A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step

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There is an adage in business stating “The customer is always right.”

As a GM, your gamers are your customers. Individual gamers will not be thrilled with your conduct of the game from time to time, but when every single gamer is unhappy, a GM needs to listen.

My most recent RPG singularity ended with the characters and their ship narrowly surviving the destruction of the base of a servant race of the Ancients and the world that contained it. A deliberate and desperate misjump landed them in the Trojan Reaches with a heavily damaged ship, where I planned to run them through Mongoose’s Pirates of Drinax series of adventures. I thought a light-hearted turn as privateers would be just the right change of pace after a series of dramatic, high-stakes games.

I could not have been more mistaken. The damage to their ship, the loss of much of their personal and ship’s funds, and the lack of options (good luck finding the MCr 110 it will take to repair your ship if you don’t take the King’s deal) angered my usually good-natured group. However, what really set some of  them off was having to become privateers (or pirates, to be honest), a group that my players held in some contempt as common criminals and murderers.

Who knew? My gamers are good people and kept playing; we stumbled our way through two or three sessions but it was clear their hearts were no longer in the game. My usual stream of emails of questions and ‘blue book’ actions outside the game dwindled to nothing. Like an elephant shot through the brain, my game had ended with the resolution of the singularity; it just stumbled on for a few steps before falling.

Damn it, I liked that campaign.

The first law of the hole: When you find yourself in a hole, the first step is ALWAYS to stop digging. The second law of the hole: No matter what you were trying to do when you found yourself in a hole, your primary objective is now simply to get out of the hole.

Like any business experiencing an unexpected loss of market share, my first step was to set up a focus group to see what I was doing wrong. So, I stopped the game and sat down with the players to see what went wrong, and to ask them what we should do.  It was soon evident my players also felt this campaign and most of its storylines had in fact ended with the singularity game; the new story I had proposed had captured exactly zero interest. To my surprise, the response to suggestions and ideas for fixing the old campaign was an unqualified “Meh.” There was, however, considerable sentiment for taking the opportunity at hand and beginning a new campaign.

Given the circumstances, I and most of the gamers wanted a clean break with Traveller and, after reviewing our options, we elected to move to a fantasy roleplaying campaign (rules system and campaign setting to be determined by further discussions.)

So, the thin list of science fiction RPG blogs shrinks by one, and the list of fantasy RPG blogs increases, same increment. Didn’t see that coming. I’m looking for a new fantasy header even as we speak. In the interim, back to the chess set.

We’ve been tossing ideas around and will meet again soon to finalize our choices of simulation (our rules set) and story (our campaign background.) I plan to share some of this process with my gentle readers in the hope it will be of some help or interest. Here’s hoping I handle the transitions between blogging about different genres as gracefully as Jason Kemp.

Sic transit gloria mundi. May the next campaign be as glorious and bring us as much pleasure as our Traveller campaign did. My game’s thousand-mile journey towards our next singularity has taken its first steps; I hope a few readers continue to find something of interest along our path and accompany me and my players as we follow the road that goes ever on.

Traveller Next?

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One of the most fascinating trends in roleplaying gaming over the last decade and a half has been the emergence of a variety of RPG games and supplements based on the Open Game License for Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 – 3.5 (collectively referred to as the D20 system.) These D20 games have expanded far beyond their fantasy origins, and even include a version of Traveller. Subsequently, many older versions of Dungeons and Dragons were cloned and released under the OGL, Creative Commons, and other similar licenses. These games (Labyrinth Lord, OSIRC, Swords and Wizardry, and others) are collectively referred to as retroclones. Combined with the revolution in desktop publishing and the development of online PDF retail stores (DriveThruRPG and others), a multitude of small RPG authors and publishers have found a successful niche in the RPG market selling these and other products. While the total RPG business itself may have become smaller as it competes with collectible card games, computer games, and console games, the variety of systems and products available to gamers in 2012 is larger than ever before.

