Combat Systems

Was reading a post concerning to-hit systems for various games. Basically it was arguing how the basic to-hit vs Armor class in D&D was inferior to the system in Chivalry & Sorcery where armor affected how much damage you took from a hit, not how easy it was to be hit.

I think it's a matter of apples vs oranges. They simply are a method of resolving the same thing. What's the difference, for example, if I have a 10% chance of hitting you with my sword because you're in armor class two, or if I have a 40% chance of hitting you, but do no damage because you armor absorbed all the damage. Under rules system two method, someone, for example, a magic user limited to daggers due to magic interference, might as well not take part in the proceedings, because his weapons would have no chance of damaging the person in Plate Mail. In the former he has a minimal chance of hitting, but can at least inflict some damage. In the latter, he hits about 4 times as often, but will never, barring a critical hit, do damage.

Personally, I prefer the second system, which is used with Chivalry & Sorcery 2nd Edition. But this is primarily because I prefer the system overall as being more "realistic." But that is a matter of preference, not a matter of dogma. Either system will do the job. It's a matter of taste.

Darn!

I'm a long time fan of FGU's old Chivalry and Sorcery Fantasy RPG. Since control of the title has gone to other publishers, in my opinion, it's all been downhill. Didn't like the concepts of the 3rd Edition to pick up anything other than the Players Book. Didn't even bother with 4th. So the other day when I was on the C&S Forum (http://chivalrysorcery.myfastforum.org/) I was happy to find that a fifth edition had been released by FGU, and was even more happy to read it was available for free as a PDF. Needless to say I followed the link and downloaded it.

What I found was not anything I'd have described as "5th" edition. In fact, I'd say that it'd be more accurately described as version 1.1. Some things cleared up, a fair amount of new material, but many of the mechanics returned to those of the first edition. Don't get me wrong. I ran first edition for almost 5 years before switching to second edition. I just can't see taking a step backwards, mechanics wise. Liked some of the added material (rules for Druids, for example), But what disturbed me was what I found later.

First, I found that the current holder of the C&S license was taking steps to stop this edition citing copyright violations. Second, the book had the FGU logo on the front. FGU no longer holds the C&S license, and since the current holder is bringing out a new edition, it's highly unlikely this is a licensed product. I also found within the book material which I KNOW if copyrighted by other sources (Tolkien, and even art from other RPGs) which has led me to believe that this is an unauthorized publication.

I was first directed to FGU's site to download this, but could find nothing for C&S on it. Also nothing on it from the current holder of the license. The person announcing it wrote one had to download some sharing progarm called "eMole" to get it. Later, another person put up a link to the material.

So I have a bit of a dilemma. I've got a number of folks who play C&S along with me. I'd thought it'd be great to burn disks with the book and had them out. Now, I'm no longer of the opinion that I should, or even to keep the copy I downloaded. One of the reputed authors of this book is one of the original designers of the game, but that doesn't make this right. The fact is he no longer holds the license and technically, can't even use the previous material without permission, even though he wrote portions of it. Simple truth is even though I'm happy with the book, it shouldn't even exist.

GM Block

Have you ever sat down to plan a gaming session as a GM, and found yourself incapable of coming up with an adventure idea. Yeah, like I'm sure that has never happened to you.



Actually, as a GM I haven't had much of a problem with that, but to be honest, my games are player driven. It's one of the reason I'm such a stickler for good character concepts and design. Most of my adventures come right off of the character sheets, or previous adventures. For me, one adventure usually went smoothly to the next. And since my players were invested in the game, they'd often call me between games with comments, questions, or out of game activities which led to the next game idea for me.



But let's just say you're not as wonderful a GM as I am, or let's say you realize I'm full of BS and suffer GM blcck too from time to time. Then what?



Well, for me, I go to my GM shelf and pull down my binder containing Georges Polti's "36 Dramatic Situations." These are descriptions of 36 themes the Polti described from stories of his day. Each contains the elements of the theme, a short summery of the basic theme, variants on the theme, and a short description of the theme.



