Apendix N: The Divine Comedy

It is ridiculous of me to sit here and pretend I can seriously write a piece about Dante’s divine comedy. I’m a second-rate blogger who writes about tabletop games; The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest classics of medieval European literature. It stands beside such epic poems as the Aeneid, or the Odessey and is no less remarkable than those masterworks. Even Dante’s own arrogance in proclaiming that his work stands next to Virgil and Homer’s does not diminish his achievement. It’s not pompous if you can back it up.

But I was recently asked not once, but three times by three different people, to write about the books which inspire me as a GM. As Brendan put it, my personal “Appendix N.” I’ve written extensively about the video games I am inspired by, such as the old Zelda, Dragon Warrior, and Final Fantasy games. If I’m being honest, this is probably because video games have had a more profound impact on my life than books have. I tend to read slowly, and I’m not as widely read as I feel I ought to be. I can fit in with the lit nerds when I want to. They accept me as one of them, but I have to say “Ya know, I haven’t actually read that one yet!” a lot.

But the Divine Comedy, and Inferno specifically? I’ve read the shit out of that. It has been a never ending font of inspiration to me since I first picked it up for a medieval literature class back in 2008*†. Dante’s description of Hell represents the most vicious and memorably fantasy I’ve ever experienced. And one which is remarkably simple to read for a piece written 695 years ago. Though, if you’re not an expert on 14th century Florentine politics, it helps to have a version with copious footnotes.

As most everyone knows, the story gave us our now-commonplace vision of a hell. It shows us a land of descending circles where punishments are ironically tailored to progressively more grievous sins. Dante himself is the story’s protagonist, who becomes lost while on a stroll, and finds himself on a road which can only lead through hell itself. He is accompanied on his journey by his literary forebear Virgil. There’s a hilariously self-indulgent scene where Virgil introduces Dante to the other great poets of history, and they accept him as one of them. Seriously. The bulk of the story is a collection of interviews as Dante meets hell’s sufferers, and speaks with them about their punishments. Some are figures from Greco-Roman mythology, while others are Dante’s personal enemies, or those of his family. A few are even friends Dante, and there are numerous popes found in hell’s lowest reaches, including one who was still alive at the time.

I don’t really care for the book’s morality, but that’s hardly surprising. I’m an atheist who grew up in a catholic household and made a conscious decisions to reject that system of beliefs. I think it’s pretty disgusting to assert that suicides, sodomites, and simonists need to be punished for all eternity. But I also believe that history ought to be judged within context. And just because I’m an atheist, doesn’t mean I feel the need to cut myself off from thousands of years of human art and culture, simply because it was inspired by philosophies I believe to be flawed. The forest of the suicides is one of the most beautifully haunting places I’ve ever seen in fiction. So much so that it featured predominantly in a game where my players chose to travel to the Abyss. (Though I did edit the purpose for the tree’s existence).

I think part of what makes the poem such a perfect source for inspiration is its breakneck pace. The plot is just a vehicle for describing the various environments and torments of hell. First Dante encounters “the Neutrals,” who were too cowardly to choose between good or evil in their lives. He describes them almost like zombies, “the woeful people who have lost the good of the intellect.” But Dante has barely finished speaking of them when Virgil ushers him forward.

He replied: ‘I will tell thee in a few words. They have no hope of death, and so abject is their blind life that they are envious of every other lot. The world suffers no report of them to live. Pity and justice despise them. Let us not talk of them; but look thou and pass.’
And I looked and saw a whirling banner which ran so fast that it seemed as if it could never make a stand, and behind it came so long a train of people that I should never have believed death had undone so many. After I recognized some of them I knew the shade of him who from cowardice made the great refusal, and at once and with certainty I perceived that this was the worthless crew that is hateful to God and to His enemies. Those wretches, who were never alive, were naked and sorely stung by hornets and wasps that were there; these made their faces stream with blood, which mingled with their tears and was gathered at their feet by loathsome worms.
And then, directing my sight farther on…”

That’s it. Dante glances over to see an impossibly huge group of people running along the shore chasing a banner (which, as I understand, represents self interest) and being tormented by hornets, wasps, and worms. Then he glances back to the path ahead of him, and moves on to the next terrifying sight. (Which, in this case, is actually just some people waiting by the shore, but you get the point).

I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone looking for hellish inspiration. The density of information makes this relatively short epic more useful than many of the sourcebooks I’ve read. Plus, having read it allows you to pretend you’re significantly more educated than you actually are. If you are interested, I suggest you get the translation by John D Sinclair. Not only does it have those copious footnotes which are helpful for understanding the politics in the book, but each Canto is followed by an insightful analysis which helps in understanding the nearly 700 year old writing style.

Oh, and by the way, Gustave Doré made some absolutely beautiful fantasy art based on the Divine Comedy. That’s what I’ve been posting here, but there’s tons and tons more. Check it out if you like fantasy art!

* On that note, every class I took with Professor Nicholas Margaritis is a source of inspiration for me. I’ve had the privilege of studying under some remarkable individuals, but none of them affected me the way that man did. I felt as though I personally failed him when I didn’t finish a reading assignment on time, and the single A- he ever gave me remains one of the most profound compliments I’ve received in my entire life.

† That’s also the year which Dante’s exile from Florence was finally rescinded by the Florentine City Council. So, ya know, you’re welcome, Dante.

System In Progress: LOZAS

My ladyfriend is 3 years younger than I am. It’s a little strange for me, since most of my relationships in the past have been with older women. And though the difference in our numerical ages is small, it sometimes feels as if those few years belie a massive generational gap. Particularly with regards to vidya games. My first console was an NES, while her was an N64, how does that even happen? The poor whippersnap missed the greatest era of gaming: the one I grew up with! I often become frustrated when I make a funny reference, only to realize she probably never used the Konami code, or blew dust out of a cartridge, or heard of games like Doki Doki Panic!

So what in Oerth does this have to do with tabletop RPGs? I’m getting to that. Be patient, geeze.

Recently, because my ladyfriend is pretty cool, she asked me to recommend an oldschool game. Probably because she was impressed by all those cool jokes she’s too young to laugh at. I considered carefully which game would be a good introduction for her, and unsurprisingly settled on my favorite of all time; The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. That game has had a defining impact on my life. It shaped my views on fantasy settings, and informed my opinions about what it means for a game to be ‘good.’ It’s the first game I ever wholeheartedly fell in love with, and that love is part of what originally led me to pursue writing. Hells, the “L” in my monicker stands for “Link,” and I’ve been known by that name for almost half my life. Even ignoring all of the personal value the game has for me, it’s still one of the most polished, well-designed games I’ve ever encountered. And since my ladyfriend is already a fan of the later Zelda titles, it’s about time she was introduced to a proper dark-haired link, rather than the boyband reject seen in more recent games.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I think the game is best when played on the Super Nintendo, with that fantastic controller. But before I set her up with the cartridge, I thought I should take a look at it. The last few times I played through LttP I was either using a game boy, or an emulator. Because of that, my SNES copy hadn’t been used in a few years, and I remember experiencing some audio glitches the last time I played it. Plus, with the game being over 20 years old, I worried that the battery wouldn’t be able to hold a save any longer. So I drew the cartridge from its shelf, gently cleaned the connectors with alcohol, nestled it into the console’s bosom, and flipped the big purple power switch up with a satisfying “clack.*”

Yes. That is me. Dressed as Link for Halloween. I was a cool kid.

Yeah, she hasn’t gotten a chance to play it yet. I’m on the second-to-last dungeon in the game and having the time of my life. But again, what does this have to do with tabletop RPGs?

Well, one evening after I’d been playing, I was in bed with a notepad. I began to lazily jot down notes for a Zelda tabletop RPG rooted in the spirit of the pre-Ocarina of Time games. Those random notes quickly evolved into a project which I’ve dubbed the Legend of Zelda Adventure System, or LOZAS for short. It’s what I’ve been blathering on about for the past week. I originally didn’t want to be open about the source material I was working with, in part because I didn’t want to feel obligated to finish it. But it’s become clear to me that I want to take this seriously, so there’s no point in being subtle any longer. Though I don’t know if it actually counts as subtle, since I’ve been tweeting about ‘my zelda system’ every 15 minutes.

