Player Sheets

I had a strange idea the other day. We're all familiar with the concept of the character sheet. It records the state and abilities of your character.

What about a player sheet?

See, one thing I really don't like doing as a GM is killing PCs. When a PC dies, not only does that character's story comes to an abrupt halt, but the player also gets more-or-less kicked from the game until a resurrection or introduction of a new character can occur. This is really kind of lame, especially since folks have gone out of their way to attend the game.

The player sheet would theoretically provide some sort of codified narrative control resources for the player to employ while he waits for a new opportunity to bring a character in, as well as some narrative control resources for when he or she does have a character. I think this might soften some of the blow of having a PC die. Play of any given character would add resources to the player sheet based on the character's achievements.

One thing that had a hand in inspiring this idea is the concept of achievements in video games. On the XBox 360 for example, just because you finish a game and sell it doesn't mean that your experiences in that game cease to matter. You gain points for your GamerScore, which exists outside of individual games to provide a record of your accomplishments across all XBox 360 titles. I'm pretty sure the score isn't really good for anything other than bragging rights, but it planted the seed of the player sheet in my head.

Really, if you and your friends wanted to, you could have player sheets that had impacts regardless of who among you was GMing or what system said GM was running. You might need to do some trial-and-error experimentation to find the sweet spot of making the sheets matter without having them either throw off game balance or restrict players from having powers and defining details that the GM would have handed over anyway were the sheets not a hurdle to that, but if successful, it could end up a gaming scrapbook with purpose in play.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Tweaking Savage Worlds

In a previous post, I talked a little about my opinion of the Savage Worlds RPG, and as you may recall I'm not overly fond of it. Still, it has some good bits, and the other day I started thinking about what I might be able to do to bring the things I dislike more in line with my preferred mechanics.

One of the mechanics that rubs me the wrong way is the spell point system. In fact, most times that I run into a system that seems like ammunition, my knee-jerk response is, "Oh, so you're saying that I can have exactly this much fun before I suck at life." If a character wants to build a magic-user in an RPG, he should be able to be a magic user all day, every day. That's his schtick. He shouldn't have to turn it off halfway through a day or a fight.

So I began tinkering. I wanted to share the results. Mind you, the following system won't make sense married to the Weird Science arcane background, but for backgrounds like Magic or Miracles, I think it looks pretty good.

Arcane Power Fatigue

Characters do not have power points. All arcane backgrounds should have their Starting Power Points entry replaced with a Resist Fatigue entry. Resist Fatigue will determine with which of the five basic attributes (usually Vigor or Spirit) characters of a particular arcane background resist drain.

When a character uses a power, instead of deducting the corresponding number of power points from a pool, he will make a trait test with the appropriate attribute. The target number for this trait test is equal to the number of power points the effect would have cost. Failed checks generate one level of fatigue. Successful checks generate no fatigue. This check occurs immediately after the effects of the power occur

Maintaining a spell after its standard duration expires subtracts one from the corresponding arcane skill roll as usual. The character also subtracts one from his rolls to resist fatigue from spellcasting.

Levels of fatigue from spellcasting fade as soon as the caster has a moment to catch his breath away from urgent situations.

Non wild card characters who fail spellcasting Resist Fatigue rolls do not accumulate fatigue, but are instead shaken. This shaken result cannot cause a wound.

With this system, a character can easily cast 1 and 2 cost effects over and over again as long as he hasn't been wounded. As the cost of an effect rises, so does the risk. The game would need a few new edges that might add a +1 or +2 to the fatigue resistance rolls, and edges that currently reference power points would have to be stripped, but I think you get the idea. If you're experienced with Savage Worlds, I'd welcome your feedback since my experience is a bit limited. Feel free to nitpick if my SW jargon in the italicized rules text isn't accurate too.

D&D 4e: The Problem with Powers

I'd like to start this post by saying that I really like D&D 4e. It is, without a doubt, a fun game to play, and I regularly dream up characters for it that never see the table because its flavor inspires me with more ideas than I ever have time to play.

That said, after thinking about powers for a while, I can finally put my finger on what bothers me about them. Powers turn characters into broken records.

When I watch a martial arts movie, one thing I hope for is a great deal of variety in fight scenes. I want to see the heroes and villains mixing it up in creative ways throughout the film. High attacks, low attacks, kicks, punches, thrown props, and terrain exploitation all sensitive to the context of the environment and the opponent generate excitement and maintain audience attention.

