Abstract Mass Combat (2026 take)

BASICS 

Armies are composed of homogeneus groups called Squads. Squads have a base amount of HP from 1 to 4. A small or tired squad has 1 hp, while a complete and fresh one has 4. Having even more men makes you start another squad. (Use incomplete squads when you want to represent poor or unstable armies, use complete ones normally for convenience)

HPs do not represent a specific number of people, but a fraction of a serious contingent. There is more people on a 4 HP footmen squad than in a 4 HP cavalry one. 

When two squads collide, they deal damage to the enemy by rolling 1d6 each:

1,2,3 means no damage
4 means 1 damage unless the victim has a shield
5 means 1 damage
6 means critical hit (damage depends on weapon) 

Sword: crit 2

Spear: crit 3

Bow: crit 2, but can fire volleys from behind another squad.

Crossbow: crit 3

Musket: crit 4 

Armor gives +1 or +2 hp to each squad, depending on the quality. Note that there is no initiative and that both squads hurt the other at once. 

 

SQUAD TYPES 

Squad types work like pokemon types: they have advantage (+1d6, keep both) and resistance (+1d6, keep worst) versus a type of squad, or in certain situations.

Cavalry: +1d6 vs footmen, both melee or ranged. If forced to leave the horses because of the terrain, they count as a footmen squad of half the HP. 

Spearmen: +1d6 vs cavalry. Once hit in melee, they are considered in close quarters and must become footmen (if they have backup weapons) or have their critical capped at 1. A levy of peasants might not have weapons beyond some bamboo spears, but one of trained samurai will. 

Footmen (Ranged): Muskets, crossbow and bow. +1 damage to spearmen on formations, and +1 vs horse archers if they are kiting; but -1 damage to a charge of cavalry. When they are in close combat, ranged footmen can become melee ones if they have side weapons, but they count as a unit of -1hp. 

Footmen (melee): Sometimes, the terrain will impose disadvantages for charging, shooting, mantaining formations, etc; such as in a forest. Footmen get +1d6 then. 

Horse archers: +1 damage vs spearmen, only bow allowed.

I will make up other types if needed. Big monsters can count as squads for battle purposes.

 

ADVANCED:

I don't want to use this system to simulate realistic battles, but to have the PCS and NPCs have enough factors to consider it as if it was one. Normally, unless I/you want to complicate the scenario with different points of interest, the basic battle will be a 2d line where squads clash in order.

*  Generals choose an order in which the squads will march. They do so without knowing which order will the other general use, nor which kind of squads, unless they have done espionage through PCs or others, which they historically did. It is also a great idea to find out if they have any Hero that is bestowing any mantle on a specific squad (see below)

* Each turn, after squads have clashed, each general can do one tactic action on the whole army. For example, moving a squad one step forward on their line (two steps for mounted units), or have a white mage attempt to heal a squad. Squads that move forward into the battle line effectivelly replace the current squad fighting on the next turn.
 

* Heroes are named NPCs (or PCs!) that lead a squad. Certain character skills or spells can affect the squad performance, such as a valkyrie summon (1-3 free re-rolls per combat, cast during the tactics phase), or just apply a bonus like +1d6 on a single charge or +hp to a squad. 

* Specific actions during the combat can impact the whole scenario, such as breaking a bridge or shooting at a nest of giant wasps, use common sense. 

* Flanking: a squad flanking another can attack twice. Flanking opportunities may be presented by the territory if you take the effort of study it.

I DONT PLAY WARGAMES. HOW ARE PCS INTERTWINED IN A BATTLE SCENE?

If PCs are directly involved on the battle, they will have a first person encounter for each battle their squad fights. If they lead a squad, they can also use any leadership-related skills at will. 

It is possible for a PC to live while his squad failed and die while his squad won. A squad at 0 hp is considered to be disbanded, but there will be some survivors unless the enemy is dedicated to exterminate them. 

