Archive for the ‘other systems’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

combat in Mazes and Monsters (including, of course, maiming and slaughter)

Monday, December 13th, 2010
This entry is part 18 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Last week we started work on the Mazes and Monsters combat system, figuring out HP and damage. That was the easy part: hit rolls are really the central feature of combat.

Let’s use RONA for this. As you may remember, using RONA, you roll a D12 and try to hit a target number. If you have an applicable trait, you roll 2d12 and take the highest number.

Wimpy monsters require an Easy Rona (a roll of 3 or more on an exploding d12); middle-range monsters Average (6) and tough or well-armored foes Hard (9).

Characters don’t necessarily get much better at hitting as they level. As soon as they get a trait that lets them roll 2d12 for their attack, they’re as good as they’ll ever be.

This is a departure from fantasy RPGs like D&D, which give the PCs (and monsters) steadily increasing hit chances as they level. Mazes and Monsters, on the other hand, provides steadily increasing damage; we don’t need to double-dip.

Armor

Armor in Mazes and Monsters is very limited! Iglacia the Fighter has listed among her possessions “armor”, “shield”, and “helmet”. No “leather”, “chain”, or “plate”; no armor+1. Just “Armor”.

Let’s say that hitting an unarmored character requires an Average success: in essence, you need to roll a 6 to hit them. We’ll give each of Armor, Helm, and Shield a +1 to that number, so a fully-armored character like Iglacia requires a 9 to hit: a Hard RONA.

Is there anything on Iglacia’s character sheet to bear out this theory?

Well, there is a stat right below H.P. I can’t make out the acronym: it’s two letters, and its value is 10. If I had to guess, I’d say that the letters were “P.T.” or “T.P.” or “B.R.” or something like that. Since I can’t figure out what it is, I’m going to declare that it’s “P.R.”, “Protection RONA”. It’s 10, instead of 9, which gives Iglacia a better defense than we theorized! Maybe Armor grants +2 P.R. while the helm and shield grant +1 each.

Weapons

Iglacia has a couple of weapons on her character sheet: mace, axe, and the Talking Sword of Loghri. She must have had some reason for keeping her mace even after she got her Talking Sword of Logrhi. How are we going to differentiate these weapons?

I’m tempted to adopt the D&D3 solution of giving monsters resistances and weaknesses to bashing, piercing, or slashing weapons. We can extend that to spells, too: maze mummies are weak to fire, for instance.

Actually, given that the only type of armor is “armor”, the list of weapons in Mazes and Monsters probably isn’t very long. No footman’s mace or Bohemian earspoon here. Instead of dividing weapons into categories, we can just give monsters resistances to specific weapons.

While we’re here, let’s come up with the weapons list. It probably looks something like

sword
mace
axe
spear
dagger
bow
staff

Let’s handle monster weaknesses and resistances by adjusting the monster’s P.R. (Protection RONA): +3 for resistances and -3 for weaknesses. For instance:

Mystic Skeleton
PR: 6 (9 vs arrows, swords and daggers)

Maiming and Slaughter

We’ve already come up with a colorful Maiming table. We can now tie that to the RONA system. If you (or a monster) get a critical success (10 higher than the RONA target number) you can roll on the maiming table. If you happen to roll a double crit (20 higher than the RONA) let’s say you kill your target instantly. We’ll call that a slaughter because that’s the sort of term that probably would have distressed 80s parents.

Say, what are the odds of having a character get Slaughtered by a freak roll of the dice?

I tend to think that monsters always roll 1d12s: the extra d12 from Traits are one of the ways that players have an advantage over their environment. In order to Slaughter an unarmored character with a RONA of 6, a monster needs a 26. That means rolling 12 twice, and then rolling a 6 or higher. The odds of this are about 1 in 300.

