One thing that comes up in a lot of combat rules analysis (especially for GURPS) is what I think of as "the myth of the featureless plain."
You probably know what I'm thinking.
Two combatants.
No surprise.
No prior damage or exhaustion.
No allies.
No time limit.
Unlimited room to retreat.
No lighting penalties.
No bad footing.
No level/height differences.
No walls.
No terrain, really.
Just a big, wide open hex mat on white paper that extends forever in all directions.
It's on this battlefield many hypothetical situations fight it out. The Reach 2 guy who you can never close with. The close combat fighter who can never grapple anyone. The shield guy you can't flank. The Counterattack or Riposte or Arm Lock specialist who auto-kills you if you attack and has a single super move that you can't counter. The DX monster you can't touch or the ST monster you can't hold on to. Dodge Man who avoids all attacks with ease. Defensive Grip dude who takes his +1 because the penalty for a flank defense never comes up, because you can't get to his flank.
You know, your completely atypical battlefield.
I call it a myth because you have to really work to make that happen in a game.
In most campaigns, this doesn't happen. It's rare to get a truly unmodified skill roll in circumstances where nothing outside of you and your opponent can affect the next few seconds. It's possible, but it's rare.
Even in a duel, you won't get this. No walls? No edge of the dueling arena? No cheating? No outside interference?
It doesn't happen even in structured environments. Grappling matches re-set you to the middle if you go off the edge of the mat. Fighters get separated and re-started if they go too far or do too little. This kind of thing happens - cage fights have cages, so you can circle but a clever fighter can box you in. Tournaments have fighting areas. Duels have an agreed upon ground and features in an around that.
Never mind actual melees. You know, with multiple combatants and unfair setups and situations where Arm Lock dude really doesn't want to grapple you because he needs his Parry against the next guy. Or where Counterattack dude leaves you alone because he's got problems elsewhere. Or back shots, or bad footing from blood and sand and dead bodies, and random missiles that thump you from a flank because your friend made his Dodge and the arrow kept on going into you instead.
This is why I often gripe about the one-on-one featureless plain basis of analysis. It's not a bad way to start your analysis of a rule, but it's not the end of it. A lot of the uber-tactics of the featureless plain are just foolishly suicidal in a melee, or might be merely risky. What might work great one-on-one on a featureless plain isn't as effective in bad lighting, on bad footing, when you're tired and wounded from the fight just before. High-cost tactics (Extra Effort in Combat, say) might not cost anything in a short fight but cost greatly if you don't get to rest before more folks come. There are costs and benefits that might not be apparent in just this circumstance.
Not every fight takes place in Nogard. Few, in fact, do. And if your game features more featureless plains than dark, dingy places with uneven footing and mismatched fights, you might want to consider looking at B402 for inspiration, just for a start. In my own games, a fight without some basic penalties is a pretty rare thing, and the more cramped spaces, terrain issues, and "don't step there!" hexes I can manage, the better. Battles are rarely fought in ideal circumstances for either combatant. So mix it up - and see how things work when everything is less than ideal.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Game Inspiration: Dueling with Shark-toothed Clubs
Over on National Geographic, there is a nice little description of duelling with shark-tooted clubs.
Check it out - scroll down to "
"Armed to the Teeth."
"The main bodies of the weapons were made of wood, and shark teeth were painstakingly sewn along their edges using thread made from coconut fiber and human hair. Because the islanders had no metal, they used spiral snail shells to bore holes in the teeth before sewing them to the weapons.
[. . .]
Often in these battles, two "champions" would fight in a central skirmish. The champions "were dressed in this really cool armor made of very tightly woven coconut cords, and they had tiger shark 'brass knuckles' and helmets made out of dried pufferfish with spikes on them," Drew said."
Pretty fun stuff, eh?
How would you represent this kind of weaponry in GURPS? Easily. The Polynesian shark-toothed club, the tebutje, is in Low-Tech on page 62. Spoiler - it's treated as a bone macuahuitl, which is also in there. Both are shark ridge-like edged material studding a club.
The spears? Bone-tipped barbed long spears or pikes will do the trick. The bone and long spear bits are in Low-Tech, barbed is easily added using the options in LTC2.
The multi-shafted clubs? Just increase the cost and weight of the tebutje. It won't do much to make it a better weapon, though, but it might increase you chances of hitting (say, by reducing Dodge by 1) but it would also be easier to parry (+1) and probably a bit difficult to use (-2 for a top-heavy weapon). You could add +1 damage for the extra weight, if you're so inclined. Most crazy weapons are like that - look cool, but the added doodads make them less handy and less effective even if they're more intimidating looking.
