Class-Based vs Point-Buy

With the announcement that the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons will be released this August I am brought back to the issue of which system I will eventually use. I have been looking at GURPS, and while I like what I see, I do not feel that it would be appropriate for my setting. The system itself is great, but I have some issues with the way the fundamental design of the system would interact with emergent gameplay, and the active defenses (everyone can oppose an attack roll with a parry, block, or a dodge) in addition to the plethora of modifiers could cause combat to drag on.

Character creation is one of the core concepts of the pen and paper RPG experience. The character is both the player's avatar to the adventure and the tool-kit which allows the player to interact with the rules of the game. Without a character we have imagination and narrative, which are fun, but we do not have continuity and a vehicle to facilitate suspension of disbelief. Lots of other people have already written about class-based vs point-buy systems, but I will be highlighting the most relevant differences that lead to my decision to go with a class based system.

Point-buy systems like GURPS allow great flexibility and character customization, whereas class-based systems like Dungeons & Dragons have restricted customization. The player may have a character concept that does not fit within a specific class system, but in a point buy system the player will be more likely to realize their character concept.

Conversely, the point-buy system has too much choice. I have looked for solutions to this issue but most of the suggestions consist of developing templates for the players to use during character creation. There are resources for developing templates, but it just produces ease of introduce with the trade-off of more worth for me (or any other game master). Class based systems just seem like they have much greater ease of introduction to new players, and an easy way to show what roles the character will excel at.

Class-based systems have role cohesion in the classes, and I like that. Having a number of specialists aids in teamwork by design, whereas a group of jack-of-all-trades do not necessarily need the same coordination. I am not saying that GURPS prevents or discourages teamwork, but I believe that class based systems do more to encourage it.

One aspect of point-buy systems that I really like is the gradual progression as opposed to steps in power that you get from levels. Going back to the World of Darkness games that I have been playing lately, and how GURPS works as well, the players receive experience which they use this to purchase abilities and upgrades. This allows specialization, but it also allows for more incremental progression as opposed to increasing all your stats at set levels. I will be looking at how various class based systems address this, but I do not at this time see how gradual progression could be introduced to a class based system.

Game Mechanic Hi-Light: Rappan Athuk Rumour Table

I have been looking at various megadungeons that have been published, and one interesting hook that I came upon is the rumour table from Rappan Athuk Reloaded.There is a table of 60 rumours that the players may know that are either true, false, or partially true/false. This is a great idea because it deals with several problems at once: it gives the players an adventure hook, gives the players hints on how to overcome challenges, warns the players about threats, and hopefully whets the player's appetite for treasure.

 

This is an example of a good rumour. It is of immediate concern to the players, it helps them deal avoid an otherwise lethal threat, and it is a rumour that other adventurers would have plausibly spread after returning to town.

 


This is a variation of the previous rumour, but whereas the first rumour was of immediate concern this information is of more use in the long haul. I am neutral as to whether this rumour is actually healthy for the game. It may dissuade players from creating magic using classes in the fear that they would eventually become useless. Of course, the players could always believe that this is a false rumour.

I do not want to spoil any of the other rumours for players who are going to be running the Rappan Athuk megadungeon, but there are also rumours for finding alternate entrances to the dungeon, the locations of various powerful and potentially useful NPCs in the environs around the dungeon, and hints to the locations of powerful magic items within the megadungeon. There are also rumours that underplay threats and could actually sometimes force actions that would be detrimental to the party.

The rumour table in Rappan Athuk uses a flat 1d60 roll, but I will probably use something with a curved distribution of 3d20 or something along those lines. Giving characters a way to fudge the dice roll would also be an option. Pushing the curve is actually a very powerful thing when it comes to random distribution. This does go against the premiss I had that you only need to keep your design ahead of the players, but the rumours further into the dungeon just need to be general direction since it is not likely that the players would be able to get that far in immediately.

