Dark Balls and Red Eye Mode

No post of substance today, because I got curious about this output from Talk to Transformer. My input is in bold. I have questions…

If your map of the dungeon is torn, you can use
Adventure Mode to reroll. The only exception is that if
you have a red eye in the Dungeon Map, you cannot
pick up the recipe from the Old Man if you roll while
having a red eye in your party (since he will always be
in the red eye status).

Returning to the Adventure Mode map to use a lot of
HP Boost or Dark Balls will display the “Quiz” like
results until you have a proper party.

Note: In most cases you can return to the Dungeon
Map with Adventure Mode active without having to
make another solo run to the boss. You can return to
the Dungeon Map without being healed by making an
NPC in the small room.

Now, Talk to Transformer was trained on a whole lot of webpages, which is why it is so good at making fake RPG materials: there’s a whole lot of web pages about RPG materials. So T2T must have gotten the ideas for this from somewhere.

Question is: from where?

What RPG or computer game has “Dark Balls” that you can use in “Adventure Mode”? Which game has characters that can be in "red eye mode?

And if the answer is “none that anyone knows of”, what kind of game mechanics could be made from this scrap?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Spell Spat Table

OOPS! You ticked off one or more magicians and then let them escape. Your new enemy plans to harass you magically until the very end. Until you do something about it, the GM rolls once a week on the Magic Spat table to see what the latest nuisance is.
Roll 4d6 and set aside any 6s rolled, then look up the total.

4d6 Roll	Magic Spat Activity
0	I Came to Gloat! Rival sends illusion of self to personally confront you.
1	Bite Me! Conjured attack dog appears.
2	Bring Waders! Area floods to knee height for 1 hour.
3	Good Job! Next door you see/pass through does 1d6 non-lethal damage as it hits you.
4	Scary Visage! NPCs flee you 1d6 times.
5	Pantsed! Trousers or robes fall off in 1d6 chases.
6	Flat-footed! Footwear falls off in 1d6 chases.
7	Pop! Next 1d6 bottles/vials held break.
8	Hiss! Backpack fills with 1d6 snakes.
9	The Eagle Has Landed! Birds take the next 1d6 small objects from your hands.
10	On a Roll! 1d6 barrels roll rapidly toward you.
11	UFO Flap! Conjures 1d6 bats around you.
12	Wine Tasting! 1d6 drinks near you spill.
13	Wart Pack! Backpack fills with 1d6 toads.
14	Duck Hunt! 1d6 ducks chase you, quacking loudly.
15	Heckler! Tiny face calls you a liar in next 1d6 NPC conversations.
16+	A Breather. Rival had something else to do this week.

If one or more 6s were rolled and set aside, each 6 rolled adds 1d6 to any dice roll mentioned in the results above.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Our Undying Publication Schedule

My future publication schedule, with suggestions added courtesy of the Talk to Transformer neural network web toy:

• Our Undying Neighbors
• Our Infernal Neighbors
• Our Spiritual Betters
• Our Unearthly Benefactors
• All of Our Neighbors In Heaven
• Our Exorcists From All Over The World
• Just Because You’re Alive
• The Larger Things In The Mirror
• Don’t Look Back Into The Deep Waters
• The End of Eternity and The Creation of Everything Else
• The Evils of Time
• The Rise of God
• The Fall of God
• Other Stuff I’ve Just Been Writing About, but You’ll Have to Read Again

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Liber 3d6

I know I have been promising for a while to finish Liber Zero, but I keep re-assessing priorities. Not sure where I want to go with it at the moment.

I feel bad, though, even though I haven't set any deadlines. To make up for it, I did a rush job on a simple RPG called Liber 3d6. It took one day! Natuurally, the layout kind of sucks, and it hasn't been proofed, but I think it is mostly OK.

The name comes from the emphasis on using 3d6 in order for everything, even things like spell casting and purchasing equipment. It's a bit light right now: only a few spells, and a mostly-improv equipment list, but there are six races and six classes, 9 abilities, and a good chunk of rules. Perhaps later I will expand the spell system and do a monster manual.

So here it is, my April 1st PDF offering: Liber 3d6. Let me know what you think!

OSRBA Random Topics Table

My first act as president of the OSR Blogowners Association is to tackle the problem of stale topics. There are certain topics which get repeated endlessly and regularly, generally every 3 to 6 months. we all know the topics: ascending vs. descending armor class, race as class, skill systems, meaning of hit points, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with rehashing old standards, but they are being rehashed too frequently.

This is a clear indication that we need a central topic authority.

