Skills and Attributes

Mass Effect has a rather lightweight character development system – it’s more of action games than dice-rolling! (Heh, it is a action game, more accurately put!). The idea is to keep the system light, so the characters are going to be light too. There is only skill focuses, no attributes. All rolls made for mundane skills (persuasion, sneaking and etc.) are made a +0.

Specialized skills are made at base modifier of -4 and is always a failure if any of the dice rolled is a 1.

Getting Focus

Getting a skill focus at a relevant task allows you to make the check at +2, instead of the base modifier. Characters can gain multiple focuses in the same skill, each time bumping the bonus up by +1. Drawing inspiration from the list, the skills available are: AI Hacking (as opposed to normal Hacking), Assault Rifles, Biotics, Bypass, First Aid, Demolitions, Engineering, Computer Use, Heavy Pistol, Heavy Weapon, Intimidate, Persuade, Submachine Guns and Sniper Rifles and Tech. There should be other skills which are conventional – Navigation, Squad Tactics and so on.

Powers

Should powers, such as Overload, Combat Drone and so on be skills? Since Dragon Age has spells, to keep to the fidelity of the system, those in-game powers should be spell-like too, but instead of having many of them, they each have their own levels and can be evolved. The amount of powers available ideally should be scaled by the character’s Tech and Biotic skills.

There is need for a character creation system too. Maybe next time!

Combat

Combats in Mass Effect 2 is dynamic, with different weapons having different rate of fire, spread and range. It’s not a good idea to roll multiple dice for rifles and submachine guns. So the idea is: roll multiple dice for the quick firing weapons and take the top three best. But, but for each 1 rolled on the dice, the dice with the highest value is discarded.

Example: The Vindicator Assault Rifle allows attacking players to roll 5d6 in combat. On a roll of 3,4,5,5,6, the player takes the three highest roll (5 + 5 + 6) and comes up with 16. If he has rolled 1,3,4,5,6, he needs to remove the 1 and 6, leaving him with 3+4+5, or 12.

Hopefully this is a nice framework to develop the idea into!

A Game of Musical Squares

(Apologies if this section is dry. More dramatic ranting at the end of the article).

Combat in D&D 4E revolves around three abstract concepts: hit rolls, combat status and moving around the squares. Hit rolls and combat status we are all familiar with, especially if anyone has played any iteration of Final Fantasy (“Blind” reduces your chance to hit, “Silenced” prevents you from casting spells). One of the biggest additions is to ability to shift, push or pull opponents or allies on the board. Paladins can teleport to an ally in peril to absorb a blow; avengers (read: ninjas) can suddenly vanish into the thin air and pops out next to a marked opponent and wizards can send foes flying with cracks of thunder.

This is not a new concept, at least in the realms of tactical RPGs for the computers. Dynasty Tactics and Romance of the Three Kingdoms 12, featured the ability to push enemy armies into traps or to lure them into craftily setup combo chains. Disagora for the PS allows you to throw (yes throw!) your allies at an enemy to damage them.

For D&D 4E, forcing enemies to move squares is a big highlight. Certain high-level powers allow melee classes to move and attack, and make another move and attack again if certain conditions are met. Coupled with Attack of Opportunities, pulling a foe next to you so that you get a free attack on him if he should turn his attention on someone else is neat. In addition, now that certain powers can create zones that afflicts penalties and cause damage, the push, pull and shift mechanics make combat in D&D 4E more tactical than before.

Sleek and Slimmer

Having considered the picture of D&D 4 combat, let take a look at the mechanics. Like its forebears, D&D 4E draws a line between the role-playing bits and the crunchy combat parts, however many of the familiar elements are streamlined.

Gone are the charts for Basic Attack Bonus and Saves – they have been replaced by the Attributes itself. A Fortitude save is one-half of your level plus your Strength or Constitution modifier, whichever it is better. Attack rolls are based on the Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Charisma etc.) itself. This is one thing worthy of note, because personally I like it. It is more elegant and makes the system easier to understand.

There are some new concepts to grasp, though; saving throws are totally revamped, powers come with three possible “cooldown” – at-will, encounter and daily, and healing is now a whole new ball game. Suffice to say, those make D&D 4E different enough from D&D 3.5 to have an integer increment in its version number.

So how does it fares?

Let’s talk about D&D 4E combat in terms of as a combat system; that is, let’s forget that it is part of a role-playing game. On paper, from reading the rules, it feel greats. Instead of just a “my BAB is higher than your AC, suckers”, the system encourages the players to think carefully about their moves. There are a lot of black and white cases in the game – many powers inflict damage even on a miss (usually half), and there’s no ways to resist someone from trying to pull you into an elemental volcano or a gateway straight to hell. This encourages players and DMs alike to think harder during combat, instead of relying on high stats and good rolls.

As a closed system, D&D 4E combat succeeds in getting rid of grey areas. I think the designers have hunted down every possible grey areas in combat so that a DM rarely has to “wing” it. However, I don’t really approve of how the grey areas are dealt with; usually the system just gun for the simplest solution. For example, if a zone containing raging hell fire intersects with a zone of the bitterest winter storm, nothing happens. They don’t affect each other at all.

