When What You Say is Judged by the Whole World

Recently I have joined StackOverflow, a site dedicated to programming. There you have a reputation score. Any question and answer you post can be voted up or down. If your answer is voted up as useful, you get a plus to your reputation. Moreso if your answer is accepted; likewise, if your question is up-voted, you get reputation. As your reputation grows, you gain admin access, ability to edit, introduce your own tags and so on.

Suddenly looking through list of unanswered questions, or popping in to help out a newbie, becomes addictive. I suppose this is a trait for some role-playing gamers – advancement, seeing increment in points and reaping in achievements. Then one day I take a step back and examine my action. Why isn’t there social reward in pen and paper role-playing games?

Why I Prefer a +3 Sword  over being a Nobleman

Say what you like, when it comes down to pen and paper games, the main conflict is still combat. Magic, stealth, physical brute force and anything else that can bring down the enemy fast is more important than anything else. Some games recently, such as Weapons of the Gods, the new A Song of Ice and Fire and Artesia, introduces the concept of social rank. For other games, however, being a nobleman means nothing when in the 9th level of the Dungeon of Doom.

While I have my own views on what a social conflict should be like in a pen and paper game, it is understanding why social rewards in current role-playing games is still in its infancy. You need to come up with rules for it. Like it or not, formal rules always give assurance, proves to the player that it is worthwhile the trouble and explicitly states how being the Captain of the Guards help when you need to hunt down cultists in a shadowy forest (even in Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 2nd, vague rules are given for leadership, and nothing is touched on what you gain if you become a noble).

Of course, there is always GM’s fiat, but that is an informal contract. Some gamers (many indeed) don’t like that, if the threads on the social aspects of Exalted on RPG.NET is anything to go by.

Yes, I like to Mention Fate Again

Fate 3.0 has the Aspect mechanics, and recently it has found its way into a number of upcoming games. Aspects are modifiers that you can tap into for extra help in times of need and they could represent anything from being a princess to having strength that rivals Hercules.

As Spirit of the Century (which uses Fate 3.0) starts the character as pulp fiction heroes, there is little room for advancement in stats and skills. However, there is Aspects. One of the forum posters at RPG.NET makes the suggestion of allowing a group of victorious heroes to put their own Aspects into the world. Suddenly, “Noble prize winner” is an attractive thing to get. You need funding to build your next prototype aircraft? Tap into that aspect and say that your reputation precedes you. You are the “Captain of the Guards”. Well, next time you need to intimidate some goons at a tavern, that’s a handy aspect to tap into, either to awe them by your authority or to psyche yourself by thinking of them as raw recurits.

Really Formal Social Achievements

However, Fate 3.0 walks the line of GM fiat and formal rules. Some people have issues with that. After all, whether an Aspect could do what you want is up to the GM to decide.  For players accustomed to D20 and other high-crunch games where rules are formalised, something more concrete is needed.

Of course, this would mean that social conflict is another form of viable conflict for the game. The players must be assured that while they are climbing the social ladder, not all their games would take place in the dark depths where being allies with the Guild of the Alchemists means nothing.

(In Fate 3, if you have the Aspect “Ally of the Alchemists”, you can try to use it in a situation, say to naturalise a poison, by saying “Well I am an ally of the Alchemists; so they taught me something about this sort of stuff”. Of course, this requires a Fate Point and the GM to allow the player to do it).

Resolving this problem is going to be lengthy. For OGL D20, the GM may introduces ad hoc feats. “Hero of the Middlelands” feat, for example, may  grant the character +2 to Diplomacy and Information Gathering in the correct region. The “Guard Captain” feat give a bonus to Intimidation and the like. Perhaps GM-designed feats could help. I am looking forward to what other ways this could be done.

Social Conflicts and its Nature

Pen and paper RPGs tends to be personal. One to one combat, spell duels, confronting a devious trap and navigating a dungeon. However, social conflicts are more than just debates, persuasion and bribery. I believe if we enlarge the scope of social conflict, social status becomes more important. I would like to explore this part more in detail.

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.

I certainty do agree that D&D 4E is onto something with its universal “skill block” for its abilities, even though I personally think it is more suited for MMORPGs and computer games. (Can’t wait for Bioware or Obsidian to come up with Neverwinter Nights 3 with it! I think it’ll be awesome). However, I also sense that it would take away lot of spontaneity for my game.

Fate 3.0′s Aspects are all-purpose ‘properties’ which definition is meaning up to the GM and the group. However, sometimes when attempting to create interesting items with just Aspects, I run into a need for a more specific version of Aspects. First, all the Aspects in Fate 3.0 have the same effect. Second, you could narrow down the scope but it’s usually something between the players and GM, not concrete.

