Designing for Generational Campaigns: Part II Combat

Previously I provided a overview of my ongoing Fantasy Campaign, which is in a style I call Generational.

There I mentioned that one of the requirements was seamless play, where characters of different generations adventure together and overlap in play without skips in tiem. This was a requirement driven by much of the fantasy fiction that I favor. In Lord of the Rings for example, completely unexperienced hobbits find themselves fighting alongside much more experienced characters. The same very much applies to my other favorite series The Chronicles of Prydain.

Naturally I wanted to recreate this in my table top fantasy world. However back in 1980 this wasn't an easy task, and I note that even today it is basically unheard of.

One of the primary problems is having low and high level character on the same battlemap, and having the low level ones both matter and yet able to survive the encounter. Most rpg combat systems won't allow this, at least if you follow the rules and suggested play styles.

To use D&D as an example- the earlier editions were based upon what is primarily a resource management style of play. Everything from HPs, to number of spells, to magic items, potions and scrolls all played an important role- and frankly high level characters have such things in great numbers and low level ones don't. Add in 'skill' related items (such as THAC0) and things only get worse. Even 4th edition shows the same issues, although to a lesser extent.

Having high level character 'twink' low levels with scrolls and potions wasn't a solution. It was counter-genre and thus undesired.

The simple truth is that anything resource management based (and where resouces increase with character advancement) is unsuitable in direct proportion to its amount of resource management. Such a combat focus is unworkable for my desired style of play. Thus I needed a system that was more focused on maneuver rather than resource management.

By removing much of resource management and adding maneuver (battle maps, facing, multiple target bonuses, terrain, stunning, etc), one changes the dynamic of combat. In this way any character could be placed in danger from lesser foes by means of position or numbers. Thus lower level characters could guard a great hero's flanks, and/or engage opponents that might be a danger from due to their numbers.

The GM and world design has an impact here as well. In contrast to a group of 5th level encountering 5th monsters- the switch is made to a group of 1st to 7th levels encountering foes of 1st to 7th levels (or even perhaps 1st to 3rd as numbers now matter more).

This has the additonal benefit of being more representional of the source fiction as well. And it's always great in game design to hit two targets at once.

Swearing off 4th Edition

Life was busy this pass week and I've left the poor blog by itself. Sigh. However it's time to pick it backup. Hopefully weeks like that will be few.

It's Friday, and time for my look around the web for comments/rants. This time a "4E and I are Done! " post caught my eye at Dungeon Mastering 101. It's a short and simple statement by AnthonyRoberson that he quits due to the simple fact that a Adult Red dragon can't possibly waste a 3rd level character with a single attack of his breath weapon.

Yeah, I can agree with that.

Of course I also note that it's basically impossible to kill a 3rd level character the first stab of a dagger in any of the editions without recourse to special rules (backstab, helpless foe, etc). And I happen to know that people die from single stabs from small blades all the time.

But the nature of D&D hit points is that you're not hitting anything when you hit anyway. That Fighter didn't take 20 arrows to down him, it took 20 shots of which one finally solidly connected.

So D&D just ignores my problems with daggers. That's the nature of the game design. The interesting question is why does D&D's abstraction break at so many different points for different people. Why did it take a dragon for AnthonyRoberson to give up? Why not a Giant's club, a orge's, or even a common thug?

I guess people are driven by extremes. And I'll say this for 4E- it seems to be driven by extremes as well...

Direction of Causality

It's Friday once again, and time for my look around the blogs to see if there was anything I wanted to comment/rant on.

This little article caught my eye over on Tales of the Rambling Bumblers. In it Joshua attempts to define one of the great splits of our hobby over rules. Are rules little more than a simple abstracted and imperfect model of a 'existing world' that has it's own laws and logic, or do they define reality for a fantasy world?

Joshua and I go back a long ways, and he's a sharp guy worth listening too and I think that article is quite good in general. But even sharp people can error when trying to define viewpoints that aren't their own (I include myself here). And I feel that he made such an error in this article. Joshua you see is a solid member of the 'world drives imperfect rules' PoV. And I happen to be in the other camp- that 'rules define the results that are possible in the world'.

So let's take a moment for someone of my viewpoint to respond to the following assertion from the linked article:

• "In original D&D, for instance, the game explicitly took the view that the rules were approximations but in every case the referee was the final arbiter; nevertheless there were rules such as Magic Users being forbidden to wear armor which weren’t explained in terms of game-world logic, leaving different groups on their own to either come up with explanations to justify the rule so that causality still flowed from the game-world to the rules (e.g. “armor is too restrictive, MUs can wear it but any attempt to cast spells will fail”), or to reverse the direction for that rule and say “Magic users can’t wear armor because that’s the rule. There is no why." (Or perhaps by an appeal to a meta-game consideration, such as “MUs can’t wear armor because that would be unbalanced.”) Note that if the group followed the first tack, there would be further in-game consequences that flow from it, such as MUs having their companions carry armor around so that when they ran out of spells they could armor up. If the group took the latter tack, there’s often an awareness that the world is operating in strange and arbitrary ways. Much gaming humor (such as in Order of the Stick) comes from making the characters as aware of the flow of causality from the rules to their world as the players are.

