Offline Games

Each summer my family goes up to stay with my in-laws for about a month. I don't have that kind of vacation so I usually go up for a week or so and then work the rest of the time.

This time my kids took their favorite stuffed Pokemon and the latest Pokedex book from Prima publishing ( http://amzn.to/p3Dqdf ). When they were not actually playing Pokemon on their Gameboys, they came up with a way to play it with their stuffed animals.

The Pokedex book is very complete and contains the stats from the game for each pokemon as well as the possible moves and the chances each would be successful. My kids took the dice out of a Monopoly game and were rolling for initative and the whole deal. It was a proud moment when my daughter described their game to me on the phone.

I always am afraid that future generations will never look for games beyond the nearest "app store". For the first time I see that there is less of a distinction for them between video game, board game or RPG -- they are all just fun games. So game designers out there, take heart! The next generation loves games, and a RPG can compete for the attention of even the most connected young mind!

Gaming this last weekend with my kids..

My wife went out of town this last weekend and I had the kids.  We watched "Iron Giant", "Princess Bride" and the older one and I watched "Dune".  We also had a chance to play a very short game of "Fair Use Space Opera" similar to a unrelated Space Opera with the initials of "S.W."

The game was a big hit with my 7 year old.  He was instantly fascinated by the idea of numbers on paper to simulate the world and dice to decide how things work out.  He was very excited and we had a great time.  His brutish "Space Trooper" had a hard time with pushing the correct buttons and natural 20s resulted in some exploding control panels.  Great comic fare for a 7 year old.

Character creation was interesting, he has a great grasp on mathematics but most of the process was verbal -- "Could your guy walk a tightrope without a net?"  His 7 year-old exuberance left him wanting to play the "Ultra" version where attributes normally on the scale of 1-20 were in the hundreds.  While this was possible, it is not really playable.

I look forward to playing again soon with them as each time it is a lot of fun.

When would you freak out?

I enjoy playing a RPG that lets people be human.  Back in the day playing D&D or Palladium's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"/"Robotech"/"Rifts" you were not often playing a true person but more like a video game character from "Double Dragon".  You had no fear, there was no reason to hang back.. as long as you had hit points and your sword ( gun/mecha/etc) you were all set.

The first time I played GURPS it occurred to me that playing a game could be more "real".  Now, not real in the tedious way and also not real in "skill roll for everything, including tying shoes", but real in that the character might get scared or that a person's motivations in playing a game are more than just achieving the next level.  I had old skool D&D players tell me how much the levels and hit points made sense, but really it is a stand-in for the ideas that later made video games possible (levels and hit points are the basis of most video games).  I can't see my own life where I am seeking experience points to get to my next level, I am not seeking a better understanding of Cisco Routers so that when a guy punches me I can take it better.  The old systems were so one dimensional.

*major confession time*

I am too old to understand Twitter and I have never played D&D 3E, 3.5E or 4E.

I know you all think less of me, but I will continue writing this...

Many games need a sense of tension and fun that only real life "S*&T Happens" type stuff can offer.  If your 4th level Cleric could always "Inflict Critical Wounds" then you are just a video game cabinet away from Gauntlet.  If your Cleric was allergic to cats and was -4 dexterity in a sneezing fit around them, now things are interesting.

In other games such things were forced.  In Rifts if you faced a Daemon there might be some forced "save vs insanity" roll, where you hit up a table on failure and ended up with a fear of heights.  But I think when a character confronts a life or death situation for the first time (ever or even "in a while") and the blood gets pumping, there should be a roll.  Anything a rookie "Glitter boy" does the first time they get face to face with "Azemodeous the eater of souls" is the right thing to do (even if they have to change their pants afterward).

In my game, such a reaction roll would be base upon the Mental Endurace/Will attribute.  There are two kinds of rolls, contest and non-contest...  This would be a non-contest roll.  In a non-contest roll you must roll under half the attribute plus any applicable skill and modifiers.  A normal person has a ME/Will of 10, with no skill (+0) and default modifier (+/-0) would have to roll under a 5 with a 20 sided die -- or 25% to hold it together.  Now let's say that they Glitter Boy Rookie had seen video of Azemodeous dancing with a puppy on YouTube, he might get a +3 for a modifier which would have him roll under a 8 with a 20 sided die, or about 40% chance to keep it together.

