The Mysterious Lever: August 2017

Friday, August 25, 2017

Weapon Damage Mathing

Big dreams of grandiose games are all well and good, but when it comes down to the pen on the paper, sometimes getting the exact details right is the hardest part. I've been struggling with a seemingly easy problem: balancing weapon damage.

The problem I have can be boiled down to normal vs heavy weapons (or one-handed vs two-handed), and how to make each of them a viable, fun, and unique option. Let's assuming the following:

  • Damage Dealt = (Weapon Damage + Character Stat - Enemy Armor) * Time
  • Time = 2 for normal, 1 for heavy (basically, normal attacks attack twice as much as heavy attacks)

Our unknown X variable then is Weapon Damage for each normal and heavy case. Condensed, this looks like:

Normal Damage = (Xn + St - Ar) * 2
Heavy Damage = (Xh + St - Ar) * 1

Let's balance that:

Xh + St - Ar = (Xn + St - Ar) * 2
Xh + St - Ar = 2*Xn + 2*St - 2*AR
Xh = 2*Xn + St - Ar

With just my gut balancing these numbers, I came up with Xn as 3 and Xh as 6, because in theory the stats and armor should cancel each other out (you apply stats twice with normal, but also armor twice, to heavy weapon's once and once). Therefor, weapon damage Xh should simply be twice as much as Xn because it takes twice as much time.

The few tricks here are that a 2 handed weapon dealing +3 damage means that with that extra time it will be bypassing some of the enemy armor more often than not, where two "normal" attacks will deal more damage to lightly armored opponents. This is shown by our equation that includes variables for St and Ar.

Let's plug some numbers in, and assume:
  • Character Stat = A number between 2 and 6
  • Enemy Armor = A number between 3 and 7
If we plug in the averages for those ranges, we get:

Xh = 2*Xn + 3 - 4
Xh = 2*Xn - 1

This is good, given our numbers that Ar will be on average slightly higher than St. If they would be the same, then the math would be a simple "heavy damage should be twice as much as normal" just as my gut told me. However, because we expect armor to be slightly more, we can now have numbers such as Xn = 3, and Xh = 5.

It all depends on St and Ar values. This is fun to me because that means characters that have low St will want to use heavier weapons. Those with high St lean towards lighter weapons. Then, against enemies with low armor, lighter weapons are more useful. But go against a tank that's armored head to toe, and you'll be missing your heavy weapon.

Interestingly, if armor is high enough, we could have ended up with an equation like Xh = 2*Xn -3. But, this means that given Xn = 3, Xh would also be 3! And if it was even larger, would heavy weapons have to be weaker?! On one hand this makes sense: attacking twice means you are encountering twice the armor. Here we've found our tipping point. When armor is so large that no attack would actually deal "positive" damage, we no longer have an interesting equation.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

GenCon 2017 Retrospective: Adventures

Cons are a great opportunity for GMs. Some get to try their craft on strangers, some get to run their homebrew creations, and some get to play! I finally got the chance to sit on the other side of the table this year, and I soaked it up. Playing in those games gave me another solid piece of evidence that adventures, not systems, are the most important piece of an RPG.

Adventures are what you'd call "customer facing" creations. They are what the players interface with. Adventures are the NPCs, setting, and character challenges all rolled into one. So when a system doesn't support those, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Swords & Wizardry, and OSR game, does it right, with mechanics that support adventures built to give that old school feel. I played a dungeon crawl that included scrambled key-word puzzles, mystical portal mirrors, and a haunting little girl controlling the madness that the PCs found ourselves in. The adventure was the main feature, as it should be. Without the dungeon-crawl adventure, it's easy to see how S&Ws itemized inventory and gamey combat can be a drag compared to more "modern" systems.