I confess, I feel more than a little arrogant announcing that I’m trying to adapt one of the most celebrated games of all time to tabletop. Who the fuck am I? I’m an untested, aspiring game designer. To be perfectly frank, I don’t think I’m up to the task. Oh, I’ll do my best, and I’ll finish the game, and maybe some people will like it. But this is just a goofy little project I started working on for my own amusement. When I do eventually finish LOZAS, it will be the first game I’ve ever designed from the ground up. And like any ‘first,’ it’s probably going to be terrible. But it will be a labor of love, and I can only hope that will help mask some of my inexperience.

So now that I’ve wasted 786 words telling you what the project is and how I came to work on it, why don’t I share a little bit about how the game is shaping up and what my goals are? That way future posts referencing the LOZAS system can at least have some context. While my list of goals is extensive, each one descends from this single goal:

Recreate the style and ‘feel’ of A Link to the Past in a tabletop environment, without forcibly including elements which are not well suited to tabletop play.

Given that, the question becomes: what is the style and feel of LttP? Exploring that question has been an ongoing process as I work on the game, but I do have my thoughts:

Dungeons Zelda games are about dungeons. Even though every game in the series has lots for the player to do outside of dungeons, the underworld is where the real meat of the game can be found. It’s where the player encounters the most varied enemies, finds the most interesting treasure, fights bosses, and achieves the most important quest-progressing goals. As such, the game will be geared towards exploring dungeons. Hyrule is an ancient land, where many forgotten kingdoms have made their home. It is riddled with dozens, hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of underworld citadels just waiting to be explored by heroes.

While dungeons can vary wildly, most dungeons will contain the following elements:

Lots of monsters.
Lots of traps.
Lots of treasure.
A wondrous item (discussed further below).
A heart container (discussed further below).
A Great Monster.

Great Monsters are special creatures within this world. In game terms, you would call them bosses. However, within the setting, they are monsters who have acquired an immense amount of power. They did this either by defeating their fellow monsters and rising to the top of the food chain, or by forging an alliance with a great evil being. Upon defeating a great monster, all the heroes who were involved in the combat gain a level. Defeating great monsters is the only way to advance in level in this game. There are no experience points.

Characters There are two big things about A Link to the Past which do not translate well to a tabletop environment. First, not every adventure can be set in motion by Zelda being kidnapped. Second, not every player can be Link. The former problem is up to the GM to solve, but I hope to give GMs a useful toolbox with my methods for creating dungeons and great monsters. The latter problem, however, is all on me.

Long story short, I’ve determined that the game will use only three classes. The Adventurer is the closest of the three to what Link would be. It’s a class with respectable fighting skills, but which focuses on special abilities. An adventurer can leap across long gaps, climb walls quickly, move without making any sound, etc. Soldiers focus purely on physical combat, and receive bonuses to their attack, damage, critical range, armor class, and battle maneuver score as they increase in level. Sages are the mystics of the game, and probably the class I currently find most interesting. At each level, the sage can permanently add one more spell to its repertoire. I’m doing my best to balance the spells at about the same power level, so that there will be no need for multiple “spell levels.” Each time a spell is cast, the sage must roll an ability check. They are currently allowed to fail the check a number of times per day equal to their level, after which they must rest before they can cast again. Though I worry this may become tedious at higher levels, even with a current max level of 10.

Numerical Simplicity There aren’t many bonuses or penalties in a Zelda game. Sure you might get an upgraded sword or new armor now and again, but the rest of your equipment provides a unique function rather than improving the effect of a function which already exists. So far, the only bonuses and penalties which currently exist in the game are either determined at character creation, or by a character’s class as they level up. The game will employ an maximum AC, and even at high levels health will likely be pretty low for most creatures. So including a lot of +1 items would just make the game messy. Instead, the game should be filled with items like a magic grappling hook which always finds something to latch onto, or a magic glove which lets you see through any wall you touch.

Heart Containers One of the staples of every Zelda game is heart containers. The player begins the game with 3 life. By defeating bosses, the player can gain heart containers which increase that life by 1. Minor as it may seem, I think this is a great idea to use in the game. A sword to the chest kills a great knight just as surely as it would kill a peasant. However, by delving into dungeons, adventurers can find magic items which absorb into their body, allowing them to survive wounds which would kill most people.

Those are some of the larger ideas which come to mind now. I’m sure I’ll continue to write about this project as it progresses.

*Seriously, why in the world did the SNES have such a loud power switch? It was as though Nintendo was trying to alert your parents of when you were playing rather than doing your chores.

Are Zocchi Dice Viable?

Upon going through my budget for the month I realized I had some spare money to spend on toys. After ordering a hardback copy of ACKS, as well as a kickass shirt, I decided to take care of something which was long overdue. I hunted down, and purchased, a set of Zocchi dice. For the uninitiated, Zocchi dice (named for their creator, Lou Zocchi) are role playing dice which are funnier than the funny dice we’re all used to. Every tabletop gamer quickly becomes well acquainted with the standard set: d4, d6, d8, d10/d%, d12, and d20. A full set of Zocchi dice includes a d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, and a d24. Mine arrived a few days ago*, and I’m rather in love with them. I think my girlfriend is getting really frustrated by the incessant clattering of my d5, as I roll it over and over again to marvel over the way it consistently lands on its edge. It doesn’t look like it should, and yet it does!

Long time readers may recall that I have something of an obsession with randomization, so gaining access to different ranges of numbers I can randomize is exciting. I will admit that zocchi dice lack some of the beauty inherent in regular polyhedrons, but in my opinion, they make up for that lack of inherent beauty by being examples of the beauty which is human ingenuity. Seriously, that d5, mang. It mystifies and fascinates me. I also have a more utilitarian need for the dice, since Dungeon Crawl Classic (which I received as a birthday gift) utilizes a full range of Zocchi dice, as well as a d30 (which I also purchased). Furthermore, while fiddling with the mechanics of the RPG system I’ve been working on, I’ve concluded that part of the game will work best if a d24 is used.

I think the last week’s worth of posts have referenced that project. I guess it’s pretty easy to tell what has inspired me to write recently. But after all of this talk, I’m going to look like a real dick if I’m not able to deliver, wont I?

The decision to include a d24 in my game has given me pause. While I have no delusions of grandeur about my project, I do hope I’ll be able to share it someday and get feedback from others. As it stands, this will be my first full-fledged attempt at game design. It’s hard enough to get people to pay attention to a sourcebook written by an untested designer. If people need to buy a new die to play the game, will they even bother? I wonder how Gygax and Arneson felt when they created a game which required a 20 sided die way back in the ’70s.

The relative success of DCC RPG would seem to imply that there is a market for games using non-standard dice. After all, the designers of DCC were able to get a wide release for not only one hard cover sourcebook, but a special edition as well. Given that, I have no doubt that it’ll be easier to release a game using Zocchi dice now than it would have been before. But I still wonder if I can get away with putting such a game out there, without it being completely ignored. It doesn’t help that a complete set of these dice is a pain in the ass to find.

I put it to you, readers: would you buy Zocchi dice if a game you were interested in required them? If you aren’t willing to buy the dice, would you be willing to play the game using standard dice to model the appropriate ranges? You could always replace a d24 with a d12 and flipping a coin. (heads is normal, tails add 12 to the result).

*My set, oddly, is missing the 7-sided die. Further research indicates that Game Science (Zocchi’s company) does not produce d7s using the same style or materials that they use to produce their other dice. I couldn’t figure out why this is, however, so if anyone has information I’d love to know!

Merciless Monsters V: LOZAS Skeleton and Popo

If you haven’t yet, there’s only today and tomorrow left to fill out the first annual Papers & Pencils survey! It honestly means a lot to me, so if you enjoy the blog, and you have a couple minutes, I would really appreciate your time!

It’s been a long while since I made a Merciless Monsters post. The Draugr were all the way back in March, and my only attempt since then was when I adapted Telecanter’s work in April. For awhile after the Draugr, I avoided writing another MM because they took so damned long to get done. Then I had my big rant denouncing Pathfinder’s complex methods of stat block creation. Since then I haven’t really been sure about how to approach making monsters. I figure I ought to come up with my own style of Pathfinder-compatible statblock which allows monsters to be built faster, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

So instead, I thought it would be fun to waste everyone’s time by working out some of the monsters for my in-progress LOZAS system. Below are two of the monsters which will appear in that game, built using the current iteration of the rules. First is the Skeleton, which I’ve included to serve as a connection between the tried-and-true (skeletons in fantasy RPGs) and the new-fangled (the LOZAS system). The other creature, which I’m currently calling a Popo, is a little more unusual, and to my knowledge hasn’t appeared in a tabletop RPG before.