The System in Context of a RPG

I have discussed what I think of the combat system as a ‘stand-alone combat resolution system’, akin to a war-game and such. It’s time to realise that this system is part of a role-playing game too, and I would humbly submit my notion: it’s horrible. Mainly because the system is designed to be closed, which could run automatically by itself and the DM could be a human CPU. (Some may notice that I have been really rigid and restrained while discussing the system as a combat system. It’s to be fair to its design. Now I would try to be more…eh, dramatic).

Of course., there are advantages to a closed system. It’s consistent. It encourages mastery of the system, which pleased achievement-oriented and competitive people. It removes GMs’ fiat which could be a bad thing at times, and reduces the number of times the GM has to come up with spot rules on the go.

However, there are various problems with a closed system for a RPG. First, the suspension of disbelief. If the combat system is just a board game, just a miniature game, fine, I’ll don’t think we need the suspension of disbelief. But this is a role-playing game, where you are supposed to use your imagination, yet the game is so rigid and black and white. There this which boggles me to no end – a druid can choose a wild-shape, no bigger than her size, but regardless whether you choose to be a fericious saber-tooth turtle, or a bear, your stats do not change. You can shapeshift to become a panther and still have a lousy Dexterity of 9. Good luck running, don’t trip over yourself.

Likewise, the rules concerning zones. In Lord of the Rings Online, certain creatures can throw fire at you, leaving a pool of fire in the wake of its flame breath. Now the Loremaster has a skill called “Gust of Wind”, which animation shows the Loremaster conjuring a burst of air at its location. I always think it will be cool if that could put out fires on the ground (the Rune-keeper has an AoE ice attack; it would be cool if that would put out fires too). Computers are limited by their programming, so it would be hard to implement such things (though Nethack’s “the developers thought of every situation!” tried admirably) .

I think it is kind of sad while, for me personally, that for a paper and pen role-playing game, we are asked to switch off our brain when it comes to grey areas. It is a great chance for players to think out of the box, and for a GM to see what innoative solutions his players can come out with. But the rules just say “those zones don’t interfere with each other”. Other examples include “the environment don’t affect the manifestation of powers”, which mean even if a typhoon hits the combat area, that zone of fire is not going out.

The human brain can be engaged to handwave those rigid rules away – “magic , or some other power is sustaining the field of fire and so they are immune to the environments”. That is valid; I just think it is sad – when I think computer role-playing games should have more of the flexibility of its pen and paper ancestors, pen and paper RPGs are taking on more of its more limited counterparts’ aspects.

To be fair to the D&D 4E combat system, for it to work some of those rules have to be black and white, or it would be just too darn complicated. For example, take the pushing mechanics. The same crack of thunder that send a small scrawny goblin flying three steps away has the same effects on a gigantic stone troll. But to factor in the weight and size of the target would mean more rules, making the combat less playable. Likewise, is there a good solution to the overlapping of zones, and having the environments affecting spells and powers and what-nots? I’m sure there is, but it would involve either lots of rulings, or player-DM negotiation, which is not desirable considering D&D 4E’s design goals.

(What are D&D 4E’s design goals? From reading the book, I believe it is to create a role-playing game that is consistent and fair, and which targets a demographics of role-players who are competitive in nature. So the DM’s power are naturally curbed).

Granted, nowhere in the rules did it say that the DM is not allowed to wing in a certain situation, but from how the grey areas are handled (or from the lack of grey areas), I infer that DMs are bound to the same combat rules as the players, and deviation is not encouraged.

Sustaining Belief in an Imagined Reality

To sum up how I feel about D&D 4E combat system, I would just say this “Effective, but artificial”. As a combat system, it works. It encourages thinking and planning your moves. But it is rigid and asks players at times to leave imagination at the doorstep. True, there are flavour text to the powers. Those text means nothing though. Being ‘scared’ is just the target moving away from you. Any other implications of being terrified at the enemies which are not cover by the rules does not count (I don’t think it is possible to persuade a terrified enemy to surrender). But it is a closed box. Your ice storm is not going to put out fire summoned by a warden, and if you shapeshifted into a hawk it doesn’t you can fly. You get things done the way the rules say.

For example, imagine the Balrog in combat with some PCs. A halfing fighter manages to push the great and mighty Balrog away with a power and he can do it because the rules say so. It’s like Lu Bu managing to trick Zhuge Liang, or Drizzt being tripped by a halfing. The DM can come up with explanations each time when those things happen, but honestly if I am the DM, I would stop trying after the third time. The system just messes up expectations. For example, in a computer game, it is like I design a gigantic stone troll but no matter how tough he looks on the screen, it doesn’t matter because in the database I gave him a Strength of 3.

This is why I say the system is artificial. So that the system can be fair, characters could be balanced and the DM and players are on equal term, it is a necessary evil. However this is not my style of play. It also lead me to imagine that D&D 5E could be just a board game like Descent, where the DM just set up the enemies according to some rules, and shuffle a deck of random Skill Encounters card which comes for a particular quest.

What I admire though, is how D&D 4E become streamlined from D&D 3.5. What I would leave out would be the entire rigid design of the power systems and the “What you see is not what you get” feel.

