Magic Items: You Are Your Stuff

Recently playing a little of the "roguelike" computer game Brogue, I was struck by one aspect of its stripped-down design. You are guiding a character through a dungeon, but the character has no variable stats, no levels, no class, no race, not even a name. The powers of this adventurer derive entirely from the items found in the dungeon - magic items to wear and wield, potions that increase strength and health permanently.
.

He's a bro. He's a rogue.

This brings up loot-based enhancements in a tabletop game. Players' characters can get more powerful and specialized in three ways: through automatic level-ups in the rules; through choices they make in leveling their character (feats, options, spell choices and the like); and through loot, spells and enhancement found in adventuring. While the first two are in the player's hands, the last factor is the GM's responsibility. 

At the same time, especially if you're running a stripped-down system where class choices are few and customization options limited, AND if you put a lot of special flavor into your magic items, the items can end up helping define the character - a dwarf with boots of leaping and a +2 shortsword/dagger combo; a priest with a necklace of lightning bolts; a henchman fighter who prefers a pole arm with a purple worm tooth blade.

So, not just power but fun gets placed in the GM's hands. Let's just dismiss entirely the notion, from later D&D editions, that item gain should be programmed and expected, level by level, as part of a "build." The essence of my old school approach is presenting a world that isn't always built around the saga of the PCs. But some technique needs to apply to these choices. It's one of the most difficult balancing acts in the game.

I suggest an average - not a guarantee - of one permanent and two expendable items per every three character levels of advancement, for each character. This should not be a sure thing for the players or the GM, either, and I find it's better to let magical treasure come up semi-randomly or as a result of other people's modules you use (with appropriate pruning) than to put yourself in charge of rationing out the players' fun. In practice, I've tended to stick to these limits, plus buyable "special" items, but if anything being a little stingy on the expendable stuff.

Is it too much of a coincidence that most roguelike games - including Brogue - go for approximately equal ratios of the three classic item categories: potions, scrolls and permanents (armor, weapons, rings, wands)? That is, a 2:1 ratio of expendable to permanent items?

The Man-E-Faces Trick

I've been playing the browser game Four Scepters. Like Grow RPG, it's a puzzle game disguised as a fantasy adventure, but with an unusual twist. Instead of sending in the four party members together, they must go in the dungeon one after another, one stepping in when the other one dies.

This neat scenario had me thinking how to make the premise work as a tabletop trick to spring on the players - making them send in the fighter for some monsters, the wizard for others, the thief to spring traps, and so forth. Of course, some contrived gauntlet of one-person teleporters, amulets, and so forth could simulate the exact play of the game. But what about ... this solution?

Bonus if the statue actually changes faces.

A granite statue of a human-sized helmeted figure, of ambiguous gender and race, stands on a carnelian pedestal. When anyone touches the pedestal, the statue emits a blinding radiance, and all persons in the room are amalgamated into the statue, which then comes alive. Any equipment or items are left in the room.

The composite statue has the combined hit points of all its inhabitants. In order for it to act, all must agree to let one personality dominate as the "caller" - at which point the statue takes on the caller's abilities. The statue has a natural armor class as partial plate mail, and can use held items and weapons appropriate to the caller's class.

How can the players get back in their bodies? Well, that might be a matter of reaching a goal buried deeper in the dungeon - of one of the players reaching a new experience level (experience points are divided up as normal) - or most deviously, by letting the statue die.

Boring Combat 1: Genesis of Tedium

One of my regrets from the past year, indeed the whole past of this blog, is trying to design rules systems that meet a theoretical need rather than a need that arises in actual play. The biggest offender last year was when I decided that "hey, in theory, combat at high levels can get quite boring with all those numbers of hit points needing a long time to whittle down." In proposing a solution I unwittingly duplicated an idea from 13th Age, which was then in closed playtesting - to increase hit and damage numbers sequentially through a combat, tracking it with a die.

The thing is, I now don't think such a system is necessary at all. 13th Age is welcome to the escalation die, and may it bring much excitement. But to explain my change of heart I'm going to have to recount the history of boredom in RPG combat. If you want the short version: 1) boredom is not just from high level combat; 2) to fix boredom, use what's already there in the game or piecemeal systems that mean something real.

