Getting your players to lead the way

A number of my recent articles here at Campaign Mastery have been derived from conversations with other GMs on Twitter (yes, readers, we GMs do actually talk to each other – and no, it’s not to find better ways to screw the players, well usually not.)

Today’s article derives from just such a discussion between myself and Chris from Osaka (@HyveMynd) which started with an interesting quotation by @NewbieDM: “At a typical rpg table, with 4 PCs and a GM, the burden of the story lies on 20% of that table”.

The Burdon Of The Story

Now, some GMs don’t agree with this quote, and many more only begrudge a qualified agreement. Nor was there a consensus over whether or not this was the way things should be. Personally, my opinion is that some players are pro-active, and go out looking for the adventure, while others are passive, and wait for the adventure to come to them. It only needs one proactive player in a group for a significant redistribution of that burden.

My personal preference, and the approach that I employ in my superhero campaigns, is that a healthy campaign requires both approaches. I like to develop adventures that force the players to drive the plot forward, with some plots involving the PCs simply because they live in a world in which certain events are taking place, and others which involve the PCs because they derive from the characters themselves.

The Passive Approach

The key with the passive approach, where the plotlines come into existence and entangle the PCs within their narrative, requires a couple of key structural elements to be present within the adventure. They must:

• derive from the actions, personalities, ambitions, and/or choices of NPCs;
• have consequences that the PCs will care about;
• engage the interest of the players;
• promise the style of play that one or more players desire; and
• be internally consistent and logical.

Adventures that derive from the actions, personalities, ambitions, and/or choices of NPCs

There are two sources of adventures that are worth noting within the Passive Approach. The first are plots that derive from previously-encountered NPCs. A would-be world conqueror won’t give up just because the PCs beat his plan into submission the last time around; he will attempt to determine where the flaw in his plans was, and look for ways to neutralize that factor or even turn it into an asset. Revenge, or previously-thwarted ambitions, make for powerful motivating factors.

A sub-source within this category are plots that derive from character actions, as the NPC strives to take advantage of, or undo, consequences of events from a previous appearance. A PC revealing a previously-unknown technology, a serendipitous side-effect, and a calamitous discovery, are just a few of the myriad of sources of such plotlines.

Bonus kudos may be awarded if the GM takes advantage of the opportunity for some personal growth in the instigating NPC’s character. Show something more about them, or have them change (perhaps just a little) as a consequence of their first encounter with the PCs.

The alternative source of adventures within this category stem from the GM having a plot idea and creating an opponent whose personality and/or ambitions will bring about that plot.

The richer the palette of NPCs within the campaign, the more likely it is that the right fit can be found between plot and an existing instigator, but it’s better to create a new foe than try to shoehorn an NPC into the role of instigator of a plotline that doesn’t quite fit.

When an adventure connects with a previous one in this way, player engagement with the plot happens more quickly because part of it will carry over from the previous plotline. That means the players will get involved in the plot more quickly and take a more active role in furthering the plotline.

Adventures that have consequences that the PCs will care about

These consequences may derive from the ultimate outcome of the plot (if the enemy succeeds) or be a byproduct or stepping stone of the plot. If the PCs have invested a lot of time and effort into setting up an Inn, threaten that Inn. If one of the NPCs cares about children, put some in danger. If a PC is addicted to coffee, threaten an import ban.

Don’t continually reuse the same shtick; find different ways to involve the PCs soft spots.

Take that Inn, for example: Having a noble threaten to confiscate it should only happen once. Threaten it indirectly by disrupting supply, by having a rival open its doors, by having the PCs overlook an obscure licensing fee or law, by threatening them with a health inspection after a plague of rats. Threaten it directly by a maniac running rampant through the city who likes to light fires, by a criminal or con-man taking lodgings there, by having an NPC (who doesn’t actually own the inn but who is associated with the PCs) losing “title” to it to the Thieves’ Guild in a game of cards, by having someone who is being chased by the watch take refuge within, by robbing a wealthy patron, by a storm that leaves the roof in need of repairs – after a minor incident or misunderstanding angers the builders at just the wrong time, by having it be located exactly where a mystic conjunction is going to take place, releasing some monster from the nether planes… if the PCs care about the inn, treat it as an NPC and look for ways to get IT involved in the plots. By virtue of the bond they have with it, they will care about the plotline.

If the adventure matters to the players, they will more readily act to further the plot.

Adventures that engage the interest of the players and avoid the dis-interest of the players

I have one player in some of my campaigns who loves mysteries but hates roleplaying detective stories because he is no good at solving mysteries. I have another player who hates big, “cosmic” stuff going on, but who enjoys sci-fi and space opera. A third player loves figuring out what’s going on a metagame level, getting inside my head and figuring out why things are happening and what’s going to happen next – and who absolutely lives for the times when a completely logical plot twist takes him completely by surprise, but who is easily bored by routine. A fourth player can’t stand to be a fifth wheel for an entire session of play – but doesn’t mind his character taking a back seat if he personally is enjoying the story.

If you can get the players engaged in the plotline, their characters will follow. If the players are not into the plotline, no matter what it might say on the character sheet, involvement in the game will only be half-hearted. So it’s important to be able to assess what your players want (even if they don’t know themselves, half the time), and if the day’s menu features something that won’t interest one of them, make sure it offers that player some other vector of connection to the plot, something else within the adventure to focus on.

If the plot interests a player, he will be more ready to get involved in it.

Adventures that promise the style of play that one or more players desire

Some players like intellectual challenges; others like to perform; some want to thump something. There are many different attempts to analyze player preferences out there in internet-land, and none of them have ever been completely convincing to me. Nevertheless, there are some styles of play that obviously appeal to a particular player more than others, and its important that the style of an adventure appeals to at least one player, who will then tend to take the lead in furthering that plot. If the plot doesn’t appeal to anyone – if the players are all thinkers and the adventure is a hack-and-slash masterpiece – they will act to reinforce each other’s negative perceptions; things will start badly and go downhill from there.

An essential distinction to make is the difference between this point and the preceding one. The earlier criteria was about the content of the adventure; this is about the style and tone of the activity within it.

If a plot lets a player do the type of things he enjoys having his character do, the player and his character will work to drive the plot forward.

Adventures that are internally consistent and logical

The final point to be considered under this heading is that adventures have to make sense. If there is a logical disconnect, it derails not only the suspension of disbelief, but the depth of motivation for the players to do something, get active, get involved – drive the plot. It will confuse them and make them second-guess themselves, or simply give up and say “it doesn’t matter what we do” – not a happy outcome.

The only flaw that comes close to being this bad for an adventure is an anticlimax. When a plot twist is revealed, you want to try and make the player’s jaws hit the deck – hit the table, at a dead minimum. When combat is about to come to a head, make sure it doesn’t end with a whimper but with a melodramatic roar with fireworks, explosions, lights, sound effects, and the kitchen sink.

Plotlines that don’t make sense force the players into introspective mental attitudes, trying over and over to find some rational explanation (that isn’t there), analyzing the whichness of the why not instead of making quick and decisive decisions and bold moves that will drive the plotline forward.

The Interactive approach

But, so far as I am concerned, all of the above are the lesser approach, that should make up no more than 40% of a campaigns plotlines (preferably 25% or so). The dominant source of adventures, which should get the players to drive the plotlines forward, are those resulting from the Interactive approach, in which the players have an active role in developing the adventures for the campaign.

I have a five-step process for achieving this. But before I go into specifics, there’s a caveat to admit to.

Aiming for the next level

The process that I am going to describe is the one that I am using for my current Zenith-3 superhero campaign – for the first time. The previous Zenith-3 campaign used a similar approach later in the campaign, but one that was not quite as developed; a still more-primitive version before that; and a barely-recognizable antecedent for the campaign’s first three or four years. At each stage, the evolution in the process & procedure has been logical – but at the same time, I have to admit that the current implementation is still in the promising-but-unproven category.

It should work. All the indications are that it will work and is working. But this is the bleeding edge of my development in this respect, and it is possible that it has gone too far.

It is also possible – even probable – that what works to a given standard within my campaigns will work to a different standard in another GMs games, with different players and GMing skills and preferences and circumstances.

All of which means that those reading this should be prepared to dial it back. Expect fewer plot threads or less complicated emergent plots or less tightly-plotted interconnections – none of which will mean very much to anyone yet, since I haven’t yet outlined the process, but the warning is there and will be reiterated as necessary.

Step One: Backgrounds Of Depth – with loose ends and integrated plotlines

The process starts with demanding that each player create a character background. In fact, it goes further than that in my campaigns: bonus building points are awarded for minor plots, for major plots, for plot hooks, for new and interesting NPCs, and for integration with established campaign background and canon.

Some definitions:

• A plot is an adventure outline, with beginning, middle, end, and consequences, usually contained in written text between one paragraph and one page in length. It should be taken for granted that any player-provided plot will be revised substantially – if not completely – by the GM; it’s an outline of an idea for something that the player thinks would be fun for the character to play through.
• A Minor Plot comes and goes with only minor consequences. It is a plotline that will be only one-to-three game sessions in length, the general content of each being specified within the written material submitted by the player.
• Major Plots are more substantial, with subplots before, during, and after the main plot, and with deliberate potential for significant impact on the life or circumstances of the featured PC. The player has to indicate the general content of both the plot, offer suggestions of the subplots that lead to the main plot, explain why this plotline will be so significant to the character and what the changes within the character will be afterwards, if any.
• Plot Hooks are loose threads in the characters background which the player has left unresolved. The player may or may not offer some indication of how he would like to see the loose thread resolved.
• Shallow NPCs are little more than names and perhaps shticks.
• Medium-defined NPCs mention the NPC’s objectives, techniques, and style in addition to the elements of a Shallow NPC.
• Strongly-defined NPCs further detail the NPC with background, motives, and at least an indication of the character’s psychology, in addition to the elements of a Medium NPC. The result is a blueprint for the construction of the character.
• Integration with established campaign background and canon, at its simplest level, simply requires that the character background does not contradict anything in the campaign background. A slightly more substantial approach ensures that established events in the campaign background are reflected in the character’s background in a logical manner, shedding new light on the events or their consequences. At it’s most innovative, the character background may turn an established event on its head, completely reinterpreting what took place without altering the outcome of the event or contradicting the experiences of the NPCs (and/or former PCs) who experienced the events at the time.

Some examples: (all invented for a fictitious, non-existent, campaign):
(I’ve decided to forego examples and discussion of background integration, simply to keep the size of this article manageable!)

• A Minor Plot by the player of Cocoa-Bean: Cocoa-Bean is kidnapped and magically reprogrammed to think she is Queen of the Lima Beans, who are under threat by a horde of bulldozers under the command of the Evil Developer. A simulacrum takes her place amongst the Bean Crop to buy the kidnapper time for Cocoa to complete the task she has been assigned, but the Simulacrum lacks drive and the ability to make decisions, while Cocoa is the leader of the Bean Crop. In part one, the substitution takes place and the PCs have to overcome a dangerous threat without the leadership they have come to rely on; the simulacrum will inadvertently make the situation much more dangerous. In part 2, the PCs overcome the simulacrum and follow the kidnapper’s mystic trail, guided by the power of cocoa, whose true identity emerges when she sleeps, an extremely hazardous journey as they will have to overcome the kidnapper, who wants no interference. In part 3, the PCs rescue Cocoa only to discover that the kidnapping was for a Noble Purpose, and have to deal with the menace of the Evil Developer and his bulldozers before returning home.
• A Major Plot by the Player of Vanilla Bean, with input from the player of Cocoa Bean: Summary: Vanilla bean is haunted by an evil future self who attempts to take control of the young bean’s actions in order to ensure that the evil future self comes into being. Pre-scenario subplot: Vanilla begins making mistakes in battle, having some difficulty with decision-making, and experiences heightened levels of aggressive tendencies intermixed with angst. She will have trouble sleeping and become noticeably tired and short-tempered. This should transpire over a 10-day period, game time, with each day exhibiting more severe symptoms (to a maximum of half the time).
   
  In part 1, evil-future-Vanilla takes total control of young-Vanilla for a short period of time at the height of a battle with the Wicked Lemur, leading young Vanilla to attack full-strength despite the presence of, and danger to, hostages. As a result, Wicked Lemur will escape when the other members of the Bean Crop divert from their planned and coordinated attack to protect the hostages. Afterwards, she won’t know what came over her.
   
  In part 2, evil-future-Vanilla will act to sever the growing relationship between young-Vanilla and Runner-bean, attacking Runner when his attentions grow too cloying for evil-future-Vanilla. The viciousness of the attack will add to the growing concern of her team-mates about Vanilla’s stability. As the team search for clues as to where Wicked Lemur will have holed up, Vanilla will take matters into her own hands, attacking a number of old cronies and former allies of Lemur to ‘force’ information about Lemur out of them. As a result, they become even less inclined to cooperate; Vanilla’s solution is to become even more aggressive.
   
  In part 3, Vanilla disobeys a direct order from Cocoa-Bean and interrogates Ferret Whistler so hard that the elderly former criminal suffers a major heart attack. When reprimanded by one or more of the team, she physically attacks the members criticizing her before quitting the group to go her own way. She warns the team to stay out of her way or she will reveal the secrets of the Bean Crop.
   
  Part 4 takes place a couple of days later; the Bean Crop’s attempts to track down Wicked Lemur have come to naught, while Vanilla has been cutting a swathe of destruction through the seedier parts of the City, and is now just as big a threat as Lemur, if not worse. Cocoa resolves that when next Vanilla reveals herself, the team have to treat her like any other Villain, regardless of the consequences. They don’t have long to wait; somehow, Vanilla has located the nursing home in which Wicked Lemur’s aged grandmother resides, and is threatening to destroy it if Lemur doesn’t reveal himself within the hour. The remaining members of the Bean Crop are about to depart to stop Vanilla – any way they have to – when the mysterious Tomato The Conqueror, a sometimes villain sometimes ally, appears and announces ‘this must not be’. He reveals to the team the interference of evil-future-Vanilla and offers them the chance to stop her before it is too late, because this is the act that will make evil-future-Vanilla’s existence inevitable – a being of darkness and evil who will destroy the Bean Crop and subjugate not only the planet but lay the foundations of an empire that will eventually crush freedom throughout the galaxy. Tomato will offer the team a bargain – if they promise not to oppose Tomato the next time they meet, Tomato will take the rest of the team forward through time to confront evil-future-Vanilla in a contest for the soul of their team-mate. Of course, evil-Vanilla will have grown in power in the intervening period, so this will be no simple challenge…
   
  Part 5 shows Cocoa-bean reluctant to agree to Tomato’s terms, citing suspicion about his motives. Tomato takes the team into the future to show them the dystopian nightmare that the world will come under the heel of, should they not agree to his terms. Eventually, Cocoa is forced to agree. The under-strength Bean Crop engage evil Vanilla. At the height of the battle (and the end of the game session), Tomato is revealed as a cybernetic rebuild of what was left of Cocoa Bean after Cocoa was almost killed by evil Vanilla. (Note to GM: This may be a deception on the part of Tomato – which is why Tomato did not reveal it when trying to convince the team. As always, Tomato is working to his/her own agenda.)
   
  Part 6 resumes with the Bean Crop attacking Evil Vanilla in 2112 while the villainous former member reacts to the revelation by Tomato. If they can take advantage of the distraction caused (and not get caught up in the shock themselves), they can slowly seize the advantage over Evil Vanilla; even if they don’t win, they can succeed in severing evil-Vanilla’s temporal connection to her younger heroic self. As soon as that is done, back in 2012, they undo the event that creates Evil Vanilla in the first place, so she fades from existence. Tomato, emotionless, even icy-cold, returns the team to the past (proving with the very fact of his/her continued existence that the ‘revelation’ was a trick, or was he/she protected from the change by being outside normal time when it took place? Tomato is always deceptive). The team can then confront Vanilla, who has come to her senses, with full memory of what she has done but thinks it was all her own idea.
   
  Aftermath: When the Bean Crop finally catch up with Wicked Lemur, it will transpire that he was hiding in a place with no access to media at all – he didn’t know about the threat to his grandmother and couldn’t have answered young-evil-Vanilla’s threat even if he had wanted to. Which means that if not stopped in 2112, Vanilla – dominated by Evil-future-Vanilla – would have carried out her threat. She will have to come to terms with what she did, and with the dark potential that she has found within her. The team, also knowing of that dark potential and never quite being sure of what might bring it out again, will no longer trust Vanilla to the same extent that they used to. Her personal relationship with Runner Bean has been damaged perhaps irretrievably. On the rebound, she will start to hook up with individuals who are the exact opposite so that they don’t remind her of Runner – bad boys, in other words – which (under the circumstances) will not exactly reassure the rest of the Bean Crop. Finally, there is the promise to Tomato – when will that chip get called in, and will Cocoa Bean honor the deal when the time comes?
• A Plot Hook from the player of Runner Bean: He got his costume from a trunk in his parent’s attic. He has no idea where it came from.
• A Shallow NPC from the player of Runner Bean: Sweet Pea attempted to seduce him into letting her go, not realizing how young he was. He ignored her charms and took her in.
• A Medium-defined NPC from the player of Cocoa Bean: Coffee Bean is not really a bean at all, he is a mushroom who has been surgically rebuilt into what he considers a higher form of life. Since his hybridized existence is “naturally” superior to all others, he naturally should rule it all. To this end, he hybridizes other residents of Florina City, building their obedience into their very genetic code. While some of these hybrids are obvious, such as the immensely tough coconauts and the nightmarishly over-sized Karrots, some appear externally unchanged; using these hidden hybrids, he has infiltrated virtually every branch of the local authorities. You never know where one will be located, and any NPC can at any time be converted – then returned to their normal lives.
• A Strongly-defined NPC from the player of Vanilla Bean: Beetroot Borer rules an underground kingdom of blind asparagus. Hidden tunnels connect him with cellars and underground structures and utilities all over the city. He only needs to pass close to a telephone cable to be able to hear what is being said, and can comprehend hundreds of conversations at the same time. He greatly resents being forced into this underground existence, and is naturally melodramatic and over-the-top in everything he does. Anger, cruelty, and frustration are never far from the surface, and he will be destructive just to see something in ruins. He is infatuated with Vanilla Bean, who he wants to make his Queen, but she can’t stand his bloated red appearance. He doesn’t realize that his asparagus citizens are mildly psionic and collectively bind him to them, which is why he can’t abandon them despite his loathing of the underground lifestyle he leads.

Some notes on these examples::

• The Minor Plot by the player of Cocoa-Bean: This is barely adequate as a minor plot. Motivations are weak, the NPCs are weak, and the plot is somewhat cheesy. There’s just enough there for the GM to work with.
• The Major Plot by the Player of Vanilla Bean, with input from the player of Cocoa Bean: This is a far more substantial plotline, and one that would only be possible with the cooperation of the players in question. The player of Vanilla Bean will obviously also play Evil-Future-Vanilla. Note that the only actions, decisions, or reactions by other PCs which are ‘pre-scripted’ are the planned reactions of Cocoa-Bean to the offer by the manipulative Tomato, and a continuation of romantic advances by the hot-blooded Runner Bean; the latter is predictable, an ongoing relationship the two have developed in roleplay, and the former is acceptable only because the author of the plotline has consulted Cocoa-Bean’s player and posed a hypothetical question about how Cocoa would react. Despite initial appearances, there is no real railroading in the plot; all actions are instigated by Vanilla or by an NPC. The plot would take very little additional development to be ready to run – details of Future-Vanilla’s abilities, the villainous Wicked Lemur, some locations and some flavor text.
   
  More importantly, this shows the power of the technique. A GM should never come up with a plot like this, it changes a PC, and relationships between PCs, too fundamentally – unless, of course, the players ask him to craft an adventure that brings about these changes. But as a plotline goes, it’s pretty stonking good!
• The Plot Hook from the player of Runner Bean: Barely adequate even as a plot hook.
• A Shallow NPC from the player of Runner Bean: Also barely adequate, though the idea of a would-be seductress named “Sweet Pea” in such a campaign has promise. There’s something both alluring and mysterious in the name – a lot of flavor.
• A Medium-defined NPC from the player of Cocoa Bean: The player of Cocoa Bean is showing a predilection for certain types of plotline, between this NPCs background and the earlier Minor Plot – something the GM should carefully note. There’s a definite X-files ‘tinge’ here.
• A Strongly-defined NPC from the player of Vanilla Bean: There is some real depth and imagination in this NPC, and some subtle nuances that are only hinted at. While the name is not of the same caliber as “Sweet Pea”, and might well be changed by the GM, the personality and characterization are very deep. The same can also be said of “Tomato The Conqueror” from the Major Plot. Vanilla Bean’s player is also definitely showing a preference for complicated plots with subtle and deep characterization. This is the sort of thing that I really love to GM – a challenge, but loads of fun if I can pull it off.

Step Two: One Weaving To Bind Them

The GM links these loose plot threads and NPCs together into an overall tapestry and integrates them into his overall plot. For example, he needs to establish the character of “Tomato The Conqueror” long before the plotline with “Evil Future Vanilla” takes place. After that plotline, he can use a “Bad boy” relationship between Vanilla and some other NPC to lead into another plotline. I’ve discussed this sort of integration in past articles quite extensively – consider:

• Forging Unexpected Connections: Putting PC Dossiers To Work
• Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures
• Back To Basics Part 2: Campaign Structures (includes a long list of other related articles here at CM at the bottom)
• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra
• The Echo Of Events To Come: Foreshadowing in a campaign structure

…so I don’t think I need to go into too much detail. If I were constructing the “Bean” campaign, perhaps I might link the psionic Asparagus-people with the true origin of Tomato the Conqueror, for example. It’s about taking ideas from two or more people and weaving them together.

More importantly, and this is why all this discussion is present here, because of the involvement of one or more players in developing the plot, to some extent, the passive phase has already taken place, and the players concerned are ready and willing to drive the plot forward with little or no effort from the GM.

Step Three: Plots that Offer to Screw with The Characters

Yes, I know – that subsection title makes it sound like I am now advocating exactly what I said a GM shouldn’t do, in Step 1 (when discussing the “Dark Vanilla” plot). But it’s not quite the same thing: that plot does screw with a character, with that character’s player’s full connivance. What I’m advocating here is occasionally crafting a plot that will have a negative impact on the PCs if they don’t act – but leaving the choice of reaction as open as possible.

By virtue of the GMs prior choices of what resources (contacts, equipment, etc) he has already made available, and the creations of the players at the time of character generation and approval, the choice of reactions is pre-sandboxed.

This pushes the players into action, rather than standing around talking about what they might do, which can help develop the habit of driving the plot, at least somewhat. I find this subtype of solution to be especially useful after a plotline with a lot of roleplaying and not a lot of combat.

If the situation can’t possibly get any worse, the players are encouraged to “do something – anything – about it” and reassess the situation. You want at least one of them to say “This is something we can do” and for the others to reply “Then let’s do that”. Or to put it another way, get the players – when confronted by a seemingly-insoluble problem – to immediately act to solve any part of the problem they do understand, then look at what’s left.

The secret to the success of this approach is that the GM isn’t really out to screw the players, or even the characters; he just wants to make them sweat for a while. He is a double-agent, working on behalf of the evil plot that he has hatched at the same time as helping the PCs achieve their goal of achieving a solution to the plot.

Step Four: Consequences are a dish best served cold

Keep track of what the PCs do and use the consequences (both intended & unintended) to build a new plot. To some extent, the players will see this not as a new plot with a new passive phase, but as a continuation of the old plot. Once again, they will already be predisposed to action, because that action will be perceived as an extension of what they had already decided to do. When your campaign consists of nothing more than a chain of consequences to an initial ‘seed’ planted by the GM, it will be fully player-driven, at least that is the theory.

In practice, the GM will need to stimulate circumstances with fresh seeds from time to time, but 95% player-driven campaigns should be quite achievable.

Step Five: Tie it all together in a way that makes it personal

The final step is to connect more character-derived plot threads with these actions and consequences to bind your plots to the PCs. Players are far more pro-active when their characters are already directly involved.

The Passive-Interactive Campaign

In combination, the passive and interactive techniques outlined above should make the players co-conspirators in driving the plots, relieving the GM of much of the burden described in the quotation given at the start of this article. And that’s only fair – the players have at least as big a desire to make the campaign successful and enjoyable as the GM does. Using the interactive approach, besides generating plot material for the direct consumption by the GM, gives valuable clues as to how to identify the content that meets the requirements of the passive approach. Together, the two are more powerful, and more effective, than either would be on their own.