The armor? Easily treated as cane armor or horn armor (also in Low-Tech, this time on page 106). The helmet is trickier, but treating it as spiked cane isn't a bad option.
The rules? Simple - follow the ones in the article, make sure you use the rules for shooting into close combat (for the thrown clubs), prime up on the rules for long weapons reaching over allies, and let people Sacrificial Parry all over the place. And use the Tournament rules to pace it out, because in this kind of match you'd expect a fair amount of clash-and-stop and probably some rules for when it ends.
I know from experience, it can be real fun to throw a ritual duel like this at PCs, since they're likely to be more badass than the local champion, but much less well prepared to fight with the unusual weapons. It because badassitude vs. experience. If they haven't seen this kind of thing before, a quick look at the First Encounter With a New Way to Die box on Low-Tech page 60 will help here too.
Check it out - scroll down to "
"Armed to the Teeth."
"The main bodies of the weapons were made of wood, and shark teeth were painstakingly sewn along their edges using thread made from coconut fiber and human hair. Because the islanders had no metal, they used spiral snail shells to bore holes in the teeth before sewing them to the weapons.
[. . .]
Often in these battles, two "champions" would fight in a central skirmish. The champions "were dressed in this really cool armor made of very tightly woven coconut cords, and they had tiger shark 'brass knuckles' and helmets made out of dried pufferfish with spikes on them," Drew said."
Pretty fun stuff, eh?
How would you represent this kind of weaponry in GURPS? Easily. The Polynesian shark-toothed club, the tebutje, is in Low-Tech on page 62. Spoiler - it's treated as a bone macuahuitl, which is also in there. Both are shark ridge-like edged material studding a club.
The spears? Bone-tipped barbed long spears or pikes will do the trick. The bone and long spear bits are in Low-Tech, barbed is easily added using the options in LTC2.
The multi-shafted clubs? Just increase the cost and weight of the tebutje. It won't do much to make it a better weapon, though, but it might increase you chances of hitting (say, by reducing Dodge by 1) but it would also be easier to parry (+1) and probably a bit difficult to use (-2 for a top-heavy weapon). You could add +1 damage for the extra weight, if you're so inclined. Most crazy weapons are like that - look cool, but the added doodads make them less handy and less effective even if they're more intimidating looking.
The armor? Easily treated as cane armor or horn armor (also in Low-Tech, this time on page 106). The helmet is trickier, but treating it as spiked cane isn't a bad option.
The rules? Simple - follow the ones in the article, make sure you use the rules for shooting into close combat (for the thrown clubs), prime up on the rules for long weapons reaching over allies, and let people Sacrificial Parry all over the place. And use the Tournament rules to pace it out, because in this kind of match you'd expect a fair amount of clash-and-stop and probably some rules for when it ends.
I know from experience, it can be real fun to throw a ritual duel like this at PCs, since they're likely to be more badass than the local champion, but much less well prepared to fight with the unusual weapons. It because badassitude vs. experience. If they haven't seen this kind of thing before, a quick look at the First Encounter With a New Way to Die box on Low-Tech page 60 will help here too.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Musings on pricing the Shield Wall Training Perk
This spawned from a Google+ discussion. The original poster put up a funny image (an old one, but still a good one) and we rules guys turned it into a discussion of rules and pricing of Shield Wall Training. I had a few thoughts, as usual.
Shield Wall Training - what's it give you?
It provides two benefits.
1) You can Block for someone adjacent to you on your shield side.
2) You can attack while wielding a Large shield without the usual -2 to hit.
If you've got a Large shield, it's a really great deal. You net a +1 DB over a Medium shield (albeit for a lot of additional weight), and you don't suffer a -2 to attack with your weapon hand. Hurrah!
Even if you don't have a Large shield, it's still useful if you have a pretty good block and a friend you want to protect. If you want to protect people behind you, you need another perk (Sacrificial Block, which is in DF15).
But still, a pretty good deal at 1 point. Should it be more? Well, let's try to price it as a Technique.
First, what's it give you?
You can Block for another person, if they're next to you. That's pretty narrow but it's still something other people can't do. So that's -1 to the default.