The same goes with Tunkar the Warrior.  If Thunkar is out in the woods and stops to look at a butterfly, a sneaky DM might ask Thunkar to make a Wisdom roll.  

"Why?" says Thunkar's player.

"I will tell you later." says the DM.

Thunkar has a Mental Power/Wisdom of 8.  Half 8 is 4, with no modifiers or skills applied by the sneaky DM Thunkar has a 20% chance and completely fails the roll.

Later, as Thunkar is ambushed by two Lollipop Trolls, he reaches for his two-handed axe and is surprised to find out he left it next to the pretty butterfly.

I am sure this stuff is possible with every system out there.  I am sure you have even played D&D with such things happening.  If you have not then I encourage you to find a way to add it to your games.  It is a good way to prevent Munchkin-ism ( "Can I drop my charisma to 2 and raise my strength to 18?" "Yes -evil laugh- I am sure charisma will not come in handy.").

Very Quick System

Back from vacation with a VERY fast system:

The player characters all have amnesia (not the interesting part).
They have no idea who they are or what they can do. Each time they
try to do anything for the first time they make two rolls with a die,
any die on hand (good for when you want to play but only have a D6
around). The first roll is what their skill will be for that task from
then on. The second roll is the attempt to accomplish the task. Roll
under the skill to be successful in the task.

The system is not sustainable because after an hour the character
sheet is filled up with skills and it is hard to find "read a
wristwatch" on the page. But it is fun when you don't have time or
supplies for a more in-depth game. It is also best for "normal human"
characters because who wants to sit for an hour and GM a guy "trying
to shoot energy from his eyes" (although if you get too bored there
are creative solutions for trying to "fly"). And "normal human"
should also assume that the characters have average capabilities, a
"walking" skill might be funny at first but a character who has a 1
for walking might not be that fun to play.

In this, everything is a skill - even common attributes. So, "lifting
heavy things" might be part of what is usually Strength. "Jumping over
something" might be part of Dexterity. The important part is the
skills should be generic enough to be used more than once but not so
generic they are used constantly - the balance between the two makes
the discovery of each new thing fun.

No hit points, the GM should provide negative consequences for
actions. Remember that just as "punching" is a skill, so is "taking a
punch" - you might be like Mike Tyson but have a glass jaw.

The point is, this is a quick way to play a fast one shot game that
might give you ideas for other characters to play.

This idea came from a friend of mine when we played a quick game set
as elementary school kids, we used D4s and had stats like "dental
hygiene" and "parental coolness". My Character had high dental
hygiene and very uncool parents...

What is the Counting Game System?

The name is not very sexy but it is what I have called it all these years.  I am content with the name because I have not come up with anything better and my kids are happy to call it that.

Now what is it?  In a nutshell of RPG design babble, it is a generic, point-based, rules-medium, skill-oriented system with a flexible classic die rolling system.

Before I dissect what that gobbledygook means to me, I want to say that the mission of this game is to provide a system where anyone can play it at any time with materials at hand.  I am not fond of LARP, I personally feel too self-conscious acting out my character, so the mission does not include the need to consider LARP as a playing option.  What the mission does mean to me is to provide a balanced and flexible system where the basic rules are simple enough to be remembered and the game can be played wherever there are people with paper and pencils.

First the system is Generic.  It is not oriented to a specific genre or setting for a game.  This is in homage to GURPS and the fickle nature of my pool of players (kids you know, one day it is spaceships and the next day it is giant robots).  As we all know a generic system with no game world is very boring (unless you are a fellow game designer), so a major impediment to publication is the lack of a game world. In a future post I will go over some of the best game world candidates for my initial release.  At this point I see the system as a way to describe and play in a world of the player's choosing with characters of their choosing.  As a web developer the system is like HTML and the game world is a fully designed web site, so the same people who are interested in a generic system might also read up on the latest HTML 5 specification (but most people would prefer to go to a fully developed web site).

