History of the Wallstorming World - The Game

 This Sunday we played out an insane concept. Trying to teach, run and complete a game for 12 players in a game half finished. Why would anyone put up with that? for me, for my birthday. I do this every year.

Bannisters Big Bad Birthday Bash Bonanza

So for this year, I want to build up some lore & story of the town of J'semby. I need to know some critical things: What buildings needed to be torn down, to make room for the farms and orchards needed to grow enough food for the population to survive.

How much material from the old town will be needed, what stone needs to be repurposed for what other buildings? Where will new wood come from?

In the past, having large conversations usually devolves into chaos, I either need to break it apart into bite sized turns, or break down the concept into bite sized decisions.

A quick way to do this is with cards. Each card has its own rules ON the card, so you can quickly surmise what you can and can't do, no need to ask or look up the rules.

This can sometimes also mean, players can think about their turns in advance, looking over their cards and comparing to others.

So I started with the core premise. what do I want. I want players to choose buildings in their district that are no longer useful, to them, and tear them down, to make room for food production.

The city is under Siege. Refugees are flooding into the city as the zombies approach. supply lines are being squeezed, then shut down. Its a calamity, when people get stressed they panic. multiple refugees in the same location means unease, distrust, mob mentality.

When things get bad, then worse, the city officials need to act. They have too many people for the buildings that exist, they need to house them or lose them. Promoting someone else to take in the masses might be a good idea, maybe load them on ships? 

That's stage one of the game, dealing with the overwhelming numbers. Refugees pouring into the city.

What I did was create a deck builder game. you 'place' all your city buildings, use them to create resources. All starting cards, (cept maybe 2-3) will allow you to draw more cards. Since your hand is 5 cards, with a good draw, you can play out all your cards, and get no inefficiency.

When you get your first refugee, you 'might' get 4 non-redraw cards, but that last one will still allow you to play out your whole hand.

The 2nd and 3rd refugee though, is guaranteed to create a blockage, you now have potentially 6 cards that will block your ability to play more. With a worst case 10 cards left in your deck, you get 3 unrest cards (guaranteed to create further unrest) so you will need to bargain with your neighbours to unblock you.

Each turn after, you need to spend some resources to 'extend' existing buildings. house the refugees, and even feed them somewhat, they will 'pay' at first.

So as a deck builder, the whole idea is to 'clear out dead / not good cards, and buy in better cards. The mechanic of getting ;stuck' with refugees worked out ok, but it was a harder slog than I expected. 

I had 80% regular players, but even they struggled to get the machines rolling in their minds. 

I had to make a decision. Abandon this version mid play, and go back to the earlier drawing board, OR struggle through it.. at what cost and what reason.

Obviously, flipping the script meant 2-3 players dropped out. which would have happened if I continued the struggle. 

The 'simpler' game was not working, it had too many holes. So we closed out at 5 with 'some' parts working, others not so much, but at least I had the 'data' for this run to work from.

Afterwards I thought about it (alot) and thought that maybe a tableau game would suit better. Place out the buildings at the start, AS the map. figure out your meeple=>food from the start, and work from that.

Instead of complex 2-3 possible actions per building, and multiples of wood/stone/coin to build. 

Just boil it down to what's plausible within 1 turn, break larger buildings into 2, 3 or 4 cards to represent costs, i.e. "wood" and show the cost & benefit at the top.

Instead of drawing refugees, you 'place' them, some buildings can cope with some spares (church) and even convert them into meeples (labour) so people feel like its a bad idea to tear down a church later on. (sure the land and the stone could be put to better use.. but the housing for refugees is awesome.

The whole point would be to have some trade-off for each building. 

I want lumberyards to 'store' wood, stone masons to carve stone, neither of which exists inside the city walls at first. you need to build them.

I want townhalls, guilds, theatres, other kinds of buildings that have a use, but in some ways are useless for a whole city to have multiples if the walls are closed and food is scarce.

So back to the drawing board, and we'll see what happens next.

       

Comparing Systems for Completeness

I saw a post about comparing their games break-away dice system, to show it off.. Though I might use the template and see if my system would do the same:

Heres the Link

Will your game system deal nicely with this:

Charter Authority (CA): You have received a gilded envelope with very flowery writing.
Beatrix: Does this look like the last envelope sent by the House of Celebration?
CA: It does, the handwriting is also recognizable to you.
Beatrix: I want to check if the envelope is rigged like the last one and, if so, open it safely. No mess this time!
CA: What skills do you wish to employ?
Beatrix: I have a 12 in Insight, I'll roll to boost: rolled a 6 and 3, success +2.
CA: Ok, If there is any rigged gear, lets see if you notice (GM rolls for stealth vs player perception+2) a 1 and a 3.. doubtful
Beatrix: So that's a failed roll.
CA: You open the envelope, trying to take great care with it until, suddenly, you're covered in glitter. It's all up in your feathers.
Beatrix: Curses!
Kace: Can I try to get a sneaky picture of her covered in glitter?
CA: Roll your Stealth against her Perception.
Beatrix: Aw, you can't just leave my poor character in peace? Does insight help.
Kace: Ooo a Setback! I rolled a pass, but with an 11.
CA: That's a mixed success! You both have a success and a failure. I think I'll let you decide what Beatrix's fumble should be, Kace.
Beatrix: Don't you dare, Kace!
Kace: I think...my character uploads the picture to my holoprofile and shows it to Beatrix.
Beatrix: My character runs at him!
Kace: He runs away! There's no way he's getting covered in glitter too!
Jackson: While this is going on, I get a picture of the chase and upload it with the tag #DD12.
CA: It gets 135 Hearts and you have 10 new followers.
Jackson: Indeed.

Its something I do from time to time, when I see people posting about their game rules. If I come across an issue, I ask myself, do my rules cover this? Can my players do this? and more often, do I want my players to be able to do this, or will it spoil their experience if they assume other rulesets.