You negate the -2 to attack while holding a Large shield. This is tricky to price - Shield is the skill you use, but it's not a -2 to shield, it's a -2 to attack with that skill or another. It's hard to buy off a blanket penalty to an open-ended set of skills with one technique. If you look at Cavalry Training, for example, you buy off the penalty for striking from horseback, but you don't buy it off overall but by weapon.
Of course, some people will read this and think, okay, you should have to buy off the -2 by each weapon, and it should be expensive. Which is fair enough, but it will be expensive, and apply only in a very narrow set of circumstances (you're holding a Large shield).
Second, how do we price it?
The question here is, do you price it as buying off -2 of penalty? Tough, because the TDS assumes the penalty is always on if you try the technique - Kicking defaults at -2, and your price for it is based on that -2. A Large shield gives you a -2, but others give -0. Shields come in 4 basic sizes (Light, Small, Medium, Large) and give penalties of -0/-0/-0/-2 for an average of -0.5, rounded up to -1.
So worst case, where you assume that -2 is so important that you need to charge as much as possible, Shield Wall Training defaults to (Weapon Skill)-3, it's Average (it's an offensive technique, and merely expands who you can defend), and it costs 3 points to buy off.
Better case, using the average, it's -2, it's still an Average Technique, and costs 2 points to buy off.
Best case, you figure that -0.5 average isn't very important at all (affects only some of the uses of the technique) and it's a base -1, and costs 1 point to buy off.
All of those would be per melee weapon skill. So using a Large Shield without penalties is going to cost a lot. A medium shield costs you 1 point of DB but will save you a lot of points.
You can also choose to break off the skill penalty from the blocking for others. If so, you could push all "Block for others" into one perk, Sacrificial Block (from DF15, mentioned above) and put all of the "buy off the -2" into separate Techniques for all weapon skills. That would be expensive (2 points per skill) but it would make it easier to price out.
Personally, I just don't think you get enough for it. GURPS prices getting rid of the -4 for off-hand use at 5 points for all skills, 1 point for each skill. This costs more for less benefit, done this way. Now Shield Wall Training is valuable. It's a good deal a 1 point. But so are a lot of perks (Grip Mastery, anyone? Naval Training, when you fight on ships all day? Teamwork? Exotic Weapon Training?). The thing about perks is they should be a good deal. They should be pretty damn useful for people within the narrow range of utility they have. They're a good tool for dealing with odd cases and edge cases (like your shield training affected other offensive skills), minor rules exemptions, and other "doesn't quite fit" issues you want to deal with.
They don't all need to be equally valuable, just valuable to the character who acts in the manner covered by the perk.
My thoughts on the pricing-as-a-Technique approach.
Shield Wall Training - what's it give you?
It provides two benefits.
1) You can Block for someone adjacent to you on your shield side.
2) You can attack while wielding a Large shield without the usual -2 to hit.
If you've got a Large shield, it's a really great deal. You net a +1 DB over a Medium shield (albeit for a lot of additional weight), and you don't suffer a -2 to attack with your weapon hand. Hurrah!
Even if you don't have a Large shield, it's still useful if you have a pretty good block and a friend you want to protect. If you want to protect people behind you, you need another perk (Sacrificial Block, which is in DF15).
But still, a pretty good deal at 1 point. Should it be more? Well, let's try to price it as a Technique.
First, what's it give you?
You can Block for another person, if they're next to you. That's pretty narrow but it's still something other people can't do. So that's -1 to the default.
You negate the -2 to attack while holding a Large shield. This is tricky to price - Shield is the skill you use, but it's not a -2 to shield, it's a -2 to attack with that skill or another. It's hard to buy off a blanket penalty to an open-ended set of skills with one technique. If you look at Cavalry Training, for example, you buy off the penalty for striking from horseback, but you don't buy it off overall but by weapon.
Of course, some people will read this and think, okay, you should have to buy off the -2 by each weapon, and it should be expensive. Which is fair enough, but it will be expensive, and apply only in a very narrow set of circumstances (you're holding a Large shield).
Second, how do we price it?
The question here is, do you price it as buying off -2 of penalty? Tough, because the TDS assumes the penalty is always on if you try the technique - Kicking defaults at -2, and your price for it is based on that -2. A Large shield gives you a -2, but others give -0. Shields come in 4 basic sizes (Light, Small, Medium, Large) and give penalties of -0/-0/-0/-2 for an average of -0.5, rounded up to -1.
