Archive for the ‘game design’ Category

Complete Gary Gygax Enworld Q&A, all on one page

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

If you’re interested in the history of D&D, one of your best resources is the long-running enworld “Ask Gary Gygax” threads. From 2002 to 2008, Gary Gygax answered a heck of a lot of fan questions. Unfortunately, there are over 500 pages in the Ask Gary threads, so if you’re looking for a specific anecdote, you have a lot of message board pages to click through.
For your Ctl-Effin’ convenience, I’ve compiled all of “Col. Pladoh’s” Ask Gary message board posts onto one (long) page.

Note: I edited Gary’s enworld posts into a book, Cheers Gary, for the Gygax Memorial Fund. At the request of the Gygax Memorial fund, I have removed this complete transcript of the Enworld Gygax Q&A. If you want to read his opinions, you’ll have to read them on enworld or await a second edition of Cheers Gary. I wish the Fund the best and hope they get the second edition printed soon.

alchemy makes you go bankrupt

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

In this post, I set out to

  • propose that the 4e alchemy system is overpriced for its power;
  • prove it; and
  • offer a solution.

    Alchemy is not used

    I remember that in earlier editions, my D&D groups relished tossing holy water, and, even better, dousing enemies with oil and lighting them on fire. However, in my current group, no one seems very excited about the alchemy rules.

    Furthermore, I don’t think there have been a lot of message board posts, Dragon articles, or gamebook support of alchemy after its introduction in Adventurer’s Vault in 2008. People don’t seem very interested in the 4e alchemy implementation.

    My first intuition is that alchemy is overpriced: the cost for making a one-shot level 1 alchemical item is 20 gp! That’s a big chunk of change for a level 1 character, comparing unfavorably with “free” for at-will, encounter, and daily powers, so they’d better deliver. I decided to crunch the numbers and compare alchemical items against at-will attacks.

    CRUNCHING NUMBERS

    STEP 1: How much damage do alchemical items do?

    I’ll look at 3 representative items: holy water, alchemical acid, and alchemical fire. I’ll assume level 1 characters using level 1 alchemical items vs level 1 monsters. All these items attack Reflex with a +4 bonus, which is comparable to level 1 characters’ other attacks, and hits the average level 1 monster’s Reflex defense around 60% of the time. Damage expectation will be based on 60% of the damage scored on a hit plus 40% of the damage scored on a miss.
    (more…)

  • Malcolm Gladwell vs. Ryan Dancey on the fate of TSR

    Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

    Mike Mearls, whose retrospective “Legends and Lore” columns always seem to be sidling towards a “We’re relaunching OD&D!” announcement, posted a link to an interesting Malcolm Gladwell TED Talk about the history of spaghetti sauce. Apparently, once upon a time, companies sought the One True Spaghetti Sauce Recipe, until a forward thinker discovered that people were different! And companies have achieved great success by splitting their product lines into different sauces catering to different tastes.

    It seems obvious when put that baldly, but it also seems to contradict another seemingly obvious story that’s central to the modern D&D mythos.

    There’s an analogy that’s commonly quoted to explain the death of TSR. I’ve seen it attributed to Ryan Dancey and Bill Slavicsek:

    “Picture it this way,” Slavicsek says, “it’s raining money outside and you want to catch as much of it as you can. You can either make a really big bucket or waste your time and attention by creating a lot really small buckets — either way, you’re never going to make more rain.” In plain English, TSR, by putting out a lot of product lines instead of supporting the main Dungeons & Dragons line, fragmented the marketplace.

    So the path to massive corporate success leads either through diversification or through consolidation. Which is it?

    Here’s something that Ryan Dancey said about the death of TSR:

    No customer profiling information. No feedback. No surveys. No “voice of the customer”. TSR, it seems, knew nothing about the people who kept it alive. The management of the company made decisions based on instinct and gut feelings; not data. They didn’t know how to listen – as an institution, listening to customers was considered something that other companies had to do – TSR lead, everyone else followed.

    On the other hand, Malcolm Gladwell says: “Assumption number one in the food industry used to be that the way to find out what people want to eat – what will make them happy – is to ask them. […] People don’t know what they want. A critically important step in understanding our own desires is to realize that we cannot always explain what we want deep down.”

    I think the takeaway from Gladwell’s quote is not that companies should ignore surveys (and message boards and blog posts); it’s that they shouldn’t be used as road maps. I think TSR was right to make a lot of decisions on instinct and gut feelings. No one would have filled out a survey and asked for D&D before it was invented.

    Perhaps the purpose of the customer survey is not to tell a company what to do: it’s to tell a company what NOT to do. While no survey can tell a company to “make D&D”, a survey could plausibly say “stop making Dragon Dice”.

    Mazes and Monsters: Monsters!!!

    Monday, April 18th, 2011
    This entry is part 32 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

    Here’s the M&M bestiary from levels 1 to 5, from the lowly Pixie to the mighty Mazosaurus Rex. The Mazosaurus Rex is not SPECIFICALLY attested in the movie, but I think it can be inferred from the awesomeness of Mazes and Monsters.