Here are his 36 situations:
Supplication
Deliverance
Vengeance of a crime
Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred
Pursuit
Disaster
Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune
Revolt
Daring enterprise
Abduction
Enigma
Obtaining
Enmity of kinsmen
Rivalry of kinsmen
Murderous adultery
Madness
Fatal imprudence
Involuntary crimes of love
Slaying of a kinsman unrecognized
Self-sacrificing for an ideal
Self-sacrifice for kindred
All sacrificed for a passion
Necessity of sacrificing loved ones
Rivalry of superior and inferior
Adultery
Crimes of love
Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one
Obstacles to love
An enemy loved
Ambition
Conflict with a god
Mistaken jealousy
Erroneous judgment
Remorse
Recovery of a lost one
Loss of loved ones



Almost all of these are basic to any genre of story. Some, such as "Conflict with a god," are more aimed, to me, at a fantasy or horror situation. But I'd think you could glance through them and easily find inspiration for an adventure, no matter what game you run. I've used it for everything from Space Opera to Chivalry and Sorcery, to Twilight 2000.

Google "Polti's 36 Themes" next time you're stuck for an idea. I think you'll like what you find. Or better yet, just click on this link, http://www.changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/polti_situations/polti_situations.htm
and go see them for yourself.

Brainhex Quiz

Your BrainHex Class is Conqueror.
Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Conqueror-Seeker.

You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.
Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:
» No Mercy: You rarely if ever care about hurting other players' feelings - mercy is for the weak!
Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.
Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:
Conqueror: 13Seeker: 11Achiever: 10Mastermind: 8Survivor: 7Daredevil: 4Socialiser: -10

Another Oldie But Goodie. The James Bond RPG

The Bio One rules I found I mentioned in my last post were stuck in the box for another old RPG ruleset I've had and cherished for many years. That is the old James Bond RPG published by Victory Games. Funny considering all the old spy/espionage games I've collected over the years, this one is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the rest.

As is obvious from the title, the game is based upon Ian Fleming's James Bond character and the movies inspired by him. And that is the magic of the rules. They attempt, unlike many of the other rules of this genre, to actually capture the feel of the movies. Other games such as Top Secret, Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, and Danger International while decent in their own right, just don't.

My first encounter with the game was at GenCon up at Wisconsin Parkside. I'd signed up for a demostration game for the rules which, at the time, had not been published yet. The game did not consist of a scenario, per see, but the woman running the game basically put us in situations which demonstrated the mechanics of the rules. We ran a combat (each of us versus the "Jaws" henchman from a couple of the movies. She then ran us through a car chase from Goldfinger, and finally a generic seduction scene. The last was particularly interesting because she insisted we actually roleplay out the seduction. One of the times I was thankful for having seen the Bond movies so many times. I actually was able to do it with a minimum of embarassment. It also helped us having a female GM. I think it would have been harder with a male running the game (and to be honest, it's not easy to run a seduction from the female perspective when running the game either).

I think the game does actually capture the flavor of the movies. It is not a dark and gritty game, but one of action and sheer adventure. Character design is fairly straight forward, and you can actually start the players at various levels of power, including the "00" class.

Action is easy to handle, essentially the skill of the player versus the difficulty rating of the action attempted. The same system works for everything you want to attempt.

I'll have to admit that part of my opinion of the game is colored by the fact that I love the James Bond movies (well except for the Roger Moore ones, which were bearable at best. I'd have liked them better if he hadn't played the role so tongue in cheek). I can't say how the rules would work for a group or a campaign, since I only ran it as single shot adventures for individual players when my regular game group cancelled out, and I only ran pregen "00" characters.

I thought the games went well. And the only complaint I had from one player who ran through my "Thunderstrike" scenario is that he said he never really felt that he was in danger. That may have been my fault since I tried to capture the feel of the movies and it'd be a bummer is Bond died.

I'll be honest about one thing, and that this set of rules is tailor made, in my opinion, for the pbp style of game. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of running one this way. And I'd have to say that the only possible drawback is that the game is a little dated, particularly in the weapons/equipment area. I'm not saying that it would be unplayable, but that having the game set in the Cold War era might make more sense.

There were a number of supplements out for the game. I never bought any of the scenarios, but I did get the Q Manual, For Your Information, and the Thrilling Locations supplements.

There have been a couple of sites on the Internet which offer updated weapons and the such for the game. To be honest, it is probably the only aspect which needs updating. Coming up with Q-Branch gizmos is probably the baliwick of the GM. Again, an aspect which the Roger Moore Bond movies overemphasized. My problem was always that my players tended to forget the gizmos in the heat of the moment, which I always found odd since I always planned an opportunity for them to used them.