So worst case, where you assume that -2 is so important that you need to charge as much as possible, Shield Wall Training defaults to (Weapon Skill)-3, it's Average (it's an offensive technique, and merely expands who you can defend), and it costs 3 points to buy off.
Better case, using the average, it's -2, it's still an Average Technique, and costs 2 points to buy off.
Best case, you figure that -0.5 average isn't very important at all (affects only some of the uses of the technique) and it's a base -1, and costs 1 point to buy off.
All of those would be per melee weapon skill. So using a Large Shield without penalties is going to cost a lot. A medium shield costs you 1 point of DB but will save you a lot of points.
You can also choose to break off the skill penalty from the blocking for others. If so, you could push all "Block for others" into one perk, Sacrificial Block (from DF15, mentioned above) and put all of the "buy off the -2" into separate Techniques for all weapon skills. That would be expensive (2 points per skill) but it would make it easier to price out.
Personally, I just don't think you get enough for it. GURPS prices getting rid of the -4 for off-hand use at 5 points for all skills, 1 point for each skill. This costs more for less benefit, done this way. Now Shield Wall Training is valuable. It's a good deal a 1 point. But so are a lot of perks (Grip Mastery, anyone? Naval Training, when you fight on ships all day? Teamwork? Exotic Weapon Training?). The thing about perks is they should be a good deal. They should be pretty damn useful for people within the narrow range of utility they have. They're a good tool for dealing with odd cases and edge cases (like your shield training affected other offensive skills), minor rules exemptions, and other "doesn't quite fit" issues you want to deal with.
They don't all need to be equally valuable, just valuable to the character who acts in the manner covered by the perk.
My thoughts on the pricing-as-a-Technique approach.
Monday, April 1, 2013
I'd Play or Run B/X D&D
"Quiet Fools! The Dungeon Master has arrived!" - Tom Servo
No, this isn't an April Fool's joke, despite the date. I'm just looking back at Basic/Expert set D&D and why I'd actually jump in on a game of it. Assuming I had free time for another game, which is a joke. Springtime is busy time for me.
Jeffro's brief discussions of running X1 prompted me to pull out (one of*) my copies of X1 and re-read it. Then I started in on Expert Set.
One thing I like about B/X, and about the Expert Set in particular, is how clean and simple the rules presentation is. There aren't a lot of special cases. The explanations are clear, the layout makes it easy to find things, and there isn't a whole lot of extraneous discussion, High Gygaxian waxing about The Game or The Mighty Master. It's purely how-to-do-it, with quick asides where the DM's decision needs to cover a situation.
The stat rules are simple, too - +1 to +3, not a lot of cases where one class benefits from one thing but not another, or people will eleventeen languages, or percentile strength to make the gap between 18 and 19 a huge one. Not only that but everything 13 and up gives a bonus, so you don't need ultra-high stats like in AD&D to matter (ST 15 on 3d6? Wow! Worth close to nothing in AD&D, sorry, next time roll better.)
Not only that, but the assumptions are spelled out well - everyone can climb, Thieves can climb sheer walls. Everyone can swim unless you rule otherwise. Everyone can build a stronghold at the same level. Alignment is simple and oriented on broad strokes of action (group oriented vs. selfish vs. actively destructive). And so on. There are plenty of figured examples, too, for folks who just want buy a freaking castle and not design every 10' square of it by hand, or who aren't sure what a good campaign area should look like.
In a way, it reminds me of GURPS - the rules complexity is a bit lower than GURPS, but it really sounds like "take these and go do stuff with it" rather than "take these and do them in a particular way." It's not a prescription to play but a solid set of baseline rules that cover 90% of what you need and has enough to let the GM know how to consistently make up the other 10%. I feel like I know what was intended by the rules and how to just go with it without violating that intention.
It doesn't need a lot of house rules, either, not obviously so. Maybe just a few - I think the Thief really needs d6 hit points to survive. I'd consider using the Advanced Edition Companion's rules for race split from class if people bothered me enough about it. And I'd dump the Tarantella spider (the joke wore thin by the time I was 10, nevermind now). Maybe another to deal with weapon choice and two weapon use.**
But otherwise it's clearly a pretty good rules set. Too bad they marketed it so heavily as the kiddie intro to D&D.