If PCs are not directly involved on the battle, in my experience, they still like to see the battle, so I made this rules because the previous ones, while they worked nice, abstracted the battle too much.

 

gang drip

porting Naruto to Blades in the Dark is looking more and more like "What if the movie the Warriors was set in Edo era Japan?"

These are some prompts to generate gang aesthetics (d12). Roll as many you want on each until you like it.

 

1. Tattoo/Mark (discrete)
2. Tattoo/Mark (showy) 
3. Bandana or scarf
4. Patterned robes
5. Elegant robes
6. Modest robes
7. Make up
8. Signature hat or hairstyle
9. Rings or bracelets
10. A necklace or hung ornament
11. A mask
12.  Vest or armor

Styles:

1. Spiritual (an animal? a demon?)
2. Flexing (flowers? feathers?)
3. Idealistic (a word/kanji?)
4. Baddie (skulls/spikes?)
5. Naive (fire or martial arts?)
6. Dreamy (Clouds or maritime?)
7. Tryhard (Monsters? Thunder?)
8. Ostentatious (gold or jewels?)
9. Humble (homemade? handknit?) 
10. Dyed (one distinctive color?)
11. Religious (icons? principles?)
12. Conceptual (abstract but recognizable logo? animal patterns?)

 

 EDIT: surprisingly, real life is always ahead. See from the Kabukimono entry on wikipedia:

 
Kabukimono (傾奇者) were gangs of samurai in feudal Japan, first appearing in 1573 -1603 as the turbulent Sengoku period drew to a close. Kabukimono were either rōnin, wandering samurai, or men who had once worked for samurai families who, during times of peace, formed street gangs. Some, however, were also members of more prominent clans—most notably Oda Nobunaga and Maeda Toshiie.

They would often dress in flamboyant clothing, disregarding traditional colours such as light yellow and dark blue, often accessorised by wearing haori jackets with lead weights in the hem, velvet lapels, wide obi belts and even women's clothing. Exoticism was characteristic and included items such as European clothing, Chinese hats, and jinbaori (surcoats) made from Persian carpet. Kabukimono also often had uncommon hairstyles and facial hair, either styled up in various fashions or left to grow long. Their katana would often have fancy hilts, large or square tsuba, red scabbards and were usually longer than normal length. Some kabukimono even used extremely long kiseru pipes as weapons. 

Kabukimono were known for their violent and unsociable behavior, such as not paying at restaurants or robbing townsfolk. Cases of the gang members cutting people down simply to test a new sword (tsujigiri), or larger-scale violent incidents were common in areas where kabukimono could be found (particularly in large cities such as Edo and Kyoto). Wrestling, loud singing and dancing in the streets were also common, as was fighting between gangs after dark. It is thought that the modern yakuza originated from either groups of kabukimono or bands of villagers gathered to fight their abusers, though other scholars believe that the yakuza origins are to be found in the machi yakko (町奴), a form of private police.

Izumo no Okuni, the actress that created the Kabuki theatre, dressed as a Kabukimono. Note the Christian cross and the gangster pose.

  

Virgin Naruto, Chad Sasuke, Retarded Itachi, Based Rock Lee

 

NARUTO:

-"I'm gonna bring Sasuke back, the girl I like told me so"

- Never mind that Sasuke doesn't want to come back. Ignore friend's desires and invalidate his decisions.

- Never offer your friend help with his revenge because that would be so evil (but go revenge Jiraiya)

 

 SASUKE:

- See brother kill all your family, be put in school and slowly see that nobody in your village gives a fuck about finding the responsible of the crime.

- Be called an emo for decades for wanting justice for an affront, both in konoha and IRL forums, get your anger downplayed by Kakashi and your peers. Be called a braggart when you decide to get strong to act yourself on it. 

-When you decide to train with Orochimaru everybody loses their minds.

 

 ITACHI:

- So in order to get possible peace for a time in this village I just have to genocide everybody I love including innocents, and some far cousins. What can go wrong?