My game of Fantasy AGE, on the other hand, was a homebrew adventure run by the creator. On one hand, I have to give him props for running his own thing at GenCon. That takes guts, and overall he did well enough. However, it wasn't a very interestingly designed adventure, and the players spent a lot of time digging into deeper meanings when there weren't any to be had. We got to see the system well enough, but without a proper adventure its very hard to judge how fluid the system really was. In the end, we ended up skipping rules in an effort to move the adventure along, which was disappointing.

I also went to a variety of talks, with one about puzzles and one about villains being the most valuable. Both of these things are built into adventures: very few systems have actual mechanics for designing these. A good villain can drive an entire campaign, and a good puzzle gives the party an interesting challenge that isn't tactical combat.

This all is going to be doubly important for me in the next month as I prep for this year's GrandCon. I'm running Hostargo all weekend, and I don't want to stumble as I have before with an adventure that's half-baked!

GenCon 2017 Retrospective: Systems

I only got to play a few different RPGs at this years GenCon, but I need to take every change I get to view games from the players side of the table. Luckily, I got to cross of two new RPGs on my list: Swords & Wizardry (an OSR game) and Fantasy AGE (a 3d6 action-oriented RPG).

I'm a sucker for classics, so when OSR games promise the old-school dungeon crawl experience with none (or at lest much less) of the tedious rulesets, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. That feeling was almost fully realized during our S&W game. It's not a perfect ruleset by any means, but it had a few simple rules that aided in it's OSR feel.

First, the specifically itemized inventories meant that we had limited carrying capacity, but our packs were full with 10 foot poles, 50ft strands of rope, mirrors, torches, and all the other often forgotten but potentially interesting gear. These specific tools allow adventurers to poke and prod at a dungeon, exploring the finer details of traps and magical devices. This style of play is not for everyone; it's slow, and put pressure on the GM to be consistent in the physics of mystical nonsense. But, get the right group together (like those who sign up to play a S&W game at GenCon), and it can be a blast.

Second, S&W has a very unique initiative order for combat rounds. Instead of streamlining turns like most other games, with a simple back and forth between players and GM, S&W keeps the old-school feel of "rounds" by introducing a Magic Prep -> Ranged -> Melee -> Magic Cast order to combat. This allows spell casters to be interrupted and ranged attackers to shoot before being approached. This gives the game a OSR tactical feel without bogging things down in casting time and weapon "reach" rules. It was enjoyable, even with simple options like bow vs. sword.

Fantasy AGE, in comparison to OSR games, is a new and exciting beast. It totes sensible rules like the bell-curve 3d6, and exciting player agency in the form of "stunts". However, new beasts come with their own slew of new issues.

First, the bell curve I've found doesn't mean much to actual gameplay. It might make sense "in real life", but in short it made all rolls and numbers too familiar, and exiting highs and lows less probable. In addition, having to add up 3d6 each roll got tiresome. It's seconds difference, but I felt that I just wanted to use my brainpower elsewhere, on something more fun.

Second, stuns are something I really was excited for. Whenever the player rolls doubles, they get stunt points to spend on increasing the effects of their actions. They choose from a menu of options, and can pick multiple if they have enough points. Critical hits have always been a fun bonus, and special effects like extra status effects or movement have been normally part of special abilities in other games, so it seems like this is all well and good. However, each time doubles were rolled, it took time to decide what options to spend the points on, usually doubling the time a given turn would take. It was even worse when none of the options off the menu made sense for the given context, or simply weren't useful for the player. More often than not, players took the extra damage stunt, even if they could have done other things.

For Hostargo, it's good to play an OSR game and mentally note that its rules don't apply to the type of game I'm making. Fantasy AGE, on the other hand, I've borrowed ideas from, such as stunts. I need to keep in mind the speed of extra decisions, as well as making those decisions meaningful in most if not all situations. Fantasy AGE tried too hard - but it was a good try. I need to take the concept and work with it until I produce a more streamlined approach, just as S&W did with it's combat rounds.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Chasing Perfection in Character Advancement

Have you ever played a level 20 character in Dungeons & Dragons? In a real campaign? Advanced all the way from level 1? Games rarely last as long as RPG books would like us to believe, even those that start mid-way up the power ladder. So why do we get so excited to see god-like powers at the end of the line?