Now I'm not saying I'm going to stop playing GURPS, or that I'm planning on running a B/X game. I think I'd quickly get to the point where I wanted a lot of what GURPS offers in my game. But as long as both the players and I were willing to take it all lightly, play it as written to see what happens, and just go with it, I think it would be fun. That really goes for all games, but it's a case of not wanting to play B/X with people who want it to be GURPS or AD&D or white-box D&D or anything else. Just, let's play this thing as see how it goes. I'd certainly play in it (as a fighter, I'm not a fan of not-fighters when I play games.) It still has a lot of the pull that D&D did back in the day when I first read it.
Good stuff. And much respect to the retro-clones, but man, the original B/X is just cooler to me. I'm glad it's back in print and people like Jeffro are out there running it.
* I didn't throw out my D&D stuff, and I inherited a couple collections. So I have 2-3 copies of X1, Basic, Expert, and other adventures. Some are in terrible condition, some aren't, but I've got them. Don't hate on me for not having a family that chucked my stuff, okay?
** One rule I thought of while reading the Holmes translation notes:
Two-Handed Weapons give +1 to AC, but you strike last in the round (and then in initiative order, if there are multiple wielders). Dual weapon attacks are fine - anyone can do them, and you get to attack normally with both weapons on the same target (fighters can split targets). Shields give +1 to AC as well (and magical ones would give more.) You'd get a nice spread this way - two-handed weapons give some protection and high damage, but act last. Shields let you act quickly but give you a defensive bonus. And two-weapon attacks give you more damage, potentially, but you're losing a lot of AC. On the face of it, it seems like it gives you a lot of real choices - a mix of offense and defense, a mix of offense and defense that trades off speed for damage, and pure offense.
Obviously this would go with the rules for differentiated damage by weapon type.
No, this isn't an April Fool's joke, despite the date. I'm just looking back at Basic/Expert set D&D and why I'd actually jump in on a game of it. Assuming I had free time for another game, which is a joke. Springtime is busy time for me.
Jeffro's brief discussions of running X1 prompted me to pull out (one of*) my copies of X1 and re-read it. Then I started in on Expert Set.
One thing I like about B/X, and about the Expert Set in particular, is how clean and simple the rules presentation is. There aren't a lot of special cases. The explanations are clear, the layout makes it easy to find things, and there isn't a whole lot of extraneous discussion, High Gygaxian waxing about The Game or The Mighty Master. It's purely how-to-do-it, with quick asides where the DM's decision needs to cover a situation.
The stat rules are simple, too - +1 to +3, not a lot of cases where one class benefits from one thing but not another, or people will eleventeen languages, or percentile strength to make the gap between 18 and 19 a huge one. Not only that but everything 13 and up gives a bonus, so you don't need ultra-high stats like in AD&D to matter (ST 15 on 3d6? Wow! Worth close to nothing in AD&D, sorry, next time roll better.)
Not only that, but the assumptions are spelled out well - everyone can climb, Thieves can climb sheer walls. Everyone can swim unless you rule otherwise. Everyone can build a stronghold at the same level. Alignment is simple and oriented on broad strokes of action (group oriented vs. selfish vs. actively destructive). And so on. There are plenty of figured examples, too, for folks who just want buy a freaking castle and not design every 10' square of it by hand, or who aren't sure what a good campaign area should look like.
In a way, it reminds me of GURPS - the rules complexity is a bit lower than GURPS, but it really sounds like "take these and go do stuff with it" rather than "take these and do them in a particular way." It's not a prescription to play but a solid set of baseline rules that cover 90% of what you need and has enough to let the GM know how to consistently make up the other 10%. I feel like I know what was intended by the rules and how to just go with it without violating that intention.
It doesn't need a lot of house rules, either, not obviously so. Maybe just a few - I think the Thief really needs d6 hit points to survive. I'd consider using the Advanced Edition Companion's rules for race split from class if people bothered me enough about it. And I'd dump the Tarantella spider (the joke wore thin by the time I was 10, nevermind now). Maybe another to deal with weapon choice and two weapon use.**
But otherwise it's clearly a pretty good rules set. Too bad they marketed it so heavily as the kiddie intro to D&D.
Now I'm not saying I'm going to stop playing GURPS, or that I'm planning on running a B/X game. I think I'd quickly get to the point where I wanted a lot of what GURPS offers in my game. But as long as both the players and I were willing to take it all lightly, play it as written to see what happens, and just go with it, I think it would be fun. That really goes for all games, but it's a case of not wanting to play B/X with people who want it to be GURPS or AD&D or white-box D&D or anything else. Just, let's play this thing as see how it goes. I'd certainly play in it (as a fighter, I'm not a fan of not-fighters when I play games.) It still has a lot of the pull that D&D did back in the day when I first read it.
