A setting in 4 images

So much time without coming around here! I must take some time to write in here again. Not dedicating myself to rpgs lately, I've become more and more absorbed in that gaming aspect by a local league of Premodern MTG (yeah I know, how could I fell for that?) but now the hype is controlled, I must be back on the tracks. As a warming excercise, I found out about this "trend" of describing a setting in 4 images and wanted to contribute with mine. Not sure on how would I do it, or if it could be done, even. But...

...I'd like to mix Evangelion (complete with angels, epic combat and comfy base-high school parts) with...

...medieval era instead of futuristic age. Not necessarily the "real middle ages" if that is even possible, just some castles, lances and horses. Pic related could be our "Shinji". The picture is called "Portrait of the young knight" and I like to think that it could even exist "in-setting", as a way that they have in Medieval Tokyo-3 to revere their teenage knights and saviors that fight against...

...this terrible monsters that threaten with a very imminent apocalypse that has a parallel relationship with the character's feelings, relationships and discovery of the world, during a seemingly endless unnatural summer. Still not sure on how they should be the only ones to be able to fight in equal conditions with the monsters, or how they are supposed to break their AT fields. The easiest answer is to make them rely on certain magical-special mounts, or some kind of impractical but magical anime swords that only them can wield effectivelly. Choose your favorite:

They also do the important role of adding some neon colors into the picture. Glowing weapons sometimes draw the seriousness out of many settings  (classic shit appearing in mmorpgs) but they kind of fit in here. But I guess that they should be as unique and as important in setting as the Evangelions are for the NERV. For closing, a meme that I just saw and I liked it a lot heheh.

More art, more insight

Some more art of the upcoming project, for which I don't have a working title yet. I am pondering reusing the one from my half-assed rpg, Monks & Mummies, as it shares muses with it. It also sounds perfect both in english as in my native language (Monjes y Momias!)

But I am considering others that might be more appropiate. Three Lost Treasures, or Los 3 tesoros robados (will post more on the rules once the game is actually printed, hopefully this upcoming month)

These are all the cards present on this prototype at the moment: I made this picture in case I lose the deck or a spare card, so I can remember them all and track which one is missing. They are all done with pencil and color markers, with occassional collages.

Introducing a project: Some art, some thoughts

Parallel to all my rpg heartbreakers, I am finishing a cherished project of mine; this time a small card game with no name yet (just some ideas). It's not mean to be a CCG or a TCG, just a set of cards which compose a "boardgame" all together.

You are suposed to play against a friend both with the same deck; each of you representing some sort of shogun trying to recover their respective heirloom relics from the hands of the other, who has stolen them. Yeah, I know its weird, but it made sense to me eventually.

These are some hand-drawn cards from the beta deck (in spanish). One of my design goals for them is to have the card text as short as possible. I realized shortly that I was writing too much text on them, trying to cover every possible legal trapping: due to my long relationship with MTG, I was using the same prose and mentality.

Though it as hard as it is hard for a man not to carry his homeland's accent, I am trying to get rid of the corporate game-designer vices. There is a reason for MTG to be extremelly careful on their wordings: they got the DCI, grand prixes, etc. They cannot afford a card to have an ambiguous meaning. If, for example, a card is a merfolk, you cannot just name it Merfolk Assassin and have a merfolk on the picture: You must specify Creature - Merfolk on the type line, or cards that affect merfolks won't have effect on him.

But I want to revel in the advantage I have over that kind of game. 

This is a small game meant to be played by persons. Probably persons who are friends or family with each other. I want to believe that if an hypotetical card affects "all creatures who carry a sword" they can civilly discern it by watching the pictures. 

I have this card called "Marsh Frogs", which originally were to have a bonus against spiders. Then I thought on writing "If the marsh frogs combat against the spider, they will automatically win the combat". But then I went: What the fuck, this is not a game for bots. People will understand this. Maybe it will change over time, but the current text is: "They will eat spiders directy". I think that people will surely interpret it the right way, and even if it is not the case, I think that the pleasure of working with human language instead of lawyer language still is worth the risk.