The desire to return to these older systems for DND and other RPGs is an understandable one. Following the initial releases of both DND and Traveller, each subsequent edition of both games has lost a percentage of its audience who prefer the previous rules systems or their retroclones for a variety of reasons. The earlier rules sets are typically simpler, faster, and less complex systems that allow for less regimented and more free form gaming; the required reference books are typically less expensive as well. (Many retroclones are available for free or as low-cost PDFs. Older copies of rules sets are frequently available at significant discounts from eBay or second-hand bookstores. The entire Classic Traveller canon is available on a single CD-ROM from Far Future Enterprises for under $40 – about the price of a single major reference book for DND 4th Edition or Mongoose Traveller.) Paizo Publishing has become a major success story in RPG publishing with its Pathfinder OGL-based expansion of DND 3.5 following the move of Wizards of the Coast (WotC) to their version 4.0; Paizo’s success clearly indicated that many gamers had no desire to move to the new system. I like to think of Pathfinder as the GURPS Traveller of the DND line. I have always felt that the success of GURPS Traveller following the disappointing release of TNE reflected a significant part of the Traveller community’s dislike for the overly complex TNE rules set and the entire Virus storyline. Lucky for Paizo that WotC did not learn from GDW’s error.

Previous posts have discussed at length my conviction that simpler, less complex simulation rules can favor an improved quality of story in roleplaying gaming that appeals to many gamers. For many years, the trend in major RPG systems was towards increased detail of simulation and increased complexity. It has only been recently that the major manufacturers have appreciated the driving forces behind OGL-based games and retroclones and modified their approach to game design.

Over the last several days, the fantasy blogosphere is in flames regarding the recent online playtest of the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons (referred to by WotC and most bloggers as DND Next.) 4th Edition DND was WotC’s first attempt to simplify the DND rules to a degree and also to equalize the capabilities and potential of the various character classes to make the fighter-type character classes more appealing; there was a significant emphasis on prestige classes and unusual character races as well as a clear intent to add various elements appealing to a generation of potential players raised on console and computer games. Much like T4, 4th Edition DND did not meet with much success. (The full list of reasons behind 4th Edition’s failure would require a full post in itself; however,  3rd and 4th edition DND’s increasing emphasis on a complex miniatures combat system in order to provide a secondary revenue stream from miniatures sales certainly did not help.) However, just as Mongoose Traveller returned to the original Little Black Book edition of Traveller for much of its inspiration, 5th Edition DND (based on the playtest rules) appears to use many of the successful elements from ADND, 2nd Edition, and 3rd Edition DND.

The final form of DND Next remains to be seen and will no doubt be shaped by the playtesters. Clearly, WotC has learned from Paizo’s experience with the Pathfinder open playtest regarding playtester buy-in and loyalty to the new product. The excitement in the blogosphere and the many favorable comments has to be encouraging to WotC. Many bloggers and playtesters have addressed problem issues that WotC will have an opportunity to fix before the final release. The playtest materials certainly suggest many of the changes in DND Next are intended to make the game simpler and faster to play in many respects than previous editions. I think their eventual success or failure will depend on how revolutionary the changes in the game made by the designers in the name of simplification, speed, and improved storytelling will be; a simple revision built around the core of 4th Edition is probably doomed to failure and may well be the last edition of DND from WotC (whose parent company, Hasbro, is less than thrilled with the performance of 4th Edition.)

I learned halfway through writing this post that Marc Miller now has a Traveller 5 Kickstarter. Marc’s Kickstarter write-up describes the 600-page (!) T5 hardcover rulebook as follows:

“T5 has technology beyond TL 15, clones, robots, computers, artificial intelligence, QREBS (!), alien senses, Flux. It has a whole series of easy-to-use Makers: GunMaker, VehicleMaker, ArmorMaker, RobotMaker, SophontMaker, ThingMaker. It includes mapping of star systems and worlds; there’s even the MOARN caveat: Map Only As Really Necessary, or referees would spend all their time just making maps of worlds and systems. There’s a rationalized section on Psionics, and more, much more.”

