The Evil Ones

Back in 1980, Dragon magazine presented an Anti-Palidin. These guys were stereotypical black hat NPCs. The logic behind them was a Palidin pledged themselves to a dark god. The problem with the article was it presented a way to generate an Anti-Palidin. The same idea was repeated a year later with the Drow in Fiend Folio, character stats for monsters. 

The message was "These aren't exactly monsters, they are more like characters." 

People are going to generate evil characters for a lot of reasons. Giving them a tool to do so isn't always a great idea, but the genie is out of the bag. Having evil characters in the party is problematic. How can the party hold together if half the party is trying to kill the other half? 

I never exactly had this issue for a couple of reasons. I would allow mixed-alignment characters in the party. That is the players' problem to sort out. I have found that player characters tend to moderate themselves in a party. Somehow, people find an accord: 

"Out of the goodness of my heart, and 1,000 gold pieces, I can heal you."

"For a dirty thief, you keep good friends."  

The alignment system in D&D is wonky. It doesn't really mean anything. Good player characters can do bad things and evil player characters can do good things in the right circumstances. There aren't any consequences for being good... or evil. If you want to switch, there are even rules for changing alignment that in my opinion, suck. They are geared to a particular campaign in the mind of the author of the books. They don't make sense in every setting. 

I DO have a problem with inherently evil races in D&D and it's a problem you'd never expect. 

I do voices for NPCs. This creates memorable characters, monsters, and scenarios. The downside is it also conveys tone and information that might be a mismatch for players expectations:

Kobold: "I am going to cut your boots off and wear your feet like boots!" 

10th level Paladin: "Snicker. Just you? Or both of you?" 

Kobolds: "Shit." 

Obviously, 2 Kobolds mean nothing to a 10th-level party. Against first-level characters, they represent some sort of threat, but not for battle-hardened characters. This is villain decay large writ. It is inevitable.

In some respects, using voices and tone gives my campaigns a fairytale-like vibe. What was once fearsome has become childish. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc. all become not threatening no matter how evil they are. Yes, you can give them some punch by cranking up the number appearing, but that has nothing to do with evil. 1,000 rats, yaks, or kobolds are dangerous to anyone. Plus rats and yaks aren't evil regardless of their numbers. 

Once the player characters hit a certain level, things like "evil" become nuanced. One example is my character, Magarven. He is a Drow PC adapted to be an NPC. He is clearly evil, but he's also an excellent dinner companion. He (probably) won't try to kill you. But he is still evil. He is gunned up like crazy, but the thought of killing isn't the first thing on his mind. 

The same thing happens to the thieves' guild that harrassed the characters at a low level. Compared to a world-ending lich, exactly how evil are they in comparison? They represent a different threat that has nothing to do with what kind of evil they are.  

I think there is an impetus to conflate evil with competence or ability. There are a lot of evil things out there that simply can't be enacted because they are not well thought out. Selfish people sabotage themselves all the time. Sure, he is a go-getter, but what the heck is he go-getting? 

Why do I let "the evil races" like kobolds not behave evilly? Why do I let players play them? 

Really it is a combination of the fairytale aspect of my gaming plus I can't really force the players or the monsters to behave a certain way, despite labels. Honor is nuanced, just because someone does something "good" doesn't mean they are out for the betterment of others. 

The Great and Power Sauron once said, "Don't kill the hobbits! Bring them to me." 

Guess what? Orcs, goblins, and every other minion of his didn't try to kill the hobbits too often. Nice of them, isn't it? No. They are all still evil, no matter how much food and drink they provide Frodo and Sam.

Evil to me means someone isn't honoring the social compact and bonds between living creatures, but it doesn't mean blindly doing so. There is also a component of self-delusion, the idea that doing evil becomes normal and the actor honestly believes that it is totally normal to do evil things. They are going to say they aren't evil at every opportunity. That is yet another violation of the social compact, although this one is oddly internalized. Add in the fact that if the villain sucks at their life and you get a bit of comedy or tragedy. 