None of these rules are quite pinned down yet, so these creatures may end up changing before I’m done. I’ve also added some commentary to the statblocks, to explain my reasons for making certain choices. Despite my joke above, I hope you find this enjoyable rather than annoying. The survey isn’t over until tomorrow, but a lot of people have noted that they’d like to read more about my amateur game design.

Skeleton

HP 8
AC 20
Body 10; Agility 26; Wisdom 3
Speed 40
Special Protection: Skeletons take no damage from piercing weapons unless it is a critical hit.
Special Weakness None
Attacks Claw (+5/1dmg); Throw Bone (50ft)(+8/1dmg)
Special Moves

Disengage: As an action, the skeleton may leap straight back 20-50ft. If there is a wall within that range, the skeleton is not harmed by colliding with it, instead gracefully sliding down the wall to land at the bottom.

Stealthy: A sneaking skeleton is able to move with complete silence, and hide itself within deep shadows. While sneaking, a skeleton can move at full speed. While hiding in deep shadows, it must remain still while it is being observed, or it will be revealed.

Description With magically animated joints the skeleton glides silently across the stone floors of a crypt. While the creature was once a person, all flesh and humanity have been stripped from it, leaving only a collection of bones with a fervent desire to harm the living. Skeletons are created either by powerful and evil sages, or by the sheer evil presence of a monster even more merciless than itself.

Tactics Skeletons much prefer to fight from range, breaking off spare bones from their rib cage and throwing them with deadly accuracy. If a skeleton ever ends up in melee range, it will sometimes attack with its claws, but its immediate reaction is to leap straight backward. Skeletons are not very bright creatures. They’re barely more than an automaton, with only a rudimentary understanding of friend & foe, and not much ability to think ahead. Clever players could potentially trick a skeleton into using its disengage ability to take a blind leap into lava, or some other dangerous substance.

Design Notes In this game, the the range of human ability can go as low as a score 2, and as high as a 22. Given that, the skeleton shown here has an average body score, extremely low wisdom score, and supernaturally high agility score. Lacking the constraints of flesh and sinew, skeletons are more flexible and fast than the world’s greatest gymnasts and runners. I’ve never liked the portrayal of skeletons as level 1 cannon fodder, possibly because of my love for the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts. My hope is to make them a little more menacing in this game.

While individual GMs are free to run the skeleton however they like, obviously, I thought it would be fun to play up the graceful aspect of the skeleton, making it a quick, stealthy foe. I particularly like the idea of skeletons being able to avoid melee range, thus allowing them to force their foes to use arrows–which they are immune to.

Popo

HP 2
AC 12
Body 16; Agility 11; Wisdom 5
Speed 30
Special Protection: None
Special Weakness None
Attacks Constricting Barbs (Auto-hit on entangled foes/1dmg)
Special Moves

Entangle: If a popo enters the same space as a target, then that target becomes entangled. The target cannot move until the popo is either killed or shaken free with a successful agility check. Once entangled, a target is vulnerable to the popo’s Constricting Barbs attack, which does not require any attack roll.

Description ‘A multicolored mass of wriggling tentacles with no other recognizable anatomy” is the simplest way to describe the popo’s appearance. While primarily colored in shades of orange and purple, a popo’s tentacles can fall anywhere on the color spectrum. The creature uses its bright colors and wriggling movements to attract potential predators. Once it is attacked, the popo latches on tightly, extruding small barbs which allow it to draw bloody sustenance from its would-be attacker. Even the strongest or most agile creatures find it difficult to rid themselves of a popo once it has latched on.

Tactics Popos are simple creatures who live in ‘clusters’ which generally range from 4-10. Often, members of a cluster will hunt separately. But when threatened, the creatures demonstrate remarkably unity by gathering together, and moving in union. In doing so, they cover a larger surface area than a single popo would, making it more difficult for attacks to avoid getting their feet entangled.

Design Notes I’m experimenting with mechanics which have ‘absolute’ results in this game. Above, you saw how the skeleton is almost completely immune to piercing weapons (as opposed to Pathfinder, where skeletons have DR/bludgeoning). The popo is another example of a mechanic with an absolute outcome: if the popo enters the same area as a PC, that PC is entangled. No saving throw or chance to avoid it. The player’s best chance to avoid being entangled by a popo is to deprive the monster of the opportunity in the first place.

You might note that all of the attacks mentioned deal a set amount of damage, rather than a dice range. At present, the game uses different rules for monsters and players in this regard. On the one hand, monsters can have any number of HP, and player weapons deal damage using a dice range. Players, on the other hand, start with only 3 HP, which can be increased one at a time by adventuring, and discovering magical items which allow them to resist wounds beyond what a normal human could sustain.

I don’t really like that method very much, but it’s what I’m working with for now.

Taking a Look at Called Shots

If you haven’t yet, there’s only 4 days left to fill out the first annual Papers & Pencils survey!

Everyone who has played a tabletop RPG, loved the concept, and thought to themselves “Hey, I bet I could make a better system than that!” has come up with at least a few of the standard newbie ideas. These are the ideas that sound really good, but the trick is finding a way of putting them into practice in a tabletop environment. I was guilty of more than a few of these myself. If I ever find the notes for my Metal Gear Solid RPG, I’ll prove it to you. Many of the thoughts new players have revolve around injecting a higher level of ‘realism’ into the game, particularly with regards to combat. And while there are certainly some very good games with more realistic combat than D&D, it’s important to realize that abstraction is a gamer’s friend. Pointless realism can make an RPG about as exciting as doing your taxes.

One idea in particular I’ve heard a few times is separating a person’s body into segments. Something like left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, torso, and head, each with their own hit points, armor class, etc. I won’t say that no game has successfully pulled this off before, because there are a lot of games I haven’t played. But, in my experience, where this idea always fails (and where most realism ideas fail) is in formulating simple mechanics. This level of realism implies a lot of complexity which can’t easily be made gameable.

But just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s impossible, right? In the system I’m currently working on, I have two design goals which are relevant here. First, the game should be simple for the GM, and extremely simple for the player. The way the it’s taking shape right now, a GM should be able to completely explain character creation to a new player within about 5 minutes, after which the actual characters should be generated in half that time. The other relevant design goal is that I want to encourage mythical battles, where players must tailor their tactics to suit the creatures they are facing.

To that end, I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters with “weak spots.” There’s tons of literary precedent for that kind of thing. Such as Bard the Bowman firing his black arrow into the tiny area of Smaug’s belly where a single scale was missing. Or Odysseus and his crew ramming a spear into the eye of the Cyclops. I like the idea of a game where monsters are often completely immune or at least extremely resistant to standard forms of attack. A game where the players need to think: should we just attack the creature straight out, or should we attack its legs to see if we can slow it down? Pathfinder does this somewhat with DR, SR, etc., and older editions of D&D did it more so with monsters who couldn’t be hurt by weapons below a +X bonus. But I’d like to see a game where player skill could be used to overcome these difficulties, rather than simply needing better equipment.

I flipped through a mental catalog of ideas for how this could be accomplished, and came up with a few options. The one which stood out to me the most was using a type of called shot system. You may be familiar with this concept, as it often shows up in a splat book, or house rules. At its core, the idea is that instead of making a standard attack, the player indicates they’d like to attempt hitting a particular part of their enemy, in exchange for taking a penalty on their attack roll. It’s pretty simple, and when combined with GM rulings, I think it could work well at the center of a combat system.

So, what about a gradient of called shot difficulties which each increase AC by a certain amount, tied to the difficulty class? Using 3-5 levels of difficulty should keep things simple enough to prevent combat from being slowed at all. Additionally, if the rules can attach plenty of examples for each difficulty class, it would help GMs get a good picture of how real-world difficulty translates to mechanics, allowing them to make on-the-fly rulings without needing to consult the book. Consider, as an example:

Easy Shot, +3 AC: Arm, Leg. These are on the outside edge of a human combatant’s defenses, making them a simple target.
Moderate Shot, +6 AC: Belly, hand, head. These are smaller areas, or they are on the inside of a human combatant’s defenses, making them somewhat more difficult to hit.
Hard Shot, +9 AC, Finger, Eye, Mouth. These are really quite small areas, which would be difficult to hit even if the target was standing still.
Impossible Shot, +12 AC, eyes behind a visor. These would be impossible for any standard combatant to hit. It would be a great feat of luck or skill to accomplish this.

