- Tabletop:
- I need to resolve something like 4-5 months of ACKS stuff - basically all of fall and winter. This is likely to be done in small groups over skype throughout break. Fortunately, I remembered to bring my hex map (though I left my dice at home due to baggage / space constraints... guess I'll be using perl's RNG). I need to resolve a bunch of trade for Matt, Alex wants to explore the caverns beneath Fort Camarone, Tom wants to clear some hexes around his tower, and Jared I believe is recruiting a company of cataphracts to hire out to Drew to clear the hexes north and west of Opportunity. Then in the winter, Alex and Tom will likely be doing research while Matt does more trade and the domained fighters collect income. Also need to generate some NPC stats and motivations for the coming Witchwar.
- Install a pdf editor (xournal, maybe) and use it to put bookmarks in the ACKS core and Player's Companion pdfs.
- I expect Matt and I will be trying to play Space Hulk at some point. We'll see how it goes; it's hard to do this properly with digital tabletops because some of the hidden information is either lost or hard to verify.
- I'm curious to take a look back at Wardogs (MJ12's Starmada-based mech game). I've kind of concluded that BattleTech is probably a bit too... heavy, and while I don't like some of the components of Wardogs, like the melee subsystem and the huge number of weapon traits, I feel like it would work quite well for an established universe where you're just converting in units. In particular, I'm curious to try it on 40k's universe. It could also work well, I think, if the permitted build options were strictly limited; here's a list of available weapons, here's a list of permitted vehicle traits, and you can only design with these things. A compromise position between the perfect freedom we had with Starmada design and the lack of design in games like 40k.
- Traveller. I've been following In Like Flynn's Traveller sandbox design project (and reading the Schlock Merc archives), and they've got my Traveller gears turning again. Might be nothing comes of it, or I may post some material since I don't expect to be able to run Traveller again before everyone goes their separate ways.
- Tim and I split for a copy of Microscope at some point last spring, and it seems like a game that I might be able to get my brother to play while I'm at home. For bonus points, combine with Traveller.
- Computer games:
- Dwarf Fortress - to elevate the fortress of Treatycaverns, home of the Circumstantial Hatchet, to prominence, preparing it properly for siege after I turn invaders back on. I finally got splintermind's Dwarf Therapist fork set up properly and it's wonderful, so that should help in this. I recently discovered that my chief medical dwarf, though a qualified doctor and surgeon, really hates helping other dwarves, and therefore hates his job. He's since been replaced; while still on call for cases when an actual trained surgeon is necessary, he no longer has to deal with minor ailments on a regular basis, and is much happier as a result. I would never have noticed something like this without Dwarf Therapist's assistance.
- Get the Steam beta up and running on my xubuntu laptop. Then, TF2. Also, filing bug reports.
- Playing with computers:
- Build and learn to operate an Arch linux VM. I'm not sure I like where Ubuntu is going with Unity and the shopping lens integration and such (and the network manager memory leak is just awful), but I don't want to jump to Arch without trying it out a bit first. If the VM tests go well, then I'll maybe think about carving a partition out for it (I'd prefer to run a livedisk test too to make sure it likes my hardware OK, but I'm not sure Arch puts out livedisk trial images).
- Upgrade this laptop to 16 GB of RAM.
- I should probably try to get through a couple more levels of smashthestack, or start playing overthewire instead. I like how overthewire at least tells you what the levels are before you get to them...
- This ARM assembly course looks informative and potentially useful
- There's this one crashing program that I want to investigate further to see if it's exploitable. Can't say more, because this might turn into a CTF problem or something.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Winter Break To-Do List
(Semi-gaming relevant) things I need to do over winter break:
Friday, December 7, 2012
Gamerspaces - The Future of the FLGS?
There's been much to do about the Death of the Friendly Local Game Store. The usual culprits are a reduction in purchases since the economy's bad, pdfs being cheaper, easier, and available in greater variety, and the recent edition wars (if you stock just one edition, you lose potential customers, but if you stock multiple editions and bet wrong, then you end up with extra stock that you can't move). A lot of stores seem to have basically just turned into outlets for Magic the Gathering or Warhammer. The trouble is that the other function of the FLGS, as a center for the local gaming community, is still useful. Sometimes it's nice to be able to meet a player in person and get a good read before inviting them to a game, or to watch a game being played before deciding to join it, or just to have a place other than your own home to run a game with CheetoBreath McBurritoFarts (nothing against him, he's a great player and all, but after the last time you had him over and the smell lingered for days, your wife gave you an ultimatum and none of your other players are willing to let him into their houses either). It's a good place to poster for home games, organize events, learn to paint minis, and a host of other things ancillary to the playing of the game itself, too. The loss of FLGSs is all the more lamentable for the loss of these elements... but I think it may also suggest a path by which they might continue.