But there’s an up-side for players, too: there is less likelyhood that the GM’s plots will be detrimental to the player in unexpected and undesirable ways for the sake of involving the PCs more intimately in the action if they have pre-selected the plot hooks they want the GM to “use against their characters”.

Your campaign will be the real winner, and both your players and yourself will be the beneficiaries. Bargain!

I’ve tried every way I can think of to set this topic aside until after I had finished the series on names, but it just doesn’t work.

So I guess it’s time to take a side-trip into the wonderful world of creating and simulating Alien Languages in RPGs…

I once, back in the early 1990s, wrote a piece of software for my Commodore-128 that created alien languages on demand. It took about three 16-hour days.

The catalyst was a library book on codes which contained a number of tables, including:

• first syllables of a word by frequency of occurrence in English;
• last syllables of a word by frequency of occurrence in English;
• frequency of occurrence of individual letters of the alphabet in English;
• frequency of occurrence of individual letters of the alphabet as the first character of a word, in English;
• intervening syllables of words by frequency of occurrence in English and total word syllable count;
• likelihoods of a specific letter of the alphabet being followed by another specific letter of the alphabet in English;
• probability of a word containing a specific number of syllables by specificity and technicality of subject.

Adding to that was some information from other sources (I no longer recall what they were):

• derivation trees showing inheritance of related words;
• word relationship chart showing the degree of change in language over time with a concordance of key events stimulating that change.

The premise behind the software’s function was simple: a text editor that mapped a new language onto an English “translation” that had been entered.

Step One: Create the Language morphology

The first step was creating the language morphology, the shape of the language. The book on codes had talked about the creation of random words in English using these probability charts as a means of generating a code that could not be broken using frequency tables because the frequencies of occurrence would be the same as natural English. I thought that was a brilliant idea if reversed – so that an alien language (bereft of all word meanings and relationships) could be created simply by randomizing the numeric values in the different tables mentioned in the first list and using the result to generate a list of words.

The Morphology Algorithm

This starts with a table of every possible syllable, defined as a vowel or vowel set, plus a consonant or consonant set. This was generated using a simple nested set of loops and stored in a language file on the PC.

Another set of loops then added each possible consonant to the start of each of these to create a larger list of additional possible first-syllables for words. These were stored in a separate language file on the PC.

A new pair of loops then assigned random ratings out of 1000 to preset table structures to create the equivalents of the tables derived from the code book for the new language. A high value was “common”, a low value was “rare”. In the more sophisticated later versions of the program, these tables were presented onscreen for manual editing. Once complete, these were stored in additional language files on the PC.

Each syllable in the first table was then analyzed for frequency of occurrence in different places within a word: first syllable, first intervening syllable, second and subsequent intervening syllables, and last syllable, all according to the rules defined in the previous step. For convenience, two separate tables were output – one was the combination of all syllables from both tables one and two, and only applied to the first syllables of words, while the second dealt with syllables in the rest of the world. The updated language morphology files were then written back to disk.

This approach was used because it permitted backtracking part or all of the way, if the results proved undesirable – I could generate a list of the 50 syllables most likely to start a word and display them, then go back and tweak the ‘rules’ accordingly. I could extract a list of the words which had the highest start-of-sentence rating multiplied by the end-of-sentence rating to derive the most common monosyllable words of the language – then tweak the language morphology if I didn’t like what I saw, then the most common two-syllable words (combining the most common start-syllables with the most common end-syllables.)

I could also manually override individual results, something I did to ensure that the most common words were not recognizable English and were readily pronounceable.

Step Two: Generating The Language

The initial version of the language generator did nothing more than take a piece of English text, break it into individual words, then generate a new non-human word using the tables of probability of occurrence of individual syllables.

I quickly started adding refinements to this basic model.

Remembering a word allocation

The first refinement added seems fairly obvious – keeping a running dictionary of English-to-alien words so that the same English word didn’t end up with three different alien words. Each time an English word was offered for translation, this dictionary was consulted for a prior translation, and if one was found, it was used. Each time a word was generated and matched to an English equivalent, it was compared to the list of alien words already constructed and if it matched an already-allocated word, it was discarded and a new translation-word generated.

Preloading the translations: a working vocabulary

The second refinement was to preload the translations with a working vocabulary. I started with the 100 most common English words – things like “An”, “And”, “But”, and so on. I then added a “specialist interest” – defining one or two subjects which were fundamental to the race to whom the language belonged. For the elves, it was plants and plant parts and words associated with the plant side of biology such as “grow”, “bud”, “shoot”, “leaf”, and so on. For Dwarves it was minerals and mining and tools relating to that activity. Orcs were tactics, and war, and hunting, and so on. These were padded out using a thesaurus – the same one to which I refer to this day – until I reached somewhere between 500 and a thousand English words, which I defined as the language’s working vocabulary. Translating those – with a weighted algorithm to select shorter words – gave me a massive head-start in constructing alien languages. Oh, and I also included words relating to any special abilities the race might have, and any values the race lauded or looked down apon.

Elementary Grammar

After that, I worked out a way to define a basic grammar, which defined the English words as one of four things: Nouns, Verbs, Words relating to a racial specialty, all other words were lowercase. This was achieved simply by listing the English text with a number in front of each English word (starting the count at zero and increasing it by one) and then telling the computer which numbered words were nouns, then which ones were verbs, and so on. A further refinement still later dealt with grammatical relationships, connecting verbs with the subject of the action (what it was being done to), the tool or operator (what it was being done with) and so on.

All this permitted me to incorporate simple non-English grammatical rules to both the order of the words and the spellings – for example, I could set a rule that the subject of a verb always start with the first letter of the verb inserted to the word. These rules were necessarily hard-coded into each language – I always intended to work out a soft-coding solution but never got around to it.

A key principle was always to effect these grammatical changes to the English to be translated BEFORE any translation took place so that I could see what was happening, and make sure the ‘rules’ were working properly.

Tenses

As part of the elementary grammar project, I inserted rules into the translation algorithm to permit standardized changes to indicate tenses, and grammatical rules to translate the English text into the current tense plus (for future) or minus (for past), and so on. These also grew in sophistication over time, permitting me in the case of a long-lived race to impart nuances such as “the past within my lifetime” and “the past in the time of my parents or ancestors” or “before I am no more” or “after I am gone”.

The general principle

The general principle was to use a body of English text as a test-translation. Each one would introduce some new concept to be taken into consideration, whether that was the relationship between verbs and their associated nouns, or tenses, or whatever; once built into the rules of the translator, I could move on to the next attribute of ordinary English.

One of the big improvements was to subdivide that list of words from key subjects from the initial elementary grammar and use them as metaphors for root words describing more complex, advanced, or subtle terms, in exactly the same way that real languages develop. this was achieved by numbering the English root words from the key subjects and appending the appropriate number to a related English word as a step in a translation, building the language up, one word at a time.

This produced some interesting and insightful language elements along the way – the Elvish words for battle, war, and violence in general became derived from their words for “Spring” (the season) and the competition between plants for sunlight. This provided a key insight into their perception of the world – what a human might see as a peaceful glade became a battleground of unceasing violence between plants, simply because the Elvish perception of time was different, a longer view if you will. This was a random choice on the part of the language-generation software which I could have overridden if it seemed inappropriate – if I had, it would have produced a different but still sensible alternative, resulting in a distinctly different conception of elves.

Similarly, the root word for weapons, battle, and so on, was randomly chosen to be “stick”, with a hyphenated preliminary syllable describing the construction material and a hyphenated subsequent syllable describing the shape of the “stick”, followed by another describing the type of movement or action required to use it. A sword might thus be literally described as a “metal-stick-sharpedged-slash” – which, in Orcish, might be “Zhu-est-con-zah”.

The Aging of a language

As time passes, languages become more streamlined, some words pass out of favor and others are introduced to describe new relationships, perceptions, or phenomena. While fully simulating this process was way beyond the program that I wrote, some rudimentary consideration was given to how these phenomena would manifest on words and phrases that were already old.

Initially, I did this manually, simply by saying translated words and phrases quickly (aloud) and seeing how things ran together. If there was a natural divide, where the tongue stumbled, either the language would change to become more sophisticated or the word would change to become more easily pronounced. For example, take that Orcish word for sword – “”Zhu-est-con-gah” – either the word for sword becomes “Conzar”, one of a class of objects which can be described as “Zhooest”, or the word itself runs together – “Zoostonga” – and then possibly just “Zoostong”.

But then I found a way to simulate this using a random action within the language generation system itself. The notion is that certain consonant pairs would be depreciated in favor of a simpler combination or just one of the pair. Where these consonant pairs couple two syllables of a word together, the resulting word becomes more streamlined. A random determination – which could be weighted or have its own logical rules applied – would decide whether the language or the word would evolve.

This language aging was further reinforced by having the rules of the language evolve over time, updating the core tables that are used to generate words. I determined, based on the information in those other sources, that a language would evolve between 0.1 and 0.5 % each year. Certainly, that seemed about right for English, where text from a century earlier (HG Wells or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example) had a slightly different flavor but was still mostly understandable without difficulty, while the writing of Shakespeare and Chaucer is much less so – and if one goes back a little further still, into medieval times, it is almost unrecognizable.

Under the principles of word breakdown (language evolution) vs word streamlining, the degree to which a word was subject to streamlining – its age – could be randomly assigned, as could a timeline of the degree of language drift each year. Accumulating drift as a word grew older then gave a percentage chance of that word being streamlined, and the depreciation rules would then indicate how that streamlining would occur within that particular word.

The Integrated Evolution of History

With this as a basis, it was even possible to indicate “key years for key subjects” – years in which great progress was made in one subject or another, and which therefore had an unusually high chance of language evolution. Words describing agriculture would necessarily become more diverse and specialized with the invention of crop rotation, or irrigation, or any of a number of other developments. Metalworking would similarly have its watershed years.

At first, it seemed like there would be altogether too many such to be useful, but it soon dawned on me that I only ever needed to deal with a small subset of the possible watershed years and subjects. They key point that I had initially overlooked was that I wasn’t constructing a whole language – I was constructing a mechanism that developed a basic core of a language that was extended as necessary to translate key elements of dialogue. I would never need to write a book in Elvish or Dwarvish or whatever – just some key phrases and perhaps a page or two of old text.

This realization made it possible to simply keep track of when certain words evolved, establishing a timeline of changes within the translation for just those subjects touched on in whatever I happened to be translating at the time.

In modern times

All this was done long before the internet really reached the masses. I wouldn’t, and don’t, do things this way any more. So how do I create non-human languages in the modern era?

The seeds of the technique have evolved out of the work that I did back in the 90s. But, rather than explain it now – because I’m out of time – I’m going to demonstrate it with material from my Shards Of Divinity campaign.

So here’s what’s going to happen from here: starting in a week or two, and continuing every 2nd week or so until they are finished, I’m going to be presenting one of the national states from that campaign. I’ll be supplying exactly what I gave the players, but where the information was presented to them by subject – everything on politics for all of the Kingdoms at the same time, for example – here, everything will be organized into a kingdom dossier. That includes notes on the naming of characters and instructions on translating the language, which is the whole point of the series – everything else is there to provide context. I’ll round out each one with some discussion on the principles used, and some of the background of the different ideas and why I chose those particular nations – and I might even slip in some additional notes and hints that the players haven’t received yet.

Oh, and I’ll precede the whole thing with a quick introduction to the overall political concept, which is so deep that the players haven’t fully grasped it yet!

So buckle up – this discussion is about to take a left-hand-turn at high speed…

This is actually the article that was supposed to appear next Monday. I started making some notes for it, and before I knew it, the whole article was written – and I no longer had enough time to finish the article that I had intended to write for today’s post (I got about half-way through it, so it will appear next week)…

I zapped a piece of spam this week that actually had a point of interest lurking underneath the superficial and ill-formed outpouring of semi-sentient garbage that forms the output of 99+% of spambots. This particular collection of semi-random phrases suggested that American Football was big business and that it is responsible for Monday Night parties – and that if that particular entertainment (Monday Night Football) was banned, the parties would go away as well.

Setting aside the fact that in Australia it’s the Friday Night and weekend games that are the tribal gatherings, and some specific Wednesday night matches (I’m referring to the State Of Origin series), which implies that cultural factors have a part to play, there is a point worth discussing in there. I can accept that American Football is big business in the US, that’s irrelevant to the subject I’m going to discuss. No, the subject is cause and effect in a social context, tradition, and the relationship between Marketing and GMing.

Cause And Effect

The first thought that came to me, even as I was verifying that this particular comment offered for consideration here at CM was indeed Spam, was to wonder to what extent the spambot had the relationship between cause and effect back to front. Did these ‘Monday Night Parties’ happen (assuming that they do) because that was when the Game was on – or was the Game scheduled for Monday Nights because that was when there was a pre-existing predilection to party, i.e. engage in tribal social activities?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (Well, technically the egg did, since dinosaurs were laying eggs long before there were chickens or birds of any sort, but you get the point).

There is a certain logic to a predilection for social gatherings on a Monday. It’s like capturing a little extra piece of weekend. After a day or more of loafing and social/home activities, the return to work is always a rude reawakening, even if you love your job – assuming that you work a normal 5- or 6- day working week. A little piece of relaxation after that return to stress can better prepare you to face the rest of the week.

A similar logic manifests about Mid-week games, which can act as punctuation to the working week, breaking it into two smaller, more manageable halves.

And of course, Friday nights kick-start the weekend – which (according to this theory) doesn’t start on Saturday, it starts when you down tools on Friday. Or even lunchtime Friday!

That leaves Tuesday and Thursday as the dullest days of the week, with no socially-redeeming value. Which sounds like an excellent reason to schedule something uplifting or entertaining on those days – there is a reason why Tuesday is traditionally ‘the’ night for comedy and light programming on Australian television screens, while Thursday was always good for action-adventure and Cop shows on TV, something that got the pulse going a bit, rejuvenating the viewer after 4 days of hard grind in the vineyard. Thursday was also the night that Sci-Fi on commercial TV always seemed to migrate towards – Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, and the various incarnations of Star Trek all migrated here. Though perhaps that’s because audience numbers are down due to late-night-shopping, which happens on Thursday Nights here in Australia, and these shows were programmed by the local networks to sacrifice themselves in the ratings in preference to anything else – Australian TV has never quite ‘gotten’ sci-fi (sigh).

Monday night football has been tried here many times, and each time it has ultimately failed to match the viewing numbers of Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night games – or those Wednesday specials, for that matter.

The Mind-manipulators

It’s a popular belief that marketing can change our minds. It’s not true. Marketing can create a demand for a particular type of product or service; it can position one brand more prominently in the minds of shoppers once that demand has been created; but it can’t actually make up our minds for us. It is limited to creating the conditions under which a product can flourish – and doesn’t always even succeed at that. Remember the New Coke fiasco?

So it is with the question of when to present football games on TV. I find it very hard to believe that a social phenomenon (Monday night football parties) can be created by marketing alone; at best, it can tap into a pre-existing propensity for such activities to occur on that particular night, and advise that scheduling the right product (sports entertainment, in this case) in that timeslot can take advantage of that social propensity. In other words, Monday night football will rate better on Mondays, because of the Monday night parties, not the other way around.

The Power Of Tradition

Once something is established, it becomes habitual amongst the general population fairly quickly. It becomes traditional. The longer it persists, the harder that tradition becomes to break. I feel entirely confident that if Monday Night Football were to go away, the parties would persist – and people would find some other justification for them. If and when those Monday Night games resumed, they would find a ready market for them, re-establishing themselves via the power of tradition.

The In-Game Implications

Any aspect of social behavior that becomes understood, or that we simply become aware of, has implications for an RPG, both internally and externally. Let’s look at the in-game ramifications first.

We often attribute various social activities within a fantasy society to tradition – it’s a nice, neat, short-cut to justification that lets us create the society that we want within the game and move on. The better GMs will give passing thought to the historical precedents that led to that social activity becoming a tradition in the first place. There is usually very little thought given as to the psychological and social reasons for the social practice in question becoming an accepted tradition, and that is shortchanging our understanding of the society that we are creating.

Or, to put it another way, once we understand the reasons why that tradition resonates with the populace in question, those reasons can manifest in other impacts on the society and its inhabitants.

There are a lot of benefits to be accrued from such an approach.

• The society becomes more internally consistent, and hence is more believable.
• It saves the GM work because there is less the GM has to create out of whole cloth.
• It saves the GM work because there is less that the GM has to create in advance.
• It makes GMing easier because there is less for the GM to remember about the society – remember the causes and not the effects.
• It makes the society easier to communicate to the players because the reasons are their own shorthand notation about the society they have encountered.
• It makes the society easier for the players to understand, because it boils the differences within the society down to manifestations of a particular cause.

That’s a lot of benefit from a relatively small investment of skull sweat.

For Example

Let’s say we want to create a society for use within a fantasy game. They are to have a tradition of fasting each midwinter’s day before a communal feast when the sun goes down, accompanied by the burning of a dried branch from an aromatic tree.

An imaginative GM will go that far and not much farther – after all, that’s all he needs the PCs to see, and he can explain it simply as a tradition.

An imaginative GM seeking to create a consistent, fleshed out campaign will ask themselves about the historical origins of the tradition, and its theological foundation. Perhaps it is symbolic of the hunger experienced during hunter-gatherer days, and the communal feast celebrates the coming of spring – in which case, the god of spring or spirit of spring should be somehow represented at the feast. This additional bit of description, offered to the players, would let them make sense of the tradition, creating that much more verisimilitude.

But a really good GM will look at why this tradition is important to the locals, because that gives leads and clues to other aspects of the lives of the villagers. Perhaps they are only permitted to celebrate on a few theologically-significant occasions, living grim, grey lives of abstinence and moral purity the rest of the year. Or perhaps there is only enough food for one feast a year, because the rest is preserved in case of famine. Perhaps Winter is seen as some dreadful beast that must be defeated each year by the spirit of spring.

Which suggests the possibility that the beast is real, and – just as each spring is a new one – must be defeated by a stranger. Imagine the PCs surprise, when (after thinking they understood the origins of the feast) they suddenly find themselves the guests of honor, the embodiment of spring, being feted and celebrated – and then learn that the reason is because at Dawn they are expected to go bravely forth and defeat the Monster Of Winter…

A few seconds of thought have not only told us a lot more about how the NPCs of the village will treat the PCs, but how they will act in other ways, and we have derived an adventure to feature this behavior from that explanation. And all because we understand the people more clearly.

The Metagame Implications

Marketing, at its heart, is all about finding out what people want and repackaging what you have to fit that desire. Successful marketing of a product makes that product popular amongst those who consume it. If that’s not directly applicable to GMs selling players on the campaign that they have created, or the adventure that is currently underway, I don’t know what is.

To be a great GM you need to identify what sort of campaign, and what sort of adventures, your players want. Either you incorporate those desires into the game that you are offering, or the players will be unsatisfied. This truth extends throughout the campaign at every level, from the NPCs and enemies that have to be overcome, to the inherent morality of the world, to the ratio of treasure to magic, to the rate at which experience is earned, to the style of the adventures the PCs undertake, to the way the GM handles the rules, to the environment and scheduling of play. Every facet of running a game is encompassed.

Marketing is a two-way process – customers can be led in a particular direction to a certain extent, and so can players. Marketing, in other words, is also about creating a demand and then satisfying that demand. And neither occurs in a vacuum – there is always the power of tradition, which can hinder this process or be harnessed to boost it.

The Marketing Cornucopia

We are surrounded by marketing all the time. Quite often, we do our best to ignore it. This is a major mistake on the part of a GM.

Another way of looking at the above situation is, we are surrounded by opportunities to self-educate ourselves about marketing all the time.

The next time you see a billboard, or a magazine ad, or a TV advert, or a TV show, or a movie, spend a little time thinking about who it is designed to appeal to, how it achieves – or fails to achieve – this appeal, and how you could change it to appeal to a different market segment or audience. When there’s a documentary on marketing and the role it plays in our lives available, such as The Gruen Transfer (later known as Gruen Planet, Gruen Nation, and most recently, Gruen Sweat), watch it. Learn from it. Talk on social media to people who really are marketing gurus or social media pundits. The skills so acquired are surprisingly relevant to the craft of being a good GM.

Some seasons of The Gruen Transfer are available on DVD in Australia from the ABC shop, but these will be region-4 encoded and may not function on DVD players from other countries. They are VERY strongly recommended if you think you can play them. There is also a book (top of the results list from the above link), which will work in any English-speaking location, and a website for you to explore. (You can also find some segments from the show on YouTube, but don’t tell the producers).

A bit of a departure from the usual today, with an article that is only indirectly game-related. Every now and then, you have to let your imagination run wild or it gets soft and flabby… normal service will resume on Thursday, this was just something that I had to get out of my system. Hopefully, it will still make for some fascinating reading…

A thought occurred to me a little while back, while thinking about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and some of the unexplored implications that it contains.

Consider that as an object approaches the speed of light, it’s aparrant length shrinks, eventually reaching the point at which that length is less than the Uncertainty limit. Once this point is reached, we can no longer be certain of exactly where the object is by an amount equal to the Uncertainty limit, and can speak of its position only as a statement of probabilities, just as we do subatomic particles of smaller size than this limit.

This error must lie in the direction of the object’s motion, and hence its true position is either forward or back of the apparent position. But the object’s position at any given instant of time is used to determine its velocity – if the object’s Uncertainty places its true position further forward of its apparent position at the instant of measurement, that means that its velocity has increased by a miniscule amount (distance over time). Eventually, if the object continues to accelerate by however miniscule an amount each second, it must get close enough to the speed of light that this increase in velocity exceeds the speed of light – which is, supposedly, an impossibility.

There are only three ways out of this conundrum:

• Either the Uncertainty ‘constant’ itself also shrinks with velocity, so that the amount of possible gain in apparent velocity is always less than the amount required to achieve the speed of light; or,
• The other quantity in our calculation of velocity, time, is also subject to an Uncertainty principle similar to that of space; or
• Faster than light travel is a valid physical phenomenon.

As a science-fiction enthusiast, I know which of these three I would like to be true, but let’s consider the alternatives for a moment.

Certainty at speed

If the Uncertainty constant shrinks with velocity in the direction of travel only, that would effectively mean that Certainty was achieved at the same instant as the object achieved the speed of light, i.e. that the quantum Uncertainty reaches a value of zero at the speed of light. I am quite sure that if this were the case, numerous particle acceleration experiments would have revealed it long ago, because as a particle accelerated to close to the speed of light, this effect would have thrown off the timing necessary to further accelerate the particle. Nevertheless, perhaps such effects have gone unnoticed.

If this were the case, how can the flawed designs have functioned? It could only have been a consequence of brute force methods, pumping additional (wasted) energy into the process of accelerating the particle sufficient to compensate. The implication is that particle accelerators can be much smaller and more powerful than our best designs to date; this has massive implications for weapons technology, if true, as well as for fusion research, and many other fields of high-energy engineering.

Uncertainty at any speed

If both space and time are subject to some sort of quantum Uncertainty, however, the effects are altogether more interesting, because every other phenomenon that physics can measure derives from one or both of these. A precise determination of gravitational attraction requires the precise measurement of distances between the two masses. Mass itself is measured by means of the force required to accelerate it, i.e. the acceleration due to gravity on earth, which involves both space and time. The Uncertainty principle would effectively impose a limit of resolution on all physical measurements, whether micro- or macroscopic. Of course, in the macro world, the degree of Uncertainty would be so small that it would be swamped by other margins of error, but no matter how instrumentation was improved, this limit of certainty would exist.

Computer Chips

And yet… there are macroscopic engineering products which are comprised of such sensitive components that quantum effects have to be taken into account in their design. Modern integrated circuits, for example – I remember reading that this was a subject of engineering concern when the Pentium was being designed. If computer chips are sensitive enough that spatial quantum effects are factors, surely they are also small enough, fast enough, to be subject to temporal Uncertainty as well? The implication is that there is a fundamental limit to computer clock speeds, and to the capacities of computer processors.

Fiber Optics

Another avenue of engineering worth considering in this context are fiber-optic communications, and specifically the precision of frequency of the laser beams used within such communications technologies. The distance from one peak to the next defines the wavelength of the energy beam; but any distance is subject to the Uncertainty principle, and the wavelengths in question are really, really small – more than small enough for Uncertainty to be a factor, smearing the frequency across a narrow band of frequencies.

