Psychosis: Ship of Fools

So, a lot has happened. We've moved to a new city, and one of the first things we did was make a trip to a Friendly Local Game Store in this city. Aside from the usual D&D 5e and Pathfinder stuff, alongside less common fare like Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls (plus organized Dungeon Crawl Classics events - I can't wait until this pandemic is through), they also have an interesting selection of vintage games and supplements that changes over time. Though several splatbooks for Vampire: The Masquerade 2nd Edition tempted me, the only book I walked away with this time was an obscure game from the early 1990s, called Psychosis: Ship of Fools.

Having read through the whole thing, I can say that it's out of my league as a referee (or Guide, as the game calls it), but I hope I can shake off the rust and sharpen my skills to run it in the future. Using Tarot cards as the sole task resolution mechanic is a neat idea. My sole gripe is in some of the scenarios presented; suffice to say, fascism isn't the forgotten relic of the distant past that a lot of people once assumed it was.

Overall, though, I like this game a lot, and I'll definitely keep an eye out for any other installments in the series (assuming any actually got made).

Assassins & Advanced D&D

So, I finally got a small group together to discuss the potential game to be played. I had decided beforehand that I would not be able to run Dungeon Crawl Classics due to lacking some of the necessary dice, and not being familiar enough with the rules. Though I am proud of my mutated Basic Fantasy rules, they're currently not complete enough to compile, and (being on a wiki) would require the use of my laptop - which is both very slow, and very slowly falling apart. Another game I've considered running - original D&D - can be very closely emulated with White Box, and the supplemental classes ported over from Swords & Wizardry Complete.

This left the group with two choices: White Box (using a new setting), or AD&D 2nd Edition (using my primary fantasy setting). Surprisingly, they chose the latter, and I helped them create their characters. Now that a lot of the participants are either off of school or finished with it, we're going to try to have a session every week.

One of the optional rules that they voted on using was the Nonweapon Proficiencies system. Something that I had suspected, but wasn't completely clear on until now, is that the assassin is indeed a slightly superfluous class in the 2nd Edition rules. If one creates a thief, takes the Disguise NWP, and has either a high Strength (for melee damage) or a high Dexterity (for two-weapon fighting and ranged attacks), the result is basically an assassin who just can't use shields. Not to worry, though; while we will be using NWPs, I'll be operating under the old-school assumption that characters are generally competent.

I had planned on adding both the assassin and the monk at a later point, but the former seems unnecessary now. For the latter, I'll probably just use the version from AD&D 1st Edition, rather than the (massively overpowered) Scarlet Brotherhood iteration. I still consider the monk a priest class for game purposes, though, so they'll use d8s.

About that new setting... I'll save it for a future post. For now, all that I'll say is that DCC was an influence on it in some ways, but not others.

Spinning Down (dice testing)

Today I bought what will very likely be my last set of Chessex dice. As I've pondered the games I might run over the summer (and hopefully into the fall), one of the things that I've considered has been the dice required for each. AD&D 2nd Edition, as well as my vivisected Basic Fantasy rules set, use the standard complement of polyhedrons. White Box, in addition to being available for free or at low cost (much like Basic Fantasy), is so minimalist that players need only d20s and d6s; it was these that I bought today, such that up to four players can use a d20 and a rounded spot d6 of the same color. (I might even give these as small gifts to the players, if they choose White Box and prove committed.)

A Gnome By Any Other Gname

A slight follow-up to my previous post, with some more musing I've done on the roles of dwarves, gnomes, and halflings in my campaign.

Previously, I've been hamstrung in attempting to make major changes to my game, largely in part due to the ruleset being used (AD&D 2e for some time). I was reluctant to change things due to other elements of the rules taking the specifics of each part into account when making additional material. Admittedly, 2e isn't nearly as strict about this as 3.5 or Pathfinder, but the problem is still there to some extent.

A major advantage of switching to a sparser system (in this case Basic Fantasy, although it could have been original D&D or Dungeon Crawl Classics if different circumstances had prevailed) is that I feel more freedom to build things up as I and my players see fit. The players who have little interest in giving input on the rules - i.e., most of them - find it easier to begin with less and then add more, instead of starting with too much and then having me take it away (which I would have to do if I ran 5e or some other thing).