Therefore, as president of the non-rabbit-centric OSRBA, I am instituting a weekly, mandatory Topic Tuesday for all OSR bloggers. Every Tuesday morning, the president will randomly select a topic that everyone must write at least one post about. The topic will be posted here and on Google+, to make it easily available. The procedure will be to roll a d12, d4, and d8 and consult the following table to create a two-word phrase:

roll	d12	d4+d8
1	Creating	(n/a)
2	Exploring	Wilderness
3	Tricking	Traps
4	Fighting	Followers
5	Looting	Villages
6	Studying	Spells
7	Magical	Monsters
8	Hiding	Hoards
9	Negotiating	Nuisances
10	Recovering	Resources
11	Controlling	Artifacts
12	Wandering	Dungeons

Next, the results of the d12 and d8 rolled above will be added and used on the following table to look up a prepositional phrase to modify the main two-word phrase:

d12+d8	of/for/in/with …
2	Weirdness
3	Random Tables
4	Fire
5	Vices
6	Secrets
7	Pleasure
8	Heaven or Hell
9	Gods
10	Robots
11	Disembodied Brains
12	Wood
13	Jokes
14	Fantasy or Illusion
15	Villains
16	Space or the Stars
17	Madness
18	Knighthood
19	Nature
20	Reason

If a rolled topic is a repeat of a topic already used in the last six months, the two-word phrase will be kept, but the d12 and d8 will be re-rolled to select a different prepositional phrase. If the second attempt is also a repeat, a Topic Amnesty Period will be declared, during which anything goes.

All blogowners will have 1d6 days to post something on the randomly selected topic or be fined 3d6 zorkmids.

Written with StackEdit.

Community vs. Conformity

On the Why I Don’t Hop post, Alexia Smolensk made the following comment while arguing with Tedankhamen:

If you really are going to ‘build community,’ then build one. Offer services, that can be availed of by members who contribute more than answers to ordinary, drab and unimaginative questions. Do more than describe the hobby, propel it forward. Organize events that ONLY new bloggers are allowed to take part in, then offer mentorships and round up volunteers to give advice and editing. Teach those that are part of the community writing techniques and contribute source material to a central pool that everyone can take advantage of. Build a consensus against abuse, establish unity in blog maintenance and design, and promote yourselves to outsiders in a smart, pleasant and encouraging manner.

Now, the first part about services, contributions, pushing the hobby forward is vague, but not too objectionable. The part about new bloggers is either a goofy fixation, or a response to something Tedankhamen said that I missed, because I certainly didn’t talk about new bloggers, or about a blog hop as some kind of initiation/rite of passage. But the bulk of the remainder of that paragraph is describing something absolutely horrible that I hope no OSR blogger helps to organize.

Mentorships? Roving packs of editors offering unasked-for advice? Teaching bullshit writing techniques? Establishing “unity in blog maintenance and design”?

The RPG blogging community is not a freaking homeowners association. Why the hell would anyone even think of it as some kind of collective standards enforcement committee? Why would anyone even want that? Are we really gathering online to discuss septic tanks and lawn care? Granted, a lot of blog posts sound like gossip about the way Joe Blow has let his front yard go all to hell, and maybe he should do something about that rusty junker in his driveway. But is that the pinnacle we should be struggling to reach?

Blogs are not a physical place. And when I spoke about building community, I did not mean some kind of social club. I meant a community of ideas. The RPG blogging community in general and the OSR/DIY blogging community in particular is about sharing information and ideas. The maps and geomorphs, the the classes and spells, the monsters, the tables, the house rules.

The most effective cross-blog community-building exercises, in my opinion, were the Dyson Logos mapping challenges and the one-page dungeon challenges/contests. There were also some lesser examples of ideas sparking cross-blog creativity. The “blog carnivals” have potential, since they involve bloggers contributing one post on a single topic, instead of 26 to 31 posts for an entire month, but they’re kind of screwed up because there’s no good way to fin out who’s hosting the carnival or what the current topic is, and because some of the carnival hosts suggest boring topics that are about who you play with, how much fun you had, what products you’ve enjoyed, how much stuff you own. The best topics are topics that provoke the creation of new material.

So please, people, I beg you: DON’T FOLLOW THE ADVICE ALEXIS GIVES ABOVE. Please don’t create The Association for the Promotion and Imposition of Irrelevant Stylistic Bullshit.

Written with StackEdit.

Why I Don't Hop

Like many people, I have been skipping the current RPG bloghop posts, and plan on skipping the one that begins next month. (YES1 Because one month wasn’t annoying enough!) I did one of those A to Z challenges a couple years ago, but I tried to use the alphabetic structure of the challenge to generate new, interesting topics to cover, since “Hey! How about if several hundred of us post the same thing every day for an entire month?” is an inherently bad idea and must be handled with care.

Plus, what a lot of people don’t seem to get is that it’s called a blog hop for a reason: it’s supposed to encourage readers to hop from blog to blog, sampling blogs they may not have otherwise heard of. At the very least, there needs to be a central popular blog where participants can register, and every participating blogger needs to link back to that list of registrants. Participants should devote a couple posts that month to linking to and discussing other participating bloggers, and the organizer ought to have a weekly round-up post. This pretty much demands that each participant only submit one to three posts, period. But no, we’re geeks, and we geeks don’t know the meaning of the word “restraint”! If one post is good, 28 to 31 posts is even better!