And yet, I was once told, such a smearing effect was very real, and forced a limit to the distance that fiber optics could carry a recognizable stream of data. Some clever engineering by Australian researchers overcame the effect, which was due to the way the beam bounced off the walls of the glass ‘tube’ carrying the data signal. Refinements in the engineering of fiber optics which employed glass with different densities with respect of the permitted speed of light when viewed in cross section eliminated the smearing and gave us the capability of long-distance fiber optic connections. Did this engineering also unwittingly correct for any temporal Uncertainty, or is it another limitation that can be overcome with some clever engineering, vastly accelerating the rate of data communications?

Particle Accelerators – again

If there is a temporal Uncertainty factor, doesn’t this also bring us back to the same problems with particle accelerators, and the same potential for improvements in efficiency? Getting the timing right as a particle blasts past the electromagnets used to accelerate it is fundamental to the design and operation of such devices, after all.

Singularities are fuzzy

Another thought came to me as I was musing over all of the above, prior to writing this article. A singularity is a point in space at which physics breaks down, or appears to do so within the limits of our understanding due to the incomprehensibility of infinities. They exist at the heart of black holes, but Stephen Hawking showed that microscopic black holes could be formed, and could evaporate through pair production (another consequence of the Uncertainty principle), leaving the naked singularity behind.

How can you have a point in space when all distances are uncertain by the amount of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty constant? Just as the position of a subatomic particle cannot be precisely located, only stated as a probability function, surely the same must be true of a singularity, which is the ultimate expression of smallness?

And, if the position of a singularity can only be stated as a probability, then the balance of that probability must describe the likelyhood that the singularity’s properties do NOT prevail at position X relative to the centre of probability of the singularity. Space in the region around a singularity must therefore be – until the potential quantum states collapse into a solution – a strange mixture of normal physics and (for lack of a better term) abnormal singularity-physics, just as Schrödinger’s Cat is both alive and dead.

A singularity, therefore, cannot be a point except when its potential quantum states collapse; it must, most of the time, be a region one Heisenberg Uncertainty Limit in radius.

The Uncertainty Barrier

This in turn, gave rise to another thought: Is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Constant the dividing line between the macroscopic world and the world of Quantum effects? I’m not entirely sure where to go with this conjecture, but there has to be a dividing line somewhere between the two – a scale at which Quantum effects are no longer negligible. Or is it more that beyond this distance, the probability that Quantum effects are negligible exceeds the probability that they are not?

Time As A Vector

In my superhero game physics, one of the fundamental concepts of reality is that time is a vector in a three-dimensional temporal ‘space’. All human measurement of time are measurements in the rate of change of some physical phenomenon within a universe, effectively the equivalent of the scalar length along that timeline. This provides an answer to the question that arises from the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics, “where are these alternative universes?”, by separating them in temporal ‘space’ from the pre-collapse universe from which they have branched. A universe becomes a tree through time, each branch representing a different quantum outcome where a probability function has collapsed into one specific possible outcome, with all unresolved quantum probabilities preserved. Because a timeline can be infinitely small, any number of space-times can lie alongside each other in this temporal volume. Because one quantum difference can interact with other quantum possibilities, space-times branching from a given event tend to separate from each other – in other words, the temporal vectors of each resulting “world” are different with respect to each other.

This gets interesting when the possibility of a temporal Uncertainty factor gets introduced, because what was a perfect line becomes fuzzy, just as one in space would do, due to the Uncertainty principle. For a period of time after branching from a quantum event, each resulting timeline would overlap with the others from which it branched, and all outcomes would momentarily exist within the one timeline. There would be a delay in the quantum collapse, in other words, in the amount of the temporal Uncertainty.

This gets really interesting when pair production is considered, because it implies that pair production that occurs during this delay can result in one or both of the resulting particles manifesting in a timeline other than the one in which the pair production took place, effectively crossing the Uncertainty threshold from one timeline to another. In effect, energy is siphoned from one timeline into another.

This presents the potential for a practical application: unlimited free energy, derived by inducing a quantum collapse virtually simultaneous with inducing pair production, then converting the resulting added mass into energy. Anything that can happen at a quantum scale, if repeated often enough in a sufficiently-confined space, becomes macroscopically significant. Free energy from space – sounds like something Nikola Tesla might have dreamed up!

The Edge Of Reality

Something that I find amusing is that the existence of temporal Uncertainty was built into my game physics inadvertently, from day one, by virtue of the explanation within that physics of Heisenberg Uncertainty. The theory runs like this: the ‘edge’ of the universe is itself subject to Heisenberg Uncertainty, therefore pair production means that some particles must manifest outside the space-time that created them, loose within the temporal ‘space’. The resulting loss of energy means that the universe itself shrinks a little, compressing all the distances within by an incredibly minute quantity.

It follows that other loose particles must impact the dimensional boundary, where they cease to be virtual particles in hyperspace and become real, inflating the universe a little.

The net effect is that the ‘edge’ of the universe is constantly quivering like jello, and the ratio of maximum possible growth or shrinkage over average size is one-half of the Uncertainty total. Of course, the term ‘edge’ is a little question-begging here; because we are talking about the boundary in the three temporal dimensions, anywhere in the physical space is equally at the ‘edge’.

But, each of these incoming particles interacts with particles and energy that is already present, effectively altering the temporal vector of the combined whole. Just by a microscopic fraction, given their relative masses, but by a measurable amount nevertheless. So the vector itself must also be quivering ever so slightly – and that’s a temporal Uncertainty.

The Uncertainty Constant – the fundamental measure of length?

If The Uncertainty Constant is the limit of resolution that is theoretically possible without disturbing that which is being measured, does that make it the fundamental smallest length that can exist in any realistic model of the universe? There is an obvious arguement to be made in favor of a ‘yes’ answer. Beneath this limit, according to the conjectures made earlier, we are in the quantum world where position (and everything else) can only be stated as a probability percentage without interacting with the object being measured to such an extent that other key values are forever unknowable and – quite probably – the consequences of interaction will also alter the property being measured. We may know where something was, but that tells us nothing beyond some small generalities about where something now is.

For the sake of convenience, however, I’m going to set the minimum unit of length at one-fifth of Heisenberg Uncertainty, because doing so lets me demonstrate something cool (the exact numeric value doesn’t matter).

In a measurement that has to take into account Uncertainty, it is more accurate to state it as measured length ± Uncertainty. But that can be rephrased as minimum + X% of Uncertainty, with the trend of Uncertainty being 50%.

And that means that can rewrite our measurement, in our theoretical subatomic units, as (minimum – 1) +d6. (Actually, it’s minimum + (d6-1), but I’ve simplified it.

Now, if we take multiple readings of the length of an object, the minimum won’t vary – it will be a constant. Only the actual value will change. Giving us d6+C for our measurement. Look familiar? C is a very large number in this case, but the general statement should be recognized by every gamer out there.

Similarly, any time measurement can be written in the same format – only the units change. The Uncertainty limit would also present an absolute limit of resolution in time.

And that means that speeds – which are distance over time – can be written d6+Cd / d6+Ct.

That’s something we, as gamers, can get our teeth into!

Divided and Multiplied Die Rolls

A long time ago, there was an article on Divided Die Rolls in an issue of The Dragon. The whole concept fascinated me, in a way that nothing had done since an article in Scientific American about the patterns of Prime Numbers (long before my gaming days), and I spent a large chunk of my spare time playing around with various divided die rolls and the shapes of the probability curves that resulted, even deriving various mathematical laws describing minimum, maximum, average, median, etc. Some time later, it was pointed out to me that multiplication is easier than division, and multiplying die rolls had exactly the same effect as dividing them – but produced some more convenient numbers to work with.

You see, the thing with such rolls is that the probable results will tend to bunch up at the lower end of the range of possible results, with extreme values possible but unlikely. Consider the results for d6 × d6:

• 1st d6 rolls a 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
• 1st d6 rolls a 2: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.
• 1st d6 rolls a 3: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18.
• 1st d6 rolls a 4: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24.
• 1st d6 rolls a 5: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.
• 1st d6 rolls a 6: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36.

The average of the possible results is 1+36/2 or 18.5. But 28 of the possible 36 results are less than this, and only 8 are higher. In fact, 21 of the 36 possible results are twelve or less, so more than half the possible outcomes are concentrated into 1/3 of the range of possible results – and into a range of double the unit size (2 × d6). Finally, 14 of the 36 possible outcomes fall within the range of the unit die (1-6). That’s almost 39%. Putting all of that together, and you get: 39% 1-6; 19.4% 7-12; 19.4% 13-18; 22.2% 19-36.

Let’s round that off a bit:

• 1-6: 40%;
• 7-12: 20%;
• 13-18: 20%;
• 19-36: 20%.

(It’s the unexpected patterns that i find so fascinating: 28, 21, 14 – all multiples of 7. Why)?

The Distribution Of Uncertainty

Of course, the distribution of Uncertainty may not be – probably is not – a flat curve. It’s just as likely to be a bell curve, something that might be better represented as 2d6 or even 3d6.

When you have compound die rolls, with their own probability curves, multiplied together – or divided by each other – the peak of the resulting probability curve falls at a point that can be derived by applying the average results of each side of the calculation.

• d6 × d6: peak probability is 3.5 × 3.5 = 12.25.
• 2d6 × d6: peak probability is 7 × 3.5 = 24.5.
• d6 × 2d6: peak probability is 3.5 × 7 = 24.5.
• 2d6 × 2d6: peak probability is 7 × 7 = 49.
• 3d6 x 3d6: peak probability is 10.5 × 10.5 = 110.25.
• d6/d6: peak probability is 3.5/ 3.5 = 1.
• 2d6/d6: peak probability is 7/ 3.5 = 2.
• d6/2d6: peak probability is 3.5/ 7 = 0.5.
• 2d6/2d6: peak probability is 7/ 7 = 1.
• 3d6/3d6: peak probability is 10.5/ 10.5 = 1.

(I must stop myself here, before I get too far off-track).

The uncertainty of speed

That means that the Uncertainty of speeds, deriving from the combination of Uncertainty in location and Uncertainty in time, is going to be smaller than the Uncertainty associated with the two values going into the calculation.

All speeds, including the speed of light itself.

The implication of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty is this: all values that we can measure are fuzzy, and have an inherent limit of resolution beyond which strange things can happen (from a macroscopic, familiar, perspective).

The Hero Connection

There’s one other place in gaming that something similar to these divided die rolls can be observed, and it also holds a lesson on the nature of Uncertainty.

In the Hero system, the price of a power is Base × (1 + total advantages) / (1 + total limitations).

When building characters to a budget, you often need to assess the impact of an additional advantage or limitation on the price. As someone who GMs a game using the Hero System (and GMs another two which use a derivative of that system), this is something that I felt I needed to have a solid understanding of.

To start with, let’s state the relationship:

• Price (New) = Base × (A0 +1 + DA) / (L0 +1 + DL),

where A0 is the total value of advantages already built into the power, LO is the total value of limitations already built into the power, and DA and DL are the total value of proposed new limitations. In effect, though, A0+1 and LO+1 are going to be constants – I’ll use C and K, respectively – which gives us

• Price (New) = Base × (DA + C) / (DL + K).

If we set the base price as 1, the structure of the resulting calculation is exactly the same as that for Speeds with Uncertainty in both distance and time.

It’s been my experience that the results are far more sensitive to changes in DL, the analogue of changes in time, than they are to changes in DA, the analogue of changes in distance. That’s because any increase on the denominator side divides any increase in the numerator into something smaller. The exact amounts change depending on the values of the constants – the larger one is, the smaller in proportion an increase of +1 is.

If K is 3, in other words, +1 is a bigger difference than if K was 103. But any change in the denominator reduces the impact of a change in the numerator (there are so many variables that it’s hard to get more specific without growing totally confusing.

To show how complicated these things can get, and as a bonus for other users of the Hero system:

• DP (change in price) = Base × [(DA × K) – (DL × C)] / [K × (K + DL)].

I find it simpler to consider things on a case-by-case basis, working with established and fixed values for K and C. But that’s the general solution, for whatever it’s worth.

Conclusion

Game mechanics is all about systems of simulation, about assigning numerical, manipulable quantities to our imaginations so that others can work with, interact with, and enjoy, the products of those imaginations. But systems of simulation have all sorts of real-world applications beyond the game table. The military use them for tactical planning. Science can use them, too.

The existence of Uncertainty inherent to one type of measurement makes all other types of measurement subject to their own Uncertainty. You don’t have to skim many of the Wikipedia articles on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and related phenomena (look especially for the name Planck, as in Planck Units and Planck Time to see that this is not entirely an original thought – though I hadn’t read them prior to writing this article!

The potential real-world technological implications discussed should manifest in any futuristic high-tech society, or at least be on their way.

But there’s a more important implication purely for us gamers: if the real world is fuzzy, so our simulated worlds should be fuzzy. So stress less about the last decimal place of accuracy in simulations and focus instead on the meaningful generality – and get on with the game. It’s that train of thought that leads to solutions like the 3-minute NPC. And that’s a “real world” benefit that we, as gamers, can all uniquely appreciate.

“I don’t care what anything was designed to do, or intended to do, I care about what it CAN do!” – Col. Jack O’Niell, Stargate SG-1

(I think – and possibly a misquotation, but the point is made…)

The King of a troubled land and his weakling allies face a troubled future. In a distant land, two dark Princes ally with the aim of overthrowing the King and his forces. Slowly, both sides build up their forces, making moves and countermoves in secret. One by one, each recruits secret allies, seemingly headed for a major confrontation. The King scores a major coup when a neighboring ruler joins his army.

Both experience reversals, as forces they expected to recruit gather in opposition camps or unite with independent groups. Ultimately, the Princes’ plans fall apart on them, and they retire to plot and plan another day. But in the meantime, an Evil Queen has been making secret alliances, out of sight of anyone else, emerging at the last possible minute to challenge the alliance of Kings, a threat which is only defeated when a third King, a secret ally, is revealed – but the exercise causes ill-will amongst the three, who disband their alliance. So outraged are the citizens that the King is forced into exile.

Doesn’t this sound like an awesome campaign background – not history, but ongoing developments in the background of the game?

Revealing the Metaphor Engine

Here’s what it really is: Player 1 is dealt a King and a three face-up and a seven, four, and nine facedown. Another player has two Jacks showing – Clubs and Spades. The player with the King showing opens the betting and is matched by the player with the jacks and by a third player; most of the others at the table fold. The player with the Kings discards two of his facedown cards and the three, drawing a ten face-up and a jack and five face-down to accompany his nine. The player with the jacks discards only his facedown cards and draws a third jack, an ace, and a four. The third player, who has a two and a four showing, discards one of his three face-down cards and both the visible cards, drawing the queen of spaces and the King of Diamonds face-up, and an ace which is face-down and hidden from the other players.

After a second round of betting, discarding, and drawing, the player with the King now has two of them face-up and one facedown. The Player with the two jacks showing has three facedown cards that are valueless to his hand. The third player now has a Queen and King showing, and has a Queen and two Aces facedown. A fourth player has received a jack face up, but folds his hand as the player with two Kings again opens the betting hard. The player with the jacks considers a bluff, but with one of the jacks known to be in someone else’s hand, decides against it, and folds; the player with the two Kings showing expects the remaining player to do the same, but that player chooses to see the bet. Both players reveal, but two pairs is beaten by the presence of the hidden third King. All the cards are then shuffled, ready for the next hand.

If each player represents a faction or government in the game world, and their winnings represents their relative power levels, then each hand of a poker game becomes a tale of intrigue and high drama within the game background. Slowly, one faction will gain dominance, while others will weaken or even collapse completely. The results can form a compelling narrative tool for your campaign, needing only a conversion via metaphor to translate the play – according to whatever rules you are playing by – be it Texas Hold-em or Stud or whatever – to render it into in-game terms. This page might help: list of poker variants as a starting point.

The Horsepower of the Metaphor Engine

I’ve seen a number of GMs use die rolls to determine the rise and fall of NPC nations in their games, but Poker is a far superior choice. This technique takes advantage of two of the primary principles of one game and states an equivalence with two of the primary principles in another: the building up of sets of matching cards represents the forming of alliances, or the gathering of servants, or the acquisition of tools to further the overall ambitions of the faction; and the ignorance of what the other players hold, and betting mechanism that is possible as a result, represents ignorance on the part of each faction about everything that the other factions are up to – though some activities might be obvious, which is the equivalent of inferring hand strengths from betting patterns.

I don’t know of any actual rules of poker that quite match the two-face-up-and-three-face-down that I used in my opening example, but there are many variants within the overall game that can be used.

Harnessing The Metaphor Engine

It’s easy to actually take this principle one step further, to truly harness the power of the Metaphor Engine that is a poker game. By designating the faction belonging to the player who eventually wins the entire game as the PCs, and the player who comes second as their major enemy, the conduct of the entire game can become a campaign planning tool that ensures a final confrontation between the forces of good and evil. Initially, the real enemy might even be anonymous, or weakened, while others loom large as an immediate threat. All that needs to be done to complete the transformation matrix of card game to RPG plot is to associate the key developments in the game with PC actions or failures to act, by regarding the next hand, or series of hands, as metaphors for the experiences to take place in the lives of the characters.

The Hand-In-Ignorance Technique

It might be tempting to map out an entire campaign using a single hand, or series of hands, but a far better choice is to play only one or two hands in advance, maintaining GM ignorance as to what will become significant and what will not. By avoiding the pitfalls of too much GM knowledge, the GM is forced to develop a number of separate plot threads, each rife with the potential for adventure, leaving the PCs to determine which one they will focus on next. The result is a virtual sandboxing, in which ‘factions’ are defined not as static entities at the start of a series of poker hands but by a combination of the outcome of a single hand or set of hands and the relative amount of attention being focused on a particular plot thread by the PCs.

Interpreting the progress and outcome of the card game in this way permits outcomes in which the PCs can be deceived into strengthening the position of their true enemies, or can focus attention on a seemingly more-urgent situation (or even an actually more-urgent situation), leaving their true enemy to strengthen his own position. The pattern of play may even be a metaphor for their enemy making a temporary alliance with them against a third party, or the PCs coming to the aid of their real enemy to deal with a mutual threat. Any sort of plot twist is possible.

Because the outcome is both held in ignorance by the GM, and yet has a continuity within the card game, any possible permutation of plot developments is possible, and the effects of the outcome of any individual plotline can be both surprising and yet leading to the inevitable. There is a chaos and unpredictability to events viewed in the finer scale of one game session or adventure, while there is an overall pattern to events that result from knowing who the ultimate winners and who their ultimate opponents are going to be.

The Compaction of Prep

One final benefit that is worth mentioning here is the implication for game prep. Activities that will spawn more untapped plot threads are encouraged, but detailed game prep is restricted to one specific element or plot thread. Game prep thus assumes a ‘fuzzy boundary’ in which the need for work outside the ‘virtual sandbox’ is minimized. The GM has less work to do, and operated with greater focus and efficiency, because only those elements that are needed will receive game prep.

In many ways, this parallels the approach taken by television series such as Stargate SG-1. The episode under development at the moment might focus on one particular Gou’uld enemy or one particular ally, whose circumstances and plotline are advanced; while all sorts of other plot threads are simply left dangling and undeveloped until they become the focus of a future episode.

This website may be useful, dealing as it does with real episodic television scripts, as does this site. I found this website to be very interesting, and the list of resources on the right-hand side looks extremely valuable in the context of writing episodic material of any sort – including RPG adventures! But, to get back to the discussion at hand:

Game prep thus becomes defined dynamically with changing and developing circumstances within the card game. The rules of the interpretational framework are such that no other plot threads can come to a conclusion, and yet have to be developed in response to events within the game, as each faction – unless they fold with the initial cards dealt, and simply mark time – at least attempts to advance their cause. So every subplot advances in the background, but only in such a way that the game itself yields more potential for future plotlines; only the primary plotline on which attention is currently focused has the potential of advancing significantly. Balances of power are constantly shifting, as factions jockey for position. The campaign plotline itself becomes more dynamic as a result.

Games to exclude

Not every series of poker hands results in a game with multiple changes of fortune. A sufficiently big confrontation in the early hands, as each player thinks they have a winning hand, can leave the overall winner with so big an advantage that the ultimate victory is inevitable. When used as a metaphor for the events which will occur in-game, the result is inevitably just as obvious and foregone a conclusion.

It may be necessary to play multiple series of hands, have multiple sessions of play, before an appropriately interesting and compelling narrative metaphor presents itself. This is something that GMs considering this technique should bear in mind.

The need for detailed records

Professional poker players analyze their performance, and the developments of each hand of the game, zealously. They seek to improve their games, to learn from their mistakes and from the mistakes of others. To this end, they keep detailed records of each hand played, whether they drop out early in the hand or not.

Since the GM cannot predict who will win each hand, or the total series of hands, in advance, it should be obvious that the GM needs to be just as assiduous in analyzing the events of each hand of the poker game being used as a metaphor engine for the plot.

Choosing the right poker client/site

Since the intention is to do things with the ongoing gameplay that are not really ‘intended’ to happen, it will be important to choose the right poker client and website. Fortunately, sites such as www.cardschat.com offer detailed reviews to help you.

At first, you might be tempted to employ such sites in tutorial mode (if they have one) or against ‘virtual’ (i.e. machine) opponents, but these are inherently more limited than playing against a human opponent, capable of flashes of instinct or insight, of bluffing, and of knowing when to bluff. The results will be better when they derive from a real game, with real opponents. What you want will be a way to log the progress of the game for later study – either using software functions or services provided by the website, or using some approach of your own – whether that’s some sort of video capture technique or hand-written notepad, or something else.

Creating most NPCs is like boiling an egg. They should take three minutes or less and be ‘boiled’ at the game table, not in advance – though you may want garnishes at the ready. In fact, most should take no more than thirty or fourty seconds.

Doesn’t sound possible? This article will show you how, and along the way will reveal why. I’ll wrap it up with some examples and discussion of how and when to advance and evolve an NPC created using this process.

The core of the system of NPC generation that I’m going to offer for consideration today revolves around 16 decisions and parameters, organized into three groups: Generalities, Dominants, and Secondaries.

• Generalities are three framing decisions that guide the GM to the answers to the more specific questions to follow. They define the broad parameters of the NPC.
• Dominants are the eight most important elements of the NPC. Get these right and the NPC is virtually ready-to-run. Many of them can be decided in no more than a second or two, some may require more careful consideration.
• Secondaries are supplemental elements that may or may not be needed for every NPC, though it is recommended that at least one be included in every NPC.
• In addition, two Optional Extras may be required for some campaigns. If they are needed at all, they will be additional Dominants, so these will be discussed at that point.

With this structure, the factors that determine how long an NPC will take to generate is (a) how quickly the GM can think of his answers, and (b) how quickly he can write his answers down – legibly, because he might need to read it and ‘recapture’ the NPC some years down the track.

Generalities

These three items are the most important questions to be asked during NPC creation because they frame and serve as foundation for all the subsequent decisions to be made during the generation process. They are:

• Plot Function
• Social Standing
• Table Mood

1. Plot Function

The plot function of the character is the purpose of the character. Why is he in the game at all? What do the PCs want or expect from him, and what does the GM want his presence to cause to happen?

As much as possible, the answer to this question should be a single word, and is often more useful as a quite abstract summation. Ignore the mechanics of literary plot as much as possible and frame the question in an emotional or functional context. “Confusion” is a perfectly valid answer, as is “Direction”. “Exposition” is a common answer, though “Explanation” is usually more appropriate. “Betrayal”, “Merchant”, “Authority”, “Lawman”, “Mouthpiece”, “Soldier”, “Danger”, “Enemy”, and “Ally” are all valid answers. In one word, try to encapsulate who the NPC is and why he is being encountered.

The more abstract the answer, the more layers of meaning exist within it to be explored. The more functional the answer, the more “cardboard cutout” the NPC will be unless steps are taken in later questions to give the character additional depth.

Note that it is important to distinguish between the function of the character in terms of his plot purpose and his occupation. A barman whose role is to sell the PCs a Macguffin or some key information would be a “merchant”, not a “barman” – the latter is his occupation, but not his primary function. This is especially important given that English is such a slippery language – consider the possible answer, “spy”. This might mean that his occupation is as a spy, or that he is present in the campaign to spy on the PCs, if this clarification did not explicitly show the second to be the intended meaning.