That is good storytelling without ramming the PC's into drawing your conclusions or messages. One player might find it funny, a second finds it tragic and the third simply wants to throw dice and fists and sees no problem with whatever these villains are doing so long as justice prevails. The DM has offered a situation to be considered without forcing a particular point of view. 

The same goes for good characters. Are Palidins expected to heal downed enemies because that is what they would do to be kind? Maybe, but probably not. The players may or may not think of it or have another response based on the situation. 

Brainless creatures are much easier to play as straight-up evil. Everyone gets that you shouldn't talk to zombies or skeletons. It's all about agency and the undead have none, but your average creature does have agency. 

If there is an Assassin and a Paladin in the party, and one is good and one is evil, what of it? The players have to decide what to do. It makes no difference if I say Half-Orc and Kobold. The players are in control of their actions, just as much as I am in control of the NPCs and monsters. If I decide to do something engaging and the players decide they don't want to fight, then maybe we have Tea with the Black Dragon. 

Which is a classic, BTW. 

Good Gothic Fun - Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night of This Cold Winter Review

Title: Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night of This Cold Winter
Publisher: Cone of Negative Energy
Author: Cecil Howe
Editor: Shasta Howe
Year: 2016
Pages: 53+ pages
Rating: 5 of 5 stars

I hope my publication date is wrong, I would hate to think I missed this lovely mini-game for 8 years. It makes me feel like I've been living under a rock in a secluded village in the middle of winter. 

No, wait. This is the premise of the game. 

Your characters arrive and are trapped in a secluded village. Being adventurers, they quickly rise to the level of decision-makers. The rules assume you play some sort of fantasy setting, probably a low-magic setting. 

You can transform your basic characters from D&D into the characters needed for this set with a quick chat with your players. Is your character a fighter, thief, or a magic user? Let the players know fighters provide firewood (fuel), thieves provide food, and magic users medicine. It's ok to get characters cross-type like a ranger counting as a magic user to make medicine or a cleric as a fighter because they do woodcraft. All you need to sort characters into the three types and be clear that these choices can't change during the game.  

Once you take off the sorting hat, you are ready to go with this resource management mini-game by setting up the village. The book or PDF comes with a map base and dozens of excellent pieces of artwork to create your village. The artwork alone is probably worth purchasing just to have as a resource for other games. It is very nice. 

Each village consists of a building per adventurer plus a storehouse. Each building houses 5 villagers and the storehouse contains resources. Place the pieces on the map and you are ready to go. 

With only 3 resources to manage the game mechanics are a snap. You roll 2d6 or 1d3 all game long, then make choices. It is surprising how complex a simple mechanic set can be. 

The number of turns determines how difficult the game will be. 

Each turn is broken down into steps: 

1. Count the dead, and determine the weather. Weather is your main antagonist. Like many games, this entry point is skipped on the first turn. 
2. Ration your supplies. Characters move supplies from the storehouse to the individual buildings: fuel, food, and medicine. You will need to use 1-3 fuel units per building, per turn. Everyone requires food. Sick villagers can be healed with medicine. Again skip this on the first turn. 
   *You have one hidden resource. Livestock can be converted to food. 
3. Gather supplies. In each turn, characters can gather one of the 3 main resources. Your character type determines what sort of bonus you receive to collect these resources. 
4. Occurrences. These are random positive and negative effects. 
5. Illness. Between 1-3 villagers will become sick per turn. 
6. Consolidation. If too many villagers die, you can consulate buildings. This reduces the amount of fuel units you need per turn. 

Winning is survival. The number of turns you play determines the difficulty of the game. Chapter 4 includes many ideas to change the difficulty and intensity of the game. 

Seeded throughout the book is descriptive text for the game master to read. This is just as good as the artwork and is excellent for those who don't like to improvise lines. I love the tone of these sections of text. With very little adaption they fit perfectly with the presentation of the game to new characters. The short duration of the game plus the copious amount of text and rule changes from Chapter Four allows for several games before players start hearing the same thing. 