In the interest of "less", I've been thinking about what exactly a gnome should be in my game world. When most people hear "gnome", they think of the really little lawn jockeys with white beards and pointed hats. The same might be said of "elf", but the cultural impact of The Lord of the Rings is so massive by this point that the roughly human-sized elves come to mind just as easily. Since the Bombadilesque gnomes aren't a firm factor in my game... why not make them Tiny?

DCC RPG: First Impressions

(Brief explanation for the recent flurry of posts: I've had a reduction in my work hours, and yesterday had to take a sick day, so while I'm tired and my throat hurts all day, it's a more stable state than being semi-energetic in the morning and exhausted in the evening. I doubt I'll be able to keep up this pace of content, but don't think I'm not going to try while taking sick leave from gaming for a short while.)

I told myself that I wouldn't buy any more of what JB calls "fantasy heartbreakers" (or FHBs). I don't need a different variant on a very similar game, especially after spending so much time and effort putting my campaign's rules into Basic Fantasy. But at a chain bookstore, I found the softcover version of Dungeon Crawl Classics on clearance for $15.00, and I couldn't resist.

I have yet to read the entire rulebook, but I've finished most of the sections on character creation and combat; the bulk of the 376 pages (!) is taken up by the magic system. I'll list some bullet points of my initial impressions below.

Character Creation vs. Character Building

This is mostly a response to this post on The Word of Stelios, and is expanded from the comment I made there. Read his post first if you haven't already, and then come back here. I'll wait.

First Stelios, then Cirsova, and now me; it proves the point concisely, though.

I'll just come out and say it: I really, really don't like point-buy systems. They make character creation drag, they repel newcomers to the hobby, and they take the focus away from immersion and place it on min-maxing. Even in the simplest, most rules-lite games, so much time can be spent agonizing over where to put those last few points. It's one thing to have points able to be allocated to skills, if the game uses a skill system - heck, even AD&D 2nd Edition uses such a system for its rogue skills. But when the basic attributes of a character are determined by shuffling little numbers around, I call foul.

Let's use my current favorite game, Basic/Expert D&D (Moldvay/Cook & Marsh) as an example. To create a character, roll 3d6 in order. Then choose a class. Then roll for hit points based on that class (that is, if you don't just give maximum HP at 1st level like I do). Then roll 3d6 one more time for starting gold, and use that to buy equipment. Then write down Armor Class based on armor and Dexterity. Total time for an experienced player: 15 minutes or less.

The basic, essential attributes of a character - everything he or she has innately, before equipment, spells, and special abilities are factored in - can easily fit on half of a 3" x 5" index card. In preparation for a Dungeon Crawl Classics-style "Funnel" for B/X, I rolled up twenty-six 0-level characters - "Normal Humans", in B/X parlance - gave them first names, and figured out their Armor Class and Hit Points. All of this fit comfortably on an index card that had been cut in half to make two narrower ones.

"But what about equipment?" Write it on the back; it's a plain white surface.
"But what about saving throws and attack rolls?" Well, I can easily look up Normal Human (or, to use the exact wording in the table, "Normal Man" - although I tried for an even balance of masculine, feminine, and neuter names) on the Saving Throws table, and I know already that all of these characters have a THAC0 of 20.

True, there technically is a way of adjusting ability scores by lowering one to raise another - but as far as I can recall in my gonzo B/X campaign so far (the third session of which wrapped up this past Thursday), no one has actually done it. The curve for ability modifiers means that most adjustments wouldn't have a big effect; one of my players could have raised her cleric's Wisdom to 18, but she decided not to since it would only have affected saving throws, and wouldn't have raised her XP bonus at all (those cap at 16).