I tried to come up with various ways to give scope and magnitude to Aspects. Here’s the earliest example:

Causes Less Damage (Fact, -1, Physical Damage), Petrifying Curse (Uncommon, +3 vs. Aura, Debuff)

This comes from the weapon Dreadwood Spike. It is supposed to do less damage but has a chance to turn its victim to stone. The first thing I’ve tried to do is to come up with a frequency for Aspects. Usually, in Fate 3.0, you spend Fate Points to tag an enemy’s or your own Aspect (if it is relevant) for a re-roll or a straight +2 bonus (which is quite hefty considering the curve of the Fudge roll).

One the things I have trouble with Aspects and Fate 3.0 is that there are certain properties which holds true all the time. For example, a blade which is super-sharp, an arrow which never missed once fired and so on. Why should the player spend Fate Points for something that is a fact? However, by defining something as a Fact I run into some troubles. For a given item, there could be lots of other facts. Do I have to list them down?

In the end, I decide to just have a Damage skill (or stat) for weapons. It’s up to GM to interpret what does that skill means. For example, a weapon with damage +1 is average. So what’s average? It depends on the world and setting.

However I would still like to retain different magnitude and scope of Aspects. Here’s the chart I come up with

Adding a Fact which just require 0 Fate Points to tag feels kind of nonsensical at this point.  Another difficulty is that I do not wish all Aspects to bestow a +2 all the time. So I came up with three tiers of Aspects. In the end, I did add in an Always but I rarely used it. Should it be there? At this point I have no idea yet. The thing with Aspects it they are only important when the situation demands it, hence the spending of a Fate Point. I believe I may use Always for an Aspect that is always a weakness, or its first tag is free and after that it becomes a Frequent Aspect.

One of the thing that I am still considering to tweak is this is not the usual Fudge ladder. I could have use the Fudge ladder to describe the Aspects, such as Average, Good and Superb – but I feel that the terms Minor, Significant and Major gives a different feel. In the end, I drop the Magnitude terms all together, and just tag a number to the end of the Aspect.

Another issue is when do the aspect apply. For example, the Dreadwood Spike puts a Petrifying Curse on its victim if he fails on an Aura roll (think of it as the spell resistance skill for Fate Fantasy) against +3. However, as times go by and I try to putting out magical items using this syntax, something dawns on me.

Aspects are “properties” of an object, not its “function”. In an object-oriented programming parallel, Aspects are the properties of a character, an item or a scene. Using that parallel, then what is the function (or method) of the class? Skills

As such, I simplify the “syntax” used to describe Aspects (from the Skysplitter Axe)

Lethality: +2, Breaks through Magical Barrier (Frequent Significant), Long Reach, Heavy

At this point I still haven’t settle for using “Damage” to describe damage, but stick to Lethality (hey it sounds cooler then). Also note the removal that instead of using number, I have returned to using the descriptors (“Significant”, instead of +2). Honestly, I was just playing around to see which format is the best.

I think I finally settle on a format which I like when trying to come up with the Winter’s Fang

Aspects: Long Reach, Piercing, Winter’s Fury
Skills: Icy Blast +3 (form: projectile, function: direct damage, affinity: ice)

An Aspect, if not defined with a magnitude and frequency tags, is always assumed to be a Common Significant (or Common +2).  At this point, I stumble upon an idea of defining the various abilities of enchanted items (and perhaps for Fate 3.0 stunts as well). The template is form, function and affinity. Form is a general description of how the ability is manifested, function is what it does, and affinity is just a “tag” of sort to give reader an idea what elements or concept is related with the effects of the skill. I could easily define a poison spray this way:

Skill: Poison Spray (form: spray [1 zone], function: poisons, affinity: snake venom)

I still have no idea how solid this idea is and would be able to hold up to the different tasks I have in mind. However, Ican see a light at the end of the tunnel…

Wound Boxes

Ordinary characters have no wound boxes – upon a hit, they will take a consquence immediately or are taken out. Your character’s levels in Toughness, Might and Atheltics will determine the amount of Wound Boxes you have. For every 2 levels in any of those skill, you will get one wound. However, you can’t get more than 4 wound boxes this way. For every 4th wound box and above, you will need an Aspect to describe your capability to withstand damage, such as “Giant size” or “Durant”.