D&D 5e's "Archdruid" is a perfect example of an ability that I believe was specifically designed to get players excited about the druid classpath, regardless of what its effects on the game might actually be.

From level 1-19, the Druid can only shapeshift (gaining temporary HP) twice per short rest. At level 20, Archdruids can all of a sudden use their shapeshift ability infinitely.

It doesn't matter if this specific ability is imbalanced in some way, underpowered compared to other level 20 abilities, or overpowered to the point of god-hood. The Archdruid hooks players by promising them seemingly limitless power, and giving them an ultimate goal to achieve.

Once you've achieved ultimate greatness what then does a game become? In some MMORPGs, it's said the game doesn't even start until you are at max level. This allows you to beat the end-game content that is actually the ultimate goal of the game. In other games, such as Borderlands, you can specialize and race towards one of a few ultimate abilities. Once unlocked, you generally proceed to blast through the rest of said game without too much effort (if you didn't, was it really an "ultimate" ability?). For MMORPGs, it can be an unpleasant grind to get up to max level. In Borderlands, as soon as Brick can punch a boss to death, there's really no challenge in continuing.

Let's skip the grind. Hostargo has always been about horizontal advancement; it's about gaining character complexity and game options, rather than simple number increases. I want the game to start with a bang and be a fun ride all the way through... but without any sort of power creep, how can I keep players interested in continuous advancement? At some pointwhich could be from the very beginningthey've already gained the powers that they were interested in. I need to be careful not to have "Brick Syndrome" and just give players all the best toys up front.

I was going to have a grid of options, where different special abilities and different party roles intersected to form a unique way of playing the game. This might still be a good start, but spreading out in the grid isn't enough to drive player interest; they could just as soon make a brand new character to explore those abilities. Instead, I need an advancement tree, or at the very least an array of more complex character abilities that will get players excited.

It's a fine line to walk between interesting advancement and power creep. The game should be satisfying both at the table and away from it, where players enjoy character building. Achievement can be a great thing, so long as it's not the last step that leads to boredom.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Interacting with "The World"

We all strive to change the world around us. Sometimes, we sit down at a table and pretend we have more influence than we really do by interacting with an imaginary environment controlled only loosely by a set of agreeable rules. We want to see how, through our character's actions, we can change that made up world.

We play RPGs to find out what happens. That is why they almost always include some sort of random chance: fate is just another player in the world building sessions we indulge in. Fate is one way to make the world interesting. We use our actions, and those of fate, as an input to discover a world filled with mystery, intrigue, and adventure. The output of those actions, of course, is a world that has changed.


In Hostargo, I've put a heavy focus on how characters interact with the world. Their special abilities, roles, and even motivations are all driven by a need or want for change. This enables players to have a visible impact on the game world, rewarding them simply by the act of playing the game. The Cypher archetype, for example, interacts with the world through hacking cyberspace, enabling them to change the way physical machines work. The Socialite has a knack for manipulating the world's NPCs, instantly making the player feel power over those around them. For those with a more mystical side, the Daemon archetype gives the player power over light and the shadows it creates.

Hostargo stresses the need for interesting environments. Players want to use their abilities to shape the events, characters, and locations that surround them. Good adventure design is the key to a good game, and Hostargo aims to be the perfect toolbox for designing those adventures. Defining archetype abilities gives the GMs of Hostargo the ability to populate their adventures with environmental interaction opportunities. Once the environment is set, the rest is up to the players (including the ever-so-exciting fate)!

Characters interacting with the world around them is ultimately what every RPG is about. There are an infinite variety of flavors and styles of this input->output function, which is why there are so many RPGs. Hostargo is my flavor, and its archetypes are my style.