How many times is a character attacked between level 1 and level 9? Well, earlier we decided that it takes 70 game sessions to get to level 9. Let’s conservatively guess that there are two combats per session. Unarmored characters try to stay out of the way, but they probably get attacked at least once per battle. Over 9 levels, that’s about 300 attacks: you’ve got an even chance of being Slaughtered before you get to level 10. Add to that the chances of death by HP depletion, traps, tricks, and Maze-related madness, and it’s obviously quite an accomplishment to make it to the level-10 cap.

Fumbling

If there’s a special chart for critical hits, there needs to be a chart for critical failures too. If you roll ten less than a target Protection RONA, you have to roll on the Fumble Chart.

Fumble Subtable
1: The character impales himself with his or another’s weapon. Character rolls damage on himself.
1: The character makes the same attack again, this time on an ally.
3: The character’s weapon or spell breaks.
4-5: The character’s weapon or spell flies across the room.
6-7: The character leaves himself open. One opponent may make a free attack.
8-9: The character falls down. He loses his next turn.
10-11: The character misses spectacularly. No other effect.
12: If there is another enemy in range, the character automatically hits that enemy.

On a double fumble (20 lower than the target’s P.R.) the character kills himself with his own weapon.

OK, our combat system is pretty solid. We maybe erred in basing it on the same mechanic as everything else in the game; to maintain fidelity to 80’s RPG style, we should have had it be a whole separate subsystem. But at least we jammed in a few unnecessary charts.

Next week we’ll finish off whatever odds and ends of rules we haven’t addressed yet. The Mazed condition springs to mind. Then, the week after: the official release of Mazes and Monsters 1st Edition, just in time for Christmas!

Edit: We won’t do that. Instead, next time: we’ll get mazed!

Tags:
Posted in fluff/inspiration, game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

hit points and damage in mazes and monsters

Monday, December 6th, 2010
This entry is part 17 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

We’ve pretty much gotten a complete RPG out of Mazes and Monsters, and now we’re putting together the final pieces. In a total reversal of normal RPG design, we’re putting together the combat rules last!

For reference, here’s Iglacia the Fighter’s character sheet:

Page 1:

click for larger version

Page 2:

Combat System

For our combat rules, we need something baroque, something byzantine, something a little quirky.

Sure, we could just abstract combat, make it an instance of the general action resolution mechanic, the way modern, non-combat-oriented games do: but this is the 80s. This is a game called MAZES AND MONSTERS. It’s about fighting monsters and stealing their treasure (and working out your neuroses along the way). It needs detailed combat rules, preferably with charts.

We already know some details about the combat system. The Columbo-like detective said it featured “maiming”. We know that characters have Hit Points (dozens or hundreds of them). From the way that Tom Hanks stood between the muggers, we can guess it doesn’t feature flanking or tactical movement. And from the lethality of traps, I’d guess that combat in Mazes and Monsters can be a fairly deadly affair.

Combat rules can be reduced to four pieces: Hit Points, Damage rolls, Hit Rolls, and Defenses. We’ll take the first two today.

Hit Points

At level 9, Iglacia the Fighter has 181 HP. An awkward number: approximately 20 HP per level, but off by one. It seems that there is some random die rolling involved. And in Mazes and Monsters, if there’s die rolling, there are d12s.

We could use our exploding die rolls here, but it doesn’t seem reasonable that someone could roll a negative number for hit points. Imagine a first-level character who starts with -5 HP! I mean, this is the 80s, the decade of death during character creation, but let’s avoid that little headache and have HP rolls be regular d12 rolls.

The average roll of 3d12 is 19.5; if fighters roll 3d12 per level for HP, a 9th level fighter would average 175.5. Iglacia’s 181 is perfectly reasonable, especially considering that players’ HP scores trend high. There’s a long RPG tradition of cheating on your hit-point rolls.

D&D-like games usually have tiers of classes, toughness-wise: for instance, Basic D&D gives fighters d8s for Hit Points, clerics d6es and magic-users and rogues d4. Advanced D&D inflated things up to d10 for fighters, and then gave d12s to barbarians, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll introduce power creep in later supplements. For now, let’s give tough classes, like Fighters, 3d12 HP per level; and weaker classes, like Holy Men and Frenetics, 2d12 HP.