Lord of the Rings and MERP - Iron Crown Enterprises [review]

Today, in the "whats hot in rpgs today" section of our program, I present you a small review on two games that are 40 and 30 years old respectivelly.

I was reading this blog the other day, and I remembered the days of my highschool in which ICE's Rolemaster and Middle Earth Roleplaying was what the cool guys were playing. Not a trace of D&D back then. I even bought the book eventually, but never managed to actually run it because I was probably busy worrying about lots of other stuff. One of my friends at the time "borrowed it" for a time (20 years and counting). But I achieved to learn the game between classes from the cool guys, and eventually I made my first character: a human bard that I imagined like this: 

I remember that the session featured skeletons, a riddle for crossing a bridge, being thrown in the cell of a coliseum and managing to get out by enchanting the guard with my only spell (some sort of confusion or sleep, can't remember). I was fucking excited with how awesome it had been. 

One thing that the game did very differently than D&D is the nature and importance of critical hits. Basically on combat you rolled your percentile dice, and there was a "VS armor" table telling you how much HP you dealt to your enemy, and wether you scored a big critical, a small critical or none at all. If you did, you rolled on a secondary table that had tiny descriptions in small letters of what happened descriptivelly; depending on the weapon used and the armor they wore. Some of them narrativelly killed your foe instantly (or your character) no matter their remaining HP

For example, rolling a 40 in the crush criticals table (for example by using a mace or falling into a pit) gives you "blow to forearm, +5 hits. If no arm armor, stunned for one round". Rollng a 110 on the slash critical table is "Impaled in heart. Dies instantly. Heart destroyed. 25% chance your weapon is stuck in foe 3 rounds" On retrospective, I think that this tables made combat a lot of fun, helped with the combat narrative and made use of otherwise aesthetic things (suddently, having your character wear arm armor was important, even if for a marginal case)

Magic and Unarmed attacks had their own tables too. When the setting "monk" equivalents got some levels they got to roll in the "big creatures" critical table, which was the one the balrogs used, instead of raising their chance to hit.

shit quality, but you get the idea

Unlike D&D, it is not centered on stealing loot or delving into dungeons, but still uses advancement through XP. Which is very interesting because I'm always trying to run away from XP=Gold for some reason or the other. MERP awards experience in eight ways, some of them worth a thought:

1. HP loss. Every HP you lose translates to 1 XP

2. Criticals. Every critical you deal has a value in XP. The most interesting is that you get double that amount when somebody deals a critical to you. This means that theoretically you and a friend could level up ad infinitum dealing criticals to each other in a dirty alleyway.

3. Kill points. Depending on your level and the monster's level, you get an amount of XP after dealing the killing blow

4. Maneuver points. When you overcome the classic "roll vs a TN" challenge, you get XP depending on the challenge difficulty (picking locks, convincing guards, all that classic shit)

5. Spell points. You get XP = 100 - (10 x Caster level) + (10 x Spell level) when casting in combat.

6. Idea points. Basically give a random amount to somebody who had an idea to overcome something.

7. Travel points. 1 XP for each mile on an unfamiliar area. Half in civilized areas, x2 or x3 in dangerous areas, and divided by 10 if flying or sailing.

8. Miscellaneous. As long as XP is pre-assigned to specific goals, and not used as "I give you XP for that cool thing you did before" it seems to me like an idea that I find underused on the OSR. The book sadly seems to encourage the latter.

To finish my review, I'd like to say that the book works as Race and Class, and now I realize its heavy parallel to D&D (the 6 stats under other names, using levels, saving throws, etc). It has a LOT of subraces, some of them I don't remember at all being in LOTR (Where do the woses appear in the movie? WTF is a dorwinadan?) and has a nice bestiary:

(WTF is a Dumbledor? wasn't he from another franchise altogether?)

Searching for the old MERP manual, I've managed to find their publisher's second attempt at Lord of the Rings rpg, called simply "Lord of the Rings Boardgame", dating from 1991. And of this one I want to talk a little more, because from the design point of view, it feels very tempting to use, to learn from and to modify.

While MERP (1982) is percentile based, ICE's Lotr (1991) is entirelly 2d6 based. It is much more basic than its older counterpart, which can be bad or good sometimes. But from the "design" point of view, there are some points that caught my attention.