The parallel which this immediately suggests to me is the hackerspace. These are essentially groups of technical folks who pool cash for rent and equipment to build a place where they can get together and play with hardware and code while hanging out with like-minded individuals. They run mainly on memberships and donations, rather than on retail sale of stuff. This, I think, might be a viable route for the FLGS - abandon retail, and become a membership-based 'gamerspace'. Get some warehouse space, throw down some cheap tables and power strips, add a wireless router or two and a concessions stand, and then get some groups willing to pay for 24/7 access, or rent out tables for shorter time slots to non-members. And sure, maybe you also stock dice and Magic cards, but selling those need not be the focus. Selling stuff starts to get complicated when you're looking at opening the space up 24/7 to members, anyways (MtG vending machine, anyone?). The natural question is "is there sufficient demand for this sort of thing, in the internet age, where I can game with strangers without either leaving my house or letting them in? Are people willing to shell out enough for membership to sustain something like this?" And that seems like something which can only be determined empirically. On the other hand, dues could probably be a lot lower than those of a hackerspace, since you're not shelling out for soldering gear, oscilloscopes, and 3d printers...
Upon reflection, the Airlock is kind of a construction of this type, but built around videogames rather than tabletops, and with set hours. They may not be thriving, but they're still kicking, which is promising for the model. On the other hand, both the Airlock and hackerspaces have the advantage of requiring specialty hardware which is a bit expensive for individuals to buy for themselves. A gamerspace does not have such a requirement, which will cut costs but also reduces the impetus to membership. It might be possible to maintain a community library of gaming books, though, and that might provide a financial incentive, in that each participant gains access to books without having to own them. On the third hand, I know that if there was a dedicated gaming space, it sure would reduce the consternation we college students have when it's sunday afternoon and we can't find anywhere to game on campus... but college students are cheap. In any case, the viability of this model will depend in part on the cost of space in an area, as well as the gamer density. It remains to be seen if there are places where it could be sustained.
The parallel which this immediately suggests to me is the hackerspace. These are essentially groups of technical folks who pool cash for rent and equipment to build a place where they can get together and play with hardware and code while hanging out with like-minded individuals. They run mainly on memberships and donations, rather than on retail sale of stuff. This, I think, might be a viable route for the FLGS - abandon retail, and become a membership-based 'gamerspace'. Get some warehouse space, throw down some cheap tables and power strips, add a wireless router or two and a concessions stand, and then get some groups willing to pay for 24/7 access, or rent out tables for shorter time slots to non-members. And sure, maybe you also stock dice and Magic cards, but selling those need not be the focus. Selling stuff starts to get complicated when you're looking at opening the space up 24/7 to members, anyways (MtG vending machine, anyone?). The natural question is "is there sufficient demand for this sort of thing, in the internet age, where I can game with strangers without either leaving my house or letting them in? Are people willing to shell out enough for membership to sustain something like this?" And that seems like something which can only be determined empirically. On the other hand, dues could probably be a lot lower than those of a hackerspace, since you're not shelling out for soldering gear, oscilloscopes, and 3d printers...
Upon reflection, the Airlock is kind of a construction of this type, but built around videogames rather than tabletops, and with set hours. They may not be thriving, but they're still kicking, which is promising for the model. On the other hand, both the Airlock and hackerspaces have the advantage of requiring specialty hardware which is a bit expensive for individuals to buy for themselves. A gamerspace does not have such a requirement, which will cut costs but also reduces the impetus to membership. It might be possible to maintain a community library of gaming books, though, and that might provide a financial incentive, in that each participant gains access to books without having to own them. On the third hand, I know that if there was a dedicated gaming space, it sure would reduce the consternation we college students have when it's sunday afternoon and we can't find anywhere to game on campus... but college students are cheap. In any case, the viability of this model will depend in part on the cost of space in an area, as well as the gamer density. It remains to be seen if there are places where it could be sustained.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
I Miss Vancian Casting
Man, I bet that's not a sentiment you hear often. Actually yeah, google searching that string doesn't turn up much. Neat.
For those unfamiliar, Vancian casting is the default means of spellcasting for editions between 1st and 3rd, where a spellcaster chooses his spells at the beginning of the day, picking both which spells he has prepared and how many of each, subject to some fairly tight limitations. Lots of folks hacked together their own "spell point" systems during this period, some of which were officially released during 2e, while 3e's Sorcerer class was the first official 'spontaneous' hybrid to my knowledge, which chose a small set of spells known and could then cast them interchangeably using slots rather than spell points. This achieved a flexibility somewhere between spell points and proper Vancian casting. 3e's psionics brought spell points back, and then in late 3.5 we saw a huge proliferation in alternate magic systems (stuff like incarnum and truenaming, which just ran on completely different mechanics from normal casting). 4e, for its part, did standardize things again, but to a new at-will / encounter / daily paradigm which bore little resemblance to anything preceding it, and which severely limited strategic flexibility.
