An idea for vancian magic

"Everytime you cast a spell, instead of losing the spell you just casted, you cross out any other spell of the same or higher level instead; unless that was your last available one, in which case, you lose that spell"

It doesn't really fix my quest for the perfect magic system, but it feels like an improvement towards the original: Now you can use the same spell more than once per day, which is how you would expect magic to work in any fantasy setting (except, of course, Dying Earth, from which vancian magic is taken). If I see a wizard casting a fireball, I would prepare against another fireball and try to close range with him as much as possible, so he cannot cast another one on me without hurting himself. In the D&D world, however, you are completely safe from another fireball, as you are sure he cannot even prepare the same spell twice.

Also I like that you can explain it as making the spell you cast becoming more and more present in your brain the more you cast it; the obsession feeding on the other possibilities you had prepared (the rest of the spells)

The problem I perceive is more "conceptual" than "gamist". But, on that side, it allows you to prepare a lot of absurd spells and burn them away once you feel that you are probably not using them that day. That, while using the ones you need without being unnecesarily stingy. I also like that it doesn't change the game at Magic User's level 1, but can be a gamechanger at level 3 or higher: Each new spell gives you much more possibilities on every rest.

EDIT: As you can see on the comments, I have been mistaken all my D&D life, and MUs can prepare spells twice (nowhere mentioned explicitly on BX but I was just assuming they couldn't). This is why its cool to have a blog, I'd still play like that if I hadn't talked about it here. STILL I think my idea is useful to allow casters to spam the same spell multiple times, while still giving them variety of spells at the same time. Are they too OP? maybe. 

BXraw: Fighter VS Halfling

Are Halflings just better than Fighters? They share the same XP and Attack progression. Armor for halflings is only limited by the availability of halfling sized gear (which depends on the setting, I guess) Let's put the advantages of each one towards the other:

FIGHTERS:

- Can use 2-handed weapons (that lose initiative anyways). Use of the d8 longsword is ambiguous, though I'd rule that halflings can only use short swords. If not using the variable weapon damage, this point is ruled obsolete. 

- They can use all magical swords that happen to be not short. 

- Use d8 for hit points instead of d6 (that is 1 puny point on average per level, Fighters can even roll badly and lose that edge)

- One prime attribute (str) instead of two (str and dex) which is irrelevant if you roll the minimum DEX or you happen to ignore prime attributes (like I do)

- No level cap (which has no relevance until level 8)

HALFLINGS:

- Saving throws equal to a fighter seven levels above you

- Shooting arrows or ranged weapons at +1. That is attacking like a fighter one level above you at all times (sometimes two levels)

- Armor class enhanced by 2 versus enemies larger than humans. This is a surprisingly large spectrum in a game like D&D, from bears to basilisks to ogres to dragons

- When using individual initiative they get a +1

- 90% chance of dissappearing in woods or underbrush

- 1 in 3 chance of hiding in normal light when there are shadows or covers present, as long as they remain still. 

- The non-despicable advantage of being lightweight. It is much easier to take out of the dungeon an unconscious or deceased halfling, load it in your own horse and head towards a local temple, than doing the same with a grown up man. This can be an important thing depending on how you rule encumbrance.

This all started because I was running a game following strict RAW rules, then went looking into the book to check if there were any strength or encumbrance caps for hobbits and I found nothing. I started reading to check how the fact that you are a 90 cm person is portrayed in the context of combat and such, and I realized that there is no real downsides at all. Suddently I found it so weird.  

My last houserules are too complex to be summarized like NOW!, but basically I run them as thieves with better saving throws (like a fighter four levels above), with STR capped at 12, and encumbrance based on STR. I intend to make a full post about them soon. Just remember that 12 dwarves picked up a hobbit once because they needed a thief to go into the dragon's lair. 

Art taken from Pits & Perils by James and Robyn George. 

On Rules-lite or Rules light

 

stephanie grunwald - drive by night

After reading both Prince and Noisms take on rules-lite games, I wanted to write my own article on the subject. To make it clearer, I won't adress their points in here, I already did on their comments, suffice to say that while I enjoyed their reading, my point of view is tangential. 

I have collected tons of One-Page rpgs, starting back in 2012. I don't like all of them, of course, but as a design fanatic, I often like how they have resolved a certain mechanic (like alignment in Jung Guns), or how they have evoked a certain feeeling with a paragraph or a layout (Raygun Gothic, Travel Journal of Short Tales). It is true that they are often highly unplayable.