In the above example, its the player asking to engage in a perception action.. Us humans, we assume that we're just not engaged with the world, and we need to 'enact' our engagement. 'be aware'. Having been in several life threatening situations, I can attest that your body does this for you automatically. Your awareness heightens, and the only thing you get to choose is where to focus that attention.

For DW, Its assumed that you are in 3 possible states of awareness, Asleep, Awake and Alert. the GM is instructed to give characters the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are in the most appropriate state for the situation. If a person was asleep, and you start describing some sound, then they are awake.

There are of course situational modifiers, lack of sleep, drugs, alcohol, blows to the head, etc, but the base score is Asleep = 0, Awake = half, and Alert = full.

When Beatrix asks to check if the envelope is rigged, its because she has previous experience with such things. So she automatically gains her insight bonus, and can roll to gain it again. (players love to roll) by being cautious and looking for the trigger.

The GM rolled a 4, with a 1, so, unless Beatrix has amazing perception + skills, its doubtful that a 4 would ever fail, so we don't even check if the roll was success or not, that 1 pretty much says it will be.

When Kace tries to stealth against Beatrix, we know the scores, Kace passes the roll, but rolls a fumble (10, 11 or 12) on one of the dice. Having players choose their own fumble is far more entertaining.

Once again, I am relieved. While I had to 'fudge' the text for the Insight roll, I'm just aware that I have to double up on the rules text about how opposed rolls work.

p.s. I have friends who glitter bomb their invites.. vacuuming for weeks!

p.p.s. OMG As Google+ goes down, all their related sites just fail. Appologies, I only now noticed that the text above was forced a white background for certain browsers, AND I can't comment to the fact, as Google+ is now blacklisted by DNS blockers from commenting.. ??

Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
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The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
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The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

World Building Game Update

A kind of Post-mortem / Resurrection thread of what happened with version II, How it maybe worked, how it didn't and how I can improve on it for the future.. oh and what we're doing with it.

Years Later, the Adventurers discovered a plaque that spells out the demise of the Ancient Civs: Pokemon Go!

Ancient Civs started in Feb 2016

40 Players started, each playing between one and three races, starting in the Stone Age. I personally knew about 25 players, I also played, but not wholeheartedly I guess, Each player started with 1 city, of a size 4 (max 6). Players were given a set of instructions, I was available for email at any point, we had several video conferences and I made some video instructions (well, beta attempts at this) but we still didn't get even 25% attention rate of players..

I've run several Roleplay events, and getting 100% is impossible, getting 50% for the first session is a huge turnout. Usually 10-25% is standard. My friends in sales are always asking me, how do I get such a huge turnout.. mostly because 5% is standard for a sales conference.

No Players... No Game!

And so, while I was happy with a 25% attention rate, it also turned out to be my retention rate.. i.e. week after week, I was lucky to get 1/4 of the previous weeks players to remember to make a turn.

Now imagine if your a GM, running a game, you have 8 players at your first session, 2 at your next, 1 the week later and finally, you're by yourself. Dismal.

What worked: Players were interested, getting a huge number of responses from the start meant I could have had a great game. The concept was intriguing, people wanted to see where this was going to go and how it was going to work. Some didn't believe it would, but they wanted to see the train-wreck up close.

What didn't: Players were interested in seeing things happen, almost instantaneously. Is the modern role-player, so gratified in all their dealings that they can't hold out for a month? let alone a year?

So, The Interface was lacking. I gave all players carte blanche on their 'character sheets' with a template for anyone to work from.. but pretty much everyone stuck with the template.

The Maps took too long to process, and when I got a new job, and lost 40 hours of my week, this became too much to run by myself, thankfully Rory stepped up and was a great help, but maybe too late.. players were sensing a drop in the game and maybe that contributed more than I thought.

Player vs / meeting Player, didn't happen quickly enough in many players views, and this maybe was a problem in expectation.

By the time we sorted out these problems, we'd lost the interest of over a quarter of the players. Once that happened, the players still playing were encountering 'empty' players.. they didn't respond to messages, and playing a game by yourself is boring.

How to Improve: By the end of turn 12, we had a list of things we'd have liked to have done before play started.

• Some kind of interactive map, so players could "see" their game easier.. even if turns would still be processed by GMs, they could maybe interact with the map and get a feel for whats going on.
• GMing needed to be done, per player, and weekly.. verbally even. I think that the 15 odd email players, should have been upgraded to skype players, having the interaction with the GM, asking questions about turns, etc. Maybe using roll20 or something for the next run.
• Allowing more scope with turns, i.e. you can be a turn late, and pre-process your turn ahead, might have helped deal with timing, and the lack or in ability for GMs to always contact a player
• In counter to that, NOT allowing player to fall behind, even 2-3 turns, players felt like they had already lost too much and continuing was pointless

GMing 40 players in one game sounds impossible, or at least daunting, yet I've run this game with 80 and it went well. The difference was, 80 players within arms reach, I could speak with them all withing a week, remind them of their turns, the rules, they could ask questions, make deals. heck, when we had 'negotiations' we'd do it live, it was sorta fun watching two or three people negotiate contracts about a fictional universe.

Maybe they all had the same player?

What Now: Well, not to waste all the hard work done already, the GMs and some players have elected to take up the mantle of several of our lost players, and play them on until we reach turn 50. We'll see what happens, mark records of major events, and use it as a kind of decent world for roleplay.
Yet with only 8 minds, it'll be limited in the creativity, decisions, deals and crazy that it might have had, we might allow a smaller kingdom to be swallowed up into a larger one, because its easier to deal with less paperwork, while a single player may have fought it out to the bitter end, or come back from the brink of defeat with a successful event or two.

The End game was already pre-set, A great war (on a different continent) triggers a spell turning the mountains into mud, and swamping the continent, burying all the cities and such, causing people to dig into the world to retrieve their culture, creating hundreds of dungeons, which names the very game its all run in.