This month’s bloghop also happens to include a lot of dull questions. “What was your first character?” I think, like a lot of kids in the ’70s, my first character was named “Bilbo”, and I’m pretty sure I had a “Gandalf” and a “Doctor Strange”. Not interesting in the slightest.

But that’s not the worst of it. About half of the questions relate to commercial consumption. It’s another geek failing, particularly easy to see on the forums: too much focus on what you can buy, how much, what’s new, what’s being re-released. Certainly, we should expect some of this. An occasional review, or an announcement from someone who is generally excited about an upcoming product because they know something about it, more than “they put a cool picture on the ad and repeated a bunch of buzzwords I like”? Blog marketing is to be expected, but what I like to see is 90% “here’s what I’m doing/thinking” vs. 10% “here’s what I own or would like to own”.

Maybe we should tone down the gamer gluttony, just a bit?

Written with StackEdit.

Whatchamacallit Games

In the Pen & Paper RPG Bloggers Community on G+, Tim Baker linked to a blogpost by Robin Laws in which he laments that there’s no easy way to talk about D&D and its descendants, in contrast to non-D&D old school RPGs or modern non-fantasy relatives of D&D, like D&D Modern. For legal reasons, we use circumlocutions, such as one he cites: “d20-rolling fantasy games”. And he suggests the term “F20” as a good shorthand for exactly this.

I, of course, object.

First and foremost, fantasy RPGs derived from D&D certainly share things in common, making “fantasy” a reasonable keyword to distinguish these games from others, like Call of Cthulhu. But the “d20” part is an absurd thing to focus on. Plenty of people, especially in the early days of the hobby, substituted 3d6 or 4d6 or some other workaround when a d20 wasn't handy. Can you really claim that D&D with exactly one change – which dice to roll for attacks and saves – is a completely different game, so far out on the fringe that it can barely be considered related to D&D? Can you really tell me that Rolemaster, which started as optional combat and magic systems for D&D, is nothing like D&D because of its use of percentiles?

Related to this: if you are going to single out “rolling a d20” as an important criteria, shouldn't you also specify how you roll? I have a friend who wrote a game system called ORCS (Organic Rules Components System,) which uses a d20 roll, but it’s clearly not the d20 System for other reasons: classes are more like backgrounds, adjusting costs for skills, for example. He hates D&D fantasy, so none of the games he’s published would be “F20” games… but if someone were to write a dungeon-crawl ORCS game, would you seriously consider counting it as a D&D derivative and an “F20” game, just because it shared one thing in common, the die rolled for attacks?

I’ve said before: I think dice mechanics are the least important part of a role-playing game. The other rules, the ones that provide the structure of how you play the game, those are the important part. Which leads to another objection: the real defining criteria of “D&D-like fantasy games”, much more so than “rolling a d20”, is the class and level system. You have a class that defines your main abilities, and adventuring allows you to increase your level, adding or improving your class abilities. This is why Tunnels & Trolls or Rolemaster are obviously closely related to D&D, even though neither uses a d20, but why Runequest or Call of Cthulhu are much further away: not because of the percentile dice, but because of the absence of classes and the focus on skills.

I’d almost be tempted to suggest calling D&D derivatives “Class and Level Fantasy Adventure Games” or “CLeF Adventure Games”, or even “A-CLeF Games” if you wanted something really short. But then you run into my biggest objection to the Robin Laws suggestion: clever abbreviations are more trouble than they are worth. If you come up with an abbreviation like “F20” or “CLeF”, no one knows what it means until you explain it to them. So, if you want everyone to adopt it, you have to waste a lot of time spreading propaganda about your clever abbreviation. You could have just wrote “Class and Level Fantasy Adventure Games”, which maybe people can figure out without too much problem. Maybe add “in the tradition of Gygax and Arneson”, or something. Sure, it’s longer to write, but it’s more immediately understandable. If you use “A-CLeF”, you have to expand it, anyways, so you saved nothing. If you use “F20”, not only do you have to expand the abbreviation, but you get into the discussion above on why certain games that use a d20 aren't F20 games, or why games that are much closer to D&D aren't considered F20 games.

It’s just a huge mess.

Written with StackEdit.

My Safe Word is 'Jackass'

If you GM, and someone asks you a specific question about how to GM this or that, chances are you can give some reasonable, specific advice, like “don’t change details in the middle of an adventure just to make it harder for the players.” If no one agrees, they can say “screw you” and do the opposite, or whatever. But general advice, especially advice about social aspects of gaming, tends to be pure crap.

That’s my explanation for something several other bloggers have been ranting about for a couple days now. Some nameless writer, whom I can only assume writes a column about GMing, offered some advice to handling players. One bit of advice: the group should have a “safe word” to let everyone know that they aren’t comfortable with what’s happening in the game.

Tim became violent. Erik was livid. Charles was scornful. The Pundit blamed it on social justice warriors.

But here’s something I haven’t seen anyone mention: It’s my understanding that the BDSM community created the idea of “safe words” because the submissive in a BDSM relationship begs the dom to stop, but doesn't mean it. Begging and pleading and screaming “it hurts!” is part of the kinky game they are playing. So, the sub needs an extra word to say “Time out, we really need to stop.”