Good stuff. And much respect to the retro-clones, but man, the original B/X is just cooler to me. I'm glad it's back in print and people like Jeffro are out there running it.
* I didn't throw out my D&D stuff, and I inherited a couple collections. So I have 2-3 copies of X1, Basic, Expert, and other adventures. Some are in terrible condition, some aren't, but I've got them. Don't hate on me for not having a family that chucked my stuff, okay?
** One rule I thought of while reading the Holmes translation notes:
Two-Handed Weapons give +1 to AC, but you strike last in the round (and then in initiative order, if there are multiple wielders). Dual weapon attacks are fine - anyone can do them, and you get to attack normally with both weapons on the same target (fighters can split targets). Shields give +1 to AC as well (and magical ones would give more.) You'd get a nice spread this way - two-handed weapons give some protection and high damage, but act last. Shields let you act quickly but give you a defensive bonus. And two-weapon attacks give you more damage, potentially, but you're losing a lot of AC. On the face of it, it seems like it gives you a lot of real choices - a mix of offense and defense, a mix of offense and defense that trades off speed for damage, and pure offense.
Obviously this would go with the rules for differentiated damage by weapon type.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Ruined City Adventure musings
This is yet another I-commented-on-this-somewhere-and-I'm-not-done-talking-about-it posts. Over at Hill Cantons there is a good post about running ruined city-based adventures, and the comments section has some good information in it. Below, I've reproduced, edited, and expanded on my comments.
I haven't run all that many ruined city adventures. Not in GURPS, and not in D&D, and not in fantasy gaming. But I did run an adventure or two - frankly, most of one campaign - in a ruined city in Gamma World. This one specifically - 2nd edition - since it came with a ruined city based adventure. The "Gamma World Adventure Booklet" was a guide to setting up adventures, a wilderness adventure location (the lands around ruined Pitz Burke), a starter adventure (a reason to go to Pitz Burke), and acted as a bit of a guide to running adventures in a ruined city. So I used that when we moved up from 1st edition Gamma World to 2nd edition.
Based on that experience, these are the issues I noticed:
- A ruined city is not a dungeon, it's a wilderness with channeling terrain and lots and lots of easy ambush points. Think jungle not plains. If you turn it into a dungeon (narrowly channeled paths, roof overhead, etc.) expect the players to treat it like one. If you greatly limit their movements, punish them for flying above the ruins or leaving them and circling back in, etc. - you're just making it a dungeon. B4 The Lost City and the Conan story Red Nails are both nominally city-based, but act a lot more like dungeons. The first is a dungeon, with some talk and pictures of a city elsewhere that you have to stat up and map yourself. The second is a single big city-sized building, but it's chock full of secret doors, fights in hallways, and people stuck inside. And a roof overhead - it's a very dungeon-y city. This can be fun but it's not necessarily the best way to handle a city.
- In a ruined city it's tough to give a complete impression of what they can see. Visuals help a lot more than in dungeons. You need some way to show them the size of the city, give some sense of scale and what's there to go to - and what's between here and there.
- You really need wandering monsters and pre-set encounters in a mix, or there isn't anything to do. I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City does a great job of this. Again, think wilderness. Some dungeon-like locations are great, so are communities, nests, and other encounters in the ruins. Even a dungeon in it (well, under it) is a good idea. But much of the travel will be above ground and meandering, so you need a way to basically stock on the fly. This is a good time to roll % in lair, too - was it wandering by or does it live where you ran into it?
- you need to have a good plan for dealing with improvisation and searches for unexpected materials or locations. Random tables for monsters are one thing, random tables for buildings might help, too - does the sort of building they're looking for exist? Where is it in relation to them? (the dice drop method in Vornheim works here, just put ruined stuff between here and there instead of "live" city.) Another option is a quickie ruin generator - is this building they're heading to intact, semi-intact, ruined? Is it safe or unsafe? Inhabited or not? Etc.
- Part of the charm of using a big ruined city is that a) you can go anywhere. It's like being in a real city, only since it's largely uninhabited you can go around and poke into all those buildings and look behind doors and look down the manholes. That's part of the fun. And b) you get the feeling that anything could be in there - you the player, and you the GM. With a big enough ruins, and wide enough random tables, it could really be there. You could equally not know all the nooks and crannies of your city. So it'll feel like there is so much you couldn't clear the place, find everything, or really know everything. It'll make perfect sense when you run into Generic Old Coot living in the city and he says he's been there 50 years and doesn't know it all quite yet. That's part of the coolness of ruins.