DungeonWorld.

As per my promise, When its done, I'll draw it up, scan it, and all players that started will get a copy. If you were/are a player and you'd like to maintain influence on your race/culture, drop me a line and we'll work something out.

p.s. you may have noticed, I tried to blog my turns, I got as far as three blogs when things went sideways, I didn't publish the last two, because it didn't seem relevant, but maybe I'll do them in blocks of 4 turns and catch up.

Narrative Sharing, my two cents

Just Wanted to jump on the bandwagon of this wave on the interwebs.

You can look at the arguments across some of the forums, from here and here and here and here

TL;DR; If used sparingly, a narrative mechanic might work, but you gotta be a dang good GM to know how to use it.

Should Players have Narrative Control?

Sure, about themselves, their characters, their decisions, for the most part. When players suddenly decide their law abiding paladin decides to slaughter innocent children, I gotta ask the player.. "hey buddy, that makes zero sense for your character, should we talk about whats happening?" So maybe not 100%.

When it comes to asking the now famous question: "Do I see a rock nearby?" or the other "is there a Botany book in this library" Now we're getting to some of the problem.. I'm thinking, probably yes, but, ... and I'll get to that..

When a player starts saying things like, " I wanna play an elf" and I say, "sorry, but the campaign is set too far from any reasonable expectation of an elf being within dragon-spitting distance, let alone born here, what is it you want to play?" we're not talking narrative, we're talking setting.. so thats another point.. kind of a yes.. but.

If a player ask, in my Pratchettesque fantasy setting, " I want to buy a glock.38" then I'm going to look at him quizzically and say, "you do realize this is a fantasy game right? no guns?" so that's a plain.. No.

Working backwards:

Setting, I hope it doesn't need to be explained in detail, no-one is really arguing that a player insists on breaking the setting, and that a GM need to allow it. strike it off the list.

Bending the setting, When a player wants to create his character that's not really permissible. Early GMs might capitulate because they don't know or haven't experienced how sometimes saying yes to make the player feel good, will break the world. My example of an Elf above, would suggest, somehow against all logic and reason, some Elven parents managed to sneak into territory hostile to elves, have a kid, raise him, all the while disguising themselves and their kid until adult-hood, enough that he can now become an adventurer with the group. This is when my players can use my Karma system, what would be Fate/Bennies/points that could make this 'background' ok, why? Does that break my world? no because its setting, we haven't started playing, its developing their own character, their background, in a way that is interesting to the player and the group.

Ok, struck from the list.. Now for in-game player narrative..

Looking at the Idea, Is there a Book about Botany in the library. To start most would agree, It is pre-destined or it is unknown.  In the case of the pre-destined book existing we have the concept of, the GM pre-thought the books existence or non-existence, and is in his notes. "the Library contains only roleplay manuals". But realistically, a book about botany not existing in a library, sounds quite far-fetched, so maybe the GM takes a moment and thinks.. hmm, well maybe..

So we're left with the Schrodinger cat conundrum, Does the Book exist or not? Like many before me have spoken, There seems two camps of thought..The Book has a chance of existing, because the world has a statistical chance of it existing, or the Book exists because of Narrative reasons.

With the chance of existing, the statistical value is based on factoids that the GM mostly knows, but maybe the players might also know if its a published adventure world, such as forgotten realms or Warhammer40k. In this case, most GMs who follow this style of GMing would roll a percentile dice of chance to see if the book exists. If it does, it does, the GM didn't decide that it existed, the plot didn't decide, The statistical chance determined that is was there all along, the percentile roll only determined that the player found it. Actually, the roll might determine that the player didn't find it, but its still actually there.. If a tree falls in the woods, does the GM hear it?

From the Narrative point of view, the Books existence is based on the flow of the story. If the player has an idea and the idea doesn't directly break the GMs current world view, he allows it, because the player has more narrative control.. and this seems to be the whole argument..

Did the book exist? or did it pop into existance because the player, and not the GM determined it needed to exist.. will this break the world?

Some game systems and Improv Theatre roleplay groups insist that this be the norm, if the GM didn't previously state that it was not so, then the players should be able to include it, sometimes for some kind of point/luck/benny/fate cost.. 

Now sure, if a group decides together that this should be the way they play.. go for it.. find out the dangers and benefits, play to their hearts contents, but don't for a second expect me to listen to your story with any level of immersion, its like kids explaining how cool it is to play a game with god-mode on, or how cool minecraft is in creative mode.. no.. its not cool.. I'm not going to say that to their sweet little cherub faces of course, but I know deep down that they've missed out on the very reason roleplay games work.. 

Experience, creativity, boundaries and obstacles.

Its fun to figure out a puzzle, we get the boundaries and the obstacles, we use creativity and when we solve it we are wiser for the experience. If we can suddenly change the boundaries, how will be ever be able to learn how to solve the original puzzle? we've changed the puzzle and we solve, probably an easier version, probably we've changed it to something we've already done before, because its easier, so we don't even learn anything new.. 

Lets look at the rock in the above example..

The Player stands in a stream and says "Oh I need a rock, is there one nearby?"

Every GM says, of course there's likely to be a rock in a stream, and lets them have one. I say.. Hang on.. what is the player asking? I have an idea.. I want to use a rock for something.. spell component or throw it or.. something.. In a movie, there will be a rock if there needs to be, because we like luck to favour the hero. If the plot determines that a rock will make the event too boring too easy, then there is no rock.. but that's a movie.. Its understood by the writer and director where the movie is going so they can balance this exactly as needed.. but a GM, on the fly? with a player who hasn't told the GM what the rock is for yet? how can he judge if that rock is going to make or break the plot.. so its easier to determine.. likely that rock exists in reality, the player wants one.. so let him have it.