The combination of simplistic yet integrated rules and great artwork for constructing villages gives this game some serious replayability. If you reskin food to water, cold for heat, etc. you could plug this into almost any scenario like a desert. 

You can pick this up at DriveThruRPG in either hardcover or PDF. 

I Think Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Taught Me To Play D&D e5

I am having a failure to campaign. I wanted to do a Star Wars campaign, but my potential players spotted the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game on my shelf and dove into a rabbit hole of Super Heroes. I wanted to playtest some ideas for my module POP-001 Reverants of Revenants of the Lost Temple but got sidetracked by prototyping a new RPG. Add in the new laser, the tablesaw, and the 3d printer and I am at a loss for what to do first or now. 

So back to basics. I am going to review the games I have acquired over the last year to 18 months. I just need to pick a good one to start on. 

To get this game design bug out of my head, I want to talk about the Marvel game. 

Marvel... it is inescapable right now. We have a couple of movies and TV shows coming out at the same time that the company is kicking out all kinds of new comic books. That's a mighty big rabbit hole to live in. When my kids and friends saw the Marvel RPG, instead of playing the game we ended up watching 3 movies while digging through a box of comics and perusing the rules. 

Friends, I have wasted a day. 

I'll review the Marvel rules eventually, but I THINK I understand what changed between my D&D of the 1970s and 1980s and e5 thanks to this Marvel ruleset. 

The social purpose changed. As a historian, I like this concept. In history, historical people wanted to focus on the ills of the world, but could not effectively mesh the current massive problem with underlying social issues which were also occurring. It usually results in half measures and more problems. The idea the gaming changed on the social side is neat. 

D&D started as a tactical game; it evolved from wargaming. I have X guys and you have Y guys, let's throw some dice to see what happens. Ok? 

D&D adds special abilities and roleplay to a tabletop game, which changes that random dice dynamic. Individuals become heroes, it is important for them to have a past, present, and future and now we have Player Characters.   

When I think of a classic movie, it will be from the 40s, 50s, or 60s. Many of these were big-budget affairs that depicted massive set-piece battles but also had an undercurrent where a gang of scrappy heroes would be the solution. Or they were low-budget and had to have a gang of oddball heroes to compete with big-budget movie spectaculars. This humanized the story and was a satisfying use of characters. Nobody saw the oddball scrappies coming.  

It doesn't even have to be a war movie. Flight of the Phoenix is a movie about people literally building a plane in flight. Just like war movies, it elevates individual characters to heroes or solution-maker status.

Even though there were far fewer character choices in OD&D, Basic D&D, and e1, not all of the rules were harmonized in the mechanics. Because the mechanics were often unique to the class or monster, it was hard for the DM to determine if a scenario was a real challenge. Add in wily player characters, and really strange things happen. This mirrors the movies of the day. No one saw the ending coming and DMs didn't try to adapt to the players. They just rolled with whatever happened because as long as the players were willing to play, there were always new bad guys and challenges.   

Today, if you ask someone about a "classic movie", the answers are very different. It's Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, Kill Bill, The Usual Suspects, etc. 

What is different about these films from older classics? Usually, the viewer has awareness of the heroes from the get-go and the bad guy has the advantage of knowing the heroes just as well as the viewer while the heroes are unaware of their opposites' goals. 

Back in the day, D&D didn't have a Session 0. The DM designed his campaign or story in a vacuum and the players subvert this by building the plane in flight. Session 0 was a vague idea when the DM told the players about the world their characters lived in as they rolled up characters, but it occurred at the same time as Session 1. The players are adapting to the DM's world, without the DM thinking about what the characters were all about. Sure there were minor questions to be answered, but those were usually no big deal: 

"Sure you can be a paladin, an assassin, or a cleric! Any class you like is available."
"Yes, you can have full-plate armor, everyone does. It's all the rage, you are cool."
"You want a pseudo-dragon as a familiar? Awesome!" 