Remember, wilderness with lots of easy ambush points and places to look at. You'll need to know the sighting rules and whose keeping an eye out for what. You'll need to know weapon ranges and who'll engage at what range. You need to know how damn far noise carries above ground if the players make a lot of noise, like my neighbors did last night. It's a wilderness with cover, more than a dungeon or a city.
True story - I almost started my DF game using I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The main reason I didn't was that I wanted people to be able to come and go, and that setting isn't conducive to "and we go back to town and replenish our supplies between sessions." Pitz Burke would work okay for that, if I run a post-apocalypse game again . . .
Some good resources to look at:
Besides what I mentioned above:
"Ruins: Rotted and risky, but rewarding" by Arn Ashleigh Parker, Dragon #54 / Best of Dragon Vol. V
AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide (the sections on spotting/visibility, especially)
I haven't run all that many ruined city adventures. Not in GURPS, and not in D&D, and not in fantasy gaming. But I did run an adventure or two - frankly, most of one campaign - in a ruined city in Gamma World. This one specifically - 2nd edition - since it came with a ruined city based adventure. The "Gamma World Adventure Booklet" was a guide to setting up adventures, a wilderness adventure location (the lands around ruined Pitz Burke), a starter adventure (a reason to go to Pitz Burke), and acted as a bit of a guide to running adventures in a ruined city. So I used that when we moved up from 1st edition Gamma World to 2nd edition.
Based on that experience, these are the issues I noticed:
- A ruined city is not a dungeon, it's a wilderness with channeling terrain and lots and lots of easy ambush points. Think jungle not plains. If you turn it into a dungeon (narrowly channeled paths, roof overhead, etc.) expect the players to treat it like one. If you greatly limit their movements, punish them for flying above the ruins or leaving them and circling back in, etc. - you're just making it a dungeon. B4 The Lost City and the Conan story Red Nails are both nominally city-based, but act a lot more like dungeons. The first is a dungeon, with some talk and pictures of a city elsewhere that you have to stat up and map yourself. The second is a single big city-sized building, but it's chock full of secret doors, fights in hallways, and people stuck inside. And a roof overhead - it's a very dungeon-y city. This can be fun but it's not necessarily the best way to handle a city.
- In a ruined city it's tough to give a complete impression of what they can see. Visuals help a lot more than in dungeons. You need some way to show them the size of the city, give some sense of scale and what's there to go to - and what's between here and there.
- You really need wandering monsters and pre-set encounters in a mix, or there isn't anything to do. I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City does a great job of this. Again, think wilderness. Some dungeon-like locations are great, so are communities, nests, and other encounters in the ruins. Even a dungeon in it (well, under it) is a good idea. But much of the travel will be above ground and meandering, so you need a way to basically stock on the fly. This is a good time to roll % in lair, too - was it wandering by or does it live where you ran into it?
- you need to have a good plan for dealing with improvisation and searches for unexpected materials or locations. Random tables for monsters are one thing, random tables for buildings might help, too - does the sort of building they're looking for exist? Where is it in relation to them? (the dice drop method in Vornheim works here, just put ruined stuff between here and there instead of "live" city.) Another option is a quickie ruin generator - is this building they're heading to intact, semi-intact, ruined? Is it safe or unsafe? Inhabited or not? Etc.
- Part of the charm of using a big ruined city is that a) you can go anywhere. It's like being in a real city, only since it's largely uninhabited you can go around and poke into all those buildings and look behind doors and look down the manholes. That's part of the fun. And b) you get the feeling that anything could be in there - you the player, and you the GM. With a big enough ruins, and wide enough random tables, it could really be there. You could equally not know all the nooks and crannies of your city. So it'll feel like there is so much you couldn't clear the place, find everything, or really know everything. It'll make perfect sense when you run into Generic Old Coot living in the city and he says he's been there 50 years and doesn't know it all quite yet. That's part of the coolness of ruins.
Remember, wilderness with lots of easy ambush points and places to look at. You'll need to know the sighting rules and whose keeping an eye out for what. You'll need to know weapon ranges and who'll engage at what range. You need to know how damn far noise carries above ground if the players make a lot of noise, like my neighbors did last night. It's a wilderness with cover, more than a dungeon or a city.