There are 12 skills: 

1. Strength

2. Agility (balance and nimbleness, also initiative)

3. Intelligence

4. Movement (Speed, MV per turn)

5. Defense (adds to armor)

6. Melee Bonus

7. Ranged Bonus

8. General (covers climbing, riding, etc)

9. Subterfuge (thief checks. Too many dexterity divisions, or its just me?)

10. Perception (do I see the trap?)

11. Magical (you get 2 spells per bonus, also adds to the casting roll)

12. Endurance (your HP). 

skills from 1 to 11 can be as high as +3, and as low as -2

skills from 6 to 11 are "bought". You get +5 bonus to divide between them, but any skill that is not raised gets a -2 instead. I like that this makes a great gap between casters and non casters, fighters and non-fighters, or sneaky hobbits and clumsy human. I would go even further and make it so the first +1 only applies to a favored weapon, which is more in line with the original books (Legolas=bow, hobbits=slings, for example) but using another of the same type (ranged/melee) only drops you to 0, not to -2

skills from 1 to 5 and Endurance depend entirelly on your "class"

There are nine "race and class" packages that you can choose. They all come in a pregen sheet with weapons, equipment and certain skills raised or lowered. The classes and examples it cites are:

Hobbit Scout (Bilbo, Frodo)

Elf Scout (Legolas)

Human Warrior (Eowyn, Boromir)

Dwarf Warrior (Gimli, Thorin)

Elf Warrior (Glorfindel)

Human Ranger (Aragorn)

Half-Elf Ranger (Elrond)

Human Bard (Gandalf)

Elf Bard (Galadriel, Arwen)

I love how the wizard word is totally out of the question. Wizards in this game are treated as bards. The spell list is kind of short, there are like 20 spells with the classic ones (sleep, fireball, identify shit, etc). Anybody can cast spells providing they raise their "magical" skill, so classes are little more than archetypes that help players to get into the character.

Combat is done in a grid, with movement, attack and half attacks. Depending on the action you take (spells go first) you act in a given order, with same actions acting in order of agility. Attack rolls use a small table modified by offense/defense of those involved, with the high results resulting in straight leaving your opponent unconscious (a natural 12 always does, at least, knock out your opponent) or maybe even killing them. Armor adds to your Defense bonus and substracts from subterfuge, magic and movement.

Too basic when compared with the MERP one, maybe. I see the simplicity of the 2d6 as a great excuse for complicating it using the critical tables of the original one!

Strength doesn't affect combat in anyway, which is plainly stupid in a game that uses it as a factor. Seeing that weapons are differenciated by modifying damage done, but with two handers and  unarmed combat having penalties to hit, I think that a good way to fix this is to have Strenght offset those penalties by a proportional amount. 

The resting 8 of the 28 pages ruleset is dedicated to an oddly specific set of questions. My copy is in spanish, but I found a screenshot that will speak better than my words:

The choice of 14 situations that are thoroughly covered by the rules is very interesting, it says a lot about the challenges that the PCs are supposed to face and about the world they tread on. In which other fantasy game did you see a page dedicated to SNEAKING THROUGH TOWN BY NIGHT?

 None of the books have anything such as "procedural challenge generation" or anything that drives the game forward other than the GM's work, but LOR makes up for it as it was originally printed in a book alongside a module (bigger in pagecount than the actual game), so you could say that the first module was part of the game itself. 

(Skimming through it it seems that it features at least Gandalf and Merry as NPCs, as well as a couple of Stone Trolls)

It is cool to know that if somebody decides to play it after all this years, after lots of iterations and games on the Middle Earth that have been published, s/he can find some help with My_GaMe_FiXeS in this small corner of the blogosphere. Nice coming into spring for everybody. 

Eowen at the doors of Meduseld

Schools of magic

image: twitter - @ahruon

From the gamist point of view, there are plenty reasons to divide magic into colors in an RPG

- increased replayability

- increased difference between various PC casters

- increased customization and sense of identity. Say that novice wizards start with one color, expert can add a second and masters can add a third That makes for organic character customization which comes up through gameplay, not at character creation. Much more if you pair it with all or some spells being "found" in-game.