Generic systems have a few pitfalls.  The first pitfall is the issue of over-generic-ness.  A GURPS implementation of the D&D world is very different from the D&D world.  A GURPS version of a 7th level Mage is... well it should be a crime to do that on top of the fact it is a lot of work to not only design the character but also pick the advantages and disadvantages that mesh with D&D.  It would require several books to just begin to cover all the material necessary.  In this system the creation rules are straight-forward and simple.  Each character, item, skill or power is evaluated for it's useful parts to determine its value in points - more on that in other posts.

The more major pitfall of generic games is the idea of character progression and playing the same character long term.  In a D&D game (should I specify that I only speak of the Second Edition?) you start with a character that is basically worthless but work to become more and more powerful.  Working to get those xp becomes an obsession.  Generic games do not really have this, they are typically class-less and level-less, so the character you start out with is the one you envisioned during creation.  There is no next level that drives you on to play.  This leads generic games to be more one-shot or shorter term than other styles.  I don't actually see this as a problem, if you were to take the average ten year old through the creation process and then have a few asthmatic cockroaches nearly kill them after six hours of play?  The would be back to their Nintendo before you could tell them that they still needed to play a few dozen hours before they could last 10 seconds with a dragon.  A generic game lets the player choose the character they want to play without hours and hours of dealing with level 1 issues.

This is a point-based system.  In this system every attribute, skill, power and weakness is worth points.  These same points are used for healing, damage, purchases and skill rolls.  This is a universal currency for everything in the game.  Some systems have hit points, skill points, attribute points, luck points, kitten points, etc - each with a unique exchange rate.  This is way too complex.  One attribute point can be exchanged for a point to increase a skill/power/buy equipment/etc.  On a side note, there are no hit points - when you take any sort of damage it comes off of the character's attributes or skills or powers (it might even increase a disadvantage or weakness).

This is a rules-medium system, meaning that it is not rules-light or rules-heavy.  My exposure to rules-light games left me feeling of potential anarchy, many people hate the government but it comes in handy when people try to steal from or kill you.  Rules are the same way, there must be some rules to check a permissive or obstinate Game Master.  On the contrary, rules-heavy games are gigantic books with tables and formulas for everything.  I would prefer to guess at the velocity of an unladen swallow than check a chart that takes into account fifteen variables.  In this game there is rounding and even bad math just to keep things simple lest someone be forced to look at a chart. 

This is a skill-oriented system.  Many systems are combat oriented, which is fine since most players prefer to "kick butt".  My daughter was the primary reason to change this in my system.  She would prefer not to kill every dragon but instead befriend them and help them live a vegetarian lifestyle.  So, the classic sense of combat is not primary in this game.  Combat is a contest, not actually different from arm-wrestling, competitive eating or even trying to get your boss to give you a raise at the office.  Keeping with the theme of flexibility, skills are all based on attributes so a skill can be untrained and used in relation to the skill's controlling attribute.  But if you take damage, then the decrease in attribute points can lower a skill.

Finally this system has a flexible die mechanic that is based on classic dice rolling.  I love dice, the dice section is my second favorite part of a game store.  A system that would only use one of them is just wrong.  On the other hand what is a person to do when they have a 1d8 axe but no 8 sided dice are to be found?  My super-flawed math skills allow me to suspend belief in my players to substitute dice.  In this system a 1d8 is the same as 2d4, 1d6+1 or even just '4'.  The thought is that the possible values of a 8 sided die are 1 to 8, with 3.5 as an average of those values.  In rounding up that 3.5 becomes a 4 just as a 1d6 becomes a 3 (and so on).  It is imperfect but it is more important to me to have a flexible system than force people to walk around with dice bags tied to their belts (like I did back in 1985).  Since this is a point based system, a 1d8 axe costs 4 points in the first place because that is the average damage it can do.  If a Game Master didn't agree with such silly math then they can play without rolling for damage (but the foundation of role playing is rolling for damage, so I think they will overlook it).

