Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Cruel animal testing

The other day with my last post on actually setting up my own game got a lot of responses that seemed to find it complicated. That isn't really true. It's less complex then it sounds, there's just a lot of little pieces to it. And 3-5 large ones named your players.

The only thing I'd consider a challenge is the latter.

And even then, they're alright. In response to that post, the 'slowest' friend actually was quite motivated and I helped them make large swathes of progress with planning their character. So much so that we actually got a lot of testing for a very, very basic set up of a single character using all the rules against an enemy a few times.

It ended very... appropriately to the series that inspired it. On the third fight too. It was however a very interesting And reassuring.

The most controversial part of my game would definitely have to be the very harshly limited mana people have. Its the most bitched about thing among my players but I find it an intrinsically important aspect of setting up the world. So I have been deeply paranoid about it.

Complaints against it include such that it's a broken, horrible system if you can't always turn a profit with a fight with the main enemies that provide the way to get mana back, and that the sheer amount of things you have to pay for are cruel. (E.g. You'll pay a little with reactive use of a defense power in response to being attacked.)

The first I really want to be a point of the game. In a group you likely won't get a fair share. That's part of the harsh reality you're meant to overcome. (By friendship or violence.) When alone your chances are better, but in addition to the risk of death that comes with no support, you're the only target and need to burn more mana to win. The only real way to overcome that is gauge how little defense and offense you need, by holding back your full levels of ability you save little bits of mana, how miserly can you be (e.g. could the environment help kill?) or just overwhelmingly strong, so you need few attacks to put them down.

Anything less, being wasteful or of poor judgement should end in disaster. It need not be lethal, that's its own thing. I feel thats appropriate.

The test, largely a single character against forces, in one case obscenely powerful in comparison, in another case drawn out against multiple fairly weak gated enemies in small number and the last against a few strong enemies with a smidgin of tactics were all very revealing.

Each drained a large percentage of mana, causing only a very small profit of gainback from the kills. But then that might be a perfectly reasonable point for being alone. The risk of death I can only describe is deliciously accurate to what I want. The ability to escape exists but isn't a given, and on re-learning that the arbitrarily weaker minions are capable of lethal damage as well as nonlethal was very uplifting. Approaching death is both predictable enough to be fair, and erratic enough to still snatch people before a guaranteed escape.

To get back onto the first paragraph and the main subject of this, if people do actually have interest in tabletop games. They need not feel so afraid. Not every person nor game needs silly things like playtests, common sense and the typical book's suggestions are all you truly need. These help a game, but that's just like anything one does a lot vs. something one does casually as a hobby. It's practice for the future.

Try it and see.

Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Special edition report from the front lines

I've been sick, again, and thus missed my lesson at the suicide hotline yesterday. Fortunately it was an overview day that was only a couple hours, as opposed to 7 hours cram and practice. I suspect I did not miss much. I asked  the people in charge to contact me with the online component if anything important was missed, but they have not yet, so I'm hopeful that's the case.


Instead, large parts of yesterday that weren't wasted were spent trying to sort things out for my upcoming game. It's been quite a mess, as such a project tends to be, and given my recent posting on the subject, a few thoughts about it might be interesting.

Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Getting the game to start

To go alongside my older post, I think today especially highlights a few points to get out on this.

Last time I covered points to planning on making a game. This time we'll be figuring out how to use these materials on getting a game started. Next tiime, we'll get into keeping it going. It's harder then it sounds and this is probably the busiest stage, and it gets into my most favorite the single worst part of games as a major subject, so lets get into it and start with this horrible, horrible subject;

Do note, none of these steps necessarily come in any single order, they should be referred to roughly simultaneously.

Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Setting up the game

This is not my most formal of posts, as I can't say I've had exceptional experience with  Game mastering (Henceforth which shall be abbreviated to GMing.) My real life/meatspace games were typically very patched together and fell apart quickly. Online too, I had very little luck, until a few years ago when I started my old game I call "Cthulhutech in spaaaace", which lead me to getting my main source of gaming friends. I may know more about what not to do then to do as a result, and so a warning to people, all my advice may be entirely subjective.

