Tabletop Games

Maybe don’t do that in public (RPGs)

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Last weekend, I was at a convention and played in the single worst RPG session I have so far played. Then, after lots of drinks and retelling how bad it was, I realized I haven’t said anything here about running RPGs. Thus, since I haven’t posted in months, I’m going to talk about running a game at some sort of convention, where you don’t know the players.

First: make sure your session fits in the time slot. Aim to take up no more than 80% of the available time, because your players will likely play slower and be less familiar with the system.

Related to that, keep the game moving. There’s table talk and there’s a 15-minute breakdown of the current Marvel movie trailer. Look for players that are not engaged with either the game or conversation to know when you need to guide people back. Likewise, don’t put an extended focus on one character. Again, a quick glance at the non-participating players can usually tell you when the scene has gone on too long.

If your players are struggling with a plan, it’s okay to point out obviously bad plans. Things their characters would know, like “traveling at night is dangerous and exhausting” are okay to point out if no one else says anything.

Make sure the action the player describes matches the action you’re assuming. “I’m going to keep watch” might mean to the player “I’m nearby but looking for threats”  but you may assume “I’m hanging back a football field away.” Ask for clarification as needed to avoid sidelining players.

Most important for a public game: don’t include controversial content. Generally, keeping content PG-13 is advisable. Keep in mind, people may have had to live through rape or serious abuse or a host of other very bad things. Don’t toss them into the session as a cheap way to up the stakes.

This last point bears repeating, especially because if you are running a scheduled game at a venue, you are implicitly representing them. You have presumably contacted them and offered to run a game. They have presumably given you a timeslot to do it. This comes with an understanding that you will not do something to make the place look bad. If you do not want this responsibility do not run an organized game.

If you instead think, “I’ll just run a pickup game,” that’s fine, but be aware that most of the same rules apply. Mainly, if your solution for avoiding having to moderate your content is to run an unsanctioned game, maybe just don’t run it at all.

Prototyping an RPG

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I have actually started prototyping my Cyberpunk RPG. This is the furthest I’ve gotten on just about any personal game-related project since college and I’m happy to report that it’s kind of broken.

But that’s okay! It’s a playtest. I knew it was going to be broken (although I hoped it was less broken than it was). The point was just to get something out so I could at least start.

Here’s a list of likely features in the full game:

  • Cool Augments to customize your character (and their rolls)!
  • Hacking that makes sense!
  • Social media combat and interaction with the game world!
  • Super-fun Action-Point-based frantic combat!
  • Personalized talents to really show where your character shines!
  • Expandable abilities that allow for either Breadth or Depth in what you can do!
  • Abstracted health system to reflect the wear and tear of combat with different damage types!

Here’s what was in the prototype:

  • Some augments that boosted skill rolls.
  • A skill labeled “Computers”
  • “Hey, look, you can totally do some in-combat streaming. If you want. No? Okay.”
  • Actually pretty fun and mostly balanced Action-Point based combat
  • Vague rules for creating talents so I didn’t have to make a list ahead of time
  • Some examples of potential abilities that didn’t make it into the testing
  • A surprisingly functional abstracted health system to showcase different attack damage types.

So, of the 7: 2 actually got in and worked, 1 was totally absent, and the rest were partially implemented.

But how did the playtest actually go? Fairly well. The game is both fun and functional, but there are some problems with it.

What did I learn?

Numeric balancing

Just because the numbers are balanced against each other, doesn’t mean they are fun. Stats were far too strong, and it took me 3 playtests to figure that out. When your highest stat can give you a +7, and your highest skill proficiency can give you a +5, there’s really no point in boosting your skill that relies on a stat of +2. If you can summarize a character as peaks and valleys, all of the characters were basically three mountains sitting on some rolling plains.

Creativity is hard without guidelines

Remember that bit about the talents? Every playtest, someone suggested that I make a list of examples when players need to create something themselves. Which, admittedly, I knew I needed to happen. When your instruction is “Choose a skill to get a bonus is a narrow situation” the definition of “narrow” is poorly defined. Can I get a bonus to shooting while aiming? How about with pistols? What if there’s a guy with no one near him? Having some examples to show the standard “narrow” limit would have helped this problem immensely.

Changing the central roll mechanic

I had a cool idea. Each character had an essence die that gets added to all rolls which started as a d12. This would shrink one die size for every augment they took, but the augment would both give bonuses to 1 or 2 skills, and change those skill to use a more stable 3d6 instead of a more swingy d20. The idea being the machine would perform consistently where a human would have wildly different results, both good and bad.

This was a nightmare that I could never balance properly.

Sure, the mechanic was interesting, but it either was underpowered, and nobody took augments or overpowered so that people would take 1 augment and be sitting at insane bonuses plus a d10 to roll. Despite this, I still think I can get it to work.

The solution could be one of the following:

  • Augments get a reverse-essence bonus, where the lower your essence die is the more powerful the augments get.
  • Augments tag skills and instead give you abilities.
  • Keep the system as-is and overhaul the numbers and re-balance based on the new numbers.

Just start. Anywhere.

I’d been hemming and hawing over whether or not this is ready, and then decided the best way to run it was to tell my friends that we were running a “Mystery RPG” (that is, an RPG that is a mystery and not a mystery-themed RPG) and just playing. A base system was created in about a week with other rules being created on the fly. Just running the game was the most helpful way to make progress. Even if it’s terrible (which it might be), even if it’s broken (which it will be), you won’t know until you see the parts moving and working with each other. A game you can play is always going to more fun than a game you can’t, so just make something and run it.

I forgot about the Star Wars RPG

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I am kicking myself for forgetting about Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars RPG: Edge of the Empire (also Force and Destiny and Age of Rebellion, but EotE is my current favorite). I’m going to talk about it in the context of the last two posts about initiative and action economies.

SWRPG’s Funky Dice

Going into this game requires a brief explanation about the dice. The dice are proprietary, with symbols instead of numbers. These dice Successes which get matched against Failures (to see if the task succeeds) and Advantages against Threats (to see if any bonuses or twists happen). Higher stat/skill values either give more dice or replace dice with better dice.

Initiative

EotE uses a character-based turns but doesn’t limit that slot to the character. Each character rolls their dice, totally up their successes (with advantages as tie-breakers). The GM orders the initiative slots based on which team they’re on (generally PC vs NPC). The players then get to choose the order they act within those slots (which can change from round to round).

This ends up with the best of both Team and Character based initiative. Rounds generally aren’t a curb stomp of whoever went first (since there’s a mix) but characters generally get flexibility in how they’re able to act within a round (unlike systems like D&D). This is probably the best turn-based initiative system I’ve used.

Actions

Similar to D&D, with a standard Action, but instead of a Move there ends up being Maneuvers. These can be used to do combat-oriented quick tasks in addition to moving, like aiming or opening a door. Interestingly, it’s possible to get either a free Maneuver as either a side effect of an action (usually involving rolling advantage) OR spending strain (which is used for other abilities) to gain a second one.

This action economy, like Ironclaw’s, supports the cinematic flair that this system is trying to effect. It’s relatively easy to teach and explain (Actions make you roll; Maneuvers don’t).

This system is my favorite Narrative-based system. Other narrative systems are generally too loose with the rules, to the point of being overly vague, but this handles almost every aspect of it in an elegant way. There are a lot of good ideas to look at here for any GM who’s trying to build their own system, or even just looking for inspiration for their campaigns.