2. Social Standing

While this is just one answer, it usually consists of three separate components. What is the character’s occupation, how successful is he at that occupation, and why?

A merchant may be very successful because he’s a charmer, or because he has a monopoly on some important aspect of the occupation, or because he buys on the black market to enhance his profit levels, or because he is widely known and trusted, or because he’s very shrewd, or a good bargainer, or has some inside connection.

A merchant may be very unsuccessful because he’s shifty, or because he is a spendthrift, or makes disastrous investments, or has a greedy family, or is being blackmailed out of his profits (and then some), or because his sense of timing is appalling, or because of a more successful rival leeching all his business away, or is a soft touch, or because he’s too busy running a shadowy cult to properly take care of business, or because he’s obsessed with fishing.

A merchant may be un-noteworthy because he’s unexceptional, or because he’s never had the opportunity for a really big score, or because he’s located in a dingy backwater, or because his suppliers are cheating him blind, or because he’s got a big family or a large debt that he is paying off, or because he’s trying to be anonymous, or simply because he’s lazy. He might have all the prerequisites of success, but also have one or more negative factors to offset that potential.

No matter what the NPCs occupation is, he will have some level of achievement within it (high, moderate, or poor) and there will always be a reason for that level of achievement. Immediately, this combination gives the NPC color beyond a simple expression of in-game occupation.

The character’s plot function may influence the choices made here. If the character’s role is to spy on the party (and not to get caught spying on the party), he will have been chosen for the assignment for a reason; if the role is to explain something to the party, his social standing has to explain how the NPC knows that explanation in the first place, and so on. The social standing needs to be chosen to permit the NPC to fulfill his plot function.

3. Table Mood

The answers so far have been about the character’s capabilities, though there may have been some that touch on the character’s personality; but this answer is focused squarely on that personality and its high-order summation. But it takes its cues from a left-field direction:

What is the prevalent mood at the table, and will this character buy into it, direct it, or oppose it? What is the dominant personality trait required to achieve this?

If the players (not the characters) are glum and downcast, the NPCs personality can:

• deepen this mood by being gloomy in personality;
• direct it by attributing responsibility for the mood to some real or imagined cause (Anything from ‘the weather’s been bad’ to ‘the crown’s been sorely oppressive’ to ‘these taxes are a crushing burden’ to ‘I’m in mourning for my goldfish’; or,
• oppose it by being cheery, light, humorous, wisecracking, ebullient, angry – in fact, anything but solemn and downbeat.

Determining what effect you want the NPC to have on the players, and choosing a personality that will have that effect, not only uses unpredictable real-world circumstances as a “randomizing factor” in NPC construction, but gives the NPC added layers of sophistication; not only is the NPC interacting with the PCs, but also with their players, directly. The normal effect is that the players will engage with the NPC more fully, rather than holding him at arm’s length and filtering the interaction exclusively through the ‘window’ of the character sheet. If quizzed afterwards, the players will often comment that they don’t know why but the NPCs seemed more alive than usual – but it won’t be anything they can (usually) put their finger on, unless you’re silly enough to let them see the wires running to behind the curtain.

What’s more, by eschewing simple labels and employing more abstract and functional labels, the sophistication of the resulting NPCs is far greater than might be expected from the minimalist approach to the character generation. You get more ground covered per second of creative effort than if you focused on generating the NPC at a game-system level.

Dominants

Once the three top-level questions are answered, the next step is to consider the eight dominant traits of the NPC, his circumstances, and his environment, each of which is captured by specific (if possibly abstract) answers to a specific question. These questions are:

• Why?
• Necessity
• Irregularity
• Environment
• Persona
• Expression
• Hook
• Name

4. Why?

What’s the NPC’s motive for fulfilling the plot function ascribed to him? How does his personality compliment, compound, enhance, or interfere with this function? How does his personality react to this motivation? Understanding the answers to this question not only tells you how the NPC will act and react, but in combination with the personality trait defined in response to the prevailing table mood, will tell you how he will interpret anything the PCs do or say.

5. Necessity

What traits and abilities does the NPC need to possess in order to achieve the social standing given him? What else does he need to fulfill his plot function? What are the things that he absolutely has to have in order to be the person already described?

6. Irregularity

Given his occupation and social standing, what makes this character different from the run-of-the-mill example of a stock character of the defined type? Everyone should have some point of uniqueness or irregularity to them – real people do. This answer’s purpose is to individualize the character. A merchant with unusual strength, a lawman with a gift for languages, a fisherman with a knack for tying knots – give him something distinctive and unusual.

7. Environment

How should the traits already established be reflected in the character’s environment? Does he live in the centre of a whirlwind even when sitting still? Does it appear that he has a bet on which will fall apart first – his body or his environment? Does he have a hobby or interest that can manifest itself in something visible or tangible in his environment? A Fisherman might have a prominent Rod and Reel handy, have a fishing lure absent-mindedly caught on his sleeve, have a “gone fishing” sign that’s a little too close to the door to be needed only occasionally?

If you can use the character’s environment to communicate one or more of his traits, you don’t need to describe or bring out those traits while acting as the character. This not only cuts down on the flavor text required, it aids consistency of characterization by making the character appear to be part of the environment that he inhabits rather than being cut-and-pasted into the scenery, and means that there is less work to be done by the GM in those less-than-three-minutes. It also opens an avenue of communications between the NPC and PCs, it’s a conversation starter. That makes it easier for both sides to roleplay the encounter. Finally, by suggesting something of the NPC beyond the bare essentials, it makes the character seem more rounded and fully-formed.

8. Persona

We all present a face to the world that is slightly different from our true selves. We tidy up our rough edges, polish our manners on social occasions, avoid expressing opinions that we know will be unpopular, wear a personality cloak for effect. This question can cut in one of two ways: if the personality determined in earlier questions refers primarily to the NPCs true plot function, if the personality traits determined earlier are more about his motivations and true opinions, this question is about the character that he appears to be on the outside; if the earlier personality definitions are more related to social standing and other external attributes, this question will relate to his true persona. It is important to add the words “true” and “apparent” where appropriate after determining the answer to this question so that you can later identify what is the real character and what is the superficial seeming presented to the world.

More often than not, what has already been decided will relate to the character’s external persona and this question will relate to his true personality.

9. Expression

How is the character going to express his personality? Just as we all wear masks in public situations, we all make subtle slips that hint at what is underneath. If we don’t do this, the superficial mask appears wooden and stilted, and an obvious subterfuge. The trick, in real life, is to find a way to let the underlying persona shine through the mask without destroying the credibility of the mask.

Consider, for example, the job interview. This is a nightmare that most of us have experienced on multiple occasions. We always attempt to present a veneer of employability, of competence, of being exactly what is needed for whatever the job is; we rarely speak as freely or comfortably as we would in a social situation. The applicants who appear most natural, most competent, and therefore most employable, are those who seem the most natural and relaxed, whose masks are less obviously artificial – who (apparently) don’t have to pretend to be right for the job because they are right for the job. In reality, they may be presenting just as false a mask as everyone else interviewed; but because they are able to respond casually and comfortably, letting a little of their real personality show through the veneer, their superficial appearance is far more plausible and believable.

In a role-playing encounter, we are faced with a slightly different challenge, but one that bears marked similarities to the job interview scenario. The GM is trying to camouflage his true thoughts and feelings beneath a superficial veneer of the NPCs character, which is itself masked by the impression the character wishes to convey. Sure, the GM can simply roll dice and announce that the PCs find the NPC to be utterly believable, no matter how poor his acting skills – but isn’t it better to have the NPC seem wholly and utterly sincere just from what the GM says and how he says it?

So the general question is, how to convert the persona in a plausible fashion?

There’s been lots of advice in answer to that question over the years – accents, body language, props, artificial mannerisms – but we aren’t interested in a general answer. The specific question to be asked right now is how the GM is going to express this particular character’s personality when roleplaying the NPC?

In my previous Superhero campaign, there was a quintessentially British superhero NPC named Lionheart. Apparently aged in his early 20s, he was actually only a young teenager, about to turn 14. In order to make the character seem real, I had to let some thirteen-year-old traits shine through. My notes for the NPC were: “Hyper-enthusiastic, Gosh Wow tone, dripping !!.” At the same time, the character drew his powers from the public confidence in him, so he had to seem to take charge, give orders without hesitation, appear overconfident to the point of insanity (from the perspective of the PCs, who were feeling very un-confident). Because they saw the personality traits described previously ‘underneath’ what the character was saying and doing, he came across as being arrogant, forceful, dashing, stiff-upper-lip, and overconfident – so, when he dropped that mask (out of sight of the cameras), and his true (and typical) self-confidence issues came shining through, they suddenly saw that he was scared witless. The character had loads of depth and immediately became a player favorite – not least because as soon as the cameras turned back on, he didn’t let a trace of his sheer terror show through. He didn’t just talk a good game, he went in, boots and all, with sublime (superficial) confidence in the outcome. Who is more brave, the person who knows no fear, or the person who’s scared witless – but goes in anyway?

All this depth came from three lines of character summary – his apparent persona, his true persona, and the mode of expression used by me when playing the character. The whole is greater than the sum of those parts.

On another occasion, in the Pulp Game, I had to take on the role of Doctor Heinz Zarkovff, a mad scientist who combined Emmet Brown from Back To The Future and Dr Zarkov from the movie version of Flash Gordon (the one with the Queen soundtrack). Eccentric, Loopy, and Brilliant, he always talked to the smartest person in the room (himself) in a semi-deranged running monologue with slightly German, slightly Russian accent. He had the utmost respect for the PCs and their accomplishments, but at the same time he knew that they were not in his intellectual league – no matter how superior they might be in other areas. Everything they said to him was eventually worked into his monologue, as was every hole in the plans they put forward, and the answers and information they needed. Every question or statement made to him was restated as a rhetorical question to himself before being analyzed in every direction from Sunday and then answered. Even while my co-GM was actually running every other aspect of the encounter, describing the NPC, etc, I was quietly monologueing under my breath, my eyes darting wildly around the room. (There was also a little of the Russian cosmonaut from Armageddon mixed in there, with a bit of Zathras from Babylon 5 “No one listens to Zarkovff, never listen until it is too late, and then they come crawling and asking for the help, and this is the wrong tool…”). My expression notes: “Never-ending manic monologue, German/Russian accent, constantly speaks in third person to himself.”

10. Hook

Every NPC needs a hook, something to hang the rest of the character from. It might be something the character does, something he wears, something he says, or an object that he keeps in his possession, but it’s something symbolic of the entire character. If, for example, I refer to a character wearing a Deerstalker, 99.99% of the readers will immediately make the connection to Sherlock Holmes. Data, from Star Trek the Next Generation, is summed up (as early as the first episode!) as Pinocchio – an artificial being who yearns to be human.

Here are some unusual hooks to show you how broad the range of options really is:

• An especially bright, shiny, belt buckle – immediately identifies the character to the PCs even if he is in disguise, it is used as a recognition signal.
• A false scar on one lip – immediately reveals substitution by an impersonator if it is missing, it is used as a doppelganger check.
• Two-face – toys with a double-headed coin when under stress
• The Joker – the maniacal grin says it all
• Clark Kent – the eyeglasses
• Batman – his shadow always has a batwing effect (and usually bat-ears), no matter what disguise he is wearing.

A hat, a cloak, a shoe, painted fingernails, a monocle, a moustache, a green-colored glint in someone’s eye, a gray cloud, the rumble of distant thunder, freckles, a birthmark…

Try these: how long does it take you to figure out who they are from their hook or tagline?

• A white racing helmet that he never opens.
• “No Boom today. Boom Tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.”
• “Logic dictates…”
• “…with the [a] and the [b] and the [c] overnheigen”
• Ruby Slippers
• “It’s Clobberin’ Time!”
• “Resistance is Futile.”
• “Want a jelly baby?”
• “D’oh!”
• A white rabbit with a gold fob watch.
• “I’ll be back.”
• “Skippeeeerrrrrr??”

Each of these is an iconic hook that in some way sums up the character. While some people might not get them all, I’ll lay odds that everyone will get all but one or two, three at the outside. That one point of distinctiveness acts as a central focus, a hook to hang all the characterization from.

11. Name

Last but not least in this category is the name. The more meaning you can build into the name by style and tone, the better. Introducing the characters to ‘Count Edwin Leopold Vatherwell D’etien Moncleef’ gives an entirely different impression of the character, even without a description, than that conveyed by “Bawon Weopold The Twelf”. There’s a reason why I’ve spent so much effort on a series of articles on character names!

Optional Extras

Some campaign genres demand something a little extra. Superhero, Pulp, some Fantasy… this is where those extras go. There are two types of extras: Theme and Gimmick.

12. Theme

The character’s Theme denotes the nature of their extra abilities. If they don’t have any, it might also be used to denote the nature of their gadgets. A character with cold-based abilities would have the theme “Cold”. Use as few words as possible to sum up the concept that unites the character’s special abilities, and give an indication of their overall power on a 1-to-ten scale, where 1 is apprentice and 10 is cosmic power – Galactus, or something on that level. Zues, Odin, and the like, would be level 9, other deities level 8 (probably Superman as well), demigods level 7 (probably appropriate for Dr Strange), the upper scale for mortal superheroes would be rank 6 (The Hulk might qualify here), and so on down the scale.

This is actually a fairly practical measure, in a lot of ways. Think of it as the chance in ten that the character has of being able to do something if it can be done at all using the character’s theme, though there is a little necessary flexibility here. No junior apprentice, no matter how talented, could dump 10 feet of snow over the entire globe – but a level 8 or 9 Ice Deity? No problem. The apprentice might be able to dump a foot of snow on a small field or a football stadium. At Rank 6 you might be able to do a small country, or perhaps only a city; certainly rank 7s could handle a small country and possible the entire planet, with a little support and assistance.

You don’t have to translate these abilities into game mechanics; you can use them as a direct index of what the end result of those game mechanics will be and create the actual abilities within the theme after the fact, or as you need them.

13. Gimmick

If you’ve got a theme, then you’ve got at least one gimmick to show off with within that theme. Sounds fairly obvious, doesn’t it? Thor has his hammer, Iron man his repulsor rays, Harry Potter his wand and broomstick, Dr Who has his Sonic Screwdriver and Luke his lightsabre. This is the place for a signature move or piece of kit, and every character who has a theme should have one that is unique to them.

Secondaries

Secondaries are more mundane and widespread optional extras. Not all characters will need all Secondaries, but it will be rare for a character to have none of them. The first question here is not “What is the character’s (x)” but “Does the character have an (x) at all?”

There are five secondaries to consider. They are:

• Secrets
• Attack
• Defense
• Connections, and
• Revisits.

14. Secrets

Most MPCs should have a secret of some sort, whether it’s a guilty little pleasure, a past indiscretion, or something more significant. The reason is that it provides an area or topic of conversation about which the character will react unusually strongly or in some unusual manner – even if that reaction is a bluff suggesting that they know nothing of it. The secret can be a plot hook to involve the NPC in a future adventure or it can be a justification for getting the NPC out of contact with the PCs if he is too useful to them, too much of a duex ex machina.

Sometimes, the nature of the secret will be mandated by decisions already made, such as an NPC whose job is to spy on the PCs and report back to someone else, or the bartender who is secretly the Grand Master of the Thieves’ Guild, or an informant working for the City Watch.

15. Attack

If the NPC is likely to engage in combat, you need to assign him an attack. The specifics depend on the particular game system in use, but the process of assigning an attack is standardized, and consists of a series of quick, simple, questions:

• What attack would a typical member of the character’s profession have, given his social standing?
• Is there any reason why the character should have a better attack? Adjust the first answer accordingly.
• Is there any reason why the character should have a worse attack? Adjust the first answer accordingly.

It’s really that simple. Assign a to-hit modifier and damage, or an OCV and at least one attack power (just number of dice and any effects that go with it), or whatever. For the standard Hero System, we use the multiples-of-five rule: 5 is poor, 10 is normal human, 15 is superior human, 20 is equal to several PCs and superior to just one, 25 is superior to a group of typical PCs, 30 is superheroic (and the absolute maximum for a pulp character). For d20 games such as D&D, I use multiples of 5 for fighter types (and subtract 5 from the result) and for non-fighter types I use multiples of 4, not 5, and subtract 8 from the result giving -4 is poor, +0 is normal human, +4 is superior human, +8 is equal to several PCs and superior to most single PCs, +12 is maximum for PCs, +16 is demigod status, and so on. Use the power scale from the character’s theme, if they have one.

16. Defense

If you need to know a character’s attack, you need to decide what the character’s defense is. Again, just pluck an appropriate value out of thin air and worry about justifying it later. As a general rule of thumb, for the Hero System we match DCV with OCV as a starting point and then vary it up ore down by as much as 10. For D&D and the like, I use multiples of 6 and add 4 for fighters, and multiples of 4 and add 6 for non-fighters, then tweak as necessary.

17. Connections

Everybody knows somebody, even if it’s a non-existent delusion entirely within their own head. But who will the NPC turn to for help (other than, perhaps, the PCs) if he gets in over his head? Who can he trust implicitly? Most NPCs will have at least one contact who will save their bacon, though perhaps at a price. Many have two or more – but it’s not necessary to list them all, just one or two who will be relevant should the plot function of the character be compromised.

18. Revisits

I hate my NPCs to be static and unchanging, unless that is a deliberate choice on my part. For that reason, each time an NPC gets involved with the PCs, I make a note in this section of how his life is altered by the experience. If the answer is not at all, then I add some other change, whether it is minor or major. I want the NPC to be able to say, the next time the PCs speak with him, “Since the last time I saw you…”

I employ different standards based on the likely frequency of contact with the PCs. A recurring NPC who will be seen every week should not have a dramatic upheaval unless it is directly plot related or caused by the PCs in some fashion, whereas one who might not be seen for a year or two, game time, may well have undergone a significant change of some sort – even if it’s just hiring a new apprentice (fantasy) or buying a new car (modern) or something of that sort.

Some Examples

I know that if I don’t include some examples, there will be a demand for them, even though I think this generation process is sufficiently straightforward not to really need any. So here are a couple from different fantasy campaigns:

Example: Sage

This is an actual example from game play this past weekend.

1. Plot Function: Give Direction
2. Social Standing: Sage, Great Reputation, Obsessive Investigator
3. Table Mood: Frustrated, Steer with calm competence
4. Why?: Inexhaustible Curiosity
5. Necessities: Knowitall 15/-, Good researcher 17/-, Honorable, Professional
6. Irregularity: Looks much weaker, older and frailer than he really is
7. Environment: Musty, dark, organized
8. Persona: Bookworm, XXXX a XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX for XXXXXXXXX with XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (redacted to keep secrets from my players)
9. Expression: Fussy, precise, detail-obsessed
10. Hook: An ever-present air of knowing more than he is telling
11. Name: Dominic Monterraign
12. Theme: Knowledge acquisition
13. Gimmick: His books follow him when he moves, levitating in the air when opened
14. Secrets: refer persona
15. Attack: –
16. Defense: –
17. Connections: The Ambassador to the Endless Library
18. Revisit: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX will have XXXXXX the XXXXXX (refer persona) in XXXXXX of the XXXXXXXXX XXXXX (redacted to keep secrets from my players)

It took a total of 35 seconds to create the NPC, largely because I already knew the answers to the questions that were to be put to him and where he would steer the PC with his answers. In short, he was a delivery mechanism for the knowledge that the subject of enquiry, a black sword whose wielder ‘must really hate Paladins’, had an Elven forged blade, a hilt of Dwarven manufacture, bindings of dragon creation using the actual flesh of the dragon, and a scabbard whose sole enchantment was to protect, maintain, and repair this particular sword, which dates back to the time of the original Drow Rebellion. Each of the named components has their own enchantment, and a low level of awareness (not to the point of sentience) but can only manifest this awareness when separated from the other components. Oh, and it’s a +3 Bastard Sword with 1 major and 2 minor abilities which resist Identification.

Example: Merchant

This is an example from last year or the year before, when this process was still in development. It took slightly longer, clocking in at about 45 seconds.

1. Plot Function: Sell the PCs information (directing the PCs into a trap)
2. Social Standing: Poor, due to partial ostracization from his native society
3. Table Mood: Eager, aid overconfidence by downplaying difficulties
4. Why?: Recognizes PCs as enemies of the state, desperation to regain former social standing
5. Necessities: Negotiation, Sly, Observant, Bluff
6. Irregularity: grossly overweight but very fleet-footed
7. Environment: bric-a-brac piled on rubbish piled on flotsam and jetsam, equivalent of a $2 shop
8. Persona: Appears a bumbling, lazy, fat, harmless merchant – used-car salesman
9. Expression: Oh, woe is me, everyone takes advantage of poor helpless [name]
10. Hook: “purveyor of junk and household necessities for the discerning buyer”
11. Name: Abdagashi Himono
12. Theme: –
13. Gimmick: –
14. Secrets: refer plot function
15. Attack: –
16. Defense: –
17. Connections: Local Priest of Beneck Wu
18. Revisit: Destitute wanderer, having been stripped of his business when the PCs escaped the trap he was instructed to lay for them. Bitter and angry, hates the world, possible convert to PC cause if they fast-talk him.

A tip on the side: If you need to stall for a couple of minutes, open a rulebook and pretend to read and take notes…

Using The NPC

Remember those three sub-questions from the section on Attack? Well, here they are again:

• What attack would a typical member of the character’s profession have, given his social standing?
• Is there any reason why the character should have a better attack? Adjust the first answer accordingly.
• Is there any reason why the character should have a worse attack? Adjust the first answer accordingly.

Exactly the same principle, the same three-step process, is used to determine any capability the NPC wants to exercise. A PC wants to sell him some knick-knack or doodad? Use the abstract parameters provided to determine whether or not the character is interested, how much over- or under- price he thinks it’s worth, and how good his bargaining skill is. The NPC attempts to shadow one of the PCs? Use the abstract parameters provided to estimate how good he is at stealthy movement and hiding in shadows. The character wants to shoot at a PC with a crossbow? Use the abstract parameters to determine his base attack ability, how likely he is to know how to use a crossbow, and so on.

For a paranormal character: The character wants to escape? Think of a means of doing so using his theme, and give him the appropriate power, at an appropriate strength, according to the abstract parameters of the character. Don’t worry about fine detail, just decide how many dice of effect he puts out and any direct modifiers to the ability’s effectiveness. GMs of superhero games have (effectively) an unlimited budget, so don’t worry about whether or not the books balance – give the character a reasonable ability, jot it down for reference next time, and let fly with it.

Refining The NPC

Take a moment to notice what we haven’t done. No stats, character classes, spell selection, hit point rolls, detailed equipment lists, detailed histories… we have created the bare minimum required for the NPC to function in-game as a personality or opponent.

Decide such minutia only when it becomes essential. And if your maths doesn’t quite add up – if you gave the NPC too good a skill check, or too low an AC, or dudded him out of a point of damage on each of his attacks – so what? Correct it, or choose to keep the incorrect score, and move on. The essential question is whether the character has served the plot function that was the only reason for its existence, or not? And if not, what can you learn from the reasons for the failure to make next time more likely to succeed?

When this is not enough

There will still be times when this is not going to be enough, though it makes a darned good starting point for full-scale character generation. In particular, important enemies and any NPCs who might become future PCs need to be detailed fully. But most of the time? A thumbnail personality that gets right to the heart of the character – why he’s there, what he can do, and what is his personality – is ample.

Organizing NPCs

This approach seems tailor-made for two methods of function: first, a database or spreadsheet using something like Crystal Reports, or second, a set of index cards. In which case, keep an index keyed by NPC name, but keep the records themselves in order of the plot function and the profession. Why? Because sooner or later you will need another NPC to serve the same function, and you want to make sure that this one is different to the last one – and the easiest way to do that is to know what characters of that type you have done before.

Alternately, you may find that you have already created the perfect NPC for the desired plot function – you just need to explain what he’s doing in this part of the world. Try to avoid the concept of coincidence, it never rings true to the players – unless the purpose is to foster suspicion and paranoia, of course. Instead, employ some form of deliberate cause-and-effect. “A witch foretold that you would come this way”. “I liked the sound of this town so much when you told me your adventures that I had to move here.” “I’ve been searching for you for months!” “I paid a Wizard to teleport me to wherever you were going to be.” Save “What a coincidence! What good luck!!” for those occasions when you WANT the players to respond, “Coincidence? Luck? Yeah, right – and I’m a goldfish.”