In an RPG, this is equivalent to the difference between “in character” and “out of character”. But the majority of gamers switch between these two modes all the time and don’t have a problem telling which is which; the only people who need a “safe word”, then, would be hardcore immersive players who want to do everything in-character and hate the more fluid play of every other gamer because it “breaks immersion”.

But we already have a safe word – many safe words – for RPGs: the real names of the players, plus any system-level terminology, like “roll a d20”. If someone does something at the table that we don’t feel comfortable with, we can say, “No, Bob, we aren’t going to sit around and watch you pretend-rape all the prisoners. Knock it off, jackass.”

I object to the whole “safe word” idea mainly for the same reason I think strict rules about in-character and out-of-character speech and action is idiotic. I remember reading, about twenty years ago, someone suggesting that you should make an “O” with your thumb and index finger and hold your hand near your forehead when speaking out-of-character. Or maybe it was a “C”; who knows? Both are stupid ideas. Perhaps I’m biased, because I play/run games 75% to 80% out-of-character, anyways. But to me, these extremely anal attempts to separate one from the other seem a waste of time, unless you have a brain-damaged player who might mix up reality with role-playing unless you keep them strictly separated.

Written with StackEdit.

Nine and Thirty Anagrams

I never considered the Anagram Server as a possible source of campaign ideas, but Zak S. suggests anagram-izing your campaign name for some quick suggestions. “Nine and Thirty Kingdoms” yields at least three anagrams I thought were interesting.

• Intoning a Kindred’s Myth
• Shredding a Tiny Tin Monk
• Nth Rank Demigod Is Tinny

Written with StackEdit.

Follow-Up: I Hate Simulation

In my rant about simulation, I very carefully avoided giving my own definition of “simulation”, partly because it would have spoiled the rantiness to have a serious discussion about what simulation means to me, and partly because I wanted people to consider the annoyance of the simulation debate without the distraction of the correct definition. And yes, my definition is the correct one, because other definitions are needlessly complex or broad. Or drift to the other extreme, becoming too specific.

I made this comment on the forum dicsussion:

…within the many kinds of simulation, there’s a specific idea of “rules to make interesting situations”, and within the many kinds of balance, there’s a specific idea of “rules to keep all players on a par with each other and the challenges they face”.

It’s an idea I’ve floated before: the interesting rules, to me, are those that make stuff happen in the fiction. These are clearly distinct from rules that tell players what they can and cannot do.

Morale rules, in general, makes stuff happen. Exempting player characters from morale rolls, though necessary in my opinion, is just good ettiquette.

Random encounter rolls make stuff happen. Balancing encounter challenge ratings against expected party size just makes certain players feel the encounter is “fair”.

Random character ability scores make stuff happen (unexpected disparities, for one.) Point buy to guarantee character equality is another concession to “fairness”.

Adding laser pistol effects to turn the game into a sci-fi action game makes stuff happen (the special laser effect.) Telling some players that they can’t use the laser pistol they found because it’s not in-genre for their character is a social rule, not simulation.

Although I concede the need for some social-level rules, such as genre expectation agreements or limits on the number of extra abilities you can beg the GM to let you have, my ideal is to make as many of the rules as possible deal with making stuff happen. It’s not because of realism or even genre emulation: so many things we use, such as magic potion miscibility tables or the description of the gelatinous cube’s powers, are pure fantasy and not even all that common in fiction, We add rules like this because we think they are fun. We enjoy the variety they introduce. We like the unexpected, and the chance to find a way to avoid ill-effects or turn the situation to our advantage.

And the fact that I like to keep the interpersonal rules to a minimum and very informal, unique to each group, and focus much more on the rules that make fictional stuff happen, means that I prioritize simulation over balance. So sue me.

I think I’ll have even more to say about this in a future post.

Rant: I Hate Simulation

I wouldn't have thought it would come to this, but it has.

I hate simulation.

Like my great hate for balance, my hate for simulation arose from the crazy vague way the term is used. If you had asked me a couple weeks ago if I hated simulation, I would have snorted derisively at you. Certainly, I don't hate the kind of simulation *I* do.

But annoying forum threads have made it clear that there are many different definitions of "simulation" going around. I don't agree with many. And some definitions flat out are the opposite of simulation... and yet, people are bandying the term about, as if they knew what it meant.

The trigger event was a discussion about balance vs. simulation. See, every time new schoolers and old schoolers fight, they start arguing about balance... and the new schoolers have come to the conclusion that the old schoolers prioritize simulation over balance. That might not be that far off, but the way I've seen this described and discussed, it's pretty clear that no one is clear on what that statement means.

For one, I saw a 4venger lump the Pathfinder people in with the "prioritizes simulation over balance". Isn't Pathfinder just 3e in disguise? From my viewpoint, the 3e crowd is just as concerned with balance as the 4e crowd, just maybe not the exact same kinds of balance. And maybe they're a little too fond of some loopholes.