ACKS, on the other hand, uses something very much like a back-port of 3e's sorcerer. Each mage has a spellbook, which contains the formulae for his spells, and also has a repertoire of spells which he has readily available for casting. Each day he receives a number of spell slots of each level, which he can use to cast any spell from his repertoire on the fly. The place where he beats the sorcerer is in his ability to change out the spells in his repertoire; while this is a slow and expensive process, it is a capability which the 3.0 sorcerer lacked entirely, and which is very limited for the 3.5 sorcerer.
There are a lot of things to like about the ACKS mage. It has a degree of tactical versatility, and also some strategic versatility, but the spells you learn when you level are (usually) acquired at random from other mages in the area. This means that getting the spells you want is hard, and puts mages on constant lookout for scrolls of spells they want. Better still, it provides a motivator for mage-vs-mage conflicts; to the victor go the spellbooks. It brings back something of the old Magic: the Gathering vibe, from back around Arena (sidenote - this is the best of the MtG novels I have ever read), where you duel for the rights to spells (which translated into the long-abandoned ante rules of the card game). The summoning spells in the Player's Companion really reinforce this feeling, and it pleases me. Likewise, the inability to choose spells on levelling means that mages aren't always picking the same handful of optimal spells; as I've mentioned, sometimes you're the evoker because you rolled all offense, and sometimes you're the dooromancer because you rolled Wizard Lock and Knock. Spell acquisition is its own game within the game, and casters are sometimes known by their own custom signature spells, which are not easily learned by others. It's really a pretty neat thing to have going on, and I think both of our mages are having fun with it.
The thing I miss about Vancian magic, though, is the planning and cunning that it entails. As a Vancian wizard, you have to make measured guesses about what you're going to encounter on this particular day, and then hope that you guessed right. An ACKS mage, on the other hand, must estimate how many more things he will encounter in a given day, in order to decide how to conserve his spell slots, but need not plan for particular expected threats to the same degree. I argue that having to plan in the Vancian manner causes players to think more like high-int magicians, whereas with ACKS-style spontaneous magic, mages are cautious due to their fragility but rarely play to the full capabilities of their nominal intellects. Roger has previously mentioned the "impulsive vs analytic" dynamic between fighters and wizards, and I think that Vancian casting reinforced that role for wizards. I recall from my time playing a Vancian wizard back in 3.0 that it was all about contingency planning. You have your combat spells, and stuff you might need at a moment's notice like Invisibility or Teleport, prepped with your actual slots. You have Scribe Scroll for a reason - scrolls are for all the stuff that you probably won't need today, but might reasonably need out of combat this adventure. Knock, Levitate, those sort of utility problem-solving capabilities. At later levels, you probably pick up Craft Wand, and shift some of your low-grade offense and frequently-used utility spells, like Detect Magic, out to those. If you're complaining about the ten-minute adventuring day as a 3.x Vancian wizard after 5th level, it's because you're managing your strategic resources poorly.
Now, you may remark, magic item creation in 3.x is terrible because it costs you XP. And this is true, and that is a bad rule, but I have a theory as to why it is there. I think, though I have no corroboration from any official source for this belief, that the motivation for magic items costing XP to create in 3.x is that it serves to slow down spellcaster levelling. It's a workaround for the uniform levelling curve introduced in 3rd edition, with the intent of restoring some degree of the old differences in levelling rate for classes which were clearly different in power. Because in Core 3.0 at least, playing a good wizard meant either scrolling it up or complaining about the ten-minute adventuring day. Sadly it would seem that the complainers have won out.
In any case, we do not see this same push to magic item creation in ACKS. Our wizards have not been creating potions or scrolls of utility spells with the same frequency observed in casters of similar levels in 3.0, and I believe this is due in part to the fact that they do not have to choose between fly and fireball, or invisibility and knock, in the same preparatory way. Created charged magic items are now useful because they permit you to use more slots in a day than you would otherwise be able, or with potions they let your fellow party members use actions to generate spell effects, which can confer an action-economic advantage. But the opportunity cost to create these items is quite steep; you need monster parts and many weeks and many gold pieces and a lab. Our mages have certainly not been jumping on the magic item creation bandwagon. Part of this, I suspect, may be that they just recently acquired the capability at 5th level, rather than 1st as would happen in 3.x. Perhaps I should just give it more time...
In any case the point was that playing Vancian casters generated a push towards gathering information about what you were going to face, and planning cleverly, which spontaneous casting does not to the same degree. And in retrospect, it was kind of fun sometimes, especially when you do have scrolls and other charged magic items as your strategic flexibility reserve.