Just a heads-up that this approach works especially well with the techniques described in By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On The Fly and the sequel, By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure!

~ Plato ~

400 is:

When I search my archived correspondence, the first mention of Campaign Mastery – the blog – that I can find is dated November 20, 2008. But the name and concept have roots that run much deeper. We knew as early as January 2008 that we were going to have a website named Campaign Mastery; it just took us that long to figure out what it was going to be.

I had already had a blog through the Yahoo 360 service. It was a more personal and perhaps typical blog (except perhaps that it went in for 5,000+ word posts), covering whatever was on my mind at the time – whether that be the cost of living in Sydney or devising new rules for AC in my Fumanor campaign, or whatever. By the time Yahoo shut down that service, some 6 months or so later, Johnn and I were already collaborating. I’d started by somewhat diffidently sending in a couple of reader’s tips to Roleplaying Tips and a brief article or two for Heather Grove’s Twilight Time, then an article or two for RPT, then some more articles. The feedback was encouraging and reader response was positive, and by the time 2009 had rolled around, it had reached the point where I would reply to virtually every issue of Johnn’s newsletter with a suggestion or two for extending or enhancing or adding a technique or twist to something that had appeared in that issue, most of which ended up as additional reader’s tips. All told, I had amassed 20-odd main article credits and was rapidly approaching three figures in published reader’s tips.

In 2008, at Johnn’s invitation, I had started work on an E-book, to be published by Johnn & I jointly through a website to be called Campaign Mastery. Originally intended to be a 20-page quickie, it reached 20 finished chapters in 71 pages, with another 42 chapters still waiting to be written. These were… no, I think I’ll keep the subject close to my chest. I’ll want to finish it someday…

400 is:

Anyway, the idea was that selected excerpts would appear as standalone articles on the website, up to half the book in fact, and the rest would be completely new material. Over the course of 2008, the concept evolved. Rather than writing the books and excerpting the material for blog posts, we decided that this approach was putting the cart before the horse; if we were to write e-book chapters as articles, and then compile them into eBooks, we could use feedback and comments to expand and improve the content. The ambition was to make the one set of words serve multiple functions. We’ve never gotten around to publishing those eBooks, but eventually it will happen.

There were seemingly-endless discussions of taxonomy (which wasn’t fully settled until February, 2009). Our business plans grew, and grew more convoluted. Over the period from the start of 2008 until the end of 2009, we designed and planned the creation of a publishing structure that was both complex and elegant. We had plans for the recruiting of additional staff, for operations as the publishers of game supplements by independent authors, for a series of books on the subject of Campaign Mastery which would join together to form a complete RPG How-to “Bible” of multiple volumes, for forums and game-aid software and, well, all sorts of things. All with one aim:

I was tired of looking for what would turn out to be another job lasting just a couple of years, and Johnn wanted to be able to give up his day job and do RPG stuff full-time.

400 is:

It’s said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I have often joked that the RPG equivalents are ‘No planned adventure survives contact with the Players,’ and ‘No game supplement survives contact with the GM.’ To these maxims, I can now add a third and a fourth, also from personal experience: “No marketing plan survives contact with the customer,” and, “No business plan survives contact with the Real World.”

The plan we evolved was to deliver magazine-sized articles, between 1500 and 4500 words each, as blog posts, two a week – Johnn’s on one recurring, regular day, and mine half a week later. We would trade off as necessary. We wanted to avoid superficiality and create depth, value, and evergreen content, that could be edited, revised, and bundled into themed e-books. At the same time, we would be writing game supplements from scratch.

The first posts were intentionally brief; Johnn’s Cure DM Writer’s Block With A Map on November 29, 2008, his Maps Have Three Parts, part 1 on December 4th; his Races Should Make A Difference on December 6th; and my Spring Cleaning For Your Campaign on December 9th. These had a three-fold purpose: to establish that all our systems were functional, before they went public; to settle on our format and layout; and to ensure that when visitors arrived for the first time, they had something to read. There was no “this is our first blog post, yada-yada”, no beginning – we wanted Campaign Mastery to simply spring forth, fully-formed.

I’m not sure when we first started telling people that the blog existed, thereby taking it public for the first time, but I suspect it was either January 1, 2009 (a suitable date for beginnings) or December 25, 2008 (A Christmas present to both of us). But our first visitors arrived at the site on January 1 (we had a whole 6 of them that day) and our first comment, from Richard Whipple, was a couple of days later, on January 4th, in response to my article, ‘A Quality Of Spirit: Big Questions in RPGs’ from Dec 31st. The comment talks about the length of the article (long for a blog post), and mentions Plato and Socrates – so we were hitting our targets very quickly, and attracting thoughtful, substantative comment almost immediately. (In fact, we’ve had a lot of comments over the years – almost 3500 of them now, not counting the spam – and they have all been thoughtful, meaningful, contributions. Our commentators are the best! Of course, I’ve probably written close to 1500 of those as replies…)

400 is:

More importantly, Campaign Mastery was being taken seriously, from day 1. We had instant credibility, something we would work hard to maintain in the years that followed.

We achieved our first significant milestone in November 2009 (100 posts) and our first really big milestone (100,000 hits) on July 5th, 2010, which we celebrated with an out-of-continuity special post. But both of these were perhaps more meaningful than we realized at the time; of all the blogs that get started, most will fold after ten or twenty posts, most of those left will not reach 50 posts, and so on. As the targets climb, the ranks of those who achieve them thin.

Compare those milestones with our more recent ones, described in the post 300, 550, 37, 40, 3300, 387 – Thank You! and you can see that CM has not only survived, it has prospered. And let’s not overlook that fantastic ENnie nomination, the results of which will start being announced this Saturday morning (Australian time).

400 is:

Real Life has taken a serious toll on that initial business plan. Originally planned to run over a 5-6 year period, here we are approaching the end of year three and most of it has been put on hold if not completely abandoned. There were three reasons for this.

My back had become an ongoing medical issue since 2004, but it was only in late 2010 that the condition was correctly diagnosed and determined to be a degenerative condition that limited my ability to work and function. Whereas I once enjoyed the capacity to devote around 125 hours a week to various projects, I was reduced in capacity to 8-12 hrs a week, and much of it at something less than 100% effectiveness. I had less time available to devote to the plan.

Johnn, at around the same time, began to experience the effects of burnout and over-commitment. He, too, was finding that he had less time available to devote to the plan, and much of it was at less than 100% effectiveness.

And then, just as we were about to complete revising the plans to take account of these circumstances, the whole thing got derailed by an unexpected opportunity, as the Assassin’s Amulet project emerged from more-or-less nowhere to monopolize much of our spare time.

That’s why there have been no Campaign Mastery e-books produced yet, and why the monster e-book that I mentioned back at the start hasn’t been worked on since 2009, and why I never got to finish the more recent eBook that I started – and why it’s taking so long to get the sequel to AA written. After all, while we had 3 main authors and an outside contributor or two on the first one, this time it’s just me – and one or two of those outside contributors.

To our credit, I think, even when the AA project was at its craziest, CM didn’t even bobble; it just kept right on ticking over, racking up article after article.

And, most importantly, 400 is:

Johnn has stepped aside in recent months – a decision made early this year but on the cards for much longer – to try and achieve those personal goals down another path. There’s no ill-will on either side; the split has been entirely amicable. I continue to wish him good fortune and once again thank him for his ongoing support, just as I continue to support Roleplaying Tips.

We set out to deliver something more substantial than most blogs (though, perhaps not more substantial than most gaming blogs :) ), and I think that our longevity is, in part, due to that intention. It also helps that when we were first starting, I drew up a long list of potential blog topics – ninety percent of which are still on standby, in the queue.

Plans for the future definitely still include those Campaign Mastery eBooks, and finishing the other eBooks I’ve mentioned in passing in this article (hopefully without giving too much away). They include the sequel to AA, which hopefully will be finished in a month or two at the latest (but don’t hold your breath waiting). There are also a few supplemental items for AA still to be finished as time allows. If time gets short, I May  have to cut CM back to one article a week, though I don’t want to do that unless I have to; regularity and dependability are a large part of the reason CM has been successful so far. But beyond all that is this:- Campaign Mastery will continue to do its best to repay your investment of the time spent reading it with something worth reading.

So that’s 400 posts done. Now, to start thinking of how to commemorate post number 500 – that’s a bit less than a year away… Any ideas?

I’ve been hearing a lot of comments lately about how WOTC are pandering to the grognards who pine for a return to the days of old-school gaming. One person with whom I have corresponded on the subject through Twitter suggested that the divide was too great for it to possibly be bridged, and that WOTC were damned if the did and damned if they didn’t – that it would in fact be utterly impossible to satisfy everyone.

Another correspondent suggested that they should simply repackage and reprint AD&D to satisfy those longing for the days gone by and keep faith with those who have bought into the 4e community.

In short, the nay-sayers appear to be in the ascendancy, at least in terms of those making a lot of noise on the subject.

Those hostile to the entire concept of the philosophic approach to DnDNext announced by WOTC decry the return of infinite tables and unbalanced character classes and the Imperial Gamemaster. Those in favor rant with equal vehemence about reuniting players of the game under one banner, and complain that their debating opponents are speaking of hypothetical situations from a position of prejudice without judging the material being tested on its own merits, and – furthermore – that they are judging those materials against the standard of polished and playtested games.

I often think both sides are missing the point.

Old doesn’t mean it’s bad

When D&D, and AD&D, first came out, there was a wonderful sense of freedom in the air in gaming communities. If there wasn’t a rule to cover it, GMs were encouraged to create one. Rules lawyers were automatically ruled out of order, because the GM had created the game world and knew what worked and what didn’t, within it. There wasn’t a lot of money in gaming and game products, so publishers were less inclined to reach for the lawyers – and speed-dial wasn’t around yet, anyway. The games were, as a result, very open, and very varied. There were masses of 3rd party supplements out there for those who knew where to look. Often amateurish or flawed, but available, nevertheless. Every game had its house rules.

But there were always those who resented the power of the GM over the rules, who demanded to be able to know where they stood, who wanted everything in black and white.

New doesn’t mean it’s better

As time passed, the latter group won ground off the former, inch by inch, game iteration by game iteration. They achieved this by having a valid point or two – it’s all well and good for the GM to always be right because of his status at the game table, but without players, his game is an empty shell. At some point, an invisible line was crossed, and the game design priority became about putting the published rules ahead of the unrestrained creativity of the GM.

Then TSR went up in smoke, or got bought out (depending on who you ask), and WOTC set out to reinvent the game, with high-quality publishing. D&D suddenly represented quite a lot of invested money, and to have the maximum potential to capitalize on that investment, they wanted to encourage professional-standard game supplements – because each one required the purchase of (at the very least) the core rules set. It was “one for you, and three for me” – and then ‘four for me’, ‘five for me’, and so on, as additional ‘official’ expansions began to appear.

WOTC have openly admitted that the OGL was not what they intended, it was too open and unrestrained. The far more restrictive policies of 4e were what they were aiming for. But the serendipitous result was a huge mass of third party material that contributed to making D&D 3.0 the biggest game in town, and a huge success for them. So much so that WOTC was bought up for even larger sums of money by Hasbro – and they DID have the lawyers on speed-dial. They started by releasing version 3.5, correcting many of the errors, typos and other errata that had survived the initial publication – and at the same time, clamped down on the OGL just that little bit tighter.

The result was far fewer third party supplements and expansions aimed at 3.5 specifically – and the continuing publication of supplements aimed at 3.0, which were mostly compatible with the newer game anyway. The genie was out of the bottle, and not inclined to go quietly back into confinement.

Fourth edition followed in due course, with FAR more restrictive terms and conditions – and strict enforcement, backed up by the lawyers. This completely ignored the scale of the investment that most people now had in their 3.x collections – hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth – and declared them all ‘out of date’.

Unsurprisingly, the fan-base that had built up for D&D fractured – there were those who remained loyal to 3.x, there were those who sought to update and further clarify the 3.x into a new generation of d20 game system while preserving the openness of 3.x and eventually produced Pathfinder and Savage Lands and all the other variations out there. And few of these were minded to buy 4e products, and even fewer after purchasing the new game’s core rules and discovering that the spirit of openness that had characterized the game had been resoundingly ignored.

So far as these people were concerned, New certainly did not necessarily mean better. They went looking for the familiar, creating a demand – and some people were smart enough to fill that demand.

At the same time, 4e represented the ultimate achievement for those who wanted written rules and game balance and everything in black-and-white. Most of the criticism at the time seemed to focus on trivial manifestations such as the absence of gnomes or some such, while ignoring the deeper issue, and because that issue went unaddressed, even attempts to placate the complainers had little-to-no effect. Hasbro had what they wished for in the first place – but the result was hardly a resounding success on the scale of the heady 3.x days.

In part, this was because the licensing was so restrictive that it virtually penalized anyone wishing to publish an authorized 4e supplement, while Hasbro made darned sure that no-one went around publishing unofficial ones. In fact, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve seen more than half-a-dozen 3rd party supplements for 4e in total. Many of the companies that signed up to the restrictive programme tied their fortunes to it being a success – and went down with the ship, as a very large market segment stayed away in droves.

DnDNext: The Second Coming?

So now, WOTC are back to try again. Full of Mea Culpa’s for past sins (and rightfully so), they are looking to try and recapture at least some of the market that deserted them with the ill-judged release of 4e and one flawed plan after another that followed. Who can blame them?

But it does them no good to try and recapture the core 3.x/d20 crowd, there are other games out there now to cater to their wants and needs. Their only hope is to find something that might hold an even greater appeal, and that’s to recapture the spirit of independence, fun, and freedom that preceded the 3.x edition. That means harkening back to 2nd Ed, and to AD&D before that.

Not to emulate the past, or simply reprint it, or to ignore the mistakes that were made back then and all the lessons learned about game design since – but to recapture that spirit and embed it into a new generation of rules that would contain something that would appeal to everyone. If they are at all realistic, they would know that this will be impossible to achieve completely; the goal is to see how close to this ideal they can come.

Modern mechanics with the old-style sensibilities and freedom – that’s the primary goal.

So, what if they succeed?

Let’s be honest, here: Each of the disparate niche markets – 4e, Pathfinder, etc – has its die-hards who will not switch loyalties, no matter what. Some of these felt betrayed by WOTC when 4e was released, others feel burned by the fact that DnDNext will not be 100% 4e compatible. Heck, there are still a few die-hard AD&D and 2nd Ed players out there.

This market share is lost, and will not be recaptured. The rest are swinging voters, who could be swayed by a good product, with varying degrees of resistance. Some will be exceedingly reluctant, either due to past disputes with the approach of WOTC/Hasbro, while others will automatically sign up simply because it’s the latest, and (theoretically, in their minds), the greatest.

The real area for disagreement is over the relative sizes of these fractional markets. No-one has any data on which to base reasonable estimates, so we are equally ignorant, and anyone’s guess is as good as anyone else. What can be said definitively is that the new game cannot be perfect (nothing made by humans ever is) and therefore it will not succeed in capturing the entirety of the possible market share, even excluding those who will stand by their current systems of choice.

What, then, are the standards by which success can be guaged? The minimum standard of success has to be sales in excess of those for the all-too-divisive 4e. No matter by how little, ANY increase on that measure has to represent not only forgiveness of past sins but redemption and absolution. It will mean that WOTC will have more than replaced the sales lost to the 4e die-hards, and those will have to have come from elsewhere – in other words, be fans recaptured from other market segments. Anything better than a break even represents a success.

With Pathfinder supplements now out-selling 4e, the next benchmark has to be reclaiming the lost number one slot – not for the core rules, or even the first extra-game supplement or two, but with the third or the fourth. Sustained good sales will indicate that they have not only recaptured lost market share, they have recaptured the loyalties of those gamers. Achieving this will state that the new game is on a solid foundation.

Beyond these minimum standards, any improvement has to be considered a noteworthy success, and the sky is the limit.

And, if they are less than completely successful?

An awful lot will depend on WOTC’s unreliable – to say the least – love/hate relationship with third party publishers. Driving them off was literally the killing the goose that layed the golden eggs, causing a dramatic decline in public acceptance of 4e. Consider that every 3rd party product not only mandated the sale of copies of the core rules from WOTC, but provided free advertising for the official product; and, by refreshing and invigorating the market, kept demand for WOTC’s own products high. If DnDNext is to have any serious hope of exceeding those bare minimum standards of success, they must recapture the attention and affiliation of third party publishers. This is one promise that they have made to the market in general, but we are – quite obviously – a long way short of seeing any details as yet.

The first indicator of how well WOTC think they have done will be those detailed licenses. If they have backslid into the arrogance of old, these will be deeply restrictive and DnDNext will be dead in the water, awaiting only the last rites. If these are less than generous, but still workable, then the question of ultimate success will linger, unanswered, until the game actually goes on sale; but it will show some hesitation and uncertainty about their success. But if they are as generous and open as the original OGL, then it will show two things: that WOTC have, indeed, learned from the mistakes of the past, and that they are genuinely confident in the success of their product.

The Message For Now

The point that I am hoping to get across right now is that it is far too early to be passing judgment. DnDNext is still a work in development; it cannot be measured against finished products, for this is holding it to an unfair standard. And, if we don’t know what it is that we are judging, it is impossible to predict how successful it will be in the open marketplace. It is fair to predict that WOTC’s rivals will not let go of their market share without a fight – but a single misstep in that defense will have massive repercussions. All we can say for certain is that exciting times for the gaming industry lie ahead…

So, getting back to the question at hand

“Old-school” gaming can mean many things to many different people. To those viewing it with a negative perspective, it’s easy to accentuate the negative connotations of the term. To those viewing it with a positive disposition, it is all too easy to see only the beneficial aspects that have become muted or lost in recent generations of game. The term itself is so general that it can be twisted to whatever meaning the speaker desires. It is therefore neither good nor evil, neither positive or negative, but is the compound of many different concepts, each of which beings its own benefits and has its own price to exact. If the benefits outweigh the cost, then it is a positive contribution; if not, then the concept should be abandoned.

This is where the lessons learned in more modern gaming times have their part to play. It may be that the price that in the past was associated with a given benefit is no longer mandated, that we have found a better way to achieve an end. It may, in short, be possible to salvage that which would otherwise be abandoned. The second question that must be asked in the design process is whether or not something should be salvaged just because it can be. For those expecting any one game system to be all things to all gamers, they are doomed to be disappointed.

The ambition of uniting the best of the past with the lessons of recent times is a laudable one. But those who focus on the negatives are actively undermining the prospects of success, poisoning the atmosphere with small-minded criticisms that are unworthy of them, and of the ambition itself, whether out of pettiness, or bitterness, or resentment; mistrust, or ill-will, or vanity; genuine concern, or sincere doubt, or peer pressure. It is good to be ambitious, and to attempt to create something that is better than what has gone before. They may fail, but if they do, at least I will be able to say that it was not because I undermined their attempts at doing so. The next time you sound off about the difficulties faced by the designers at WOTC, whatever you may think of them personally, pause for a moment and ask yourself whether you are really saving “roleplaying as we know it” by doing so. In years to come, will you really be proud of your behavior? Will you remember with pride the support you gave to the ambition, regardless of the outcome? Or will you remember being a naysayer, a critic, a cynic, a prophet of doom – an enemy of the goal of bettering the roleplaying game?

Regardless of the success or failure of the endeavor, I can be proud of the part I’ve played in the attempt. Can others say the same?

On Monday, I attempted to post the third part of the current series on alternate damage-handling systems for 3.x. Unfortunately, time ran out when I was only half-done…

A quick refresher on where we stand. There are flaws in the system of progression for healing spells that result in an unacceptable degree of overlap, especially when it comes to higher-level healing spells like Cure Critical Wounds. To correct and overcome this, a revised progression structure was created that does far more healing per spell – with promises that this would make sense by the end of the article.

This revised progression can be summed up in these tables:
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1d4 – – – – 1 1d4 d6 – – – 2 1d4 d6 + 1 – – – 3 1d4 d6 + 2 d8 + 5 – – 4 1d4 2d6 + 2 d8 + 6 – – 5 1d4 2d6 + 3 2d8 + 6 d10 + 12 – 6 1d4 2d6 + 4 2d8 + 7 2d10 + 12 – 7 1d4 3d6 + 4 2d8 + 8 2d10 + 13 d12 + 27 8 1d4 3d6 + 5 3d8 + 8 2d10 + 14 d12 + 28 9 1d4 3d6 + 6 3d8 + 9 3d10 + 14 d12 + d6 + 28 10 1d4 4d6 + 6 3d8 + 10 3d10 + 15 d12 + d6 + 29 11 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 10 3d10 + 16 d12 + d6 + 30 12 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 11 4d10 + 16 2d12 + d6 + 30 13 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 17 2d12 + d6 + 31 14 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 18 2d12 + d6 + 32 15 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 18 2d12 + 2d6 + 32 16 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 19 2d12 + 2d6 + 33 17 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 20 2d12 + 2d6 + 34 18 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 21 3d12 + 2d6 + 34 19 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 22 3d12 + 2d6 + 35 20 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 2d6 + 36 21 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 36 22 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 37 23 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 38 24 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 38 25 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 39 26 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 40 27 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 28 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 29 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 30 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 …and so on.

 

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 / 2.5 / 4 – – – – 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 1 / 3.5 / 6 – – – 2 1 / 2.5 / 4 2 / 4.5 / 7 – – – 3 1 / 2.5 / 4 3 / 5.5 / 8 6 / 9.5 / 13 – – 4 1 / 2.5 / 4 4 / 9 / 14 7 / 10.5 / 14 – – 5 1 / 2.5 / 4 5 / 10 / 15 8 / 15 / 22 13 / 17.5 / 22 – 6 1 / 2.5 / 4 6 / 11 / 16 9 / 16 / 23 14 / 23 / 32 – 7 1 / 2.5 / 4 7 / 14.5 / 22 10 / 17 / 24 15 / 24 / 33 28 / 29.5 / 39 8 1 / 2.5 / 4 8 / 15.5 / 23 11 / 21.5 / 32 16 / 25 / 34 29 / 30.5 / 40 9 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 12 / 22.5 / 33 17 / 30.5 / 44 30 / 38 / 46 10 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 13 / 23.5 / 34 18 / 31.5 / 45 31 / 39 / 47 11 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 14 / 28 / 42 19 / 32.5 / 46 32 / 40 / 48 12 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 15 / 29 / 43 20 / 38 / 56 33 / 46.5 / 60 13 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 21 / 39 / 57 34 / 47.5 / 61 14 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 22 / 40 / 58 35 / 48.5 / 62 15 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 25 / 46.5 / 68 36 / 52 / 68 16 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 26 / 47.5 / 69 37 / 53 / 69 17 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 27 / 48.5 / 70 38 / 54 / 70 18 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 28 / 49.5 / 71 39 / 60.5 / 82 19 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 29 / 50.5 / 72 40 / 61.5 / 83 20 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 41 / 62.5 / 84 21 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 42 / 66 / 90 22 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 43 / 67 / 91 23 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 44 / 68 / 92 24 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 45 / 74.5 / 104 25 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 46 / 75.5 / 105 26 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 47 / 76.5 / 106 27 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 28 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 29 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 30 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 …and so on.

 
So, if everyone has caught up, let’s plunge onward…

Photo by Sura Nualpradid, provided free by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Healing Differential

The key principle of all the alternate damage handling systems has been to make the significance of the different healing spells to something more substantial than a simple numeric variation on the amount of damage healed. This is achieved by setting in place definitions of “Light Wounds”, “Moderate Wounds”, “Serious Wounds” and “Critical Wounds” so that the lesser healing spells cannot cure greater injuries.

One of the consequences of this proposal is that a cleric is obliged to stock more healing spells – at least one of each variety to which he has access. But this has an unwanted consequence – that of making the cleric, more than ever before, nothing more than a “Walking Drip Bottle”, as one of my friends used to describe it disparagingly. By consuming more of the cleric’s spell slots with healing spells, the variety and depth of clerics is arguably diminished.

(There is a counter-arguement that suggests that by leaving clerics less scope for flexibility, they are forced to make choices as to which spells to carry that actually result in greater distinctiveness from one to another. While there is something to that, it presupposes that all clerical magic has equal utility and hence that there are no ‘ideal choices’ for the remaining spell slots – an assumption that I would dispute.)

