, Herb has an excellent thought:
Wouldn't it be great to see every theater with a midnight showing giving out a Harry Potter goody bag sponsored by local gamers. Along with the branded products it could include a version of the S&W quickstart with a more Harry Potter like adventure. Maybe a GORE quickstart (or CARE for Classic Alternative Roleplaying Engine) aimed at the same crowd with 2-3 adventures. Maybe a "welcome to tabletop adventures" website linked to with additional free and pay products building on those materials.
A crazy marketing nightmare? Maybe. It also might be an idea to help the hobby grew a new generation.
So really, the question I want to ask is: What would it take to make this happen?
First off, I have to disagree with Herb that an old-school quickstart and some HP-like adventures are a good introduction. I haven't talked here about my MU*ing days or the friends I know who do freeform roleplay on LJ, but those experiences and observations give me some immediate insights into how very different are the expectations of this crowd. Dungeon crawls, even featuring young wand-wielding wizards, are not going to be widely successful. These are people who cut their teeth on interpersonal drama, non-violent character conflict, and heavy emotional investment in their characters.
What would S&W look like to someone who's most familiar with player-driven plots and heavy internal roleplay? Some might be able to parse what they're looking at, but the majority are going to find it extremely heavy on rules and wonder what the point is, if they can even make heads or tails of it.
One long-running online roleplay site I know of[1. Otherspace, to be precise.] has (or did) for a long time use FUDGE as a lightweight conflict-resolution system. For online roleplay, even that is pretty heavy. For the purposes of a Harry Potter opening night giveaway, though, something lightweight and very friendly to stories heavy on the character drama would be necessary.[2. Yes, yes, I know you can roleplay with any system. Not every system explains how you can roleplay with it, though, let alone features a core system that makes it obvious how it can be used to play the kinds of stories you already play.] We like our crunch, but crunch is not what will impress this crowd.
So, that's one component such a goody bag needs: A simple, but evocative and flexible system. (Preferably something that uses d6 exclusively, since these are plentiful and familiar.[3. I read a design blog recently that made this point clear to me, and now I can't find it. If anyone knows, let me know in the comments.])
Secondly, but rather more importantly, such a goody bag would need a cover sheet that explained, as straightforwardly as possible, answers to the questions "What is roleplaying?" and "What's the point of rules: can't I just make up stories?"
There are some great (and many not-so-great) What Is Roleplaying texts out there among the many roleplaying games that have been published, but all of them assume that you are a complete stranger to roleplaying already. These people aren't the implied reader of those texts. Already being roleplayers, and possible quite sophisticated ones, these readers need to be addressed in the context of the roleplaying that they already do. We want to show off this hobby we enjoy as a new addition to the roleplaying they already enjoy. Talking to them like they're clueless won't fly, nor will any misguided implications that this is somehow "real" roleplaying and what they're doing isn't.
Of course, not everyone in line for a midnight opening of Harry Potter is going to have roleplaying experience. Though many will, the introductory sheet would need to explain things in novice terms as well. That's a tall order, but I think it could be done.
That's the second component needed: A novice-friendly introduction that still appreciates the breadth and depth of roleplaying experience they already might have.
A roleplaying game, even with a good "What is Roleplaying?" introduction, is still going to baffle a very lot of people unless there's something to guide them. This is especially true of people who are already familiar with roleplaying and may not realise there are many different ways to play. An introductory scenario—I hesitate to use the genre-biased term "adventure"—or two that presents a possible template for play would go a long way.
Apart from offering a clear set of signposts to answer the "what now?" question, the included scenarios should also acquaint the players with novel concepts and meta-roles particular to pen-and-paper roleplaying: game masters and dice rolling instead of player consensus, playing a group story instead of a collection of interconnected personal stories, and world against player conflicts, to name just a few.
We know what's in the goody bag now:
As lovely as the theory is though, is this something that the blogging community could put together? The work involved staggers me and my paltry free time, but the idea of being able to hand out a friendly, curiosity-piquing booklet to the adults and kids lining up outside the next big Harry Potter movie, and to know that the same is being done at theatres across the continent, would be a wonderful thing indeed. It's wonderful enough that my free time is slinking nervously into a corner as I get that look in my eye.