What about monsters? I don’t know about you, but rolling 27d12 to generate the Hit Points of a 9th-level monster doesn’t sound very fun to me. Let’s give monsters static HP by level.

Monsters, to my mind, come in two tiers: melee monsters and ranged. Let’s give melee monsters 20 HP per level (similar to fighters in toughness) and ranged monsters 10 HP per level (a little less than Holy Men and Frenetics).

Damage Rolls

You can derive average damage from average HP by answering the following question: all things being equal, how many hits can a hero take? and dividing accordingly.

I get the sense that Mazes and Monsters is a deadly game. However, as our friends prove, it is possible to get to level 9, so the odds are stacked towards the smart player!

My guess – based on the same instinct that led me to peg spell points at 20 per level and spells at 10 spell points per level – is that, on average, a fighter can take maybe two solid hits: but I wouldn’t be surprised if a monster can one-shot a player with a good enough damage roll.

Let’s start with two types of attacks, Weak attacks and Strong attacks.

Weak attacks – like a sprite’s dagger, or an ogre’s sling – do exploding 1d12 damage times the attacker’s level. (It’s a great way to learn your times table!)

Average damage for a weak attack is 5.5 HP per level, while fighters have an average of around 20 HP per level. On average, Iglacia the fighter can take 4 Weak hits from 9th-level adversaries before being killed.

Strong attacks – like a sprite’s bow, or an ogre’s club – do exploding 2d12 damage times the attacker’s level.

Two Strong attacks from a 9th level opponent will kill Iglacia. One such attack has almost a 50% chance of dropping Pardieux. He’d better only resort to front-line fighting as a last resort! He’d better rely on his spells, or on reason.

Next week, let’s figure out hit rolls, armor, weapons, and all that jazz. Then we’ll have a complete combat system.

Tags:
Posted in advice/tools, game design, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

using the Ravenloft board game to make 4e less “board gamey”

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Castle Ravenloft uses simplified D&D mechanics. Movement speed and tactical positioning are of reduced importance, so, ironically, the Ravenloft board game points to a version of 4e D&D that can be played off the battlemap, without minis.

Most Ravenloft monsters move 1 room per turn. Extremely fast ones, like wolves, move 2 rooms. A room is a dungeon tile: it might be, say, four by four squares. At this lower level of granularity, though, we’re usually not dealing with squares; we’re dealing with zones or range bands: concepts used by RPGs that are less finicky and tactical than D&D.

If you applied these movement rules to D&D combats, most combatants will probably end up in the same zone. Suddenly, it becomes pretty easy to track everyone’s position without a map. Chances are, all the melee fighters are going to be in the same zone, and some ranged guys will be one or two zones away. You could track this on a little zone chart, or even in your head.

This is not a ready-to-play 4e D&D houserule: 4e has too many game elements that involve shifts, pushes, pulls, and other square-based movement. It’s more of a wishful fantasy for 5e. Sometimes I like playing a tactical encounter on a battlemat, and sometimes I like to run a combat in everybody’s imagination. In my magical perfect D&D game: let’s call it Pauls and Dragons: every such rule would have two rules writeups, one for battlemat play and one for no-map play. Example:

Battle Push
Tactical map rule: The target is pushed up to 3 squares to a square that is not adjacent to any other creature.
Mapless rule: On the target’s next turn, it must spend a move action before it makes a melee attack.

In this imperfect world, one might want to play mapless 4e even without the full Pauls and Dragons rules being available. Here are some quick rules substitutions for zone-based D&D:

Adjacent: Everyone in the same zone is considered to be adjacent to everyone else.

Combat advantage: Movement can be used to gain abstract positioning.