Bolding mine.

Here Joshua betrays his own mindset when attempting to examine an opposing view. In attempting to define it, he insists on still viewing it in terms of the World instead Rules, i.e. he's looking for in-world reasons for the rules. That's not something someone who considers rules to define world does.

As an example, let's pull back a moment to a wargamer playing a WWII battle. He has all the rules needed to resolved a conflict involving German and American tanks- except of course anything that indicates why German tanks have better guns and armor. From Joshua's PoV, such a player (one who lacks any knowledge of the history involved, but yet is still a fan of games set in that background) should be asking 'Why?, what else does that mean?".

But the gamer doesn't care. He assumes it's correct, that it covers all he needs to know as far as results, and given that freedom he's able to focus on having a bang up time playing the game and acting within it's definitions.

Going back to D&D and Magic-Users having no armor- most of the questions and concerns Joshua insist that I have, I don't (or rather didn't, I don't play D&D anymore). The rules are clear, Magic-Users don't use armor. I don't need or even want to understand why. Nor do I need to worry about follow-up effects, for if there were any they too would be covered by the rules. Instead I play and role-play given that result, much the same that people generally go on with their lives living within physical laws they don't really undestand.

I should note here that any attempt to game the rules or the setting by nature reverses causality to match Joshua's viewpoint- not mine.

It's this line of thought at cause me to disagree with much of Joshua's following article about changing 4th edition to work for grognards. The only grognards he's concerned with are those like him- world drive rules types. There is little to no needed changes for 4E to work grognards for such a myself. All the worries and questions he asks have no meaning when the game is being played.


Now I should take a moment here to say something rather important about at least my own approach to this subject. While I'm "rules define world" in play, I'm the reverse when selecting what game to play.

And that's why I don't play D&D of any edition any more. Hit Points, AC, and all that doesn't match any world I'd want to game in. And thus before I ever sit down and play- I select the rules from Joshua's PoV. I also design games from that PoV. But I don't play them that way.

I think many players don't do this. They just grab the rules, take them as defining the world- and go. I also think people may well switch between the two viewpoints, often depending upon the exact subject as each person has different hot buttons. The fact that Joshua can live with games he does while I can't is proof enough of this.

Designing for Generational Campaigns: Part I

One of the least common things I've encountered over the years are people playing campaigns that span generations- which is basically the only type of fantasy campaign I've ever played.

By generations I mean characters who have children, and players who then run those children who in turn have children and so on down the line. The primary campaign I've played in this style has been on-going for 28 years real-time and 80 years or some in-game time.

I've encountered a number online who do something similar, I different from most in the following two ways:

• No Skips: Skipping is a methods suggested in Pendragon and to a lesser extent Ars Magica . Skips are "let's advance thing 10 years and pick things up when...". That's not the method I'm talking about, but rather continuous play of the campaign advancing the time line naturally through play. One may 'skip' or abstract a month of travel, but not years just to get to a new generation of characters or a new point in time.

• Seamless Play: Children will enter play along side older characters, and sometimes even go on the same adventures with them. They interact as families do, not displaying the 'new group of character' mindset common to most campaigns.

Doing this successfully requires a different approach to combat, skills and character advancement. I've found that nearly every game system on the market crashes attempting this type of campaign. I'll cover some of these issues and how I've addressed them in my campaigns as the series continues.

You want to be something different...

...do things right, because almost nobody ever does.

I first said that many years ago about a very different subject, and I'm sure the thought has been expressed better by others in under a great array of conditons. But I think it applies to rpgs in a number of ways.

Did you really love that first season of a TV show but hated when it ended up? Make it into a rpg campaign and do it right. Comic books are infamous for changing writers and directions, and often redefining characters completely. When you don't like the result, do your own.

We've entered the age of the reboot and re-imagined series (Battlestar Galactica is a great example for TV, Batman Begins for movies, The Ultimates for comics), and there's no reason such a mindset shouldn't apply to rpgs. It's quite likely your re-imagined versions are better in any case- for the simple truth is that most creators screw up their originals given time.

There's a new Star Trek movie coming out. If you think they screwed up big time with such a young crew, blow off the movie and do your version of those characters.

One can even do the same with your home-grown original campaigns of past years. Pick up those old characters, dust them off, maybe update them and roll again. Take advantage of a chance to do it better, and maybe this time do it right...