Role-playing design notes

The Greyhawk Grognard is looking at how to organize the various sections of D&D-style rulebooks. OD&D had Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, AD&D reorganized to the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, and the Monster Manual. Why separate the game master book from the player book? Why keep monsters separate as well?

The way I look at it is this: if it’s a rule, it goes in the Rulebook for all players to read. If it’s specialized, it gets its own book. And I like to keep each book that gets used at the table at 120 pages or below and in a format that flattens more easily.

So, I have the Gods & Monsters Rules in their own book; the Arcane Lore magic book, and the Divine Lore prophet book. I separate out spells and spirits because only some of the players need them, and they take up a lot of space. I’m trying to avoid the necessity of looking things up in an index (one of the reasons I’ve avoided even making an index) by keeping each book focused.

I used to make a “big” book available on Lulu¹ that combined the Rulebook, Arcane Lore, and Divine Lore. But nobody bought it—including me. At the table I found it more useful to be able to hand the Divine book to the prophet player, the Magic book to the sorceror, and not have them distracted by the rules that they don’t currently need.

There are a couple of oddities, currently. I have skills in the Arcane Lore book because they aren’t big enough to go on their own; I may end up moving them into the main rulebook since they are far more integrated into the rules than they used to be in previous incarnations. Specialties and psychic powers will stay in the Arcane Lorebook because they’re too small to go on their own. It’s all a tradeoff between playability and just plain having too many books lying around.

Several years ago, I wrote an article about making custom character sheets using downloadable fonts and any modern page layout software. I used Apple’s AppleWorks package to make the examples. I updated it later for Scribus.

It’s fun designing things like that. But when I decided to include these custom character sheets in the downloadable set of gaming sheets for Gods & Monsters, it wasn’t a joke when I added a third, “advanced” sheet that is just a blank page of ruled paper.

College rule, wide rule, graph paper, or just a blank sheet from a sketch book. In my opinion, those are the best custom character sheets.

This is why, even though I’ve started using the “professional” looking character sheets to portray NPCs such as Deanna Carmen in Helter Skelter, I never updated the sample characters in the main rulebook. Those are player characters, and as such they should be scrawled out on whatever paper you’ve got handy. Just like the Moldvay Red Book example. So I left the example characters in boring table format, hoping to someday do them up as if they were on normal paper.

Well, I finally got around to it last week in Scribus, using some downloaded fonts from Abstract Fonts. They look awesome, as you can see on Sam Stevens’s character sheet (PDF File, 293.6 KB). And each one uses a different font, because, of course, each player character is made by a different player.

I considered doing them by hand, but that would have meant either them all being in the same handwriting, or getting my friends together and then being unable to make changes when necessary without trying to match their handwriting. Also, it would mean scanning them as images rather than as text, which makes the documents less useful for alternative readers.

The only problem with the EPS files is that for some reason, Word really doesn’t like EPS files. Besides not displaying them onscreen, it also makes the RTF file size huge—about 90 megabytes uncompressed, and 36 megabytes compressed. None of the individual files even reach a megabyte; the math there is way off. A quick test with Nisus indicates that when I switch to Nisus, the compressed file size will drop down to a more manageable 13 megabytes. (The PDF, of course, is even smaller.)

One of the things I like to do is steal good poetry and rewrite it for Highland. I did this with The Lady of Shalott in The House of Lisport. I just did it again for a new adventure our group is currently going through, the road to the first city. I stole straight from one of the best: Rome Unvisited from Oscar Wilde’s Rosa Mystica. It turned out even better than the Lady of Lisport. The fifth stanza is probably going to be the highlighted text of the imprint page:

• And yet what joy it were for me
• To trod my feet upon the earth,
• And journeying toward Aira’s birth
• To kneel again at Drasoli!

The rest of the poem undoubtedly still has changes to be made, but I do like those lines!

Here for your enjoyment is Urbana Mystica: The Song of the City.

Northwest

• • The corn has turned from gray to red,
  • Since first my spirit wandered forth
  • From the drear cities of the north,
  • And to the solar mountains fled.
• • And here I set my face toward home,
  • For now my pilgrimage doth yield,
  • Although, methinks, yon blood-red field
  • Marshals the way to Aureum.
• • O Mesiemblé, who dost hold
  • Upon the central roads thy reign!
  • O Mother without blot or stain,
  • Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold!
• • O Meshiaské, at thy feet
  • I lay this barren gift of song!
  • For, ah! the way is steep and long
  • That leads unto thy sacred street.

Southwest

• • And yet what joy it were for me
  • To trod my feet upon the earth,
  • And journeying toward Aira’s birth
  • To kneel again at Drasoli!
• • And wandering through the tangled pine
  • That break the gold of Marsu’s dream,
  • To see the purple mist and gleam
  • Of morning on King’s forty-nine.
• • By many a vineyard-hidden home,
  • Orchard, and olive-garden gray,
  • Till from threaded Edekli’s way
  • The central hill bears up the dome!