Now, I have a player who prefers point-buy to generate ability scores; part of this is due to his terrible luck with the dice when rolling up characters (something I've witnessed firsthand), but part of it is due to his desire to have as much control over the character as possible. I'm starting to think that this player suffers from acute Special Snowflake Syndrome, as the three characters he's had in my games are as follows: a Kitsune merchant, a Dhampir, and a giant(ess). You'll notice that none of those are even remotely core in any role-playing system outside of maybe The World of Synnibarr. In the first two cases, I had to scrape something together from homebrew sources; in the latter, I've had to combine information from The Complete Book of Humanoids with some references to the more obscure implied rules from the PHB and Monstrous Manual. This player insisted that his character had to be about 16 or 17 feet tall, but the largest giant-kin in the CBOH is the Firbolg, who stands about 10' 6". Fortunately, I was able to fudge this because the much taller Hill Giant has the same maximum Strength as the Firbolg (19).

This player is certainly not a bad person or even an annoying player while actually in session; he and I get along quite well otherwise. It just frustrates me that he seems unable to stick with the stuff already in the book. Isn't it enough to be able to play one of four to seven races, and choose from four to nine (or eleven) classes? Apparently not.

I think part of this is a result of said player having begun with D&D 3.5... which leads me to my next bugbear: feats.

I can't stand feats. They take too long to choose from, they're so vague that the player has to either write out a summary of the feat on their character sheet or resign themselves to the fate of having to crack open the rulebook every time they attack or get attacked, and there are some feats that are just plain better than others - a beginner's trap. (I have the same problem with the inflated spell lists in AD&D, but that's a whole other rant.) They're just another reason for me never to run D&D 3e or 3.5, or Pathfinder ever again.

At first, I thought that D&D 5th Edition had improved by making feats optional. But as I examined the process of character creation more thoroughly (and "built" a few characters of varying level myself), I realized something: no matter what optional rules are dropped, feats are still there, hiding under a different name. You might know them as "backgrounds" and "archetypes". Short phrases that have little to no meaning in and of themselves, serving only as shorthand for little packaged abilities or "skill bundles", chosen at character creation? Them there's feats.

Of course, feats are far from the only thing about 3rd Edition and 3.5 that would be a cause for Special Snowflake Syndrome; the mania for prestige classes and supplement bloat (the latter, naturally, also a problem with AD&D2, and even oD&D if you think about it) probably had something to do with it, along with the inclusion of a point-buy system into the core. Making a new character for any standard d20 System game - be it D&D, Star Wars Saga Edition, or something else - takes way too freaking long. Even worse is having to make a character, and then level it up to whatever number the DM has arbitrarily decided as the starting point. I joined an in-progress campaign where everyone was 8th level - and I do mean everyone. Not content with the evened-out XP table that is the same regardless of class, this particular DM (also a good person, and a fun guy to game with) did away with XP entirely, and just levels people up as the "story" moves along.

So anyway, I needed an 8th-level character. My first thought was to make a wizard, but I quickly realized that that was a bad idea; the class features gave me a big enough headache to incapacitate a hippo. Even making a fighter - a fighter, by the Nine! - required choosing a Martial Archetype, and following along with all the fancy feats that came with leveling up. This is probably why I like older versions of D&D more; in B/X and (core, no splatbooks) AD&D2, a fighter is a fighter. Sure, there's weapon specialization in AD&D2, but for the most part one fighter starts out the same as another. The uniqueness of each comes out in play. Delmar the Mighty is famed for his killing of the Dragon of Grindly Grunn, while Ulysses is a very smooth talker.

Likewise with wizards (or magic-users or mages). In either edition I typically run, you have one spell, four hit points, and no armor. You'd better play smart. I find that this is still somewhat the case in 5e (my 3rd-level wizard character got injured in a fight), but much less so thanks to infinite cantrips. (Of course, that's a whole other rant.)

I'm not really sure how to end this post; I've been working on it for two days off and on. Anyhow, thoughts? Has there ever been a system that, in your view, was so fun to play that it didn't matter how long it took to make characters?

More or less dice?

I have a large collection of dice, of various shapes and sizes, and I know I'm not the only tabletop gaming hobbyist who will gladly buy a die that I've never seen before, if it's in the bin at my FLGS. The most fun for me seem to be those that I know I'll never use. Among these are a pair of d6's that are numbered 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5 (supposedly used for bite damage in the old Vampire: The Masquerade); another pair of translucent d6's that each have a tiny d6 inside them; a twenty-sided die numbered 1 to 5 four times; and several "old-school" twenty-sided d10's (two of which I actually use as percentile dice).