Sounds like Traveller Next to me.

My recent review of the DND Next playtest rules had already inspired me to consider the form of the next Traveller rules set as the subject of this post (you really didn’t think Traveller’s development would stop with Rikki Tikki Traveller, did you?) Learning of the Kickstarter for T5 was a pleasant surprise (and certainly forced an extensive rewrite of the draft post!)

I will be interested in the direction Marc has taken T5 since the CD-ROM draft release a few years ago. Mongoose Traveller was initially described as a subset of the T5 draft materials in the CD-ROM from FFE (although I think it has diverged quite a bit over the course of the many supplements and various ports to other backgrounds.) I have referred to my dislike of the Mongoose rules previously. Returning to the simplicity of Classic Traveller – in the spirit of the DND OGL and retroclone products – was a good idea that Mongoose did not take far enough. Their desire to make Mongoose Traveller a universal core system for science fiction gaming and the release of multiple specialty supplements added unfortunate layers of complexity to a decent if somewhat old-school core mechanics system. I really feel that Mongoose overlooked the benefits utilizing some of the advancements of the last couple of decades in core gaming system technologies (as demonstrated in a variety of newer RPGs and miniatures rules) could have provided to Traveller. I have real concerns that T5 will repeat the mistakes Mongoose made.

The concept of a 600-page rulebook frightens me; as a poster on one of the Traveller forums noted today, it sounds more like a book you mine for ideas for your house rules game system than a game you can actually play. I have recently been impressed with two games demonstrating how small a game and rules system needs to be to generate an enjoyable and playable RPG experience.

The first game is called Three Sixteen from BoxNinja (available here and here.) In less than 100 pages, Gregor Hutton created a RPG system using only d6 and d10s, with characters having only two abilities described on a character sheet that will fit on a 4×6 card. In spite of its simplicity, the award-winning game has proven to generate exciting combats as well as a surprisingly rich campaign game. House rule additions to allow the use of the game system in more complex campaign backgrounds have appeared on several web sites.

It does not take a complex rules set to frame a good story.

Another example of a simple rules frame allowing good storytelling is Void Vultures, an outstanding and undeservedly unknown game by Josh Roby and Ryan Macklin. Subject of a recent Kickstarter and released under a Creative Commons license, Void Vultures is a delightful science fiction version of the classic dungeon crawl from 1stEdition DND. Its Rülsleit system could easily serve with a few changes as the core rules for a full-blown Traveller campaign. Here is a compilation of the PDFs:

Void Vultures

One of the most appealing features of Void Vultures is its use of an advanced die mechanic where die rolls generate multiple results (referred to as precision and power) that both influence the final result and the effects of the roll. Advanced die mechanics (what Ryan Macklin refers to as die schticks on his blog) provide a real opportunity to add depth to a task roll and thereby easily add some story mechanics to a set of simulation rules.

Various die mechanics and other techniques (plot points, ‘bennies’, and other in-game economies) provide effective tools to improve GM storytelling and are game technologies I would love to see incorporated in Traveller Next. DND Next has clearly recognized some of the improvements in die mechanics since the invention of DND; it has introduced a simple two-die mechanic for advantages and disadvantages that will replace a multitude of modifier tables and eliminate a significant amount of consulting rules and performing calculations from a player’s turn. Traveller Next could benefit from this sorts of creative innovation in its core rules set; DND Next should continue to innovate as well.

The last thing either Traveller or DND need is a new, massively complex rules set; the steady decline in the numbers of roleplaying gamers and their increasing average age is a clear indication of the effects of such a design strategy over the last few incarnations of the core rules. The continuing popularity of Classic Traveller and the various DND retroclones demonstrates the desire in the gaming community for simpler and more elegant rules mechanics that inspire great storytelling and utilize creative interpolation of the rules to cover situations not spelled out in the rules rather than referring to hundreds of pages of rules covering every potential situation.