When a push, pull, slide, or shift power is used, the actor makes a saving throw, with a bonus equal to the number of squares pushed, pulled, slid, or shifted. On a success, the actor gains combat advantage against another creature in the same zone. Combat advantage lasts until the actor or the subject moves again.

Hindering terrain: Pushes, pulls, and slides can move a creature into a pit or other dangerous terrain in the same zone. The pusher/puller/slider makes a saving throw, with a bonus equal to the number of squares pushed, pulled, or slid. On a success, the victim is moved into the hindering terrain. (The victim gets its usual saving throw to avoid being moved into the terrain.)

Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, game design, other systems, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

RONAs and monsters

Monday, November 29th, 2010
This entry is part 16 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

From watching the Mazes and Monsters movie, we’ve managed to glean a lot of the rules: adventure structure (a maze with a single end boss), a spell system (spell points), and a handful of races, classes, monsters, spells, and items.

We’re almost ready to hammer our Mazes and Monsters rules into a complete game! But before we publish, there’s a couple of tiny rules we need to figure out.

Notably missing: AN ACTION RESOLUTION MECHANIC and A COMBAT SYSTEM. All the times that Tom Hanks stabbed a pretend lizard, we never got the needed play-by-play from a Maze Controller. How hard would it have been to have Jay Jay voiceover, “The lizard rolls an 11! He misses! Tom rolls a 4 on his counterattack!”

Today let’s work on the Action Resolution Mechanic. We’ll save the combat system for next week.

For reference, here’s Iglacia the fighter’s character sheet. We can refer to this as we work out our rules.

click for larger version

RONA

So far, we know that most actions are resolved by rolling exploding d12s and trying to hit a target number called a RONA (Roll-Over Number for Accomplishment). We are using a somewhat peculiar exploding-die mechanism: rolls of 1-10 are treated normally, while 12 is a critical success (add 10, roll again), and 11 is a critical failure (originally, I said that you rerolled and subtracted your new roll, but let’s simplify it to “subtract 10, roll again).

We also know that characters don’t have numeric stats: Iglacia has “courage”, for instance, not “courage 12”. Therefore, we probably don’t use a D&D-like system where stat bonuses are added to a die roll.
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

mazes and monologues

Monday, November 22nd, 2010
This entry is part 15 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

We’re in the last scene of Mazes and Monsters! In a week or so I’ll be preparing a free PDF of the complete rules. For now, let’s finish up the movie.

Last time, Tom Hanks’ friends found an insane Tom Hanks about to jump off the World Trade center and saved him by DM fiat.

Some time afterwards, the friends pile in a car to visit him at his parent’s house. They’ve heard he’s “doing better” and are excited to see him. They exchange news about their own lives: Kate, for instance, has gotten over her writer’s block! Oh yeah, she’s a writer, and she had writer’s block. I remember that from all the times that came up.

They find Hanks sitting under a tree out behind his house. They’re thrilled to see him! He quickly demonstrates, though, that he hasn’t recovered; he still thinks he’s Pardieux. That’s the bad news. The good news, though, is that his role-playing has never been better! He delivers a magnificent in-character monologue that generations of Mazes and Monsters players would do well to study and imitate, for both style and content. I present it here, with rules annotations in a right-hand column. Aspiring actors, I strongly recommend you memorize this piece for future audition work.
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in fluff/inspiration, game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

mazes and monsters: pointless

Monday, November 15th, 2010
This entry is part 14 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

I said I’d wrap up Mazes and Monsters today, but there’s just TOO MUCH GOOD MATERIAL in this movie. Every word falls from these kids’ mouths like gold coins from the mouth of the girl in that one fairy tale. The fairly tale with the frogs, maybe? I believe Tom Hanks is the frog in this analogy. The point of the analogy, in case you’ve forgotten it, is that it will take me two weeks to finish extracting game material from Mazes and Monsters.