I might think also.. wait, is that player always 'coming up with ideas at the last moment? and using his fate/benny/luck to change the plot? how will a person grow, if he expect life to always have things ready for him.. so maybe the rock will be there, but not accessible, not right this very combat round.. so he thinks, next time, next time I'll get a rock and be prepared, have one in my pocket.. like a good adventurer should.

That's sorta "yes, and" but I've created an obstacle to what they wanted, because they thought of it at the last second and wanted 'god' to 'shift' reality to accommodate, which I hate to do, but they are heroes and they should be lucky, because roleplay is a little cinematic.. but they have to use the luck.

Why is this acceptable to me? because dice are fickle, and narrative is not supposed to end because someone rolled a 1 at the wrong time, but I don't want to bend the rules, because then it never ends.. and when I've played games with GMs who rule bend to keep the narrative, I got bored almost instantly.. why bother to try so hard if the GM is just going to allow me to do my cool thing because it fit the narrative or as much it didn't break the narrative. So I included a mechanic, dice are fickle, monsters and NPCs might die because life is like that, but you are heroes, so if you make a choice and it results in poor dice rolls, you can use your luck to take back that roll, and live another day.. but learn from your mistakes, because you have a limited pool and once they run dry, you've out of luck.

For systems without some kind of saviour, I don't see an answer. fickle dice will kill a straight simulationist story, but player narrative will destroy players agency in the long run, and make a game boring. finding the right balance is hard.. which is why people will argue about it.

Monopoly New House Rule

Just watched an interesting article about how Monopolies original concept was to teach you to hate the rise of the real-estate barons, I guess that's why everyone gets that negative feeling when playing..

Heres the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeLPNVmzerg

But an Idea popped up from watching, specifically from the one point,

Choose your Direction, after you roll.

   In roll and move board games, players are at the mercy of the dice. Many games that use this mechanic (which many board games designers call the worst ever mechanic) don't give you any choice, you roll, you see what it results in, you follow the rules of that square, pass the dice.

   The Idea of player agency, player choice, which makes game more interesting, is in monopoly, which is probably why it did so well, vs snakes & ladders and other games of its time. You roll the dice, but then you have a choice, buy the property at the listed price or be the auctioneer on the property (Original rules had no listed price, you just went to auction automatically). Also, if the up coming properties were already taken, you engaged the players in conversation before rolling the dice, get them distracted about some other topic, roll casually, count out your position in your head and if you landed on someone elses property, pass the dice and encourage them to roll "quick game is a good game" as you moved your piece.. if they rolled quick enough, you escaped the rent.

   Paying attention, in a time when board games were more about an excuse to have conversation and get together, than to actually play, was more critical.

But one rule that was lost to time, was the agency of choice. When you rolled. you could choose which direction you wanted to move, except backwards past go (see there was a reason there was an arrow) you could only pass go in one direction to get paid.

Thinking about it, how many lost opportunities are there for games where this kind of mechanic could be employed. What you gain in not going forward to a bad square and going backward to a safer square, you give up in faster income, also teaching players that sometimes going backwards in life can be the better choice.

What other dice choice mechanics could we be using? 

Roll two dice, and move either the value of one dice or the other.. choice in your possible results.

How about moving one die forward and the other backward, takes longer to move around the board, but give you choice.

Two dice, move either the result or either of the individual dice, or reverse for the same. Now you have six possible choices, throw in the +/- variant and you have eight possible locations to choose from..

The Lit Streets Issue

I might come back and edit this, but for now:

Why would Fantasy Medieval Streets be unlit?

Or Trapped Fairies? - Art by Aimee Stewart

In a fantasy city, that includes some kind of magic using group of skilled or talented people, there would exist an early understanding of creating fire, through magic. Most, if not all decent systems of magic have a ways and means of casting a spell, so that it can become permanent.

So, given these two premises, there is no reason to not have street lamps, with permanent cast flames
or light sources. With a metal cage around it, to protect, both the flame and the user, maybe the inclusion of glass, some little engineering to provide reflection, flow of air (if need be) The idea is pretty much a stable concept, if not in every city, at least the higher ranking streets of the capital (or the main castle).

This is the concept that a lot of Games designers forget to think about when inventing spells, powers, magical artefacts and the like. The effect it has on society.

These little things are what makes a world real, alive, rich and interesting.

So you've probably gotten here from a link to this, where I brief on the subject or go further into how, this is not supposed to spoil the game, not supposed to have any negative effect, far from it, its the requirement of its inclusion. Without considering Lit Street Issues, you're just building a dull boring, unplanned, unthought-out generic world.

FATAL Critical Failures!

For a blog I'm doing research for (will edit link in here after I post it) I was researching other games systems, ones that did things poorly or horribly, and what they did that I should avoid for my own. During the process, I encountered some interesting (and shocking.. NSFW.. I mean for the average non roleplayer its Extremely NSFW in which writing I found my self cringing and re-writing this blog) roleplay systems, amongst the complaints from standard systems, Often people would cy...

At Least its not F.A.T.A.L!

Oh, and Gang Rape was the
plot for character
team building / formation.

For those not in the know.. FATAL is a system, created by Byron Hall, who probably didn't do a lot of market research into making RPGs, but did a lot of research into medieval environments, much of which seems to be D&D, medieval movies from the 80s, maybe some shlock horror, the Rutger Huer Movie "Flesh & Blood", typical teenage basement dwelling humour.

Whats not surprising is the amount of flak he got for daring to publish his ideas (well, a PDF at any rate). As it stand FATAL is listed as the worst, for all time so far, worst RPG system ever..

So of course I had to download it.

I downloaded the first version : Fantasy Adventure To Adult Lechery

The title gives away main reason why people hate it.

This the 2nd version cover..
The More safe for work version

Its a Great big overly detailed, and I mean comparative to Rolemaster or GURPS overly detailed, list of so many things a Gamesmaster should consider (and then discard what doesn't match their system) when designing their own system, Its just that FATAL included ALL of them.. 900 pages of rules and rules and rules..