It was almost unseemly for the DM to try to negate a character's abilities by reshaping the previously written materials. Yeah, we have all played those games where clerics can't heal, paladins are evil, or wizards are hampered by widespread anti-magic. Those results are really horrible and DM's usually learn not to do those things. 

An excellent modern movie that depicts this idea is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The DM created a scenario in a vacuum and has no idea that zero players have thieving characters. The antagonists think they know what is going on, but usually, they are wrong. The PC's subvert expectations, just like classic D&D. The link above is a post all about the idea where the PC's subvert the basic tenets of the scenario. 

It's great! Everything goes sideways for the DM because they have to cope with the fact zero people are conforming to their original idea. The plane is going down. That is ok because everyone is out there working on the wings. 

In Star Wars and in the MCU, the bad guys know exactly who the heroes are. The author/DM is now creating a checklist of tasks that are measured against the known. The prevalence of Session 0 is almost universal. The harmonized mechanics of D&D e5 make it so simple for the DM to swap out specific antagonists or scenarios to counter the heroes in a way that makes sense... at least in terms of what the DM desires. 

I personally don't like this tactic, but I see the appeal. It makes the game more superhero-like or like a video game while avoiding the trope of simply taking away the hero's abilities, tools, and gear. It is almost fair and just barely dodges railroading. Anything is preferable to taking stuff from the players or railroading, but I dislike this option of plug-and-play gaming. But I understand it.  

I think this is where the idea of DM as a storyteller became overpowering and all-consuming. It's like you are playing against the DM, which is not fun. I have always been a storytelling DM. I create a unique world for the players. BUT I am not "storytelling" in a way to prevent or pervert the player's intentions and goals. There is a difference. 

For example, pawnshops are just as common in my world as magic item shops. New players may not have thought they could find such a thing, but I am not making them shop there. They just know. Horses are also common, the players won't have trouble obtaining one but they don't have to do it. I will tell the players if they are in a kingdom or a republic or something else, which changes a lot of the dynamics of society. I will also let them know if there is a town guard, a marketplace, a city hall, a bank, and whatnot and populate them appropriately. This is the storytelling I do for them. It makes them react if they so choose, it doesn't force them to make specific choices or force them to be something.  

I think I understand e5 better now. What do you think? 

Game Scale - Down the Rabbit Hole - Part 1

As mentioned last time, I am prototyping a science fiction game. 

Before I get to the fun of developing characters and equipment, I like to think about scales. Usually, the first scale I like to work with is "How big is it?" I have always hated the D&D weight and encumbrance scale but in certain ways it makes sense. 

A gold coin is heavy, this is sort of appealing from a DM's point of view. "How big?" is connected to "How much money?". It's not perfect but it does make sense. 

Since I am doing Sci-Fi, I want to leverage SI units. So meters and kilograms are usually what the players encounter. I don't have to come up with my own units. Made-up units nearly always sound silly. How much damage can the words like "Parsec" or "Cubits" do?

Don't answer that.  

The rabbit is out of the
hole.

In thinking about this, I wanted to go down the economic rabbit hole first. It was surprisingly, easy but also comes with its own problems: 

1. Cost doesn't equate to size or weight. 
2. What do I call space money? 
3. Space money sucks as a name. 
4. Will I use creeping capitals: "Space Money" vs. "space money"? 
5. What color is it?  

I decided to name the unit of money "Credits". It is a classic and doesn't suck like "Space Money". Credits are used to buy average, daily stuff. A loaf of bread, a bullet, a comb are all right around one credit each. 

Players won't want any of that, they want lasers, robots, aircars, fighters, and spaceships. One of the wacky things with letting characters have all of these things is that the scale rapidly gets into the millions or even billions of Space mone... er, credits. I hate math that gets out of control.  

The first issue I need to address is that credits are "shiney". It's sort of a color. (There is a whole different rabbit hole about most cultures not wanting to call the sky "blue", but "bright" or "shiny", like bronze. Feel free to climb into that rabbit hole on your own time. Here is a link to get you started.) 

Next, we need a scale to prevent players from yanking their hair out jumping from "How do I buy lunch?" to "How do I buy a spaceship?". 