For those unfamiliar, Vancian casting is the default means of spellcasting for editions between 1st and 3rd, where a spellcaster chooses his spells at the beginning of the day, picking both which spells he has prepared and how many of each, subject to some fairly tight limitations. Lots of folks hacked together their own "spell point" systems during this period, some of which were officially released during 2e, while 3e's Sorcerer class was the first official 'spontaneous' hybrid to my knowledge, which chose a small set of spells known and could then cast them interchangeably using slots rather than spell points. This achieved a flexibility somewhere between spell points and proper Vancian casting. 3e's psionics brought spell points back, and then in late 3.5 we saw a huge proliferation in alternate magic systems (stuff like incarnum and truenaming, which just ran on completely different mechanics from normal casting). 4e, for its part, did standardize things again, but to a new at-will / encounter / daily paradigm which bore little resemblance to anything preceding it, and which severely limited strategic flexibility.
ACKS, on the other hand, uses something very much like a back-port of 3e's sorcerer. Each mage has a spellbook, which contains the formulae for his spells, and also has a repertoire of spells which he has readily available for casting. Each day he receives a number of spell slots of each level, which he can use to cast any spell from his repertoire on the fly. The place where he beats the sorcerer is in his ability to change out the spells in his repertoire; while this is a slow and expensive process, it is a capability which the 3.0 sorcerer lacked entirely, and which is very limited for the 3.5 sorcerer.
There are a lot of things to like about the ACKS mage. It has a degree of tactical versatility, and also some strategic versatility, but the spells you learn when you level are (usually) acquired at random from other mages in the area. This means that getting the spells you want is hard, and puts mages on constant lookout for scrolls of spells they want. Better still, it provides a motivator for mage-vs-mage conflicts; to the victor go the spellbooks. It brings back something of the old Magic: the Gathering vibe, from back around Arena (sidenote - this is the best of the MtG novels I have ever read), where you duel for the rights to spells (which translated into the long-abandoned ante rules of the card game). The summoning spells in the Player's Companion really reinforce this feeling, and it pleases me. Likewise, the inability to choose spells on levelling means that mages aren't always picking the same handful of optimal spells; as I've mentioned, sometimes you're the evoker because you rolled all offense, and sometimes you're the dooromancer because you rolled Wizard Lock and Knock. Spell acquisition is its own game within the game, and casters are sometimes known by their own custom signature spells, which are not easily learned by others. It's really a pretty neat thing to have going on, and I think both of our mages are having fun with it.
The thing I miss about Vancian magic, though, is the planning and cunning that it entails. As a Vancian wizard, you have to make measured guesses about what you're going to encounter on this particular day, and then hope that you guessed right. An ACKS mage, on the other hand, must estimate how many more things he will encounter in a given day, in order to decide how to conserve his spell slots, but need not plan for particular expected threats to the same degree. I argue that having to plan in the Vancian manner causes players to think more like high-int magicians, whereas with ACKS-style spontaneous magic, mages are cautious due to their fragility but rarely play to the full capabilities of their nominal intellects. Roger has previously mentioned the "impulsive vs analytic" dynamic between fighters and wizards, and I think that Vancian casting reinforced that role for wizards. I recall from my time playing a Vancian wizard back in 3.0 that it was all about contingency planning. You have your combat spells, and stuff you might need at a moment's notice like Invisibility or Teleport, prepped with your actual slots. You have Scribe Scroll for a reason - scrolls are for all the stuff that you probably won't need today, but might reasonably need out of combat this adventure. Knock, Levitate, those sort of utility problem-solving capabilities. At later levels, you probably pick up Craft Wand, and shift some of your low-grade offense and frequently-used utility spells, like Detect Magic, out to those. If you're complaining about the ten-minute adventuring day as a 3.x Vancian wizard after 5th level, it's because you're managing your strategic resources poorly.
Now, you may remark, magic item creation in 3.x is terrible because it costs you XP. And this is true, and that is a bad rule, but I have a theory as to why it is there. I think, though I have no corroboration from any official source for this belief, that the motivation for magic items costing XP to create in 3.x is that it serves to slow down spellcaster levelling. It's a workaround for the uniform levelling curve introduced in 3rd edition, with the intent of restoring some degree of the old differences in levelling rate for classes which were clearly different in power. Because in Core 3.0 at least, playing a good wizard meant either scrolling it up or complaining about the ten-minute adventuring day. Sadly it would seem that the complainers have won out.
In any case, we do not see this same push to magic item creation in ACKS. Our wizards have not been creating potions or scrolls of utility spells with the same frequency observed in casters of similar levels in 3.0, and I believe this is due in part to the fact that they do not have to choose between fly and fireball, or invisibility and knock, in the same preparatory way. Created charged magic items are now useful because they permit you to use more slots in a day than you would otherwise be able, or with potions they let your fellow party members use actions to generate spell effects, which can confer an action-economic advantage. But the opportunity cost to create these items is quite steep; you need monster parts and many weeks and many gold pieces and a lab. Our mages have certainly not been jumping on the magic item creation bandwagon. Part of this, I suspect, may be that they just recently acquired the capability at 5th level, rather than 1st as would happen in 3.x. Perhaps I should just give it more time...