Another thing I want out of fight scenes is growing tension as the fight goes on. The fighters start by throwing basic kicks, punches, or weapon swings. Finding themselves evenly matched, they start to get creative by taking advantage of high ground or causing distractions to gain the upper hand. Perhaps they also drive the fight toward a balcony or ledge, each hoping for an opportunity to knock the other off of it in a high-stakes gamble for a quick victory. These things help to keep an audience invested in the scene as the tension grows.

The player-logic that drives the use of powers in D&D 4e sabotages both of these goals during in-game fights. Encounter powers don't look clever or creative when they're used in every single fight. Take the Rogue encounter power "Sand in the Eyes." When you use it, you cast sand into your enemy's eyes, blinding him. You see this happen in movie fight scenes often enough that it's easy to imagine, but you don't see it again and again and again in every fight scene of a single movie. You see it once, and it's clever. You see it repeatedly and the audience says, "That's nice. What's new?" This wouldn't be too problematic if there were any kind of incentive to not use every one of your encounter powers in every encounter, but players understand that when they have a resource usable once per encounter, for any encounter in which they don't use that resource, they've been inefficient with their power.

This leads into sabotage of the second good fight scene rule. Since players don't want to waste a resource that they've cared to put on their sheets, they tend to front load the fight with per encounter resources to ensure that they're spent in a fight. It's worse in fights that get recognized as "boss fights," because then they front load the fight with daily powers only to end up feeling like lumberjacks in the second half of a fight as they chip away at remaining hit points.

I'm not running a D&D 4e campaign right now, but I've considered testing out a house rule to remedy this in the future. This rule comes in two pretty simple parts, and would apply to both PCs and NPCs.

(For NPCs, encounter powers are powers that have any sort of conditional recharge. Daily powers would be those that can never be used more than once per fight.)

-Any round in which you expend neither encounter nor daily resources, you gain a +1 to attack rolls. This accumulates on itself in consecutive rounds if you continue to fulfill the condition.

-Any round in which you expend at least one daily resource, the bonus to attack rolls from this mechanic decays by 1 (to a minimum of 0).

In my experience, players love bonuses to attack rolls, and absolutely hate missing with limited powers. I think this would provide enough incentive to change behavior and create more exciting and tense fights as players have to weigh the benefits of cutting loose early with the drawbacks of missing out on increased accuracy.

PDQ#: Scaling Fortes by Genre

One role-playing game that I've run and enjoyed recently is Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (often abbreviated as S7S). The system that runs the game is called PDQ#, and it's available for free as a pdf. (Though I strongly recommend taking the plunge and buying S7S if you like what you read in the free PDQ# pdf as it has a much more extensive treatment of the rules.)

Also, I'm a big fan of shounen fighting anime shows like Naruto and Bleach. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children qualifies as well. Pretty much any anime that involves characters defying physics, throwing energy bolts, and shouting the names of special attacks while they perform them will probably go over well with me.

Recently, I had a thought on how to make PDQ# more capable of handling the gravity-defying fight scenes of my favorite shows. All you'll need to do is write a short list of genre assumptions with a single reference to game terms for each. I'll give an example here using leaping. In the anime I like, trained characters seem to be capable of easily leaping from the ground to rooftops. Using that, I'll write the following.

"For characters with an appropriate forte (ninja, acrobat, etc.), leaping from the ground to a two-story rooftop is an Average (Target Number 7) task."

Bam! Other than considering the appropriate fortes to be secret, technical, or esoteric (PDQ# p. 16), that's all you really need. Other target numbers can be easily ball-parked from there. For example, let's say that Cloud (of Final Fantasy VII fame), with the Master [+6] Ex-Soldier forte has some leaping to do.

Cloud needs to leap to a rooftop from the ground (TN 7). TN 7.

Cloud needs to leap to a rooftop from the ground (TN 7) in the dark (+2). TN 9.

Cloud needs to leap to a high (+2) rooftop from the ground (TN 7) in the dark (+2). TN 11.

Cloud needs to leap to a very (+2) high (+2) rooftop (TN 7) in the dark (+2) while Sephiroth (+2) slices free chunks of said building and sends them plummeting toward him (+2). TN 17.

And so on. I think this is a lot easier than finding out what kind of astronomical forte modifiers one might need on the normal human scale to achieve the crazy TN you'd have to come up with.