Another thing soon became clear: some people were talking about the dreaded "realism", even though they used the term "simulation". And so, up popped the old cliche of "verisimilitude". Look, it's nice if some people like verisimilitude. And if you squint your eyes at it, it is a sort of simulation. But in most cases, that's certainly not what I mean by "simulation" I wish you people would go back to ranting about realism...

And a third thing... no, let's bitch about the first thing again, in a different way. One of the clever debaters tried to separate "simulation" from "balance" with an example of setting point costs based on difficulty of learning a talent vs. setting costs based on usefulness to the character. I'm sorry, but any time you talk about "point costs", you are talking about balance. There may be some emulation aspect going on, but definitely both examples deal with balance.

And then there's the whole "enforcing genre expectations". For reasons I won't go into until my follow-up post, I don't consider any kind of "enforcement" to be simulation. Genre expectations are (Ta ta-ta DA!) genre expectations. Surprisingly, they already have a name. They are part of a play group's ground rules, like "keep it clean" and "no player-vs.-player". Are either of those "simulating" something? NO.

So I've come to the conclusion that just about anything anyone else describes as "simulation" is stuff I don't like. Well, OK, I have no great abiding hate for genre emulation, but it's not a major or even secondary interest, for me. But although I use the real world as a guide for imagining stuff, I hate getting bogged down in the numeric details of the real world. I'm not about to do force calculations based on mass as part of my gaming, and "Realistic [falling damage | economics | weather patterns | environmental effects]" are going to turn me off when I see them.

And I've already told people where they can stick point-buy schemes. That applies no matter what you are basing your point costs on.

Rejected Monster Ideas II

I almost... ALMOST.. gave these two monsters full write-ups a day or two ago. And why not? There aren't enough Lawful monsters, are there? But they seemed just a little too absurd...

Cherubou (Lawful Fantastic Beast)

Like a moose or elk, but with an antlered baby head instead of a moose head. Also, angel wings. Acts a bit like a shedu, roaming the wilderness and offering wisdom.

Cherubus (Lawful Celestial Beast)

Just as the gates of Hades are guarded by a three-headed dog, the gates of Heaven are guarded by a giant three-headed baby. With angel wings.

Weapon Tree

So, while I was working to get my new computer on the internet and eventually ready for writing/layout projects, I was also playing a video game. It was, after all, one of the few things I could do until my computer was online. What I was playing was Torchlight, a game I’d never heard of before. Not surprising; I’m not all that big on video games, tend to be slow to adopt a new one and play just a small range of games for freaking ever. But someone blogged several months ago about Torchlight and mentioned that it was either free or on sale for really cheap at GOG Games, so I decided to try it out… and after a month or two, when I had a computer I thought could run it, I finally installed it.

It’s entertaining enough, but it’s a lot like Diablo 1 and 2, which as it turns out I don’t really like all that much. Not because it’s all that hard; I’ve played the Diablos and now Torchlight all the way to the end. It’s just not all that fun. It’s based on these premises:

1. There should be lots of combat;
2. Combat should basically be just a “click-storm”, maybe with some “special moves” (i.e. clicking with the right mouse button instead of the left;)
3. Your other preoccupation is junk farming.

By “junk farming”, I’m referring to what some people may think is a great innovation: the way magic items are arranged and described. See, there’s a bunch of adjectives or descriptors, and each one has a specific mechanical meaning, so you just randomly assign one or more modifier to the base item to get a unique magic item, like “Spiked Epic Potato of Thorns”. Also, there are gems, in several grades (cracked, dull, discolored, etc.) and with a different bonus associated with each variety… and some magic items have “sockets”, which you can put gems into to add specific powers to your epic potato. There are also rare items that come in sets, and if you have two or more items in a set, you get bonus powers.

Problem #1: This is the dullest way you could describe magic items.

Problem #2: Since the game is about collecting just the right gear to defeat those thousands of monsters you are going to fight, and the gear is randomly generated, there’s a lot of it, to give you at least a thin chance of getting the right gear. That means you get a lot of gear. Tons of it, almost all useless, so you have to sell it. Hence, it’s junk.

Problem #3: The gear is keyed to level. Not just the magical gear, but even the mundane stuff. Hence that word “Epic”, which means you have to be about 25th to 30th level, I think, before you can use it. You start getting it when you get to about that level in the dungeon. That means even more junk, and no way to jump ahead and take a risk to get something really good, to make the early battles easier.

In short, what the designers of Diablo and Torchlight think is “fun” is something mind-numbingly boring and not the least bit special.

Now, this is an OD&D blog, not a video game blog. The reason why I brought this up is because this kind of thinking has infected D&D. And not just the WotC editions; I occasionally spot someone offering game material that sounds a lot like this. There was, I believe, an actual Diablo supplement for D&D, so that you could enjoy your boredom in more than one form. But beyond that, the way feats, skills, and templates work is much the same. I was struck by this when I read the thread about the Gelatinous Cube, because basically after the original question was answered, the optimization dorks moved into the thread to discuss the optimum form of Gelatinous Cube, based on adding templates. Half-Fiend Half-Draconian Awakened Gelatinous Cube. Sounds AWESOME!