Damage

Instead of giving a damage rating for all weapons possible, try using this simple system. A weapon that is sharp will give a +1 damage; large weapons which require two hands to wield grant another +1 damage and heavy weapons get another +1. A typical longsword would have +2 damage for being sharp and heavy.  The GM is free to add more modifiers to it – for example, a super-sharp mono-filament sword may have +2 sharpness.

If you strike in combat, you do damage equal to the weapon’s damage rating multiplied by the amount of shifts you have gained. If you generate spin, you may also add an aspect. Depending on the damage, it is either sticky or non-sticky. It is sticky if you manage to cause a roll-up on the wounds track otherwise, it is temporary.

Taking this out for a spin, a longsword with +2 damage with a shift of +2 will do +4 damage, which is enough to take down most characters with a blow. Aspects and Fate Points can be invoked by the defender to reduce the amount of damage taken (-2 for each Aspect invoked).

For firearms, the damage is equal to the roll (not number of shifts, but you must generate at least 1 shift) multipied by the number of shifts. If you manage to generate a spin, you increase your shift by 1. Guns can do deadly damage in this case, but for each type of guns, there’s a maximum damage. For example, a revolver may only have Damage +3 – no matter what your roll is, you will never do more than +3 damage.

Armour

Damage goes to armour first, then to the wounds; so wearing a suit of armour is like having a few more wound boxes. However, certain weapons with the Piercing skill directly ignores armour – the level of the piercing skill determine the amount of piercing damage done which is not absorbed by armour, and is equal to the level of piercing skill multiplied by the number of shifts obtained.

Usually, padded armour gives 1 additional wound box, chain mail gives 2, plate gives 4 and full plates gives 6. It is recommended, though, that characters have a relevant Aspect for being able to wear armour from plate onwards. In Fate Fantasy, there is an Armour Training skill which determine the heaviest type of armour that one can wear.

The wound box given by Armour are put in front of the existing wound boxes which the character. Hence, a character with Toughness 2 wearing padded armour will have 2 wound boxes.

For firefight, the armour would be simple Kevlar chest-plate, full combat suit and so on. Those are generally more effective against bullets than close combat weapons though.

This article discusses ways in which aspects can be easily placed in Fate 3.0 during a conflict, making them the central theme of combat and fierce debates instead of high skills and good dice rolls.

Placing Aspects on Close Call

If a named character’s attack fail to connect, consider placing a fragile aspect on the target instead of just letting it pass. A close call could be both sides having the same roll or narrowly missing by a range of 1. As usual, the GM’s judgement call is used to consider if the Aspect being placed is suitable. Examples would include:

• “Even though my enemy manages to block my blow with a shield, my powerful blow knocks him staggered” (Aspect: Staggered)
• “My hail of machine-gun fire may have missed them all, but they are going to drop the idea of flanking” (Aspect: Flanking them won’t work!)
• “Accusing him of murdering his own brother may not have non-nonplussed him at all, but I am not so sure about the audience!” (Aspect: The Audience Doubts Him)

Close Call Attacks against Minions

A group of minion not commanded by a named character gets an fragile aspect whenever there is a close call, and the range is increased to 2 (so if the group’s roll vs. your roll is 2 or less, you get to place the aspect).

Spin on Maneuvers

The original Spirit of the Century rules allow that on a spin during a Manuever, the Aspect becomes sticky. However, it doesn’t make sense that a maneuver which has such dire consequences have no practical impact at all. For example, a martial art master may use his Brawling skill for a maneuver, maybe “I trip him down so that he is off balanced” and achieved a spin of 3+ – so perhaps the opponent’s ankle is sprained or otherwise his movement is hampered; but such a feat should incur some physical stress at least!

The easiest way to rule this is to change allow the Manuever to inflict stess equal to the roll minus  3 (down to a minimum of 1). A more drastic way, for a deadlier game, is for one round the whammied character is considered to have all his stress boxes failed.

Other use of Spins include allowing the character to make one free action against his target, if you like to have a more cinematic game.

Fate Fantasy is a modification to Fate 3.0 for a fantasy-based setting.

The PDFs below are a rules modification for Fate 3.0 (the rule-set behind Spirit of the New Century – from Evil Hat Productions). These rules are more suitable for a sword and sorcery style of game. Currently, they are still pretty raw, unformatted but functional. There has been a single play-test and tweaks are still being made to it.

You are free to download those rules and play around with them!

Fate Fantasy: Skills (479)
Fate Fantasy: Talents (Stunts) (392)
Fate Fantasy: Combat Rules (471)
Fate Fantasy: Magic (468)
Fate Fantasy: Character Sheet (372)