The Real Underworld

There is a real underworld in the world today. Places that no human has seen. The first few minutes of this TEDTalk by Bill Stone look at some of the realities of underground exploration. Thousands of meters underground, chambers so large you can see hundreds of meters uninterrupted, fantastic abysses, but also the dangerous of isolation and the environment.

When we spend days on end we deal with stress and crushing psychological remoteness. That is why Mr Stone looks for people with competence, discipline, endurance, and strength. In addition to this, the deeper you go the more you come into conflict with water. In the real world this requires ingenuity and engineering, but in the megadungeon this would involve gadgets and/or some form of magic.


I am not sure how I will address this, but I can see some water features coming into play in the megadungeon. Hopefully it will not be held in the same regard that the Water Temple currently is. It will help that this is moderated by a person instead of being a computer simulation, although disorientation should always become a short term danger if the character is running out of breath and can not retrace their way to the surface.

10 Iconic Swords of Modern Fiction

Before anyone gets up in arms over any swords that may not be present here, this list appears to only be looking at examples from visual media. It is somewhat striking how often these weapons were themselves the source of conflict within their respective stories. It was often the case that various sides were fighting over control of the weapon (Green Destiny/the Power Sword) or that the weapon was the Big Bad's greatest weakness (Sword of Omens/the Master Sword).

by IamRobertShaw.

What Does a Strategy Designer Think About?

I do more reading than writing lately, but this Eurogame article by Chirstian Donlan on the development of strategy games by Firaxis does briefly look at the past of roleplaying games (wargame simulators) and issues we may run into in the future (housekeeping nightmares brought on by complexity).

I will not lie, I am currently running a Vampire the Requiem game using some modified Primacy game play rules from Damnation City, Block by Bloody Block, and Vampire: Prince of the City. I need a spreadsheet and a custom Google map overlay to run this, but I designed the spreadsheet myself and it allows me to rather easily keep track of relative prestige for all the characters involved. This is not a direct that I can see myself going with the megadungeon design.

Sometimes we tend to forget that these games are abstractions more than simulations, and that a dice roll can help determine an entire set of outcomes, rather than going through a flow chat worth of rolls just to determine whether you have successfully picked the lock on a door.

Pictures to Inspire a Megadungeon: Börkur Eiríksson

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture by Börkur Eiríksson sums up a lot of the ideas I had for the megadungeon. Börkur's fan art of a forgotten beast from the game Dwarf Fortress shows an unknown threat rising from the depths to destroy the inhabitants of a dwarven city.

Perhaps they dug too deeply, or perhaps it was a summoning gone wrong, but whatever happened the result was death. A lot of it. Wherever this chthonic horror came from, it looks like a compelling big bad to me. I can see other exploratory groups sent in by the government to try and either capture the beast or recreate the conditions that called it into being in an attempt to acquire a new weapon to use against other worlds.

Vacation Reading

I did some reading during my vacation, but three books gave me ideas for the setting: The Long Earth,  Anathem, and Marooned in Realtime. A combination of the concepts could give the answer for the unsolved mysteries of the setting.

Imagine parallel-ish worlds where some events in the past were different, but instead of just side-stepping into the other worlds instantaneously the journey would take an objective period of time while staying objectively instant. So, if reality B was relatively easy to reach and only took an objective day to reach you could step through the portal and arrive at that other reality. If you stepped back through the portal immediately and returned to reality A you would have experienced only a couple seconds of subjective time, but the time in reality A would have advanced by two days.

There could be a vast confederation of inter-dimensional empires. Anyways, I know this does not exactly follow my design concepts, but I was trying to figure out how a truly mysterious lost city would exist. I know that we have had lost cities before, at least from the Western/European perspective, but I am picturing a city on a scale larger than any lost settlements that have existed on earth. This would also allow the disaster that eliminated the previous residents of the megadungeon to have occurred relatively recently, giving an excuse for the environs to have not completely succumbed to nature.