On a successful hit, the GM could decide based on the damage dealt relative to the creature’s total HP, what the result of the attack is. If the adventurer makes a called shot to an enemy’s sword arm, succeeds, and rolls 10 damage, the results of that could differ based on what percentage of the enemies’ total HP that 10 damage represents. For a foe with 100 hit points, 10hp is not a significant amount. It would be deducted from the enemy’s current HP normally, but would not have any additional effect. For an enemy with 50 HP, dealing 10 damage to their sword arm might give them a penalty to future attack rolls, or they might need to roll a saving throw to avoid dropping their weapon entirely. For a creature with only 11 HP, 10 damage to the arm would lop it clean off.

Bear in mind that there should be no exact or expected result here. The common sense of the GM should be the only deciding factor for the effects of a called shot. Nor should the damage be treated as cumulative. Each called shot to a certain area should be considered separately from any previous attacks against the same area. If the player wants to worsen damage which has already been done, then they’re not aiming for the monster’s arm, they’re aiming for the wound which is on the arm. That’s a much smaller target, and hitting it would be at least hard, if not impossible during the jostling of combat.

Aside from the on-the-fly rulings, monsters could have special weaknesses listed in their monster entry. A giant insect’s wings (easy shot) could take double damage from fire. Or a slime monster could be completely immune to damage unless you make the hard shot of hitting the brain which floats inside of its goo. Furthermore, creatures could have particularly strong defenses on areas which adventurers might commonly think to attack. A monster with giant eyes would probably need extra-tough eyelids that grants its eyes greater protection than the rest of it.

It’s just a thought experiment at this point, but I’m growing fond of using called shots as a central combat mechanic. Do you have any experience with a mechanic like this which could come in handy?

Investigating Ability Scores

If you haven’t yet, there’s only 6 days left to fill out the first annual Papers & Pencils survey!

When you sit down to create an entirely new RPG from scratch, where do you start? I don’t know if there’s a particular method used by more experienced game designers, but the handful of times I’ve attempted it, I always start in the same place: how does the player create their character? It’s the closest thing to a ‘logical’ starting place that I can think of. Nearly every mechanic in every RPG I’ve ever looked at relates either to how the characters can affect the game world, or how the game world can affect them. And since the character needs to exist before it can affect or be affected, it seems like that’s the best place to start. So when I began making notes for the game system I mentioned yesterday, that is what I did.

From there, I chose to start with the most fundamental building block of a character: ability scores. I’m sure there’s a system out there where characters don’t have any of ability scores, and it might be really good. But, for my purposes with this game, ability scores seem like the best way to go. Then came my first real decisions: how many ability scores, what do they represent, and how are they generated?

I am most familiar with the D&D base ability scores. There are six of them: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Numerous methods exist for determining the numbers associated with each ability, but all of them are just permutations on the original. The player rolls 3d6, six times. The basic score is a number between 3 and 18, weighted heavily towards scores of 10 or 11. When you look at OD&D or AD&D, it’s very clear why ability scores were set up this way. Rolling 3 dice makes the minimum and maximum scores very unlikely, so when a 17 or 18 is rolled, it’s a cherished event. Hell, I got excited when my OD&D Magic User Higgins rolled a 16 Intelligence. The maximum score of 18 also plays beautifully into the original “ability check” mechanic, where a player rolls 1d20 and compares it to the ability score they’re attempting to use. If the result of the d20 roll is less than or equal to their ability score, whatever they’re attempting succeeds. I love the way this mechanic makes the specific number of a character’s ability score significant, while also retaining an absolute 10% failure chance.

Modern versions of Dungeons and Dragons–including Pathfinder–retain the basics of this system, but have lost everything which made the systems elegant. By using larger dice pools, the game removes the rarity of high or low numbers. There are racial ability bonuses which can easily increase a character’s score to 20 at first level, and even extra ability points given to characters at every 4th level. This would kill that consistent 10% failure chance, if the ability check mechanic hadn’t been dropped in favor of rolling against a target number. As I understand it, D&D 4th edition dropped the die rolling aspect of entirely, using a ‘point buy’ system instead. The ability score range of 3-18 seems like nothing more than tradition at this point.

After seeing this example of a mechanic being used in a game where it doesn’t fit any longer, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just copy the system I was most familiar with. I needed to properly explore my alternatives, and thoroughly examining why a particular system was the right choice for this game. (Incidentally, this concern is what prompted me to question Reinventing the Wheel.) And what better way to explore my alternatives was to grab every game sourcebook I own, and look at how they handled ability scores, presented in no particular order.

Note that these are specifically from books I own, and not an exhaustive investigation into every system of ability scores ever used. I’ve also excluded the Adventurer Conqueror King and Dungeon Crawl Classic systems, since they both use a system based heavily on oldschool D&D.

The Deadlands RPG published in 1996 (which I picked up at a garage sale about a year ago, but have not yet taken a serious look at) has a whopping 10 ability scores, divided into two groups. There are the “Corporeal Traits,” which include Deftness, Nimbleness, Quickness, Strength, and Vigor; and the “Mental Traits,” which include Cognition, Knowledge, Mien, Smarts, and Spirit. Having not played the game it seems unfair to judge, but some of these seem awful similar to me. Deftness is defined as “Hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. Great for shooting holes in things.” and Quickness is defined as “Reflexes and speed. Draw, pardner!” I get that there’s a difference, but is it really significant enough to add additional complication to a tabletop game? I would need a lot of convincing.

Ability scores are determined by drawing from a standard deck of playing cards, with the two jokers included. You draw 12 cards, discard 2. You then assign each card to one of your ten scores. The card is then compared to a chart. The number on the card determines which type of die you roll in association with that ability score, while the suit determines how many of that die you roll.

The game has a wild-west setting, so using playing cards as a mechanic makes sense. Aces & Eights did the same thing. But really it’s just a fancy method for assigning dice to abilities, and that idea has always interested me. The difference between having a 1d4 Strength and a 1d12 dexterity is a lot more interesting than the difference between a -2 Strength and a +4 Dexterity in Pathfinder.

The Serenity RPG was the first game I bought after D&D, but I still haven’t had the opportunity to play it! I blame none of my friends being big Firefly fans. And maybe it’s just as well–I’ve heard that the system is horribly broken.

Like Deadlands, the attributes in the Serenity RPG are die types, rather than numbers. Before play begins, the group selects which “heroic level” they’d like to play at, choosing from “Greenhorn,” “Veteran,” and “Big Damn Hero.” Each of the heroic levels has a different number of “Attribute Points” which are spent in creating a character. Again, they are divided into physical and mental, but with only 6 instead of 10: Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower. Dice are purchased for each of the scores, with each die costing a number of points equal to the number on its highest face. (A d6 costs 6 points, a d8 costs 8, etc.)

Personally, I’m not a fan of point-buy systems. I see their value as a means of balancing characters, but I find it far more fun when characters have a chance of being unusually flawed or gifted. None the less, I still like the dice idea. It’s something to think about.

Earthdawn is another system I picked up at a garage sale and never took a really look at. It appears to be more of a storytelling game, which is not my forte. Again it uses a sort of “point buy” system, ranging from 2-18, with the lowest numbers actually adding points to your pool if you take them. It also has an alternative method allowing characters to roll 3d6 for their scores. The actual scores are similar to D&D as well: dexterity, strength, toughness, perception, willpower, and charisma.

Whatever other interesting elements the game might have, it’s not particularly useful for this exercise.

Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG is notoriously bad. I couldn’t not buy it when I found it at a used book store a few years back, just for the sake of morbid curiosity. I’m honestly having a difficult time even understanding how this works. From what I can tell, there are actually only 5 attributes, which range from 1 to 5 for humans, and each attribute has two “edges” which a character can be particularly strong or particularly weak in. I honestly can’t decipher how this works by flipping through the book, but it seems similar to the WEG Star Wars RPG, which I’ll discuss below.