I should have learned by now that when it comes to blogging Mazes and Monsters, I should always double my initial estimates. I originally thought this would be a 6-post series. It looks now like it will be at least 16 posts, and maybe something like 20,000 words. And I’m only scratching the surface of what could be done! Mazes and Monsters is a game so different from other RPGs of its time that a company could devote a whole product line to it. It really merits expansions, modules, a line of paper minis, and a Saturday morning cartoon with Vin Diesel as the voice of Tom Hanks. And vice versa!

I’ll do one more week of recap, and then maybe a week or two where we can grapple with some unresolved rules questions, like “What exactly is the combat system?” My hope is to make available a PDF of the complete game system by Christmas!

Now on to the recap:

Last time, we followed Tom Hanks on his murderous rampage through Manhattan. This time, his friends have figured out that Hanks’ map bearing the legend “The Two Towers” isn’t a Tolkien reference: it refers to WTC. That means we get a cringe-inducing chase through the Twin Towers, that goes on forever. Seriously, I think Hanks and his friends visit every floor. It’s like that interminable part of Final Fantasy VII inside the Shinra building, except more boring and uncomfortable.

Tom Hanks’ friends finally corner him on the roof just as he is about to jump off.

JJ: Pardieux, what are you doing?
Hanks: I’m going to join the Great Hall!
Blondie: (with infinite guile) You can’t! It’s a trap!
Hanks: I have spells! I’m going to fly!
JJ: You don’t have enough points! I am the maze controller, and i have absolute authority in this game.

POINTS! Confirmation that Mazes and Monsters uses a spell point system. Could Gary Gygax’s DMG reference to alternate game systems, with their cumbersome spell-point mechanics, have been targeted at Mazes and Monsters?

Sadly, since we’ve mostly seen Iglacia the fighter’s character sheet, we don’t have any idea what the scale is for spell points. We saw Tom Hank’s character sheet, but it was a childish chickenscratch scrawl. So we’ll have to guess.

Based solely on the fact that Iglacia had 181 Hit Points at level 9, let’s say that Spell Points are in the ballpark of 20 points per level. So at level 9, Pardieux the Holy Man can’t cast Fly. Of course, he may have already used up some of his Points: on that failed spell against the thugs, for instance. (What was that spell? It seemed to involve flower petals. Maybe it was a Wizard of Oz-inspired sleep spell.)

Why do Holy Men get 20 points per level, and not, say, 10? Maybe spells cost around 10 points per level, and the design intent is that spellcasters can cast 2 spells of the highest level during an adventure, or multiple lesser spells. Maybe less-powerful casters get less points.

Spell Points
Characters find magical Spells, Tricks, and Powers during maze exploration. These spells can be used over and over again – they are not used up. The characters, however, have a limited capacity to cast these spells represented by Spell Points.

Holy Men gain 20 Spell Points per level. Frenetics gain 10 per level. Fighters don’t gain Spell Points and thus cannot use Spells, Tricks, or Powers.

When characters cast a spell, the spell’s cost is deducted from their Spell Point total. Spell Points regenerate to their maximum value only after characters leave the maze forever. (There may be other items and features, like magical springs or bitter roots, that restore spell points as well. This is up to the discretion of the Maze Controller.

With this info, we can start slotting in spells. We’ve seen Fly; we’ve theorized Sleep; and earlier, Tom Hanks failed at casting a Raise Dead spell.

Spells

Sleep: Level 9. Cost: 90 SP. A single subject must make a RONA check or fall unconscious. (The points are spent whether or not the subject is affected.) This is a favored spell of Holy Men and others who prefer to resolve combats without bloodshed.

Fly: Level 10. Cost: 100 SP. The caster, or another character of his choice, is able to fly for the next hour.

A flying character who takes off from a sufficiently high point (at least 1300 feet off the ground) who flies straight up for the entire hour can reach Heaven.

Raise Dead: Restores a dead person to life. It only works for a short period after the person’s death; after that, you need to fly to Heaven to find them.

Next week, Tom Hank’s magnificent monologue, in which he delivers a performance on par with Skeletor’s monologue from “Masters of the Universe!”