If you like the whole spy genre, and like James Bond, get this game if you can find it reasonably priced. I doubt if you'll ever see it in print again due to licensing issues.

An Oldie But Goodie, Bio One rules.

When you've been in RPGs as long as I have, you pick up, from time to time, some odd products.

Ond of these is an odd little booklet I picked up at a GenCon way back in 1974 called Bio One. The creator of it stated the purpose of it was to "incorportate a degree of realism to a field of wargaming that, to our knowledge, was suffering." This apparently is a system for modern man to man combat rules which allows you to determine hit locations and damages. The system is fairly simple, though somewhat tedious to us, and I found it curious that they were apparently intended to be used with wargame skirmish type rules, not roleplaying games. I actually tried using them with The Sword and the Flame Colonial Wargame rules, but finally found the perfect rules for them when I used them with TSR's "Boothill" Western RPG. I imagine, however, you could pretty much use them for any game which uses firearms. And I imagine they could be adapted to use with hand to hand combat with some effort.

The rules give a series of hit location charts, then separate charts for determining what is hit and how much damage is inflicted. They are fairly easy to use, though they do tend to slow things down. However, the hooting and laughing that went on when I used them more than made up for it. Below is a sample of how they work.

Two gunfighters, Bloody Bill and Spastic Steve, step into the street for the traditional Western gunfight. Both draw and fire simultaneously, both hitting. On chart A, both are fully exposed, so a single percentage die is rolled. Bloody Bill rolls a 31, he was hit in the arm. There is a 50-50 chance of it being left or right, he gets lucky and it is the left. We go to chart 5 for Arm/Hand wounds, and roll D100 and get a 18, which puts the shot into the shoulder joint. This hit dies 5d10 damage, which are added together, which in this instance comes to 34 points. For this case Bloody Bill's shoulder is destroyed and in essence, blown off. He also is bleeding at a rate of 3 pts and will bleed out an additional 2 per turn until it is stopped.

Bill only has 31 dp, so at this time he is in no danger of dying. His blood loss rate is 5. so he is down 3d10 and loses a additional 2d10 per turn until stopped. On the chart we see that a roll of 0 or 1 on a d10 stops the blood, and a roll of 2 or 3 reduces it one level. Bill would have to take a hundred points to get additional damage for blood loss and won't even have a chance of passing out from blood loss until he hits at least 41 damage points lost. I guess since Bill only lost an arm, he could be said to have "won" the gunfight.

Spastic Steve is less lucky, and rolls a 70, he takes the round in the upper abdomen. We roll two d10, which shows poor Steve take the shot to the left side, area 7. We then go to chart 2-1, and roll 70 d100, which essentially hits nothing (the chart gave possibility of a lung hit, a hit on a Rib, both, or nothing). Normally this would be 6d10 in damage. I roll 30 pts in damage, which incapacitates Steve, and gives him a bleeding rate of 4, 2d10 initially and 2d10 per turn thereafter until stopped. He's going down, and ain't going anywhere, but he's alive. But for the sake of fun and bloodshed, lets assume Steve had been unlucky and had gotten the "both" result.

On chart 3 we find the "Lung" column and roll 6d10 and get 31. According to the chart, this is doubled to 62. Anything over 15 incapacitates the target, so Steve goes down. Stevie is bleeding at a rate of 6, so he bleeds out 3d10 points and will lose another 3d10 each turn it is not stopped. Steve also has a 50% chance of internal bleeding, which since he rolls a 21, he gets, so another d10 is lost each turn, which can't be stopped. Steve is in really bad shape.

Unfortunately for Steve, the shot also hit a Rib, so we have another 5d10 damage, also doubled, 32 double to 64. Anything over 15 incapacitates, but Steve is already down from the Lung hit. Bleed rate is 3, so he loses 2d10 more initially and 1d10 per turn after until stopped. He also is restricted in movement, so he'd take 2d10 damage if he jumped, ran, or undertook any other strenuous movement.

Steve has 126 points in damage, so he dies on a roll of 0-5 on a d10. He's also bled out 19 points and will lose an additional 4d10 until stopped, and an additional d10 from the internal wound, which cannot be stopped without a doctor. I'd say that barring a miracle or a kind gamemaster, Steve is toast.