Follow-Up Rant: I Hate Niche Protection

I just managed to fix the Internet on my new (desktop) computer, which is much better for writing long blog posts and cross-linking to other posts. So, I wanted to continue the rant about niche protection and address a few of the issues raised in the comments. The important points to note in that post are:

1. I mean "niche protection" in a very broad sense; and,
2. Like so many things, the hate is about intentions rather than appearances.

The alternate definitions or applications some people gave for niche protection all specify narrower examples of what I'm talking about. For example, ProfessorOats defended niche protection in this circumstance:

You only protect those areas not every character should be doing. That's why the thief class is an issue: everyone should be picking locks, disabling traps or climbing walls!

So, in his view, if only one class can do some highly specialized thing that shouldn't be common, that's "niche protection" in its truest and most useful form.

Yeah, I hate that idea, too.

The reason is because of those intentions I mentioned. It's not the mere surface aspects of preventing someone from doing something; it's it's the intention of doing that to protect another class, for whatever reason: spotlight protection, encouraging group cohesion, whatever.

I'm all for designing classes and characters to be different. And I'm all for what Brendan referred to as "interesting trade-offs": making a class better at one or two things, but allowing other abilities to languish at "normal" levels. It's the way I think when I design my own classes. But you can play just fine with classes and with zero niche protection, as long as you don't have a whiner in the group. So why have niche protection?

Because somebody is elevating theory over fun.

When I tell new players "Magic-Users can cast spells, Thieves are good at stealth, opening locks, and things like that," I'm not telling them what they are limited to, or what other classes are forbidden from trying. I'm giving them quick package deals built around what they might find fun to do. Want to do a lot of magic stuff? Play a magic-user. Playing a fighter instead? Then if you try to do magic, you may find it very difficult, although not necessarily impossible, and you will have to work like a dog just to get anywhere at it. But hey, even by the book, there's a way to do it (Ring of Spell Storing.)

Or switch classes. That's something the niche protection racket never seems to address: if protecting players from having their gimmick "stolen" is so important, why have rules for switching classes? Answer: because doing everything should be hard, but not impossible.

And to finish up: no, Dante, the "you might make him cry" is *not* a straw man argument, or even important to the discussion of niche protection. It's satire. Because, from my viewpoint, all the rationalizations about why niche protection is a Great Thing basically translate to "someone, somewhere, might cry". People *have* bitched about the Knock spell making the Thief "pointless". Really? Because the M-U is going to waste a spell or scroll on opening a trivial lock that a Thief could open, instead of saving the Knock for the one lock the party must get past and the Thief can't seem to pick? If the M-U does, so what? The look on the party's faces when they find mostly worthless junk in the first chest they use Knock on is certainly worth the lack of niche protection, isn't it?

Rant: I Hate Niche Protection

Professor Oats was a little startled when, in a comment on my last post, I quite strongly stated that I don't like niche protection. In fact, I'm opposed to it.

I can understand why you'd have mixed feelings about skills, but opposed to niche protection? Could you elaborate on that, 'cause I honestly can't wrap my head around why you'd oppose niche protection unless you were also opposed to classes

Here's the elaboration: I loathe niche protection. It does terrible things to your game, your adventures, and possibly to your pets as well. It has no reason to exist, even in a game with classes. Perhaps especially in a game with classes.

But maybe we should be clear about what "niche protection" is, since when I first heard of it after 15 or so years of playing RPGs, I didn't have a clue what it could be; and after hearing an explanation, I thought "What the hell...?" It's like aliens came down from the sky and planted chips in some gamer's heads.

The theory of niche protection is that each character should have a distinct role in the group, something only your character can do, or that your character does best. Sometimes, niche protection proponents link niches to classes; other times, to MMORPG-style roles (tank, dps and ... healer? I think. Not really into MMORPGs.)

The general problem with that, from my perspective, is that old-school characters are supposed to be able to try anything. Telling a player, "No, you can't try to force the lock on the door, because that's the thief's job, and you might make him cry" seems contrary to the spirit of telling players to make decisions based on the situation, not on your character sheet.

Furthermore, classes and characters in old-school games often have very little detail. You are not supposed to differentiate your character by picking a unique race/class/ability score combination, but by, you know, playing your character differently. Old school play expects that there might be two fighters. Or three. Or maybe even ten. How do you protect that many niches, in just the area of combat? What if two people want to play Magic-Users? Do you tell one "No, the other guy might cry"? Do you force them to take different spells?

The more I think about niche protection, the more I realize that it causes all the evil in the world. Or, at least, the gaming world. You need more classes, because you need more niches. Or you play with smaller parties, so that you only have one character per niche. In which case, better design adventures differently, so that a party of four won't find it too tough. Can't have hirelings! They stomp on someone's toes! Classes have to be overdesigned, because you have to try to make each one distinct. You need skills, to help make two fighters distinctive. Feats, too. No randomly-rolled characters, because what if two players roll similar stats? Better make the ability bonuses finer grained, too.