    Download Monsters PDF

    Table Cost

    Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

    Next time you design a new rule or game element, calculate its Table Cost. That’s a measure of the strain it places on the players around the table, in terms of time, brain stress, and suspension of disbelief. Rules with low Table Cost are less annoying to use. Rules with high Table Cost are more annoying to use, and they’d better have something else going for them, or they Get The Axe!

    Recall Cost
    +0: Not easily forgotten, because it’s obvious when should you should use it. (“I need healing, let me see what healing powers I have left!”)
    +2: Somewhat easily forgotten. Your CHARACTER could be reasonably expected to remember it. When it’s not the focus of attention, you don’t have to think about it. (“I can activate Fire Form to get through the lava!”
    +5: Easily forgotten. The PLAYER has to remember it, because it’s based on a generic or a meta-game trigger. May require something to be tracked from round to round. (“I became Bloodied, so my Animal Fury kicks in!”)

    Speech Cost
    +0: You don’t need to bother anyone else with the details (you roll 3d6 extra damage when flanking)
    +2: Requires you to specify a game term aloud (“…and I do 15 fire damage”)
    +5: Requires you to specify a game term aloud EVERY TURN (“…and I’m using my minor action to sustain the Flaming Sphere”)

    Belief Cost
    +0: Provides a vivid mental picture (“I slam into him and push him back a step”)
    +2: Abstract (“When I hit this guy with my mace, I give you an AC bonus”)
    +5: Defies imagination (“So I guess the fog is prone?”)
    (more…)

    Mazes and Monsters: magic charms

    Monday, April 4th, 2011
    This entry is part 31 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

    Gear up your Hanks with a chapter of magic items! Here’s the PDF of the full chapter.

    Click to download the pdf.

    As a sample, here’s a charm that, for sheer baroque old-school madness, knocks the Eye of Vecna into a cocked hat:

    Graven Eye of Gellor. Level 8 charm. This is a faceted ruby with twelve faces. (It looks much like a d12.) On each face is carved the iris of an eye, along with a unique magical rune. To use the Graven Eye, you must actually put out one of your own eyes and put the Graven Eye in its place. From now on, you will probably want to wear an eye patch a lot of the time.

    At the beginning of every day, a different face of the Graven Eye will face the world, and you will have a different power when you gaze through the Graven Eye. Each morning, roll on the following table:

    Table 9-1: Graven Eye of Gellor
    1: Eye of Understanding: You gain the benefit of Read Strange Languages all day.
    2: Eye of Fear: You can make an attack on people in throwing range or closer. If you hit, they are Mazed (RONA 6). While Mazed, they fear you. They may either stand where they are, not moving, or spend their turn moving away from you.
    3: Eye of Seeing: You gain a trait die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception. Also, you can see invisible creatures.
    4: Eye of Truth: When people are lying, you see them surrounded with a red haze.
    5: Eye of Light: You can shine light from your eye as if it were a lantern.
    6: Eye of Lies: You can change your appearance to that of any person or monster that is approximately your size. Whoever you change your appearance to must have the Graven Eye of Timor visible as one of its eyes. The change of appearance does not affect your abilities or the appearance of your clothes and equipment.
    7: Eye of Change: For the entire day, whenever you go through a door you’ve never been through, you roll on this table (rerolling 7s), temporarily taking on a new power. Passing through the same door multiple times has no effect.
    8: Eye of X Rays: You can see through anything within throwing range (walls, curtains, etc) except lead. This doesn’t let you see in the dark, so you can’t, for instance, see the coins inside a dark coin purse or treasure chest.
    9: Eye of command: You can make an attack on someone within throwing distance. If you hit, you do no damage, but you may issue them a short command. They are Mazed (RONA 4). As long as they are Mazed, they must follow your order. The Maze ends when the order has been fulfilled. The attack will fail if following the order will obviously lead the creature to immediate harm. (Near future harm is OK. The Mazed creature will not stab itself but will insult a dragon.)
    10: Eye of the Mind’s Eye: You may make any images or visions you want appear in the sparkling surface of the Eye.
    11: Eye of Darkness: You are blind in this eye. You gain a weakness die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception.
    12: Eye of Flame: As an attack, you can shoot a fiery red beam from your eye. It can attack at bow range, but unlike a bow, can also attack people next to you. It does fire damage. You gain a Trait die on the attack roll.

    Maze Controller’s Guide

    Monday, March 28th, 2011
    This entry is part 30 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

    The Maze Controller’s Guide section of the Mazes and Monsters manual contains a lot of advice, some of it sound, some of it very bad. Perhaps the worst piece of advice is

    If a player is becoming uncomfortable, terrified, confused, or frenzied, DON’T BACK OFF! Keep on challenging the player by upping the stakes in the fantasy. Don’t let a player leave the fantasy until they solve their issue! If players can’t handle it, they will freak out, flake out, or drop out. These are acceptable losses! You can’t make an omelet without driving some people mad.