But this is a subject I've been asked about and want to get into. This will be a long one, so I'm splitting it over at least a couple days, this post will be related to the preamble for getting a game going, Figuring out what you want and getting the materials to do it. Next up I plan on getting it set up to begin a game, and then possibly keeping it going once you have started in the last part.

The disclaimer out of the way, let's begin a magical journey.

Designing propper bosses in PnP RPGs

I should first mention, a good deal of this knowledge comes from my more experienced friend who has designed far more monsters made to fufil this roll, but I've been doing it a while and I'd like to think I know a few tricks too.

I should say, I've never really been a fan of the idea of 'bosses' as they tend to work out in either dungeon crawls or typical games, a big fellow lurking at the end of the dungeon who is arbitrarily a stronger, tougher foe. That seems uninteresting and often brings up questions for why they aren't guarding the front entrance personally. A lot of games have mechanics explicitly for this in enemies, and I try to avoid those systems.

What I do love is unique people that actually deserve either a position of having the power/resources to be a challenge. Singular monsters that come alone to mess things up, powerful pets, named, plotty important people. Its more appealing and at least a little more original. But I'm not a fan of running dungeon crawls, so that affects it too.

That's what I try to  go for but these tricks will work with both schools, but the latter is my primary focus.

•  Build them like a tank. A lot of games give multiple ways for people to defend themselves, these are easily broken down to they're either so fast they're hard to hit, or so tough a hit doesn't meaningfully hurt. These are both valid options for players, but a major enemy will often find itself outnumbered and surrounded. It needs to be able to endure multiple successful attacks, even if the attack needs to be very accurate, its a different game for a dodgey player avoiding one enemies attack and a dodgey boss avoiding four or five simultaneous attacks. Sheer luck will let enemies hit regularly, but without endurance, they'll be weakened far quicker. Conversely, if they're more resistant, they'll be hit more, but either lose so little health it won't matter for the time needed for them to provide the challenge, or they'll resist puny attacks, causing the players to need to expend resources to help, a bit of a challenge in itself.
• Give them a safety net. Some sort of way that lets them re-attempt a failed attack, avoid or reduce the impact of a particularly bad one, or heal up some damage. Its best if that's limited. The fight should end, but its nice to make a backup so that it doesn't just too quickly. Players, being the cruel and petty things they are, also enjoy removing the precious resources of their enemies.
• Mobility, this is more subjective to systems, but you want to ensure that every character can be reached, even if only difficultly. The ability to fly or shoot at flying ranged attackers. The ability to continue moving to chase down people that run. Players that learn they can exploit something because it can't get up to or catch up with them will take every opportunity to.
• When building or testing, if you can, aim for being just a tad over the line of too powerful. This is very hard to get right, and goes against initial common sense, but this ensures you'll have the closest you get to a desirable challenge. Not only that, players are like cornered animals. They'll scrape up every single little advantage they can get. This is fairly appropriate for important for challenging fights.
• Never be afraid to have the environment play a part in fights. Its often looked down on and considered a gimmick, but if its something thats telegraphed, everywhere or rare can be accepted, and if it's  very manipulable environment during a fight, especially if with a little effort players can turn it against their enemies or use it for their own advantage they will often absolutely adore it. Players using something that isn't just their ability to devastating effect is probably one of the single most memorable things they'll come away from games with.

I'm sure there's more tips, but this is the largest points I can think of for right now. If you can think of any other ideas, please mention them!

Finishing up strong

I hate days where I have to go out for things like appointments. Like any some sort of misanthrope-hikikomori thing I get less and less able to be comfortable outside for long periods of time. I spent all of yesterday bouncing around waiting till the end of the day, getting nearly nothing done physically. I try and work on this by going out daily for short times but it only seems to get worse faster then it gets better.

It does give me time to think though, and it gives me lots of time to think though, and with both my friends and myself finishing up long running tabletop games and video games, this has been on my mind for the last few weeks, and is a common area of screwing up in games of all kinds.I find it a very common theme that the end of a game things just... fall apart. As the deadline looms, patience wanes, the budget shrinks, the audience locks in on things you don't want them to know, or get too annoying or any combinations of these will cause a game will lose quality rapidly. Actually this often applies to movies, TV shows and other things. You need to rush things and dump information. Remind people of things they should know. Challenge them. Its a mess and its easy to make mistakes. Or forget to bug test. I'm looking at you Obsidian Entertainment.