Niche protection is the Great Satan. Go forth and stamp it out.

Follow-Up: I Hate Play Testing

I talked about a lot of things in my rant about the Cult of Play Testing, but the two main points I wanted to cover were the delusion that pen-and-paper RPGs, like computer games, can become obsolete, and that tight, mathematically-oriented design is a Good Thing in RPGs.

Video games become obsolete when the hardware or operating system they were designed for is no longer available and the game was never ported. The hardware for your typical tabletop RPG is some kind of writing tool, some kind of randomizer, and the people to operate these. The operating system is called "your brain". Your brain is not obsolete, and simple writing tools and dice (or cards) still work the same way they've always worked for centuries. Batteries don't go dead in dice or pencils. Treating tabletop RPGs as if they were computer programs, requiring frequent updates and a rigorous design process, is not only ridiculous, but I suspect mostly about ego, putting on airs of being some great designer.

As for tight, mathematically-oriented designs, the problem with repeated tweaking of numbers to get the perfect system, meshing perfectly and rationally with all other components of the system, is that it produces boring RPGs. Plus, since those components you are tweaking are really a matter of taste, it's not really the perfect system, is it? Just somebody's temporary answer to the question "how do I want to play?"

The thing is, despite the name, roleplaying games are not games; they're pastimes. They are not meant to be rigorously-defined activities with a clear objective, but loosed "play" with transitory "in-fiction" goals. The most fun in an RPG happens not when the system performs as expected and players are able to demonstrate their mastery of the rules, but when unexpected surprises happen. That's why the GM's rulings are so important: not because they fill in gaps in the rules, but because they keep the game from being just a pen-and-paper version of Diablo.

Rant: I Hate Play Testing

Here's another rant to go along with the rant about game balance.

I hate play testing. It's possibly caused more damage to RPGs than even the damnable quest for game balance.

I'm sure some people reading this are choking on their own frothy rage-spittle already. But it's true.

It's not the actual act of playing a game before it's finished that is the problem. I've done that myself, playing in a couple games before their publication, and play testing a couple games I wrote and discovering that they just didn't work. There's never anything wrong with playing a game and then deciding it's not fun, either abandoning it or making changes.

No, what I hate is the nefarious Cult of Play Testing that seems to have emerged.

The Cult of Play Testing doesn't advocate play testing for any sensible, like making sure it's fun and that there are no major mistakes. The Cult of Play Testing is batshit insane. The Cult believes in Objectively Good Design. There are certain numbers you have to hit to make a good game, in the eyes of the Cult. And as knowledge of Objectively Good Design advances, old games become obsolete. Dice expire, you know, and must be replaced with dice that have more sides.

Let's take the numbers racket first. Stuff like "average damage output". Sometimes, this is linked to "game balance", for example the damage output of a particular spell may be higher than the damage done by a fighter of similar level. But even in other situations, Cultists like to pick some magic number as the goal and will add or drop features of the game based on whether they hit the expected number. They don't realize that "5" isn't any better or worse than "7", depending on the circumstances.

The absurdity of this, of course, is that the numbers chosen are completely arbitrary, as are the means of testing, in many cases. Consider  the classic example of comparing Fighter damage to that of a Magic-User with a Fireball spell. A 5th level M-U -- lowest level where Fireball is available -- does 5d6 damage, or half that on a save, to multiple targets. A 5th level Fighter, though, only does 1d6 in pre-Greyhawk D&D, maybe double or triple that with a spear set for a charge. That's nowhere near the same damage output, and the *Fighter* is supposed to be the one who deals damage!

Except, of course, that the Fireball is cast only once, while the Fighter can fight all day, and in some cases multiple opponents. A Fireball can potentially kill 5 orcs with 1 HD each in one round... but so can a 5th level Fighter, getting 1 attack per level against 1 HD creatures. And then again in the second round, and the third... and later that day, during another battle. By choosing damage per second instead of damage per expedition, you artificially inflate the damage potential of the 5th level M-U.

The Cult also buys the idea that everything should be play tested. Especially an old game, because maybe it stopped working when you adapted it to post-apocalyptic dance-offs. Better be safe and design the game from scratch, instead of starting with a tried-and-true base and adding modifications until you get what you like.

What this means is that taking, say, D&D, limiting the importance of levels, changing the classes, and tacking on broad backgrounds to adapt it to modern occult horror is something the Cult considers "bad design". Not, oddly, because they play tested such a design and found it lacking, but because everyone knows D&D is a class-and-level game designed for primitive dungeon-crawl game play, and therefore you can't adapt it to mystery/investigation or any other kind of game play.

