Thinking about design: character creation

When I think about making characters, I find myself drawn to particular things now (some of which I have discussed in the past.

1. Speed
When given a choice between being able to jump into the action and customizing an exact character, I now prefer the former. I had long term relationships with Hero System in the 80s - 90s and with 3rd edition in the 2000s, so I understand the appeal of custom character builds. But I find that custom builds annoy me more than they amuse me. Plus, as a GM, teaching new players how to build effective characters and managing differences in effective character builds vs. ineffective ones has always bugged me.

Besides, it's easier to feel okay killing somebody's character if they can have a replacement ready before the next big encounter.

2. Meaningful Choices
The joy of old school class system like OD&D and T&T is that classes define what you contribute to the game. The archetypes In Feng Shui similarly give characters a special role at the table. 4e even does a decent job of this, though I think the large number of class, race, build, feat, etc. options water this down.

In short, I think it's easier to get into the game and the group dynamic if it's clear what you contribute, where you shine, and why you need others to help you. It's harder to learn how to do this in an entirely open-ended system. Given a billion choices, it still only matters which one are effective in achieving your goals. For that to be true, it helps to have significant measures of goals and differences.

This leans me to consider class or class/race (D&D, T&T, or at the heart of it World of Darkness) or archetype (Feng Shui, Talislanta) systems as particularly useful models.

3. Relatively Simple
By this, I mean that it shouldn't take Herculean efforts to explain task resolution and that your character sheet should't be so complex that you have a hard time figuring out you skills/powers/abilities on a regular basis. It shouldn't make you head ache to figure out your turn. I tend to find abstraction a good thing and slavish detail spent on simulation tedious and off-putting.

How to preserve these things in a system without alienating contemporary gamers is my challenge.

Thinking about game design: ability scores

Looking at EPT makes me think a bit more critically about ability scores. The classic D&D model of 3-18 scores with secondary modifiers means ability scores have limited purpose or value (the old school model in which extremes have a mechanical effect) or that they have a great deal of influence (3.0 edition on), but only because modifiers an the high scores that go with them are essential.

There are more subtle approaches. Systems like Fudge and Marvel Superheroes introduce some interesting mechanics around qualitative descriptive rankings. Some games (like Talislanta) use modifiers as scores. Storyteller systems use pips, etc. But conceptualizing what one dot of strength or feeble strength means can be challenging to explain.

EPT ranks abilities 1- 100, allowing them to show a range of numbers on a known scale and to serve as a simple task resolution system. Other games have done this since to differing degrees, but this still excites me. What's the chance of a STR 57 have of forcing a non-fortified door? 57%. Maybe a barred one we half that.

Hey, but there's more we can do. We can tie that score to quality of result. If you succeed, you succeed by an amount equal to the percent rolled. You have an 80% Strength and try to lift a portcullis to your waist. You roll 50 and you're halfway there. The guards get a little closer, and you have to succeed again....

I do have problems with the swinginess of flat percentile rolls to determine ability scores. I want some curve on that distribution, and firm limits on the minimum and maximum. There are also some problems I have with flat percentages since results are also too swingy in play, but I bet my Basic RolePlaying rules that this is more a problem in my head than in play.

Which all says that thanks to Mike saying he's thinking about making a generic EPT clone, I am back to thinking about what I can take from Dr. Barker's funky white box variant.

No game budget = designing it myself

Between my wife's employment benefits running out this month, the looming specter of massive state budget cuts affecting my pay in the next year, and my student loans beginning to come due in March all lead me to the conclusion that I am going to avoid spending on new RPG materials this year. (We'll see how that holds up over time...)

This and my general dissatisfaction with gaming rules that goes back to 1981 or so (I wanted to house rule as soon as I really started to read the AD&D rules), has sent me back to thinking about rules and systems again:

1) EPT is an ever-enlightening read. Barker's way of structuring spell casters, his brutal world, the percentile attributes all really fascinate me. And Mike D's post at Sword +1 about him working on a non-Tekumel EPT clone is pretty exciting.

2) Rereading the combat rules in the AD&D DMG has led me to a new appreciation of how, at its core, the AD&D turn sequence could be: surprise, encounter distance, initiative, and actions. The fact that closing to melee range was all you could do (unless you charge, which you can do just once a turn) would speed up turns at the table, and so does making melee range ten feet. I can quibble about details (ties in initiative and weapon speed factor, for example), but there is stuff to reconsider there.

3) Magic still bugs me, and I don't know that I will ever feel I have found the right mix of simplicity, openness, and flavor.

Not that these thoughts are productive now, but my mind is roving down the halls of game design again.

Technical Difficulties

Seems as if the Lulu printers now are having troubles with my MacOS-generated PDFs after several months of working just fine. I will need to do some renewed outputting from the original source files, and in the process will probably update some errata and finally make a PDF of the cover. However, this is not likely to happen for a few days.

The original PDF is still up for download. The book will take a week or so, I suspect, since it will be sandwiched between me working on extending my Institutional Review Board approval for my dissertation, writing up a proposal for revising my research plan to match my new work and school balance life, and working on a presentation for my college's inaugural Teaching Diversity Conference (being one of those Evil Leftist Academics, I have to keep up the agenda.

I am still suffering from a lack of motivation for the blog, but recently have been looking at the setting again with fresh eyes. Who knows, after this spate of academic work and a bit of minor touching up, I can start thinking about where to go next.