Now, there are some glaring problems with it.. Layout, Design, 900 pages, tables of tables.. It could be salvageable, if it had some kind of underlying something to it worth salvaging. The book goes into great detail about diseases, phobias, psychological traits, aspects of dealing with life as a medieval peasant. Occupations, Skills and Equipment.. all before telling me how to play the Friggin game.

And Oh, My Gawd is it overdone.. 4 lines to explain what water is, another 4 for milk!.. If players need a Thesaurus of common terms, maybe you have the wrong kind of players..

So I'm not going to go any further, (as much fun as it could be) into picking apart a bad system, Discussing how, splitting it into Standard rules, Gamesmasters rules and the Adult material could have helped, nor how the Structure or format needed to be more player friendly..no, others have done before me. I'll focus instead on what a lot of people have focused on.. poorly.. the Adult Lechery.

If you read the reviews and counter reviews of the author, you'll come across how the bulk of people focus on the fact that your character can have an [here it is... no.1 reason for its ranking ] anal circumference, because, if and when you get raped, you need to know how much pain you're going to be in.

In comparison to the size of this blog.. that one line represents the percentage of filth in the book. But for 900+ pages, thats still 20 odd pages of filth.. and another 100 pages of dubious material.. And for typical human reasons, its the only thing anyone will ever remember of it.

So Why Write about this filth?

Normally I might read up on hundreds of pages of articles, double check my references, make sure what I'm writing about has plausible credibility to it.. I do the same for my own system. I might never point out some things I read, because its not what I like to share with others..

Yet like a car accident, We imagine how it might have been us.. and I looked back at my earlier works and wondered... would I have been so unlucky if I published in 1998?

Total 100% accurate of how players
Act in game, but real life?

Then, while travelling by train across south Russia these last few days, I had some pdfs in my tablet I could read, and one of them was Critical Failures. .. About a DM who has the power to send his a group of players, who are behaving like the worst players you could get, to the fantasy world they're playing in, when their behavior gets them into trouble, time and time again...

I didn't feel like I was reading something that someone had made up, I know people that behave that way.. I don't roleplay with them, and probably never would, but I remember being 12 and sorta maybe acting that way. So I could identify easily with who they were

The writing of Critical Failures is poor, language badly chosen, some serious flaws in the style, but heck, its better than mine half the time, and at least the guy wrote it and made it available for download.

But the funniest part for me, I didn't feel like they were playing D&D, even though that's the parody the author went for. No, I felt that they were playing FATAL.. and Byron Hall was the DM, and the RPG Net were the players... and then I took a look back at the RPG environment of the 80s and 90s and felt sorry for the Author of FATAL.. because it looks like that's what he's gone and done.. Made the RPG for the audience that has since, grown up, while the Author had not.

In the 80s all manner of things, with 20/20 hindsight, seems racist, sexist, misogynist immature and just plain wrong. RPGs were not immune, depending on the system & Gamesmaster, Characters would typically devolve into murder hobos, ultra powerful bad guys, or all manner of worse. Half of today's memes are based on 80s RPG fail.

So FATALs Author seems to be a GM whose inclusiveness went over board.  instead of putting down his foot and saying.. "hey guys,too much.. this is never going to be popular on the market.." no, instead the author thought that all roleplayers were like his group.. raping and pillaging across his game world.. so he added more rules to match all the consequences..

I got out of the standard roleplay scene when this seemed to be happening around me. Players were joining the brand new Vampire games, where killing and raping innocents became part of the norm. The teenage angst of lack of control in the real world bleeds into the control they need to exert in the roleplay world, lashing out at anything that offends them, and with power, allows them to avoid or beat back any social problems that may arise.

Lessons to be learnt

It asks the question, Why do we roleplay? Is its the Escapism? to get away from this world that we lack the skills and control needed to be successful and the desire to be so? To go to a place (even if its in our minds) to be able to be skilled, powerful and in control?

Is this an immature desire? I've had maybe a few handfuls of 'adults' in my life try to tell me that roleplaying is a childish thing, and that I should grow up. Now that I'm 40, a dad, I've researched what games are, what play is, what is a roleplay game, and how roleplay has a very critical aspect of learning about it. Gamification is mired in roleplay, Schools actually teach us to role play scenarios out, in order to solve problems.

"Train A is headed from the West at 20km an hour, Train B from the East at 30km an hour, they start 100km apart, at what point do they crash?"

Albiet, your not playing a Train, but the puzzle is set in a way that allows the student to visualize the problem in real terms, which is one of the cores of what a roleplay game is.

The Concept of Games & Play has been coming up in my discoveries over the last few years, and I'm quite seriously considering my PhD in this field. How much of the desire to roleplay is the desire to escape our own mundane vs the playground of the mind to learn?

Conclusion

My Own system went through stages, Complex, Simplified, Improvements, Mess, Restructuring. If I had published at any stage prior, I'd expect to be ripped to shreds by the RPG community for attempting to publish anything less than a half decent set of rules.

The current 'popular' RPG seems to be rules lite, narrativity styled RPGs, possibly due to the influx of females to the gaming industry over the last 20 years, So attempting to bring a new system, more complex than most, is bound for failure, let alone adding sexuality (No, mum, not that kind of roleplay), obfuscated layout, and adult themes (plus, claiming its all historically accurate).

Yet I have a complex system, So I guess I have empathy for this guy.. he thought that his differentiation, that 'thing' which would make his game interesting, is the first person to publish a game which dealt with the smut & puerile humour that many games devolve into. To cater to those teenagers and their angst at a lack of sexual experience. Not realising, that is the worst kind of roleplay, and the community as a whole would rather pretend it never existed, than admit that yes, once, they too tried to 'get it on' with a barmaid, and the teenage GM asked to roll for penetration.

Post Script

Further topics on this to come:

* Will Roleplaying games of the future be boring, or will Roleplay become obsolete, if we get too politically correct?