"Modern" game design is better because RPGs are like computer software or automobiles, employing new technical improvements every year. Which means you can play test an old set of rules to set some base numbers, then play test new iterations of the rules to see if you can "beat" those numbers. Old games had +1 hit die every couple months? Well, this new game speeds it up to every couple weeks! Old ability score range was 3 to 18? Version 2.0 will fill in the missing numbers to get 1 to 25, and Version 3.0 will have scores all the way to 100, with scores increasing every couple levels! And none of this limiting ability score bonuses to +1 or +3... we'll give you a +1 every 2 points, indefinitely!

And all those numbers and components have to fit together tightly. You need synergy. Everything should interact with everything else, so that creating a character is an art. And it's all about numbers. Beautiful, soulless numbers.

What a load of bullshit. Half the time, maybe even *more* that half time, even new computer software or new automobiles aren't any better than the old ones. All the good solutions have pretty much been invented already. Maybe one new mechanics idea -- just an idea, mind you, not a complete system -- will come along every 5 to 10 years.

"Game Design" is really a matter of picking stuff off the shelf and assembling it, then changing a few numbers to fit a campaign concept. Play testing, such as it is, is just to see if the numbers you picked are viable. The numbers and mechanics in RPGs are just a convenience for making up new stuff for an ongoing game; it's the non-numerical part that's the most interesting.

Warforged

Yesterday in the Kender post, I wondered why no one is bitching about the warforged coming back, but taichara responded that "people who play warforged haven't been handed a mandate to drive the rest of the table into an insane asylum with their pwecious twee kleptomaniac". Well, no, they haven't. The mandate they have been handed gives them the right to sullen fighty types with few, if any, social connections. If the kender is custom made for That Guy, the warforged is custom made for The Turtle.

Also, it's made for the guy who says "I'm tired of being told my character has human limitations like a need to eat, drink and breathe, and I'm terrified that the GM will tell me I have to take my armor off to rest. So I want a race that that has no disadvantages other than 'refuses to act like a human being'."

By the way, Timrod, did you know that the kender are coming back?

I Hate Game Balance, Part II

(This is Part II of "I Hate Game Balance", previously posted on RPGNet. In the original forum thread, I made several follow-up comments; this is the material that specifically expanded on my ideas about game balance. One notable thing from the original thread was that I promised rants on "I hate Awesome" and "I hate role-players", which I really ought to get around to writing.)

I feel sorry for the people who don't agree with me, since, of course, they're wrong. But note that I don't care if people play games that are "balanced", in whatever fanciful way they choose to define that term, so I'm not taking down names of people who posted negative replies so that I can hunt them down later. No, seriously, I'm not! Play your little balanced games, if you want! I've probably even played in some games you'd consider "balanced".

As I made clear, but some people failed to grasp, the overarching objection to most forms of game balance I have is that people indiscriminately attempt to force everything into one or more patterns of "balance", either as designers of new games or as fans who demand new editions that "fix" problems with old games. Not every character should be balanced against every other character; sometimes, a game needs to be designed to focus on one or two types of characters, with enough ways to provide variation within those types, and any other types of characters that may exist in that game exist merely to flesh out the setting, or provide an option for someone who wants more of a challenge, or who wants to take a break from playing a major role.

Yes, sometimes you're going to get fantasy games where players are going to take one look at the rules and say, "Wizards are way overpowered compared to fighters. Why play a fighter at all?"

You know, games like Ars Magica. Stupid, imbalanced Ars Magica!

And sometimes you're going to get games where certain strategies make way more sense than others, like spending a plot point on a single on-the-fly change in Toon instead of spending lots of points on schticks up front, or making dumb characters that are more likely to fail Smarts checks. Or Risus, where for some reason it doesn't make sense NOT to try using a completely inappropriate cliché. It's like the designers were trying to ENCOURAGE that behavior!

Someone brought up something about "gew gaws", which I could have touched on earlier, but it kind of bleeds into a whole 'nother hate-filled rant. But certainly the shopping lists of feats, powers, skills, spells, all carefully defined to cover up any potential loopholes and make sure everything seems balanced are a huge part of my hatred for the concept. For one thing, they only seem balanced. There's so many of them, with so much minutiae attached to each, and "system support" in the form of a steady stream of publications expanding the gew-gaw lists, there's simply no way such games could be balanced. Which is probably why so many people in this thread bring up stuff like two advantages that cost the same, do the same thing, but one does something extra as well; it's a side effect of creating a massively-complex, let's pretend-it's-balanced system. People are going to wind up disappointed with such a system... unless the loopholes fit their favorite character concepts.

This is why my two favorite kinds of gaming are old school dungeon crawls and lite indie games. OD&D is great because most of the character detail is really handled off the cuff, instead of as part of the sparse mechanics. And I'm liking some of the stripped-down retroclones that can be used old school even more, because they often address any problems OD&D may have had without using a ton of new rules designed to make the game "balanced". And games like octaNe/InSpectres wind up being pretty balanced. Never exactly balanced, but close enough so no one notices anything except that ebb and flow I talked about. You've GOT to have those moments when one character, maybe two at the most, stand out, forcing everything else into the background, because if you go the nutcase route and try to make everyone and everything equal, you wind up making everything THE SAME.

Which is dull. So don't do that.