    But hey, it doesn’t go much further than Dogs in the Vineyard.

    Here’s a section of the manual about designing Mazes:


    (click for a larger version)

    super simple mass battle mechanics: saving throws to save the world

    Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

    Like any rules hacker, I’ve tinkered with complex mass-combat rules. The other day, when I actually ran a battle encounter, I threw away all my precious rules in exchange for rock-paper-scissor mechanics, and it was a great success.

    One of our players is moving away, and to see him off, I ran a one-shot epic adventure to kill Tiamat. Everyone took a beloved existing character, leveled them to 30, and I rolled the timeline forward a couple of years, to a day when Tiamat’s armies were poised for total conquest of the world. Only the PCs and their armies stood in the way.

    I decided to Epic It Up, and go for over-the-top heavy metal high fantasy. Here’s the plot. Over-the-top Epic elements are in CAPS.

    THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS BEEN CONQUERED by Tiamat’s forces, except for the encampment containing the PCs and their armies. The PCs are fiddling with a device that will let them TRAVEL TO THE MOON and KILL TIAMAT ON THE MOON surrounded by her DESERT EMPIRE OF DRAGONS AND DRAGONBORN SLAVES ON THE MOON. Tiamat is so big that, from Earth, she is VISIBLE SITTING ON THE SIDE OF THE MOON.

    Tiamat’s UNSTOPPABLE ARMIES contain LEGIONS OF PRIMORDIALS, EVIL GODS, legions of cultists, dragonborn infantry, and an AIR FORCE OF DRAGONS THAT DARKENS THE SKY.

    MASS BATTLE MECHANICS

    PCs Leading Armies

    There are 3 kinds of troops, set up in a rock-paper-scissors relationship: flying troops have +2 against infantry, infantry has +2 against ranged, and ranged has +2 against flying.
    (more…)

    Mazes and Monsters manual: I wrote 40 spells

    Monday, March 21st, 2011
    This entry is part 29 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

    …and tricks and powers. Here are 14 of them.

    I changed the way the Mazes and Monsters magic system works. Spells, Tricks, and Powers are now much more differentiated from each other. The changes were based on my RIGOROUS RESPECT FOR TEXTUAL EVIDENCE, not whimsy.

    Spells: Rory, who read the novel, told me that in one scene, spells were referred to as one-shot items, like scrolls. Now spells are fire-once items, available to any class, as opposed to tricks and powers, which are learned permanently, and class-specific.

    Powers: I originally had powers be unique to Holy Men, but I’d forgotten that Jay Jay says his Frenetic has “tricks and powers to take him far and keep him safe.” Now, Frenetics and Holy Men both have access to powers: healing powers are still unique to Holy Men, and I’ve added some tricky powers, like Sonar, for Frenetics. Some powers can be used by both classes.

    Tricks: To make Tricks unique, I made them work a little bit like Blue Magic from Final Fantasy: Frenetics learn them by harvesting items from defeated enemies. This adds a form of treasure that the Maze Controller doesn’t have to worry about placing. It also adds another income source: every time you kill a Dragon, you can harvest its magic tooth and sell it in town.

    Here’s Page 37, which contains half of the Tricks (along with the monsters they’re stolen from).

    Click for larger PDF version of this page

    Here’s page 39, which contains half of the Powers.

    Click for larger PDF version of this page

    How to build a 4e Subsystem: Saving Throw with Fumble and Crit

    Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

    Subsystems – self-contained rulesets that didn’t interact with the rest of the rules – ran amok in 1st Edition and, by 4th edition, have mostly been removed. There is still a place for the subsystem in D&D. I like introducing one-shot mechanics to spice up a single encounter. Oxymoronically, I like to use a consistent structure for all my subsystems.

    I use a mechanic I call “Saving Throw with Fumble and Crit”. I’ve tried to invent a cool acronym for it, but all I’ve come up with is either “F On Toast” (“Fumble Or Natural Twenty On A Saving Throw”) or “Stoat Ass” (“Saving Throw, One and Twenty are Super Special”). Let me know if you can think of an even more unacceptable acronym.

    The basis of every “F On Toast/Stoat Ass” subsystem is a chart like this:

    Make a d20 roll, plus any situational modifiers.
    1 or less (or natural 1): Critical failure
    2-9: Failure
    10-19: Success
    20+ (or natural 20): Critical success

    The principles behind this chart are
    a) that the 4e saving throw (essentially a coin flip that slightly favors the player) is a good generic mechanic, and
    b) that “20 and 1 are Magic”.

    I’ve used this subsystem template for my wilderness survival rules, mass combat rules, wandering monster rules, random treasure rules, and several other homegrown subsystems. It’s easy to explain to players, especially the second or third time the same structure is used. All you have to say is “Make a saving throw. Let me know if you crit or fumble.”