* How to Use failed roleplay systems, and identifying failure within successful systems, to build a better system. (Building a better mousetrap?)

* What IS roleplay, and what IS a roleplay Game? Does a conversation about a vorpal sword working on a Jabberwickerbasket count?


p.p.s. I Always thought it would be fun to run a roleplay group of evil (i.e. bastard) characters, while several other roleplay groups of good guys were hunting them...

[Thoughts] Roleplay Gamers, World Simulation Vs / And Story

I wrote this topic several moths back, after discussion online about Simulation vs Story, then recently someone pointed me in the direction of the GNS Theory from Ron Edwards and Aaron Hoffmans opinion of it. Yes, it seemed to match up with my Simulation vs Story theories, but introduced the third Gamist (which I always thought of as a immature board gamer who disrupts the real RPGers)  to the table.. So now I've had to re-write this blog notes:

Arguments of World-Simulation vs Story-Roleplayer, now add Board Game Geek and maybe a Gamificator for good measure! 

Are you a board gamer, a war gamer or a listener?

My Initial foray into the psychology of roleplay was about the two. Simulationist vs Storyteller. This was aimed more at GMs, I felt that often a Storyteller was more railroady. The Players make some choices that follow the story that the GM (or for World of Darkness, the actually storyteller) has in mind, and provided the GM is the wolf and the players are sheep, they all get to have their own kind of fun.

Can you tell that I'm a Simulationist?

I have/had/will have again players who care not for their character sheet, level progression, bonuses, etc, they want to act out their part, partake in the story and enjoy themselves. They ask the rules lawyers what would be the best choice in their character progression. My own system was designed to guide these players to make it easier for them, the player is a fighter? he fights? he gets experience as a fighter and his fighting skills get better. He knows he's a fighter and feels like a fighter, so there is no need for him to care about min/maxing his skill set with a stealth attack or a spell, and besides, he's probably forget to use them, because when a creature walks into the dungeon, the fighter grabs his weapon and fights.

https://xkcd.com/393/

Then there are the rules lawyers, they study their own numbers with meticulous care, and make sure that they have their stats just perfect, balanced in the best way possible. and I'm covered there, because I think that way myself. (I think that to be a half decent game designer, you sorta need to be a rules lawyer to GM)

But when I encountered board gamers, I was always under the impression, they had just not yet learnt how to roleplay, and like a child in school who just doesn't get the lesson, they lash out in ways to 'make the game fun' or 'amp up the excitement' I never once thought that this was a sub-group unto itself.

GNS Theory

Firstly, While a long time reader of Psychology profiling, Personality Bartle Tests, GNS is new to me, so forgive me for the errors in interpretations, this is my own take on what 've read so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

So Gamism is when you make the decisions based on extrinsic motivators. You form a party, and you are instantly friends, because that's the way the game is played. You go to the tavern and talk with the old man, to get the quest and then you complete the quest and get the gold and the girl/boy/victim and save the day. Because its a game, man! Meta Gaming could be considered gamism, checking on your friend in another room because you know that he just fell in a pit of acid, but you state.. "I haven't seen GunThar in a bit, I might just go check on him. "

Board Games that mimic roleplay (Descent, Heroquest, Talisman) are very Gamist, its practically the definition of a Gamist Game. So Often when I was balking at D&D and Pathfinder, It wasn't that those games suck, it was because they cater to the Gamism mentality, which I like some of, but as a Simulationist, I can't cope with. [I re-wrote the rules to Heroquest just months after I got it for my 14th Christmas to include XP]

Narrativism is roleplaying. Special voices, being angry or sad at appropriate moments, making sure you make choices, not based on if its the smartest thing to do, or the most efficient, but because its what my character would do. Well, maybe that's the simulationists perspective on Narrativism.

I've noticed alot of games are pushing towards Narrativism recently, which I applaud when done well, but they seem to be pulling away from the other end of the spectrum(s) Games coming out with little to no rules, arbitrary decision making, the GM is more like, telling a story, and the players are like, following along.. like Vampire, but without a character-sheet and experience points.

Simulationism is a Virtual world, Immersion by the players is achieved by making sure nothing outside of the parameters of the world, and rules, is broken (except the occasional 4th wall for humour). The game rules ensure that the world and its 'defined bubble of physics' is kept whole, so the players can make decisions quickly to create a fun experience.

Now, its pretty true that not many games can achieve this, and the ones that do are sometimes so grey/bland across their system, that takes away from the game play itself. I've read from some posts, players quoting how little fun it is to create a character and then get killed in the first session, because of realism. GMs are expected to fudge the dice to keep players alive long enough for the plot to become apparent, then if the player makes a stupid move, its his own fault after that.. Not every tavern would have an old man, and not every quest should be tailored for the players level.

Now, while I tend to lean towards the Simulation, I am trying as hard as possible to find the middle ground in all three. Or.. possibly, if I was to follow other theories.. all four:

http://www.whatgamesare.com/2011/12/the-four-lenses-of-game-making.html

  

When Sterotypes hurt your Game

Something I've strived for in a lot of my games is an attention to detail. You always see posts, articles and stories about how the designers added so much background, and the user barely notices, but overall the game/movie does better for it. I never expected it to backfire so badly as my last roleplay session.

When your players stereotypes clash with each other

  I started a 4 week stand alone session about Pirates, Sailors and their dealings with a strange phenomenon called magic.

  The Session started with quicker than normal character creation, we even had to skip formalized equipment and their stats (though proved humourous) so we could get started and into the basic plot quickly enough.

The basics were thus: There are two sides, Arabian Pirates, who come from a land which has outlawed magic in all forms. Consequently the majority of the pirates are actually magic users. And the European Sailors, having had their entire city wiped out by undead magic users because their race managed to invent gunpowder (magic users everywhere have banned the invention) those politics aside, the players know that they consider their 'guns' to be anti-magician guns.