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

mazes and monsters: holy man in manhattan

Monday, November 8th, 2010
This entry is part 13 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Raise your hand if you’d like to see Tom Hanks harassed by street toughs! Because it’s HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

While Tom Hanks’ friends are searching for him fruitlessly, he’s totally been subsumed by his Mazes and Monsters persona. As Pardieux, he’s haplessly stumbling around 80’s New York, which as we know is grittier, uglier, more lawless, and generally more old-school than modern New York.

Naturally, it’s not long before he has an encounter with 1d3 human bandits.

Notice that Tom Hanks, in his Pardieux persona, is making no effort to avoid being surrounded by the thugs. Apparently MAZES AND MONSTERS DOES NOT HAVE FLANKING RULES.

The thugs notice Tom Hanks’ little leather dice bag.

THUG: Hey, what is that? Give it to me!
HANKS: It’s my spells! I guard them with my life.

Confirmed: spells are physical objects which can be held in a dice bag.

Spells are small physical objects which you can find in a maze, each of which can trigger a unique magic power. If you have a sufficiently high Level, and are of a spell-casting class, you can cast these spells. Spells are reusable.

Tom runs from the two muggers, but is cornered in an alley. He takes out what appears to be a flower petal from his dice bag and flourishes it at the thugs, but it has no effect.

I guess he doesn’t have enough mana or something. Or maybe they made their saving throw.

One of the muggers lumbers forward, and, through Tom Hank’s Mazed eyes, we see it as a horrible monster!

I think that’s a Gorville, right? Based on the frequency with which Tom encounters them, Gorvilles must be like the orcs of the Mazes and Monsters setting. Where do they get their crazy name? Illinois, I’m guessing.

A Holy Man is supposed to prefer spells and reason to violence. Tom Hanks has tried spells on the thugs. He doesn’t really make any effort to try reason; he instead scuffles with the thugs, and he ends up stabbing one of them with a switchblade. Bad Holy Man! No Experience for you! The Great Hall must be rolling over in his foggy tube.

After a brief interlude of sanity, during which he summons his allies via payphone, Tom loses it again and finds an open door that leads to the tunnels beneath the subway. “A maze!” he breathes.

How do people find these entrances to off-limits subterranean complexes beneath cities? It looks so easy for the guys in Mazes and Monsters, Beauty and the Beast, and Neverwhere. I’ve been commuting in New York for years and I’ve never passed an unguarded door marked “Steam Tunnels: Absolutely No Admittance Unless You Are On a Hero’s Journey.” But maybe the doors are there and my workaday eyes just can’t see them.

The steam tunnels are fairly light on monsters, but Tom Hanks does cower and cover his ears when he hears a train going past. He decides that the noise must be the passing of the “Giant Dragon.”

Bestiary
Dragon: The Dragon breathes fire on his foes.
Giant Dragon: The Giant Dragon’s roar is a Sonic attack that deafens all who hear it.

Next, Tom Hanks meets a crazy moleman (a friendly NPC) and pumps him for information.

Not everyone you meet in a Maze will be hostile. You may encounter other adventurers, wise guides, or peasants scraping out a living among the maze’s many perils. Make sure to ask for aid and information, for foreknowledge of the dangers ahead may spell the difference between victory and death!

“Can you tell me of the Giant Dragon?” Tom asks the puzzled moleman. “Does he stand guard over the treasure?”

Clever, Tom Hanks! Do your legwork before you fight the dragon. It’s investigative chops like that that will land you your role in Dragnet.

The Giant Dragon is a Boss monster, worthy to stand guard over the maze’s treasure.

Note to the Maze Controller: Not every Boss monster guards the maze’s treasure. A Maze may contain a second Boss monster, whose purpose is to decoy rash players into unnecessary danger. Players should make sure that powerful creatures guard a treasure before they run such a risk as to offer battle.