- different types of wizards build world. Factions, tensions, zones on the map that belong to ones or others. The whole Kanto is built over making zones for each pokemon type, but the same can be said about Ravnica.

- the opportunity to create different legendary spells or magic items tailored to specific types, which can be quested for by their respective PCs. This type of "item hunting" is one of the best things you can have when you play a sandbox.

And, lets face it, I want to create something inspired by Pokemon Magic since ages. It's one of the best examples of good gameplay-oriented worldbuilding in history, and there is a lot to steal from it.

After thinking a lot about this,  I think that the correct number of schools for my project should be around four or five in the book, with around 10 spells each (lets say: 6 basic, 2 expert and 2 legendary). But instead of closing them in a wheel (as MTG does) keep it open so one could create custom schools or spells around any concept one should want (chronomancy, technomancy, etc. Sense of taste not included) while still being compatible with the existing lists. As I was doing my research, I found out that the uneven GLOG does "in spirit" much of what I am striving to do, but of course, I am going to do it my way anyways. 

So, first of all, lets see some examples of magic schools portrayed elsewhere.

You got eight of them in post-3e D&D: abjuration, alteration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, invocation, and necromancy. This particular case is interesting because types are defined mostly around their "role" in game: alteration and illusion are suited for adventuring tricks, conjuration and invocation are more suited for combat, with necromancy having a very defined use. To put it in a way, wizards are much more "pigeon holed" in what they can or cannot do.

Pokemon, on the other hand, is divided by theme (lightning, plant, water, etc) but the role of every theme is mostly the same: beat the other guy down. 

Magic the Gathering's five colors fits nicely between both examples: Colors have a solid definition in theme, and while all of them can take you to "zero life" they play wildly differently. And while they have limitations and specializations, they feel like they are built around a theme in-game and not around utility in a design room as 3e D&D does.

Ideally I want to conceive five wizard schools and try not to rip off MTG straight in the process. Five is a curious number to base something, as there are much lesser correspondences than with the number four (four directions, four elements, four seasons, four quadrants on an X/Y graph); though it is used on chinese systems (earth-metal-wood-water-fire) or japanese ones (wind-fire-water-earth-void). Also japanese use a five season calendar that divides summer into a rainy and a dry season.

So, to begin with, here is a table in which (you/I) can roll up some wizard schools. Your school spell list gets one spell for each type below, but for one that is unknown to them (roll). Two other types get one and two extra spells respectivelly, for a total of 10 spells. A school with three types of offensive spells is likely to be a very quarreling faction, while one that focus on alter the self or alchemy will look more like a sect of cultivators.

1 offensive (damage + certain status alterations)
2 healing (damage and or status alterations, including death)
3 divination (prophecy, ESP, commune-style questions, etc. Tapping into the "hidden" side of everyday things, such as travelling through mirrors or speaking with animals, also goes here)
4 summoning (other entities, forces or objects)
5 enchanting (alter things and people, also non-violent combat moves such as sleep)
6 altering the self (transformation or other power ups)
7 alchemy (preparing potions or other consumables, probably buffed in uses to compete with instant spells)
8 protection (any kind)

Now, roll two or three times for the themes of the school. These will help you give form to the spell list, and hint which forces or mythological animals power your advanced spells. Just forget for a while that these are the official pokemon types.

1. Fire
2. Water
3. Grass
4. Electric
5. Ice
6. Fighting
7. Poison
8. Ground
9. Flying
10. Psychic
11. Bug
12. Rock
13. Ghost
14. Dark
15. Dragon
16. Steel
17. Fairy
18. Normal

Suit yourself to choose what each of this words mean. Fairy in the pokemon game is used mostly as mind-alteration (which make more sense on the Psychic type IMHO) but it can be interpreted in a more open way and make it about fate, bending space and time and other works of elves and demigods. It feels natural to expand Ghost into necromantic/exorcist territory, while type: Normal is probably best used as representing animals and other beasts (druidic style)

Now roll twice for your thematic colors

1. Red
2. Blue
3. Yellow
4. Orange
5. Purple
6. Brown
7. Black
8. Green
9. Pink
10. Indigo
11. White
12. Emerald
13. Lavender
14. Turquoise
15. Gold
16. Silver
17. Bronze
18. Cyan
19. Magenta
20. Go monochromatic. You can always choose this instead of any result. If this is your only result, roll again.