I hope the designers of both DND Next and Traveller Next take note.

Finally, Josh Roby and Ryan Macklin have another Kickstarter in progress that needs a few more backers over the last 48 hours of their fundraiser. If you have any interest in fantasy RPGs, these two skilled indie RPG designers could use your help; they are less than $200 from their funding goal.

I can kill you with my brain

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Champions: The Role-Playing Game, released in 1981, was one of the earliest second-generation RPG’s to take advantage of the lessons learned from DND and Traveller. The game rules and point buy character generation system were designed first and foremost to simulate superhero combat from the comics and did so brilliantly, with a logarithmic scale for attributes (STATs) and powers allowing characters at vastly different power levels to easily be handled within the same rules set. Unfortunately, Champions also rapidly became another example of what Ken Pick has referred to as the “monster game carcinoma” that plagued the 80’s, with release after release after release of supplemental rules, campaigns, modules, screens, expansions to other genres, etc. for the system. (Like Ken, I thought the Magic Card Extinction Event had nearly made the disease extinct for science fiction games, but Mongoose is well on the way to reviving it for Traveller.) There were so many things to purchase that to this day the books occupy several linear feet of bookshelf space in my study (second only to my collection of chess books.) It has often occurred to me if I had purchased Apple stock with all of the money I have spent over the years on books for my various hobbies my wife and I would be sitting on a tropical beach somewhere sipping a frosty libation even as we speak. (Amusingly, the Apple stock price chart also requires a semi-logarithmic plot.)

Unlike Dungeons and Dragons or Traveller, however, Champions never became an extended, cherished campaign in our group. In part, our desire to return to one of our true first loves was the first sign of an issue my gentle readers will remember from earlier posts, the group’s evolving need for a less-complex and speedier combat resolution system. (A Champions melee takes much, much longer to resolve in the game than it does to read about it in a graphic novel or see it on the movie screen.) However, another reason became clear during play: my players could not accept the ‘catch and release’ aspect of the superhero genre, where villains return again and again to plague the heroes.

A common convention of the superhero genre is the concept of  “code vs. killing”, where the hero always attempts to capture the villain and being him to justice rather than simply whacking him in the street as an example to his peers not to violate Wil Wheaton’s law. The code goes back to Superman, whose code vs. killing is one of the character’s defining principles. While admirable, in conjunction with an inefficient criminal justice system and poorly designed prisons (apparently due to a congenital and widespread unwillingness to recognize the actual level of danger superpowered villains pose to society), the failure to kill the villain nearly always results in his return to his life of crime at a later date. The ‘catch and release’ concept, where the recurring villains become familiar foils for the heroes and in some cases (like the Joker and Batman) come to actually define the heroes, is a wonderful literary device for episodic storytelling. Sadly, RPG players do not see their game as a graphic novel. Players raised in the hobby on a steady diet of monsters to kill for XPs (followed by the ritual looting of the lair) despise having to defeat the same villain over and over. It seems inefficient on their part, and insincere on mine. An occasional vigilante hero NPC makes a nice contrast to the remainder of the PC heroes and allows a GM to explore concepts of justice vs. law in his campaign; an entire swarm of player characters who encounter villainous NPCs and terminate them with extreme prejudice (as mine came to do) take a superhero campaign down dark and implausible roads where a GM or his players should not wander for long. And so, we did not.

During our brief Champions runs, no NPCs drew the ire of my vigilante player characters like the NPC’s with mental powers. Part of the issue was the point buy nature of Champions, where players would skimp on mental defenses to optimize the character against other physical threats. Naturally, when an NPC appeared who could take advantage of this weakness in combat he was never given an opportunity to do it twice. No one likes having his or her mind read, influenced, or controlled. Even Mahatma Gandhi, the epitome of nonviolence, once said, “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” (It is doubtful he was actually referring to mental powers, but the sentiment is clear enough.)