- Fails to do the mission anyways by leaving his brother alive because after killing his parents you suddently discovers that he loves him a lot. Loves him so much that he decides to pile up psychological torture on him from now on to ensure his life is long and miserable, then tries to trick him into killing his best friend Naruto for the lols.

- Somehow remembered as a tragic, sacrificed figure and a super intelligent ninja. 

 

 ROCK LEE:

- "kerosene can't melt steel beams"

Casting Chaotic Evil Spells.

this entry has its own OST

  

GOAL: I want to have both good and evil spells available to the PCs, but the evil ones must have a gamist reason to be tempting to the player as much as to the PJ, while their consequences must also be punishing to the character and the player alike, with enough leeway to not mean instant doom. I wanted to have a little more substance to this than to make a "corruption score" which makes their character an evil NPC when topped. 

My current system works on a Magic attribute and a spell list. The magic attribute grows as the spell list does, and that happens on level ups. (I have this idea to give them only spell slots, and then make the spells "things to be found", but hasn't happen yet)

Ok so now you have your Magic Attribute, your first spells and you start your adventure. They are probably very useful on the real world, but the Magic Attribute, which also defines the overall strenght of your spells, is not very high yet so you might not feel like a powerful wizard at level 1. 

You can artificially put your magic attribute into steroids by going evil. In the fiction, this may not be as easy as saying "I am evil give me power" but, at the table, it can be. 

In the fiction, it requires a dark patron to get in contact with you: This can be an evil spirit, a shady old man, an obvious vampire, a floating demon made of eyes or an aboleth that contacted you on a ship travel. At the table, just ask your GM and he will send one to meet you soon. You may even know them from before the game started. Their methods may vary: one might have to bite you. Others will give you a present. They all might have different agendas, but in the end they all want to use you. But in the inmmediate present, your spell list will grow and, subsequently, your Magic Attribute. 

In the practice, this will put you one or two levels above a similar wizard: This goes very well with the classic trope of dark magic being a shortcut to power. In addition, certain spells will gain additional effects, such as a little extra damage for psychic attacks, or make charm spells less restricted, or imprint a compelling fear into your suggestion spell.

Instead of corruption increasing per spell used, I will only count failed rolls or partial successes. Even though an increase of the Magic Attribute will make failures more sparse (representing "mastery" of the Dark Arts) having more power and relying on it will make you want to use it more in compensation.

Dark patrons may be overt, but most will present themselves as compassive figures that want to help you, give you a gift, because they see potential in you, so you can get that wish you said you have (vengeance, love, power, riches). They know they will eventually benefit of your downfall, if not also of the trail of chaos and sorrow that will precede it.

Depending on the nature of the patron, and the nature of the player, choose which 2 consequences are most befitting to a given botch. Let your player choose one.

1. Inevitable corruption score. You gain 1d3 "corruption". Once your HP go below that mark, dark powers will seize control of your body to any degree the GM wants. The patron might want to use you for fun for a while and allow you to rest later, or maybe want to keep you forever on. Some NPCs may perceive corruption score in you, even if subconsciously, as a small buzzing fear. If you don't abuse corruption, you might level up and gain HP to keep up with it for a long time. Your friends can try to exorcize the evil or heal you above the corruption score level, if they can get hold of you.

2. One of your attributes is permanently drained; probably charisma but again, whatever befits the patron better. You also suffer a hideous transformation to reflect this; not monster-like at first, but enough to know something is wrong about you. They will become more like jynxes later. Alternativelly, a cleric spell is permanently erased from your list (those that heal, bless or work against evil). 

3. The spell has unnecesarily horrific side effects, the GM will tell you which.

4. The veil between our dimension and the patron's wears out, and strange things start to permeate over your house/territory/kingdom, if your character is settled somewhere. Alternativelly, your patron will soon appear to cause chaos nearby, or strange entities will start following you for a time until they crash somewhere.

5. The patron convinces you to do something drastic that tangentially suits your goal, and you think its actually your idea. You can avoid doing it by choosing the other option your GM presented you, but your character still felt the suggestion. 

6. Right now, nothing happens. But the patron has decided that the free trial has expired, and reclaims you to be their full time servant, their new body, their food or similar. This is not automatic and you may still present battle. Alternativelly, they may impose a quest on you, which you cannot freely ignore.

 *****************************************

 EDIT: In the end, I made it much simpler:

Botch: +2 corruption, that can be halved by doing a task for the patron (subconscious or demanded). Corruption increasingly mutates both your aura, the aesthetic of your spells and your looks. 

When your health goes below corruption level, the patron can fuck with you as he sees fit. If you play with death at 0hp, you can think of it as lowering your HP total, with your "death" having weird consequences. This can be as permanent as the GM wants but you should recover your character if a cleric manages to heal you above corruption score levels.  

to play naruto (spoilers!)

Following this, I am thinking on how good it sounds to play a low level Naruto campaign...

But better so, inspired by naruto, but my own thing. The main reason is because the actual anime canon is too good to manipulate in a meaningful way, and I don't want to doublecheck information on the wiki about clans, dates and facts. 

I have actually some sketch of the rules. You start doing low level ranked missions at the start, as members of a ridiculously small clan, village or reassembled group. The main catch is that I want your character to be expendable, and to have the "ninja village" grow during the game, in the style of Blades in the Dark. Better ninja villages mean better starting characters, and the possibility to play during an overarching plot. I want parties to eventually include ninjas of different tiers: masters, students, legends alongside rookies, focusing more on deceit and tactics than in shonen powerups. I am rewatching the series and I really enjoy watching the Akatsuki (like the baddest ninjas you can find) being still cautious about an ambush in the woods, or being mindful about the money (both personally like Kakuzu or as a group like Pain). I loved when Jiraiya turned a giant frog into a bar called Frog Club in order to set a trap for two minions. And I love the overlapping bijuus, cursed seals, elemental techniques, mantles, special eyes and all. All those concepts are great and I want to use them, but, in relationship with the appropiate canvas (a tabletop RPG), there are some points that are so broken:

1 The Sharingan. A "just opened" eye with the sharingan can see chakra and genjutsus, physical movements at any speed and allows the user to copy them instantly. Also has the power to cast illusions and compel targets who look at it. And this is all the first level of the ladder of broken shit (mangekyu, rinnegan, etc). Like what the fuck, its really hard to manage this shit for a  GM. The greatest barrier to port Sharingan to a tabletop is, however, murderhobo players (I know some of them) that will put away any mission for searching an Uchiha and steal one of his eyes.

2. Genjustu battles. D&D fixes this as "you are stunned for 1d4 rounds" or similar. But in naruto, genjutsus are special, each one of them and ask to be played in. Sometimes, at least. They allow the user to draw information from the victim, or to speak to them apart. There are whole battles in mindscapes. But finding out you are in a genjutsu is also part of the concept, and that becomes harder to do, mostly when they target one member of the party and you are narrating to all of them. 

3. Shadow clones. They are easy on the surface: create X clones, say what they do. You wait until an enemy strikes you to reveal that he attacked a clone and that the real you is attacking him... just to see that he was a clone too, and the real one is behind you. Repeat. Something inside me thinks that it would be better to play that in reverse: Do not care about cloning yourself before the battle: just spend something to reveal it was a clone all the time. Same for the NPCs. The whole anime seems to work on retroactive logic, actually. 

4. Battles sometimes become kaiju fights alongside person fights. More rarely, a person fights a kaiju. Maybe is not as hard to portray as it seems, and its just giving those crazy abilities and tons of HP, but still. Summons, however, are broken on another sense: they allow instant communication by autodispelling from a danger zone, and being summoned by a receiver. This is easily fixed by allowing summons, but not unsummons: every animal must find the way to their home by physically travelling or any other.