On Issues of Portability

Another flaw of the entire system is the ‘shift, pull and push’. It is great for the epic feel of the game, the anime-combat style akin to Final Fantasy Advent Children. However, if you watch enough espiodes of Mythbusters, you would know that anything that send you flying away for more than 6 metres is going to be painful. This system may not work well in other genres, such as modern warfare. Shotguns don’t push anyone at all, and a grenade don’t send people flying (they fill you with little sharpnels). Of course it is a non-issue now, for this is D&D, not D20. It’s not a generic system after all.

Final Words

If I am to play a game of D&D 4E, I will defintely be asking for permission to wing certain aspects of the game. Martial powers which push creatures would take creature size into consideration. Zones and the environment would interfere with certain powers.  It may make the game less consistent, less fair, but for my players and me, it may be more fun.

The powers are really bloated now. I think there might be a way to condense a class to just a few core powers. Classes would be the topic of my next article on D&D 4E.

Oh yes, before you comments, do take note I am usually a narrator GM who prefer rules-lite, wing-it games like Fate and Nobilis. That’s the context where I am coming from.

Weapons does fixed amount of damage, but have different Armour Bypass Roll. Armour has an Armour Factor (AF) and to actually hurt the target, you would need to roll the weapon’s Armour Bypass Roll and exceed the AF. If not, your blow simply bounces off.

This is the basic mechanic used for resolving blasting spells too (Speed vs. Evasion) and indirect spells that in D20 would require a Will save (Magical Attack vs. Magcial Defence). With the basic rules out of the way, let’s see how we can have a mass mob combat consisting of hero characters and mooks.

Before we begin, a reminder – the purpose of one roll (or fewer rolls) combat is not to make it a replacement for full fledge combat. It is more for pacing, setting the scene and making combat a ‘strategic game’ instead of micro-management, tactical ones. Hence, the player, when he makes a choice, actually lasts for a few round.

Combat Actions with Attributes

Dragon Warriors, unlike Fate, is not skill-based; this poses a difficulty as this reduces the amount of options for non-combants (whose abilities are more useful when it comes to really tactical combat). Hence in this case the GM must prepare to use attribute checks to replace the usual Attack rolls. The standard attribute check is a 1d20 equal or under the relevant attribute. To simplify opposed rolls (Dragon Warriors do not have skills for opposed rolls), the target number to beat is the relevant attribute of the mob, or the GM can decide one.

Here are the five stats in Dragon Warriors, and here how you can use them for combat.

• Strength – feats of strength (push down a pillar to crush enemies), a throw
• Dexterity - tumbling, keeping out of the way of enemies, athletics
• Intelligence – trick or misdirect the enemy, coordinate the battle
• Psychic Talent - Ironically, I am drawing a blank here. This measures ESP, innate powers of magic and such, and has no use formally unless you are spell-caster.
• Looks – the ultimate dump stat  in Dragon Warriors (it’s a linear 3d6 anyway, so you don’t have much of a choice). Not much use in combat unless you determine that it also means charisma and leadership.

Combat Proper

First, we got to prepare the enemy, right? Take the usual stat for the enemy and for every extra in the group, give it +1 HP (so 5 goblins would get +4 HP).

Second, there is no need for Armour Bypass Rolls here. AF will reduce Combat Effectiveness. Shields bestowed +1 AF.

Third, let’s measure Combat Effectiveness for the party. Everyone will roll their Attack and attempt to hit as normal. Unlike usual combat, there is no missing. Everyone’s Combat Effectiveness (or CE) is equal to the “to-hit roll” (which is Attack – Defence) minus the roll of the 1d20. There are no criticals here. Total up the entire party’s CE.

Next, the enemy will attack too. Unless players come up with something crafty, everyone is going to be attacked. The enemy will just roll once and attempt to hit. That is it, no CE calculation. Every hit, if it does damage, will reduce the party’s CE by the damage inflicted. If the GM deems a party member is swamped (that is, attacked from all sides), give a bonus from +1 to +3 to their Attack score.

Finally, take the party’s CE and divide by the number of players (round up to the most convenient numbers to speed things up; so if you have 4 players, round up to multiples of 4 and so on). This is the amount of damage done.

Attribute Checks

Now, if one of the players decided to go for a strategy instead of wading into attack mode, he makes his attribute test as above. The degrees of success (which is the player’s attribute minus the number rolled, assuming that he rolled under) becomes the player’s CE. However, the GM should give a bonus depending on how effective the strategy is. A general who is trying to funnel his enemies through a chokepoint is doing more good than someone who is just trying to stay out from combat. Give a multiplier to the total CE (x2 for a good effect, x3 for something that would really turn the tide). I afraid it is totally GM’s fiat at this point.

Remember that there is no initiative whatsoever – so even if the adventurers achieve total overkill in the first exchange, the enemies still have a chance to attack for one exchange.

Spellcasting

Now this is a tricky thing – how do you factor in the effect of spells? All spells, as a rule, contribute to CE or directly takes away HP. As a rule of thumb, spells that disable enemies immediately reduce the mob’s HP by 1 for each mob disabled. For blasting spell, treat it as an attack using the spell’s Speed as the attack roll and the enemy’s Evasion as the defence roll. However, do not add the damage to the CE unless it is an area of effect spell. If it is single target spell, add the rank of the spell. If it is an area of effect spell, then roll for damage and add the result to CE.