  Throw in a Knights Inquisitor, whose sole reason for infiltrating the pirate ship is to root and rat out the mages to be beheaded at the next port.

  So we have two sides, with conflicting inner struggles. I expected some emotional and political conflict, as did the players.. but we didn't expect what did happen.

Arabian Indians & German Gunners

Some of my players like to put on voices.. the 'Europeans' jumped for German, and for some strange reason, the Arabians decided to be Indian (some jumping from Scottish to Iroquois mid sentence) alot of funny moments for a later blog.

  What happened was a misunderstanding of ranking.

  Some of my players are older gentlemen, they have families, kids, wives who expect their husbands home by 10pm, and the rest, Uni students, not so serious, just having fun with it all.

  The Serious players, want to get to the game, get it happening and enjoy themselves, while the younger players have yet to learn that sense of urgency and self control.. so already different tensions started in, players not respecting the game, monty python quotes, etc etc

  The Pirate 3rd Mate & the Ships cook were instructed to take this group of sailors and pirates of equivalent by slightly lower rank out to inspect the island, look for fresh water and food. The Cook can of course identify plants & poisonous varieties, and the 3rd mate bossed people around, to get stuff done..

  But The Pirate player, had previously played a D&D adventure on the high seas, and the campaign had extremely poor understanding of life aboard a ship, crew, rules, emotions and the like. Far worse than the stereotypes of the movies. The players had been press-ganged into ship slavery, whipped, beaten, half rationed, disease & seasickness, it was a brutal campaign (I never played, I just got this players impression)

Now, does that Officer look like he's going to run him through?

  Also, in games prior to 2000, I used to run many of my campaigns with a strict iron fist. Players who would encounter guards and give them flack, would likely end up in prison for unruly behavior or beaten up and left in the gutter. Players learned that they might be the heroes of the story, but they are certainly not given free reign to do as they please.

The Skirmish

So, this player, felt that his 3rd mate, was in charge, and should/would deserve the respect of his position, to the point of almost bashing the back of the head of the German gunner who was giving him a little flack, at which point, the gunner drew his flintlock pistol and told him to back off.

  This set off the 3rd mate, insisting that the rest of the crew, imprison the two germans in a discovered stone room, til he could summon up someone of higher rank to have them flogged. The germans went in the room, but not so much as punishment, but instead creating a nice walled barrier against the feral mate, so they would obviously only have to guard the one entrance with flintlocks. Strategically, a good move.

  I, at this point, honestly thought the player was playing his pirate like this on purpose.. to create angst, or disrupt the possible inquisitor from discovering that he was actually a mage.

  It turned out, he honestly thought that pirates were blood thirsty bastards who would sooner run in a scurvey prisoner than take lip. While 6 of the 9 players had other ideas.

 The Key point had been pointed out earlier in the hand out text, which I'll quote:

A Ship of European style, A Galleon, 14 Guns (Extremely rare), but a crew of only 50 (The Galleon needed 75 to operate at full ability, but sleeps 150) Lost a Battle to a Pirate known as Twin Blades McCrowly and his crew of 40 pirates. The Pirates has (rightly) never encountered guns, and thought the booms were a storm coming over the bow, while 8 of them were killed on the opening attack, the remaining 32 managed to kill the captain of the galleon and 15 crew so effectively, their scrimshaw blademanship was so deadly, the remaining crew gave in (it was fairly obvious these warriors were so deadly, they would slaughter the crew and burn the ship)

The Master Gunner, knowing that the future of his culture was at stake, pleaded with the pirate captain, to take them on as crew. McCrowly took a look at the 8 dead, holes blown through them, and looked back at the massive hole blown in the side of his own ship and realised. He had now gained some of the most powerful “magic” that existed.. but it was not actually magic, somehow, this would be perceived as “evil” and the Knights Inquisitors might be pissed, but since it was not magic, their anti-magics would not work..

So, the Crew of the Galleon was given a choice, Join the Pirates, Plunder the Seas and if they want to get off at the next safe port, they may do so, AFTER they train the replacement crew member how to operate the guns & cannons.

The Ship has been anchored off the coast of a small, uncharted island, The Captain has ordered you lot, to go investigate, gather water, see if supplies exist and buried treasure (he adds with a laugh).

Beautiful Tropical Island, filled with Deadly Creatures, Crazy Terrain and Wild-men, must be Australia.

  So, you can see The Galleon Crew are on 'probation', to prove their worth, and become pirates, as equal ranking to the rest.
  For myself, I've always thought that the idea of a Pirate Captain, treating his crew like scum, would eventually result in mutiny. The concept that any higher ranking sailor on the sea, trying to act all big and tough, better be chummy with 80% of the crew, and only try that kind of thing with the least well liked persons on the ship.. that said.. close quarters, no where to go, I don't like the odds of anyone being less than amicable on a ship, but idiots will be idiots, and that's why the quartermaster exists.
  
  Returning to the situation, 'the 3rd mate thinks he's top sh*t', not because the player wants the character to be played that way, but thinks that this is how higher ranked pirates are supposed to act. The Pirate Stereotype has 'forced his hand' so to speak.
  No one else agreed with him, and began to belittle the player( in and out of game) because he was playing an a**hole. The Player didn't want to be boxed in, Some of the Pirates were siding with the Germans, which the Player insisted was against the spirit of the game.
  So suddenly we're all raised voices and getting angsty about whats going on.. I blame myself, not providing enough material to the player about how pirates should be played.. because quite frankly when you have a group, it is, sorta, the responsibility of the GM to set a scenario that the group has a reason to bond & team up against the GM.

  We had to pull the session to an end, so I could write up several pages based on historical data to show the more truer version of history and why the stereotypes would destroy the ability on pirates being pirates.. but it really got me thinking..

How many sessions of roleplay are disrupted by this kind of clash, players playing the 'classic trope' which ultimately ruins everyones fun?

Encounter lists, why are they so drab?