It was a good idea at the time: document changes to Gods & Monsters as I make them. But as we started playing more, I started documenting less. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that I’ve been uploading a lot of changes since the last “rule change” post over a year ago.

I don’t even remember the specifics now; the main focus over the last year has been:

• Removing rules that we have never used.
• Simplifying rules that we do use.
• Consolidating the various rules to use similar systems.
• Knowing why every rule exists.

As we enter our own endgame, I’m also thinking more and more of the final layout. Eventually these will be re-uploaded to Lulu or some similar service. Don’t hold your breath, however.

Herewith follow the last documented changes to Gods & Monsters:

Reactions

Saving rolls are now called reactions. Learning has been renamed reason. Reason is comprised of Intelligence and Wisdom; Perception is comprised of Charisma and Agility; there is no longer a special Surprise modifier to Perception, so surprise has been removed from character sheets.

Death

Death is now a whole lot easier to handle: whenever a character gains injury points and their injury point total is greater than their current survival and verve, the player must make a contested Endurance roll against their total injuries. Their injuries are the acting side of the contest: the Guide rolls less than or equal to their injuries; if successful, the player rolls less than or equal to their Endurance (with normal penalties, including injury point penalties). Warriors gain a bonus of their level on the Endurance roll.

Player characters can also perform a “final roll” if they are dying; the final roll has some bonuses, but after it is made (or failed), the character will die.

Each action is a single roll

Each action is a single roll now explicitly applies to failures, with one exception: A failed roll cannot be re-rolled, not even by another character, unless the task is reframed as a different task. The only exception is that if an individual player character has attempted a task once, a group of player characters can also attempt the task once. If a group effort has been attempted once, then an individual can also try once.

Ailments

Ailments are a lot simpler now: they’re just contests. Most ailments a player character will encounter are poisons, but they may also represent sickness, or the effects of recreational drugs such as alcohol.

Ailment strength

Each ailment has a strength. Players must make saving roll at a penalty of the strength of the ailment, or the ailment takes effect. Most poisons will have a strength of from zero to four.

I went to Forge Midwest this month, where I got to play a great game of Blazing Rose. On the drive to Chicago, it occurred to me that the game could be played with no role-playing-style narration at all, simply as a card game where the goal is to accumulate chips. And from there it occurred to me that role-playing games go out of their way to explain what role-playing is but don’t generally say anything about what a game is. So I’ve added one short paragraph to Gods & Monsters, just before talking about narration.

Gods & Monsters is a game. You roll dice to see if your character in the game is successful at doing adventurous things. Your character has resources. You will use those resources to gain more resources. Just like betting chips in poker, if you use too many resources (such as survival points) your character might die; use too few and your character won’t advance. You’ll use strategy in Gods & Monsters just as you would in Hearts or Yahtzee. You will maneuver your character into situations where their resources are most effective.

I’ve put verve into the rules so that more people can help me test them out. I may well revert back to the old way of handling survival points, however.

I’m also experimenting with a different page layout. It’s designed to print well at 9x7 as well as 11x8.5. I found that once I started using Traveling Books I stopped buying books from Lulu. The smaller traveling format was too useful. So I’ve been looking for a design that would make printing in a smaller format easier. The wider format also makes pictures easier to use, which is one of the reasons you see more graphics in the main rulebook.

You’ll also notice that the books all have a resources file you can download, with the Persistence of Vision source files for the cover, as well as the inner imagery (which is mostly all public domain).

Creating characters

The guidelines about which archetypes should be chosen have been turned into rules.

If there are four players, one will be the Adventure Guide, one will play a Warrior, one will play a Thief, and one will play one of the available mental archetypes. If there are only three players, one of the player characters must be a physical archetype, and one must be a mental archetype. If there are five players, the extra player can play a warrior, a thief, or one of the remaining mental archetypes (but not the same one already being played). If there are six players, the extra player can choose any archetype that isn’t already being played by two players.

This will help to ensure that each character has a major part in the game, even if their numbers are lower, someone else’s numbers are higher, or (most importantly from my experience) the players have differing levels of experience gaming.

There are some huge changes this time around. You may want to keep your current version available just in case. I know that some of the specialties, spells, and spirits still reference the old way of handling skills and some of the other changes, but I wanted to get this version out so that people can start playing with the new character creation, skill, and carry systems.

Highland

Before I get started on the rulebook updates, a note that I haven’t been recording changes to the World of Highland here. Since it’s still in a very early stage of development, there are just too many changes to keep track of. But if you take a look at it you’ll see that the section about the Celtic valley is starting to be fleshed out. Thanks to Rory Keating for many of the ideas and places there. He’s been running our game for the past year as our group has passed through the southern edge of the Celtic lands. Because of this, the empty map of the Celtic valley is now only “mostly empty”, and there are a few more towns on the northernmost section of the main map.

Introduction

I’ve added a short section on when and how to use narration for player characters.