It follows that the best way to redress the balance and restore flexibility to the cleric is to make each healing spell more effective, so that the cleric doesn’t need to pack as many of them, leaving spell slots free for other varieties of spell. This should counterbalance the need to carry more healing spells because some of them won’t work in any given post-combat situation, resulting in a relatively unchanged game balance.

The only alternative that comes to mind is a slightly more generous rewording of the rules governing Spontaneous Casting to permit any clerical spell to be Spontaneously Cast as a Cure spell of equal or lesser spell level. But that has other undesirable consequences, since such spells inflict damage on creatures harmed by positive energy, fundamentally weakening an entire class of creature relative to one character type only – without reducing the xp value of such creatures. This represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power between heaven and hell. Either such creatures receive some compensatory ability that only affects clerical spellcasters or the GMs campaign must factor that balance-shift into its background and setting. Of course, if that sort of change in balance is appropriate to the campaign that you want to run – I could argue that the results are more suitable for younger players – then no such rebalancing is needed. But, in general, the solution that has more limited consequences and fewer impacts on game balance is the ‘more powerful healing spell’ solution.

The Healing Imperative: General Principles Of Wound Differentiation

There are four main variations under the umbrella of “The Healing Imperative” system (and innumerable sub-variations). There is also a fifth approach that doesn’t completely fit these general principles, which I’ll describe at the end of the article, and which was a compromise adopted in the Shards Of Divinity campaign when the full Healing Imperative rules could not be completed in time for play to commence.

The four variations all rest on the principle of setting the thresholds that indicate the different wound types according to the healing power of their namesake cure spell. In other words, “Cure Light Wounds” is used to define what a Light Wound is, “Cure Moderate Wounds” is used to define what a Moderate Wound is, and so on.

Each has deeper implications for the look-and-feel of combat, for the consequences in combat readiness (especially at low-to-medium character levels), and for the relationship between wound levels and for the “reality” that they supposedly reflect.

The four variations are:

• The ‘maximum of the minimums’ variation;
• The ‘minimum of the maximums’ variation;
• The ‘average of the extremes’ variation; and
• The ‘average of now’ variation.

but I prefer to use the less mechanically-descriptive and more colorful titles,

• The ‘You look like you’ve been in a fight’ Variation;
• The ‘Exceptional Wounds for Exceptional Blows’ Variation;
• The ‘Only A Flesh Wound’ Variation; and
• ‘The Proportionate Response’ Variation;

respectively.

Variation #1: “You Look Like You’ve Been In A Fight”: The maximum of the minimums

In this variation, the maximum healing result that can be achieved with a given healing spell at the level it is first bestowed defines the threshold for the next higher wound type, and each individual attack is resolved separately. If a fighter has 3 attack rolls in a combat round, he can inflict three wounds in that round. The thresholds are:
 

Wound Type Damage Range Typical Description Bruise 1 – 3 Bruising Minor Wound 4 – 5 Nicks & Abrasions Light Wound 6 – 12 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound 13 – 21 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound 22 – 38 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound 39 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
Most wounds will be bruises, minor wounds, and light wounds, with the occasional moderate wound from a weapon that does a lot of damage. A serious level of magic in a weapon (+3 to +5) will usually carry its damage up one or two categories when coupled with an appropriate strength modifier, but the really dangerous wounds will only result from a critical hit. The result is a plethora of bruises, nicks, cuts, abrasions, and cracked and fractured bones. At low character levels, serious and critical wounds will tend to linger and accumulate, slowly eroding the character’s capacity to engage in combat.

Combat with a more powerful opponent becomes far more serious, and knowing when to back away from a fight becomes a survival trait. Hit-and-run tactics by stronger opponents can be effectively used to wear down an opposition until they can no longer defend themselves against even a weaker foe. Life becomes much more dangerous for an adventurer.

Under the surface, there is a lot going on here. It takes account of the combat effectiveness of both attacker (attack, damage) and the defender (AC). Alter just one of these – by wearing better armor, for example – and the wounds that are received in battle from the same opponent will change in pattern, frequency, and character. This variation has a lot of “Die Hard” feeling to it, and yet at the same time there is a flavor reminiscent of very old-school game mechanics in the resulting behavior.

By providing the above table to the players and having them interpret each attack that they make, it forces them to use more narrative terminology to describe the results of their attacks – instead of “I hit for 14 points”, a player would announce “I inflict a moderate wound for 11 points” or (even better) “I hack at his arm for 11 points”. The defender simply keeps a tally of the number of each type of wound received and the total damage that has been inflicted to date (for reasons that will become clear a little later).

The downside: because each attack must be interpreted, this choice can slow combat down even if that interpretation is quick and easy.

Variation #2: “Exceptional Wounds for Exceptional Blows”: The minimum of the maximums

This brings us to variation number two, in which the minimum healing result for the maximum effectiveness of a healing spell defines the threshold of the wound type received, and in which the total damage inflicted in a round is compared to this total.

The logic runs like this: if each attack roll represents a vast number of attempted blows, as described in the rules, most of which fail but some of which succeed, then all the attacks carried out in a round collectively can be used to indicate the severity of the sum consequence of that attack.

The thresholds, accordingly, are:
 

Wound Type Damage Range Typical Description Bruise 1 – 3 Bruising Minor Wound 4 – 8 Nicks & Abrasions Light Wound 9 – 15 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound 16 – 30 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound 31 – 48 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound 49 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
This makes more damaging wounds rarer until characters start getting multiple attacks in a round, when the cumulative damage inflicted can begin to really ramp up. It results in more frequent serious wound types, but fewer overall wounds to keep track of. It takes into account all the combat factors listed earlier AND the number of attacks in a round overall. At low levels, a character can only expect to inflict light wounds, except on a critical (and often even then). As they learn (i.e. gain multiple attacks, each of which gains in likelyhood of success), first moderate and then serious wounds become routine.

It makes weapon enchantments even more significant – consider that a character with 2 attacks in a round using a +2 weapon effectively gets both an increased likelyhood of success on any given blow and an increased quantity of damage inflicted by each blow.

Once again, it is presumed that this table will be attached to each character sheet to make interpretation quick and easy. This approach is something of a compromise between Variation #1 and Variation #3, and is relatively flavor-neutral in most respects. It might seem that there is too large a jump when a character gets another attack in a round, but this is actually balanced by the unlikelihood of succeeding with those additional blows (at least at first).

Variation #3: “Only A Flesh Wound”: The average of the extremes

This variation is a little more artificial, averaging the minimum healing when the spell is first bestowed and the maximum possible healing when the spell caps out to define the thresholds. These are, once again, compared to the total damage inflicted by an attacker in each combat round. The threshold table that results is:
 

Wound Type Working Damage Range Typical Description Bruises & Minor Wounds — <5 Bruises, Nicks & Abrasions Light Wounds (1+24)/2 = 12.5 –> 13 6 – 25 Cuts (Stitchable) & Cracked Bones Moderate Wound (6+44)/2 = 25 26 – 42 Wounded Limbs & Fractures Serious Wound (13+73)/2 = 43 43 – 72 Torso Wounds & Compound Fractures Critical Wound (28+118)/2 = 73 73 + Deep Torso Wounds, Head Wounds, & Shattered Bones

 
Under this approach, wounds, and especially big wounds, become a lot less frequent. They are still possible, but only at high levels, or when there is a serious discrepancy between the power level of individual opponents. The result is an amplification of the consequences of individual power levels, a more epic feel as characters approach epic levels. At lower levels, even a critical hit is often not going to be enough to get out of light-wound territory – it will take two or more in a combat round.

A key difference is that it defines anything less than a light wound as being a minor wound. The result is a shorter, neater table. But this variation doesn’t work well at lower levels – most mages can be killed by “bruising, nicks and abrasions” for the first few character levels! Heck, even at 12th level, a mage with a -1 CON Bonus who has only average rolls for his hit points – something that becomes more likely with more dice rolled, remember – will only have 18 hit points!

The only way to rationalize this – and it IS rationalizing it – is to assume that low-HP characters are so weak that even a light wound or a collection of bruises and minor cuts can so impair them in combat that they cannot effectively defend themselves against a killing blow, effectively a coup-de-grace in the middle of a combat round. This starts to move us back into the territory of “wounds as a measure of helplessness”, which is where we started.

Variation #4: “The Proportionate Response”: The average of now

All three of the variations presented thus far reduce the effectiveness of an encounter with many creatures of lesser capabilities, to a somewhat varying extent – least impact to greatest – while increasing the effectiveness of encounters with fewer opponents of greater individual effectiveness. While this may be desirable to a GM, it may equally be undesirable; this thought prompted me to look outside the box and find a fourth option that does not suffer from this potentially undesirable consequence.

The resulting approach is seriously metagame, in some respects: it links the degree of wounding to the ability to heal of the party cleric – assuming the party have one. If they don’t, use their average character level as though they DID have a party cleric. By setting the thresholds to what the cleric can heal, which are – at least in theory – proportional to the damage the party can inflict and the damage they can absorb, wound categories remain relevant throughout the adventuring life of the party. No rationalizing of “bruises, nicks, & abrasions can kill a mage” required.

Here is a compendium of the resulting tables (running across the page and not down for practicality reasons):
 

Cleric Level or equivalent Damage to achieve wound type Minor Wound Light Wound Medium Wound Serious Wound Critical Wound 0 <4 4 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 1 <4 4 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 2 <5 5 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 3 <6 6 – 9 10 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 4 <9 9 – 10 11 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 5 <10 10 – 14 15 – 17 18 – 29 30 + 6 <11 11 – 15 16 – 22 23 – 29 30 + 7 <15 15 – 16 17 – 23 24 – 29 30 + 8 <16 16 – 21 22 – 24 25 – 30 31 + 9 <17 17 – 22 23 – 30 31 – 37 38 + 10 <17 17 – 23 24 – 31 32 – 38 39 + 11 <17 17 – 27 28 – 32 33 – 39 40 + 12 <17 17 – 28 29 – 37 38 – 46 47 + 13 <17 17 – 29 30 – 38 39 – 47 48 + 14 <17 17 – 29 30 – 39 40 – 48 49 + 15 <17 17 – 29 30 – 46 47 – 51 52 + 16 <17 17 – 29 30 – 47 48 – 52 53 + 17 <17 17 – 29 30 – 48 49 – 53 54 + 18 <17 17 – 29 30 – 49 50 – 60 61 + 19 <17 17 – 29 30 – 50 51 – 61 62 + 20 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 62 63 + 21 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 65 66 + 22 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 66 67 + 23 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 67 68 + 24 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 74 75 + 25 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 75 76 + 26 <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 76 77 + 27+ <17 17 – 29 30 – 51 52 – 82 83 + Typical Description: Bruising, nicks, & abrasions Cuts & cracked bones Wounded limbs & fractures Torso wounds & compound fractures Deep torso wounds, head wounds, & shattered bones

 
The strength of this approach is also its weakness: the table of thresholds has to be updated every time the cleric goes up a character level (or the average level of the party increases by 1, if they don’t have a cleric). Admittedly, this won’t happen all the time, but it will happen often enough to be a pain in the posterior.

In theory, I like this approach very much. In practice, it won’t wash – at least for me. Other GMs might disagree.

I would certainly like this variation a lot more if it were married to an XP-system variant such as the one I described in Objective-Oriented Experience Points which completely removes the direct connection between success in combat and xp earned, because this would enable the GM to directly control when the tables change.

And yet, there is something philosophically profound about this approach. It is based in part on the (subtle and hidden) premise that the total separation between life and death doesn’t change as characters advance in levels, it just gets subdivided into smaller and smaller pieces (this is another of those eternal debates that have been cropping up since the early days of D&D – usually in discussions about falling damage – and never resolved). I say in part, because this is the situation that the table trends towards and eventually achieves; but at early levels, it implies that there are some demonstrable improvements in the ability to survive at lower levels, but that these soon come to an end.

Healing Old Wounds

It may have been noted that earlier I said to simply keep a tally of the number of wounds of each type and the total hit points lost, rather than tracking the damage associated with each wound. Not only is this simpler to perform during battle, minimizing unwanted delays in combat, but it ties in directly with the way wounds are healed.

Any wound can seemingly be healed with any healing spell. Apply enough Cure Light Wounds and you will heal the hit point loss; but healing the wound itself requires a bit more.

• A Heal spell heals all wounds of any type as though the character had spent the time to fully recover with appropriate medical support. See also the section on Lost Limbs & Organs below.
• A Cure Critical Wounds Heals one critical wound, 2 serious wounds, 4 moderate wounds, 6 light wounds, and 8 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Serious Wounds Heals one serious wound, 2 moderate wounds, 4 light wounds, and 6 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Moderate Wounds Heals one moderate wound, 2 light wounds, and 4 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).
• Cure Light Wounds Heals one light wound, and 2 minor wounds (without healing the cosmetic effects of such wounds, which will disappear in time as they would, normally, or until the target is the subject of a Heal).

Unhealed wounds that have been Cured heal naturally over time. 1 day heals all minor wounds (1 week removes all cosmetic effects). Light wounds heal at the rate of 1 per day, a Moderate wound becomes a Light wound in 2 days, a Serious Wound becomes a Moderate Wound in 4 days, and a Critical Wound becomes a Serious Wound in 8 days. Except for Minor wounds, which can heal concurrently with any other type of injury, these effects do not occur concurrently, but happen in order from Light to Critical, and happen one wound at a time.

Unhealed wounds that have not been Cured (except for Minor wounds) require twice this time. This healing is concurrent with the recovery of hit points each day.

Reopening Old Wounds

Until a wound is Healed, strenuous activity may partially reopen the wound, while combat-level activities may fully reopen the wound.

A strenuous activity is designated as any activity taking up more than 8 hours in a day, or more than 2 hours at a stretch, or requiring a roll of any kind, other than those listed as combat-level activities. The intervals between such activities must be at least half as long as the maximum, and the character will still require their usual amount of rest each night.

A combat-level activity is any activity involving a weapon or something that can be used as a weapon – whether that’s scything wheat, digging a hole, chopping down a tree, repairing armor, or actual combat. It doesn’t matter how long it persists, a single round is enough.

Partially reopening a wound inflicts damage as though the character were the subject of an Inflict [x] Wound spell of one lower category than the wound, with a Caster Level equal to the character’s level. In other words, roll for the damage as though it were a healing spell of one lower wound type.

Fully reopening a wound inflicts damage as though the character were the subject of an Inflict [x] Wound spell of the same category as the wound, with a Caster Level equal to the character’s level. Note that this can cause more damage than the character originally received.

The Significance

It is therefore no longer enough for a character to swallow healing potions and receive multiple Cure Light Wounds spells to recover after combat. On the surface, the character may be healed – but the sinews are still weak and poorly bound together. Even the march back to town, unless carefully managed, with adequate time to rest, can leave the character as weak as he was at the end of combat – despite having been fully healed.

At the same time, Cure spells are not a waste of time. They not only replace lost hit points and accelerate the healing process, they Heal outright a certain number and level of Wounds so that the character does not need to worry about reopening those wounds.

Lost/Shattered Limbs & Organs

A Heal spell restores function to any damaged organ, but cannot restore one that was fully lost or destroyed. Such loss or destruction usually means that the character has died during the inflicting of injury. Even a critical hit will not fully destroy an internal organ, that would require the character to experience something ‘special’. Arms and legs are not critical to survival in this way. Nevertheless, a Heal spell will restore a limb so damaged – if the limb is still available to be reattached with a Heal skill, or if a replacement can be salvaged from another body – even if it has begun to rot and decay.

Of course, grave-robbing in this fashion is – at best – morally questionable, and may be an alignment violation. Such healing tactics are generally decried as immoral and repugnant – but for those without scruples and the wherewithal to fund the treatment, it’s often a valid – and desirable – choice.

Impure Healing

Another nasty wrinkle that can be contemplated is the notion of Impure Healing. Potions contain biological elements, and these constituents can be poisonous or carry illness. Those that are poisonous are obvious after the briefest tasting – real poisonous potions (ones that can be used to poison food etc) don’t give the game away with an obviously foul taste. But those which carry illnesses and disease can be harder to detect.

In most such potions, the active biological agents will eventually die for lack of nutrients, leaving the potions safe to consume. Characters would have to be unfortunate indeed to become ill after using one. For this reason, potions are normally not ‘brewed fresh’ but are left in storage for a period of months or years. None of that is true in the case of Healing potions, which Heal the illness just as they will the character who consumes them; they can remain infectious for decades, perhaps centuries or millennia.

For the record, I got this idea from the 5th season episode of Stargate SG-1, The Tomb.

The Fifth Solution

As I explained earlier, all of the above wasn’t quite finished when the time came to start play in the Shards Of Divinity campaign. As a result, I had to come up with an interim solution, and that solution may suit some GMs better than the ones I have described already. In the interests of completeness of discussion of the topic, I therefore present this fifth solution.

A Critical Hit Inflicts A Critical Wound

I started from the premise spelt out in the subsection title above. I then redefined a critical hit as “any hit that exceeds the target required to hit the opponent by an amount equal to or greater than the critical hit range, or which has a natural roll within the critical hit range.”

That in turn permitted a definition for a serious wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 5 less than that required for a critical hit”), a moderate wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 10 less than that required for a critical hit”), and a light wound (“results from a hit that succeeds by an amount 15 less than that required for a critical hit”).

That all sounds complicated – it’s not.

If you have a critical hit threshold of 20, then:

• You inflict a critical wound on any hit that succeeds by 20 or more, or that is a critical hit;
• You inflict a serious wound on any hit that succeeds by 15-19;
• You inflict a moderate wound on any hit that succeeds by 10-14;
• You inflict a light wound on any hit that succeeds by 5-9; and,
• You inflict a minor wound on any hit that succeeds by 1-4.

If you have a critical hit threshold of 19, then:

• You inflict a critical wound on any hit that succeeds by 19 or more, or that is a critical hit;
• You inflict a serious wound on any hit that succeeds by 14-18;
• You inflict a moderate wound on any hit that succeeds by 9-13;
• You inflict a light wound on any hit that succeeds by 4-8; and,
• You inflict a minor wound on any hit that succeeds by 1-3.

…and so on.

In every other way, this variant operates exactly the same way as the others. I suspect that this option might appeal to GMs who desire a bit of elegance in their games :)

The impact on play in Shards of Divinity

To date, the impact on play has been minimal. That’s a consequence of the adventures that I’ve been running, which haven’t had a lot of traditional “fight the monster” encounters, and of the fact that I started the other characters at a higher character level than the starring character (who has been given other advantages in compensation). What combat there has been has been more metaphor and mind-game in the land of the Fey, battles of wills and illusion, submission and domination, than traditional in nature. In theory, the characters should now be approaching 11th or 12th level; in practice, they are about 18th. That’s not a consequence of this combat variant, that’s the result of a number of other circumstances. Unfortunately, the combination of these facts and the interim rules above means that there will be minimal opportunity to test these combat variants properly, ie at low-to-non-epic levels.

All those caveats notwithstanding, the PCs have evidenced a relative reluctance to engage in direct combat, avoiding it whenever possible in preference to non-combat solutions – is that the consequence of these rules? I don’t know – but if so, it’s a good one.

Photo by Cralos Porto, provided free by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the first two parts of this series we examined alternative approaches to the simulation of injuries that were written cold, without the benefit of actual use in play. In this third and final part, I will describe a third – but this is an update on a variation that I have actually used (and use) in one of my campaigns, Shards Of Divinity. The updates will represent the benefit of hindsight and actual playtesting.

I started work on the third and final part of this series expecting it to be a big article, but the size has proven to be TOO big for one post. After some hurried rescheduling, I’ve divided it in two – the first half today, and the second half for this Thursday. I would normally rewrite the article to separate the two parts more completely, but attempts to do so in this case were less than successful. So, unfortunately, part 1 will start lines of discussion that won’t be completed until later this week. Sorry about that…

Although I hadn’t noted it when first drafting the series, it worked out that the first variant lowered the fantasy element in favor of a more gritty, reality-based environment, the second was relatively neutral in that respect, and this is something of a high-fantasy concept.

In practice, the Healing Imperative approach, also referred to as the Differential Damage approach, shares a number of concepts with the earlier alternatives, as you’ll see when we get into specifics. But I wanted to start this article by drawing the reader’s attention to a couple of larger issues. In particular, I wanted to emphasize how changing the damage handling system even minimally alters the look and feel of combat within the game, and of its consequences, and by extension, alters the atmosphere of the campaign.

Of course, this is only part of the story of distinguishing one campaign from another; you need the encounters and adventures that you design to do their share as well, and we could argue about which is the dominant factor until the turn of the century without settling anything. With everything working in harmony, these small differences compound and synergize and deliver a gaming experience that is both memorable and unique.

The point that I want to make is that the standard rules are just that, a common standard that is functional and capable of delivering most of the unique flavor of a campaign to the players, but their very ubiquity and generic capability blunts the final all-important few percentage points of distinctiveness.

The Flavor Experiment

I once ran an experiment, taking the one basic and generic adventure and running it using three or four different game systems; while the plot didn’t change, the mindset that the players carried into the game did and that made a major difference.

Part of the concept of this experiment grew out of discussions with a fellow-GM about convention adventure modules and how different players could take the same basic adventure and make it completely different by virtue of their different play styles, and how two GMs could take the same adventure and put completely different spins on it because of their own GMing style. I wanted to minimize these variables to focus on the consequences of changing only the rules system, so for the most part the same set of players were used throughout. The results were compromised, to some extent, by additional GMing experience and (more importantly) by contamination from player foreknowledge – an experience that eventually played a key role in the methods I devised for creating mysteries, described in my recent articles The Butler Did It and The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch which provides examples of the techniques described in the first article.

The point is that the same adventure will seem completely different in tone and dynamics when it is played with different game systems – the systems I used were AD&D, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls, and Chivalry & Sorcery. Plans to repeat the experiment with Empire Of The Petal Throne and GURPS Fantasy fell apart when I didn’t have the time to learn those rules systems or the finances to seek out copies of the rules, but by then the principle results were well-established. Those results have formed the foundations of my perception of House Rules as a necessary medium for the actualizing of campaign concepts into game mechanics ever since.

Image by jscreationzs, provided free by Free Digital Photos .net

The Healing Foundation

Which brings us to the core subject of this article – the “Healing Imperative” variant on the d20 damage-handling game mechanic. The key difference between this and earlier systems is that instead of making the differential between different wound types a function of the character’s total hit point capacity, it distinguishes types of injury by the amount of damage inflicted in a single blow – making it more akin to the “internal injury threshold” mechanics presented in part one, which were based (in part) on this variant system.

Rather than basing the point of distinction between types of wounds on the total damage inflicted, this goes to the source – the healing spells themselves. But before we can get into that in detail, we first have to address a strange anomaly in the effects of these spells:

The Inconsistency Of Cure [X] Wounds

When you compare the healing effects of the different clerical spells available, some strange anomalies present themselves. Compare them in the following table:
 

Spell Spell Level Base Healing Progression With Class Levels Cap Cure Minor Wounds 0 0d8 +1 per caster level +1 Cure Light Wounds 1 1d8 +1 per caster level +5 Cure Moderate Wounds 2 2d8 +1 per caster level +10 Cure Serious Wounds 3 3d8 +1 per caster level +15 Cure Critical Wounds 4 4f8 +1 per caster level +20

 
This is obviously the way the designers thought of the spells when they were designing them, it’s a nice orderly progression and looks very rational on the page.