Mental powers (and the fear and loathing they usually generate) are a common theme in science fiction of all kinds:

“Also, I can kill you with my brain.” — River, to Jayne in the Firefly episode “Trash”

“The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi, to Luke Skywalker

“Your mind, to me, is an open book: full of big print and lots of pictures!” — Maldis, Farscape

“We are everywhere for your convenience.” — From a Psi Corps advertisement (Babylon 5)

“Of course I’m a threat. Why? Did you think for a moment that I wasn’t?” — Emma Frost (powerful telepathic villain originally with the Hellfire Club and now with the X-Men.)

Surprisingly, in spite of the evidence above, mental powers (referred to in Traveller as psionics) are a popular part of most Traveller campaigns. In the Official Traveller Universe (OTU), the Zhodani (an offshoot of humanity) are a major interstellar government whose entire society is structured around the employment of psionics by the nobility and the government. As you might expect, in the OTU the Zhodani have fought five interstellar wars with the Imperium in the last 500-odd years. The antipathy of the Imperium towards the psionic Zhodani confuses the Zhodani terribly, because they only use their powers for good. Just ask them. (Of course, the Zhodani also started all of the wars.)

The love Traveller players have for psionics in their campaigns fascinates me. A game whose gearheads pride themselves on complex and intricate technical design sequences for weapons, vehicles, and starships (literally, to the point of being a game within a game) and whose players passionately argue the finer points of game technology back and forth in the forums at excruciating length has at its core in the OTU mental powers even more magical than faster-than-light drives, reactionless drives, lasers with light-second weapon ranges, or starships without heat radiators. The players of my murderous Champions vigilante group are happy to have billions of NPCs with psionic powers in the Traveller game universe with them as long as a few of the PCs have psionics as well.

Does that seem right to you?

As TV Tropes points out, the more powerful and dramatic the psychic powers, the ‘softer’ the sci-fi. Inclusion of psionics is one of the key elements that push Traveller firmly into the category of space opera rather than hard science fiction.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Space opera frequently produces lighter and more entertaining stories than hard, accurate science fiction. As one of my players once said about Cyberpunk 2020, “I don’t come to our game to enjoy grim and depressing worlds where everyone is out to screw us over; I’ve got real life for that.”

Remember one of the key lessons of our GM school, though: Always think through the consequences for your campaign universe of the things you include in your campaign background, and define their limits carefully. The details you generate during your thought processes will give depth and reality to the campaign it might lack otherwise. And psionics, just like nanotechnology, will turn your campaign into grey goo if you let it.

As promised, here are the psionic house rules for my campaign:

Savage Worlds Traveller House Rules 5.0 beta: Arcane Background: Psionics

The section on psionic technology is a reflection of those thought processes in my own campaign. I like to think that it helps explain why there have been five wars with the Zhodani instead of just one. (Of course, the Imperium has technically lost three of the five conflicts, drawn two, and won none. Well, at least the Zhodani aren’t like these guys.)

The dust has finally settled a little bit around here following my heart attack four weeks ago. I’ll try to pick up the pace a little on the posting.

Finally, never forget: if you don’t see the fnord, it can’t eat you.

 

 

So Say We All

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In the beginning, there were 3d6. And we rolled the 3d6 six times in order, and we saw that the roles were mediocre to poor, and we were told to be silent and that our rolls were good enough. And we were encouraged to choose a class that fit the character’s rolls and play him without complaint regarding our lack of bonuses to experience or die rolls, cherishing the mediocre to poor rolls as roleplaying inspiration as we did so. SO SAID WE ALL.

Yeah, that didn’t last long. First came, “That character died at birth. Roll again.” Next came, “Arrange the dice rolls any way you want,” followed by “Roll 4d6 for each stat and discard the low die.” Soon, there were as many ways to roll up characters as there were dungeonmasters. (I think you can see the beginnings of the trend that led to Nishan the Ranger.)