As Prince attests, many of them fall back on D&D to cover their gaps. Many more are innocent attempts at fixing D&D forever or just novel ideas that sound awesome in the author's head but have no sense on the page, and much less on the table (I love those. I have made a bunch of those too). Others (more and more everytime) are just made to look nice, with little care of the actual rules, probably because their author doesn't even think on playing it.

As I see it, the problem with rules-light games is not about they having little space or little rules. The problem is that they usually cut off the wrong rules. 

As I pointed out on previous articles, the core rules of a game are those that create and push the game's biorhythm, as opposed to its conflict resolution rules. 

The core rules of D&D are XP for gold, the dungeon generation rules that create rooms with gold alongside rooms with monsters, monsters and gold, dangers and traps, and the "level up" boon-unlocking dynamic for characters and dungeons. You play to level up, and adventure happens in the process. Using a d20 to hit or 2d6 vs an adjusted TN can have interesting effects, but won't change the game's nature in the slightest bit. 

Most published games, even rules-heavy ones, don't even have core rules. They just have conflict resolution rules. And that is frustrating because that is not gameable. They have lore bricks instead, and you must make a mission-based game with whatever you can assemble from it. Rules-light games often go the same road, working on innovative, clean or personal resolution rules (usually chargen+combat+equipment) and vague or absent procedures to conduct the game.

No, Maze Rats tables may be a great oracle, but are not a game procedure. It does have rough guidelines, though, on how do dungeons, cities and wildernesses look, and at least mentions the use of wandering monsters. But having XP per session + extra XP for abstractly overcoming a difficult challenge, the game can or cannot feature dungeons or loot of any kind. In fact the game can be about anything. Which seems liberating yet also kind of aimless: players must set their own drives, in a world they don't really know yet. But I am sure it works in the end.

Knave doesn't even have that. I think it was maybe conceived as an alternate chargen/combat/spells for D&D and was considered a full game by some at some point. In any case, OSR-related games have an advantage: the more a game gets closer to the OSR purity, the better it can use its resources: falling back on D&D to fill the gaps or using published modules. I think Searchers of the Unknown was built for the latter in mind too. 

But it would be unfair to accuse rules-light games of this sin, when big games do commit it constantly. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, for example, is written in two big tomes (player guide and referee guide) and somehow forgets to fit any setting, a bestiary, procedures for generating monsters, dungeons, adventure sites or adventure of any kind. It offers some advice on the tone the author wants to convey, but the advice feels short and falls on a void. 

World of Dungeons: Turbo Breakers, being three pages long, achieves to include useful gameable setting elements (the rifts, a countdown to the Cloud of Woe, an archmage called Kai Shira Kai, a Bestiary and a guide to create monsters, etc). 

Into the Odd: One page version, on a single page, allows you to run a dungeon without any preparation, filled with monsters, social encounters and traps; and teaches you to make a similar one by altering the tables therein. If you put simple advancement rules (maybe +1 to an attribute if you roll over it, and +1 to hp for each dungeon completed) and you have enough depth to make a long campaign using that rules alone. 

And as a word of advice: for people who has already read some Lovecraft enough to be familiar with the setting, will find the same or more useful stuff in the 4-page Cthulhu Dark and its companions than in the classic Chaosium tomes, all ripe with an astounding amount of nothing. You will still have to come up with an adventure yourself, but at least you will save time and effort.

So yes, rules light doesnt have to mean depth-light. I actually think they are a good paradigm for designers to learn and test things: the shorter a game is to write, the faster you can test it and re-shape it as needed. Minimalism has no inherent value on itself, but there is a limit on how complex you can make a ruleset without it becoming unwieldy. As I like to see it: the more minimal your rules are in one aspect, the more you can complicate the game in another. For example, getting some minimal rules for combat allows me to make extensive and fussy rules for handling horses without overloading players with information. This way you can add simplicity and complexity to things depending on how you want to portray them on the game you have in mind. 

Recently I put down the advancement rules for Monks and Mummies, one of my many chimeras. I found out that it was actually the hardest part of the game to come up with, and possibly the most important. Now that I know what the game is about, I think I can put the rest together """easily""". The rest of the game is sort of falling into place by itself. And thinking about this ruleslite things this days I have realized that it might not fit in one page, but I can see all the concept fitting on four or five. Let's see.