In any case the point was that playing Vancian casters generated a push towards gathering information about what you were going to face, and planning cleverly, which spontaneous casting does not to the same degree. And in retrospect, it was kind of fun sometimes, especially when you do have scrolls and other charged magic items as your strategic flexibility reserve.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Roll Your Own Treasure Tables II - Dungeon-Specific Treasure Tables
To Part 1
The natural extension of the notion of creating custom treasure tables was to do so in a per-dungeon fashion, much as people do with random encounter tables. This, however, seemed like it was going to be a ton of work, especially if I wanted to keep something resembling the original probability distribution for magic items. Further, there are problems of variety with this approach. It's reasonable for monsters for be very similar in a localized area, but finding a bunch of the same magic item strains the suspension of disbelief a bit; in particular, it seems like it could lead to some variety of an MMO-like "farming" ethos, where if you want item X you go to dungeon Y where it is known to 'drop'. And that is something which I wish to avoid.
I think I have something of a solution, however. Instead of building absolute lists for each dungeon, where an item can be found in the dungeon iff it's on the dungeon's list, I'm leaning towards instead building a "favored items" list for each dungeon. In this case, the procedure would run as follows:
Potions: Animal Control, Healing
Ring: None
Scroll: Favored spell scrolls are Divine, written in Auran, and chosen from Bladedancer spell list, favored ward scrolls are against Lycanthropes.
Rod/Staff/Wand: Staff of Healing, one-time only. None favored after Staff of Healing rolled.
Sword: None
Misc Magic: Eyes of the Eagle, Quiver of Many Arrows. Both are one-time only.
Misc Weapons: Roll 1d20 on the Misc Weapons table (always magic arrows of some sort or another)
Armor: Favored armor is always Leather
So yeah, that took me about five minutes to throw together, and should do a nice job of somewhat altering the treasure distribution of the dungeon without turning it into a farm for a particular type of item (except possibly magic arrows, but the 20% chance of being favored is certainly not in the farmer's favor).
The natural extension of the notion of creating custom treasure tables was to do so in a per-dungeon fashion, much as people do with random encounter tables. This, however, seemed like it was going to be a ton of work, especially if I wanted to keep something resembling the original probability distribution for magic items. Further, there are problems of variety with this approach. It's reasonable for monsters for be very similar in a localized area, but finding a bunch of the same magic item strains the suspension of disbelief a bit; in particular, it seems like it could lead to some variety of an MMO-like "farming" ethos, where if you want item X you go to dungeon Y where it is known to 'drop'. And that is something which I wish to avoid.
I think I have something of a solution, however. Instead of building absolute lists for each dungeon, where an item can be found in the dungeon iff it's on the dungeon's list, I'm leaning towards instead building a "favored items" list for each dungeon. In this case, the procedure would run as follows:
- For each magic item, roll to see if it's a favored item with a ~20% probability at the same time that you roll for item type.
- If the roll comes up unfavorable, roll as normal on the standard tables.
- If it comes up favorable, check the dungeon favored items list, and see if the dungeon has a favored item of that type. If it does, that item appears (or one selected at random from the set of favored items of that type).
- If the dungeon has no favored item of the rolled type, proceed to the normal tables for items of that type.
Potions: Animal Control, Healing
Ring: None
Scroll: Favored spell scrolls are Divine, written in Auran, and chosen from Bladedancer spell list, favored ward scrolls are against Lycanthropes.
Rod/Staff/Wand: Staff of Healing, one-time only. None favored after Staff of Healing rolled.
Sword: None
Misc Magic: Eyes of the Eagle, Quiver of Many Arrows. Both are one-time only.
Misc Weapons: Roll 1d20 on the Misc Weapons table (always magic arrows of some sort or another)
Armor: Favored armor is always Leather
So yeah, that took me about five minutes to throw together, and should do a nice job of somewhat altering the treasure distribution of the dungeon without turning it into a farm for a particular type of item (except possibly magic arrows, but the 20% chance of being favored is certainly not in the farmer's favor).
Friday, November 30, 2012
Space Hulk and Campaigns
(Forewarning - this applies only to first edition Space Hulk, as that is what I once scrounged the rulebooks from. Maybe 2nd or 3rd have already done something of this sort; in particular I think I've heard that the marines usually win in 3rd, which was immensely surprising to me)
I had my brother over for Thanksgiving, and we got to talking about Space Hulk. We really like the premise, but the odds being so stacked against the marines is hard because on some level, even the genestealer player (being a human) bears some sympathy for them. Personally, I have the difficulty that I like the genestealer flavor ("we are legion and we will eat you"), but when I play wargames I kind of like to take the side with long odds against them, which pushes me towards playing the humans.