For quite some time, I've been using a computer database for my encounter lists, but recently I ran a few sessions in a different system, and found the encounter charts to be abysmal, so I quickly threw in some ideas that I thought I'd share with the community [note, by this I mean, unedited ramblings]

Why do I need to fudge encounter chart lists?

Back in the day, when I was a green GM, a DM if you will, players would enter a room in the dungeon and I would roll up the next encounter from a chart and they would fight it. I was 13, I had no other idea about anything other than the expensive (read: I couldn't afford so I made my own) pre-written adventures, which in hindsight, seemed to be a writer doing the very same thing, then giving some actual explanation why a beholder is in the room next to 20 orcs, in a Crypt that has been sealed for 50 years.

As I progressed, they of course became the 'random encounters' that characters would 'cut their teeth' on before the adventure, so they could test their 'leadership' and 'tactics' with the opportunity to heal up and even return to town, before they would repeat this process 3-10 times in a sealed environment.

Years Passed, and I found myself rolling, 2-3 times, and picking what seemed far more logical, rather than what the dice said.. but it felt wrong to fudge the dice.. going against fate, as it were..

Which Encounter to Choose.. Hmm, Maybe All? Seems logical!

So what was wrong?

Looking back at those charts, I see monsters too high a level, assigned only 1 value on the d100, while common creatures assigned several values.. but just like the casino, the house always wins. If you have a dragon on your chart, eventually the players will encounter it.

recently, a 12 day trek through semi-dangerous forest resulted in this:

Day 4, Dire tiger, day 5, Treant, day 8, 4 Bugbears, Day 9, 11 goblins & a Barghast, Day 12, 2 assassin Vines. All for a group of 4th levels.

Ahh TPK, how Schadenfreude

The Dire tiger mauled our tank, who couldn't participate in the fight with the Treant, so the whole group got wrecked, we had to camp to rest, but that made us vulnerable to the Bugbears, So while the goblins should have been a walk in the park, they almost slaughtered us and the Vines TPK'd the group.

Now, ignore the group.. lets look at the creatures.. We have a Dire Tiger and a Treant, within a days walk of each other.. The Scent of the Tiger, should have caused the Treant to be wary, which admittedly could have alerted him to come investigate, but in turn the Treant should cause the Dire Tiger to be wary or moving on from this neck of the woods..

Databased System

As I said, I use a Database system, which wouldn't allow such things to occur. creatures have a threat radius, a scent radius, a territorial radius and a position, some creatures ignore these things, others stay well back from such things, so certain creatures wouldn't be found dead, (literally) within the radii of other creatures, and others would (be found dead).

Another feature of databasing is that when players kill the Dire tiger, its gone from that neck of the woods, and the creatures react to the power/territory vacuum, some creatures increase their territory & breed more, others randomly move into worse neighbourhoods, perceiving the threat to be gone, to find a worse threat which annihilates them.

No DataBase.. how can I make a better list?

So after starting this game, in an area with no database, no system, I had to revert to my old knowledge of encounter lists, and thought.. surely there has to be a better way to do this.. hence this blog.. and I came up with a solution.. I'll be sure to put this into my own system for publishing later, but I think its cool enough to share with any reader:

First we start by ordering the danger rating of the encounter list, At the top, 01 - ? is the 1st level creature, keep the '% values, but scale it up to 300%.. i.e. if goblins was 3 numbers before (41-43), its 9 numbers now (41-50), if unicorns were 1 number, they're 3 numbers (actually for unicorns, I'd scale them back to 1 number and bump something else up by 2). Shift these around as you see fit.. creatures who would likely not care about other creatures, scents, territorial etc, give them higher %, while other more territorial, a lower %.

Next, Add in these two charts:

Encounter Modifier & Encounter Style.

Encounter Modifiers I leave 01-75 as "no modifier" and for each 25% I add in an increasing addition, such as " & pets (add d4 dogs of appropriate type)", or "increase numbers (increase the dice of creatures from d4 to d6+1, or d6 to d8+1)" or "aggressive, (+1 to hit, +1 to damage)". These also go up to 300.

Encounter Style I have things like, 01-25: Not here today, 26-50: tracks of _(roll on chart again).. nearby, 51-75: dead body of  _(roll on chart again).. 76-100: Ambush, 101-125: -Bandits, 126-150: Roll again & have fight each other, 151-175:  Boss monster of encounter roll. etc etc up to 300.

So here's where it gets interesting..

When you roll on the "do I get an encounter today %" initial listing, and get "nothing" you roll d3 and add 10% or 20% (normal vs dangerous terrain) to one of my charts (bit of paper behind the screen, add a notch, marker, etc) so I know that todays encounter could be nothing, or this could be the beginning of something worse, maybe the characters have entered the territory of some hideous beast. each day of "no encounter" is just increasing the likely hood that the next encounter is going to be bigger than before. The first 3 styles listed, are of ways that the group will not encounter this larger than normal beast, and if that happens, I'll have the next few days also be no encounter (this land is so dangerous, nothing wants to go here, but luckily the characters managed to 'bypass' its horrible lair) but the players won't know that they bypassed, instead they're thinking they are getting closer and closer to something even worse!!

Encounter a Lair, ensure no encounter rolls for trip home

My own lists include in the styles (at 01-25): Within the Lair: Ignore the modifier, and roll again at -25%, keep the modifier for future rolls, So while travelling trough the hills of the hill giants the players encounter some kobold travellers, easily defeated, but the danger of Hill giants is still close.

With a few test rolls, (and a spreadsheet for extensive testing) I had around 80% success rate, that the larger, deadlier creatures turned up far less often, in close proximity to anything else.. ensuring that if you do encounter something rather large, you'll have enough time to rest up, cause nothing with any brains, is going to be coming to the lair of this (now dead) beasty anytime soon.

and the GM doesn't have to feel like he's cheating, fudging the dice, anymore.