Gangbusters (first edition, 1982) has some seriously strange ability scores. It looks like each character has Muscle, Agility, Observation, Presence, Driving, and Luck. But each is rolled differently! For muscle, agility, and observation, the player rolls a percentile die. Modifiers go from +0 to +25, with a lower roll being better. The presence score is just rolled on a D10, with modifiers from 0 to 2. The driving score is the average of your agility and observation scores, and the luck score is just a percentile dice divided by two.

This is a mess. I don’t think there’s really any way to redeem it within the system’s mechanics. Though again, I should probably play it before I pass judgement. (If you haven’t figured it out: I own a great many systems I’ve never had an opportunity to play!)

I picked up the Batman Role Playing Game a little over a year ago because I found it at a used book store and was curious. Unlike some of the other RPGs I’ve picked up second had, I took a very serious look at it. My ladyfriend is a huge batman fan, and I had some fun ideas for a campaign where the players started out as thugs in Gotham city, constantly hounded by Batman. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was the worst system I’ve ever laid eyes on.

But lets stick to the attributes. This game has a nine of them. When I first read it, that seemed extremely excessive. But then, I hadn’t read anything about Deadwood yet. The attributes make up a cross-section, which I do find somewhat interesting. Three attributes are physical, three are mental, and three are spiritual. Of those, one in each category is an “Acting/Opposing” attribute, one is an “Effect Attribute,” and one is a “Resistance Attribute.” Once again, point-buy is used during character creation, so this isn’t of particular interest.

The Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game is god damned beautiful. It is based on the Burning Wheel role playing system, which I’ve had no prior experience with. Despite appearing to focus more on storytelling than gaming, the system is very interesting and I would like to learn more about it.

The game doesn’t have ability scores in the traditional sense, but it does have Nature, Will, Resources, and Circles. These can used and depleted through play, however, so perhaps this would be a good example of a system without ability scores.

Shadowrun, 1st edition, has 8 attributes for most characters, but has a 9th if the character is a magician. In some ways, this seems like a poor design choice to me. The purpose of ability scores, as I view them, is to be the most basic, fundamental, and universal expression of what a character can do. An Orc Barbarian who cannot cast spells still has an Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma score.

But, on the other hand, I can see this making a certain amount of sense in a setting where mystical abilities are completely inaccessible to those who were not born with them.

The way attributes are generated is also interesting. It’s a point-buy system, with some complexities that are a little reminiscent of Gangbusters, but much more refined. There are five columns to choose from in creating a character from scratch: Magic, Attributes, Skills, Tech, and Race. The player is given five importance ratings, 0 through 4, and they must assign one rating to each of the five columns. They will receive more or less resources in each of the five categories, depending on how important they rate them. Giving attributes an importance rating of 0 gives you 15 points to spend, while an importance rating of 4 gives you 30 points.

The six physical and mental attributes can each range from 1 to 6 for humans. The three mystical attributes each work a little differently. All characters start with an Essence of 6, which decreases as they add cyberware implants, or if they are healed improperly. Reaction is the average of Quickness and Intelligence, but is also reduced by cyberware implants.

Magic rating is the ninth attribute which only magic users posses, and I don’t actually understand why it exists based on these rules. It starts at 6, and “declines with essence rating.” I can’t figure out why they would need a seperate ability if–by all appearances–magic should always be equal to essence. But as I’m not intimately familiar with the system, I’m sure there’s something I’m missing.

Traveller (2008, Mongoose) has one of the coolest character creation systems ever, wherein the players must make a number of decisions and roll on a number of charts to generate their character’s entire lifetime prior to the point that play begins. Rolling the six basic ability scores, however, is straightforward. Roll 2d6 six times and assign them in any order. It’s simple, but works.

I like the idea of using two dice to generate an ability score rather than 3. The roll is still weighted towards the center, but both high and low scores will be more common.

And lastly, we come to the West End Games Star Wars Role Playing Game. I love this game. And, as it turns out, I’ve written about its ability scores before. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just quote myself:

WEG Star Wars characters have six basic attributes; Dexterity, Knowledge, Perception, Strength, Mechanical, and Technical. Each of these has a certain number of six sided dice attached to it during character creation. (WEG Star Wars only uses six sided dice.) For example, a human character gets 18 dice total, and has a minimum of 2 dice and a maximum of 4 dice in each of the six attributes. After filling the minimum requirements, players have 6 dice to spread between their six abilities. Once in play, any action which requires a roll will be associated with one of the six abilities, and the player gets to roll however many dice they allocated for that attribute. For example, hitting something with a blaster requires the ability to aim the blaster accurately, so you would roll your dexterity. If you went ahead and maxed out your dexterity, then you’d be able to roll 4d6 against your opponent’s dodge. And if he or she rolls lower than you did, the blaster bolt hits! And given how dangerous combat is treated in this game, there’s a good chance getting hit by that blaster bolt killed them.
There’s also a skills system for more specific tasks. Each character starts out with 7 dice to apply to skills. So even though you have 4 dice in dexterity, you could put another 2 dice in the Blasters skill, and be able to roll a whopping 6 dice whenever you try to hit somebody. Dice can also be split up. Each die counts as 3 “pips,” which is WEG’s code for bonuses. Essentially, if you’ve put 2 skill die into blasters, 3 into medicine, and 1 into starfighter piloting, and can’t decide where to put your last die, you can just break it up. Add a +2 to starfighter piloting (making the skill 1d6 + 2) and a +1 to blasters.

The system is elegant, and beautiful. Despite using what is essentially a point-buy system, it doesn’t feel bogged down with number crunching, nor do you ever feel obligated to build an “optimized” character.

This has been a weird post. When I started it, my intention was to examine all of these different game systems, and figure out how their use of ability scores could be adapted to the game I’ve been working on. Instead, I’ve really just listed all the different systems I found next to one another, with some commentary attached.

This might be a bad post…but it doesn’t seem bad to me right now, at 1 in the morning. Maybe I’ll feel differently later, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Reinventing the Wheel

If you haven’t yet, there’s only 7 days left to fill out the first annual Papers & Pencils survey!

During my spare time for the last few days, I’ve been working on a new game system. It’s not a particularly ambitious project, nor am I taking its development very seriously, but I was struck by inspiration and have enjoyed putting those ideas down on paper. Whether or not I’ll ever finish this project, I don’t know, but for the time being it has been an entertaining process. Going through the motions of putting an entire system together from scratch has given me a new appreciation for the challenges involved, and raised a few questions I don’t think I would have considered previously.

Many of the mechanics I’ve come up with for this game are unique in my experience. I’ve never played another game where all spells are equally powerful, or where additional hit points are gathered as treasure. I’m not saying nobody has ever done it before, I’ve just never seen it myself. For a lot of mechanics, I have specific ideas about how they should work, and how I will adapt them from my source material. For other mechanics, however, I…well, don’t.

Take combat, for example. There’s something you want to kill, so you attack it with a weapon. This is a fundamental part of fantasy adventure games, and most everyone would agree that it requires a resolution mechanic. Unless you want to stand up from the table and start LARPing, you need a standardized procedure to easily determine the success or failure of an attack. Personally, I’m from the school of thought which says that since war is chaos, a wide variance of random probability is appropriate when determining the success or failure of an attack.

I’ve seen this handled a couple different ways in the various games I’ve played, but I am most familiar with the method D&D, and later Pathfinder, have used since their beginning. Every player and NPC has an ‘Armor Class’ number representing how difficult they are to hit. The attacker must roll a twenty sided die, and if their result is equal to or better than their target’s AC, the attack is successful and damage can be rolled. Various editions have had more or less complexity on top of this basic system, but the fundamental mechanic has remained unchanged from the early days of OD&D. Why change what works, after all?

This is one of the problems I’ve encountered while developing this game. For some things, including conflict resolution with regard to attacks, I don’t have any ideas better than the ones which have been used in D&D for decades. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to call using D&D’s attack roll system ‘plagiarism,’ there is something that feels wrong about it. If I use a mechanic someone else came up with, without adapting it to make it my own, then am I really making my own game, or am I just regurgitating something that already exists with a few superficial tweaks?

It’s not as though it would be difficult to come up with a reasonably unique mechanic, either. Just off the top of my head I can think of a few different ways to handle this kind of conflict resolution. The attacker and the defender could make opposed rolls, which would increase the chaos of battle. I could replace the 20 sided die with a 30 sided die. Perhaps the attacker doesn’t even make a ‘to hit,’ roll. Every attack immediately results in a damage roll, and every character has a minimum amount of damage which must be rolled in order to hurt them at all. Or perhaps “defense” and “attack” numbers are static, and can only be modified with clever tactics described to the GM. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll give you a dozen more ways it could be done.