Obviously there are a lot of details to explain in these posts.  My intention with this blog is to explain it and eventually it will be so concise I can publish it (after I decide which game world to go with).  So, for those of you still awake.. you have now read a brief rationalization of this game system with specifics to follow.  

Questions, comments and random musings are welcome!

Why do I home-brew a game when there are other "Open" systems...

I have joined the RPG Bloggers Network.  There are some great blogs as part of this network, any time I had recently to collect my thoughts on my game has been devoted to mindless surfing these RPG Blogs.

My fascination with these other blogs is part of the same issue I have with using another game system, I am old.  In 1982 my father got a photocopied edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  I was able to look at it for one whole day before my parents discovered that it would turn me into a suicidal devil-worshiper so the "pirated" book was thrown out while I was at school.  But the damage was done, what little I had seen in that book was enough.  I wanted to play D&D but my parents would not have it, so I eventually acquired the contents of the Star Frontiers game box.

Always the oddball, I was forced to shun D&D (my parents opinion mattered, I was 8 to 10) and try to play Star Frontiers.  Most of my friends would rather play Atari, but I had a Commodore Vic 20.  Typical visits from friends went like this:

"Hey Chris, let's play D&D."

"I am not allowed, let's play Star Frontiers."

"What? Nevermind, let's play Atari."
"I don't have an Atari, we can play Vic 20.  I have a new math game I typed in from the back of a magazine."

"Nevermind, lets go ride our bikes."

It was not until 1986 that I actually played Star Frontiers with a neighbor.  I made up the rules because I still didn't understand the book but I loved the art in the book and the game world.  We had fun and played my made up rules a few times.  In 1989 a new kid moved to my school who had a ton of brothers.  Their house was like a toy store with the biggest collection of Legos outside of LegoLand.  They were playing the second edition version of D&D.  Ever the goofball I still shunned it for the sake of my mortal soul, but at this point there was no denying that I knew the rules and the classes and was able to play it.  I knew enough to understand that the rules for D&D had changed with the second edition, it seemed complicated then.

I eventually broke down and played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons (second edition because no one had the first edition any more).  I liked it compared to the other Role Playing Games I was into (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, Robotech RPG and eventually Rifts RPG - so, all the Palladium games).  D&D was so well organized it was beautiful.  You played a character for the long haul instead of just one time.  It was so well crafted and complex it was an art form, compared to the other games I was playing.

But there were problems.  Like most of the game systems of its time, what the character did outside of combat didn't matter at all.  When you added house rules, optional rules and supplements the people who wanted to "munchkin" their characters could do so in the most heinous ways (custom character classes where levels were 1xp each, I am looking right at you).  Most of all, I didn't always want to play sword, magic and get the treasure.  So I stopped playing D&D (I played GURPS instead but that is another story for another time).

In the years since, D&D has changed a lot.  During the resurgence of Role Playing Games in my life thanks to free efforts like FUDGE and the others, the Open Source mentality got into the Wizards of the Coast and they put the d20 system out under the Open Gaming License.  Now, back in 1992 I began this system I blog about and once the OGL/d20 was released quite a few people felt I should use that system.  Most of the homebrew web sites (before blogs there were forums and bulletin boards) had member populations moving to d20 in droves.  I resented Wizards of the Coast for that migration.  Overnight discussions of die rolling systems were replaced with what feats Neo would have in the Matrix and other stuff.  I moved on because in a wold of forum trolls and d20 fan boys there was no room to discuss my ideas.

To this day I have a mental block when it comes to the OGL, d20 or the new editions of D&D.  I have tried several times to "get it" but can't.  Now, I don't need another "but I'll teach you" session from a zealot who only wants to convert another person to the system.  I don't need a thinly veiled explanation of why d20 is superior to the system I am working on.  Maybe I do need young eyes to look at d20 and get excited, maybe even recapture the feeling I had when I looked at that photocopied book all those years ago.

But maybe I am too old and set in my ways to put my ideas in another framework.  My framework has developed over time and it fits the concepts I use when I run or play a game.  I am not sure what d20's roots are but they are not appealing to me.