These two concerns got us thinking about changing up the scenario design of the game. Normally, the Marines start strong but have to haul ass to an objective before they are overwhelmed by the genestealers, who keep spawning more-or-less indefinitely. The genestealers do have strengths other then sheer numbers, though, namely speed, hidden information, and a huge advantage over the marines in melee. This set of capabilities suggests several variants of the traditional Space Hulk idiom. The natural extension, it seems to me, is to run a "hunting the hive tyrant"-type scenario with limited or no reinforcements for the genestealers. One of their blips is the target (broodlord, I guess), and if the marines can kill it, they win the mission. For the genestealer, then, this is a shell game - if you keep the target in the back, then it's clear that that is the objective (unless you're up against a canny genestealer who puts a decoy in the back...), but if you bring it forward in an attempt to conceal it, then you risk losing it. You could try to spread your forces out across the map evenly so the marines have to engage each blip to find the target, but then you risk being unable to support the target once it's engaged. In any case, creating a mobile, hidden objective for the genestealer's defense plays to their strengths of mobility and hidden information and makes it plausible to deny them their numerical strength. I also considered the addition of trap-like tokens; something like an immobile ambush counter which might be something unpleasant or might be nothing, in order to aid the defense by serving much like minefields in other games.
An inversion of this scenario would put a limited genestealer force on offense against a group of marines with the aim of assassinating their sergeant, captain, or other leader. Again, this plays to speed, melee offense, and hidden information, but puts a pretty severe limiting factor on the genestealer's ability to just throw more bugs at the problem. For bonus points, allow the genestealer some number of ambush counters too. Both of these missions probably entail some sort of turn limit to push Team Offense towards the enemy, and custom map arrangements to make them workable.
The other possibility that I considered was a system by which the players alternate sides, and a mission is iterated until the humans win or both players agree that it's quite impossible. This started me towards thinking about a simplistic 'campaign system', which would provide a scoring bases for repeated games much like Starmada's Simplest Campaign System, but without resource management carrying between games. Perhaps 'series' is a better term than 'campaign'. In any case, the scheme I propose is as follows:
(Also, further work - generalization of this structure beyond two players)
Sooo... yeah. Hey Matt, up for some Space Hulk?
I had my brother over for Thanksgiving, and we got to talking about Space Hulk. We really like the premise, but the odds being so stacked against the marines is hard because on some level, even the genestealer player (being a human) bears some sympathy for them. Personally, I have the difficulty that I like the genestealer flavor ("we are legion and we will eat you"), but when I play wargames I kind of like to take the side with long odds against them, which pushes me towards playing the humans.
These two concerns got us thinking about changing up the scenario design of the game. Normally, the Marines start strong but have to haul ass to an objective before they are overwhelmed by the genestealers, who keep spawning more-or-less indefinitely. The genestealers do have strengths other then sheer numbers, though, namely speed, hidden information, and a huge advantage over the marines in melee. This set of capabilities suggests several variants of the traditional Space Hulk idiom. The natural extension, it seems to me, is to run a "hunting the hive tyrant"-type scenario with limited or no reinforcements for the genestealers. One of their blips is the target (broodlord, I guess), and if the marines can kill it, they win the mission. For the genestealer, then, this is a shell game - if you keep the target in the back, then it's clear that that is the objective (unless you're up against a canny genestealer who puts a decoy in the back...), but if you bring it forward in an attempt to conceal it, then you risk losing it. You could try to spread your forces out across the map evenly so the marines have to engage each blip to find the target, but then you risk being unable to support the target once it's engaged. In any case, creating a mobile, hidden objective for the genestealer's defense plays to their strengths of mobility and hidden information and makes it plausible to deny them their numerical strength. I also considered the addition of trap-like tokens; something like an immobile ambush counter which might be something unpleasant or might be nothing, in order to aid the defense by serving much like minefields in other games.
An inversion of this scenario would put a limited genestealer force on offense against a group of marines with the aim of assassinating their sergeant, captain, or other leader. Again, this plays to speed, melee offense, and hidden information, but puts a pretty severe limiting factor on the genestealer's ability to just throw more bugs at the problem. For bonus points, allow the genestealer some number of ambush counters too. Both of these missions probably entail some sort of turn limit to push Team Offense towards the enemy, and custom map arrangements to make them workable.