But would any of them be better?

I would have to be stupid to be different, simply for uniqueness’ sake. It’s possible I’ll think of a mechanic which better suites the tone aiming for than the D&D attack roll does. It’s also possible that I won’t, and if that happens, then why should I shoehorn something different into the game just so I don’t feel as though I’m being derivative? I believe that every choice made in game design should be made because the designer believes it improves the way the game plays. I can’t think of any other consideration which matters at all by comparison.

True as that may be, however, it doesn’t stop me from feeling bad when I lift something wholesale from another game. Even a game as time honored as Dungeons and Dragons.

Lively Locals 6: The Godstone

If you haven’t yet, there’s only 9 days left to fill out the first annual Papers & Pencils survey!

A bag of holding is a coveted prize for an adventurer. In one small sack, a person can carry an entire armory of weapons, more potions than a wizard could brew in a year, and enough riches to buy a kingdom. Never does the bag grow in size, or become any heavier than a skin filled with water. Few know how these marvelous devices work, but the truth is that each bag accesses a small pocket of the Astral Plane. The infinite nothingness which flows between the dimensions, holding them together into a single multiverse. Each bag of holding is a small portal into a pocket of that void.

As precious as these items are, they’re also a great liability. It’s a simple task for a thief to rob you of your entire fortune, if you’re foolish enough to put it all in one place. Thieves are not even the greatest of an adventurer’s worries. A far greater danger is that posed by a stray blade, or arrow. A whizzing bit of steel which, while it may fail to harm the adventurer, damages their bag. When a bag of holding is broken, it does not simply split as a bag of canvas would. A bag of holding implodes, sending its contents whirling into the astral plane in all directions, and the unfortunate adventurer will be lucky if they’re not sucked in along with their lost treasures.

Over the centuries, countless bags have burst into the astral plane. Since the acquisition of such a bag in the first place is a dangerous–or at least expensive–proposition, the items contained in them are often quite valuable. Powerful magic items and artifacts float aimlessly throughout the vast nothingness.

But the astral plane is not entirely empty. Planar travelers use the astral plane as their road between worlds. The alien Githyanki even call the astral plane their home. There are many astral phenomena as well. Young wizards preparing to travel the planes for the first time are warned of the dangers of sonic rain, and transformative clouds. Worst of all is the bridge lightning. Arcs of energy which are drawn towards physical matter. They appear as if from nowhere, and move so quickly that by the time the eye has seen them, they are already gone.

If a person can survive the shock of being struck by bridge lightning, they’ll suddenly find themselves somewhere completely different. The lightning draws anything it touches to an area of intersection, where the astral plane overlaps another plane. Whatever the lightning strikes is unceremoniously dumped into a seemingly random spot somewhere in the multiverse. It is said that the astral plane’s natural state is emptiness, and the gods created the bridge lightning to enforce that.

Lost treasures are far more numerous than travelers in the astral plane, though. The lightning is often drawn to a mighty sword or magic potion lost by an adventurer who trusted their magic bag a little too much. Sometimes the items fall into the fires of hell or the endless fields of Elysium. Occasionally, they even end up in the depths of a dungeon, only to later be found by another adventurer. And other times, the items are zapped to a rock.

It’s not a particularly interesting rock. It’s just a stone in the middle of a field, which happens to intersect with the astral plane. Every so often, some item appears on the rock without warning. One day, a magical sword might appear, and six months past that, a dozen gold coins. A week after, a collection of goblin teeth, then a year later a powerful suit of plate armor.

A century or so ago, a clan of nomadic orcs were wandering through the wilderness, and came upon a small pile of gold and other treasure. They fell upon it eagerly, and took it as an omen that they should make camp around the stone. They intended to stay only a few weeks, but while they were there, they noticed that magical marvels continued to appear. The shamans declared the rock to be a manifestation of the orcish god, and the tribe cast off their nomadic ways to remain with the godstone.

To this day, the Tribe of the Godstone guard their land viciously. They are impossibly wealthy and well equipped, and eagerly offer outsiders as sacrifice to please their deity.

1st Annual Papers & Pencils Reader Census

I’ll just admit right up front that I’m completely lifting this idea from Jen McCright of Blag Hag. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in three of her annual reader censuses over the years, and I’ve always thought they were a lot of fun. So now that I have my very own blog which has lasted a full year, I thought I’d get in on that fun for myself! I’m not a scientist, and I don’t have the kind of statistical knowledge that she does, but the results should be interesting to muse over none the less.

So here’s how this works. First, you visit:

The Papers & Pencils 2012 Reader Census

Then you fill out the questions as best you can, and click submit. It’s not very long and shouldn’t take much of your time. There are only 8 multiple choice questions that are required, with some extra optional questions at the end. You’ll be able to take the survey until Saturday the 18th, at whatever time I get around to closing it.

If you read and enjoy Papers & Pencils, I would like to ask you to take a few minutes to do this. It should only take a moment, and the more responses I get, the more reliable my eventual data will be. Hopefully, what I learn here should help me better understand and serve my readership.

Ding! Level Two

WARNING: This post is self-indulgent tripe. Turn back now, while you still can!

One year ago today, I was depressed. My life had taken a number of dark turns right in a row, and even though things were getting better, I was unsure of how to move forward. I’d been thinking about getting back to my writing, so I pulled up blogger, set up a site named ‘Comma, Blank_;’ and jotted down an essay about how shitty I felt. After I wrote it, I remember feeling oddly at peace with myself. The half dozen people who read it told me it made them feel terrible, but for some reason I now felt like everything was going to be okay. That was was the first day of the experiment which has grown to become Papers & Pencils. And while I didn’t write any RPG themed articles until August 9th, nor did I start taking that writing seriously until October 10th, I still view today, August 8th, as the day the project began. The day I looked at my shitty situation and said “Fuck this noise.”

But I already wrote about all that way back when I moved off of blogger, so I won’t bore you with it a second time. Instead I figured this would be a good opportunity to take a look at the posts from the past year. Which ones are really good, really bad, or just somehow interesting. Hopefully it will give newer readers a chance to check out some of what came before, without needing to prowl the archives themselves. After that, I’ll outline some of my goals for the future of the site, and other related projects.

The past year has over 200 posts for me to sift through, though, so that’s enough introduction. Lets go.

The Girl and the Granite Throne began shortly after the site went up, and as of this writing hasn’t been updated since I started taking the blog seriously back in October of 2011. It is, I think, a story with a lot of potential. The four parts of it which have already been written still hold up well in my opinion. And now that the campaign the story was based on has officially been declared dead, it’s important to me that I find another medium through which I can tell Erin’s story. The only problem is that I’m actually a very slow writer. Between a full time job, writing 4 blog posts every week, and playing in the games which inspire those posts, it’s difficult for me to make time to write lengthy fiction.

The Hall of a Dozen Deaths is a terrible post, which is a sad thing for me to admit. Most of the time, when I’ve written something bad, I already know it’s bad when I post it. Sometimes, that bad stuff actually gets a pretty warm reception, but that doesn’t change the fact that I know it could have been better if I’d just focused more, done more research, given myself more time, or something else like that. Not so with this post. I did my research, invested plenty of time, and when it was finished I was proud of myself. So proud, I even took the time to repost on /tg/, where someone pointed out that all I had done was create an annoying series of skill checks.

Damn it.

The Corpse Sewn Hekatonkheires. Of all the monsters I’ve created, this one is still my favorite. I have a few of them wandering around my current game world, and I can’t wait for my players to encounter them. And as an added bit of sentimentality, ranting about how difficult Pathfinder’s monster creation rules were while making this beast is how I met by my twitter-pal DarkPatu for the first time.

Ability Penalty Flaws are an idea I wish I could claim as my own, but they were originally proposed by Paul over on Blog of Holding. The system is elegant in its design and application, and lends depth to the characters built using it. In the post, I revised Paul’s original idea to work with Pathfinder, and to be a little less goofy than he had originally envisioned. I love this rule, and it would probably end up codified in any serious attempt I made to design a fantasy adventure game.