Our story begins not with the combats of tabletop RPGs, but with the first crude attempts to simulate them, the first so-called computer RPGs like Wizardry and Temple of Apshai. I say "so-called" because there was very little role-playing or sense of wonder about these pursuits. You were running a single-minded band of dungeoneers with no other goal than to map blocky dungeons, stay alive, amass loot and gain levels. Of course, this was not too far off from what the majority of adolescent D&D fans cooked up for themselves around the dining room table.

Then...

Combat in a game like Wizardry or Bard's Tale laid down a procedure that with few changes is still followed today in the computer RPG genre, especially the more rules-light, anime-influenced "JRPG" games. You have a lineup of characters; maybe a back rank. When monsters appear they also form into ranks. The figures in turn have a bash at each other, or cast spells, use items and so forth.

And now.

There is no maneuver except to flee en masse; no Tarantino moments with fumbles or crits; the environment is assumed to be a standard Dungeon Delvers' Guild 10' square to which you are magically confined. Under these circumstances, the main source of excitement comes from the situation in which your characters are facing death in one or two rounds, either from the feebleness of their own hit points or the power of the enemy attack.

The problem with this is that, under standard D&D rules, hit points grow with levels much quicker than damage does. A first level party facing three orcs have to whittle down only 3 HD but each of those does 1d8 of damage, for example. When the party, now sixth level, faces three hill giants, the enemy's HP have gone up by a factor of 8 but damage only by a factor of 2. While first-level characters are only an unlucky blow or pair of blows away from death, higher-level characters don't see combat damage as that kind of immediate threat - it takes multiple rounds or multiple fights to be worn down to the life-or-death point.

You see the tunnel vision? "Combat is a mathematical contest between hit points, armor class and damage. To solve any problem with boring combat we must tweak the mathematical parameters."

Away with that! Combat in an RPG is a tactical simulation. "Grinding" is for machines. Live figures will be running, jumping, diving, bashing, swinging ... And if we see the enemy as mechanical combat, then the answer to boring situations at all levels is to animate it. That way, you don't need to constantly threaten the players with death to get them excited and involved in the fight.

I'll show you what I mean next post, which is about boring combat at low levels.

Beyond Generation Wars

"The problem with this new generation is that they grew up on computer games that hand everything to them. They don't have the gumption for old-school play!"

This is a common enough sentiment, but I had to question it recently after reading this article by David Wong. Granted, he admits to "pushing 40," but most of the computer games he mentions are hits from the past 10 years. And some of his criteria for a great moment in computer game play seem lifted straight from the Old School roleplaying ethos. Such as:

• "When you feel truly powerful for the first time:" Means that you have to spend some time paying your dues, hiding and skulking and killing rats with a stick. Power is earned, not granted from the start.
• "The first time you see an awe-inspiring enemy." Means that you have to face things you're not sure you'll survive.
• "The first time you see the universe running without you." Right on. To continue: "Here's a quick way to separate good fantasy stories from bad: The good ones leave you feeling like the universe continues whether or not the camera is there to see it." 

These are all ideas behind old-school naturalism: the world is not composed of carefully measured, player-centric combats and artificial puzzles. You are let into a world where things can overpower you, where there are problems not puzzles, and you have to use all your guile, stealth and good judgment to survive. The computer gaming examples Wong gives here would also make great experiences in tabletop gaming - for example, running from the dragon only to have it fight the giant.

But here's my suspicion: there hasn't really been a change with the generations. Maybe there's less tolerance for pointless grinding at the tabletop because of the ready availability of electronic timewasters. But running a naturalistic world always has taken insight and a certain amount of grit when faced with the players' desire to win. Steering clear of pointless reward and pointless sadism as a DM - and of the self-consciousness that you might be indulging in one or the other - has never been easy. It's also not easy as a player to stick with such a campaign, even though it ultimately brings deep rewards.

You can see from the fulminations of Gygax in the AD&D books that many of his contemporaries ran overly easy "Monty Haul" campaigns. Dice fudging is openly discussed. Clearly, not all old-time players had the Old School mentality. And evidently, a minority of roleplayers today embrace it.

This way has never been mass-market - which is why Mike Mearls feels the need to surround his old-school advice in D&D Next with a slew of padded safety mechanisms. That's OK; those of us who care know how to unbolt the training wheels.

