XP charts

If you have read this blog a little, you'll know that I like minimalism. Not because rules are boring and school sucks, you know. I just like rules when they are meaningful and the cool shit they apport compensates the complexity they demand. 

Lately I've been studying carefully this classic XP charts. 

I was thinking that as the thief progresses much faster than the fighter, he might actually get tougher than him at some point. I made the numbers and, using 1d4 and 1d8 HD respectivelly, the fighter will always tend to have more HP than the thief at the same XP, at around a 3:2 proportion. But that was it: The saves will always be equal or at +/- 1 difference. Same with the attack rate: the thief will attack worse at some levels, but will get higher levels faster so he will attack as good as the fighter during most of their career. So, essentially, the thief just sacrifices a potential 50% increase of HP and proficiency on some weapons and armor in exchange of the thief skills.

So, if that was the point, it seems unnecesarilly complicated: Writing their own XP chart, assigning a different HD size for each class... Would not be much easier to just say: "This is the universal XP chart for all classes. Fighters get 50% more HP, Thieves get thief skills"?

Well, maybe. Would it be better? again, maybe. Who knows.

The same could be said for the dwarf: In the end he is just the fighter but with MUCH better saves, a skill for discerning shit around dungeons and infravision. In exchange, he cannot use 2h weapons (irrelevant), but gets a small "tax" in  the shape of slightly increased XP requirements (a 10%). This also makes that, though they have the same d8 as fighters, their HP increases a 10% less in the same time on average. Wouldn't have been easier to trash the different chart altogether, alongside HD size differences, and just give the dwarves their pack (weapon restriction, infravision, saves, mining knowledge) and an increased amount of HP respectivelly to the thief standard? just a little bit smaller than the fighter one. Maybe just a bump to constitution: It makes sense in-game and would organically raise the dwarf's average HP.

Again, maybe. 

But the thing is that, even though I have made similar arrangements in my games, I actually like different PCs raising in level at different paces. It makes leveling up a special thing for everybody, just like a birthday party would not be the same if everybody in the world's birthday was the same day. It also feels natural for each race to have different XP milestones. It makes sense for the elf to level up very slowly! 

 

Still, I cannot help striving for minimalism and if the chance to supplant a chart with a procedure falls in my hands, I must at least consider it. I've had one idea to keep escalated progression amongst PCs while having the same chart for every class. More or less, it is like this:

Everytime you do something that might level you up (like, for example, retrieving 1000 gold pieces), you roll a die (lets say a d6) and sum that number to your XP

You level up at exponentially higher milestones. For example: 6 XP, then 16 XP,  them 40 XP, then 100. This way, you never know if this travel will get you leveled up until you actually bring back the gold or do whatever grants you that experience. Some characters will roll higher, some lower...

Once you have this, it is easy to have this system hacked to do other things: Some treasures or quests having you roll higher or lower dice: "this diamond was worth 1d8 XP. Killing that monster just 1d4". You can adjudicate some XP dice to a given "quest" without problem, with the chance of getting a single XP on a 1, or to get a big roll, which can even get you from level 1 to level 2 straight at the first downtime.

Also it can be used to balance races too: some races might be powerful, but they might have a penalty to leveling up and use 1d4 to do it. It can be the effect of an undead curse, or, converselly, be increased by the power of an item/magic/whatever. 

edit: see this alternate comparison of XP/HP on Spriggan's Den

Fire Elixir Forever

I ran a long cyberpunk-themed campaign years ago, based on the adventures of a street gang (the PCs) versus another gangs of diverse levels; the most powerful one being a mix of the Yakuza and the OCP from Robocop. The rest of the setting was a wild mixture from Battle Angel Alita, Grand Thief Auto, The Warriors, Streets of Rage, Gungrave, Daredevil and Akira. The game stopped eventually due to two of my friends stopped talking to each other for unrelated reasons.

I used a very simple ruleset I came up with (Very similar to Lasers and Feelings, with "fiction first" style HPs and freeform skills) which had its pros and its cons, but it was very narrative and I didn't like it drove the game towards the players "negotiating" with the GM out of character; and made combats rely on my personal judgement and whims more than in tight rules. This made combats seem unfair on victories (it always felt like I had "given" them the combat) and even more unfair when they lost. I am maybe being so hard with myself: everyone involved were thrilled and we all remembet the campaign very fondly; pieces of it still appear on our day to day conversations and have changed the way we look at our hometown forever (the game was set on an alternate version of it)

Recently I "unwillingly" came up with some rules that I think that would have worked very good, and I want to write them here just in case I need them again. I don't think I will reunite the old gang or continue that campaign where we left it, but some of them are back in town and who knows if I can pull out some sort of spiritual "reboot".

Character Creation: Roll 4d6, then arrange them from highest to lowest. In that order they give you:

1) your age (add 11 to it. If your character is not part of a young gang for some reason, ignore this result)

2) # of starting items. You roll them on a separate table: some of them are actually traits and are inherent to you, while others are physical objects and can be given or traded to other PCs before the game starts.

3) Your starting hit points. Your gang's vest gives you an extra +1 as long as you wear it. 

4) Your # of skills

Skills: 

Kung-fu: This covers all melee or shuriken-based combat, from fists to katanas. 

Gun-fu: guns, guns, guns. I don't think the genre needs more differentiation in combat skills.

Ninjutsu: This is for when you dodge, sneak, jump more than one would thought, etc. It is possible for non-combatants to be skilled in this arts, specially for animals and kids.

Hacking: From John Connor stuff getting easy money to programming the Matrix

Mechanics: Engineering and repair of vehicles, cyberparts, the physical part of robots, etc.