SI units to the rescue. Will just use credits, kilo credits, mega credits (starting to sound silly..._ giga credits (somehow less silly), and so on:

• Credits (Cr) = Base unit
• Kilo Credits (kCr) = 1,000 Cr
• Mega Credits (MCr) = 1,000,000 Cr (1 million)
• Giga Credits (GCr) = 1,000,000,000 Cr (1 billion)
• Tera Credits (TCr) = 1,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 trillion)
• Peta Credits (PCr) = 1,000,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 quadrillion)

I haven't used AI chats to create content, but I decided to be lazy today and leverage it. ChatGPT did the chart above so I didn't have to do math. Even better, I didn't even sanity-check it. I have no one to blame but my lazy ass self. 

Anyway, I asked GTP Chat to compare that scale to a couple of different real things. A 60,000,000 credit vehicle is best measured in mega credits: 60 mcr. A space shuttle is 1.7 gcr. A motorcycle is 12 kcr. 

This chart gives a base of credits and 5 different scaling factors. That isn't much more difficult than D&D's copper, electrum, silver, gold, and platinum conversions. That will allow me to use 6 different colored tokens to scale things. Yes, I am ignoring that I need 1000 of one colored token to get to the next step in the scale. 

The nice bit about this scale is it is based on reality. The GDP of planet Earth is around 0.1 pcr. We aren't at most science fiction levels of technology so we don't produce a whole peta credit worth of stuff in a year. 

There is a time component to asking how long it takes to build a spaceship without starving everyone on the planet. You can build the Deathstar, but it takes a couple of years or more. This is why they aren't left sitting on a used spaceship lot but the Serenity is available at your local used spaceship lot. 

This time component is nice and I want to reuse this concept in my next post about combat scale. This is another headache for sci-fi: "What happens when a spaceship snipes individuals on the ground?" This will be my next post. 

The bad part is I thought I would be talking "game scale" like distances and weights, and this doesn't do it. A million-dollar diamond ring and a million-dollar airplane are wildly different sizes. An acre of desert could be less than an acre of farmland. A bag of feathers and a bag of lead are wildly different to lift. Nothing matches or scales nicely. I'll have to work on that bit. 

Anyway, thank you for climbing into this rabbit hole with me. I plan on having a whole series of posts as I develop this game. 

Prototyping and Fun

Back in 2021, I reviewed Atlas Game's The White Box Set. This is the handiest game set I've ever owned. The primary part is a 100+ book of essays that every game producer needs to read. It is loaded with a lot of research, details, and facts. I love it for that alone. 

The bits and bobs are perfect for role-playing and board games, even if you are not a content producer. They are so useful, I have five sets. 

Each box comes with:

3 counter sheets with 71 pre-printed and 49 blank counters,

150 small wooden cubes in 6 colors,

36 wooden meeples in 6 colors, 

6 large cubes in 6 colors, 

12 1d6 dice, again in 6 colors, 

110 bingo disks in 8 colors, 

Several clear bags for storage, 

102 page book of essays. 

These little bits and bobs are perfect for resource management in RPGS, replacing lost pieces from board games like dice, highlighting areas on maps without marking them up, etc. You have so many options. 

It's extremely useful. 

But now I have 5 copies of the same book. Well, 4 of those will be going up on my Ko-Fi store. I'll let you know when I have that done. I am on-call this week making a bad time for monitoring orders. 

If you must have this book now, I suggest the Atlas Game store as it's on clearance for $22.00 for the whole set. 

If you need it faster than physical shipping would allow, I suggest DriveThru RPG. Driverthu has two different products: a PDF and an Audiobook. 

Each of these products are LESS than the 10 bucks I plan to sell used copies on Ko-Fi. I want to see what sort of costs are associated with selling physical goods on Ko-Fi. Esty is a non-starter due to the terms and fees. The $10 dollar price point is to make the math easy. These books will be clearly marked with a warning that you are helping me with an order and there are better options out there.