EDIT: link to Dont worry, I've got a Sword where the author has worked on the same topic.

EDIT 2: 8 Schools of Magic by Reckless Dweomer

source (a game called wizards of unica)

The Gender of Magic

It came upon me that there are two kinds of magic users. 

There is one kind that goes out exploring, learns spells and throws fireballs from a staff. This is the one we model in D&D. They activelly seek to get into the monster's lair and take out their magic loot. This is Gandalf, this is the Dying Earth guys and also any wizard you see casting Bolt2 in Final Fantasy games. You can even argue that White mages and Priests from Dragon Quest belong to this group. Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicles does not have a staff, but it's otherwise a perfect example. Their magics are visible and obvious; immediate. They often embody the concept of Glass Cannon (fragile but potent combatants), but still a cannon. They are the Yang (or male) side of the casters, and we usually call them wizards. They often learn their craft by reading books in posh wizard colleges or equivalents and in their extreme variant do not require any special inner wisdom: just memorizing shit and repeat some words boldly. Their magic tends to have very clear rules for casting, very scientific with little mysticism.

The Yin (Female) kind also appears much in fantasy, but rarely in the form of main characters. Yin implies a degree of passiveness, so they are not specially suited to star in an adventure book, though they might fit better on more introvert, small-scoped novellas. Yin magic users do not cast flashy spells, but rather do things like influencing others or preparing potions. They are not usually adventurous but stay at home; sometimes for years or for life, improving their magical skills often in solitude. Their magic is not "shot" but instead often requires a degree of intimacy. It also works subtler and slower: they seduce, think, trick, deceive and plot to get their goals, to the point that sometimes it's not clear where the manipulation begins and the magic ends. We usually call this casters witches, and when they appear in a story is very likely that they are helping characters or villains. Rhea de Coos, Malefica, or the Fairy Godmother. Though they're often women, some male mages in fiction embody this archetype, for example Merlin in his mentor facet, Flagg from Eyes of the Dragon or Jafar from Aladdin.

In rpg games we usually play wizards. I don't think there is nothing bad at it: they just work better for what D&D does. Playing a witch is a little more difficult. Mind that if what she does in-game is to shoot elemental spells and go killing monsters 4 loot you are essentially playing a female wizard. The very act of being an adventurer is Yang on itself, while Yin would be concerned to introspection and travelling "the world inside you" (which can be awesome on itself but not an usual part of D&D). Yin wizards are present as NPCs such as antagonists, the alchemist hirelings or the potion sellers. 

But as the Tao shows, Yin holds Yang inside and viceversa. So every single thing, and every magic user in existance has, of course, a little bit of both. To traduce this to rpg mechanics: If we assume both approaches of caster to be the same class (Magic User), how likely is that a Wizard can cast lots of spells, but require an alchemist to prepare a potion for them? and how likely is that said alchemist has researched lots of potions that are EVIDENTLY MAGICAL, but hasn't cared of learning a single level 1 spell? I think that the lines should blurr a bit in there. Still struggling to make my "perfect" magic system/class, and got stuck thinking about this. Ideally, a class should let you advance your character on either field, instead of making you choose between artificially created distinctions like "the Wizard class" or "the Alchemist/witch class". I've found this documents that might serve as inspiration in future attempts to create it. The challenge is that the more you push a character to become a "brewer" you put more emphasis on downtime, which might not sync well with the biorrhytm of the rest of the party. 

There are, of course, some tricks like making potions "quantum" (as in, you are given X potion points each downtime, then you spend one point to produce a potion that "you always carried with you"). To make this ability organically mixed with the "fireball gun", magic users could choose to learn a potion recipe instead of a spell, with potions being more potent than level 1 spells, but not more than level 3 spells. This way one could advance freely between the wizard and witch concepts, while having a good reason to specialize in potions at the start of the game (more potency in exchange of more complexity) and a good reason to not do it (more spells, in the end they might be more useful, you never know). Also with spells get more powerful the more level you have (such as magic missile) it might compensate little at the start, but a lot when you are level 10 or more. 