Unfortunately, its also the worst place to make mistakes. Its what people will remember you best for. The last things that happened and how it all comes to a close, not the humble beginnings no matter how glorious they were at the time, nor dramatic scenes in the middle. It's simply how we're wired. To that end as a person on the internet I offer my uneducated advice to all creators of things out there:

Just as planned

I've been waiting a while for this one. Just a casual look at my anime collection and on seeing both Death note and Code Geass taking up large parts of it, I'm a fan of the just as planned type of move. A big one. This is no secret as elements have come out in several games of mine. What's a secret about it is normally the how.

Yesterday, in one of the final sessions for my current game (not including at least one more combat will (hopefully) take) I finally got to reveal the major one, revealing that an NPC the players have been around for a long time is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and oh boy how fun this has been~

Complicated systems

Ahh, I'm finally 'officially' running the end game, wherein lies points of no return and such for my game. It was a busy one today, and some weird things came up.

Nothing else has also reminded me of how I feel about Cthulhutech in a long while.

I certainly like the system, its complex set of rolls make the game feel dynamic. It gives it a very anime feel, where even without skill, a little luck can turn an attack into something massive, skill only adds to it. It really adds a lot when not only are you in a fight with some sort of lovecraftian tentacled monsters, either in a mech or in a fleshy monster suit, and it can suddenly turn around on you and leave you very wounded, or go in your favour ripping it apart like something from Evangelion mechanically.

But boy oh boy, rolling six attacks, then six dodges, then six armour checks, then a tenacity check for each of the six attacks that did damage, then a duration for how long the poison lasts every time it works as just one action among many, on top of doing this for combat of all sorts, such a lovely mess.

Mutants and masterminds is certainly just as complex at times, especially with certain plans of mine, but oh boy. A single save or two a turn, combined with only the very occasional defensive rolls, will be such a load off of my mind.

A friend of mine just did a post detailing a recent test, and while we discovered a few issues we're gonna have to work on for my upcoming game, but even in spite of that, simply rolling attack, receiving toughness, then adding trip? Childsplay to me. Adding all manner of other negative effects are just a little more of this. D20 has issues but complex rolls in my opinion aren't one of them.

Another good thing about a new game, hopefully, a fresh start for players and gameplay. One of the funnier things today, having to talk one of the players being very stupidly stubborn into spending a limited but easily enough regained resource to avoid something that'd possibly kill them due to a massive roll. They have a tendency to be stupidly stubborn on these things. Or maybe they were just suicidal, who knows.

In the mess, I offered to even make a secret deal to forgo damage to help me with plot a bit. Then proceeded to get into around an hour long discussion basically about how I'm awful for offering such. Seemed valid to me at the time, I want more then one player dealing with the last game session or two and saving the world and all that nonsense. It'd probably cancel the game, that'd mean a LOT of wasted effort. Maybe I shouldn't have offered such, and normally wouldn't, but circumstances got to me. Still, of all the things to complain about. Mercies like that are rare things, especially from me.

I guess I can only hope that thy won't bitch so much when it doesn't come up with the upcoming sessions, or my next game, I've shown my players this before and happily will again, where sudden and unceremonious death will be not just happen, but likely be standard, because with its circumstances I know I'll always have room for another Player Character to fit in.

Finding a balence, crippling and empowering.

I've been so slow with this blog lately. I'm going to try and kick it back into gear. I have no excuse right now, being on internet with a bandwidth limit doesn't give many other options for things to do anyway.

I've been hard at work though. Within the next two weeks, I'm hoping, I will finally be finishing up the very long campaign I've been running. Trying to figure out how to get things going. I can only hope I'll get something climactic enough once it's done.

And once I'm finally finished with it, I'll be free of the Cthulhutech system, at blood last. It had its problems, but I tend to love it for them, but after running two very long campaigns, an attempted third and playing in another, I won't be touching it again until I hear a very appealing concept.

....Instead with my new game, I'm jumping into Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition, a game in which two of MY friends are finishing up long running campaigns soon. Maybe when its over, if these plans don't ruin all my friendships I'll have finally thought up ideas for a more original system to offer my friends.