Magically Generating New Adventures is an important post for several reasons. First, I think it’s one of the best and most unique ideas I’ve ever had. Second, it was my first post after I decided that I was going to take RPG writing seriously. Third, even after all this time, it is still one of my most popular and oft-linked-to posts. I’m proud of this idea, and I’m always excited when someone tells me they used it to help them design their game world.

Colorful Characters 1: The Governor was (obviously) the very first Colorful Characters post. The series was originally intended to serve two roles. First, I hoped it would provide me with something I could write quickly without to much hassle. Second, I wanted to create a consistent series of posts which readers could know to expect and look forward to. As it turned out, Colorful Characters didn’t fill either of those roles, because they turned out to be longer and more difficult to write than normal posts, and due to that fact, weren’t as reliable as I had hoped they would be.

Instead, they’ve given me an outlet for writing short fiction over the past year which has been invaluable to me. Even though I don’t have time to write full short stories, it’s nice to sit down and sketch out the highlights of a character’s life.

Non-Digital Random Map Generation. The idea I wrote about here is one of my favorites. Like Magically Generating New Adventures, it feels uniquely “mine,” and I’ve received a lot of compliments for it at the time. Sadly, this one doesn’t get linked to nearly as often as the magic card post does. One of the great flaws of the blogging format is that old posts sometimes get lost, because nobody is going to spend their time going through all 200+ posts in my archive looking for gems. I hope this link gives that post some of the traffic I think it deserves.

Simple Experience Points is another idea taken directly from Paul of Blog of Holding. And, somewhat frustratingly, it’s one of the posts which I’ve received the most recognition for. Again, I did adapt it for Pathfinder, and add a few refinements of my own to the idea, but the critical leap of intellect was Paul’s. None the less, it’s a good system, and one of the best house rules I’ve ever implemented in my game.

I wrote The Problem with Feats on Halloween night. I was covered in caked-on makeup, and had a severely burned finger that stung every time I typed with it. But it was worth it, because that post gave me my first real bit of attention from the very generous Courtney of the blog Hack & Slash. Thanks to the link he posted, I had 74 hits on my blog the next day. And bear in mind, this was back when I was having a good day if I broke 10 hits! I doubt I would have lasted long enough to write a 1 year retrospective post without Courtney’s encouragement. I didn’t get that many hits again until late February, and it didn’t become normal for me until long after I had made the move to Papers and Pencils.

Deadly Dungeons: Scholomance Part 1. Ho boy. Well, first I’ll point out that originally, I was planning to make ‘Deadly Dungeons’ an ongoing series, much like Colorful Characters. But I bit off more than I could chew with my first outing, an adaptation of my favorite World of Warcraft dungeon, Scholomance. Part of my failure there was that I failed to realize that WoW dungeons and D&D dungeons have very different design goals. Sholomance, in WoW, is one of the most sprawling dungeons in the game. In D&D, it’s a very brief, very combat-heavy dungeon, which lacks a lot of flavor.

I’d still like to revisit the idea of transforming Scholomance into a dungeon someday. Particularly since Blizzard recently brutalized this beloved dungeon of mine, sucking out everything that made it beautiful in the first place and making it linear. I’m not sure when I will tackle it, but when I do it will likely be a fresh start, with a completely different approach.

Funny story: I’m very proud of Thoughts On Hero Points, but I still don’t use Hero Points in my game, nor do I really intend to start doing so in the future. It’s a good post with good ideas, but they don’t really suit my gaming preferences, or those of my group.

Sitting Behind the GM Screen stands out in my mind as one of the worst posts I’ve ever written. My thinking, at the time, was that it would be cool to write a post about how I prepare for games, and how I set up my table before my friends arrive to play. I’ve never been happy with how the post turned out, and generally try to avoid remembering it. Which is too bad, because that’s an excellent photograph of me.

My book review of The Worldwound Gambit is kind of a dickish piece of writing on my part. I stand by every criticism I made, but in my attempt to be entertaining about it, I think I just came off as mean-spirited. None the less, it’s kind of cool that my review of a book is currently the 5th result when you perform a Google search for the book’s title.

I’m proud of Succubi Deserve More. If I had to pick my favorite post from the first six months of the site, I would probably pick this one. I don’t even have all that much to say about it, except perhaps to mention that after it went up, I suddenly started getting a lot of hits from people searching for Succibi.

No More Overzealous Paladins was really just a rant which didn’t turn out as well as I wanted. I had this vision of finding tons of good and bad paladin stories, and spacing them throughout the post. But when it came time to write the thing, I couldn’t find any of them! Feeling defeated, I jotted down what came to mind and wrote it off as a bad post. The next day I woke to discover that it had been reposted to several different websites. This was probably the first post of mine to get circulated around the internet much at all.

Obfuscation Through Volume. Aside from being a solid post about Game Mastering techniques, this post made it onto the OSR Required Reading List posted by Courtney over at Hack and Slash. That was a proud day!

After writing Colorful Characters for months, it started to become more of a chore to do it every single week. So I started writing the Magical Marvels series, starting with Kofek’s Tongue. These have always been really fun, because I was able to work together with my ladyfriend Morrie on the art. Plus, they allowed me to share the history of my game world by describing the history of artifacts found therein. I think pretty much every Magical Marvels post I’ve written to date holds up very well, and would recommend giving them a look.

I don’t have a lot to say about A Personal History of Role Playing. It is a post which I felt like I had to write, and I’m glad I did. I feel as though I expressed myself very openly, honestly, and clearly in that post.

As I mentioned, after writing “Succubi Deserve More,” I started to receive a lot of hits from people searching for Succubi on Google. Oddly, one of the most common searches was for “Succubi in Succubus Town.” To this day I’m still not sure why that happened, but I decided to write a post about it. What started as a shameless attempt to draw in more traffic turned into an interesting exploration of what a succubus society might look like.

NPC Reactions is the single laziest post I’ve ever written for this site. I am ashamed of it.

Roughly halfway through the past year’s posts is Deities Defined. Some might argue that it’s pointless to spend too much time working on the mechanics of a god, since in essence, the gods are just a tool for the GM to manipulate the game world with. Keeping their powers nebulous and undefined is valuable. But I think gods are interesting. I love the idea of players being pawns in a war between deities, or entering a realm where their god cannot help them. I honestly view my system for defining the limits of the gods to be one of my best additions to Pathfinder.

After writing Merciless Monsters 2: Bloody Avenger (Bloody Mary) I received one of the best compliments I think I’ve ever received about my game design, again from Courtney of Hack & Slash:

Hello Friend.
You’ve committed the wonderful gygaxism of generalizing a specific creature into a monster! (Gorgon, Medusa et. al.)

That made me feel like a god damned badass.

Player Agency in the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon. After watching the 80s D&D cartoon, my ladyfriend and I joked that whoever was running that D&D game was a terrible GM, because they weren’t giving the player any ability to affect the outcome of the adventures. It seemed like a fun idea for a post, so I wrote this. Like the book review for The Worldwound Gambit, I stand by everything I wrote, but I feel like I may have come off as mean-spirited when I was really just attempting to be funny. There’s even a Facebook thread out there where a bunch of people complain about what a dick I am for writing it. Ernest G. Gygax Jr. even left a comment in that thread talking about how hard they worked on the show, though he didn’t give any indication that he read the article itself.

I tried to play up my hatred for the show to get laughs, and I wonder if I did a poor job of that. Though, bad as I might feel, I seriously considered making “Gary Gygax Jr. Disapproved!” the tagline of the site. >.>

After the success of my Bloody Avenger post, I decided to find another little-known undead monster I could convert to Pathfinder. I settled on Merciless Monsters 3: Draugr. All I remember about this post was that it took forever to write, and I was up for hours working on it at a snail’s pace when I really wanted to be sleeping. I’m happy with how it turned out, though I was disappointed when I learned that I had failed to notice the Draugr’s presence in Pathfinder’s 2nd Bestiary.

Making Travel More Engaging and Hex Crawling Encounters were written as a pair, and they basically epitomize what I want to do with this website. I want to identify gaps in tabletop RPGs, and I want to thoroughly discuss how those gaps could be filled. I want to improve upon gaming’s weaknesses. These two posts are largely aimed towards Pathfinder players, and attempted to re-introduce concepts which were commonplace in the early days of gaming, but have become forgotten over time.