But watch what happens when we compare the range of possible results for a given character level:
 

Caster Level Results Range (min / ave / max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 1 / 4.5 / 8 – – – 2 1 2 / 5.5 / 9 – – – 3 1 3 / 6.5 / 10 2 / 9 / 16 – – 4 1 4 / 7.5 / 11 3 / 10 / 17 – – 5 1 5 / 8.5 / 12 4 / 11 / 18 3 / 13.5 / 24 – 6 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 5 / 12 / 19 4 / 14.5 / 25 – 7 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 6 / 13 / 20 5 / 15.5 / 26 4 / 18 / 32 8 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 7 / 14 / 21 6 / 16.5 / 27 5 / 19 / 33 9 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 8 / 15 / 22 7 / 17.5 / 28 6 / 20 / 34 10 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16 / 23 8 / 18.5 / 29 7 / 21 / 35 11 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 10 / 17 / 24 9 / 19.5 / 30 8 / 22 / 36 12 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 11 / 18 / 25 10 / 20.5 / 31 9 / 23 / 37 13 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 11 / 21.5 / 32 10 / 24 / 38 14 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 12 / 22.5 / 33 11 / 25 / 39 15 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 13 / 23.5 / 34 12 / 26 / 40 16 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 14 / 24.5 / 35 13 / 27 / 41 17 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 15 / 25.5 / 36 14 / 28 / 42 18 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 16 / 26.5 / 37 15 / 29 / 43 19 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 17 / 27.5 / 38 16 / 30 / 44 20 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 17 / 31 / 45 21 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 18 / 32 / 46 22 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 19 / 22 / 47 23 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 20 / 34 / 48 24 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 21 / 35 / 49 25 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 22 / 36 / 50 26 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 23 / 37 / 51 27 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 28 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 29 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 30 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 …and so on.

 
Do you see the problem now? The 3.x spell system is predicated on the concept that 2nd level spells are more powerful than 1st level spells – so why is it possible for the 2nd level spell, Cure Moderate Wounds, to do less healing than a Cure Light Wounds (Caster Levels 3-5)? And the same problem holds true for the 3rd level spell, Cure Serious Wounds, relative to Cure Moderate Wounds (Caster Levels 5-13); and for the 4th level spell, Cure Critical Wounds, relative to Cure Serious Wounds (Caster Levels 7-20). Until a spell achieves its cap bonus and drops out of the running, the minimum effect of the more powerful spell is always 1 point less than that of the more powerful spell.

Similarly, until a spell achieves the cap, the average result of the more powerful spell is less than the maximum that the lower-level spell can achieve, and this difference grows with increasing spell level. This might be comparing apples and oranges – but statistics shows that the more dice are involved, the more likely it is that the result will be close to the average. That means that these comparisons are absolutely reflective of the likely outcomes.

Rationalizing Healing

Fixing the minimums is easy – we just need to add a progressive bonus to the amount of healing each spell. +2 to CMW, +4 to CSW, and +6 to CCW will fix that problem. Fixing the second problem is a little trickier; we need to increase the variability of the results without increasing the overall healing amounts very much. Instead of throwing more dice at the progression, a better answer would be to adjust the dice size with increasing spell levels, incorporate the progressive bonus, and then tweak the results as necessary to give a rational progression of minimums, averages, and maximums.

So, let’s try this:

• 1d4 for CMinW.
• 1d6 for CLW, +1d6 at levels 4, 7, and 10, and +1 every caster level from 2nd except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +6.
• 1d8+5 for CMW, +1d8 at levels 5, 8, and 11, and +1 at per caster level from 4th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +12.
• 1d10+12 for CSW, +1d10 at levels 6, 9, 12, and 15, and +1 per caster level from 6th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +23.
• 1d12+27 for CCW, +1d6 at levels 9, 15, and 21, +1d12 at levels 12, 18, 24, and 27, and +1 per caster level from 8th except those in which a dice is gained or transformed, to a maximum of +40.

Or, to put it into a table:
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1d4 – – – – 1 1d4 d6 – – – 2 1d4 d6 + 1 – – – 3 1d4 d6 + 2 d8 + 5 – – 4 1d4 2d6 + 2 d8 + 6 – – 5 1d4 2d6 + 3 2d8 + 6 d10 + 12 – 6 1d4 2d6 + 4 2d8 + 7 2d10 + 12 – 7 1d4 3d6 + 4 2d8 + 8 2d10 + 13 d12 + 27 8 1d4 3d6 + 5 3d8 + 8 2d10 + 14 d12 + 28 9 1d4 3d6 + 6 3d8 + 9 3d10 + 14 d12 + d6 + 28 10 1d4 4d6 + 6 3d8 + 10 3d10 + 15 d12 + d6 + 29 11 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 10 3d10 + 16 d12 + d6 + 30 12 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 11 4d10 + 16 2d12 + d6 + 30 13 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 17 2d12 + d6 + 31 14 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 4d10 + 18 2d12 + d6 + 32 15 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 18 2d12 + 2d6 + 32 16 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 19 2d12 + 2d6 + 33 17 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 20 2d12 + 2d6 + 34 18 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 21 3d12 + 2d6 + 34 19 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 22 3d12 + 2d6 + 35 20 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 2d6 + 36 21 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 36 22 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 37 23 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 3d12 + 3d6 + 38 24 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 38 25 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 39 26 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 4d12 + 3d6 + 40 27 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 28 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 29 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 30 1d4 4d6 + 6 4d8 + 12 5d10 + 23 5d12 + 3d6 + 40 …and so on.

 
This violates the nice, neat orderliness of the original table, but it should come closer to giving a rational progression of results. CLW now caps out at level 10 – it was level 9. CMW now caps at level 13, the same as it used to be. CSW now caps at level 20, the same as it used to do. CCW caps at level 27, also the same as it used to be. So there has been minimal change in that respect. In the critical caster level 7-20 range, there are (in general) more dice on the entries to the left than on the right – so lower level spells will deliver less healing but more reliability of result. Higher level spells appear have higher maximum results – but also greater variability. On average, healing results will have increased somewhat – but that will be counterbalanced by restricting the utility of individual spells, ie specifying that there are some injuries that can’t be healed so quickly, as will be seen in later sections. But there’s no way to check that this has solved the problems other than recalculating the minimums, averages, and maximums.
 

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 / 2.5 / 4 – – – – 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 1 / 3.5 / 6 – – – 2 1 / 2.5 / 4 2 / 4.5 / 7 – – – 3 1 / 2.5 / 4 3 / 5.5 / 8 6 / 9.5 / 13 – – 4 1 / 2.5 / 4 4 / 9 / 14 7 / 10.5 / 14 – – 5 1 / 2.5 / 4 5 / 10 / 15 8 / 15 / 22 13 / 17.5 / 22 – 6 1 / 2.5 / 4 6 / 11 / 16 9 / 16 / 23 14 / 23 / 32 – 7 1 / 2.5 / 4 7 / 14.5 / 22 10 / 17 / 24 15 / 24 / 33 28 / 29.5 / 39 8 1 / 2.5 / 4 8 / 15.5 / 23 11 / 21.5 / 32 16 / 25 / 34 29 / 30.5 / 40 9 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 12 / 22.5 / 33 17 / 30.5 / 44 30 / 38 / 46 10 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 13 / 23.5 / 34 18 / 31.5 / 45 31 / 39 / 47 11 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 14 / 28 / 42 19 / 32.5 / 46 32 / 40 / 48 12 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 15 / 29 / 43 20 / 38 / 56 33 / 46.5 / 60 13 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 21 / 39 / 57 34 / 47.5 / 61 14 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 22 / 40 / 58 35 / 48.5 / 62 15 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 25 / 46.5 / 68 36 / 52 / 68 16 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 26 / 47.5 / 69 37 / 53 / 69 17 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 27 / 48.5 / 70 38 / 54 / 70 18 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 28 / 49.5 / 71 39 / 60.5 / 82 19 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 29 / 50.5 / 72 40 / 61.5 / 83 20 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 41 / 62.5 / 84 21 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 42 / 66 / 90 22 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 43 / 67 / 91 23 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 44 / 68 / 92 24 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 45 / 74.5 / 104 25 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 46 / 75.5 / 105 26 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 47 / 76.5 / 106 27 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 28 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 29 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 30 1 / 2.5 / 4 9 / 16.5 / 24 16 / 30 / 44 30 / 51.5 / 73 48 / 83 / 118 …and so on.

 
Close examination of these results reveals five anomalous results:

• Caster Level 4, Cure Moderate Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Light Wounds. This is acceptable as the average result is still better for the higher level spell and the minimum much higher, so the supposedly more powerful spell actually IS still more powerful.
• Caster Level 5, Cure Serious Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Moderate Wounds. This is acceptable for exactly the same reasons as for the Caster Level 4 anomaly.
• At Caster Levels 15, 16, and 17, Cure Critical Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Serious Wounds. This is acceptable for the same reasons as for the previous anomalies.

This shows the degree of effort and complexity involved in ensuring that a fine-sounding principle or progression does not lead game designers to flawed ends.

Reality Check

The numbers shown for healing are much higher than those of the old system. Here’s a direct, spell-by-spell comparison, at caster level 12 (chosen randomly):
 

Spell Old New Cure Minor Wounds 1 1 / 2.5 / 4 Cure Light Wounds 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16.5 / 24 Cure Moderate Wounds 11 / 18 / 25 15 / 29 / 43 Cure Serious Wounds 10 / 20.5 / 31 20 / 38 / 56 Cure Critical Wounds 9 / 23 / 37 33 / 46 / 60

 
To see how reasonable these are, let’s consider the likely number of hit points that a character of 12th level will have (various classes). The panels in green highlight the values that have been found to be most probable for each class, through experience of the priorities for each class.
 

Class -1 CON Bon +0 CON Bon +1 CON Bon +2 CON Bon +3 CON Bon +4 CON Bon Barbarian 72 84 96 120 132 144 Bard 30 42 54 66 78 90 Cleric 42 54 66 78 90 102 Druid 42 54 66 78 90 102 Fighter 54 66 78 90 102 114 Monk 42 54 66 78 90 102 Paladin 54 66 78 90 102 114 Ranger 42 54 66 78 90 102 Rogue 30 42 54 66 78 90 Sorceror 18 30 42 54 66 78 Wizard 18 30 42 54 66 78

 
So a revised CCW is barely able to fully heal a fairly typical 12th-level Wizard with an average result. For most classes, it would require two such spells to fully heal a character who was near-death – perhaps a CCW and a CSW might suffice. For many classes, even a maximum result on the CCW would not be enough. Even though the CCW is twice as effective (on average) as it used to be, it is not a cure-all.

It should also be remembered that a cleric who has access to CCW is not that far away from having access to the most powerful healing spell in the game, Heal. So a spell that can heal a little more than half a character’s hit points is not all that far out of line – though it is far more powerful than the original version of that spell.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that I ran out of time. Calculating and recalculating and re-recalculating the tables above simply chewed up too many hourglass sands – there’s more work in them than there seems! So these results will be put to good use later this week in Part 3b…

Tuesday Update:

RaptorKing has suggested (refer comments at the bottom of the post) that what the designers actually meant for the table of results to be is as shown below, something I find both plausible and unsettling (there’s something odd about accruing bonuses for a spell you can’t cast yet).
 

Caster Level CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 d8 + 1 – – – 2 1 d8 + 2 – – – 3 1 d8 + 3 2d8 + 3 – – 4 1 d8 + 4 2d8 + 4 – – 5 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 5 3d8 + 5 – 6 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 6 3d8 + 6 – 7 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 7 3d8 + 7 4d8 + 7 8 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 8 3d8 + 8 4d8 + 8 9 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 9 3d8 + 9 4d8 + 9 10 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 10 4d8 + 10 11 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 11 4d8 + 11 12 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 12 4d8 + 12 13 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 13 4d8 + 13 14 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 14 4d8 + 14 15 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 15 16 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 16 17 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 17 18 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 18 19 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 19 20 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 21 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 22 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 23 1 d8 + 5 2d8 + 10 3d8 + 15 4d8 + 20 …and so on.

Caster Level Results Range (Min / Ave / Max) CMnW CLW CMW CSW CCW 0 1 – – – – 1 1 2 / 5.5 / 9 – – – 2 1 3 / 6.5 / 10 – – – 3 1 4 / 7.5 / 11 5 / 12 / 19 – – 4 1 5 / 8.5 / 12 6 / 13 / 20 – – 5 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 7 / 14 / 21 8 / 18.5 / 29 – 6 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 8 / 15 / 22 9 / 19.5 / 30 – 7 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 9 / 16 / 23 10 / 20.5 / 31 11 / 25 / 39 8 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 10 / 17 / 24 11 / 21.5 / 32 12 / 26 / 40 9 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 11 / 18 / 25 12 / 22.5 / 33 13 / 27 / 41 10 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 13 / 23.5 / 34 14 / 28 / 42 11 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 14 / 24.5 / 35 15 / 29 / 43 12 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 15 / 25.5 / 36 16 / 30 / 44 13 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 16 / 26.5 / 37 17 / 31 / 45 14 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 17 / 27.5 / 38 18 / 32 / 46 15 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 19 / 33 / 47 16 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 20 / 34 / 48 17 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 21 / 35 / 49 18 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 22 / 36 / 50 19 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 23 / 37 / 51 20 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 21 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 22 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 23 1 6 / 9.5 / 13 12 / 19 / 26 18 / 28.5 / 39 24 / 38 / 52 …and so on.

 
While this disposes of the first set of anomalies quite comfortably, it does nothing for the second. Because the more powerful spells always have more dice, they are more likely to yield a result close to the average than the supposedly weaker spells to their left on the table.

With the +1 per caster level the same for all caster levels, it becomes easy to compare the possible results:
 

2d8 vs 1d8 2d8<1d8 21 in 512 apr 4·1% 2d8=1d8 84 in 512 apr 16·4% 2d8<1d8 407 in 512 apr 79·5% 3d8 vs 1d8 3d8<1d8 126 in 4,096 apr 3·1% 3d8=1d8 210 in 4,096 apr 5·1% 3d8<1d8 3,760 in 4,096 apr 91·8% 3d8 vs 2d8 3d8<2d8 5558 in 32,768 apr 17% 3d8=2d8 7,308 in 32,768 apr 22·3% 3d8<2d8 19,902 in 32,768 apr 60·7% 4d8 vs 1d8 4d8<1d8 512 in 32,768 apr 1·6% 4d8=1d8 722 in 32,768 apr 2·2% 4d8<1d8 31,534 in 32,768 apr 96·2% 4d8 vs 2d8 4d8<2d8 11,852 in 262,144 apr 4·5% 4d8=2d8 17,224 in 262,144 apr 6·6% 4d8<2d8 233,068 in 262,144 apr 88·9% 4d8 vs 3d8 4d8<3d8 437,264 in 2,097,152 apr 20·85% 4d8=3d8 533,744 in 2,097,152 apr 25·45% 4d8<3d8 1,126,144 in 2,097,152 apr 53·7%

 
You read that right – only 53.7% of the time is 4d8+number better than 3d8+number. Heck, 4d8+number is better than 1d8+number only 96.2% of the time!

The same two basic problems remain: there is too much overlap in the results (curable with a bigger bonus) and there is less variability in the higher-level spells than in the lower level spells.

And that means that the fundamental solution remains – the modified tables for healing results that I presented earlier.

Mike’s notes

For those interested in peeking behind the curtain (I do, as often as possible) to see how the figures in table above were derived, I’m including a PDF of my working, warts and all… Oh, and if you’re wondering why I went to all this trouble, it’s because I was afraid that my error may have undermined the whole foundations of the alternative damage system, leaving the second part of this article moot. As it happens, those fears were unfounded…
 

Photograph courtesy of Conor Ogle via Wikipedia

Human nature never changes. That’s what makes science fiction and fantasy accessible to modern audiences. Often, it is by denying that fundamental truth that poor science fiction and fantasy are created. This was especially rife in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (in terms of television and movies) and the 30s, 40s, and 50s in terms of written works. The popular thought at studios and other such dens of iniquity was ‘slap some makeup on there to make them alien and their motives don’t have to make sense’. The end result was the B-grade movie and the B-grade novel, and though the best of them could be entertaining at times, the majority were simply awful.

It follows that a roleplaying game needs to respect the foibles and flaws of human nature or it, too, will be bad science fiction or fantasy.

But a game’s internal environment, which comprises the plot, characters and background, is not a state of objective reality, it is a state of subjective communications between GM and Players and vice-versa, overlaid and interrupted by objective descriptions of actions and conditions that have been translated into game mechanics by the game system.

It is the GM’s responsibility and burden to generate an internal environment that is conducive and appropriate to the genre and subgenre of the game to be run. His primary tools for achieving this are his narrative content and the ability and manner in which he delivers it.

Good narrative can get players into the right mindset, which is reflected in the attitudes, choices, and dialogue from their characters. It can convey factual & consistent details of the environment while communicating texture, mood and tone. Such narrative is sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘flavor text’, an injustice that I personally have been guilty of from time to time; it’s so easy to discount its effectiveness and impact. This article is going to focus on one area of flavor text, and how to make it work to strengthen a campaign.

Vices and Flaws

So let’s think for a moment about those human foibles, and how we can use them to convey flavor and reinforce genre.

Gossip can be used to reflect the adaption of technology into everyday life – we have Twitter, for example, as a medium for exchanging news and opinions with others all over the world.

Vices reflect the technology that’s available. You can’t have designer drugs without a certain level of technical expertise in chemistry being extant; you can’t have really exotic foodstuffs without a certain level of transport capability and a reasonable degree of exploration. Vanity talks about clothing styles, Lust informs as to the state of medical knowledge – are the women healthy or do they have obvious infirmities? Social issues such as population levels, economic woes, social classes, and so on, can also be addressed with a sentence or two while discussing such flaws in the human character.

But, of all the vices, none can better inform the audience – your players – better than gambling. This is a lesson that was first intimated to me when watching the original Battlestar Galactica, whose opening episode I saw in a big theatre (long before I saw Star Wars in a small country cinema). Starbuck was gambling, but it wasn’t a common game that we all knew, though some elements were similar to poker. As a result, it not only informed us about his society, it made that society accessible.

Who gambles? Where? What limits and restrictions? What is legal? What is ethical? What is criminal? What are the social conventions that surround gambling?

What games do they play?

The Mechanics Of Improbability

If probability is about how likely an event is, surely gambling is about how unlikely an event is. Games of chance succeed with the public if they ensure that the potential payout is greater in the audience’s mind than the unlikelihood of that outcome, while such games succeed with the house if those payouts are less than the cumulative losses of those who do not achieve an improbable result.

When creating a new game to reflect your society, there are three aspects that need to be considered, and they go hand-in-hand. The first is the improbability of the various winning results, which specify the payouts. In this respect, games essentially come in a couple of basic varieties; there is the poker paradigm, where the winnings derive from a ‘pot’ to which all players contribute in some measure, for example; and the ‘roulette’ approach where the improbability of the outcome is awarded by a payout determined by the size of the stake and the specific outcome.

A number of articles on this site have hinted at the Poker-oriented opportunities in this respect. I wanted, this time around, to concentrate more on the formal elegance and drama of roulette. It’s not too difficult to set up a game simulation – and that’s what we’re discussing when we are talking about an RPG – with any given chance of winning, and a relevant payout for achieving that winning result. You can get any reference information you need in this respect from Wikipedia’s article on roulette, or one of the articles on Poker Odds from the same source.

Note that the roulette article seems to contradict my earlier statement about the odds and the desirability of playing the game – the payouts shown are a fraction below the odds of them happening – but they are close enough, and often you can place a single bet with multiple chances for a payout at the same time.

How much effort you want to go to in this department is up to you, because it doesn’t matter what the gameplay is, there is always a simple way to simulate it using basic dice rolls. For traditional roulette, a d20 and a d6 (for high-and-low) will do the job – if the d6 comes up high, add 18 to the result on the d20; if you roll a 19 on the d20 then reroll it; and if you roll a 20, that’s either “0” or “00”. An even simpler approach is to roll a d20 and call the result to determine the player’s “luck” for that hand or spin, and invent the appropriate results and narrative as you go.

But that’s simply simulating the existing and traditional game of roulette; what we want is something that expresses a bit more “genre” than that, for use in those games that aren’t set in a reasonably modern era. That means that we have to look beyond factual sources for the basis of our fictional game.

Visual Distinction

The second aspect of the fictional game you are creating is to consider the look-and-feel of the game – not the gameplay, but the components, table markings, and so on. This is where your imagination can really run riot. Instead of a traditional round wheel, why not an elliptical one that has some wedges larger than others? Or two contra-rotating wheels with gaps in the inner one for the ball to – possibly – bounce out from into the better-paying but less-likely outer wheel? Or a three-dimensional globe that can spin on two different axes at the same time? Or a wheel with zones of increased or decreased gravity?

Or, for fantasy analogues, why not a spinning wheel with a rotating (and hidden) inner section concealed by a keep tower, with the ball fed in through the top and emerging at an unknown speed and direction? What could you build with a touch of magic in the construction – perhaps a roulette wheel with more valuable numbers (ie bigger payouts) partially protected by miniature Gates that can randomly redeposit the ball? or a wheel above a larger non-rotating wheel and a maze of ‘tunnels’ under the upper wheel, the ball possibly falling into various pits and ending up somewhere on the lower wheel – or perhaps re-emerging from the central column of the upper wheel? Think of everything that’s been done with pinball machines, then build those tricks into a spinning roulette wheel…

The difficulties of translating the visual distinctiveness into real odds quickly makes clear the benefits that can derive from a more abstract, less realistic, method of simulating the progress of the game. If you’re an expert physicist and a pretty good mathematician, you could work out from these descriptions and a bit more detail exactly what the odds are of any given result, based on the permitted patterns of laying bets – but it’s a lot of work and slim rewards. Ultimately, that much detail would interfere with the gameplay at the RPG table as well as the gameplay at the simulated casino table; the abstract approach is infinitely preferable.

The Nature Of Play

The third and final aspect of the simulated game to consider is the gameplay. Are games normally fast-moving, or slow and deliberate? Do players of this game interact with each other, or with a simulated bank, or with a rotating dealer’s slot? Is whoever won the last hand the dealer for the next? Or is it whoever last lost a round? Again, let your imagination go wild. Why not a roulette game with a card-playing component, where each winning hand was placed around the roulette wheel as the “numbers” on the wheel? High cards would tend to dominate, and there would be sequences and multiples of some numbers, while others would not be present at all. The lower the number on the card face, the less likely it would form part of a winning hand, and so the less likely it would be to appear on the roulette wheel when the card phase was complete – and the bigger the payout if the ball landed in that particular space.

Direct Experience

In order to really get this aspect of play down pat, to give your imagination something to build on, the best approach is to actually play some games. Virtual roulette played over the internet gives you the foundations and language that you need in order to successfully describe what the characters are experiencing and seeing. Of course, you could also visit a real casino, but that’s likely to be a lot more expensive and a lot more inconvenient than learning in your own home.

There are lots of sites out there to choose from, of course, and not all casino sites are created equally. Some are better than others, some have better layouts or more help for the novice, or any number of other differences. And some are less trustworthy than others. Fortunately, help is at hand, thanks to the casino.org website which offers reviews of a number of different online casinos, and some helpful information pages to help you decide where to risk your hard-earned cash. After all, just because you’re learning how to play, and what it feels like, doesn’t mean that you have to take a loss, right? You may as well at least try to win, or at least break even.

As usual, there are common-sense guidelines that you should follow. Have a budget that shows how much you can afford to lose in gaining this education, and don’t exceed it, no matter what. Set yourself some time limits as well. Keep security uppermost in your mind – only give your financial information to a website that casino.org tells you that you can trust. And remember that for these purposes, breaking even is almost as good as winning!

Putting It All Together

Here’s another way to look at what you are doing when you create a game simulation in this way, especially one that has been tailored to the fantasy or science-fiction environment in which your adventures are set: you are creating an element within your game setting and permitting your players to interact with it, while being careful to shunt technicalities and game mechanics to one side; combining narrative elements that are unique to your game setting with roleplaying activity within that setting in such a way that the social, economic, and legal fabric of the world you have created is translated from dry words on the page into something that lives and breathes. In other words, into something that imparts genre, flavor, setting, and fun.

The alternative damage-handling subsystem proposed in last week’s article suffers from one major flaw, as some of our commentators have pointed out – it involves additional processes and bookkeeping that can adversely impact the flow of combat. This flaw is present to a much smaller extent in this proposal. Once again, this is not a variation that I have personally enabled within one of my campaigns, so the discussion is strictly theoretical.

It all stems from a proposed definition of hit points as “soft-tissue damage”. That includes muscles and skin and major organs, but it specifically excludes broken bones. It follows that “damage” comes in two types – that which is scored against the character’s hit point capacity and that which is not.

The significance, of course, is that most healing spells and healing potions only specify a restoration of hit points, they say nothing about this new class of injury.

The Breaking Of Bones

The first question that has to be asked is how a broken bone is scored against a character. There are three basic options: the first is simply to keep a tally – one critical hit, one bone. This has the virtue of extreme simplicity, and minimal systemic impact on combat. But is might, perhaps, be too simplistic. There are better ways.