And, for closing, let me ask you a question: do you feel that you have ever played a "witch", in the Yin sense of word?

Magic system sketch v2

After all this time, I've still haven't found a magic system that I like 100%. This is the current iteration I am working now. Numbers are made to fit with this other previous work, though they can work with any rules using roll-under, under a magic stat such as wisdom or intelligence.

Wizards grow in 2 fields:

# of Spells and Magical skill

There is a magic skill, lets say X in 6, that grows as the wizard gets more powerful. 

Using certain magic items (like oracles) passive reactions (like detect magic) or small magic effects (cantrips) uses a roll of this to work. Wands also use this as primary factor of power, I will explain soon. 

# of Spells is very reduced, even though if spells themselves are more "versatile" and should not have a single, ultra-specific effect.I want to limit it to four or five even in very powerful wizards. More spectrum is added by gathering items (jewels, wands, etc) that allow casters to have more repertoire. This magic items are not too overpowered because they need a good magic skill score to work, so it is fine. It is hinted in the books that Gandalf uses fire thanks to the elven ring he carries; so wizards having lots of power and not many spells has basis on the holy fantasy books.

This is a hint on how this could work:

Lets say you have a spell list of 2: Heal and Cold

You use the Cold spell to deal damage, so you roll 1d6 and check your magic score (3)

If you roll under or equal your score, you take that number of HD from your enemy or enemies (you decide how this damage is divided). Lets say that the Cold spell has a side effect or alternate effect of slowing enemies down: then everyone affected rolls a save or is paralyzed. At 0 HD they are frozen permanently until defrosted. 

Having more level or good gear might increase the number of dice you roll: If you roll multiple d6, treat them separatelly

If you roll OVER your magic score, then the result is assumed to be equal to your magic score (3) but either the spell is lost if all dice are over (like a vancian system) or you lose magic die which roll over (making energy decrease instead, instead of making spells deplete separatelly)

Depending on the spell, the number rolled can be interpreted as HD of damage, yards, meters, possible individual targets or just an abstract degree of effect (up to the GM to decide the spectrum of effects on all results from 1 to 6). 

A very interesting interpretation could be to make a spell (for example, CHARM) be able to target a monster with HD equal to [number rolled + wizard HD]. So the spell always works with monsters under the wizard's HD, and makes a nice progression for spells to grow up in power as the wizard does (per BX rules, sleep, charm or hold person have hard caps on which monsters can be affected based on HD or size, but seem a little arbitrary and make you wonder: why is a dragon never affected by a sleep spell, EVER, no matter the wizard's skill? it seems something that could happen on a fairy tale. Why not in a D&D game?

So, wizards get exponentially better as they raise their magic score, which is something I activelly want. My idea is to make multiclassing possible, but mathematically sub-par. Having one fighter and one wizard should render more "powerful" characters than having two fighting-wizards, even if the latter might be useful in some situations. 

Having made this, only one more task remains: to make a provisional spell list to be tested, and deciding what kind of effects can be used as cantrips or produced on a different way.

One idea is that both HEAL and COLD, as do FIRE or BOLT, can produce light under certain conditions (for example, when used by a "magic score=3" wizard who is carrying a wand). This way, you can have spells produce lights of different colors depending on the wizard's favored powers (just like jedis have different lightsabers)

Another one is that spells give you both active and passive abilities.

Having mastered the HEAL spell means that you must be a very lawful or righteous person, so you have a +1 to turn undead.

Having mastered the COLD spell might give you a passive resistance to cold temperatures, and so on. 

Ah! I almost forgot: Wands allow certain effects (such as light) but magically imbued wands give you an extra d6 when rolling to their favored spells (Wand of cold gives you an extra 1d6 when casting cold, for example). This die never depletes unless you are one of those sick people who makes wands a depleting resource.

Here is a big good list of spells alongside the cantrips/passive bonuses they grant to the caster that memorizes them. While I make my own list (the real tough work) this can serve as inspiration