5. The most broken shit, hands down, is those scrolls. Fuinjutsu: the ability to seal any kind of shit, of any size or nature, inside a piece of paper (technically, sealing spirits or monsters is also possible if sealed into persons or other living matter). Stealing a 50x50x50 meters statue from a musemum is easy if you take some time to draw some seals, unfold a parchment and cast some jutsu (it will make an audible "poof"). This makes characters able to carry virtually anything they can come up with: a canoe, endless shuriken, 10 tons of water, a house; make a legendary object dissapear by sealing it into a roll and tossing it down the toilet... In the series, there is no limits on how much they can hold. The chakra is spent sealing the objects, but not releasing them, so you can use them all in the same battle, providing you spent downtime preparing them. And if downtime is in practice infinite on the inside, so are the potential scrolls.

6. All of those are probably usable somehow, but the ability of making real operating clones is not available to PJs on any case. That is like mtg's Memory Jar of the moves, broken as fuck for a thousand reasons once you move it away from a controlled medium like an anime, to a chaotic like a game. 

 Am I being too much a pussy? Am I too scared of it? Maybe. What do you think?

 

 

Catching pokemon in a pen and paper game

Related to this and this. If I am using tamed monsters as a magic system, there has to be a way to catch them. Or not? I am very confused about how to do it. 

On one hand I have the analogic ways:

Getting into the wilderness (aka the tall grass)  until a monster pops up, then catching them with a pokeball equivalent. This works perfectly on the videogames, but I see how it can become tedious on a tabletop. Grinding a place to find one pokemon that one player happens to want makes all the other players who dont have anything to do at that place just stop and watch the show. If I do it too easy so the pokemon is catched fast, its almost the same as giving the player the monster straight. 

An even more analogic version of this is if the monsters are not catch with pokeballs, but convinced to follow a leader by actually roleplaying and discovering the monster's motivations or personality. This is great to have sometimes, but having it as the main point of the game for sorcerers and not for the rest of the classes might make them absorb a lot of game time that is not spent doing teamwork. It is also difficult, as it might seem easy to bond with a pikachu in game, but other monsters can be a challenge for the GM to roleplay in this manner.

A middle option is to make the player roll their pokeball or do their talk no jutsu once per downtime or so, allowing retrys once some time has passed.

The more boring option is just to give the players pokemon on level ups just as if they were magician spells. They can select from a random heap of them (whatever invocation scrolls are available on the local library, or whatever local pokemon are on the nearby grass), maybe adding any monster they met on their adventures to the list of possibles. This removes the need of doing all the work in character, though still the first options can be used for legendary or special pokemon. But something feels bad about taking from players the experience of catching their rattattas.

This opens the problem of that players catching their pokemon diegetically advance more than those spending their level ups on them. Its easy to fix, though, by making those diegetical ones "temporal" until the next level up, and then requiring the player to spend the level up "keeping" them just as if they were their downtime catch. This can apply from cosmic monsters who manifest as spells to a plain dog who is an animal companion. 

As an addendum, there is something I don't like about Naruto's summoning: Servant animals are supposed to be someplace when you just "teleport" them into battle or whatever. This is ridiculously easy to break by PCs in order, for example, to send real-time messages through them as they dispell the summoning; and you run into the risk of summoning a sleeping dog at night or summon a giant toad at the moment he was sitting on the toilet taking a shit,

 

 

 

 

 

rpg design tips I heard somewhere.

 

 

1. Have a setting, as to write the rules around it. Do not be as lame as to make a generic ruleset and then put a setting over it. 

2. Evoke the setting. Make it as tangible as possible through description, implied descriptions, tables, clichés. Tangible is better than sensible. 

3. Do not write optional rules; make the effort to choose the best option yourself, you are the designer. GMs do not like having to decide that shit. Players in general are not dumb and will homebrew their own rules eventually if they don't like the established ones.

4. Make it so the players have either a long or short term goal right at the start. A good long term goal will make the players decide a first step towards it. A good short term goal will unlock new goals by its pursue and/or its resolution.