Similarly, a treasure may be hidden with no Boss monster to mark its location. In such a case, you may be sure it will be cleverly hidden and guarded by many cunning Traps!

Next Monday, the LAST RECAP OF MAZES AND MONSTERS, complete with lots of creepy footage of the Twin Towers, and a magificent closing monologue from Tom Hanks that will cement his place in history as America’s Foremost Actor. Don’t miss it!

Tags:
Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

Mazes and Monsters is a far out game

Monday, November 1st, 2010
This entry is part 12 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

After Tom Hanks’ disappearance, his three friends are interviewed separately by a scary detective, who seems intent on trapping them in an admission that they play Mazes and Monsters. They’re perfectly willing to sell Hanks up the Mazes and Monsters river, though. They claim that he played with a Mazes and Monsters group whose identities are shrouded in mystery.

Detective: Who’d he play with?
Kate: I – I don’t know. He never talked about that part of it. … I don’t think he really realized how dangerous the game was.
Detective: (significant pause) Was Robbie a doper?

Finally the Detective explains his theory about Hanks’ disappearance.

Detective: One of the players that Robbie played with… got carried away and killed him.
Blondie: That’s kind of far out.
Detective: Mazes and Monsters is a far out game. Swords… poison… spells… battles… maiming, killing…
Blondie: Hey, it’s all in the imagination!
Detective: Is it…?

We’re so lucky that the Detective knows so much about Mazes and Monsters game rules!

Introduction
Mazes and Monsters is a far out game.

Equipment
Poison: Applied to a weapon or to food or drink, Poison instantly kills the subject with no possibility of survival. Similar to Traps, the Maze Controller is obligated to give the following disclaimer to the players about any poisoned – or potentially poisoned – item: “Be wary: it may be harmless… but it may be poisoned.”

Maiming
Whenever a character is hit, the Maze Controller should roll a d12. On a roll of 1, the character is Maimed. The Maze Controller should roll again on the Maim Subtable.

Maim Subtable
1: The character is instantly killed.
2: Loses a hand or arm.
3: Loses a foot or leg.
4: Loses an eye.
5-6: Facial disfigurement. Character takes -2 on all Charm spells.
7-8: Concussion. Character is Mazed.
9-11: Permanent scar; character looks awesome. No other effect.
12: Flesh wound: Character got lucky… this time. No effect.

reporter

The chiastic structure is a literary device used in The Odyssey, Beowulf and Mazes and Monsters.

In the next scene, we’ve finally caught up with the beginning of the movie, which, as you remember, started with a bunch of cops and reporters gathered around the entrance of Pequod Caverns. They’re looking for a missing Mazes and Monsters player who’s lost in the caves. This is the moment that’s been foreshadowed for the whole movie: cave jaunt after cave jaunt has promised us tragedy, only to deliver anticlimactic safety. And… that’s what happens again. After the search for Hanks in the cave turns up empty, we see Hanks stumbling through Times Square, looking lost, confused, dazzled – just like every other Times Square tourist, in other words. Tom Hanks isn’t in Pequod Caverns at all!

So the whole uproar at the caverns was for nothing. It’s almost as if the message of the movie is that clueless adults are creating a media frenzy based on misinformation and speculation, and that you can’t trust reporters and writers to get their facts straight before they propagate panicked jeremiads. But of course, that’s not the case. Mazes and Monsters IS dangerous. Just look what happened to Tom Hanks.

Hanks’ friends decide that since the cops haven’t found anything, they’ll have to find Hanks themselves, using their GAME SKILLS.

Kate decides that “The Great Hall” isn’t a place – it’s a person! Hanks’ little brother ran away to New York City on a Halloween past, and he was named Hall.

By the way, here’s how popular “Hall” is as a first name. Not very popular. Its best year was 1881 where .007% of boys were named Hall.