Spells with Expiry Rolls are presume to last for the entire battle. If a spell has no formal rules for combat but inflicts a certain condition, reduce the enemy’s Attack and Defence roll accordingly. In a pitch, have the sorcerer to test his Psychic Talent and add it to the rank of the spell and come up with a multiplier depending on how ingeniously the spell is used to come up with the CE.

How many spells can a sorcerer/warlock cast per exchange? For sanity sake, it is good to limit to one, as an exchange usually consists of a minute and a sorcerer can cast 10 spells (each round is 6 seconds). If it is an issue, set a formal length of tme for each exchange. Remember that the magic points must be expended for spellcasting and mystics must make fatigue rolls.

Is this workable?

The next question on my mind (and perhaps for any reader) is – is this combat any more fun? Faster? Hopefully someone would playtest this!

Next up, tackling a roll under game – Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.

Generally put, the goal of most meta-plot is to provide a direction to the narrative of the world and stories. For instance, the overarching meta-plot of many Greek myths are the inter-fighting among the gods and the interaction between them and the mortals. Some Meta Plot are justifications – why on earth is a powerful starship exploring vast, unexplored corners of the world. Others are used to suspend the disbelief – if magic is introduced into a world, it is easier for people to accept that there are staves that can shoot fireballs and spells that can turn someone into a statue. Meta-plots, basically, are expositions, and rules for good expositions follow too.

Right, let’s get on to fleshing out the meta-plot then.

1. Overall Theme

One way to generate ideas for the Meta Plot is to decide its theme. Remember, a Meta Plot does not have to be for the whole game world. It can be for an epoch of history, a series of adventures, or even just for one city or dungeon. So something like “greed” would do well for a dungeon (the typical dragon hoard) while “despair” is a good theme for an entire campaign world (Call of Cthulhu, for example). The theme could explore hard questions, such as “Who really has right to call anywhere his country since everyone’s country is obtained through war?”

Theme and genre can be decoupled, and different combination of them generates different feel of games. Unknown Armies and Call of Cthulhu are both horror games; yet Unknown Armies has a somewhat upbeat optimistic theme to it “We are utimately in charge of our destiny”) whereas Call of Cthulhu is “we are ultimately doomed”. Eberron and Midnight both used the OGL D20 system, but in Eberron, magic plays the role of technology and there is a sense of adventure and excitement. In Midnight, the world has been conquered by evil and everyone struggled to survive. Both are fantasy, but with a switch of theme, you get a different feel.

2. History

If using theme to generate ideas for a meta plot is too far high up on the ladder of abstraction, a more concrete way would be to come up with a history for the world, city, scenario or dungeon. History, however, is more than “this then that and then some more of those”. Reading through history, the thing to look for is why did the event happen and what were the people’s reaction. Take the simple Meta Plot for a haunted house scenario. What is the history of the house? Of course, the realtor who sold the house may not be important (or is it?). What may be important is who once stayed there, what horrifying events happened before, what did the previous owners do (and what happened to them) and is there anything n history that explains why wolves are encircling the house preventing escape?

The important thing in crafting history is to leave in “openings” for further trouble in present (in Chinese, this is known as “the hidden pen”). A story with total closure is basically finished. Modern history has many examples of those “openings” – unfortunately mainly rooted in coups and wars. The “good guys kill a bad guy and the bad guy’s descendant returned for revenge” is a standard “opening” in a Meta Plot.  A Song of Ice and Fire used the history of the seven kingdoms to open up the way for a clash of kings. It is precisely because that the olden way of life in Westros is not completely forgotten which is why there are events as it is. If the story goes “And everyone was conquered and their culture lost forever”, the plot has written itself into a corner.

When writing history, think beyond the borders of your scope. Writing a history of the world would require gods, beings from other existence, interference (be it unknown horrors or meteors) and maybe even other worlds. Likewise, writing the history for a scenario would require input from the bigger world as a whole. Take a keep at the edge of a civillised kingdom. Who built it (and if the architect designs a secret passageway, would his descendants know of it)? What is the purpose of the keep, and is it still the same now? And most importantly of all, what does all this got to do with the present situation?

One big work that uses history as its meta-plot is Lord of the Rings. The MMO game (Lord of the Rings Online) borrowed heavily from the little history that was told in the appendix to create an expansive world. Melkor taking on Eru, and the forging of the rings, as well as the two kingdoms Arnor and Gondor, set the stage for many exciting events and stories within the novel.

3. Norms and Culture

Culture plays a big part in making a Meta Plot feels real. Norms would determine what sort of actions the PCs can do. Let’s take a game with intrigue, for example. It is apparent that a rival merchant house is responsible for the arson of a few of the PCs’ warehouse. Does norm allow the PCs to return the favour with torches and magefire? Or does the norms demand that the PCs get back via other methods?

Norms are ultimately set by people and people differs from places to places, cities to cities, world to world, so it is possible to come up with different type of approach in the same world just by modifying the culture and geographical location. Perhaps in one city duels on the street are the norm, while the other it is equally okay to get the assassin’s guild to “teach your target a good lesson”.

One of the biggest applications of norm to restrict character’s actions is once again…Nobilis. You are avatars, a god-human, yet because of these laws and custom, and not to offend your fellow god-like peers, you can’t do this and can’t do that. In Dragon Warriors, the culture is that if you don’t have a suzerain, you are just a landless vagabond.

Some games do get away without explictly defining norms and culture. This is usually because norms and culture, while adding details, do impose on the game to be played in a certain way.

4. Laws of the World

How does the world work? Let put physics and chemistry aside, as those can be hard to defined in-game (or much less change). But how does magic, the gods, supernatural powers, demons summoning and such work? Other “laws” to think about also the right to bear arms, how does one become a citizen of a country, what sort of common law of courtesy exists between gods and supernatural beings and so on.

In the Tales of Earthsea, magic works via true names and the principle of balance. You will need to know the true name of a living being in order to work magic on him/her/it. This is itself is a big story element in the novel. The other being that if you use magic to bring rain down on one region, you are causing another to suffer a drought. This has ramifications on the PCs’ actions and is also excellent for plot hooks.

Hopefully what I am typing make sense. To fill up a meta-plot, basically, try to strike for a theme. You can have more than one – unorganised chaos is a theme good for the usual hack and slash or sword and sorcery genre. History would help to come up with interesting characters, events that have repercussions that would affect your PCs now. Norms and culture could restrict what your PCs can do but at the same time helps to suspend disbelief.  Finally, adding a touch of “how things work in this game world or dungeon” grounds the player to the world.

On reading a RPG.Net thread about campagins which go downhill rapidly, one type that often surfaces is the “time-travel-with-characters-from-different-worlds”. The problem? Inconsistency and lack of a meta-plot. What is a Star Fleet officer doing in Victorian London with a werewolf? How are they supposed to behave in a world that is so chaotic? What are the norms? Can they just kill someone they don’t like because there is no police? If there is a police, how could they stand against phasers and werewolves? And if the police are actually clockwork robots

Hopefully, from this one can see the value of the Meta Plot and how things can quickly go south if it is not properly managed.

The line between using magic effectively or carelessly is something that I have been thinking about. On one hand, it is good to use magic to preserve the mystery of a setting and the Meta Plot, but it get tiring when it’s always evil sorcerers, unhinged druids, mentioned unspeakable horrors, infernal demons and unexplained psionic manifestations behind the scene. So for this week, the usual daily adventure hooks would have no magic as its explanation whatsoever. That also includes faerie creatures and monsters which have magical abilities.

Consistent Magic or Mysterious Mysticism?

One of the thing I have been pondering over why D&D and Dragon Warriors are different in term of magic and the supernatural is because in D&D magic is fleshed out entirely. Schools of magic, meta-magic feats, what can be done, what not and so on. It’s limiting at first, and I find all the explanations suffocating, but on thinking through it, some people do like it. Magic cannot be used carelessly. It is possible to build a challenge revolving around the schools of Magic in D&D (or just see the speculation of who actually saved V and O-chul in the latest Order of the Stick comic).

I can now understand why some people prefer magic to have rules and to be a closed system, rather than an open system where are lots of unknown. I guess it’s no a matter of “this way is better”. In Dragon Warriors, the school of Sorcery and Elementalism are not the only form of magic there is. There are faeries, not documented and not detailed, and what they can do is entirely up to the GM’s imagination. Those holes allow the GM to challenge the magic-using players.

Yet this could get annoying when the GM keeps springing up “this is a new form of ancient magic which you have never encounterd before”. I have been guility of that. So how to you retain mystery and but not carelessly? I like to think of magic, like cooking and other disciplines, have basic fundamental. Work out the fundamental of magic for your setting and let the players know, but allow for variants and differences for different cultures, different ages and so on. For example, a very good fundamental would be the classic Five Elements, or Ars Magica’s arts and forms. Using those as fundamentals, even when a magic user comes across a mysterious form of magic, he would have some clue to proceed. The clues could either grant specific formal bonuses (which you need rules for) or a bargaining chip for certain rolls (agreed between the player and the GM).

Though said, I am intrigue now by how D&D handles magic. The game is not my cup of tea, but having a ‘science of magic’ defined would help to remove the accusation that GMs and fantasy authors use magic as a crutch as an explanation for everything.

So to go on from where I have stopped on the meta-plot series, I am going to write down my thoughts on writing a meta-plot. Whether the result is good depends on the writer

1. Decide on the Level of the Meta Plot

No, no I am not talking about a Leve 20 Meta Plot or something of that type. Meta Plot exists on different scope and level. There’s no definite chart. but it might look something like this:

• Dungeon/Scenario : Why is the dungeon created? What are the limitations of the sandbox?
• Campaign : What factions are involved? What’s going on in the background? Why are things happening?
• World : Who created the world? What is the cause of so much problems? What’s going on in the world?
• Cosmos: Who/what created whatever/whoever created the world? What laws bind those forces?

2. Bottom up or top-down?

You could start with a world-specific meta-plot (“this fantasy world is acutally seeded by a high-tech worldship from a doomed star-faring civilisation”) and start let the original idea runs downward (“monsters are actually the native creatures of the planet”) and let it seed campagins (“lore-spheres from the worldship have been scattered all over and they contain incredible knowledge”) and specific scenarios (“a particular lore-sphere has been stolen and a mystic realises it contains a spell that could rip the world asunder! Recover it at all cost”).

I personally go with a top-down approach but sometimes you could think of something at a dungeon level and let it spread. Let’s take a simple example, say a fortified keep on a  hill. The purpose of the keep? Mm…let say it is to a trade hub for the evil races. The adventurers defeat the monsters there, conquer it and take home the plunder. According to the meta-plot for the dungeon, a few questions have to be asked:

1. If the keep is a trade hub, who are the trading partners?
2. Likewise, who is going to be upset that the hub is destroyed?
3. What are monster merchants like, anyway?

All these could be used to spawn more dungeons and perhaps, over time, explanations would have to be devised to explain those dungeons (“Why do monsters trade with each other instead of devouring each other? Because they all belong to the same god!”)

More to come….using customs, norms and law, as well as themes, to write your own meta plot.

Why a One Roll Combat?

The idea of one roll combats come from video games – the famous “reaction sequences” from God of War and its numerous clones as well as the Time Crisis arcade games. In those games, usually, out from nowhere, an enemy will launch at you or an event will demand your immediate attention. On the screen a button will flash and you have to hit it at the right timing to avert imminent doom. Resident Evil 4 uses this to good effort, with an entire fights played through by pressing a combination of right buttons.

An armed confrontation, in a RPG, is usually a time for thrill and action-packed roleplaying; but sometimes tactical rules could drag the process down and it becomes a number-crunching, planning-laden process. The motive of thinking up a one-roll combat is to have the thrill of combat without all the lengthy dice rolling.

When to use One Roll Combat?

One of the features of old-school dungeon crawls, and in console rpgs, are random encounters (or planned encounters for the the good old dungeon). The intent is to soften up the adventurers before they come to meet the final bad guy at the end. The idea of one roll combats is for those cases – not for epic, dramatic, pivotal showdowns (which are often slow-downs as well)  but for fighting mooks.

A lot of emphasis on one roll combat is more than just attribute + skill or a roll-under of certain sum of number – but also the use of environment, tactics and strategies to outsmart your opponent. While usually in a normal combat encounter the usage of those is broken into several rounds, for a one-roll combat system this is all abstracted in one quick roll (or several rolls, for each of the player).

Actually, another inspiration for this idea comes from Tunnels and Trolls, where everyone rolls their combat dice and adds and compare it with the monsters. No movement chart, no flanks or attacks of opportunities. Well, no formal rules, anyway. It is possible to use “saving rolls” for other effects, but there’s only GM’s fiat to work that out.

Likely Objections to ORC

Right, typing “One Roll Combat” is tiring my fingers out, so let use ORC as its shorten name instead. One of the biggest objections to ORC is that it takes out all the planning and the fun crunchy part of the game. It’s a valid one; however, ORC is not intended to replace all combat. It is a pacing tool, as one could see later.

A second challenge to ORC is what if it doesn’t incorporate all the nuances of combat? For example, if designing an ORC for D&D 3.5 and it doesn’t take into consideration iterative attacks, fighters may feel ‘nerfed’ when using the ORC system (or for D&D 4, the inability for fighters to mark targets for a long term advantage). For such reason, ironically ORC is good for medium rules heavy game instead of ultra-heavy ones – unless the players are all right with the inconsistency. One thing to stress though is that ORC is a pacing tool – it is  intended for “mook combat” , an alternative to “only 2 combat scenes per game” as fully ran combat could run up to an hour.

A Simple One Roll Combat System for Fate 3.0

To start off simple, let’s consider a ORC for Fate 3.0 (where ORC is the acronym for One Roll Combat). The SRD for Fate 3.0 is online and at any rate it is based on FUDGE. The concept is simple.

1. The mob is given a level, maybe Average (+1) or Good (+3). The GM will roll 4dF for the mob, add it to the it’s level and hide the result.
2. Each player has a chance to use one skill (and if they wish, tag an Aspect or two) in the fight. That skill represents their main thrust of strategy in the combat. A character who uses the Weapon skill is of course, engaging in combat. Another character may use Leadership in an attempt to coordinate the battle. One may use Stealth to try to stay hidden and cause distractions.
3. Players will roll their skill.
4. Each player compare his skill to what the GM has rolled. For each player, if he rolls lower than the mob, he takes a physical stress equal to the number of shift. If the player has rolled higher, the mob takes 1 point of damage. Keep track of the running damage.

For each point of damage taken by the mob, its quality drops by one level. Once it is reduced to mediocre (+0), the mob is dispersed or utterly destroyed. Hence, a mob of Fair quality (+2) upon taking 2 or more points of damage would not be of any threat. If this is too easy, consider this variant – for every point of damage equal to the number of players, the quality of the mob drop by 1. So for 4 characters, if there are 4 points of damage, the mob’s quality will go down by 1.

Only evaluate whether the mob’s threat is neutralised after giving resolving each roll of the player’s.

Of course, some skills would not be applicable during a a pitched battle (for example, Academics), so it’s the GM’s call whether a skill can be used. Depending on the nature of the enemy, certain skills may be penalised. A character going hand to hand with a bunch of gangsters wielding tommy guns may get a disadvantage via tagging of an aspect.

Doing an ORC fo Fate is simple, really. Let try something with medium crunch next – Dragon Warriors.

Meta Plots of Antiquity

It comes from a very old book which I read so I couldn’t really remember the title, but a lot of board games out there have meta-plots built into them. Chess has one – and a reading on the meanings of the pieces in both proto-chess, International Chess and Chinese Chess (and more besides) show that. There games where you are trying to get sheep together in one place, ascend to heaven and so on (here’s an interesting book on the subject).

Why a meta-plot for a board game? Maybe it gives a sense of purpose; it also gives some guidelines for design. Consider the rules for Chinese Chess:

• A cannon can only attack a piece if there is a piece between its target and itself
• The minister piece can not cross the river (as it has to take care of its country)
• The marshal (the ‘king’) cannot leave the palace

Where would one think of such rules if there isn’t a meta-plot? This has been discussed before for Don’t Rest your Head, Spirit of the Century, War of the Ring and Nobilis. So the firs purpose of the Meta Plot is to guide the game design.

How do play a game according to the Meta Plot

The Meta Plot does not just help the game designer; it also gives a frame of reference for the game player. Monopoly can be reduced to moving around a board where each location is marked from A to Z, and you have to give wooden cubes to the player owning the location. If he got triangles on that location, you have to give more cubes. If you run out of cubes, you lose.

But once you put in the Meta Plot of “you are a real estate developer who can owe plot of lands, buy buildings on them and you have to pay others if your piece land on their lands” – it does not only give the game some colour – it also set a context for them, giving them something to be fmailiar with. According to human-computer-interaction theory, when we come across something new, we usually try to understand it from our past references and experiences. If the game has a meta-plot that has some links to the player’s pre-conceptions, it would be easier for him to learn and enjoy it.

Back when the computer game designers are debating the issue of “plot and story” for games, many dismiss plots are just fluff, an excuse for violence, looting and blowing raspberries at the social norms of the days. Yet looking at what the meta-plot does for board games, I would say that we have a computer game industry because games have meta-plots inherently. And because of that meta-plot, we understand the game and put up with it.

What am I talking about? Let return to the day of the 1970s and 1980s, where computer graphics are mostly ASCII base and blockly sprites which doesn’t look like anything it is supposed to represent. Why do people put up with Space Invaders then? Because they know that they are shooting aliens. Who told them they are shooting aliens? The Meta Plot. In NetHack or Rogue, who on earth would be interested in find ! and $ scattered about what seems to be just nonsensical arrangement of | and _ and +? They are, because the Meta Plot tells them that they are an adventurer exploring a dungeon; the Meta Plot helps the player to stay put with all the unbearable madness of PC games back then (complicated keypresses, lack of GUI, using the keyboard for everything, graphics which does not look like anything it is supposed to be).

I do not know how accurate my opinions are for PC games, though. Feel free to discuss on this!

As for pen and paper roe-playing games, the meta-plot guides the player’s style of play and interaction. A game of Ars Magica and Dungeons and Dragons run differently and have different feel because of the Meta Plot. Both have powerful magic users. Both have the idea of a celestial, divine power. In Ars Magica, though, mages try to steer clear of the Divine because the angelic forces could crush any magus – in Dungeons and Dragons, that is not the case.

Ars Magica tells the magus players to steer clear of angering the Church. Dungeons and Dragons say mages and clerics are on the same playing field. Woe betide the player who thought he could march into a Church in Ars Magica because he can throw fireballs!

Hence the Meta Plot, as discussed before and in prior articles, gives the players what the setting expects of him, what can he do in the game and why he is someone noteworthy.

So the second purpose of the Meta Plot is to guide player’s decisions making.

Meta Plot and the Artefacts of the Game

By artefacts,  I do not mean “Ring of Protection +1″ or “Gauntlets of Giant Strength”. I am borrowing this term from management studies where artefacts is used to represent the physical manifestation of a group’s culture and norms (like how Google has gyms, rec rooms and swimming pools for its employees. Those are the artefacts of the company). Meta Plots also manifest itself in the tangible stuff of the game -for board games, it is the board design. For RPGs, the fonts and artwork used in the rule-books. For computer games, the themes of the artwork, its box cover and the poster used for the advertising campaign.

Needless to say, the Meta Plot provides the theme, the motifs and other clues for designers to pick up and incorporate it into their final product. A science-fiction game using gothic fonts in its rulebook may be problematic (not if the game is Warhammer 40K though -again, it fits because of the Meta Plot)

So the third purpose of the Meta Plot is to set design guidelines for the ‘tangible’ parts of the game.

Meta Plots should inspire more Plots

This is particulary for role-playing games and computer games with sandbox style of play (or which like to have lots of expansion packs).  The Meta Plot, for it to be use to the GM, must provide ideas for his own adventures. There are some Meta Plots which are choked full of details that the GM cannot even place a fictional city somewhere. Meta Plots which define everything and anything leave no room for mystery and no way to keep the players on their toes instead of throwing more and more powerful and over-the-top challenges. Some people do like that; but for me as a GM, I always prefer something that is loosely defined than something that has the weight of a thousand novels, splat books and spin-offs.

Not all meta plot restricts. Some just rumbles on…and on….and on. They are histories, deeds of heroes 10,000 years ago which has no bearing on the world now. They are not as bad as restrictive meta plots, though.

Some games’ meta-plot provides no hooks at all, or it relies on the genre to do so. This is fine, but things could get really derivative after a while.  Games that meta-plots with lot of hooks include Unknown Armies. Its ‘plot-hook-in-a-sentence’ is wonderful and it gives some much inspiration. In just one sentence! Other worth looking at includes Dragon Warriors, Spirit of the Century and Call of Cthulhu. The D20 edition of Call of Cthulhu has a short timeline of modern history and how the Great Old Ones fit in.

If you are doing a game, and your Meta Plot rambles on about the founding of this dynasty, that dynasty and a latter dynasty, with wars in heavens and all that, but offers no suggestions on how the GM can create a plot hook from it, then maybe it is good to introduce some mysteries into it or to find ways in which those events, even if they take place a dozen centuries ago, relevant now. Nobilis has tried very hard and true to the author’s credit, she has done a good job at giving GMs how to come up with adventures for an abstract, mindblowing game.

So the fourth purpose of the meta plot is to provide adventure hooks.

In Conclusion

These are just my opinions of course, but that I take an hour to write it down means that I sense that I am right This comes not just as a want-to-be designer, but also as a consumer. Of course, there are always exceptions, and as a standard disclaimer, not all games without a meta-plot sucks. If but your game does have one, it’s good to have a helpful one. If you are writing one, see if the meta-plot meets any of the purposes listed and if not perhaps you want to revisit it a little.

I hesitate to list out games which I think has bad meta-plot, just because I don’t want to raise up my flame shield. At any rate, I think this series is at an end (till I think of something about the meta-plot).

Now most core rulebooks would suggest that to roll dice only when necessary. However, this is not in the formal rules – it is like more of a rule of thumb. In Spirit of the Century,t hough the game is lighter than most, dice-rolling takes up most game-play time.  True, the Fudge dice roll will ensure that over a long period of time, you will get +0 most of the time but because a game usually involves less than a hundred rolls, you get unexpected results.

Then I played Nobilis. As a GM, I feel strangely…empowered…and at a loss. Last time, whenever the player tries to do something, I set a target number, or apply a penalty (depending whether it is roll and add, or roll-under) then you see the dice roll and decide whether it succeed. In Nobilis, you use miracles. But what happened when a player does not use any miracle at all and try to use social skills to resolve a situation? I was very tempted to make them roll dice – except that this being Nobilis, I didn’t bring any dice.

When it comes to a diceless games, things tend to be black and white – either your miracle (or points bidded) is enough to overcome the challenge, or not. But during the game, where the players are trying to use social means to resolve a problem, I feel it is unfair that I do not give them success, or even partial success, because they do not use any special powers. Plus, they put up a compelling argument. The spirit of the game of Nobilis, after all, is to avoid direct use of force and supernatural powers to get what you want. So I ruled in the party’s favour and have to drop a cinematic “powers unleashed” confrontation (though they did well, I grant them that).

With the dice, I could easily delegated that to random numbers. Part of the responsibility goes to the dice. Sure, GMing guidelines say the GM could ‘fudge’ dice rolls now and then, but that’s not the point. The dice also justifies. “You rolled too low dude, sorry, no game”. It helps the GM to make decisions. That I appreciate.

However, as mentioned upfront, dice-rolling can become a chore. So I would like games that have dice-rolling as an optional part of the game, used only in dramatic situation. Sure, Unknown Armies state that there is no need to roll most of the time, but somehow that doesn’t apply to conflict resolution (character vs. character), which makes up bulk of a game anyway.

So when thinking about Qitai, the characters being Wuxia characters and all that, it would also feel strange to make them roll dices for every actions. I am toying with something like Nobilis and still retain the Fate Points aspect of SoTC. Here is what I have in mind so far.

• If a player’s skill level is equal or higher than the challenge’s level, it is an automatic success.
• In case of automatic success, the player can still roll the Fudge dice for style or to get better results
• If the player’s skill level is lower than the challenge, he will have to spend Fate points to roll the dice. The only thing different is that it is a 4d+ – it is a 0,0,+1,+1,+1,+1 distribution.
• In a stress situation (conflicts), both side will roll the normal 4dF, though the player can still spend a Fate Point to roll 4d+
• The player can instead choose, while tagging an Aspect, to spend 1 Fate point for a +1, 3 Fate Points for a +2 and 6 Fate Points for a +3. Of course, for each +1 he needs to tag one Aspect (and the maximum Aspects he can tag is of course 3) – this is without the need to roll (a normal tag would still give a +2 bonus, but will require a roll)

Hopefully, this would reduce the number of dice rolls needed for the game (the spending of Fate Points to get a flat bonus is pretty much like Nobilis) and at the same time, when the GM needs guidance from the dice, he got it too.