The other possibility that I considered was a system by which the players alternate sides, and a mission is iterated until the humans win or both players agree that it's quite impossible. This started me towards thinking about a simplistic 'campaign system', which would provide a scoring bases for repeated games much like Starmada's Simplest Campaign System, but without resource management carrying between games. Perhaps 'series' is a better term than 'campaign'. In any case, the scheme I propose is as follows:
- Two players agree to play a series of chosen missions, and also agree on rules allowable (equipment availability, psionics, ambush counters, tactical marines, flavor of flamer (1e vs 2e), and so forth)
- For each mission, in order
- Each player attempts the mission with the default forces. The loser of the previous mission chooses who will play which side first; in the event of a draw in the previous mission, flip a coin for who chooses.
- If both players win the mission as marines with default forces, the mission is a draw. If only one does, then they have won this mission. In either case, move to the next mission. (Variant - if both players win with default marine forces, they instead move to the bidding step below, with a bid cap equal to the value of the default force)
- If neither player could complete the mission with default marine forces, they use the bidding procedure outlined in Deathwing.
- Whichever player bids lowest plays the mission with the forces that he bid. If he wins, he has won the mission and the series advances.
- If the low bidder loses, then the high bidder must play the mission with the point value that he bid. Should he lose, the two players may either declare the mission a draw and move to the next one, or they may re-bid.
- Should the high bidder win, the low bidder may attempt the mission with forces with the high bid in points. Should he lose, the high bidder has won the mission, and if he wins, then the mission is a draw. In either case, the series then moves to the next mission.
- Once all missions have either been drawn or won by one player, whichever player won the most missions wins the series. If both players have won an equal number of missions, break the tie using the sum of the bid points they spent on their victories. If it's still a tie, add another mission as a sudden-death tiebreaker or have a headbutting contest or flip a coin or something.
(Also, further work - generalization of this structure beyond two players)
Sooo... yeah. Hey Matt, up for some Space Hulk?
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Roll Your Own Magic Item Tables
This was going to be a post extolling the virtues of rolling random treasure and countering the arguments you sometimes hear against it. There were going to be anecdotes and laughs and such. And as I was writing that post, I ran up against a realization that I realized was maybe more important than trying to participate in the conventional dialogue.
And that is that you (yeah, you) should build custom magic treasure tables for your world. And by "you should" I mean I should, but I think you might benefit from it too.
In the writing of that other post, I realized that the main issue people seem to have with random treasure is that it sometimes yields items which are unsuitable for the type of game being run. The fear is that it'll give them something which is either useless, or a terrifying gamebreaker like a Ring of Three Wishes. I've seen the first one before - we once found a Murlynd's Spoon in a dragon's hoard in a combat-heavy, tactical Trailblazer game where we didn't track rations or encumbrance (at least not for practical purposes). It was just the most useless thing, and we complained about it. But in retrospect, it made me realize that the problem is not that the tables give you items that either your players don't want or that you don't want your players to have, so much as that the tables were developed to give items which made sense when people were playing the Old Style. When rations and encumbrance are issues, Murlynd's Spoon is pretty neat actually. Likewise, a Ring of Three Wishes is not a game-ender in this style - your PCs will use it to summon castles and fantastic wealth, as is expected normal behavior in the Old Ways, rather than to kill your main villain and derail your plot. It accelerates and furthers the game, rather than destroying it.
But the main point, that "the tables may not suit your game so tweak them" is ultimately more interesting. People build their own random encounter tables, even in 3.x, on a reasonably regular basis. It's something that people have heard of or thought about at least. But throwing together custom treasure tables is not. I've seen new treasure tables published in sourcebooks full of treasure which very rarely got used, and a few schemes at Telecanter's for generating unique magic items, but for me as a DM to roll my own that were well-suited to my world simply didn't occur to me until, well, yesterday. Perhaps I'm just dense. That it provides a fairly clean solution to the objections against random treasure is neat, but personally I'm more excited about using it as a creative exercise over winter break.
How much new, but sensible, treasure can I come up with, and how am I going to vary the probability distributions of various treasures within the world? Remains to be seen. Currently I'm looking forward to adding:
And that is that you (yeah, you) should build custom magic treasure tables for your world. And by "you should" I mean I should, but I think you might benefit from it too.
In the writing of that other post, I realized that the main issue people seem to have with random treasure is that it sometimes yields items which are unsuitable for the type of game being run. The fear is that it'll give them something which is either useless, or a terrifying gamebreaker like a Ring of Three Wishes. I've seen the first one before - we once found a Murlynd's Spoon in a dragon's hoard in a combat-heavy, tactical Trailblazer game where we didn't track rations or encumbrance (at least not for practical purposes). It was just the most useless thing, and we complained about it. But in retrospect, it made me realize that the problem is not that the tables give you items that either your players don't want or that you don't want your players to have, so much as that the tables were developed to give items which made sense when people were playing the Old Style. When rations and encumbrance are issues, Murlynd's Spoon is pretty neat actually. Likewise, a Ring of Three Wishes is not a game-ender in this style - your PCs will use it to summon castles and fantastic wealth, as is expected normal behavior in the Old Ways, rather than to kill your main villain and derail your plot. It accelerates and furthers the game, rather than destroying it.