Medicine: From first aid to acupunture to surgery to the implantation of cyberparts. Ido from GUNNM is an example of somebody who knows both medicine and mechanics

Driving: Useful for biker gangs who do a lot of road mayhem.

Charisma: This is not something that magically bends people to your will, but will come up when an NPC makes a reaction roll, when you try to influence a crowd or when you make a proposal to an NPC that is at least feasible to be accepted. This is Harry McDowell from Gungrave or Cyrus from the Warriors.

Notice that there are no void skills like cooking or lore: history. These nine are those that shape the genre I am trying to emulate. However I don't want to limitate the game to them. You can make up any skill you want as long as it doesnt step on the toes of all those listed above. Any kind of specific lore, an incredibly useless profession or hobby, etc. If you want optimization you can do it, if you want to be a flute player you can do it too. We had this rule for years, it worked perfecly and I loved it

Resolution:

You roll 1d6 if its something everyone can attempt. + 1d6 for skill; +1d6 for skill mastery, +1d6for situational bonus (This is called the Special die), up to 4d6

5-6 is a success. 4 is a partial success, and 1-3 is a failure

Combat:

Highest Hp goes first, unless duels and stuff where everyone rolls at the same time. 

You roll 1d6, + 1d6 for skill; +1d6 for skill mastery, +1d6for situational bonus (Special die), up to 4d6

The results are read like this:

1-3: miss

For each 4, you deal 1 damage.

For each 5 or 6, you deal 2 damage if using fists, 3 if using a street weapon and 4 if using a proper weapon.

Armor is rare, and normally pieces of combat cloth, such like a superhero's suit, provide some work as an extra amount of HP.

Real armor is more likely to happen when one has a metal exoskeleton, or a piece of cloth designed to stop a specific weapon (a kevlar vest for example). This kind of armor negates your best result when rolling against it, instead or in addition to HP increase.

Starting Items/Traits: not the definitive version, I am improvising it, but it looks something like this. There are also examples ingrained on how to deal with bonuses and mechanical parts on a system like this. Probably would benefit greatly from improving the table to a 1d36 one.

3 Minor Psychic Powers. Choose 1, the others may be granted to you sometimes at GM's discrection: Telekinesis, Psychometry, Telepathy, Clairvoyance. You can get better at this by investing in a secret skill: Eerieness.

4 1d6 grenades. They deal 1d6 damage on a hit. On a 4, you can but your enemy gets a free move against you. On a miss, you lose turn cant launch them yet.

5. Toolbox. Allows you to repair and custom vehicles, cyborgs and other stuff. Advanced surgery needs you to work in a lab (improve your homebase until you have one). 

6. Bionic implants, choose 1: Hacking Port (counts as a computer), Adamantium bones (+2 HP), Hidden street weapon; Bionic Eye capable of Thermal Vision. 

7. Aesthetic portable computer: Allows for hacking shit. Taking your effort to set multiple computers allows you to roll, and then re-roll the special dice that many number of times.

8. Tiger Kick: When using street or no weapons, you can add the situational die to combat rolls whenever you can use your legs. Once you miss a roll, your attack becomes predictable and you lose this bonus.

9. First Aid Kit. Use a turn & a medicine roll to cure 3 HP on a 5-6. On a 4, the kit is exhausted. On a miss, you also fail to heal anything.

10. Knife, Chain, Nunchucks or Spiked club (street weapons)

11. Apple, Chicken, Soda or Cigarettes. Those kind of shit gives you back 2 HP when consumed.

12. A couple of walkie-talkies

13. You get a light motorbike that allows for 2 passengers. Roll 1d6 to see its max speed (1:low, 6:very high)

14. Gun or Katana (mean weapons)

15. 1d6 doses of your favorite drug. Choose its effect: Hypnotic, Trippy, Stimulant, Chill, Knock-Out...

16. 1d6 Flashbombs and 1d6 shurikens.

17. Panzer Kunst. This martial art helps you to fight enemies twice as high as you or higher. Every time you score a 6 in melee combat, you can roll the "special" dice and add it.

18. Bionic Body specifically adapted to a single skill (+1 special dice per scene/combat)

Leveling up was achieved by surviving X game sessions, and every now and then you earned a new skill or improved an existing one. Now you also get +1 HP. We didn't use HP back then, but a status box (healthy - wounded - dead). In practice didn't work so good.

Lethality. The game is meant to be quite lethal for PCs once you start combating outside the "unarmed" range. You are expendable troops after all, but there are ways to cheat death. 0 or even -1 HP is just incapacitation/dying depending on what caused it; and can still be treated with a medicine kit or similar. But, if you have read enough Battle Angel Alita, you'll know that -2 HP characters that have their head or brain preserved can still come back if a good cyborg mechanic puts them on a new body.

You are also meant to improve your homebase through the game (specific rules to be written another day), and doing so allows you to have new characters start at level 2 or 3, which makes character death a little less painful.

Balance: I don't care shit about balance. You are a gang. All gangs have tough guys and weaklings, skilled and dumb members, who help each other. This is OK. If you get less skills or HP or shitty gear, you can still hang around and interact with the game world. You are not expected to get into mandatory mortal kombat, nor there are pre-planned solutions: attempt things that your character could do. Think how to buy, steal or borrow a solution. Ask NPCs to help you. Whatever. You are not meant to grind the whole setting. There is also a kind of balance in having toughest members fighting while the weak run or do their thing. Ajax and Swan make most of the beatings in The Warriors for a reason. Still, with time you may level up get better at something eventually.

Gameplay procedures: Will expand on this on another entry. I'm taking a lot of time to write this one and I am fucking eager to click publish, so I can chill and take my time with the rest. For now I'm proud with what I got.