Option 2: Critical Thresholds

The second alternative uses our old friend, the threshold. Critical hits, by virtue of doing more damage, are more likely to exceed this threshold. But this approach, while a little more elaborate than the elegance of the first, has two really big advantages going for it:

• First, it permits the exclusion of damage that should not break bones – things like electrical and fire damage, for example; and
• Second, it permits the bone-breaking risk to be differentiated by type of weapon.

Unfortunately, heading down this path leads back to the same sort of complication that was encountered with the previous system. There is a simpler, third alternative.

Option 3: The dedicated die roll

A different kind of damage deserves a separate, dedicated damage roll.

A piercing weapon has virtually no chance of breaking a bone (unless the combatant falls awkwardly), a slashing weapon has some chance, depending on its size and weight, a crushing or bludgeoning weapon has a high probability. This can be achieved by simply rolling a die of a different colour and size as “bonus damage” towards the breaking of the threshold only, and increasing the size of the threshold to compensate.

A d4 for piercing weapons and light slashing weapons, a d6 for medium slashing weapons, a d8 for heavy slashing weapons, and a d10 for crushing weapons, with a threshold of x, would work quite well. Add the character’s STR bonus to the roll. X, of course, would be a value associated with the target – it might be the size of the hit die of the creature plus their CON bonus, and perhaps with an additional value based on how well the target’s armor protects them against such damage. +0 for leather and cloth, +1 for chain mail (partial or complete), +2 for plate mail (full or half); and a further +1 for a shield, +1 for a helm.

Increase the number of dice according to the critical multiplier in the case of a critical hit.

Instead of rolling this for each hit with a weapon, where the character gets multiple attacks, add 1 to the roll for each successful hit after the first. Similarly, you could add the magical deflection bonus of armor to the threshold and magical attack bonus to the die roll. And you rule that a miss doesn’t trigger a bone-breaking check.

The big advantage here is that all this math can be done in advance and written on the character sheet, where it is instantly accessible. The threshold won’t change for a specific target, and the bone-breaker die (and most of the modifiers) won’t change from combat to combat, either.

Right away, this achieves every advantage of the preceding proposed options, and none of the drawbacks. You automatically exclude damage effects that won’t break bones, and you can also exclude unusual attack modes like Backstabbing that will do increased damage but not increase the likelyhood of breaking bones.

There may be further alternatives, but this is so simple and quick and yet comprehensive that it’s hard to see how they could possibly be improvements.

Examples/testing

It’s one thing to invent a house rule out of whole cloth, such as I have done above; in order to be confident in the results, you really need to run a couple of examples through the system. In this case, I am going to employ a trio of characters with typical equipment, each of whom will act as the target in a set of examples, with all three taking turns to attack that target.

Target #1 is a 4th-level rogue in +1 leather armor and buckler, armed with a +1 dagger. STR bonus of +0, DEX bonus of +3, CON bonus of +2. Feats are Agile, Alertness, Improved Initiative. HP 26, AC 17, Critical Threshold 19, Multiple x2, Attack of 4, doing d4+1 damage, 1 attack per combat round. Backstab does +2d6. In example set 1, this will also be the attacker.

Target #2 will be a 6th-level cleric in +1 chainmail, small shield, and helm, armed with a +1 heavy mace. STR bonus of +1, DEX bonus of +1, CON bonus of +3. Feats are Improved Initiative, Improved Turning, Persuasive, Weapon Focus (Heavy Mace). HP 56, AC 18, Critical Threshold 20, Multiplier x2, Attack of 7 doing d8+2 damage, 1 attack per combat round. In example set 2, this will be the attacker.

Target #3 will be an 8th-level fighter in +2 Full-plate and helm, armed with a +2 flaming bastard sword used two-handed. STR bonus of +4, DEX bonus of +2, CON bonus of +4. Feats are Blind-Fight, Combat Expertise, Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Sword, bastard), Weapon Focus (ditto), Improved Critical (ditto), Weapon Specialization (ditto), Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, and Quick Draw. HP 77, AC 21, Critical Threshold 19, Multiplier x2, Attack 11/6 doing d10+10 damage, 2 attacks per combat round.

First, for each of our three combatants, lets work out the bone-breaker rolls:

• Target #1: d4 +0 (STR) +1 (magic) +d4 on a critical.
• Target #2: d10 +1 (STR) +1 (magic) +d10 on a critical.
• Target #3: d8 +4 (STR) +2 (magic), +1 if both attacks hit, +d8 for each critical.

Next, the critical thresholds for each:

• Target #1: 4 (Hit die size) +2 (CON) +0 (leather) +1 (magic) +1 (buckler) = 8.
• Target #2: 6 (Hit die size) +3 (CON) +1 (chainmail) +1 (magic) +1 (shield) +1 (helm) = 13.
• Target #3: 10 (Hit die size) +4 (CON) +2 (plate) +2 (magic) +1 (helm) = 19.

Example Set 1

Rogue vs. Rogue: The attacker needs to roll 8 or better on his bone-break check. This is only possible if he gets the second d4 from a critical hit. One of the resulting 2d4 must be a 4, and the other must be a three or four, so there is a 1 in 8 chance of success on a critical. To get a critical, he needs to both hit, rolling a 19 or 20, and then to hit again. With an attack roll of d20+4 and a target of 17, he needs to roll 13 or better to hit. So he has a 2-in-20 chance of a critical check, and a 13-in-20 chance of confirming the critical, for a 26-in-400 chance of a critical hit overall. On 1-in-8 of those 26-in-400 chances, he will cause a broken bone – that’s 26-in-3200 attacks, or about 0.8% of the time. Not very likely, but everything is working against him, so it is not too surprising.

Cleric vs. Rogue: The attacker needs a total of 8 or better on his bone-break roll. On a non-critical hit, he rolls d10+2 to achieve this target, so a six or better on the dice will suffice – that’s a 40% chance on any such hit. On a critical hit, he has 2d10+2 to hit the target number, which makes it a 90% chance of success. He needs to roll at least a 10 on his attack roll to hit – a fifty-fifty chance. If he does hit, there is a 1-in-20 chance of a critical check and a 50% chance of confirming that critical – the other 50% is just a normal hit.

• So, 45% chance of a 40% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 18%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 40% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 90% chance of a successful critical resulting in a broken bone = 2.25%.
• Total chance of inflicting a broken bone in a combat round against the rogue = 18+1+2.25 = 21.25%.

That seems a little low – one in every five combat rounds? Perhaps crushing weapons should use d12s instead of d10s? How would that change the results?

He still needs to achieve a target of 8, but on d12+2 that’s a 50% chance, not a 40%. And the chance on a critical goes up to 134 out of 144 results, or just over 93%.

• 45% chance of a 50% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 22.5%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 50% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1.25%.
• 5% chance of a 50% chance of a 93% chance of a successful critical resulting in a broken bone = 2.325%.
• Total chance of inflicting a broken bone in a combat round against the rogue = 22.5 + 1.25 + 2.325 = 26.075%.

From one in five to one in four doesn’t sound like the big gain that we were looking for. The cleric’s relatively low chance to hit in the first place is dominating the odds. To prove that, let’s drop the rogue’s AC by 1 – a relatively small adjustment, but it increases the cleric’s chance of hitting, and of confirming a critical, by 5%, and run those d12 results a third time:

• 50% chance of a 50% chance of a non-critical broken bone = 25%.
• 5% chance of a 45% chance of a 50% chance of a failed critical attempt resulting in a broken bone = 1.125%.
• 5% chance of a 55% chance of a 93% chance of a successful critical causing a broken bone = 2.5575%.
• Total: 25 + 1.125 + 2.5575 = 28.6825%. That’s a lot more than a 5% improvement in the chances – it’s a 10% increase (28.6825 is 110% of 26.075%).

Increasing the cleric’s strength, or the magical bonus from his weapon, would not only yield the direct improvement shown, but would make it easier to achieve the threshold values – compound effects.

Keeping the Rogues AC down by 1 (so that this set of results can be directly compared to the previous ones), lets contemplate the situation if the cleric had a +4 STR bonus and a +4 weapon; that means that the cleric’s bone-breaker check is now d12+4+4, +d12 on a critical, still against the target of 8; and his attack rolls are now d20+13 against a target of 16.

The chance of an 8 or better on d12+8 is 100%. The chance of an 8 or better on 2d12+8 is still 100%. The chance of getting 16 on d20+13 is 17 in 20, or 85% (but 5% of that indicates a possible critical). 85% of possible criticals will become actual criticals, but it doesn’t matter because the bone-breaker chance doesn’t change – it’s still 100% either way. So if there is an 85% chance of hitting, there is an 85% chance of breaking a bone in the target on any given combat round. A battle that lasts three rounds has better than a 61% chance of three broken bones, a 93.925% chance of two, and a 99.66%+ chance of at least one – you’d feel pretty comfortable betting the farm on it.

Fighter vs. Rogue: All of which makes the confrontation between Fighter and Rogue very interesting. The fighter is both more likely to hit and more likely to inflict a broken bone through sheer strength – but his weapon is less likely to do so than that of the cleric. What’s more, He gets two attacks, and because the number of successes changes his likelyhood of causing a broken bone, we need to start with the to-hit rolls.

For his initial attack, the fighter rolls d20+11 and needs a total of 17 – so that happens on 6 or better. On a 19 or 20 he has a critical chance, which will be confirmed on a 6 or better. That makes the probability of outcomes:

• 25% chance – miss.
• 75$-10% = 65% hit with no critical chance.
• 10% critical chance which is not confirmed 25% of the time (=2.5% overall) and IS confirmed 75% of the time (7.5% overall).

For his second attack, he rolls d20+6 against the same target, so he needs to roll 5 higher than last time.

• 50% chance miss.
• 50%-10% = 40% hit with no critical chance.
• 10% critical chance which is not confirmed 25% of the time and IS confirmed 75% of the time (same overall numbers).

Putting these together, we get:

• 12.5% chance, both miss – no chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 44.375% one hit, not critical – base chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 5.625% one critical hit – +d8 to the bone-break roll.
• 28.6875% two non-critical hits – +1 to the bone-break roll.
• 8.25% two hits, one of the critical – +d8+1 to the bone-break roll.
• 0.5625% two critical hits – +2d8+1 to the bone-break roll.

The target is 8, and the base roll is d8+7. Chance of achieving the target: 100%.

This is not too surprising, after the analysis of the cleric vs. rogue result. The combination of strength and magic bonus from the weapon are exactly enough to make up for its inefficiency as a bone-breaking weapon. In each combat round, there is a 50% chance of one broken bone resulting, a 37.5% chance of two, and a 12.5% chance of a clean miss.

Example Set 2

Cleric vs. Rogue
In this set of examples, the target is the cleric, and the critical numbers are his AC of 18 and the critical threshold of 13. To cut a long story very short, there is no way that the rogue can achieve this target with his bone-breaker rolls of d4+1 and 2d4+1 on a critical.

Cleric vs. Cleric
Being the target of another Cleric with the same equipment is bit more difficult, especially with the upgrade from d10s to d12s that was made to the system as a result of the previous set of tests. To hit the AC of 18, the cleric has attack roll of d20+7 and a critical threshold of 20; and to hit the bone-breaking target of 13 he has d12+2, plus another d12 on a critical hit.

The chances of a non-critical hit are therefore 11 or better on d20, less the chance of rolling a 20, or 45%. There’s a 5% chance of a critical check, and a 50% chance that a critical check will result in an actual critical, leaving a 50% of 5% chance that it won’t. That’s a 47.5% chance of a non-critical bone-breaker check and a 2.5% chance of a critical bone-breaker check.

The non-critical check requires a total of 13 on d12+2, in other words an 11 or 12 on the roll – a 1 in 6 chance. So that 47.5% chance of a non-critical hit gives a 7.91666…% chance of a broken bone.

The critical bone-breaker check is 2d12+2 to achieve 13 or better, which is the same as 11 or better on the 2d12. That will happen 77 times out of 144, or 53.47222…% of the time. The 2.5% chance of a critical gives an additional chance of a broken bone result of 1.33680555…%.

So there is a grand total of 9.25347222…% chance of inflicting a broken bone in any round of combat. Call it nine-and-a-quarter percent. Compare that with the same attack on the Rogue of 26-and-a-bit percent. The difference is due to the larger hit die size, the better armor, and the helm – plus a little from a better CON bonus. In other words, because a cleric is more adept at face-to-face combat than a rogue, they are better able to protect themselves in combat from this sort of injury.

Cleric vs. Fighter
At this point, it’s worth noting that the cleric’s AC is only one better than that of the rogue, and while changes in the AC can have a big impact (as was shown previously), there’s no expectation of big differences between the outcomes on that score. However, there is a much larger difference between the cleric and the rogue when it comes to bone-breaking threshold – 13 vs 8 – and that should cause a substantial difference in the outcomes. Remember, the fighter couldn’t help but break bones on a successful hit when attacking the rogue.

As before, the fighter gets two attacks, one at d20+11 vs. AC 18, and one at d20+6 vs. AC 18. These are the equivalent, respectively, of d20 vs. a target of 7 or better, and d20 vs. a target of 12 or better.

In combination, these yield:

• 16.5% chance, both miss – no chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 46.05% one hit, not critical – base chance of inflicting a broken bone.
• 5.95% one critical hit – +d8 to the bone-break roll.
• 23.94% two non-critical hits – +1 to the bone-break roll.
• 7.07% two hits, one of the critical – +d8+1 to the bone-break roll.
• 0.49% two critical hits – +2d8+1 to the bone-break roll.

As expected, there isn’t a lot of change in these numbers. The chance to miss has increased 4%, the chance of one hit only by about 2%, and everything else is down slightly to make up for that extra 6% in “poor” outcomes. It’s when these are translated into targets and rolls for bone-breaking attempts that things get more interesting:

• 16.5% chance of no chance.
• 46.05% chance of needing 13 on d8+6 = 25%.
• 5.95% chance of needing 13 on 2d8+6 = 76.5625%.
• 23.94% chance of needing 13 on d8+7 = 37.5%.
• 7.07% chance of needing 13 on 2d8+7 = 84.375%.
• 0.49% chance of needing 13 on 3d8+7 = >98.04%.

None of those rolls is a guaranteed success. The odds range from okay (25%) to excellent (98.04%) but there is always a chance of failure. When these chances are totaled up, we get 31.49% and change chance of breaking one of the opponent’s bones on any given round.

Learning from the examples

This testing suggests some further tweaks to the basic system. Using d12s for crushing weaponry still doesn’t go far enough. Since d16’s – while in existence (I have one) are fairly non-standard, the better way to boost this is to set the base as 2d10 and the extra dice for criticals remains a d12.

Part of this is compensation for an increase in the bone-breaker threshold of +2.

The goal of these changes is to make it a little rarer for non-crushing weapons to inflict broken bones while boosting the chances for crushing weapons to do so. Beyond these minor tweaks, the system would seem to work fairly well – it just requires an attacker to keep track of how many attacks succeed, and to add a dice to his stack each time he scores a critical hit. Most players can handle that with no extra time taken. At the end of their attacks, they simply roll the bone-breaker dice, add the modifier from their character sheet and the modifier for the number of attacks that succeeded, and announce the total while the GM/target compares that total against the target number on that character sheet and tallies any broken bones.

It should be fast and simple.

Fractures and Splinters

Having determined how it will be decided whether or not a bone will be broken, the next step is to decide how that affects the character in combat. While there are many choices, there are only two that fulfill the brief of keeping the system simple and non-intrusive into the combat process. The first is the slightly unrealistic but very playable solution of having broken bones inflict NO consequences during combat. The second is the slightly more realistic option of reducing the characters’ chance of hitting by 1 for every broken bone. Both are very straightforward and should have minimal impact on the pace of combat.

Which brings us to the question of post-combat consequences – and to decisions concerning which bones are broken and how badly.

Again, the focus should be on simplicity and realism should be declined in favor of something abstract and efficient. My inclination would be to base the severity on the total percentage of hit points lost in the battle, and again to modify the result according to the nature of the weapon that inflicted the break:

• 24% hit points or less: minor break, no impact
• 25-50% hit points lost: inconvenient break
• 51-75% serious break
• 76%-100% critical break

Bludgeoning/crushing weapons advance the break type by 1 step, i.e. Minor Breaks become Inconvenient Breaks, Inconvenient Breaks become Serious, and so on.

Meat on the bones

That’s all well and good, but at the moment these are just empty labels. Before they can be of any use to us, they need some further definition.

Minor breaks represent a fractured finger or toe, a broken cheekbone, or a broken nose – something of that order – and clean breaks. If properly treated, these will heal perfectly. These are annoying, and may even be inconvenient for a while, but they are not crippling and will barely even slow the character down as they continue doing whatever they are doing.

Inconvenient breaks represent either more serious fractures of the preceding type – compound breaks – or cracked ribs, or cracked limb bones (arm or leg). In a 3.x world, some of these are difficult to treat properly, and bone fragments may cause persistent trouble. In general, though, complete recovery is possible if the injuries are properly treated, but the character will be impaired or inconvenienced to some extent in the meantime.

Serious breaks are broken ribs, broken arms, wrists, ankles, legs, a broken jaw, a broken clavicle, or something along those lines. These not only severely impair the character, normal levels of activity frequently cause them to heal imperfectly, resulting in ongoing pain or incapacitation. Furthermore, since cracked bones and minor breaks are placed in the inconvenient category, those which may be found in this category are the more extreme versions of such injuries. This category also contains cracked bones in more dangerous and sensitive locations – pelvis, kneecaps, spine, neck, skull. These are actually less incapacitating but more potentially dangerous as a successive injury to the location of the damage may cause permanent incapacity or death.

Critical breaks are the most sort of broken bones – skull fractures, shattered pelvis, broken back, crushed hand or foot (maiming), shattered kneecaps, and so on. These will not only cause immediate impairment and pose a serious risk of permanent incapacity, they may be life-threatening in their own right. Even the act of conveying an individual with these injuries to safety for treatment may be a life-threatening activity, and treatment is as likely to kill as cure.

Interpretation

Having defined the injury types in descriptive, subjective, terms, the next step is to consider how to interpret them in terms of game mechanics. Rather than offer some hard and fast rules for this, though, it might be better to consider the problem in relative terms, and leave the question in the hands of the GM.

In other words, the GM decides how to interpret the injury and resulting impairment/handicap based on what the injured character is trying to achieve at the time. Some tasks will not be impaired at all, others will be impaired to a minimal extent, others may be impaired greatly, and there will be some tasks that might be impaired in a progressive fashion – only a little at first, becoming more severe as the activity (such as walking a great distance) is maintained.

Natural Healing

Each progressive type of break takes longer to heal: 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 5 months, 7 months, (12 months). The healing time for all but minor breaks goes up one step if the character engages in strenuous activity.

Healing Potions

Because healing potions work on soft tissue injuries only, they won’t heal a broken bone. What’s more, unless the bone has been set first, it may well result in the “healing” of the soft tissue causing as much damage as is “healed” – and more, when the bone is actually set.

Healing Spells

One of the big benefits of the damage system suggested in part one was the differentiation between healing spells. It is extremely desirable that this benefit be perpetuated in other alternative healing subsystems such as the one proposed by this article. Fortunately, this is easily achieved.

Cure Light Wounds

This most basic of healing spells does nothing but heal soft-tissue damage, i.e. hit points, in exactly the same manner and with the same restrictions, as a Healing potion. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Moderate Wounds

In addition to healing hit points, this spell can heal 1 minor break completely. It can also reduce the healing time required for one inconvenient break (normally 1 month) by the amount of the healing time of the next lower bone break type (1 week). This benefit cannot be applied to the same broken bone repeatedly, but multiple castings can be applied to reduce the healing time of several different broken bones (or several breaks in the one bone). It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Serious Wounds

In addition to healing hit points, this spell can heal a single Serious Break to the point of being equivalent to an Inconvenient Break (in terms of subsequent healing time required), i.e. reduce it from 3 months to 1 month. It can, similarly, heal an Inconvenient break to the point of being equivalent to a Minor Break (in terms of subsequent healing time required) i.e. reduce the remaining healing time from 1 month to 1 week. It does not alter the nature of the break, i.e. a Serious Break remains a serious break, only its healing is accelerated. Any consequences of imperfect healing are not affected. This spell cannot be used to affect the same break repeatedly, though subsequent castings can accelerate the healing of other broken bones. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Cure Critical Wounds

In a similar manner to that of Cure Serious Wounds, this spell can accelerate the healing of any broken bone to the point of requiring the next lower healing time before it is completely healed. This benefit can only be applied once to any given break in a bone, and does not alter the severity of the original break. Any consequences of imperfect healing are not affected by this spell; it simply accelerates the process, though that will reduce the opportunity for further harm. It does not set a broken bone, this requires a successful Healing skill check.

Heal

This spell completely heals any broken bones in addition to restoring hit points. However, while it will complete the process of knitting the broken bones together, this will take place with the bone fragments arranged in whatever position they occupied before the Heal spell was cast. It is possible to correct such bone misalignments by re-breaking the bone very precisely and correctly aligning it before casting Heal. Heal may or may not repair any other damage resulting from fractures such as spinal cord injuries and consequent paralysis, though it will restore the tissue to health. It is also possible that it will repair the physical damage but that the character will need to undergo rehabilitation to relearn how to use the damaged/impaired/paralyzed limbs. In essence, these three options can be summarized:

• Accelerated Time – the character receives the benefits of healing as though he had simply waited for the injury to heal naturally.
• Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration – as above, but damaged tissue is restored and rejuvenated, even if the body could not do so unassisted through the passage of time.
• Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration and rehabilitation – as above, but full function of the affected body is also restored.

Which of these interpretations applies in a specific campaign is a choice for the GM of that campaign. It may be desirable to differentiate between the impacts by race of the caster, e.g. Humans & Dwarves use the Accelerated Time healing principle, Elves and human followers of the Goddess of Healing use the Accelerated Time with tissue regeneration, while Elven clerics of the Goddess of Healing can use the most complete interpretation. Or perhaps battlefield mages are the group restricted to the most basic version of Heal.

Laying On Of Hands

Of course, there’s another form of Healing to be considered – Laying On Of Hands by a Paladin. While this doesn’t deliver anywhere near as much healing potency in terms of hit points, I rather like the idea of them being able to do something that a Cleric can’t get to do with anything short of a Miracle – such as perfect restoration of function and realignment of mis-healed bones without having to re-break the imperfectly-healed bone. This would, of course, consume a full usage of the laying on of hands ability. Again, this is entirely up to the GM.

Magic Items

It should also be clear that the addition of a new damage-handling subsystem holds potential for a whole new batch of magic items to be found by, and used against, characters. Weapons that give bonuses to the bone-break roll instead of the to-hit roll, weapons that inflict more serious breakages, armours that protect more effectively against broken bones, bandages that (at least temporarily) set and hold broken bones, and so on. A net that breaks ankles? Why not?

Trollish regeneration

The final subject I’d like to throw out there for consideration is the question of what this means for abilities like Trollish Regeneration. Does this automatically realign and set broken bones? Does it do so imperfectly, producing trolls with misshapen limbs, limps, and hunched backs? Or can it only handle soft-tissue damage, the same as a healing potion? The first makes Trolls even more dangerous relative to an adventurer; the second maintains the relative power level, at least approximately; while the last weakens them compared to what players would be used to.

My personal choice would be to introduce several different species of Troll – this is something I do in most of my campaigns, for the sheer fun factor. Black trolls might have the weakest healing, but the greatest intelligence amongst their kind, as is the case in my Fumanor Campaigns, while Green Trolls might heal more rapidly but be even thicker intellectually than the typical Troll (again the way I have it arranged in my Fumanor Campaigns). There are also the horny-ridged Trolls (which the PCs have yet to encounter) who can only heal each other with their regeneration, and not themselves, and whose abilities are triggered by the mating rituals of the species – so that the more you injure them, the greater their population grows, a generation later.

This is a place where you can have some fun, exercise some creativity, and give your world more verisimilitude all at the same time – so don’t waste it!

The third part of this set of articles will look at a high-fantasy approach I call the Differential Damage Approach (for lack of a better name, I have to admit). Unlike this mid-level fantasy approach or the previous low-level approach, this is one that I have actually used, though I will be taking the chance to revise and tweak it.