Mine are red with white numbers, and white with red numbers,
respectively; this makes them perfect for percentile rolls!

Whenever I decide to work on my own tabletop game, I wonder if I should have it use as many different types of dice as possible (i.e. the normal set of polys), or as few as possible (only d6's or d10's). On the one hand, some people like rolling various sizes and shapes of dice, due to how certain actions have a different "feel" from others. On the other hand, having a game that only relies on percentile rolls and d10 rolls (maybe along with 2d10) would be much more portable, and the idea of a "core mechanic" is not entirely a bad one.

At the extreme of different dice types is Dungeon Crawl Classics, to the point where Goodman Games actually sells a pack of the weirdest dice I've ever seen, mixed in with the standard Platonic solids. They can be found at the bottom of this page: http://www.goodman-games.com/dccrpg.html

If anyone reads this blog, any thoughts on dice variety? How much is too much (or too little)?

Flakiness (a rant)

The big issue for me isn't getting people to agree on an edition: it's finding people in the first place. Not just anyone, but someone who's willing to read the rules (at least partially) and, y'know, actually show up.

I've had trouble getting reliable people since I first started GMing. My first group had four players, one of whom would follow exactly the same pattern for every session after the first two or three. I'd announce the time of the next session to everyone several days in advance, and he'd say that time worked for him. The day before the session, I would check with him to make sure he was still coming; he would assure me that he was.

The day of the session? Nothing. No phone call or text to say he wasn't coming, and no answer when any of us tried calling him ourselves.

(I hope it doesn't seem like I'm ragging on this guy; he was fun to hang out with, very knowledgeable about D&D - particularly Forgotten Realms, since he read a lot of fantasy fiction - and overall a good person, but this was a pretty annoying habit he had.)

In my slightly nebulous group that started off playing AD&D 2nd Edition, I was able to get the group to meet a total of one time. This session was never finished; one of the players had a call from "work" (of dubious legality), and had to leave immediately. The others soon followed. The next attempted session, the only group member who showed up was the guy whose house we were playing at. Fortunately, he brought one of his friends, and even more fortunately, I had a pre-made character he could use. Unfortunately, that unexpected friend had to leave unexpectedly.

More recently, a B/X D&D game I attempted to run (one session so far...) collapsed in a perfect storm of unplanned delays and last-minute changes of plan. One of the players wasn't feeling well, one was still out of town visiting friends, one was tied up in some kind of legal matter - a disputed ticket, or something of that nature - and one just plain overslept after a late night. The one guy who did show up went with me to grab some video games for what turned out to be (in a kind of baleful synchronicity) a mini LAN party that failed due to a faulty cable. Considering the work I've put into this so far, I'm wondering if I should try to have another session with the same group.

Speaking of video games, that's probably why tabletop games seem to be played so little. In today's world of blogs, PDF stores and print-on-demand, a game can be made and distributed for minimal cost, and reach a far wider audience than one which would be subject to corporate marketing requirements (side note: I saw a gigantic hardcover copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics at one of my local chain bookstores). The problem is, no one wants to put forth the effort to play in one of these games.

I know I'll probably come across as a disgruntled cynic of twice my actual age, but I see no more obvious culprit for this than video games. A person can sit at home on their computer (or in front of their console of choice, etc.) and immerse themselves in a highly addictive, brightly colored fantasy world with thousands of other people from all over the globe... or they can try to get together with half a dozen real-world friends, have to read stuff - read, as in words in a book! - and roll dice for four hours.

A telling sign? The university I attend has a semi-official League of Legends "team", but nothing in the way of tabletop gaming. I'd wager that there was a group of avid (A)D&D players here ten to fifteen years ago, but no more.

At least another FLGS opened up recently that has table space for RPGs; of the other hobby/game stores in town, one caters mostly to R/C and Gunpla (and consequently has no tables, although they do have some Warhammer and The Hobbit wargame stuff), and the other doesn't allow RPGs to be played at their tables (only card/board/wargames). Every so often when I'm doing stuff there, someone walks by and asks what we're doing. Genuinely curious.

...Maybe I should ask around there soon.