"Parameters" and Minimal Mechanics

Amusing? Entertaining? Infuriating? These are some possible reactions to the "one page computer RPG" Parameters, by Nekogames. This little Flash panel contains boxes representing your character's stats, shops, quests, monsters and special power-ups. There is no description of a game world; just numbers and very minimal icons. Everything is done by clicking on the boxes, from fighting to gold-farming to leveling up. The goal is to beat the final boss in as little real-time as possible.

It's not quite a satire of the mindlessness of such games, as Progress Quest was; there is gameplay and strategy, of a kind. And it does inspire some thoughts:

1. What a difference just a little description would make ... add words like "Orc" and "Mine Gold" and "Giant Ant" to the boxes, and the people who are cursing its minimalism would instead be praising its concision. Extra amusement at those who are implying (comments) that somehow, doing so would make it a real-io trul-io ROLE-playing game.

2. I'm also imagining what a little artistic flash would do ... treat the grid like the gilded architectural framing of a late medieval altarpiece, or like an Advent calendar.

Or add some silhouettes ... yeah.

3. But really, these thought experiments also go to show that there needs to be very little beef in the gilded burger. The story and monsters and cities and setting can cover up for game play that is really simplistic; in fact, increasing immersion by pulling you away from the bean-counting, min-maxing game layer. It's detailed, not abstract, combat systems that risk getting some trivium of chain-mail ablation wrong.

4. Honestly, what this probably represents is a programmer who wanted to save time and money on writing, sound and graphics. A lot of time and money.

The Epic Fantasy Wargame: Survivals

Not only did the hex-and-counter game suffer a sharp decline in the 1980's, but the medium was not that well suited to depicting a fantasy epic. There's a limit to how much information a counter or map hex can hold, and most of these games creaked under the weight of a mass of special rules that had to be constantly looked up.

There is also a kind of first-kiss syndrome that paints a halo around these old games. I think a lot of the positive feelings old-schoolers associate with them are residue from anticipating how cool it might be to try them, as well as a much less critical outlook when actually played. Not by coincidence, gaming companies in the 70's and 80's also seemingly chose to produce games largely on how cool they sounded. They had a naive (by today's standards) outlook on usability, play balance, elegance, replay value, and other factors that have come to gamers' awareness in the Internet decades. Again and again in comments on BGG - and in some comments on previous posts here - we hear that the rules are incomplete and baffling, the gameplay either simplistic and obvious or swingy and random.

Solid Gaming History

From Metafilter comes a link to a really well-written blog that covers a lot of history relevant to old-school gaming: cardboard, paper and 5 1/4" floppy. Jimmy Maher's The Digital Antiquarian goes analog for a series on hex wargames and D&D that gives the best concise narratives of these hobbies' origins I've yet seen, and then traces their influence on computer games through the divergent paths of text adventures and computer RPGs. Early in my blog's history I noted a reverse influence - the more naturalistic problem-solving nature of text adventures coming in through the Old School movement and enlightening the number-crunching, cRPG-like ways of later D&D editions. So it's good to have all this history spelled out with great detail and insight. For example:


' I submit that D&D was in practice not mostly played by groups of “artful thespians,” but by scruffy teenage boys and men perfectly happy to remain Jim and Bob as they pondered the best way to kill that group of trolls in the next room. And that experience of D&D a computer could, within inevitable limits, simulate pretty well.'


There's even an emulator version of Temple of Apshai, the pioneering computer RPG. Brave danger as a congeries of extended-set ASCII blocks!

Good stuff here.

Cities by Dwarf Fortress

Although I've stopped playing it, the development of the vast, ponderous, procedurally generated, obsessive-compulsive amazingness that is the Dwarf Fortress computer game continues to fascinate me. The two programmers have set forth a task truly worthy of a Demiurge: to represent everything in a vast and random fantasy world, down to the last severed left toenail of a naked mole rat, down to the last one-humped camel leather loincloth and prickle berry bush. What it lacks in graphics (strictly ASCII), DF makes up for in detail.

Sometimes the random generation intersects with the needs of roleplaying and coughs up something useful. I'm not so sure about typical DF names like "Udo Spoonsclasped" but this series of random city maps just cries out for Photoshopping into a campaign. Draw on a wall, some big buildings, street names and you're good to go!