Like the previous posts, A Paladin’s Fall and The Paladin’s Oath, and GM Clarity were written as a pair. The success of my rant about Paladins a few months prior had left me thinking about the class a lot. It is a class with a lot of fun potential, but one which is often improperly handled. The three posts were my attempt to articulate and address those problems intelligently, and I think I succeeded to a reasonable degree.

Making Encumbrance Work is another example of a post where I took something which I don’t think works in modern games, and I made it work for myself. I’m proud of how it turned out, even if I think the system presented there needs some improvement based on reader feedback, and my own playtesting.

March 2012 was apparently a pretty good month for me!

Oh, wow. I’d forgotten about How Players Make Enemies & Influence People. This was a decent idea, ruined by rushed and lazy writing. It’s easily a contender with ‘NPC Reactions’ for wost post I’ve ever uploaded to this site.

I spend a lot of time thinking about features that might improve Papers & Pencils. For awhile, I was really set on the idea of having a sub-section of the site where I just posted adventure notes. My thinking was that I would write detailed notes for each adventure, and others could use them either to follow the progress of my game, or to run my adventures within their own campaigns as a kind of mini-module. The only thing which ever came out of that idea was Behind the GM’s Screen:ToKiTiMO 3. Writing such detailed notes was simply too much work to keep up with. And since my players started to make their own plans, rather than following the adventure hooks I put in front of them, my style of note taking has needed to adapt to a format which would be much less enjoyable to read.

Then there’s the grand overview of skills. Christ on a Cracker, was this a lot of work to write. Eleven posts in all, which took over half of the month of April to post. This is probably my most notable work to date. And while I have had one person complain that they were far too dry, I’ve also had at least three other blogs start similar skills series of their own, citing me as part of their inspiration. That feels really good.

While it is far from completed yet, Page By Page: Gary Gygax’s DMG has been an educational thing to write. Slowly reading through the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, and writing down my thoughts on sections which stands out, has helped me to better understand a lot about gaming’s origins. I look forward to continuing this series into the next year, then finding another book to do the same thing with!

I was honored when I was asked to participate in the May of the Dead Carnival. So much so that I asked if I could write four posts instead of only one. From those, I think Undead Items is the best. Followed closely by The Crypt of Ancient Wisdom. I have a penchant for the macabre, and I got to exercise that here. I really ought to come up with another post about Undead Items!

The Wide Swing Dilemma created some fascinating discussion in the comments. This was one of those rare cases when I honestly was not sure what the correct response was as a GM. Normally I’m pretty confident in my decisions, even if I later decide I was wrong. But in this situation, I had my personal gaming philosophies on one hand, and an important game mechanic in the other. It was a difficult choice, and not one which everybody agreed with.

My post on Fantasy Languages was the first time in a couple months that I really tried to comprehensively address a problem with RPGs. To date I think this is one of my most underrated posts. I’ve never received any comments or feedback on it, despite pouring many hours into its development. Maybe this is a subject which just doesn’t interest anybody but me. But that’s fine, because I myself have used it as a resource several times already!

If you want me to write for anybody but myself, you gotta pay me.

Writing What I Want felt like writing a manifesto. I stated my goals, and I’m going to work towards finding or building a game which meets those goals. And once I’ve done that…well, I’m sure I’ll have new goals by then!

While it wasn’t the first in this series, Lively Locals 2: River of Blades is the first Lively Local post which I felt a strong connection to. Lively Locals finally did what my “Friday” style posts (Colorful Characters, Magical Marvels, Merciless Monsters, and Lively Locals) were supposed to do from the beginning: they don’t take forever to write. I can bang one of these out pretty quickly, and I think most of them have been both entertaining to read, and useful for GMs.

The Updated Forest Battlefield Generator might just be the most useful GMing tool I’ve contributed gaming community. Which, come to think of it, is kinda sad. And on top of that, I completely forgot to add another sub table for elevations! None the less, I think it is a solid tool, and I use it in many of my games.

My post on Weapon Mechanics is one of my favorites from recent history. One of the things which keeps me from abandoning modern gaming and jumping completely into the OSR is my love of deep, tactical combat. But what modern gaming does wrong is that much of the tactics come from character build options, many of which unnecessarily limit what players can attempt within the game. I think increasing the importance of which weapons the character chooses to carry is a much more interesting way of enhancing the tactical aspect of combat.

This is getting to be pretty recent, but I very much enjoyed my posts on Tabletop Magic from Final Fantasy, and Tabletop Items from A Link to the Past. These posts were written over a week apart apart from one another, but I group them together because they have the same purpose. I took a property which is similar to tabletop RPGs (in these cases, Final Fantasy games and a Zelda game), I selected an aspect from these properties which is also present in tabletop games (magic systems and special items), and I adapted them to a tabletop environment. I love this kind of thing because it forces me to change my thinking patterns in order to accomplish the goal. And anything which forces me to approach tabletop gaming from a fresh perspective is a good thing in my mind.

My Product Review of the AD&D First Edition Reprints was a cop-out post. A friend of mine had spent the day with me, and I didn’t have time to write a proper post. So I took a bunch of pictures of my new books and threw up a review of them. This post wouldn’t be even slightly notable, except it somehow got me a link from Penny Arcade, which shot my traffic into the stratosphere for a day. It gives me a lot of hope when something I’m not particularly proud of can still be important. It makes me think that perhaps I’ve got a chance at doing something more than uneducated labor with my life.

And finally, Product Review: Using Banners on the Cheap for Maps. Even if this wasn’t a very good post, and even if the product was bad, it would still be important to me. Because for the first time, a company gave me free stuff in exchange for a review. That kind of recognition, combined with the Penny Arcade thing, really makes me feel as though this writing is a valuable use of my time. (And by the way, the post is pretty good, and the product was awesome)!

And that’s it. An overview of what I think are the most notable posts from the last year. This is already the longest post I’ve ever written for this site, but I promised a look at what I want to do in the future, so I’ll go over that quickly here:

I want to learn to write faster, which I understand means I need to lower my standards for what I write, and raise my standards for how much I edit. I’d also like to inject more humor into my writing, because I like to think I’m a funny dude.
There are a number of improvements I’d like to make to the site itself. I have a long-standing bad habit of constructing extremely over-designed websites with very little content. And now that I have tons of content, I worry that I’m not displaying it as effectively as I could. I would like to find a way to integrate some kind of automatically-generated navigation system, which allows people to go through the various posts in a more organized fashion. Doing so will probably require me to revise all of the post categories and tags, which means:
I need to revise all of the post categories and tags.
I need to begin working my way through my archives and making sure all of the images I use are properly attributed to their respective creators. As the site gets bigger and more people see these images, the people who created them really deserve to get some attention for it. This is something I should have been doing from the start, and I’m trying to improve on it now.
I’d like to integrate a few other kinds of content into the site. I’m very interested in both board gaming and war gaming. I doubt the focus of the site will ever stray far from its pen-and-paper roots, but these are related topics and I think it would be not only fun to cover them, but valuable to examine them and how they relate to tabletop RPGs.
I have and idea for a space-combat board game which, I think, is quite good. It is in very early development at this stage, but my hope is to eventually produce a complete set of rules which can be played with household objects. Once I’m there I can’ start looking for groups interested in playtesting the game.
I’ve written a script for a 5-10 minute comedy video centered on tabletop RPGs. I don’t want to reveal much about this right now, but it’s a project I’m extremely excited for. The biggest obstacle is that I don’t yet own a video camera, nor do I have a computer which could easily handle video editing. Both of these problems are being addressed, but may take some time.
While I’m sure the site will always have a lot of one-off posts, I want to move towards doing more series, similar to the one I did for skills posts. Not necessarily that long, mind you, but there are many topics which are better covered in 3 or 4 posts than they are in only one.
I would like to begin writing more fiction for the site as well. I think I’m a much stronger fiction writer than I am an article writer, so the fact that I’ve hardly posted any fiction in the past year is kind of silly. Returning to, and finishing, The Girl and the Granite Throne is high on my list here. But I also have an idea for a much shorter story about a lowly porter, and his adventures with a Fighter, a Paladin, a Wizard, and a Sorcerer.
I’d like to begin covering a larger variety of games. Which means I need to start playing a wider variety of games!

And that’s that. First year under our belts, and if I have anything to say about it, the second year will be a lot better than this one was.

Lets do this