True story - I almost started my DF game using I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The main reason I didn't was that I wanted people to be able to come and go, and that setting isn't conducive to "and we go back to town and replenish our supplies between sessions." Pitz Burke would work okay for that, if I run a post-apocalypse game again . . .
Some good resources to look at:
Besides what I mentioned above:
"Ruins: Rotted and risky, but rewarding" by Arn Ashleigh Parker, Dragon #54 / Best of Dragon Vol. V
AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide (the sections on spotting/visibility, especially)
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Painting Minis I Don't Like
Yesterday was a pretty nice day, weather-wise, and I had a big gap in the afternoon thanks to Good Friday schedule changes. So I did some painting.
Occasionally I won't paint the minis I like, but only the ones I don't. You know the ones - they came in the set, or you needed them for some project but found them annoying to paint, or the more paint you put on them the worse they come out.
I did a bunch of those.
I did four that I kind-of like but know won't ever come out well - they aren't minis, per se, but plastic figures from an outscale set that I can use as props as long as they aren't bright blue anymore. So I did them - painted, dried, then washed, then brushed twice with Army Painter. Next is a highlighting brush and maybe a final dip. It depends.
I also did these four hyenas from the Chainmail line of minis. As with all of those minis, they're very "flat." They came with something else, I can't recall what now. I tried to paint them a while back but after a tan basecoat they just looked bad. I didn't feel like putting effort in.
So I decided on a one-pass paint job. Black on the harness. Copper on the studs and rings. Ivory teeth. True red on the eyes. And then a two-stage wash with Army Painter Quickshade - once Dark Tone, once Strong Tone. Not bad. I'll highlight the eyes after they get a matte coat. But they're tabletop ready. They took more time to dry than to paint.
I still don't like them much, though. Maybe my players will love them.
I also re-primed 6 minis (I'd primed them grey, but then decided on a black-based scheme) and base-coated 7 more (all the same kind and same paint job). Those I like, but I realized my hand wasn't so steady and my patience was limited, so I didn't want to start in on "real" paint jobs. They'll be quick ones, too, but they need some color variety and thus I'll need to let them dry in stages.
Occasionally I won't paint the minis I like, but only the ones I don't. You know the ones - they came in the set, or you needed them for some project but found them annoying to paint, or the more paint you put on them the worse they come out.
I did a bunch of those.
I did four that I kind-of like but know won't ever come out well - they aren't minis, per se, but plastic figures from an outscale set that I can use as props as long as they aren't bright blue anymore. So I did them - painted, dried, then washed, then brushed twice with Army Painter. Next is a highlighting brush and maybe a final dip. It depends.
I also did these four hyenas from the Chainmail line of minis. As with all of those minis, they're very "flat." They came with something else, I can't recall what now. I tried to paint them a while back but after a tan basecoat they just looked bad. I didn't feel like putting effort in.
So I decided on a one-pass paint job. Black on the harness. Copper on the studs and rings. Ivory teeth. True red on the eyes. And then a two-stage wash with Army Painter Quickshade - once Dark Tone, once Strong Tone. Not bad. I'll highlight the eyes after they get a matte coat. But they're tabletop ready. They took more time to dry than to paint.
I still don't like them much, though. Maybe my players will love them.
I also re-primed 6 minis (I'd primed them grey, but then decided on a black-based scheme) and base-coated 7 more (all the same kind and same paint job). Those I like, but I realized my hand wasn't so steady and my patience was limited, so I didn't want to start in on "real" paint jobs. They'll be quick ones, too, but they need some color variety and thus I'll need to let them dry in stages.
Friday, March 29, 2013
So, Dwimmermount
I backed James Maliszewski's Dwimmermount on Kickstarter.
It looks like it's finally going to happen, but:
- it's going to be ACKS only, not ACKS and Labyrinth Lord.
- it's not going to be finished by James Maliszewski.
So it's not really what I wanted to back, when I backed it.
I sent in a request to Autarch for a refund. I'm sure what they will produce will be good, but it's a few too many steps removed from what I wanted.
It looks like it's finally going to happen, but:
- it's going to be ACKS only, not ACKS and Labyrinth Lord.
- it's not going to be finished by James Maliszewski.
So it's not really what I wanted to back, when I backed it.
I sent in a request to Autarch for a refund. I'm sure what they will produce will be good, but it's a few too many steps removed from what I wanted.
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