Character Generation

First level mojo has been added into the system, which means fewer skills and equipment during initial character creation; acquisition of skills and equipment is now spread across a character’s first level.

Skills

The skill system has been replaced with the Fields system, with minor changes.

There is no longer any distinction between archetypal and general skills/fields. The growing distinction between archetypal and non-archetypal actions is making this both confusing and unnecessary.

Carry

Carry has been completely redone. Instead of a factor to multiply against the character’s weight, a character’s Carry is half their strength, modified by endurance as a major contributor. This is the number of items they can carry. Each item must have a bulk that is less than or equal to the character’s strength. As part of this, the following changes have been made to item bulk:

• Reduced Shield to 6 bulk and Large Shield to 13 bulk. Shield bulk increases if carried rather than worn.
• Clubs have a 10 bulk. Quarterstaffs have a 12 bulk.
• Weapons only require two hands if they require it for mechanical reasons. Otherwise, the item’s bulk is compared against the character’s strength for whether it requires one or two hands.

Ammunition

Arrows now cost .1 monetary unit. Gun bullets have been added, and cost .05 monetary units with a bulk of .05.

Sorcerors and mojo

Acquiring new spells costs three mojo per spell level. Commonly-known spells (or spells for which the classical sorceror has the mnemonic formula) cost two mojo per spell level.

I’ve just replaced the old game aids document with a set of new documents. I’ve designed the new game aids using Scribus and Inkscape, and there are three of them: character sheets, rules summaries, and map grids.

The PDF file contains all of the PDFs in a single file; the archive contains each of the PDFs separately.

Character sheets

These character sheets are basically the same as the earlier character sheets I made in AppleWorks. They continue to use the Celtic Patterns, PR Astro, Stjernetegn, and Devils & Dragons fonts available elsewhere on the net. Because Scribus has a master layer, I put the borders in the master layer and added two blank pages to each character sheet for additional notes.

Rules summaries

The major advantage of moving to Scribus, besides the ability to use my iMac as a heating unit in the cold San Diego summer, is that it supports multiple foreground layers. I was thus able to customize the rules summary for each archetype, as well as a crammed-full summary for the adventure guide.

Scribus supports scripting via Python, so I’ve also included the Python script that automatically generates each archetype’s PDF file. It would otherwise be very tedious to show and hide each appropriate layer for each archetype whenever I (or you, since you have the source) make changes and need to regenerate the new versions. If you need to generate a full set of PDFs, use Scribus’s Script menu and execute the “Save All Summaries.py” script in the Summary folder.

The summaries are meant to be folded into a three-fold. Each sheet has two guides that will help you fold them. First, fold the inside right edge to the left, so that the right edge just barely covers the dotted vertical line that is currently next to Falling Damage. Second, fold the inside left edge to the right, so that the left edge just barely covers the dotted vertical line that is currently underneath the movement rules.

Map grids

I’ve also included some themed map sheets, using the map grids I wrote about earlier. The map sheets are created using Inkscape. The alchemical and Celtic borders are each their own layer that you can turn on or off, and there is a hex layer and a square layer for the grids. It uses the same method described in the AppleWorks character sheet article for creating borders, and the result is very cool.

Inkscape is very useful for mapmaking. You should be able to use this file as the basis for making maps in Inkscape, or simply print out the PDFs to draw maps by hand.

If it weren’t for POV-Ray, Mr. Seven is what the graphics for Gods & Monsters would look like.

Starting with The Vale of the Azure Sun, I’m also releasing the source files used to create the cover image of these books. I use the Persistence of Vision Raytracer for most of the cover images. POV-Ray is the best tool I’ve found for people who can’t draw but can program.

I’ve included here the best drawing I’ve ever done by hand (not including maps or other things for which rulers and compasses work). It’s done in colored pencil, my favorite medium when the game master is on the phone. Compare Mr. Seven to the covers on every Gods & Monsters book except The Lost Castle of the Astronomers. If I can use Persistence of Vision, anybody can.

One of the nice things about 3D source files is that you can add objects, re-use objects, and change the perspective of the scene very easily. That can make such a tool useful for generating adventure images once you’re comfortable with it.

For example, when I decided I wanted an image for Silver Sails, I was able to re-use the image I used for Simple Photorealism using Persistence of Vision. I went out on the web to find some ancient ship models, added them in flying through space, and in a few minutes had a graphic of far better quality than Mr. Seven.

While it may not come out for a while, The House of Lisport will have a cover designed using GIMP, which is also an impressive software package, and released under the GPL. Although it isn’t quite as useful for you as a 3D source, I’ll be including the GIMP document along with that adventure when I release it. I also used GIMP to create the terrain of the Vale.

I’ve been planning on uploading the scene files for the other books for quite a while, but haven’t gotten around to it. I hope to do so at some point, but because the files are strewn about my home folder, it will take some time to break through my natural procrastination, organize them, and write the instructions.