But the main point, that "the tables may not suit your game so tweak them" is ultimately more interesting. People build their own random encounter tables, even in 3.x, on a reasonably regular basis. It's something that people have heard of or thought about at least. But throwing together custom treasure tables is not. I've seen new treasure tables published in sourcebooks full of treasure which very rarely got used, and a few schemes at Telecanter's for generating unique magic items, but for me as a DM to roll my own that were well-suited to my world simply didn't occur to me until, well, yesterday. Perhaps I'm just dense. That it provides a fairly clean solution to the objections against random treasure is neat, but personally I'm more excited about using it as a creative exercise over winter break.
How much new, but sensible, treasure can I come up with, and how am I going to vary the probability distributions of various treasures within the world? Remains to be seen. Currently I'm looking forward to adding:
- Magic ballista bolts and catapult shot to the misc weapons table
- Heck, maybe magic ballistae and catapults proper
- Magic banners and standards which provide a bonus to troops in formation for mass battle purposes
- Books that answer questions, a la Grognardling
- Magic item recipes (kind of a booby prize, but useful nonetheless)
- Magic shields that do things other than just being +x
- Winged shields
- Floating shields
- Mirrored shields
- Lifeward shields
- Ironwood, adamant, and mithral armors
- A "what flavor of sword is this" table to go with the armor weight table, including flavorful terms like "dirk", "scimitar", "sabre", and "kris" (so far I've been giving out ho-hum magic longswords, except for one gladius)
- Possibility for magic weapons to be silvered, adamant, or other special materials
- Ideally at least one interesting or iconic variant for each of the main weapons; javelins of lightning, axes of hewing, daggers of poison, and so forth.
- More wands of other spells
- Potions of things other than spells (like these)
- Artifacts, with low, low probability
Monday, November 26, 2012
Praise be to Armok! - New Dwarven Craftpriest Spells
I am sad to say that I had a Dwarf Fortress relapse during the parts of Thanksgiving when I did not have guests. In between eating leftovers, experimenting with surface farming, and pondering what to do with the two owlmen caught in my cage traps, I was struck by the fact that ACKS' dwarf craftpriest uses the same spell list as their standard cleric. This is somewhat ridiculous, given that Bladedancer use a different spell list, and it hardly seems reasonable for the folk-under-the-mountain to worship some surfacer sun god. So I got to thinking about what some suitably dwarfsome spells would be, and while I don't have full descriptions or levels, the rest should be fairly doable.
- Detect Treasure - Dwarves love gold, and their priests have perfected means for locating it.
- Detect Ore - Like Detect Treasure, but lower level and somewhat less utile.
- Plague of Cats - Summons 3d4 cats which harass, distract, trip up, and reduce the frame-rate of the target. A long-term Curse version is also available, whereby the subject suffers a +4 to reaction rolls with cats, cat-like monsters, and cat owners, and is forever plagued by their unhelpful presence and 'gifts' of dead animals.
- Fell Mood - A uniquely dwarven Curse with Geas-like attributes, the target of a Fell Mood must save vs spells or be driven mad by an obsessive need to construct an utterly implausible work of art. Should he fail to do so within six months of the casting of the spell, he goes irrevocably insane. Should be succeed, however, he becomes a master of his craft. Sometimes used as a means of trial among the dwarves along old Medieval "trial by superstition" lines; if he succeeds, he must be innocent.
- Deforestation - Kind of an inverse of plant growth; sends a wave through the earth which uproots trees and other plants in the affected area. Originally designed for fueling the furnaces of industry, later discovered to be good for depriving those accursed goblins of their cover too.
- Speak with Stones, Stoneshaping, Burrow, and similar earthy spells
- Water to Ale - seriously, why do you think they keep these guys around? Arguably just a reflavoring of Purify Food and Water.
- Create Ale - A similar reflavoring of Create Water.
- Bless Tools - A possible replacement for the ability of high-level clerics to create holy water with the Bless spell. What blessed tools do, I don't rightly know. Maybe +2 on the next proficiency roll using them in the next unit time?
- Beard of Iron - Grants the subject's beard the strength of steel wool, providing a bonus to AC and to mortal wounds rolls against the chest and head for the duration. When applied to a subject without a beard, causes severe facial itching instead. Might work as a replacement for Shimmer on the Bladedancer list.
- Stranglebeard - Causes the subjects' beards to attempt to strangle them, much like multi-target Choking Grasp that only works on targets with beards. Applications in the dwarven justice system are again clear. An improved version instead strangles the target using the caster's beard.
- Vulcanism - Flame Strike, but from below rather than on high.
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