Classic Traveller ‘improved’ on this trend by allowing characters to die in character generation after hours of work by the player and GM without ever reaching actual play, and by randomly rolling skills at each step rather than allowing a player to select skills to get the character he actually wanted. I lost count of the number of characters who survived character creation only to be discarded for poor final skill sets or poor mustering out benefits.

Who knew roleplaying games would evolve to deliberately generate massive body counts before combat ever began?

Honestly, I don’t think I have ever seen a character created for a roleplaying game in character generation systems with random elements without some significant degree of tinkering with the system by the player and GM. I have seen many articles and blog posts advocating the joys of random character creation and character diversity; some of their points are valid. However, this ideal runs into the RPG equivalent of the NIMBY syndrome. Who wants to be the player stuck with a suboptimal long-term player character that has to compete with another player’s carefully optimized creation? Look at 3rd Edition and 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons; the entire concept of prestige classes represents a player’s desire to have an optimized and unique character made canon. To paraphrase Kosh, “We are all munchkins.”

Champions and GURPS took the alternative concept of point-buy character generation mainstream. In character creation using a point-buy system, stats, skills, and other character features are purchased with points from a menu; your character is built to order based on your concept. The disadvantage of the system is, of course, that you never have enough points to buy everything you want. Players rapidly lose sight of the idea that these characters are low-level starting characters that should grow into their concept and want to buy the powerful character they could have right now if only their GM would grant them JUST A FEW MORE POINTS TO MAKE THIS WORTHLESS WEAKLING PLAYABLE. First-level characters somehow seem easier to accept in a roll-up system than a point-buy system.

My players dislike point-buy systems for just this reason. I prefer them because it is the best way to ensure starting characters are on a reasonably equal footing; I do not think it is fair to have a wide variation in power and skills between starting characters based on how much a player is willing to bend the character creation system, to fudge his die rolls, and to murder characters repeatedly during creation until he gets what he wants. I have reluctantly concluded that point-buy systems are the worst possible character generation system – except for all of the others.

Savage Worlds Traveller House Rules 5.0

This link will let you download the current beta of my point-buy house rules system for creation of Traveller characters for Savage Worlds. As my gentle readers will no doubt have noted, the editing of this document has produced a long delay between posts and it is still not complete to my satisfaction. I will take comments from my players and my readers and post a revised draft in one to two weeks. The beta rules for psionics, Traveller racial packages, and my weapon and armor tables will follow over the next few posts.

Some general comments. First, I again want to acknowledge Ed Messina’s Traveller Plus system as well as Jon Woodland and John Harrower for their own versions of Savage Traveller. I recommend you check out the originals for inspiration and for concepts I have not incorporated that you might find of use.

Second, this document and the documents to follow will not allow you to play Savage Traveller without a Traveller rules set (sources here, here, and here) and a set of the Savage Worlds rules. Man (or woman) up, spend a little coin to buy the rules sets, and support your hobby. Roleplaying games are not the movie or music industries; there are no alternative revenue streams for our authors and game designers. Trust me when I tell you that my experience of the last few days has shown me how time consuming game design and writing can be; if these men and women don’t get a little compensation for their efforts because almost everyone got their copies from friends or from torrents, our little hobby will go belly up.

Third, I assume most readers of this blog have more than a passing familiarity with Traveller, but my posted house rules also assume a working knowledge of the Savage Worlds rules as well. Do your homework.

And last, I have a few specific remarks to make on the content. I have deliberately not included a character background system; I strongly prefer my players and I create their character backstory together. There are various systems to do so in each of the Traveller rules sets, but this is another case where rolling your own is superior to the commercial product. Read the section on standard vs. specialized cascade skills carefully; this is the most complex item in the system. Note the limit on skill values above their controlling attribute, and note the important Rule of d0.

As always with my posts and especially with my house rules system, remember rule 1 is: It’s your game. Your rules, your world, your universe. Take my ideas and suggestions as a starting point; make changes as needed to create your own house rules for you and for your players to use in your campaign world . Niven once described such intellectual activity as “proper use of playground equipment.”

SO SAY WE ALL.