Now in the event that neither gunfighter went down and continued firing, in each additional turn of combat, damage points received in earlier rounds only count half for dying. Bloody Bill is still on his feet and is pissed over having his arm blown off, so he aims at the prone Steve and fires again and hits. This time his hit location roll on the target prone chart gives a head hit. Head hits are fun.

Hit location on the head is a 28, the Nosebridge. Steve takes another 8d10 x 2, so he gets 46pts x 2 to 92. To this we add half of the 126 he suffered in the previous turn, so he is now up to 155dp (92 plus 126/2). Blood loss is an additional 4d10 initially plus 3d10 each turn afterwards. Unfortunately for Steve, that is no longer a factor because anything over 151dps, you are dead.

Now I imagine there are a number of folks saying, "God, that is sick." Actually, I found it worked particularly well for what it was intended to do, though it tended to leave folks pretty much busted up after a fight. There were lasting effects to getting wounded, and folks tended to avoid gunfights, or at least to look upon the old practice of bushwhacking more favorably. I do know one character, a crack shot who, like the Lone Ranger, liked the "shoot the guns out of the opponent's hand," was somewhat shocked when I tried Bio One when his shot took off the target's hand.

I just thought I'd toss this out, mainly because it was typical of some of the stuff we had coming out for RPGs (though like I said, this was for wargames, not RPGs, and in the days I bought it, GenCon was as much for wargamers as roleplayers).

Old School

Just finished reading an interesting post on Trollsmyth's blog, titled , "Is Old School the New Cool? (http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-old-school-new-cool.html). I guess I might have a unique perspective since I started in a D&D game run by a guy who'd gotten a playtest copy of the rules, knew Gary Gygax (and later went to work for TSR/WOTC until fairly recently), so I've been involved with this whole thing since it's inception, if not earlier since we'd toyed with the fantasy rules in Chainmail for quest type miniature games before then.

I find it interesting folks trying to define what constitutes "Old School" from what came later. I've read a number of debates on various blogs and on RPGnet, and while some are interesting, some are stupid, and others devolve rapidly into vile flamewars. So I'll toss my five cents into the pot and give my definition.

For me, Old School is the RPG community before control of it left the community. When most rule sets came from gamers, as a labor of love. Did folks try to make money at it. You betcha. Most failed miserably. I used to have boxes of mimeographed, stapled sets of rules and unofficial "supplements" for D&D and other rules. Some I bought, others were actually given to me by the authors.

And even after D&D went big time, and RPGs came into the mainstream, there was still a "Old School" portion of the community. I remember going to the early GenCons even after TSR got big, and seeing tables in the dealer area with the actual author of the rules sitting behind it. I remember one year picking up the Saurians supplement for Chivalry & Sorcery, spending the day reading it, and then going back and bending Wes Ive's ear about whether a T-Rex would have a chance to rear back and expose it's belly for a killing shot like a Dragon did under Chivalry & Sorcery (I got the impression he hadn't thought about it, and we concluded that it might, though later I decided it probably would not. A Dragon is intelligent and might be surprised by a human charging it, a T-Rex would simply look at a charging knight on horseback, as dinner, express delivered).

So "Old School" for me was that time before the hobby became big business. When the rules were judged more on how the game played rather than how slick it looked or what setting it was tied into. When you bought a ruleset, you got a ruleset, not a "core" book which would need another half dozen books to make it a game. It was when the hobby was still controlled by those playing the games.

I guess I never really stopped being old school myself. Outside of Champions/Hero, I haven't bought a new ruleset in over ten years until recently when I bought Serenity (I'm a big fan of the TV show Firefly) and a copy of The Savage World of Solomon Kane (I was curious about the Savage World system and I loved Howard's Solomon Kane character). I began to get tired of it when a game would come out with a flood of supplements, just to have a new edition come out two years later with all the supplements reissued for the "new" system.

To simplify it, my definition is that Old School was when the hobby was controlled by those playing the game. That's why I've been happy to see products like Swords and Wizardry, and other clones. It's why I'm happy to see folks reprinting some of the old rule and supplements. It's not that these rules are necessarily better, but to me, it signals that maybe the players can retake the hobby.