Also Kate didn’t really use her GAME SKILLS to remember that fact, unless “game skills” and “knowledge of Tom Hanks” are synonymous, which, in a way, maybe they are. After all, you can’t write a real history of RPGs without frequently mentioning Tom Hanks. My RPG group did enjoy many sessions of FASA’s ‘burbrun, and who can forget the hit White Wolf scored with Joe: The Volcano?

While Kate recreates Tom Hank’s family tree, the boys apply game logic to determine his next move:

JJ: Where would a Holy Man go?
Blondie: (thinking with visible effort, then having a Thought) On a quest!
JJ: Exactly!

Holy Men go on quests.

More precisely, Holy Men go on quests to New York.

Next week, we’ll catch up with Tom Hanks in the Big Apple. Will his spells be enough to defeat these goofy New York hoodlums?

Hoodlum One looks like Indiana Jones just told him not to look directly at the Hanks.

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

Mazes and Monsters: Halloween Episode

Monday, October 25th, 2010
This entry is part 11 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Jay Jay is throwing a Halloween party! Jay Jay is dressed as Noel Coward. Blondie is a naval officer. Kate is, uh, the naval officer’s girlfriend? (I forgot to mention, Blondie and Kate hooked up at the end of the last scene.)

The party also contains Frankensteins, maids, Darth Vaders, and pirates. (No mummies. Too bad. A mummy is, like, the easiest Halloween costume. All you need is gauze, or, in a pinch, toilet paper.) Everyone is bopping to generic 80s party music, except Tom Hanks, who is stalking through the party with the spooky asceticism of one who has been visited by the Great Hall. Hanks is dressed like a Holy Man. But it’s NOT A COSTUME.

You! Shall! Not! Pass!

Hanks leaves the party and closes the door. He lays his hand on the door in a mystic gesture.

This peculiar gesture is undoubtedly some Holy Man spell, meant to prevent his friends from following him.

Spells

Lock Portal: By laying his hand on a door, a Holy Man can lock it for a few hours. Anyone who tries to force the door or open it with a key must succeed on a RONA based on the Holy Man’s level.

At this point in my notes from the first time I watched the movie, I have the following puzzling scrawl:
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

ammo rules from Gamma World

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I never played Gamma World. I’m just not a post-apocalyptic guy, I guess. Some people’s inner psyche resonates to a brutal, hopeless desert world filled with mad Maxes. My “quiet place” is a verdant forest, dotted with wildflowers and limpid pools, and it’s being set on fire by orcs.

Although I’m not the Gamma World demographic, I do want to read the Gamma World rulebook. I like reading RPG combat mechanics. I have this 19th-century idea that RPG game rules are steadily progressing towards perfection. (That’s opposed to the classical worldview of old-school bloggers: that every RPG generation is a further-debased descendant of a Golden Age.)

WOTC preview articles have shown ff some of the Gamma World rules. One of my favorite of these mechanics is the rule for ammo use.

Ammunition is a problem in D&D. Do you make all the players count arrows? (Probably not.) Do you let people buy a sheaf of 20 arrows, and let them use that from level 1 to retirement? (Probably.) What about magic arrows? should PCs count them?

The Gamma World rule is this: when you use ammo, you may either try to conserve it or be profligate with it. If you conserve it, you can use it once per encounter. If you’re profligate with it, you can use it as many times as you like during this encounter, but at the end of the encounter, you’ve used it up.

This strikes me as a great way to introduce ammunition-conservation decisions without adding an irritating arrow-counting step to every ranged combatant’s turn. It wouldn’t work with normal arrows, of course: you can’t have a ranger who fires one arrow per encounter. I’d prefer to handwave normal ammunition and use this rule for what it was designed for: limited, powerful resources: a sheaf of magic arrows, perhaps. It could also replace the pre-4e rules for magic items with charges.

There’s an extra benefit of this rule, besides avoiding accounting. In video games as well as D&D, do you know how many times I use magic ammunition/items with charges? ZERO. I hoard. I like a rule that circumvents my hoarding instinct.

Posted in 4e D&D, game design, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »